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           Title: Theological Essays of the Late Benjamin Jowett
      Creator(s): Jowett, Benjamin (1817-1893)
     Print Basis: London: Henry Frowde (1906)
   CCEL Subjects: All;
      LC Call no: BT15 .J6
     LC Subjects:

                  Doctrinal theology
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                               THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS

    OF THE LATE

BENJAMIN JOWETT

SELECTED, ARRANGED, AND EDITED BY

LEWIS CAMPBELL

  LONDON

  HENRY FROWDE

  1906

OXFORD: HORACE HART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
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Prefatory Material
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    TO

HALLAM LORD TENNYSON

    THIS REPRINT

    OF ESSAYS BY HIS FATHER'S FRIEND

    IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED
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PREFACE

   THE little volume of Select Passages from the Theological Writings of
   Benjamin Jowett has been well received; and it is hoped that a more
   extensive reprint of some of the dissertations in his edition of St.
   Paul's Epistles may find acceptance.

   The Essays on St. Paul and the Twelve, and on Casuistry, have been
   slightly abridged. The remaining five are given here as they appear in
   Professor Jowett's second edition (1859).

   L.C.
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INTRODUCTION

   THE present Bishop of Oxford, to his lasting honour, preaching in
   Christ Church Cathedral, as Dean, in October 1893, exhorted his hearers
   to praise God for the strenuous ungrudging energy, the hidden
   bountifulness, the true kind heart, the public spirit, the
   unworldliness, the deep reserve of strength, which were in Benjamin
   Jowett [1] . The Regius Greek Professor of the years from 1855 to 1893
   had triumphantly lived down' [2] the obloquy which, from conscientious
   motives, had been commenced by a former Canon of Christ Church [3] ,
   and promulgated by a former Bishop of Oxford [4] . His greatness as an
   educational and moral force could no longer be gainsaid; and his place
   in the literature of scholarship had been secured by his translations
   of Plato and Thucydides. But the injury to his reputation as a
   theologian was not thus repaired. The clergy of his own generation had
   been warned to avoid his teaching as unsound', and in the following
   years the younger men, whether theologically inclined or the reverse,
   were listening to other voices--sacerdotal, mystical, positivist, or
   aesthetic. The firstfruits of his ripe manhood were in danger of being
   buried in oblivion--the labour of his best years wasted. Yet there were
   not a few to whom his writings on religious subjects appeared
   invaluable; and there are some even to-day who are ready to endorse the
   words of A. P. Stanley in reviewing the work from which these essays
   are taken [5] : The cynical and sceptical spirit of the time will have
   met with an antidote such as we shall vainly expect from any other
   quarter.' Nor only the cynical spirit; but the neopagan hedonist
   temper, which saps the moral strength of many, meets here with a more
   searching humanism which penetrates to the inmost marrow of the mind
   and heart, and reaches that which is far more deeply interfused'. What
   Wordsworth said with invincible confidence' of his own poetry [6] may
   be affirmed of Jowett's theological writings. They co-operate with the
   benign tendencies in human nature and society wherever found, and will,
   in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and
   happier'.

   Some part of what he expected from his own method in theology may be
   inferred from a passage towards the end of the essay on the
   interpretation of Scripture [7] :--

   Is it a mere chimera that the different sections of Christendom may
   meet on the common ground of the New Testament, or that the individual
   may be urged by the vacancy and unprofitableness of old traditions to
   make the gospel his own--a life of Christ in the soul, instead of a
   theory of Christ which is in a book, or written down? Or that, in
   missions to the heathen, Scripture may become the expression of
   universal truths rather than of the tenets of particular men or
   churches? That would remove many obstacles to the reception of
   Christianity. Or that the study of Scripture may have a more important
   place in a liberal education than hitherto? Or that the rational
   service' of interpreting Scripture may dry up the crude and dreamy
   vapours of religious excitement? Or that, in preaching, new sources of
   spiritual health may flow from a more natural use of Scripture? Or that
   the lessons of Scripture may have a nearer way to the hearts of the
   poor when disengaged from theological formulas?'

   That essay was contributed to a volume whose professed object was to
   illustrate the advantage derivable to the cause of religious and moral
   truth, from a free handling in a becoming spirit of subjects peculiarly
   liable to suffer by the repetition of conventional language and from
   traditional methods of treatment'. In some such attempt as this Jowett
   saw the only hope of making Christianity a universal religion (see
   below, p. 220).

   The essays which are here presented to the reader may be said to have
   had a threefold purpose:--(1) While interpreting St. Paul, to call up
   as far as might be, a true image of the Apostolical age; (2) to apply
   the lessons of that age, and the teaching of the Apostle to actual
   life; and (3) to find such an expression for the theological doctrines
   which have been derived from that teaching, as may appeal to modern,
   or, if possible, to universal experience.

   (1) The nature of the first endeavour may be best described in the
   words of Arthur Stanley, who, as Arnold's pupil, had the same problem
   in his eye. He says of Jowett in the article already quoted:--

   He has approached the Apostolic writings with the view, not of imposing
   his meaning on them, but of learning their own meaning from themselves.
   He has placed himself not merely on the external scene, but in the
   living atmosphere of the Apostolic age. He. . . prepared himself for
   his work by committing to memory the whole of St. Paul's Epistles in
   the original Greek. But this is not enough. . . the immense layers of
   Papal, scholastic, and Puritan philosophy which intervene between
   ourselves and the Apostolic times; the elevation of the Apostolic point
   of view above the petty disputes in which we are absorbed; the very
   familiarity of the words of Scripture--all aggravate the difficulty of
   such an effort. . . . So to reproduce the past by the microscopic power
   of scholarship, and by the telescopic power of genius and learning, is
   the very purpose for which Universities are endowed, and for which
   Theology exists,

   (2) The second element or factor in Jowett's work belonged to the
   insight of a man of large experience and profound religious feeling,
   whose power of sympathy was equal to the width and clearness of his
   mental vision. It is this which stamps a work of erudition with the
   character of genius. The growth of an intrinsic faculty, it was the
   fruit of his devotion to the educational work to which he had been
   called, and in which from the first he had been aware of possibilities
   that are hidden from less original minds. Whatever he had gained from
   his own early struggles with self, with temptation, or with
   circumstances, had been transfused into a means of helping others--of
   strengthening his brethren'. Amongst his pupils had been men of genius,
   and his own experience was enlarged by theirs. These gifts, together
   with the rich and varied culture accumulated in student days, were now
   concentrated on what he had long regarded as his chief life-work. See,
   for example (below, p. 62):--

   No one with a heart open to human feelings, loving not man less, but
   God more, sensitive to the happiness of this world, yet aiming at a
   higher--no man of such a nature ever made a great sacrifice, or
   performed a great act of self-denial, without impressing a change on
   his character which lasted to his latest breath. No man ever took his
   besetting sin, it may be lust, or pride, or the love of rank and
   position, and, as it were, cut it out by voluntarily placing himself
   where to gratify it was impossible, without sensibly receiving a new
   strength of character. In one day, almost in an hour, he may become an
   altered man; he may stand, as it were, on a different stage of moral
   and religious life; he may feel himself in new relations to an altered
   world.'

   Or consider the following passage from an essay not included here:--

   There is a state in which man is powerless to act, and is,
   nevertheless, clairvoyant to all the good and evil of his own nature.
   He places the good and evil principle before him, and is ever
   oscillating between them. He traces the labyrinth of conflicting
   principles in the world, and is yet further perplexed and entangled. He
   is sensitive to every breath of feeling, and incapable of the
   performance of any duty. Or take another example: It sometimes happens
   that the remembrance of past suffering, or the consciousness of sin,
   may so weigh a man down as fairly to paralyse his moral power. He is
   distracted between what he is and what he was; old habits and vices,
   and the new character which is being fashioned in him. Sometimes the
   balance seems to hang equal; he feels the earnest wish and desire to
   act rightly, but cannot hope to find pleasure and satisfaction in a
   good life; he desires heartily to repent, but can never think it
   possible that God should forgive. "It is I and it is not I, but sin
   that dwelleth in me." "I have, and have never ceased to have, the wish
   for better things, even amid haunts of infamy and vice." In such
   language, even now, though with less fervour than in "the first
   spiritual chaos of the affections" does the soul cry out to God--"Oh
   wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this
   death?"' [8]

   In this and other adaptations of the Apostle's thoughts the interpreter
   is guided by what he frequently calls the analogy of faith' [9] .

   (3) The remaining purpose was one which made a more severe demand on
   strenuous thought and spiritual imagination. It was nothing short of
   the endeavour to give to the truths which darkly join 1 in Christian
   theology, and which the Church of the fourth century, or the reformed
   churches in the sixteenth, had formulated in a manner suited to that
   age, an expression which may appeal to the heart and intellect of
   modern times, and may not be found to clash with other truths, or with
   the highest standard of morality. It was through this attempt that
   Jowett gave offence to the religious world of his day by departing at
   once from Patristic' and from popular' theology.

   Bishop Kaye, of Lincoln (1827-1853), had said that the decree of the
   Council of Nicaea was the greatest misfortune that ever befell the
   Church'. On this Jowett quietly remarks that is, perhaps, true; yet a
   different decision would have been a greater misfortune'. His method in
   this respect has much in common with that recommended by the late M.
   Auguste Sabatier in his sketch of a Philosophy of Religion. See, for
   example, the following passage:--

   Par ces discussions, par ces controverses mêmes auxquelles heureusement
   aucun pouvoir extérieur ne vient mettre fin, le dogme est sans cesse
   mis à l'épreuve, refondu en quelque sorte au feu de la forge; il perd
   sa dureté de loi extérieure; il reste chaud, malléable; il se dépouille
   des superstitions mortes du passé pour répondre aux besoins du présent,
   se di versifier naturellement avec les esprits, s'ouvrir à la
   philosophie du siècle, la pénétrer à son tour, participer au progrès
   laborieux de la pensée moderne et rester toujours en harmonie et en
   communion avec elle [10] .'

   In the present volume a certain progress may be traced from the first
   of these endeavours to the third,--the first two essays dealing more
   directly with the Apostolical age, while the third and fourth dwell
   more on religious experience generally, and the last three are mainly
   concerned with theology. The seven dissertations here reprinted are in
   this way representative of the whole work. It may be mentioned that the
   essay on the Character of St. Paul gave the motive for an ideal work of
   sculpture by Woolmer, and that on Conversion was pointed out at the
   time by H. J. S. Smith as likely to conciliate the Evangelical School.
   The essay on Casuistry should be compared with the account of Loyola in
   the volume of Biographical Sermons. Much else, of equal interest, might
   have been included, but would have extended the volume beyond the
   limits assigned to this series. Readers whose interest is awakened by
   what is here contained may be led to examine other portions of the
   original work,--such as the essay on Predestination, full of subtle
   disquisition, that on The Law as the Strength of Sin, where modern
   analogies are drawn out with deep observation, or that on Contrasts of
   Prophecy, or above all the essay on the Interpretation of Scripture,
   originally contributed to Essays and Reviews, and reprinted in the
   posthumous third edition of the Epistles. This last, comprising matter
   which the author had intended to include in his second edition, throws
   abundant light upon his general method and point of view. Minor
   excursuses such as that on the Belief in the Coming of Christ, or on
   the State of the Heathen World (not reprinted in the 3rd edition),
   would also still repay perusal.

   Professor Jowett was far from thinking that his work in theology was
   complete or final. Posterity, he said, will remark that up to a certain
   point we saw clearly; but that no man is beyond his age--there was a
   circle which we could not pass' [11] . Yet a disciple may be pardoned
   for believing that his writings may have even now an influence for
   good. The time for such endeavours is not yet past; and it is hoped
   that the present reprint may be received with better quiet, better
   opinion, better confirmation', than was accorded to these essays when
   they first appeared.

   Many persons still require to be taught that the whole world, and all
   things in it, instead of being secular and external to revelation,
   needs to be brought back to within the sphere of revelation' [12] . And
   although in fifty years much water has passed the mill--though
   marvellous progress has been made both in the acquisition and diffusion
   of knowledge,--yet the whole has not yet been harvested in the interest
   of religion. In these slow-paced changes' (the phrase is Dr. James
   Martineau's) speculations, and even discoveries about human origins, or
   about the constitution of the material universe, do not add much
   appreciably to the long result of time. It may still be worth while,
   even for the most enlightened, to consider what a mind of exceptional
   fulness, of keen discernment and sincere piety, regarded as the main
   outcome of all that was known and felt half a century ago.

   Students of Professor Jowett's book on St. Paul may have much besides
   to learn, but they will not have much to unlearn. Historical studies
   have greatly advanced and so has Natural Science; but Gibbon and
   Humboldt are still worth reading. The very extent of the field makes
   concentration difficult. The success of special inquiries renders it
   harder for philosophy and for the religious mind to take all into one
   view. But, as Plato said, comprehensiveness belongs to the only kind of
   knowledge which takes lasting root. [13]

   And religious thinking ebbs as well as flows. The past sometimes
   prevails over the present and dims the forecast of the future. There is
   a real danger lest Obscurantism should divide the ground which Religion
   and Science ought to occupy harmoniously together. The serene spirit
   which breathes through Jowett's writings may give courage to the timid
   and calmness to the bold.

   The two large volumes published in 1855 (second edition, 1859) were
   after all only a fragment of the work which their author had in view.
   There are those amongst his friends who will always regret that the
   labours of the Oxford Vice-Chancellorship, and the exhaustion which
   followed, should have deprived him first of the leisure, and then of
   the mental vigour, that was requisite for the execution of his literary
   designs. He never lost his interest in theology; and the strong vein of
   reverent thoughtfulness, which pervades the book on St. Paul, was the
   same which carried him onward through many trials to the attainment of
   the Christian graces so eloquently commended by Bishop Paget.

   Professor Jowett was less inclined indeed in later years to engage in
   controversy. He used to say, when we were younger, religious doctrines
   such as that of the Atonement were often presented in a form repugnant
   to the moral sense. That is not equally so now.' But it were much to be
   wished that he had written the treatise he so long contemplated on
   Moral Ideas, or had worked out his views on the Religions of the World;
   or had been able to substantiate the dream that was suggested to him by
   the Imitatio Christi:--

   Would it be possible to combine in a manual of piety religious fervour
   with perfect good sense and knowledge of the world? This has never been
   attempted and would be a work worthy of a great religious genius. . . .
   Is it possible for me, perhaps ten years hence, to write a new Thomas a
   Kempis, going as deeply into the foundations of human life and yet not
   revolting the common sense of the nineteenth century, by his violent
   contrast between this world and another?'

   Will Jowett some day have a successor an inheritor of his unfulfilled
   renown--to sum up with calm insight, and with unclouded faith in God,
   the spiritual outcome of the last fifty years?--A Christian
   philosopher, gifted with knowledge of the world and human nature, yet
   not worldly; loving truth unflinchingly, and not despairing of it;
   accomplished, not only in theology, but in history and science, full of
   devotion to God and Christ, and also to the good of man?--Who knows?

   LEWIS CAMPBELL.

   ALASSIO, ITALY,

   March, 1906.
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   [1] Studies of the Christian Character, by Francis Paget, D.D., 1895.

   [2] See Life of Benjamin Jowett, I, 239.

   [3] E. B. Pusey.

   [4] Samuel Wilberforce.

   [5] In the Times of Oct. 15, 1859.

   [6] Letter to Lady Beaumont, 1807.

   [7] Essays and Reviews, p. 423. Reprinted in 3rd edition of the
   Epistles, vol. ii, p. 91.

   [8] Epistles, 3rd edition, vol. ii, p. 297.

   [9] Cf. Rom. xii. 6.

   [10] Esquisse d'une Philosophie de la Religion, 7^e édition, p. 332.

   [11] 3rd edition of Epistles, vol. ii, p. 138.

   [12] See Life of Benjamin Jowett, vol. i, p. 372.

   [13] Plato, Rep. 537 c.
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Essays
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ESSAY ON THE CHARACTER OF ST. PAUL

   Oidate de hoti di' astheneian tes sarkos euengelisamen humin to
   proteron, kai ton peirasmon humon en te sarki mou ouk exouthenesate
   oude exeptusate, alla hos angelon theou edexasthe me, hos christon
   Iesoun.--Gal. iv. 13, 14.

   THE narrative of the Gospel gives no full or perfect likeness of the
   character of the Apostles. Human beings do not admit of being
   constructed out of a single feature, nor is imagination able to supply
   details which are really wanting. St. Peter and St. John, the two
   Apostles whose names are most prominent in the Gospels and early
   portion of the Acts, both seem to unite two extremes in the same
   person; the character of St. John combining gentleness with vehemence,
   almost with fierceness; while in St. Peter we trace rashness and
   timidity at once, the spirit of freedom at one period of his life, and
   of narrowness and exclusiveness at another. He is the first to confess,
   and the first to deny Christ. Himself the captain of the Apostles, and
   yet wanting in the qualities necessary to constitute a leader. Such
   extremes may easily meet in the same person; but we do not possess
   sufficient knowledge to say how they were really reconciled. Each of
   the twelve Apostles grew up to the fullness of the stature of the
   perfect man. Even those who to us are little more than names, had
   individual features as lively as our own contemporaries. But the
   mention of their sayings or acts on four or five occasions while they
   followed the footsteps of the Lord on earth, and then on two or three
   occasions soon after He was taken from them, then once again at an
   interval of twelve or fourteen years, is not sufficient to enable us to
   judge of their whole character. We may distinguish Peter from John, or
   James from either; but we cannot set them up as a study to be compared
   with each other.

   More features appear of the character of St. Paul, yet not sufficient
   to give a perfect picture. We should lose the individuality which we
   have, by seeking to idealize and generalize from some more common type
   of Christian life. It has not been unusual to describe St. Paul as a
   man of resolute will, of untiring energy, of logical mind, of classic
   taste. He has been contrasted with the twelve as the educated with the
   uneducated, the student of Hebrew and Greek learning, brought up in
   Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel, with the fishermen of Galilee
   mending their nets' by the lake. Powers of government have been
   attributed to him such as were required, and in some instances
   possessed, by the great leaders of the Church in later ages. He is
   imagined to have spoken with an accuracy hardly to be found in the
   systems of philosophers. Not of such an one would the Apostle himself
   have gloried'; he would not have understood the praises of his
   commentators. It was not the wisdom of this world which he spoke, but
   the hidden wisdom of God in a mystery'. All his life long he felt
   himself to be one whose strength was perfected in weakness'; he was
   aware of the impression of feebleness which his own appearance and
   discourse made upon his converts; who was sometimes in weakness and
   fear and trembling before them, having the sentence of death in
   himself', and at other times in power and the Holy Ghost and in much
   assurance'; and so far from having one unchanging purpose or insight,
   that though determined to know one thing only, Jesus Christ and Him
   crucified', yet in his manner of teaching he wavers between opposite
   views or precepts in successive verses. He is ever feeling, if haply he
   may find them, after the hearts of men. He is carried away by sympathy,
   at times even for his opponents. He is struggling to describe what is
   in process of revelation to him. Rude in speech but not in knowledge',
   as he himself says. The life of the Greek language had passed away, and
   it must have been a matter of effort for him to write in a foreign
   tongue, perhaps even to write at all; yet he puts together words in his
   own characteristic way which are full of meaning, though often
   scattered in confusion over the page. He occasionally lights also on
   the happiest expressions, stamping old phrases in a new mould, and
   bringing forth the new out of the treasury of the old. Such are some of
   the individual traits which he has left in his Epistles; they are
   traits far more interesting and more like himself than any general
   image of heroism, or knowledge, or power, or goodness. Whatever other
   impression he might have made upon us, could we have seen him face to
   face, there can be little doubt that he would have left the impression
   of what was remarkable and uncommon.

   There are questions which it is interesting to suggest, even when they
   can never receive a perfect and satisfactory answer. One of these
   questions may be asked respecting St. Paul:--What was the relation in
   which his former life stood to the great fact of his conversion?' He
   himself, in looking back upon the times in which he persecuted the
   Church of God, thought of them chiefly as an increasing evidence of the
   mercy of God, which was afterwards extended to him. It seemed so
   strange to have been what he had been, and to be what he was. Nor does
   our own conception of him, in relation to his former self, commonly
   reach beyond this contrast of the old and new man; the persecutor and
   the preacher of the Gospel; the young man at whose feet the witnesses
   against Stephen laid down their clothes, and the same Paul disputing
   against the Grecians, full of visions and revelations of the Lord, on
   whom in later life came daily the care of all the Churches.

   Yet we cannot but admit also the possibility, or rather the probable
   truth of another point of view. It is not unlikely that the struggle
   which he describes in the seventh chapter of the Romans is the picture
   of his own heart in the days when he verily thought that he ought to do
   many things contrary to Jesus of Nazareth'; the impression of that
   earlier state, perhaps the image of the martyr Stephen (Acts xxii. 20),
   may have remained with him in after years. For men seem to carry about
   with them the elements of their former lives; the character or nature
   which they once were, the circumstance which became a part of them, is
   not wholly abolished or done away; it remains, even in the regenerate',
   as a sort of insoluble mass or incumbrance which prevents their freedom
   of action; in very few, or rather in none, can the old habit have
   perfect flexure to its new use. Every where, in the case of our
   acquaintance, who may have passed through great changes of opinion or
   conduct, we see from time to time the old nature which is underneath
   occasionally coming to the surface. Nor is it irreverent to attribute
   such remembrances of a former self even to inspired persons. If there
   were any among the contemporaries of St. Paul who had known him in
   youth and in age, they would have seen similarities which escape us in
   the character of the Apostle at different periods of his life. The
   zealot against the Gospel might have seemed to them transfigured into
   the opponent of the law; they would have found something in common in
   the Pharisee of the Pharisees, and the man who had a vow on his last
   journey to Jerusalem; they would perhaps have observed arguments, or
   quotations, or modes of speech in his writings which had been familiar
   to them and him in the school of Gamaliel. And when they heard of his
   conversion, they might have remarked that to one of his temperament
   only could such an event have happened, and would have noted many
   superficial resemblances which showed him to be the same man, while the
   great in ward change which had overspread the world was hid from their
   eyes.

   The gifts of God to man have ever some reference to natural
   disposition. He who becomes the servant of God does not thereby cease
   to be himself. Often the transition is greater in appearance than in
   reality, from the suddenness of its manifestation. There is a kind of
   rebellion against self and nature and God, which, through the mercy of
   God to the soul, seems almost necessarily to lead to reaction. Persons
   have been worse than their fellow men in outward appearance, and yet
   there was within them the spirit of a child waiting to return home to
   their father's house. A change passes upon them which we may figure to
   ourselves, not only as the new man taking the place of the old, but as
   the inner man taking the place of the outer. So complex is human
   nature, that the very opposite to what we are has often an
   inexpressible power over us. Contrast is not only a law of association;
   it is also a principle of action. Many run from one extreme to another,
   from licentiousness to the ecstasy of religious feeling, from religious
   feeling back to licentiousness, not without a fearful looking for of
   judgement'. If we could trace the hidden workings of good and evil,
   they would appear far less surprising and more natural than as they are
   seen by the outward eye. Our spiritual nature is without spring or
   chasm, but it has a certain play or freedom which leads very often to
   consequences the opposite of what we expect. It seems in some instances
   as if the same religious education had tended to contrary results; in
   one case to a devout life, in another to a reaction against it; some
   times to one form of faith, at other times to another. Many parents
   have wept to see the early religious training of their children draw
   them, by a kind of repulsion, to a communion or mode of opinion which
   is the extreme opposite of that in which they have been brought up. Let
   them have peace in the thought that it was not always in their power to
   fulfil the duty in which they seem to themselves to have failed. These
   latter reflections have but a remote bearing on the character of St.
   Paul; but they serve to make us think that all spiritual influences,
   however antagonistic they may appear, have more in common with each
   other than they have with the temper of the world; and that it is
   easier to pass from one form of faith to another than from leading the
   life of all men to either. There is more in common between those who
   anathematize each other than between either and the spirit of
   toleration which characterizes the ordinary dealings of man and man, or
   much more the spirit of Christ, for whom they are alike contending.

   Perhaps we shall not be far wrong in concluding, that those who have
   undergone great religious changes have been of a fervid imaginative
   cast of mind; looking for more in this world than it was capable of
   yielding; easily touched by the remembrance of the past, or inspired by
   some ideal of the future. When with this has been combined a zeal for
   the good of their fellow men, they have become the heralds and
   champions of the religious movements of the world. The change has begun
   within, but has overflowed without them. When thou art converted,
   strengthen thy brethren' is the order of nature and of grace. In secret
   they brood over their own state; weary and profitless their soul
   fainteth within them. The religion they profess is a religion not of
   life to them, but of death; they lose their interest in the world, and
   are cut off from the communion of their fellow creatures. While they
   are musing, the fire kindles, and at the last--they speak with their
   tongue'. Then pours forth irrepressibly the pent-up stream--unto all
   and upon all' their fellow men; the intense flame of inward enthusiasm
   warms and lights up the world. First they are the evidence to others;
   then, again, others are the evidence to them. All religious leaders can
   not be reduced to a single type of character; yet in all, perhaps, two
   characteristics may be observed; the first, great self-reflection; the
   second, intense sympathy with other men. They are not the creatures of
   habit or of circumstances, leading a blind life, unconscious of what
   they are; their whole effort is to realize their inward nature, and to
   make it palpable and visible to their fellows. Unlike other men who are
   confined to the circle of themselves or of their family, their
   affections are never straitened; they embrace with their love all men
   who are likeminded with them, almost all men too who are unlike them,
   in the hope that they may become like.

   Such men have generally appeared at favourable conjunctures of
   circumstances, when the old was about to vanish away, and the new to
   appear. The world has yearned towards them, and they towards the world.
   They have uttered what all men were feeling; they have interpreted the
   age to itself. But for the concurrence of circumstances, they might
   have been stranded on the solitary shore, they might have died without
   a follower or convert. But when the world has needed them, and God has
   intended them for the world, they are endued with power from on high;
   they use all other men as their instruments, uniting them to
   themselves.

   Often such men have been brought up in the faith which they afterwards
   oppose, and a part of their power has consisted in their acquaintance
   with the enemy. They see other men, like themselves formerly, wandering
   out of the way in the idol's temple, amid a burdensome ceremonial, with
   prayers and sacrifices unable to free the soul. They lead them by the
   way themselves came to the home of Christ. Some times they represent
   the new as the truth of the old; at other times as contrasted with it,
   as life and death, as good and evil, as Christ and anti-Christ. They
   relax the force of habit, they melt the pride and fanaticism of the
   soul. They suggest to others their own doubts, they inspire them with
   their own hopes, they supply their own motives, they draw men to them
   with cords of sympathy and bonds of love; they themselves seem a
   sufficient stay to support the world. Such was Luther at the
   Reformation; such, in a higher sense, was the Apostle St. Paul.

   There have been heroes in the world, and there have been prophets in
   the world. The first may be divided into two classes; either they have
   been men of strong will and character, or of great power and range of
   intellect; in a few instances, combining both. They have been the
   natural leaders of mankind, compelling others by their acknowledged
   superiority as rulers and generals; or in the paths of science and
   philosophy, drawing the world after them by a yet more inevitable
   necessity. The prophet belongs to another order of beings: he does not
   master his thoughts; they carry him away. He does not see clearly into
   the laws of this world or the affairs of this world, but has a light
   beyond, which reveals them partially in their relation to another.
   Often he seems to be at once both the weakest and the strongest of men;
   the first to yield to his own impulses, the mightiest to arouse them in
   others. Calmness, or reason, or philosophy are not the words which
   describe the appeals which he makes to the hearts of men. He sways them
   to and fro rather than governs or controls them. He is a poet, and more
   than a poet, the inspired teacher of mankind; but the intellectual
   gifts which he possesses are independent of knowledge, or learning, or
   capacity; what they are much more akin to is the fire and subtlety of
   genius. He, too, for a time, has ruled kingdoms and even led armies; an
   Apostle, not of man, nor by men'; acting, not by authority or
   commission of any prince, but by an immediate inspiration from on high,
   communicating itself to the hearts of men.

   Saul of Tarsus is called an Apostle rather than a prophet, because
   Hebrew prophecy belongs to an age of the world before Christianity. Now
   that in the Gospel that which is perfect is come, that which is in part
   is done away. Yet, in a secondary sense, the Apostle St. Paul is also
   among the prophets'. He, too, has visions and revelations of the Lord',
   though he has not written them down for our instruction', in which he
   would fain glory because they are not his own. Even to the outward eye
   he has the signs of a prophet. There is in him the same emotion, the
   same sympathy, the same strength made perfect in weakness', the same
   absence of human knowledge, the same subtlety in the use of language,
   the same singleness in the delivery of his message. He speaks more as a
   man, and less immediately under the impulse of the Spirit of God; more
   to individuals, and less to the nation at large; he is less of a poet,
   and more of a teacher or preacher. But these differences do not
   interfere with the general resemblance. Like Isaiah, he bids us look to
   the man of sorrows'; like Ezekiel, he arouses men to a truer sense of
   the ways of God in his dealings with them; like Jeremiah, he mourns
   over his countrymen; like all the prophets who have ever been, he is
   lifted above this world, and is in the Spirit at the day of the Lord'.
   (Rev. i. 10.)

   Reflections of this kind are suggested by the absence of materials such
   as throw any light on the early life of St. Paul. All that we know of
   him before his conversion is summed up in two facts, that the witnesses
   laid down their clothes with a young man whose name was Saul', and that
   he was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the few Rabbinical
   teachers of Greek learning in the city of Jerusalem. We cannot venture
   to assign to him either the choleric' or the melancholic' temperament.
   [Tholuck.] We are unable to determine what were his natural gifts or
   capacities; or how far, as we often observe to be the case, the gifts
   which he had were called out by the mission on which he was sent, or
   the theatre on which he felt himself placed a spectacle to the world,
   to angels, and to men'. Far more interesting is it to trace the simple
   feelings with which he himself regarded his former life. Last of all he
   was seen of me also, who am the least of the Apostles, that am not
   worthy to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted the Church of
   God.' Yet there was a sense also [in which it is true] that he was
   excusable, and that this was the reason why the mercy of God extended
   itself to him. Yet I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in
   unbelief.' And in one passage he dwells on the fact, not only that he
   had been an Israelite, but more, that after the strictest sect of the
   Jews' religion he lived a Pharisee, as though that were an evidence to
   himself, and should be so to others, that no human power could have
   changed him; that he was no half Jew, who had never properly known what
   the law was, but one who had both known and strictly practised it.

   We are apt to judge extraordinary men by our own standard; that is to
   say, we often suppose them to possess, in an extraordinary degree,
   those qualities which we are conscious of in ourselves or others. This
   is the easiest way of conceiving their characters, but not the truest.
   They differ in kind rather than in degree. Even to understand them
   truly seems to require a power analogous to their own. Their natures
   are more subtle, and yet more simple, than we readily imagine. No one
   can read the ninth chapter of the First, or the eleventh and twelfth
   chapters of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, without feeling how
   different the Apostle St. Paul must have been from good men among
   ourselves. We marvel how such various traits of character come together
   in the same individual. He who was full of visions and revelations of
   the Lord', who spake with tongues more than they all, was not mad, but
   uttered the words of truth and soberness'. He who was the most
   enthusiastic of all men, was also the most prudent; the Apostle of
   freedom, and yet the most moderate. He who was the strongest and most
   en lightened of all men, was also (would he have himself refrained from
   saying?) at times the weakest; on whom there came the care of all the
   Churches, yet seeming also to lose the power of acting in the absence
   of human sympathy.

   Qualities so like and unlike are hard to reconcile; perhaps they have
   never been united in the same degree in any other human being. The
   contradiction in part arises not only from the Apostle being an
   extraordinary man, but from his being a man like ourselves in an
   extraordinary state. Creation was not to him that fixed order of things
   which it is to us; rather it was an atmosphere of evil just broken by
   the light beyond. To us the repose of the scene around contrasts with
   the turmoil of man's own spirit; to the Apostle peace was to be sought
   only from within, half hidden even from the inner man. There was a veil
   upon the heart itself which had to be removed. He himself seemed to
   fall asunder at times into two parts, the flesh and the spirit; and the
   world to be divided into two hemispheres, the one of the rulers of
   darkness, the other bright with that inward presence which should one
   day be revealed. In this twilight he lived. What to us is far oft both
   in time and place, if such an expression may be allowed, to him was
   near and present, separated by a thin film from the world we see, ever
   ready to break forth and gather into itself the frame of nature. That
   sense of the invisible which to most men it is so difficult to impart,
   was like a second nature to St. Paul. He walked by faith, and not by
   sight; what was strange to him was the life he now led; which in his
   own often repeated language was death rather than life, the place of
   shadows and not of realities. The Greek philosophers spoke of a world
   of phenomena, of true being, of knowledge and opinion; and we know that
   what they meant by these distinctions is something different from the
   tenets of any philosophical school of the present day. But not less
   different is what St. Paul meant by the life hidden with Christ and
   God, the communion of the Spirit, the possession of the mind of Christ;
   only that this was not a mere difference of speculation, but of
   practice also. Could any one say now--the life' not that I live, but
   that Christ liveth in me'? Such language with St. Paul is no mere
   phraseology, such as is repeated from habit in prayers, but the
   original consciousness of the Apostle respecting his own state. Self is
   banished from him, and has no more place in him, as he goes on his way
   to fulfil the work of Christ. No figure is too strong to express his
   humiliation in himself, or his exaltation in Christ.

   Could we expect this to be otherwise when we think of the manner of his
   conversion? Could he have looked upon the world with the same eyes that
   we do, or heard its many voices with the same ears, who had been caught
   up into the third heaven, whether in the body or out of the body he
   could not tell? (2 Cor. xii. 1-5.) Must not his life have seemed to him
   a revelation, an inspiration, an ecstasy? Once and again he had seen
   the face of Christ, and heard Him speak from heaven. All that followed
   in the Apostle's history was the continuation of that first wonder, a
   stream of light flowing from it, planting eyes' in his soul,
   transfiguring him from glory to glory', clothing him with the elect in
   the exceeding glory'.

   Yet this glory was not that of the princes of this world, who come to
   nought'; it is another image which he gives us of himself;--not the
   figure on Mars' hill, in the cartoons of Raphael, nor the orator with
   noble mien and eloquent gesture before Festus and Agrippa; but the
   image of one lowly and cast down, whose bodily presence was weak, and
   speech contemptible'; of one who must have appeared to the rest of
   mankind like a visionary, pierced by the thorn in the flesh, waiting
   for the redemption of the body'. The saints of the middle ages are in
   many respects unlike St. Paul, and yet many of them bear a far closer
   resemblance to him than is to be found in Luther and the Reformers. The
   points of resemblance which we seem to see in them, are the same
   withdrawal from the things of earth, the same ecstasy, the same
   consciousness of the person of Christ. Who would describe Luther by the
   words crucified with Christ'? It is in another manner that the Reformer
   was called upon to war, with weapons earthly as well as spiritual, with
   a strong right hand and a mighty arm.

   There have been those who, although deformed by nature, have worn the
   expression of a calm and heavenly beauty; in whom the flashing eye has
   attested the presence of thought in the poor withered and palsied
   frame. There have been others again, who have passed the greater part
   of their lives in extreme bodily suffering, who have, nevertheless,
   directed states or led armies, the keenness of whose intellect has not
   been dulled nor their natural force of mind abated. There have been
   those also on whose faces men have gazed as upon the face of an angel',
   while they pierced or stoned them. Of such an one, perhaps, the Apostle
   himself might have gloried; not of those whom men term great or noble.
   He who felt the whole creation groaning and travailing together until
   now was not like the Greek drinking in the life of nature at every
   pore. He who through Christ was crucified to the world, and the world
   to him', was not in harmony with nature, nor nature with him. The manly
   form, the erect step, the fullness of life and beauty, could not have
   gone along with such a consciousness as this, any more than the taste
   for literature and art could have consisted with the thought, not many
   wise, not many learned, not many mighty'. Instead of these we have the
   visage marred more than the sons of men, the cross of Christ which was
   to the Greeks foolishness', the thorn in the flesh, the marks in the
   body of the Lord Jesus.

   Often the Apostle St. Paul has been described as a person the furthest
   removed from enthusiasm; in capable of spiritual illusion; by his
   natural temperament averse to credulity or superstition. By such
   considerations as these a celebrated author confesses himself to have
   been converted to the belief in Christianity. And yet, if it is
   intended to reduce St. Paul to the type of what is termed good sense in
   the present day, it must be admitted that the view which thus describes
   him is but partially true. Far nearer the truth is that other quaint
   notion of a modern writer, that St. Paul was the finest gentleman that
   ever lived'; for no man had nobler forms of courtesy, or a deeper
   regard for the feelings of others. But good sense' is a term not well
   adapted to express either the individual or the age and country in
   which he lived. He who wrought miracles, who had hand kerchiefs carried
   to him from the sick, who spake with tongues more than they all, who
   lived amid visions and revelations of the Lord, who did not appeal to
   the Gospel as a thing long settled, but himself saw the process of
   revelation actually going on before his eyes, and communicated it to
   his fellow men, could never have been such an one as ourselves. Nor can
   we pretend to estimate whether, in the modern sense of the term, he was
   capable of weighing evidence, or how far he would have attempted to
   sever between the workings of his own mind and the Spirit which was
   imparted to him.

   What has given rise to this conception of the Apostle's character has
   been the circumstance, that with what the world terms mysticism and
   enthusiasm are united a singular prudence and moderation, and a perfect
   humanity, searching the feelings and knowing the hearts of all men. I
   became all things to all men that I might win some'; not only, we may
   believe, as a sort of accommodation, but as the expression of the
   natural compassion and love which he felt for them. There is no reason
   to suppose that the Apostle took any interest in the daily life of men,
   in the great events which were befalling the Roman Empire, or in the
   temporal fortunes of the Jewish people. But when they came before him
   as sinners, lying in darkness and the shadow of God's wrath, ignorant
   of the mystery that was being revealed before their eyes, then his love
   was quickened for them, then they seemed to him as his kindred and
   brethren; there was no sacrifice too great for him to make; he was
   willing to die with Christ, yea, even to be accursed from Him that he
   might save some of them'.

   Mysticism, or enthusiasm, or intense benevolence and philanthropy, seem
   to us, as they commonly are, at variance with worldly prudence and
   moderation. But in the Apostle these different and contrasted qualities
   are mingled and harmonized. The mother watching over the life of her
   child, has all her faculties aroused and stimulated; she knows almost
   by instinct how to say or do the right thing at the right time; she
   regards his faults with mingled love and sorrow. So, in the Apostle, we
   seem to trace a sort of refinement or nicety of feeling, when he is
   dealing with the souls of men. All his knowledge of mankind shows
   itself for their sakes; and yet not that knowledge of mankind which
   comes from without, revealing itself by experience of men and manners,
   by taking a part in events, by the insensible course of years making us
   learn from what we have seen and suffered. There is another experience
   that comes from within, which begins with the knowledge of self, with
   the consciousness of our own weakness and infirmities; which is
   continued in love to others and in works of good to them; which grows
   by singleness and simplicity of heart. Love becomes the interpreter of
   how men think, and feel, and act; and supplies the place of, or passes
   into a worldly prudence wiser than, the prudence of this world. Such is
   the worldly prudence of St. Paul.

   Once more; there is in the Apostle, not only prudence and knowledge of
   the human heart, but a kind of subtlety of moderation, which considers
   every conceivable case, and balances one with an other; in the last
   resort giving no rule, but allowing all to be superseded by a more
   general principle. An instance of this subtle moderation is his
   determination, or rather omission to determine the question of meats
   and drinks, which he first regards as in different, secondly, as
   depending on men's own conscience, and this again as limited by the
   consciences of others, and lastly resolves all these finer precepts
   into the general principle, Whatever ye do, do all to the glory of
   God'. The same qualification of one principle by another recurs again
   in his rules respecting marriage. First, do not marry unbelievers', and
   let not the wife depart from her husband'. But if you are married and
   the unbeliever is willing to remain, then the spirit of the second
   precept must prevail over the first. Only in an extreme case, where
   both parties are willing to dissolve the tie, the first principle in
   turn may again supersede the second. It may be said in the one case,
   your children are holy'; in the other, What knowest thou, O wife, if
   thou shalt save thy husband?' In a similar spirit he withdraws his
   censure on the incestuous person, lest such an one, criminal as he was,
   should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. There is a religious
   aspect of either course of conduct, and either may be right under given
   circumstances. So the kingdoms of this world admit of being regarded
   almost as the kingdom of God, in reference to our duties towards their
   rulers; and yet touching the going to law before unbelievers, we are to
   think rather of that other kingdom in which we shall judge angels.

   The Gospel, it has been often remarked, lays down principles rather
   than rules. The passages in the Epistles of St. Paul which seem to be
   exceptions to this statement, are exceptions in appearance rather than
   in reality. They are relative to the circum stances of those whom he is
   addressing. He who became all things to all men', would have been the
   last to insist on temporary regulations for his converts being made the
   rule of Christian life in all ages. His manner of Church government is
   so unlike a rule or law, that we can hardly imagine how the Apostle, if
   he could return to earth, would combine the freedom of the Gospel with
   the requirements of Christianity as an established institution. He is
   not a bishop administering a regular system, but a person dealing
   immediately with other persons out of the fullness of his own mind and
   nature. His writings are like spoken words, temporary, occasional,
   adapted to other men's thoughts and feelings, yet not without an
   eternal meaning. In sending his instructions to the Churches he is ever
   with them, and seems to follow in his mind's eye their working and
   effect; whither his Epistles go he goes in thought, absent, in his own
   language, in the body, but present in spirit'. What he says to the
   Churches, he seems to make them say: what he directs them to do, they
   are to do in that common spirit in which they are united with him; if
   they live he lives; time and distance never snap the cord of sympathy.
   His government of them is a sort of communion with them; a receiving of
   their feelings and a pouring forth of his own: he is the heart or pulse
   which beats through the Christian world.

   And with this communion of himself and his converts, this care of daily
   life, there mingles the vision of the great family in heaven and
   earth', the Church which is his body', in which the meaner reality is
   enfolded or wrapt up, sphered in a radiant cloud', even in its low
   estate. The language of the Epistles often exercises an illusion on our
   minds when thinking of the primitive Church; individuals perhaps there
   were who truly partook of that light with which the Apostle encircled
   them; there may have been those in the Churches of Corinth, or Ephesus,
   or Galatia, who were living on earth the life of heaven. But the ideal
   which fills the Apostle's mind has not, necessarily, a corresponding
   fact in the actual state of his converts. The beloved family of the
   Apostle, the Church of which such glorious things are told', is often
   in tumult and disorder. His love is constantly a source of pain to him:
   he watches over them with a godly jealousy', and finds them affecting
   others rather than himself'. They are always liable to be spoiled' by
   some vanity of philosophy, some remembrance of Judaism, which, like an
   epidemic, carries off whole Churches at once, and seems to exercise a
   fatal power over them. He is a father harrowed and agonized in his
   feelings; he loves more and suffers more than other men; he will not
   think, he cannot help thinking, of the ingratitude and insolence of his
   children; he tries to believe, he is persuaded, that all is well; he
   denounces, he forgives; he defends himself, he is ashamed of defending
   himself; he is the herald of his own deeds when others neglect or
   injure him; he is ashamed of this too, and retires into himself, to be
   at peace with Christ and God. So we seem to read the course of the
   Apostle's thoughts in more than one passage of his writings, beginning
   with the heavenly ideal, and descending to the painful realities of
   actual life, especially at the close of the Second Epistle to the
   Corinthians--altogether, perhaps, the most characteristic picture of
   the Apostle's mind; and in the last words to the Galatians, Henceforth
   let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord
   Jesus'.

   Great men (those, at least, who present to us the type of earthly
   greatness) are sometimes said to possess the power of command, but not
   the power of entering into the feelings of others. They have no fear of
   their fellows, they are not affected by their opinions or prejudices,
   but neither are they always capable of immediately impressing them, or
   of perceiving the impression which their words or actions make upon
   them. Often they live in a kind of solitude on which other men do not
   venture to intrude; putting forth their strength on particular
   occasions, careless or abstracted about the daily concerns of life.
   Such was not the greatness of the Apostle St. Paul; not only in the
   sense in which he says that he could do all things through Christ', but
   in a more earthly and human one, was it true, that his strength was his
   weakness and his weakness his strength. His dependence on others was
   also the source of his influence over them. His natural character was
   the type of that communion of the Spirit which he preached; the
   meanness of appearance which he attributes to himself, the image of
   that contrast which the Gospel presents to human greatness. Glorying
   and humiliation; life and death; a vision of angels strengthening him,
   the thorn in the flesh' rebuking him; the greatest tenderness, not
   without sternness; sorrows above measure, consolations above measure;
   are some of the contra dictions which were reconciled in the same man.
   It is not a long life of ministerial success on which he is looking
   back a little before his death, where he says, I have fought the good
   fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith'. These words
   are sadly illustrated by another verse of the same Epistle, This thou
   knowest, that all they which are in Asia be turned away from me' (2
   Tim. i. 15). So when the contrast was at its height, he passed away,
   rejoicing in persecution also, and filling up that which was behind of
   the afflictions of Christ for his body's sake'. Many, if not most, of
   his followers had forsaken him, and there is no certain memorial of the
   manner of his death.

   Let us look once more a little closer at that visage marred' in his
   Master's service, as it appeared about three years before on a
   well-known scene. A poor aged man, worn by some bodily or mental
   disorder, who had been often scourged, and bore on his face the traces
   of indignity and sorrow in every form--such an one, led out of prison
   between Roman soldiers, probably at times faltering in his utterance,
   the creature, as he seemed to spectators, of nervous sensibility;
   yearning, almost with a sort of fondness, to save the souls of those
   whom he saw around him, [14] --spoke a few eloquent words in the cause
   of Christian truth, at which kings were awed, telling the tale of his
   own conversion with such simple pathos, that after-ages have hardly
   heard the like.

   Such is the image, not which Christian art has delighted to consecrate,
   but which the Apostle has left in his own writings of himself; an image
   of true wisdom, and nobleness, and affection, but of a wisdom unlike
   the wisdom of this world; of a nobleness which must not be transformed
   into that of the heroes of the world; an affection which seemed to be
   as strong and as individual towards all mankind, as other men are
   capable of feeling towards a single person.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [14] Gal. ii. 20; iv. 14; vi. 17: 1 Cor. xv. 32: 2 Cor. i. 9; vi. 12;
   x. 10; xi. 23-27; xii. 7-10: Philem. ver. 9.
     __________________________________________________________________

FROM AN ESSAY ON ST. PAUL AND THE TWELVE

   EVENTS of the greatest importance in the annals of mankind are not
   always seen to be important, until the hour for preserving them is
   past. There is a time before biography passes into history, when a
   society has not yet learned to register its acts, and individuals have
   not awoke to the consciousness of national or ecclesiastical life. In
   this intermediate period, events the most fruitful in results may lie
   buried (the unfolding of the germ in the bosom of the earth is not the
   least part of the growth of the plant); they may also be reproduced in
   a new form and their spirit misunderstood by the imperfect knowledge of
   after ages. Two or three centuries elapse; documents are lost or
   tampered with, or confused; there is no eye of criticism to penetrate
   their meaning. The historian has the veil upon his face' of a later
   generation; he cannot see through the events, institutions, opinions in
   the circle of which he lives. Who can tell what went on in a large
   upper room' about the year 40? which may, nevertheless, have had great
   consequences for the world and the Church. Who, when Christianity was
   triumphant in the fourth century, would comprehend the simple ways and
   thoughts of believers in the first? Nor is there anything more likely
   to be misunderstood, than the differences between the first teachers of
   a religion, and the disputes of their respective followers about a
   matter of discipline or doctrine which has passed away. The transition
   may be too gradual to be observed while it is going on. Literature is
   of a later date; beginning when the Church has already arrived at its
   full stature, it cannot describe the stages of its infancy and growth.
   In the extreme distance the objects of earth are no longer
   distinguishable from the clouds of heaven.

   All history receives a colour from the age in which it is written. This
   is the case with ecclesiastical history even more than secular; it
   glows with the faith and feelings of the historian; it reflects his
   principles or convictions--it is sometimes embittered by his
   prejudices. Eusebius, the father of ecclesiastical history', believing
   as he did that the constitution of the Church which he saw around him
   had existed from the first, was not likely to give a consistent account
   of its origin or growth. Nor was it to be expected that he should trace
   the history of doctrines, who, within the Church at least, could have
   admitted of no doctrinal difference or development. It was impossible
   for him to describe that of which he had no conception. Had he been
   disposed to write an accurate account of the progress of the Christian
   faith in the first two centuries, the scantiness of his materials would
   have prevented him from doing so. The antiquarian spirit had awoke too
   late to recover the treasures of the past. Those who preceded him had a
   similar though less definite impression of the first age, of which they
   knew so little, and wrote in the same way. It would be an anachronism
   to expect that he should sift critically the few cases in which the
   earlier authorities witness against themselves. In point of judgement,
   he is about on a level with the other Father of History'; that is to
   say, he is not wholly destitute of critical power: yet his criticism is
   accidental and capricious; most often observable in the case of
   ecclesiastical writings, which his literary tastes led him to explore.
   But real historical investigation is unknown to him. No resisting power
   of inquiry prevents his acceptance of any facts which fell in with the
   orthodox faith of his age, or seemed to afford a witness to it. Mira
   cles are believed by him, not upon greater, but upon rather less
   evidence than ordinary events. He catches, like Herodotus, at any
   chance similarity, such as that between the first Christians and the
   Therapeutae of Egypt (ii. c. 17). He feels no difficulty in receiving
   the statement of Justin Martyr, that Simon Magus was honoured at Rome
   under the title of the Holy God (Semo Sancus); or the testimony of
   Tertullian, that the Emperor Tiberius referred the worship of Christ to
   the senate. He sees the whole history of the Church through the medium
   of that victory over Paganism and heresy which he had witnessed in his
   own day. He carries the struggle back into the previous centuries, in
   which he finds almost nothing else but the conflict of the truth with
   heresy, and the blood of martyrs the seed of the Church. No one can
   suppose that the heresiarchs were such as he describes them, or that he
   has truly seized the relation in which they stood to the primitive
   Church. The language in which he denounces them is a sufficient
   evidence that he could not have investigated with calmness the
   character of the wolf of Pontus', or the false prophet Montanus and his
   reptile' followers. Though living at a distance of a century and a
   half, he repeats and adopts the conventional abuse of their
   contemporary adversaries.

   Records of the earliest heretics have passed away; no one of them is
   fairly known to us from his own writings. Their names have become a
   byword among men; at another tribunal we may believe that many
   judgements passed upon them have been reversed. The true history of the
   century which followed the withdrawal of the Apostles has also
   perished, or is preserved only in fragmentary statements. It is a
   matter of conjecture how the constitution of the Church arose; it is a
   parallel speculation, out of what simpler elements the earliest
   liturgies were compiled. But it does not follow that nothing happened
   in an age of which we know nothing. The least philosophy of history
   suggests the reflection that in the primitive Church there must have
   existed all the varieties of practice, belief, speculation, doctrine,
   which the different circumstances of the converts, and the different
   natures of men acting on those circumstances, would be likely to
   produce. The Church acquired unity in its progress through the world;
   it was more scattered and undisciplined at first than it after wards
   became. Even the Apostles do not work together in the spirit of an
   order; they and their followers are not an army set under authority',
   of which the leaders say to one man come, and he cometh', and to
   another go, and he goeth'. The Church of the Apostles may be compared
   more truly to the wind blowing where it listeth', or even to the
   lightning shining from one part of the heaven to the other'. Paul and
   Barnabas and Apollos, and even Priscilla and Aquila, have their
   separate ways of acting; they walk in different paths; they do not
   attempt to control one another. Whatever caution is observable in their
   mode of dealing with each other's spheres of labour is a matter of
   courtesy, not of ecclesiastical discipline. It is not certain, perhaps
   on the whole improbable, that those who came from James to Antioch
   (Gal. ii. 12) represented the community at Jerusalem. There is no
   Church which claims to be the metropolis of other Churches; nor any
   subordination within the several Churches to a single authority. The
   words of the Epistle to the Ephesians (iv. 11), He gave some apostles,
   and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and
   teachers', are hardly reconcilable either with three orders of clergy,
   or with the distinction of clergy and laity. They describe a state of
   the Church in which there was less of system and more of impulse than
   at a later period; in which all the Lord's people were prophets', and
   natural or spiritual gifts became offices in the beginning of the
   Gospel'. Compare Rom. xii. 6; 1 Cor. xii. 28, 29.

   Many doubts and possibilities arise in our minds respecting the age of
   the Apostles when we look on the picture through a microscope', and
   dwell on those points which are commonly unnoticed. We are tempted to
   frame theories and reconstructions, which are better, perhaps,
   represented by queries. Did those who remained behind in the Church
   regard the death of the martyr Stephen with the same feelings as those
   who were scattered abroad? or was he in their eyes only what James the
   Just appeared to be to the historian Josephus? Were the Apostles at
   Jerusalem one in heart with the brethren at Antioch? Were the teachers
   who came from Jerusalem to Antioch saying, Except ye be circumcised, ye
   cannot be saved', commissioned by the Twelve? Were the Twelve
   absolutely at one among themselves? Are the commendatory epistles'
   spoken of in the Epistle to the Corinthians, to be ascribed to the
   Apostles at Jerusalem? Can the grievous wolves', whose entrance into
   the Church of Ephesus the Apostle foresaw, be other than the Judaizing
   teachers? Were the multitude' of believing Jews, who were all zealous
   for the law, and liable to be quickened in their zeal for it by the
   very sight of St. Paul, engaged in the tumult which follows? Lastly,
   how far does the narrative of the Acts convey the lively impression of
   contemporaries, how far the recollections of another generation? These
   questions cannot have detailed answers; to raise them, however, is not
   without use, for they make us regard the facts in many points of view;
   they afford a help in the prosecution of the main inquiry, What was the
   relation of St. Paul to the Twelve?'

   If we conceive of the Apostles as exercising a strict and definite rule
   over the multitude of their converts, living heads of the Church as
   they might be termed, Peter or James of the circumcision and Paul of
   the uncircumcision, it would be natural to connect them with the acts
   of their followers. One would think that, in accordance with the spirit
   of the concordat, they should have delivered over to Satan' the
   opponents of St. Paul, rather than have lived in communion and company
   with them. To hold out the right hand of fellowship to Paul and
   Barnabas, and yet secretly to support or not to discountenance their
   enemies, would seem to be treachery to their common Master. Especially
   when we observe how strongly the Judaizers are characterized by St.
   Paul as the false brethren who came in unawares', the false Apostles
   transforming themselves into Apostles of Christ', grievous wolves
   entering in', and with what bitter personal weapons they assailed him
   (1 Cor. ix. 3-7). Indeed, the contrast between the vehemence with which
   St. Paul treats his Judaizing antagonists, and the gentleness or
   silence which he preserves towards the Apostles at Jerusalem, is a
   remarkable circumstance.

   It may be questioned whether the whole difficulty does not arise from a
   false conception of the authority of the Apostles in the early Church.
   Although the first teachers of the word of Christ, they were not the
   rulers of the Catholic Church; they were not its bishops, but its
   prophets. The influence which they exercised was personal rather than
   official, derived doubtless from their having seen the Lord', and from
   their appointment by Him, yet confined also to a comparatively narrow
   sphere; it was exercised in places in which they were, but hardly
   extended to places where they were not. The Gospel grew up around them
   they could not tell how; and the spirit which their preaching first
   awakened passed out of their control. They seemed no longer to be the
   prime movers, but rather the spectators of the work of God, which went
   on before their eyes. The thousands of Jews that believed and were
   zealous for the law would not lay aside the garb of Judaism at the
   bidding of James or Peter; the false teachers of Corinth or of Ephesus
   would not have been less likely to gain followers, had they been
   excommunicated by the Twelve. The movement which, in twenty years from
   the death of Christ, had spread so widely over the earth, they did not
   seek to reduce to rule and compass. It was beyond their reach,
   extending to communities of the circumstances of which they were hardly
   informed, and in which, therefore, it was not to be expected that they
   should interfere between St. Paul and his opponents.

   The Apostolic name acquired a sacredness in the second century which
   was unknown to it in the first. We must not attribute either to the
   persons or to the writings of the Apostles the authority with which
   after ages invested them. No Epistle of James and Paul was received by
   those to whom it was sent, like the Scriptures of the Old Testament, as
   the Word of God. Nor are they quoted in the same manner with books of
   the Old Testament before the time of Irenaeus. We might have imagined
   that every Church would have preserved an unmistakable record of its
   lineage and descent from some one of the Twelve. But so far is this
   from being the case, that no connexion can be traced certainly, between
   the Gentile Churches of the second century and that of Jerusalem in the
   first. Jerusalem was not the metropolis of all Churches, but one among
   many; acknowledged, indeed, by the Gentile Christians with affection
   and gratitude, but not prescribing any rule, or exercising authority
   over them.

   The moment we think of the Church, not as an ecclesiastical or
   political institution, but, as it was in the first age, a spiritual
   body, that is to say, a body partly moved by the Spirit of God,
   dependent also on the tempers and sympathies of men swayed to and fro
   by religious emotion, the perplexity solves itself, and the narrative
   of Scripture becomes truthful and natural. When the waves are high, we
   see but a little way over the ocean. The first fervour of religious
   feeling does not admit a uniform level of Church government. It is not
   a regular hierarchy, but some apostles, some prophets, some
   evangelists, others pastors and teachers', who grow together into the
   body of Christ'. The description of the early Church in the Epistles
   everywhere implies a great freedom of individual action. Apollos and
   Barnabas are not under the guidance of Paul; those who were
   distinguished among the apostles before him', could hardly have owned
   his authority. No attempt is made to bring the different Churches under
   a common system. We cannot imagine any bond by which they could have
   been linked together, without an order of clergy or form of Church
   government common to them all; this is not to be found in the New
   Testament. It was hard to keep the Church at Corinth at unity with
   itself; it would have been still harder to have brought it into union
   with other Churches.

   Of this fluctuating state of the Church, which was not yet addicted to
   any one rule, we find another indication in the freedom, almost levity,
   with which professing Christians embraced traditions of men'. The
   attitude of the Church of Corinth towards the Apostle was not that of
   believers in a faith once delivered to the saints'. We know not whether
   Apollos was or was not a teacher of Alexandrian learning among its
   members, or what was the exact nature of the party of Christ', 1 Cor.
   i. 12. But that heathen as well as Jewish elements had found their way
   into the Corinthian community, is intimated by the false wisdom', and
   the sitting at meat in the idol's temple. It is a startling question
   which is addressed to a Christian Church: How say some among you that
   there is no resurrection?' (1 Cor. xv. 12). It is not less startling
   that there should have been fornication among them, such as was not
   even named among the Gentiles. In the Church at Colossae again
   something was suspected by the Apostle, probably half Jewish and half
   heathen in its character, which he designates by the singular
   expression of a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels'. And
   mention is made in the Roman Church of those who preached Christ of
   envy and strife, as well as those who preached Christ of peace and
   goodwill (Phil. i. 15).

   Amid such fluctuation and unsettlement of opinions we can imagine Paul
   and Apollos, or Paul and Peter, preaching side by side in the Church of
   Corinth or of Antioch, like Wesley and Whitfield in the last century,
   or Luther and Calvin at the Reformation, with a sincere reverence for
   each other, not abstaining from commenting on or condemning each
   other's doctrine or practice, and yet also forgetting their differences
   in their common zeal to save the souls of men. Personal regard is quite
   consistent with differences of religious belief; some of which, with
   good men, are a kind of form belonging only to their outer nature, most
   of which, as we hope, exist only on this side of the grave. We can
   imagine the followers of such men incapable of acting in their noble
   spirit, with a feebler sense of their high calling, and a stronger one
   of their points of disagreement; losing the principle for which they
   were alike contending in oppositions of knowledge', in prejudice and
   personality. And lastly, we may conceive the disciples of Wesley or of
   Whitfield (for of the Apostles themselves we forbear to move the
   question) reacting upon their masters and drawing them into the vicious
   circle of controversy, disuniting them in their lives, though incapable
   of making a separation between them.

   A subject so wide is matter not for an essay but for a book; it is the
   history of the Church of the first two centuries. We must therefore
   narrow our field of vision as much as possible, and content ourselves
   with collecting a few general facts which have a bearing on our present
   inquiry.

   First among these general facts, is the ignorance of the third and
   fourth centuries respecting the first, and earlier half of the second.
   We cannot err in supposing that those who could add nothing to what is
   recorded in the New Testament of the life of Christ and His Apostles,
   had no real knowledge of lesser matters, as, for example, the origin of
   Episcopacy. They could not understand, they were incapable of
   preserving the memory of a state of the Church which was unlike their
   own. The contemporaries of the Apostles have nothing to tell of their
   lives and for tunes; the next generation is also silent; in the third
   generation the license of conjecture is already rife. No fact worth
   mentioning can be gathered from the writings of the Apostolical
   Fathers. Irenaeus, who lived about fifty years later, and within a
   century of St. Paul, has not added a single circumstance to what we
   gather from the New Testament; he has fallen into the well-known error
   of supposing that our Lord was fifty years old at the time of His
   ministry; he has stated also that Papias was John's hearer, and the
   associate of Polycarp', though Papias himself, in the preface to his
   discourses, by no means asserts that he was hearer and eyewitness of
   the holy Apostles' (Euseb. H. E. iii. 39); he has repeated as a
   discourse of Christ's the fable of Papias respecting the bunches of
   grapes; this he would have literally interpreted. Justin, who was
   somewhat earlier than Irenaeus, has given a measure of the knowledge
   and criticism of his own age in the story of Simon Magus. Tertullian,
   at the close of the next century, believed that the emperor Tiberius
   had consulted the Roman senate respecting the worship of our Lord
   (Euseb. H. E. ii. 2). Eusebius himself verified from the Archives of
   Edessa the fabulous correspondence of Abgarus and Jesus, and the
   miraculous narrative which follows (H. E. i. 13). In at least half the
   instances in which we are able to test his quotations from earlier
   writers, they exhibit some degree of inaccuracy or confusion. It is
   hard to believe the statement of Poly crates of Ephesus (about A.D.
   180), that John, who rested on the bosom of the Lord, was a priest, and
   bore the sacerdotal plate' (Euseb. H. E. iii. 32), or that Philip the
   Evangelist was one of the Twelve Apostles. But what use can be made of
   such sandy materials? It is idle to have recourse to remote
   reconcilements when the facts themselves are uncertain; equally so to
   argue precisely from turns of expression where language is rhetorical.

   The second general fact is the unconsciousness of this ignorance, and
   the readiness with which the vacant space is filled up, and the Church
   of the second century assimilated to that of the third and fourth.
   History often conceals that which is discordant to preconceived
   notions; silently dropping some facts, exaggerating others, adding,
   where needed, new tone and colouring, until the disguise can no longer
   be detected. By some process of this kind the circumstance into which
   we are inquiring has been forgotten and reproduced. Nothing has
   survived relating to the great crisis which Christianity under went in
   the age of the Apostles themselves; it passed away silently in the
   altered state of the Church and the world. Not only in the strange
   account of the dispute between the Apostles, given by Origen and
   others, is what may be termed the animus' of concealment discernible,
   but in fragments of earlier writings, in which the two Apostles appear
   side by side as co-founders of the Corinthian, as well as of the Roman
   Church (Caius and Dion, of Corinth, quoted by Euseb., ii. 25), pleading
   their cause together before Nero; dying on the same day, their graves
   being appealed to as witnesses to the tale, probably as early as the
   first half of the second century. The unconscious motive which gave
   birth to such fictions was, seemingly, the desire to throw a veil over
   that occasion on which they withstood one another to the face. And the
   truth indistinctly shines through this legend of the latter part of the
   second century, when it is further recorded that St. Paul was at the
   head of the Gentile Church at Rome, Peter of the circumcision.

   Bearing in mind these general considerations, which throw a degree of
   doubt on the early ecclesiastical tradition, and lead us to seek for
   indications out of the regular course of history, we have to consider,
   in reference to our present subject, the following statements:--

   1. That Justin, who is recorded to have written against Marcion, refers
   to the Twelve in several passages, but nowhere in his genuine writings
   mentions St. Paul. And when speaking of the books read in the Christian
   assemblies, he names only the Gospels and the Prophets (Apol. i. 67).

   . That Marcion, who was nearly contemporary with Justin, is said to
   have appealed to the authority of St. Paul only.

   (On the other hand, it is true that in numerous quotations from the Old
   Testament, Justin appears to follow St. Paul. It is difficult to
   account for this singular phenomenon.)

   3. That in the account of James the Just, given by Josephus and
   Hegesippus (about A.D. 170), he is represented as a Jew among Jews;
   living, according to Hegesippus, the life of a Nazarite; praying in the
   Temple until his knees became hard as a camel's, and so entirely a Jew
   as to be unknown to the people for a Christian; a description which,
   though its features may be exaggerated, yet has the trace of a true
   resemblance to the part which we find him acting in the Epistle to the
   Galatians. It falls in, too, with the fact of his peaceable continuance
   as head of the Church at Jerusalem, in the Acts of the Apostles; and is
   not inconsistent with the spirit of the Epistle which bears his name.
   (Comp. Euseb. ii. 23.)

   4. That the same Hegesippus regards the heresies as arising out of
   schism in the Jewish Church. He was himself a Hebrew convert; and after
   stating that he travelled to Rome, whither he went by way of Corinth,
   and had familiar conversation with many bishops, he declares that in
   every succession and in every city the doctrine prevails according to
   what is declared by the law and the prophets and the Lord' (Euseb. iv.
   22). This is not the language of a follower of St. Paul.

   5. That in the Clementine Homilies, written about the year 160, though
   a work generally orthodox, St. Paul is covertly introduced under the
   name of Simon Magus, as the impersonation of Gnostic error, as the
   enemy who had pretended visions and revelations', and who withstood'
   and blamed Peter. No writer doubts the allusion in some of these
   passages to the Epistles of St. Paul. Assuming their connexion, we ask,
   What was the state of mind which led an orthodox Christian, who lived
   probably at Rome, about the middle of the second century, to affix such
   a character to St. Paul? and what was the motive which induced him to
   veil his meaning? What, too, could have been the state of the Church in
   which such a romance grew up? and how could the next generation have
   read it without perceiving its true aim? Doubtful as may be the precise
   answer to these questions, we cannot attribute this remarkable work to
   the wayward fancy of an individual; it is an indication of a real
   tendency of the first and second centuries, at a time when the flame
   was almost extinguished, but still slumbered in the mind of the writer
   of the Clementine Homilies. It is observable that at a later date,
   about the year 210-230, in the form which the work afterwards received
   under the title of the Clementine Recognitions', which have been
   preserved in a Latin translation, the objection able passages have
   mostly vanished.

   6. Lastly, that in later writings we find no trace of the mind of St.
   Paul. His influence seems to pass from the world. On such a basis as
   where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty', it might have been
   impossible to rear the fabric of a hierarchy. But the thought itself
   was not present to the next generation. The tide of ecclesiastical
   feeling set in another direction. It was not merely that after-writers
   fell short of St. Paul, or imperfectly interpreted him, but that they
   formed themselves on a different model. It was not only that the
   external constitution of the Church had received a definite form and
   shape, but that the inward perception of the nature of the Gospel was
   different. No writer of the latter half of the second century would
   have spoken as St. Paul has done of the law, of the sabbath, of
   justification by faith only, of the Spirit, of grace, of moderation in
   things indifferent, of forgiveness. An echo of a part of his teaching
   is heard in Augustine; with this exception, the voice of him who
   withstood Peter to the face at Antioch was silent in the Church until
   the Reformation. The spirit of the Epistles to the Romans and to the
   Galatians has revived in later times. But there is no trace that the
   writings of the Apostle left any lasting impress within the Church, or
   perhaps any where in the first ages.

   Yet the principle of the Apostle triumphed, though at the time of its
   triumph it may seem to have lost the spirit and power of the Apostle.
   The struggle which commenced like Athanasius against the world, ended
   as the struggle of the world against the remnant of the Jewish race.
   Beginning within the confines of Judea, it spread in a widening circle
   among the Jewish proselytes, still wider and more faintly marked in the
   philojudaizing Gentile, fading in the distance as Christianity became a
   universal religion. Two events had a great influence on its progress.
   First, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the flight to Pella of the
   Christian community; secondly, the revolt under Barchocab; both tending
   to separate, more and more, both in fact and the opinion of mankind,
   the Christian from the Jew.

   It would be vain to carry our inquiry further, with the view of
   gleaning a few results respecting the first half of the second century.
   Remote probabilities and isolated facts are not worth balancing. The
   consciousness that we know little of the times which followed the
   Apostles is the best part of our knowledge. And many will deem it well
   for the purity of the Christian faith, that while Christ Himself is
   clearly seen by us--as a light, at the fountain of which a dead Church
   may receive life, and a living one renew its strength--the origin of
   ecclesiastical institutions has been hidden from our eyes. In the
   second and third centuries Christianity was extending its borders,
   fencing itself with creeds and liturgies, taking possession of the
   earth with its hierarchy. Whether this great organization was
   originally every where the same, whether it adopted the form chiefly of
   the Jewish worship and ministry or of the Roman magistracy, or at first
   of the one and afterwards of the other, cannot be certainly determined.
   A cloud hangs over the dawn of ecclesiastical history. By some course
   of events with which we are not acquainted, the Providence of God
   leading the way, and the thoughts of man following, the Jewish
   Synagogue became the Christian Church; the Passover was superseded by
   Easter; the Christian Sunday took the place of the Jewish Sabbath.
   While the Old Testament retained its authority over Gentile as well as
   Jewish Christians, the law was done away in Christ, and the Judaizer of
   the first century be came the Ebionitish heretic of the second and
   third.
     __________________________________________________________________

ON CONVERSION AND

CHANGES OF CHARACTER

  ROMANS VII

   THUS have we the image of the lifelong struggle gathered up in a single
   instant. In describing it we pass beyond the consciousness of the
   individual into a world of abstractions; we loosen the thread by which
   the spiritual faculties are held together, and view as objects what
   can, strictly speaking, have no existence, except in relation to the
   subject. The divided members of the soul are ideal, the combat between
   them is ideal, so also is the victory. What is real that corresponds to
   this is not a momentary, but a continuous conflict, which we feel
   rather than know,--which has its different aspects of hope and fear,
   triumph and despair, the action and reaction of the Spirit of God in
   the depths of the human soul, awakening the sense of sin and conveying
   the assurance of forgiveness.

   The language in which we describe this conflict is very different from
   that of the Apostle. Our circum stances are so changed that we are
   hardly able to view it in its simplest elements. Christianity is now
   the established religion of the civilized portion of mankind. In our
   own country it has become part of the law of the land; it speaks with
   authority, it is embodied in a Church, it is supported by almost
   universal opinion, and fortified by wealth and prescription. Those who
   know least of its spiritual life do not deny its greatness as a power
   in the world. Analogous to this relation in which it stands to our
   history and social state, is the relation in which it stands also to
   the minds of individuals. We are brought up in it, and unconsciously
   receive it as the habit of our thoughts and the condition of our life.
   It is without us, and we are within its circle; we do not become
   Christians, we are so from our birth. Even in those who suppose
   themselves to have passed through some sudden and violent change, and
   to have tasted once for all of the heavenly gift, the change is hardly
   ever in the form or substance of their belief, but in its quickening
   power; they feel not a new creed, but a new spirit within them. So that
   we might truly say of Christianity, that it is the daughter of time';
   it hangs to the past, not only because the first century is the era of
   its birth, but because each successive century strengthens its form and
   adds to its external force, and entwines it with more numerous links in
   our social state. Not only may we say, that it is part and parcel of
   the law of the land, but part and parcel of the character of each one,
   which even the worst of men cannot wholly shake off.

   But if with ourselves the influence of Christianity is almost always
   gradual and imperceptible, with the first believers it was almost
   always sudden. There was no interval which separated the preaching of
   Peter on the day of Pentecost, from the baptism of the three thousand.
   The eunuch of Candace paused for a brief space on a journey, and was
   then baptized into the name of Christ, which a few hours previously he
   had not so much as heard. There was no period of probation like that
   which, a century or two later, was appropriated to the instruction of
   the Catechumens. It was an impulse, an inspiration passing from the
   lips of one to a chosen few, and communicated by them to the ear and
   soul of listening multitudes. As the wind bloweth where it listeth, and
   we hear the sound thereof; as the lightning shineth from the one end of
   the heaven to the other; so suddenly, fitfully, simultaneously, new
   thoughts come into their minds, not to one only, but to many, to whole
   cities almost at once. They were pricked with the sense of sin; they
   were melted with the love of Christ; their spiritual nature came again
   like the flesh of a little child'. And some, like St. Paul, became the
   very opposite of their former selves; from scoffers, believers; from
   persecutors, preachers; the thing that they were was so strange to
   them, that they could no longer look calmly on the earthly scene, which
   they hardly seemed to touch, which was already lighted up with the
   wrath and mercy of God. There were those among them who saw visions and
   dreamed dreams', who were caught up', like St. Paul, into the third
   heaven', or, like the twelve, spake with other tongues as the Spirit
   gave them utterance'. And sometimes, as in the Thessalonian Church, the
   ecstasy of conversion led to strange and wild opinions, such as the
   daily expectation of Christ's coming. The round world' itself began to
   reel before them, as they thought of the things that were shortly to
   come to pass.

   But however sudden were the conversions of the earliest believers,
   however wonderful the circumstances which attended them, they were not
   for that reason the less lasting or sincere. Though many preached
   Christ of contention', though Demas forsook the Apostle', there were
   few who, having once taken up the cross, turned back from the love of
   this present world'. They might waver between Paul and Peter, between
   the circumcision and the uncircumcision; they might give ear to the
   strange and bewitching heresies of the East; but there is no trace that
   many returned to those that were no gods', or put off Christ; the
   impression of the truth that they had received was everlasting on their
   minds. Even sins of fornication and uncleanness, which from the
   Apostle's frequent warnings against them we must suppose to have
   lingered, as a sort of remnant of heathenism in the early Church, did
   not wholly destroy their inward relation to God and Christ. Though
   their last state might be worse than the first', they could never
   return again to live the life of all men after having tasted the
   heavenly gift and the powers of the world to come'.

   Such was the nature of conversion among the early Christians, the new
   birth of which by spiritual descent we are ourselves the offspring. Is
   there anything in history like it? anything in our own lives which may
   help us to understand it? That which the Scripture describes from
   within, we are for a while going to look at from a different point of
   view, not with reference to the power of God, but to those secondary
   causes through which He works--the laws which experience shows that he
   himself imposes on the operations of his spirit. Such an inquiry is not
   a mere idle speculation; it is not far from the practical question, How
   we are to become better'. Imperfect as any attempt to analyse our
   spiritual life must ever be, the changes which we ourselves experience
   or observe in others, compared with those greater and more sudden
   changes which took place in the age of the Apostle, will throw light
   upon each other.

   In the sudden conversions of the early Christians we observe three
   things which either tend to discredit, or do not accompany, the working
   of a similar power among ourselves.--First, that conversion was marked
   by ecstatic arid unusual phenomena; secondly, that, though sudden, it
   was permanent; thirdly, that it fell upon whole multitudes at once.

   When we consider what is implied in such expressions as not many wise,
   not many learned' were called to the knowledge of the truth, we can
   scarcely avoid feeling that there must have been much in the early
   Church which would have been distasteful to us as men of education;
   much that must have worn the appearance of excitement and enthusiasm.
   Is the mean conventicle, looking almost like a private house, a better
   image of that first assembly of Christians which met in the large upper
   room', or the Catholic church arrayed in all the glories of Christian
   art? Neither of them is altogether like in spirit perhaps, but in
   externals the first. Is the dignified hierarchy that occupy the seats
   around the altar, more like the multitudes of first believers, or the
   lowly crowd that kneel upon the pavement? If we try to embody in the
   mind's eye the forms of the first teachers, and still more of their
   followers, we cannot help reading the true lesson, however great may be
   the illusions of poetry or of art. Not St. Paul standing on Mars' hill
   in the fulness of manly strength, as we have him in the cartoon of
   Raphael, is the true image; but such a one as he himself would glory
   in, whose bodily presence was weak and speech feeble, who had an
   infirmity in his flesh, and bore in his body the marks of the Lord
   Jesus.

   And when we look at this picture, full in the face', however we might
   by nature be inclined to turn aside from it, or veil its details in
   general language, we cannot deny that many things that accompany the
   religion of the uneducated now, must then also have accompanied the
   Gospel preached to the poor. There must have been, humanly speaking,
   spiritual delusions where men lived so exclusively in the spiritual
   world; there were scenes which we know took place such as St. Paul says
   would make the un believer think that they were mad. The best and
   holiest persons among the poor and ignorant are not entirely free from
   superstition, according to the notions of the educated; at best they
   are apt to speak of religion in a manner not quite suited to our taste;
   they sing with a loud and excited voice; they imagine themselves to
   receive Divine oracles, even about the humblest cares of life. Is not
   this, in externals at least, very like the appearance which the first
   disciples must have presented, who obeyed the Apostle's injunction, Is
   any sad? let him pray; is any merry? let him sing psalms'? Could our
   nerves have borne to witness the speaking with tongues, or the
   administration of Baptism, or the love feasts as they probably existed
   in the early Church?

   This difference between the feelings and habits of the first Christians
   and ourselves, must be borne in mind in relation to the subject of
   conversion. For as sudden changes are more likely to be met with
   amongst the poor and uneducated in the present day, it certainly throws
   light on the subject of the first conversions, that to the poor and
   uneducated the Gospel was first preached. And yet these sudden changes
   were as real, nay, more real than any gradual changes which take place
   among ourselves. The Stoic or Epicurean philosopher who had come into
   an assembly of believers speaking with tongues, would have remarked,
   that among the vulgar religious extravagances were usually short-lived.
   But it was not so. There was more there than he had eyes to see, or
   than was dreamed of in a philosophy like his. Not only was there the
   superficial appearance of poverty and meanness and enthusiasm, from a
   nearer view of which we are apt to shrink, but underneath this,
   brighter from its very obscurity, purer from the meanness of the
   raiment in which it was apparelled, was the life hidden with Christ and
   God. There, and there only, was the power which made a man humble
   instead of proud, self-denying instead of self-seeking, spiritual
   instead of carnal; which made him embrace, not only the brethren, but
   the whole human race in the arms of his love.

   But it is a further difference between the power of the Gospel now and
   in the first ages, that it no longer converts whole multitudes at once.
   Perhaps this very individuality in its mode of working may not be
   without an advantage in awakening us to its higher truths and more
   entire spiritual freedom. Whether this be so or not; whether there be
   any spiritual law by which reason, in a measure, takes the place of
   faith, and the common religious impulse weakens as the power of
   reflection grows, we certainly observe a diminution in the collective
   force which religion exercises on the hearts of men. In our own days
   the preacher sees the seed which he has sown gradually spring up; first
   one, then another begins to lead a better life; then a change comes
   over the state of society, often from causes over which he has no
   control; he makes some steps forwards and a few backwards, and trusts
   far more, if he is wise, to the silent influence of religious education
   than to the power of preaching; and, perhaps, the result of a long life
   of ministerial labour is far less than that of a single discourse from
   the lips of the Apostles or their followers. Even in missions to the
   heathen the vital energies of Christianity cease to operate to any
   great extent, at least on the effete civilization of India and China;
   the limits of the kingdoms of light and darkness are nearly the same as
   heretofore. At any rate it cannot be said that Christianity has wrought
   any sudden amelioration of mankind by the immediate preaching of the
   word, since the conversion of the barbarians. Even within the Christian
   world there is a parallel retardation. The ebb and flow of reformation
   and counterreformation have hardly changed the permanent landmarks. The
   age of spiritual crises is past. The growth of Christianity in modern
   times may be compared to the change of the body, when it has already
   arrived at its full stature. In one half-century so vast a progress was
   made, in a few centuries more the world itself seemed to have gone
   after Him', and now for near a thousand years the voice of experience
   is repeating to us, Hitherto shalt thou go, but no further.'

   Looking at this remarkable phenomenon of the conversion of whole
   multitudes at once, not from its Divine but from its human aspect (that
   is, with reference to that provision that God himself has made in human
   nature for the execution of his will), the first cause to which we are
   naturally led to attribute it is the power of sympathy. Why it is that
   men ever act together is a mystery of which our individual
   self-consciousness gives no account, any more than why we speak a
   common language, or form nations or societies, or merely in our
   physical nature are capable of taking diseases from one another. Nature
   and the Author of nature have made us thus dependent on each other both
   in body and soul. Whoever has seen human beings collected together in
   masses, and watched the movements that pass over them, like the trees
   of the forest moving in the wind', will have no difficulty in
   imagining, if not in understanding, how the same voice might have found
   its way at the same instant to a thousand hearts, without our being
   able to say where the fire was first kindled, or by whom the
   inspiration was first caught. Such historical events as the
   Reformation, or the Crusades, or the French Revolution, are a
   sufficient evidence that a whole people, or almost, we may say, half a
   world, may be drunk into one spirit', springing up, as it might seem,
   spontaneously in the breast of each, yet common to all. A parallel yet
   nearer is furnished by the history of the Jewish people, in whose
   sudden rebellion and restoration to God's favour, we recognize
   literally the momentary workings of, what is to ourselves a figure of
   speech, a national conscience.

   In ordinary cases we should truly say that there must have been some
   predisposing cause of a great political or religious revolution; some
   latent elements acting alike upon all, which, though long smouldering
   beneath, burst forth at last into a flame. Such a cause might be the
   misery of mankind, or the intense corruption of human society, which
   could not be quickened except it die, or the long-suppressed yearnings
   of the soul after something higher than it had hitherto known upon
   earth, or the reflected light of one religion or one movement of the
   human mind upon another. Such causes were actually at work, preparing
   the way for the diffusion of Christianity. The law itself was beginning
   to pass away in an altered world, the state of society was hollow, the
   chosen people were hopelessly under the Roman yoke. Good men refrained
   from the wild attempt of the Galilean Judas; yet the spirit which
   animated such attempts was slumbering in their bosoms. Looking back at
   their own past history, they could not but remember, even in an altered
   world, that there was One who ruled among the kingdoms of men, beside
   whom there was no God'. Were they to suppose that His arm was
   straitened to save? that He had forgotten His tender mercies to the
   house of David? that the aspirations of the prophets were vain? that
   the blood of the Maccabean heroes had sunk like water into the earth?
   This was a hard saying; who could bear it? It was long ere the nation,
   like the individual, put off the old man--that is, the temporal
   dispensation--and put on the new man--that is, the spiritual Israel.
   The very misery of the people seemed to forbid them to acquiesce in
   their present state. And with the miserable condition of the nation
   sprang up also the feeling, not only in individuals but in the race,
   that for their sins they were chastened, the feeling which their whole
   history seemed to deepen and increase. At last the scales fell from
   their eyes; the veil that was on the face of Moses was first
   transfigured before them, then removed; the thoughts of many hearts
   turned simultaneously to the Hope of Israel, Him whom the law and the
   prophets foretold'. As they listened to the preaching of the Apostles,
   they seemed to hear a truth both new and old; what many had thought,
   but none had uttered; which in its comfort and joyousness seemed to
   them new, and yet, from its familiarity and suitableness to their
   condition, not the less old.

   Spiritual life, no less than natural life, is often the very opposite
   of the elements which seem to give birth to it. The preparation for the
   way of the Lord, which John the Baptist preached, did not consist in a
   direct reference to the Saviour. The words He shall baptize you with
   the Holy Ghost and with fire', and He shall burn up the chaff with fire
   unquenchable', could have given the Jews no exact conception of Him who
   did not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax'. It was in
   another way that John prepared for Christ, by quickening the moral
   sense of the people, and sounding in their ears the voice Repent, for
   the kingdom of heaven is at hand'. Beyond this useful lesson, there was
   a kind of vacancy in the preaching of John. He himself, as he was
   finishing his course', testified that his work was incomplete, and that
   he was not the Christ. The Jewish people were prepared by his preaching
   for the coming of Christ, just as an individual might be prepared to
   receive Him by the conviction of sin and the conscious need of
   forgiveness.

   Except from the Gospel history and the writings of Josephus and Philo,
   we know but little of the tendencies of the Jewish mind in the time of
   our Lord. Yet we cannot doubt that the entrance of Christianity into
   the world was not sudden and abrupt; that is an allusion which arises
   in the mind from our slender acquaintance with contemporary opinions.
   Better and higher and holier as it was, it was not absolutely distinct
   from the teaching of the doctors of the law either in form or
   substance; it was not unconnected with, but gave life and truth to, the
   mystic fancies of Alexandrian philosophy. Even in the counsels of
   perfection of the Sermon on the Mount, there is probably nothing which
   might not be found, either in letter or spirit, in Philo or some other
   Jewish or Eastern writer. The peculiarity of the Gospel is, not that it
   teaches what is wholly new, but that it draws out of the treasure-house
   of the human heart things new and old, gathering together in one the
   dispersed fragments of the truth. The common people would not have
   heard Him gladly', but for the truth of what He said. The heart was its
   own witness to it. The better nature of man, though but for a moment,
   responded to it, spoken as it was with authority, and not as the
   scribes; with simplicity, and not as the great teachers of the law; and
   sanctified by the life and actions of Him from whose lips it came, and
   Who spake as never man spake'.

   And yet, after reviewing the circumstances of the first preaching of
   the Gospel, there remains some thing which cannot be resolved into
   causes or antecedents; which eludes criticism, and can no more be
   explained in the world than the sudden changes of character in the
   individual. There are processes of life and organization about which we
   know nothing, and we seem to know that we shall never know any thing.
   That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die'; but the
   mechanism of this new life is too complex and yet too simple for us to
   untwist its fibres. The figure which St. Paul applies to the
   resurrection of the body is true also of the renewal of the soul,
   especially in the first ages, of which we know so little, and in which
   the Gospel seems to have acted with such far greater power than among
   ourselves.

   Leaving further inquiry into the conversion of the first Christians at
   the point at which it hides itself from us in mystery, we have now to
   turn to a question hardly less mysterious, though seemingly more
   familiar to us, which may be regarded as a question either of moral
   philosophy or of theology,--the nature of conversion and changes of
   character among ourselves. What traces are there of a spiritual power
   still acting upon the human heart? What is the inward nature, and what
   are the out ward conditions of changes in human conduct? Is our life a
   gradual and insensible progress from infancy to age, from birth to
   death, governed by fixed laws; or is it a miracle and mystery of
   thirty, or fifty, or seventy years' standing, consisting of so many
   isolated actions or portions knit together by no common principle?

   Were we to consider mankind only from without, there could be no doubt
   of the answer which we should give to the last of these questions. The
   order of the world would scarcely even seem to be infringed by the free
   will of man. In morals, no less than in physics, everything would
   appear to proceed by regular law. Individuals have certain capacities,
   which grow with their growth and strengthen with their strength; and no
   one by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature. As the poet
   says,--The boy is father to the man'. The lives of the great majority
   have a sort of continuity: as we know them by the same look, walk,
   manner; so when we come to converse with them, we recognize the same
   character as formerly. They may be changed; but the change in general
   is such as we expect to find in them from youth to maturity, or from
   maturity to decay. There is something in them which is not changed, by
   which we perceive them to be the same. If they were weak, they remain
   so still; if they were sensitive, they remain so still; if they were
   selfish or passionate, such faults are seldom cured by increasing age
   or infirmities. And often the same nature puts on many veils and
   disguises; to the outward eye it may have, in some instances, almost
   disappeared; when we look beneath, it is still there.

   The appearance of this sameness in human nature has led many to suppose
   that no real change ever takes place. Does a man from a drunkard become
   sober? from a knight errant become a devotee? from a sensualist a
   believer in Christ? or a woman from a life of pleasure pass to a
   romantic and devoted religion? It has been maintained that they are the
   same still; and that deeper similarities remain than the differences
   which are a part of their new profession. Those who make the remark
   would say, that such persons exhibit the same vanity, the same
   irritability, the same ambition; that sensualism still lurks under the
   disguise of refinement, or earthly and human passion transfuses itself
   into devotion.

   This practical fatalism', which says that human beings can be what they
   are and nothing else, has a certain degree of truth, or rather, of
   plausibility, from the circumstance that men seldom change wholly, and
   that the part of their nature which changes least is the weakness and
   infirmity that shows itself on the surface. Few, comparatively, ever
   change their outward manner, except from the mere result of altered
   circumstances; and hence, to a superficial observer, they appear to
   change less than is really the fact. Probably St. Paul never lost that
   trembling and feebleness, which was one of the trials of his life. Nor,
   in so far as the mind is dependent on the body, can we pretend to be
   wholly free agents. Who can say that his view of life and his power of
   action are unaffected by his bodily state? or who expects to find a
   firm and decided character in the nervous and sensitive frame? The
   commonest facts of daily life sufficiently prove the connexion of mind
   and body; the more we attend to it the closer it appears. Nor, indeed,
   can it be denied that external circumstances fix for most men the path
   of life. They are the inhabitants of a particular country; they have a
   certain position in the world; they rise to their occupations as the
   morning comes round; they seldom get beyond the circle of ideas in
   which they have been brought up. Fearfully and wonderfully as they are
   made, though each one in his bodily frame, and even more in his
   thoughts and feelings, is a miracle of complexity, they seem, as they
   meet in society, to reunite into a machine, and society itself is the
   great automaton of which they are the parts. It is harder and more
   conventional than the individuals which compose it; it exercises a kind
   of regulating force on the wayward fancies of their wills; it says to
   them in an unmistakable manner that they shall not break their ranks'.
   The laws of trade, the customs of social life, the instincts of human
   nature, act upon us with a power little less than that of physical
   necessity.

   If from this external aspect of human things we turn inward, there
   seems to be no limit to the changes which we deem possible. We are no
   longer the same, but different every hour. No physical fact interposes
   itself as an obstacle to our thoughts any more than to our dreams. The
   world and its laws have nothing to do with our free determinations. At
   any moment we can begin a new life; in idea at least, no time is
   required for the change. One instant we may be proud, the next humble;
   one instant sinning, at the next repenting; one instant, like St. Paul,
   ready to persecute, at another to preach the Gospel; full of malice and
   hatred one hour, melting into tenderness the next. As we hear the words
   of the preacher, there is a voice within telling us, that now, even
   now, is the day of salvation'; and if certain clogs and hindrances of
   earth could only be removed, we are ready to pass immediately into
   another state. And, at times, it seems as though we had actually passed
   into rest, and had a foretaste of the heavenly gift. Something more
   than imagination enables us to fashion a divine pattern to which we
   conform for a little while. The new man' unto which we become
   transformed, is so pleasant to us that it banishes the thought of the
   old'. In youth especially, when we are ignorant of the compass of our
   own nature, such frames of mind are perpetually recurring; perhaps, not
   without attendant evils; certainly, also, for good.

   But besides such feelings as these, which we know to be partly true,
   partly illusive, every one's experience of himself appears to teach
   him, that he has gone through many changes and had many special
   providences vouchsafed to him; he says to himself that he has been led
   in a mysterious and peculiar way, not like the way of other men, and
   had feelings not common to others; he compares different times and
   places, and contrasts his own conduct here and there, now and then. In
   other men he remarks similarity of character; in himself he sees
   chiefly diversity. They seem to be the creatures of habit and
   circumstance; he alone is a free agent. The truth is, that he observes
   himself; he cannot equally observe them. He is not conscious of the
   inward struggles through which they have passed; he sees only the veil
   of flesh which conceals them from his view. He knows when he thinks
   about it, but he does not habitually remember, that, under that calm
   exterior, there is a like current of individual thoughts, feelings,
   interests, which have as great a charm and intensity for another as the
   workings of his own mind have for himself.

   And yet it does not follow, that this inward fact is to be set aside as
   the result of egotism and illusion. It may be not merely the dreamy
   reflection of our life and actions in the mirror of self, but the
   subtle and delicate spring of the whole machine. To purify the feelings
   or to move the will, the internal sense may be as necessary to us as
   external observation is to regulate and sustain them. Even to the
   formula of the fatalist, that freedom is the consciousness of
   necessity', it may be replied, that that very consciousness, as he
   terms it, is as essential as any other link in the chain in which he
   binds fast the world'. Human nature is beset by the contradiction, not
   of two rival theories, but of many apparently contradictory facts. If
   we cannot imagine how the world could go on without law and order in
   human actions, neither can we imagine how morality could subsist unless
   we clear a space around us for the freedom of the will.

   But not in this place to get further into the meshes of the great
   question of freedom and necessity, let us rather turn aside for a
   moment to consider some practical aspects of the reflections which
   precede. Scripture and reason alike require that we should entirely
   turn to God, that we should obey the whole law. And hard as this may
   seem at first, there is a witness within us which pleads that it is
   possible. Our mind and moral nature are one; we cannot break ourselves
   into pieces in action any more than in thought. The whole man is in
   every part and in every act. This is not a mere mode of thought, but a
   truth of great practical importance. Easier to change many things than
   one', is the common saying. Easier, we may add, in religion or
   morality, to change the whole than the part. Easier because more
   natural, more agreeable to the voice of conscience and the promises of
   Scripture. God himself deals with us as a whole; he does not forgive us
   in part any more than he requires us to serve Him in part. It may be
   true that, of the thousand hearers of the appeal of the preacher, not
   above one begins a new life. And some persons will imagine that it
   might be better to make an impression on them little by little, like
   the effect of the dropping of water upon stone. Not in this way is the
   Gospel written down on the fleshly tables of the heart. More true to
   our own experience of self, as well as to the words of Scripture, are
   such ideas as renovation, renewal, regeneration, taking up the cross
   and following Christ, dying with Christ that we may also live with Him.

   Many a person will tease himself by counting minutes and providing
   small rules for his life, who would have found the task an easier and a
   nobler one, had he viewed it in its whole extent, and gone to God in a
   large and liberal spirit', to offer up his life to Him. To have no
   arrière-pensée in the service of God and virtue is the great source of
   peace and happiness. Make clean that which is within, and you have no
   need to purify that which is without. Take care of the little things of
   life, and the great ones will take care of themselves, is the maxim of
   the trader, which is sometimes, and with a certain degree of truth,
   applied to the service of God. But much more true is it in religion
   that we should take care of the great things, and the trifles of life
   will take care of themselves. If thine eye be single, thy whole body
   will be full of light.' Christianity is not acquired as an art by long
   practice; it does not carve and polish human nature with a graving
   tool; it makes the whole man; first pouring out his soul before God,
   and then casting him in a mould'. Its workings are not to be measured
   by time, even though among educated persons, and in modern times,
   sudden and momentary conversions can rarely occur.

   For the doctrine of conversion, the moralist substitutes the theory of
   habits. Good actions, he says, produce good habits; and the repetition
   of good actions makes them easier to perform, and fortifies us
   indefinitely against temptation'. There are bodily and mental
   habits--habits of reflection and habits of action. Practice gives skill
   or sleight of hand; constant attention, the faculty of abstraction; so
   the practice of virtue makes us virtuous, that of vice vicious. The
   more meat we eat, to use the illustration of Aristotle, in whom we find
   a cruder form of the same theory, the more we are able to eat meat; the
   more we wrestle, the more able we are to wrestle, and so forth. If a
   person has some duty to perform, say of common and trivial sort, to
   rise at a particular hour in the morning, to be at a particular place
   at such an hour, to conform to some rule about abstinence, we tell him
   that he will find the first occasion difficult, the second easy, and
   the difficulty is supposed to vanish by degrees until it wholly
   disappears. If a man has to march into a battle, or to perform a
   surgical operation, or to do anything else from which human nature
   shrinks, his nerves, we say, are gradually strengthened; his head, as
   was said of a famous soldier, clears up at the sound of the cannon;
   like the grave-digger in Hamlet, he has soon no feeling of his
   occupation'.

   From a consideration of such instances as these, the rule has been laid
   down, that, as the passive impression weakens, the active habit
   strengthens'. But is not this saying of a great man founded on a narrow
   and partial contemplation of human nature? For, in the first place, it
   leaves altogether out of sight the motives of human action; it is
   equally suited to the most rigid formalist and to a moral and spiritual
   being. Secondly, it takes no account of the limitation of the power of
   habits, which neither in mind nor body can be extended beyond a certain
   point; nor of the original capacity or peculiar character of
   individuals; nor of the different kinds of habits, nor of the degrees
   of strength and weakness in different minds; nor of the enormous
   difference between youth and age, childhood and manhood, in the
   capacity for acquiring habits. Old age does not move with accumulated
   force, either upwards or downwards; they are the lesser habits, not the
   great springs of life, that show themselves in it with in creased
   power. Nor can the man who has neglected to form habits in youth,
   acquire them in mature life; like the body, the mind ceases to be
   capable of receiving a particular form. Lastly, such a description of
   human nature agrees with no man's account of himself; whatever
   moralists may say, he knows himself to be a spiritual being. The wind
   bloweth where it listeth,' and he cannot tell whence it cometh, or
   whither it goeth'.

   All that is true in the theory of habits seems to be implied in the
   notion of order or regularity. Even this is inadequate to give a
   conception of the structure of human beings. Order is the beginning,
   but freedom is the perfection of our moral nature. Men do not live at
   random, or act one instant with out reference to their actions just
   before. And in youth especially, the very sameness of our occupations
   is a sort of stay and support to us, as in age it may be described as a
   kind of rest. But no one will say that the mere repetition of actions
   until they constitute a habit, gives any explanation of the higher and
   nobler forms of human virtue, or the finer moulds of character. Life
   cannot be explained as the working of a mere machine, still less can
   moral or spiritual life be reduced to merely mechanical laws.

   But if, while acknowledging that a great proportion of mankind are the
   creatures of habit, and that a great part of our actions are nothing
   more than the result of habit, we go on to ask ourselves about the
   changes of our life, and fix our minds on the critical points, we are
   led to view human nature, not only in a wider and more generous spirit,
   but also in a way more accordant with the language of Scripture. We no
   longer measure ourselves by days or by weeks; we are conscious that at
   particular times we have undergone great revolutions or emotions; and
   then, again, have intervened periods, lasting perhaps for years, in
   which we have pursued the even current of our way. Our progress towards
   good may have been in idea an imperceptible and regular advance; in
   fact, we know it to have been otherwise. We have taken plunges in life;
   there are many eras noted in our existence. The greatest changes are
   those of which we are the least able to give an account, and which we
   feel the most disposed to refer to a superior power. That they were
   simply mysterious, like some utterly unknown natural phenomena, is our
   first thought about them. But although unable to fathom their true
   nature, we are capable of analysing many of the circumstances which
   accompany them, and of observing the impulses out of which they arise.

   Every man has the power of forming a resolution, or, without previous
   resolution, in any particular instance, acting as he will. As thoughts
   come into the mind one cannot tell how, so too motives spring up,
   without our being able to trace their origin. Why we suddenly see a
   thing in a new light, is often hard to explain; why we feel an action
   to be right or wrong which has previously seemed indifferent, is not
   less inexplicable. We fix the passing dream or sentiment in action; the
   thought is nothing, the deed may be everything. That day after day, to
   use a familiar instance, the drunkard will find abstinence easier, is
   probably untrue; but that from once abstaining he will gain a fresh
   experience, and receive a new strength and inward satisfaction, which
   may result in endless consequences, is what every one is aware of. It
   is not the sameness of what we do, but its novelty, which seems to have
   such a peculiar power over us; not the repetition of many blind
   actions, but the performance of a single conscious one, that is the
   birth to a new life. Indeed, the very sameness of actions is often
   accompanied with a sort of weariness, which makes men desirous of
   change.

   Nor is it less true, that by the commission, not of many, but a single
   act of vice or crime, an inroad is made into our whole moral
   constitution, which is not proportionably increased by its repetition.
   The first act of theft, falsehood, or other immorality, is an event in
   the life of the perpetrator which he never forgets. It may often happen
   that no account can be given of it; that there is nothing in the
   education, nor in the antecedents of the person, that would lead us, or
   even himself, to suspect it. In the weaker sort of natures, especially,
   suggestions of evil spring up we cannot tell how. Human beings are the
   creatures of habit; but they are the creatures of impulse too; and from
   the greater variableness of the outward circumstances of life, and
   especially of particular periods of life, and the greater freedom of
   individuals, it may, perhaps, be found that human actions, though less
   liable to wide-spread or sudden changes, have also become more
   capricious, and less reducible to simple causes, than formerly.

   Changes in character come more often in the form of feeling than of
   reason, from some new affection or attachment, or alienation of our
   former self, rather than from the slow growth of experience, or a
   deliberate sense of right and duty. The meeting with some particular
   person, the remembrance of some particular scene, the last words of a
   parent or friend, the reading of a sentence in a book, may call forth a
   world within us of the very existence of which we were previously
   unconscious. New interests arise such as we never before knew, and we
   can no longer lie grovelling in the mire, but must be up and doing; new
   affections seem to be drawn out, such as warm our inmost soul and make
   action and exertion a delight to us. Mere human love at first sight, as
   we say, has been known to change the whole character and produce an
   earthly effect, analogous to that heavenly love of Christ and the
   brethren, of which the New Testament speaks. Have we not seen the
   passionate become calm, the licentious pure, the weak strong, the
   scoffer devout? We may not venture to say with St. Paul, This is a
   great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church'. But such
   instances serve, at least, to quicken our sense of the depth and
   subtlety of human nature.

   Of many of these changes no other reason can be given than that nature
   and the Author of nature have made men capable of them. There are
   others, again, which we seem to trace, not only to particular times,
   but to definite actions, from which they flow in the same manner that
   other effects follow from their causes. Among such causes none are more
   powerful than acts of self-sacrifice and devotion. A single deed of
   heroism makes a man a hero; it becomes a part of him, and, strengthened
   by the approbation and sympathy of his fellow men, a sort of power
   which he gains over himself and them. Something like this is true of
   the lesser occasions of life no less than of the greatest; provided in
   either case the actions are not of such a kind that the performance of
   them is a violence to our nature. Many a one has stretched himself on
   the rack of asceticism, without on the whole raising his nature; often
   he has seemed to have gained in self-control only what he has lost in
   the kindlier affections, and by his very isolation to have wasted the
   opportunities which nature offered him of self-improvement. But no one
   with a heart open to human feelings, loving not man the less, but God
   more, sensitive to the happiness of this world, yet aiming at a
   higher,--no man of such a nature ever made a great sacrifice, or
   performed a great act of self-denial, without impressing a change on
   his character, which lasted to his latest breath. No man ever -took his
   besetting sin, it may be lust, or pride, or love of rank and position,
   and, as it were, cut it out by voluntarily placing himself where to
   gratify it was impossible, without sensibly receiving a new strength of
   character. In one day, almost in an hour, he may become an altered man;
   he may stand, as it were, on a different stage of moral and religious
   life; he may feel himself in new relations to an altered world.

   Nor, in considering the effects of action, must the influence of
   impressions be lost sight of. Good resolutions are apt to have a bad
   name; they have come to be almost synonymous with the absence of good
   actions. As they get older, men deem it a kind of weakness to be guilty
   of making them; so often do they end in raising pictures of virtue, or
   going over the theory of virtue in our minds'. Yet this contrast
   between passive impression and active habit is hardly justified by our
   experience of ourselves or others. Valueless as they are in themselves,
   good resolutions are suggestive of great good; they are seldom wholly
   without effect on our conduct; in the weakest of men they are still the
   embryo of action. They may meet with a concurrence of circumstances in
   which they take root and grow, coinciding with some change of place, or
   of pursuits, or of companions, or of natural constitution, in which
   they acquire a peculiar power. They are the opportunities of virtue, if
   not virtue itself. At the worst they make us think; they give us an
   experience of ourselves; they prevent our passing our lives in total
   unconsciousness. A man may go on all his life making and not keeping
   them; miserable as such a state appears, he is perhaps not the worse,
   but something the better for them. The voice of the preacher is not
   lost, even if he succeed but for a few instants in awakening them.

   A further cause of sudden changes in the moral constitution is the
   determination of the will by reason and knowledge. Suppose the case of
   a person living in a narrow circle of ideas, within the limits of his
   early education, perplexed by difficulties, yet never venturing beyond
   the wall of prejudices in which he has been brought up, or changing
   only into the false position of a rebellion against them. A new view of
   his relation to the world and to God is presented to him; such, for
   example, as in St. Paul's day was the grand acknowledgement that God
   was not the God of the Jews only'; such as in our own age would be the
   clear vision of the truth and justice of God, high above the clouds of
   earth and time, and of His goodwill to man. Convinced of the
   reasonableness of the Gospel, it becomes to him at once a self-imposed
   law. No longer does the human heart rebel; no longer has he to pose his
   understanding with that odd resolution of Tertullian,--certum quia
   impossibile'. He perceives that the perplexities of religion have been
   made, not by the appointment of God, but by the ingenuity of man.

   Lastly. Among those influences, by the help of which the will of man
   learns to disengage itself from the power of habit, must not be omitted
   the influence of circumstances. If men are creatures of habit, much
   more are they creatures of circumstances. These two, nature without us,
   and the second nature' that is within, are the counterbalancing forces
   of our being. Between them (so we may figure to ourselves the working
   of the mind) the human will inserts itself, making the force of one a
   lever against the other, and seeming to rule both. We fall under the
   power of habit, and feel ourselves weak and powerless to shake off the
   almost physical influence which it exerts upon us. The enfeebled frame
   cannot rid itself of the malady; the palsied springs of action cannot
   be strengthened for good, nor fortified against evil. Transplanted into
   another soil, and in a different air, we renew our strength. In youth
   especially, the character seems to respond kindly to the influence of
   the external world. Providence has placed us in a state in which we
   have many aids in the battle with self; the greatest of these is change
   of circumstances.
     __________________________________________________________________

   We have wandered far from the subject of conversion in the early
   Church, into another sphere in which the words grace, faith, the
   spirit', have disappeared, and notions of moral philosophy have taken
   their place. It is better, perhaps, that the attempt to analyse our
   spiritual nature should assume this abstract form. We feel that words
   cannot express the life hidden with Christ and God; we are afraid of
   declaring on the housetop, what may only be spoken in the closet. If
   the rights and ceremonies of the elder dispensation, which have so
   little in them of a spiritual character, became a figure of the true,
   much more may the moral world be regarded as a figure of the spiritual
   world of which religion speaks to us.

   There is a view of the changes of the characters of men which begins
   where this ends, which reads human nature by a different light, and
   speaks of it as the seat of a great struggle between the powers of good
   and evil. It would be untrue to identify this view with that which has
   preceded, and scarcely less untrue to attempt to interweave the two in
   a system of moral theology'. No addition of theological terms will
   transfigure Aristotle's Ethics into a Summa Theologiae'. When St. Paul
   says--O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of
   this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord'; he is not
   speaking the language of moral philosophy, but of religious feeling. He
   expresses what few have truly felt concentrated in a single instant,
   what many have deluded themselves into the belief of, what some have
   experienced accompanying them through life, what a great portion even
   of the better sort of mankind are wholly unconscious of, It seems as if
   Providence allowed us to regard the truths of religion and morality in
   many ways which are not wholly unconnected with each other, yet
   parallel rather than intersecting; providing for the varieties of human
   character, and not leaving those altogether without law, who are
   incapable in a world of sight of entering within the veil.

   As we return to that hidden life' of which the Scripture speaks, our
   analysis of human nature seems to become more imperfect, less reducible
   to rule or measure, less capable of being described in a language which
   all men understand. What the believer recognizes as the record of his
   experience is apt to seem mystical to the rest of the world. We do not
   seek to thread the mazes of the human soul, or to draw forth to the
   light its hidden communion with its Maker, but only to present in
   general outline the power of religion among other causes of human
   action.

   Directly, religious influences may be summed up under three heads:--The
   power of God; the love of Christ; the efficacy of prayer.

   (1) So far as the influence of the first of these is capable of
   analysis, it consists in the practical sense that we are dependent
   beings, and that our souls are in the hands of God, who is acting
   through us, and ever present with us, in the trials of life and in the
   work of life. The believer is a minister who executes this work, hardly
   the partner in it; it is not his own, but God s. He does it with the
   greatest care, as unto the Lord and not to men, yet is indifferent as
   to the result, knowing that all things, even through his imperfect
   agency, are working together for good. The attitude of his soul towards
   God is such as to produce the strongest effects on his power of action.
   It leaves his faculties clear and unimpassioned; it places him above
   accidents; it gives him courage and freedom. Trusting in God only, like
   the Psalmist, he fears no enemy'; he has no want. There is a sort of
   absoluteness in his position in the world, which can neither be made
   better nor worse; as St. Paul says, All things are his, whether life or
   death, or things present, or things to come'.

   In merely human things, the aid and sympathy of others increase our
   power to act: it is also the fact that we can work more effectually and
   think more truly, where the issue is not staked on the result of our
   thought and work. The confidence of success would be more than half the
   secret of success, did it not also lead to the relaxation of our
   efforts. But in the life of the believer, the sympathy, if such a
   figure of speech may be allowed, is not human but Divine; the
   confidence is not a confidence in ourselves, but in the power of God,
   which at once takes us out of ourselves and increases our obligation to
   exertion. The instances just mentioned have an analogy, though but a
   faint one, with that which we are considering. They are shadows of the
   support which we receive from the Infinite and Everlasting. As the
   philosopher said that his theory of fatalism was absolutely required to
   insure the repose necessary for moral action, it may be said, in a far
   higher sense, that the consciousness of a Divine Providence is
   necessary to enable a rational being to meet the present trials of
   life, and to look without fear on his future destiny.

   (2) But yet more strongly is it felt that the love of Christ has this
   constraining power over souls, that here, if anywhere, we are unlocking
   the twisted chain of sympathy, and reaching the inmost mystery of human
   nature. The sight, once for all, of Christ crucified, recalling the
   thought of what, more than 1800 years ago, he suffered for us, has
   ravished the heart and melted the affections, and made the world seem
   new, and covered the earth itself with a fair vision, that is, a
   heavenly one. The strength of this feeling arises from its being
   directed towards a person, a real being, an individual like ourselves,
   who has actually endured all this for our sakes, who was above us, and
   yet became one of us and felt as we did, and was like ourselves a true
   man. The love which He felt towards us, we seek to return to Him; the
   unity which He has with the Divine nature, He communicates to us; His
   Father is our Father, His God our God. And as human love draws men
   onwards to make sacrifices, and to undergo sufferings for the good of
   others, Divine love also leads us to cast away the interests of this
   world, and rest only in the noblest object of love. And this love is
   not only a feeling or sentiment, or attachment, such as we may
   entertain towards a parent, a child, or a wife, in which, pure and
   disinterested as it may be, some shadow of earthly passion unavoidably
   mingles; it is also the highest exercise of the reason, which it seems
   to endow with the force of the affections, making us think and feel at
   once. And although it begins in gentleness, and tenderness, and
   weakness, and is often supposed to be more natural to women than men,
   yet it grows up also to the fulness of the stature of the perfect man'.
   The truest note of the depth and sincerity of our feelings towards our
   fellow creatures is a manly,--that is, a self-controlled--temper: still
   more is this true of the love of the soul towards Christ and God.

   Every one knows what it is to become like those whom we admire or
   esteem; the impress which a disciple may sometimes have received from
   his teacher, or the servant from his Lord. Such devotion to a
   particular person can rarely be thought to open our hearts to love
   others also; it often tends to weaken the force of individual
   character. But the love of Christ is the conducting medium to the love
   of all mankind; the image which He impresses upon us is the image not
   of any particular individual, but of the Son of Man. And this image, as
   we draw nearer to it, is transfigured into the image of the Son of God.
   As we become like Him, we see Him as He is; and see ourselves and all
   other things with true human sympathy. Lastly, we are sensible that
   more than all we feel towards Him, He feels towards us, and that it is
   He who is drawing us to Him, while we seem to be drawing to Him
   ourselves. This is a part of that mystery of which the Apostle speaks,
   of the length, and depth, and breadth of the love of Christ' which
   passeth knowledge. Mere human love rests on instincts, the working of
   which we cannot explain, but which nevertheless touch the inmost
   springs of our being. So, too, we have spiritual instincts, acting
   towards higher objects, still more suddenly and wonderfully capturing
   our souls in an instant, and making us indifferent to all things else.
   Such instincts show themselves in the weak no less than in the strong;
   they seem to be not so much an original part of our nature as to fulfil
   our nature, and add to it, and draw it out, until they make us
   different beings to ourselves and others. It was the quaint fancy of a
   sentimentalist to ask whether any one who remembers the first sight of
   a beloved person, could doubt the existence of magic. We may ask
   another question, Can any one who has ever known the love of Christ,
   doubt the existence of a spiritual power?

   (3) The instrument whereby, above all others, we realize the power of
   God, and the love of Christ, which carries us into their presence, and
   places us within the circle of a Divine yet personal influence, is
   prayer. Prayer is the summing up of the Christian life in a definite
   act, which is at once inward and out ward, the power of which on the
   character, like that of any other act, is proportioned to its
   intensity. The imagination of doing rightly adds little to our
   strength; even the wish to do so is not necessarily accompanied by a
   change of heart and conduct. But in prayer we imagine, and wish, and
   perform all in one. Our imperfect resolutions are offered up to God;
   our weakness becomes strength, our words deeds. No other action is so
   mysterious; there is none in which we seem, in the same manner, to
   renounce ourselves that we may be one with God.

   Of what nature that prayer is which is effectual to the obtaining of
   its requests is a question of the same kind as what constitutes a true
   faith. That prayer, we should reply, which is itself most of an act,
   which is most immediately followed by action, which is most truthful,
   manly, self-controlled, which seems to lead and direct, rather than to
   follow, our natural emotions. That prayer which is its own answer
   because it asks not for any temporal good, but for union with God. That
   prayer which begins with the confession, We know not what to pray for
   as we ought'; which can never by any possibility interfere with the
   laws of nature, because even in extremity of danger or suffering, it
   seeks only the fulfilment of His will. That prayer which acknowledges
   that our enemies, or those of a different faith, are equally with
   ourselves in the hands of God; in which we never unwittingly ask for
   our own good at the expense of others. That prayer in which faith is
   strong enough to submit to experience; in which the soul of man is
   nevertheless conscious not of any self-produced impression, but of a
   true communion with the Author and Maker of his being.

   In prayer, as in all religion, there is something that it is impossible
   to describe, and that seems to be untrue the moment it is expressed in
   words. In the relations of man with God, it is vain to attempt to
   separate what belongs to the finite and what to the infinite. We can
   feel, but we cannot analyse it. We can lay down practical rules for it,
   but can give no adequate account of it. It is a mystery which we do not
   need to fathom. In all religion there is an element of which we are
   conscious--which is no mystery, which ought to be and is on a level
   with reason and experience. There is something besides, which, in those
   who give way to every vague spiritual emotion, may often fall below
   reason (for to them it becomes a merely physical state); which may also
   raise us above ourselves, until reason and feeling meet in one, and the
   life on earth even of the poor and ignorant answers to the description
   of the Apostle, Having your conversation in heaven'.

   This partial indistinctness of the subject of religion, even
   independently of mysticism or superstition, may become to intellectual
   minds a ground for doubting the truth of that which will not be
   altogether reduced to the rules of human knowledge, which seems to
   elude our grasp, and retires into the recesses of the soul the moment
   we ask for the demonstration of its existence. Against this natural
   suspicion let us set two observations: first, that if the Gospel had
   spoken to the reason only, and not to the feelings--if the way to the
   blessed life' had to be won by clearness of ideas, then it is
   impossible that to the poor the Gospel should have been first
   preached'. It would have begun at the other end of society, and
   probably remained, like Greek philosophy, the abstraction of educated
   men. Secondly, let us remark that even now, judged by its effects, the
   power of religion is of all powers the greatest. Knowledge itself is a
   weak instrument to stir the soul compared with religion; morality has
   no way to the heart of man; but the Gospel reaches the feelings and the
   intellect at once. In nations as well as individuals, in barbarous
   times as well as civilized, in the great crises of history especially,
   even in the latest ages, when the minds of men seem to wax cold, and
   all things remain the same as at the beginning, it has shown itself to
   be a reality without which human nature would cease to be what it is.
   Almost every one has had the witness of it in himself. No one, says
   Plato, ever passed from youth to age in unbelief of the gods, in
   heathen times. Hardly any educated person in a Christian land has
   passed from youth to age without some aspiration after a better life,
   some thought of the country to which he is going.

   As a fact, it would be admitted by most, that, at some period of their
   lives, the thought of the world to come and of future judgement, the
   beauty and loveliness of the truths of the Gospel, the sense of the
   shortness of our days here, have wrought a more quickening and powerful
   effect than any moral truths or prudential maxims. Many a one would
   acknowledge that he has been carried whither he knew not; and had
   nobler thoughts, and felt higher aspirations, than the course of his
   ordinary life seemed to allow. These were the most important moments of
   his life for good or for evil; the critical points which have made him
   what he is, either as he used or neglected them. They came he knew not
   how, sometimes with some outward and apparent cause, at other times
   without,--the result of affliction or sickness, or the wind blowing
   where it listeth'.

   And if such changes and such critical points should be found to occur
   in youth more often than in age, in the poor and ignorant rather than
   in the educated, in women more often than in men, if reason and
   reflection seem to weaken as they regulate the springs of human action,
   this very fact may lead us to consider that reason, and reflection, and
   education, and the experience of age, and the force of manly sense, are
   not the links which bind us to the communion of the body of Christ;
   that it is rather to those qualities which we have, or may have, in
   common with our fellow men, that the Gospel is promised; and that it is
   with the weak, the poor, the babes in Christ,--not with the
   strong-minded, the resolute, the consistent,--that we shall sit down in
   the kingdom of heaven.
     __________________________________________________________________

ESSAY ON CASUISTRY

  ROMANS XIV

   RELIGION and morality seem often to become en tangled in circumstances.
   The truth which came, not to bring peace upon earth, but a sword',
   could not but give rise to many new and conflicting obligations. The
   kingdom of God had to adjust itself with the kingdoms of this world;
   though the children were free', they could not escape the fulfilment of
   duties to their Jewish or Roman governors; in the bosom of a family
   there were duties too: in society there were many points of contact
   with the heathen. A new element of complexity had been introduced in
   all the relations between man and man, giving rise to many new
   questions, which might be termed, in the phraseology of modern times,
   cases of conscience'.

   Of these the one which most frequently recurs in the Epistles of St.
   Paul, is the question respecting meats and drinks, which appears to
   have agitated both the Roman and Corinthian Churches, as well as those
   of Jerusalem and Antioch, and probably, in a greater or less degree,
   every other Christian community in the days of the Apostle. The scruple
   which gave birth to it was not confined to Christianity; it was Eastern
   rather than Christian, and originated in a feeling into which entered,
   not only Oriental notions of physical purity and impurity, but also
   those of caste and of race. With other Eastern influences it spread
   towards the West, in the flux of all religions, exercising a peculiar
   power on the susceptible temper of mankind.

   The same tendency exhibited itself in various forms. In one form it was
   the scruple of those who ate herbs, while others had faith' to eat
   anything. The Essenes and Therapeutae among the Jews, and the
   Pythagoreans in the heathen world, had a similar feeling respecting the
   use of animal food. It was a natural association which led to such an
   abstinence. In the East, ever ready to connect, or rather incapable of
   separating, ideas of moral and physical impurity,--where the heat of
   the climate rendered animal food unnecessary, if not positively
   unhealthful; where corruption rapidly infected dead organized matter;
   where, lastly, ancient tradition and ceremonies told of the sacredness
   of animals and the mysteriousness of animal life,--nature and religion
   alike seemed to teach the same lesson, it was safer to abstain. It was
   the manner of such a scruple to propagate itself. He who revolted at
   animal food could not quietly sit by and see his neighbour partake of
   it. The ceremonialism of the age was the tradition of thousands of
   years, and passed by a sort of contagion from one race to another, from
   Paganism or Judaism to Christianity. How to deal with this second
   nature' was a practical difficulty among the first Christians. The
   Gospel was not a gospel according to the Essenes, and the church could
   not exclude those who held the scruples, neither could it be narrowed
   to them; it would not pass judgement on them at all. Hence the force of
   the Apostle's words: Him that is weak in the faith receive, not to the
   decision of his doubts.'

   There was another point in reference to which the same spirit of
   ceremonialism propagated itself, viz. meats offered to idols. Even if
   meat in general were innocent and a creature of God, it could hardly be
   a matter of indifference to partake of that which had been sacrificed
   to devils'; least of all, to sit at meat in the idol's temple. True,
   the idol was nothing in the world'--a block of stone, to which the
   words good or evil were misapplied; a graven image' which the workman
   made, putting his hand to the hammer', as the old prophets described in
   their irony. And such is the Apostle's own feeling (1 Cor. viii. 4; x.
   19). But he has also the other feeling which he himself regards as not
   less true (1 Cor. x. 20), and which was more natural to the mind of the
   first believers. When they saw the worshippers of the idol revelling in
   impurity, they could not but suppose that a spirit of some kind was
   there. Their warfare, as the Apostle had told them, was not against
   flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against
   the rulers of the darkness of this world'. Evil angels were among them;
   where would they more naturally take up their abode than around the
   altars and in the temples of the heathen? And if they had been
   completely free from superstition, and could have regarded the heathen
   religions which they saw enthroned over the world simply with contempt,
   still the question would have arisen, What connexion were they to have
   with them and with their worshippers? a question not easy to be
   answered in the bustle of Rome and Corinth, where every circumstance of
   daily life, every amusement, every political and legal right, was in
   some way bound up with the heathen religions. Were they to go out of
   the world? if not, what was to be their relation to those without?

   A third instance of the same ceremonialism so natural to that age, and
   to ourselves so strange and unmeaning, is illustrated by the words of
   the Jerusalem Christians to the Apostle,--Thou wentest in unto men
   uncircumcised, and didst eat with them'; a scruple so strong that,
   probably, St. Peter himself was never entirely free from it, and at any
   rate yielded to the fear of it in others when withstood by St. Paul at
   Antioch. This scruple may be said in one sense to be hardly capable of
   an explanation, and in another not to need one. For, probably, nothing
   can give our minds any conception of the nature of the feeling, the
   intense hold which it exercised, the concentration which it was of
   every national and religious prejudice, the constraint which was
   required to get rid of it as a sort of horror naturalis in the minds of
   Jews; while, on the other hand, feelings at the present day not very
   dissimilar exist, not only in Eastern countries, but among ourselves.
   There is nothing strange in human nature being liable to them, or in
   their long lingering and often returning, even when reason and charity
   alike condemn them. We ourselves are not insensible to differences of
   race and colour, and may therefore be able partially to comprehend
   (allowing for the difference of East and West) what was the feeling of
   Jews and Jewish Christians towards men uncircumcised.

   On the last point St. Paul maintains but one language:--In Christ Jesus
   there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision.' No compromise could
   be allowed here, without destroying the Gospel that he preached. But
   the other question of meats and drinks, when separated from that of
   circumcision, admitted of various answers and points of view.
   Accordingly there is an appearance of inconsistency in the modes in
   which the Apostle resolves it. All these modes have a use and interest
   for ourselves; though our difficulties are not the same as those of the
   early Christians, the words speak to us, so long as prudence, and
   faith, and charity are the guides of Christian life. It is
   characteristic of the Apostle that his answers run into one another, as
   though each of them to different individuals, and all in their turn,
   might present the solution of the difficulty.

   We may begin with 1 Cor. x. 25, which may be termed the rule of
   Christian prudence: Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat,
   asking no question for conscience sake.' That is to say: Buy food as
   other men do; perhaps what you purchase has come from the idol's
   temple, perhaps not. Do not en courage your conscience in raising
   scruples, life will become impossible if you do. One question involves
   another and another and another without end. The manly and the
   Christian way is to cut them short; both as tending to weaken the
   character and as inconsistent with the very nature of spiritual
   religion.'

   So we may venture to amplify the Apostle's precept, which breathes the
   same spirit of moderation as his decisions respecting celibacy and
   marriage. Among ourselves the remark is often made that extremes are
   practically untrue'. This is another way of putting the same
   lesson:--If I may not sit in the idol's temple, it may be plausibly
   argued, neither may I eat meats offered to idols; and if I may not eat
   meats offered to idols, then it logically follows that I ought not to
   go into the market where idols' meat is sold. The Apostle snaps the
   chain of this misapplied logic: there must be a limit some where; we
   must not push consistency where it is practically impossible. A
   trifling scruple is raised to the level of a religious duty, and
   another and another, until religion is made up of scruples, and the
   light of life fades, and the ways of life narrow themselves.

   It is not hard to translate the Apostle's precept into the language of
   our time. Instances occur in politics, in theology, in our ordinary
   occupations, in which beyond a certain point consistency is impossible.
   Take for example the following:--A person feels that he would be wrong
   in carrying on his business, or going to public amusements, on a
   Sunday. He says: If it be wrong for me to work, it is wrong to make the
   servants in my house work; or if it be wrong to go to public
   amusements, it is wrong to enjoy the recreation of walking on a Sunday.
   So it may be argued that, because slavery is wrong, therefore it is not
   right to purchase the produce of slavery, or that of which the produce
   of slavery is a part, and so on without end, until we are forced out of
   the world from a remote fear of contagion with evil. Or I am engaged in
   a business which may be in some degree deleterious to the health or
   injurious to the morals of those employed in it, or I trade in some
   articles of commerce which are un wholesome or dangerous, or I let a
   house or a ship to another whose employment is of this description.
   Numberless questions of the same kind relating to the profession of a
   clergyman, an advocate, or a soldier, have been pursued into endless
   consequences. Is the mind of any person so nicely balanced that every
   one of six hundred disputed propositions' is the representative of his
   exact belief? or can every word in a set form of prayer at all times
   reflect the feeling of those who read or follow it? There is no society
   to which we can belong, no common act of business or worship in which
   two or three are joined together, in which such difficulties are not
   liable to arise. Three editors conduct a newspaper, can it express
   equally the conviction of all the three? Three lawyers sign an opinion
   in common, is it the judgement of all or of one or two of them?
   High-minded men have often got themselves into a false position by
   regarding these questions in too abstract a way. The words of the
   Apostle are a practical answer to them which may be paraphrased thus:
   Do as other men do in a Christian country.' Conscience will say, He who
   is guilty of the least, is guilty of all'. In the Apostle's language it
   then becomes the strength of sin', encouraging us to despair of all,
   because in that mixed condition of life in which God has placed us we
   cannot fulfil all.

   In accordance with the spirit of the same principle of doing as other
   men do, the Apostle further implies that believers are to accept the
   hospitality of the heathen (1 Cor. x. 27). But here a modification
   comes in, which may be termed the law of Christian charity or courtesy:
   Avoid giving offence, or, as we might say, Do not defy opinion'. Eat
   what is set before you; but if a person sitting at meat pointedly says
   to you, This was offered to idols', do not eat. All things are lawful,
   but all things are not expedient', and this is one of the not-expedient
   class. There appears to be a sort of inconsistency in this advice, as
   there must always be inconsistency in the rules of practical life which
   are relative to circumstances. It might be said: We cannot do one thing
   at one time, and another thing at another; now be guided by another
   man's conscience, now by our own.' It might be retorted, Is not this
   the dissimulation which you blame in St. Peter?' To which it may be
   answered in turn: But a man may do one thing at one time, another thing
   at another time, "becoming to the Jews a Jew," if he do it in such a
   manner as to avoid the risk of misconstruction.' And this again admits
   of a retort: Is it possible to avoid misconstruction? Is it not better
   to dare to be ourselves, to act like ourselves, to speak like
   ourselves, to think like ourselves?' We seem to have lighted unawares
   on two varieties of human disposition; the one harmonizing and adapting
   itself to the perplexities of life, the other rebelling against them,
   and seeking to disentangle itself from them. Which side of this
   argument shall we take; neither or both? The Apostle appears to take
   both sides; for in the abrupt transition that follows, he immediately
   adds, Why is my liberty to be judged of another man's conscience? what
   right has another man to attack me for what I do in the innocence of my
   heart?' It is good advice to say, Regard the opinions of others'; and
   equally good advice to say, Do not regard the opinions of others'. We
   must balance between the two; and over all, adjusting the scales, is
   the law of Christian love.

   Both in 1 Cor. viii. and Rom. xiv. the Apostle adds another principle,
   which may be termed the law of individual conscience, which we must
   listen to in ourselves and regard in others. He that doubteth is
   damned; whatsoever is not of faith is sin.' All things are lawful to
   him who feels them to be lawful, but the conscience may be polluted by
   the most indifferent things. When we eat, we should remember that the
   consequence of following our example may be serious to others. For not
   only may our brother be offended at us, but also by our example be
   drawn into sin; that is, to do what, though indifferent in itself, is
   sin to him. And so the weak brother, for whom Christ died, may perish
   through our fault; that is, he may lose his peace and harmony of soul
   and conscience void of offence, and all through our heedlessness in
   doing some unnecessary thing, which were far better left undone.

   Cases may be readily imagined, in which, like the preceding, the rule
   of conduct here laid down by the Apostle would involve dissimulation.
   So many thou sand scruples and opinions as there are in the world, we
   should have to go out of the world' to fulfil it honestly. All reserve,
   it may be argued, tends to break up the confidence between man and man;
   and there are times in which concealment of our opinions, even
   respecting things indifferent, would be treacherous and mischievous;
   there are times, too, in which things cease to be indifferent, and it
   is our duty to speak out respecting the false importance which they
   have acquired. But, after all qualifications of this kind have been
   made, the secondary duty yet remains, of consideration for others,
   which should form an element in our conduct. If truth is the first
   principle of our speech and action, the good of others should, at any
   rate, be the second. If any man (not see thee who hast knowledge
   sitting in the idol's temple, but) hear thee discoursing rashly of the
   Scriptures and the doctrines of the Church, shall not the faith of thy
   younger brother become confused? and his conscience being weak shall
   cease to discern between good and evil. And so thy weak brother shall
   perish for whom Christ died.'

   The Apostle adds a fourth principle, which may be termed the law of
   Christian freedom, as the last solution of the difficulty: Therefore,
   whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.' From the
   perplexities of casuistry, and the conflicting rights of a man's own
   conscience and that of another, he falls back on the simple rule,
   Whatever you do, sanctify the act'. It cannot be said that all
   contradictory obligations vanish the moment we try to act with
   simplicity and truth; we cannot change the current of life and its
   circumstances by a wish or an intention; we cannot dispel that which is
   without, though we may clear that which is within. But we have taken
   the first step, and are in the way to solve the riddle. The insane
   scruple, the fixed idea, the ever-increasing doubt begins to pass away;
   the spirit of the child returns to us; the mind is again free, and the
   road of life open. Whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of
   God'; that is, determine to seek only the will of God, and you may have
   a larger measure of Christian liberty allowed to you; things, perhaps
   wrong in others, may be right for you.

   Questions of meats and drinks, of eating with washen or unwashen hands,
   and the like, have passed from the stage of religious ordinances to
   that of proprieties and decencies of life. The purifications of the law
   of Moses are no longer binding upon Christians. Nature herself teaches
   all things necessary for health and comfort. But the spirit of
   casuistry in every age finds fresh materials to employ itself upon,
   laying hold of some question of a new moon or a sabbath, some fragment
   of antiquity, some inconsistency of custom, some subtlety of thought,
   some nicety of morality, analysing and dividing the actions of daily
   life; separating the letter from the spirit, and words from things;
   winding its toils around the infirmities of the weak, and linking
   itself to the sensibility of the intellect.

   Out of this labyrinth of the soul the believer finds his way, by
   keeping his eye fixed on that landmark which the Apostle himself has
   set up: In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor
   uncircumcision, but a new creature.'

   There is no one probably, of any religious experience, who has not at
   times felt the power of a scrupulous conscience. In speaking of a
   scrupulous conscience, the sense of remorse for greater offences is not
   intended to be included. These may press more or less heavily on the
   soul; and the remembrance of them may ingrain itself, with different
   degrees of depth, on different temperaments; but whether deep or
   shallow, the sorrow for them cannot be brought under the head of
   scruples of conscience. There are many things in which we offend all',
   about which there can be no mistake, the impression of which on our
   minds it would be fatal to weaken or do away. Nor is it to be denied
   that there may be customs almost universal among us which are so
   plainly repugnant to morality, that we can never be justified in
   acquiescing in them; or that individuals of clear head and strong will
   have been led on by feelings which other men would deride as
   conscientious scruples into an heroic struggle against evil. But quite
   independently of real sorrows for sin, or real protests against evil,
   most religious persons in the course of their lives have felt unreal
   scruples or difficulties, or exaggerated real but slight ones; they
   have abridged their Christian freedom, and thereby their means of doing
   good; they have cherished imaginary obligations, and artificially
   hedged themselves in a particular course of action. Honour and truth
   have seemed to be at stake about trifles light as air, or conscience
   has become a burden too heavy for them to bear in some doubtful matter
   of conduct. Scruples of this kind are ever liable to increase; as one
   vanishes, another appears; the circumstances of the world and of the
   Church, and the complication of modern society, have a tendency to
   create them. The very form in which they come is of itself sufficient
   to put us on our guard against them; for we can give no account of them
   to ourselves; they are seldom affected by the opinion of others; they
   are more often put down by the exercise of authority than by reasoning
   or judgement. They gain hold on the weaker sort of men, or on those not
   naturally weak, in moments of weakness. They often run counter to our
   wish or interest, and for this very reason acquire a kind of tenacity.
   They seem innocent, mistakes, at worst, on the safe side,
   characteristic of the ingenuousness of youth, or indicative of a heart
   uncorrupted by the world. But this is not so. Creatures as we are of
   circumstances, we cannot safely afford to give up things indifferent,
   means of usefulness, instruments of happiness to ourselves, which may
   affect our lives and those of our children to the latest posterity.
   There are few greater dangers in religion than the indulgence of such
   scruples, the consequences of which can rarely be seen until too late,
   and which affect the moral character of a man at least as much as his
   temporal interests.

   Strange as it may appear, it is nevertheless true, that scruples about
   lesser matters almost always involve some dereliction of duty in
   greater or more obvious ones. A tender conscience is a conscience
   unequal to the struggles of life. At first sight it seems as if, when
   lesser duties were cared for, the greater would take care of
   themselves. But this is not the lesson which experience teaches. In our
   moral as in our physical nature, we are finite beings, capable only of
   a certain degree of tension, ever liable to suffer disorder and
   derangement, to be over-exercised in one part and weakened in another.
   No one can fix his mind intently on a trifling scruple or become
   absorbed in an eccentric fancy, without finding the great principles of
   truth and justice insensibly depart from him. He has been looking
   through a microscope at life, and cannot take in its general scope. The
   moral proportions of things are lost to him; the question of a new moon
   or a Sabbath has taken the place of diligence or of honesty. There is
   no limit to the illusions which he may practise on himself. There are
   those, all whose interests and prejudices at once take the form of
   duties and scruples, partly from dishonesty, but also from weakness,
   and because that is the form in which they can with the best grace
   maintain them against other men, and conceal their true nature from
   themselves.

   Scruples are dangerous in another way, as they tend to drive men into a
   corner in which the performance of our duty becomes so difficult as to
   be almost impossible. A virtuous and religious life does not consist
   merely in abstaining from evil, but in doing what is good. It has to
   find opportunities and occasions for itself, without which it
   languishes. A man has a scruple about the choice of a profession; as a
   Christian, he believes war to be unlawful; in familiar language, he has
   doubts respecting orders, difficulties about the law. Even the ordinary
   ways of conducting trade appear deficient to his nicer sense of
   honesty; or perhaps he has already entered on one of these lines of
   life, and finds it necessary to quit it. At last, there comes the
   difficulty of how he is to live'. There cannot be a greater mistake
   than to suppose that a good resolution is sufficient in such a case to
   carry a man through a long life.

   But even if we suppose the case of one who is endowed with every
   earthly good and instrument of prosperity, who can afford, as is
   sometimes said, to trifle with the opportunities of life, still the
   mental consequences will be hardly less injurious to him. For he who
   feels scruples about the ordinary enjoyments and occupations of his
   fellows, does so far cut himself off from his common nature. He is an
   isolated being, incapable of acting with his fellow men. There are
   plants which, though the sun shine upon them, and the dews water them,
   peak and pine from some internal disorder, and appear to have no
   sympathy with the influences around them. So is the mind corroded by
   scruples of conscience. It can not expand to sun or shower; it belongs
   not to the world of light; it has no intelligence of or harmony with
   mankind around. It is insensible to the great truth, that though we may
   not do evil that good may come, yet that good and evil, truth and false
   hood, are bound together on earth, and that we cannot separate
   ourselves from them.

   It is one of the peculiar dangers of scruples of conscience, that the
   consequence of giving way to them is never felt at the time that they
   press upon us. When the mind is worried by a thought secretly working
   in it, and its trial becomes greater than it can bear, it is eager to
   take the plunge in life that may put it out of its misery; to throw
   aside a profession it may be, or to enter a new religious communion. We
   shall not be wrong in promising ourselves a few weeks of peace and
   placid enjoyment. The years that are to follow we are incapable of
   realizing; whether the weary spirit will require some fresh pasture,
   will invent for itself some new doubt; whether its change is a return
   to nature or not, it is impossible for us to anticipate. Whether it has
   in itself that hidden strength which, under every change of
   circumstances, is capable of bearing up, is a question which we are the
   least able to determine for ourselves. In general we may observe, that
   the weakest minds, and those least capable of enduring such
   consequences, are the most likely to indulge the scruples. We know
   beforehand the passionate character, hidden often under the mask of
   reserve, the active yet half-reasoning intellect, which falls under the
   power of such illusions.

   In the Apostolic Church cases of conscience' arose out of religious
   traditions, and what may be termed the ceremonial cast of the age; in
   modern times the most frequent source of them may be said to be the
   desire of logical or practical consistency, such as is irreconcilable
   with the mixed state of human affairs and the feebleness of the human
   intellect. There is no lever like the argument from consistency, with
   which to bring men over to our opinions. A particular system or view,
   Calvinism perhaps, or Catholicism, has taken possession of the mind.
   Shall we stop short of pushing its premises to their conclusions? Shall
   we stand in the midway, where we are liable to be over-ridden by the
   combatants on either side in the struggle? Shall we place ourselves
   between our reason and our affections; between our practical duties and
   our intellectual convictions? Logic would have us go forward, and take
   our stand at the most advanced point--we are there already, it is
   urged, if we were true to ourselves,--but feeling, and habit, and
   common sense bid us stay where we are, unable to give an account of
   ourselves, yet convinced that we are right. We may listen to the one
   voice, we may listen also to the other. The true way of guiding either
   is to acknowledge both; to use them for a time against each other,
   until experience of life and of ourselves has taught us to harmonize
   them in a single principle.

   So, again, in daily life cases often occur, in which we must do as
   other men do, and act upon a general understanding, even though unable
   to reconcile a particular practice to the letter of truthfulness or
   even to our individual conscience. It is hard in such cases to lay down
   a definite rule. But in general we should be suspicious of any
   conscientious scruples in which other good men do not share. We shall
   do right to make a large allowance for the perplexities and
   entanglements of human things; we shall observe that persons of strong
   mind and will brush away our scruples; we shall consider that not he
   who has most, but he who has fewest scruples approaches most nearly the
   true Christian. The man whom we emphatically call honest', able',
   upright', who is a religious as well as a sensible man, seems to have
   no room for them; from which we are led to infer that such scruples are
   seldom in the nature of things themselves, but arise out of some
   peculiarity or eccentricity in those who indulge them. That they are
   often akin to madness, is an observation not without instruction even
   to those whom God has blest with the full use of reason.

   So far we arrive at a general conclusion like St. Paul s:--Whether ye
   eat or drink, do all to the glory of God'; and, Blessed is he who
   condemneth not himself in that which he alloweth'. Have the Spirit of
   truth, and the truth shall make you free'; and the entanglements of
   words and the perplexities of action will disappear. But there is
   another way in which such difficulties have been resolved, which meets
   them in detail; viz., the practice of confession and the rules of
   casuistry, which are the guides of the confessor. When the spirit is
   disordered within us, it may be urged that we ought to go out of
   ourselves, and confess our sins one to another. But he who leads, and
   he who is led, alike require some rules for the examination of
   conscience, to quicken or moderate the sense of sin, to assist
   experience, to show men to themselves as they really are, neither
   better nor worse. Hence the necessity for casuistry.

   It is remarkable, that what is in idea so excellent that it may be
   almost described in St. Paul's language as holy, just, and good',
   should have become a by-word among mankind for hypocrisy and
   dishonesty. In popular estimation, no one is supposed to resort to
   casuistry, but with the view of evading a duty. The moral instincts of
   the world have risen up and condemned it. It is fairly put down by the
   universal voice, and shut up in the darkness of the tomes of the
   casuists. A kind of rude justice has been done upon the system, as in
   most cases of popular indignation, probably with some degree of
   injustice to the individuals who were its authors. Yet, hated as
   casuistry has deservedly been, it is fair also to admit that it has an
   element of truth which was the source of its influence. This element of
   truth is the acknowledgement of the difficulties which arise in the
   relations of a professing Christian world to the Church and to
   Christianity. How, without lowering the Gospel, to place it on a level
   with daily life is a hard question. It will be proper for us to
   consider the system from both sides--in its origin and in its
   perversion. Why it existed, and why it has failed, furnish a lesson in
   the history of the human mind of great interest and importance.

   The unseen power by which the systems of the casuists were brought into
   being, was the necessity of the Roman Catholic Church. Like the
   allegorical interpretation of Scripture, they formed a link between the
   present and the past. At the time of the Reformation the doctrines of
   the ancient, no less than of the Reformed, faith awakened into life.
   But they required to be put in a new form, to reconcile them to the
   moral sense of mankind. Luther ended the work of self-examination by
   casting all his sins on Christ. But the casuists could not thus meet
   the awakening of men's consciences and the fearful looking for of
   judgement. They had to deal with an altered world, in which
   nevertheless the spectres of the past, purgatory, penance, mortal sin,
   were again rising up; hallowed as they were by authority and antiquity
   they could not be cast aside; the preacher of the Counter-reformation
   could only explain them away. If he had placed distinctly before men's
   eyes, that for some one act of immorality or dishonesty they were in a
   state of mortal sin, the heart true to itself would have recoiled from
   such a doctrine, and the connexion between the Church and the world
   would have been for ever severed. And yet the doctrine was a part of
   ecclesiastical tradition; it could not be held, it could not be given
   up. The Jesuits escaped the dilemma by holding and evading it.

   So far it would not be untrue to say that casuistry had originated in
   an effort to reconcile the Roman Catholic faith with nature and
   experience. The Roman system was, if strictly carried out, horrible and
   impossible; a doctrine not, as it has been some times described, of
   salvation made easy, but of universal condemnation. From these fearful
   conclusions of logic the subtlety of the human intellect was now to
   save it. The analogy of law, as worked out by jurists and canonists,
   supplied the means. What was repugnant to human justice could not be
   agreeable to Divine. The scholastic philosophy, which had begun to die
   out and fade away before the light of classical learning, was to revive
   in a new form, no longer hovering between heaven and earth, out of the
   reach of experience, yet below the region of spiritual truth, but, as
   it seemed, firmly based in the life and actions of mankind. It was the
   same sort of wisdom which defined the numbers and order of the
   celestial hierarchy, which was now to be adapted to the infinite
   modifications of which the actions of men are capable.

   It is obvious that there are endless points of view in which the
   simplest duties may be regarded. Common sense says--A man is to be
   judged by his acts', there can be no mistake about a lie', and so on.
   The casuists proceed by a different road. Fixing the mind, not on the
   simplicity, but on the intricacy of human action, they study every
   point of view, and introduce every conceivable distinction. A first
   most obvious distinction is that of the intention and the act: ought
   the one to be separated from the other? The law itself seems to teach
   that this may hardly be; rather the intention is held to be that which
   gives form and colour to the act. Then the act by itself is nothing,
   and the intention by itself almost innocent. As we play between the two
   different points of view, the act and the intention together evanesce.
   But, secondly, as we consider the intention, must we not also consider
   the circumstances of the agent? For plainly a being deprived of free
   will cannot be responsible for his actions. Place the murderer in
   thought under the conditions of a necessary agent, and his actions are
   innocent; or under an imperfect necessity, and he loses half his guilt.
   Or suppose a man ignorant, or partly ignorant, of what is the teaching
   of the Church, or the law of the land,--here another abstract point of
   view arises, leading us out of the region of common sense to difficult
   and equitable considerations, which may be determined fairly, but which
   we have the greatest motive to decide in favour of ourselves. Or again,
   try to conceive an act without reference to its consequences, or in
   reference to some single consequence, without regarding it as a
   violation of morality or of nature, or in reference solely to the
   individual conscience. Or imagine the will half consenting to, half
   withdrawing from its act; or acting by another, or in obedience to
   another, or with some good object, or under the influence of some
   imperfect obligation, or of opposite obligations. Even conscience
   itself may be at last played off against the plainest truths.

   By the aid of such distinctions the simplest principles of morality
   multiply to infinity. An instrument has been introduced of such
   subtlety and elasticity that it can accommodate the canons of the
   Church to any consciences, to any state of the world. Sin need no
   longer be confined to the dreadful distinction of mortal and venial
   sin; it has lost its infinite and mysterious character; it has become a
   thing of degrees, to be aggravated or mitigated in idea, according to
   the expediency of the case or the pliability of the confessor. It seems
   difficult to perpetrate a perfect sin. No man need die of despair; in
   some page of the writings of the casuists will be found a difference
   suited to his case. And this without in any degree interfering with a
   single doctrine of the Church, or withdrawing one of its anathemas
   against heresy.

   The system of casuistry, destined to work such great results, in
   reconciling the Church to the world and to human nature, like a torn
   web needing to be knit together, may be regarded as a science or
   profession. It is a classification of human actions, made in one sense
   without any reference to practice. For nothing was further from the
   mind of the casuist than to inquire whether a particular distinction
   would have a good or bad effect, was liable to perversion or not. His
   object was only to make such distinctions as the human mind was capable
   of perceiving and acknowledging. As to the physiologist objects in
   themselves loathsome and disgusting may be of the deepest interest, so
   to the casuist the foulest and most loathsome vices of mankind are not
   matters of abhorrence, but of science, to be arranged and classified,
   just like any other varieties of human action. It is true that the
   study of the teacher was not supposed to be also open to the penitent.
   But it inevitably followed that the spirit of the teacher communicated
   itself to the taught. He could impart no high or exalted idea of
   morality or religion, who was measuring it out by inches, not deepening
   men's idea of sin, but attenuating it; mincing into nonsense' the first
   principles of right and wrong.

   The science was further complicated by the doctrine of probability',
   which consisted in making anything approved or approvable that was
   confirmed by authority; even, as was said by some, of a single casuist.
   That could not be very wrong which a wise and good man had once thought
   to be right,--a better than ourselves perhaps, surveying the
   circumstances calmly and impartially. Who would wish that the rule of
   his daily life should go beyond that of a saint and doctor of the
   Church? Who would require such a rule to be observed by another? Who
   would refuse another such an escape out of the labyrinth of human
   difficulties and perplexities? As in all the Jesuit distinctions, there
   was a kind of reasonableness in the theory of this; it did but go on
   the principle of cutting short scruples by the rule of common sense.

   And yet, what a door was here opened for the dishonesty of mankind! The
   science itself had dissected moral action until nothing of life or
   meaning remained in it. It had thrown aside, at the same time, the
   natural restraint which the moral sense itself exercises in determining
   such questions. And now for the application of this system, so
   difficult and complicated in itself, so incapable of receiving any
   check from the opinions of mankind, the authority not of the Church,
   but of individuals, was to be added as a new lever to overthrow the
   last remains of natural religion and morality.

   The marvels of this science are not yet ended. For the same changes
   admit of being rung upon speech as well as upon action, until truth and
   falsehood become alike impossible. Language itself dissolves before the
   decomposing power; oaths, like actions, vanish into air when separated
   from the intention of the speaker; the shield of custom protects
   falsehood. It would be a curious though needless task to follow the
   subject into further details. He who has read one page of the casuists
   has read all. There is nothing that is not right in some particular
   point of view,--nothing that is not true under some previous
   supposition.

   Such a system may be left to refute itself. Those who have strayed so
   far away from truth and virtue are self-condemned. Yet it is not
   without interest to trace by what false lights of philosophy or
   religion good men, revolting themselves at the commission of evil, were
   led step by step to the unnatural result. We should expect to find that
   such a result originated not in any settled determination to corrupt
   the morals of mankind, but in an intellectual error; and it is
   suggestive of strange thoughts respecting our moral nature, that an
   intellectual error should have had the power to produce such
   consequences. Such appears to have been the fact. The conception of
   moral action on which the system depends, is as erroneous and imperfect
   as that of the scholastic philosophy respecting the nature of ideas.
   The immediate reduction of the error to practice through the agency of
   an order made the evil greater than that of other intellectual errors
   on moral and religious subjects, which, springing up in the brain of an
   individual, are often corrected and purified in the course of nature
   before they find their way into the common mind.

   1. Casuistry ignores the difference between thought and action. Actions
   are necessarily external. The spoken word constitutes the lie; the
   outward performance the crime. The Highest Wisdom, it is true, has
   identified the two: He that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath
   already committed adultery with her in his heart.' But this is not the
   rule by which we are to judge our past actions, but to guard our future
   ones. He who has thoughts of lust or passion is not innocent in the
   sight of God, and is liable to be carried on to perform the act on
   which he suffers himself to dwell. And, in looking forward, he will do
   well to remember this caution of Christ: but in looking backward, in
   thinking of others, in endeavouring to estimate the actual amount of
   guilt or trespass, if he begins by placing thought on the level of
   action, he will end by placing action on the level of thought. It would
   be a monstrous state of mind in which we regarded mere imagination of
   evil as the same with action; hatred as the same with murder; thoughts
   of impurity as the same with adultery. It is not so that we must learn
   Christ. Actions are one thing and thoughts another in the eye of
   conscience, no less than of the law of the land; of God as well as man.
   However important it may be to remember that the all-seeing eye of God
   tries the reins, it is no less important to remember also that morality
   consists in definite acts, capable of being seen and judged of by our
   fellow creatures, impossible to escape ourselves.

   2. What may be termed the frame of casuistry was supplied by law, while
   the spirit is that of the scholastic philosophy. Neither afforded any
   general principle which might correct extravagancies in detail, or
   banish subtleties, or negative remote and unsafe inferences. But the
   application of the analogy of law to subjects of morality and religion
   was itself a figment which, at every step, led deeper into error. The
   object was to realize and define, in every possible stage, acts which
   did not admit of legal definition, either because they were not
   external, but only thoughts or suggestions of the mind, or because the
   external part of the action was not allowed to be regarded separately
   from the motives of the agent. The motive or intention which law takes
   no account of except as indicating the nature of the act, becomes the
   principal subject of the casuist's art. Casuistry may be said to begin
   where law ends. It goes where law refuses to follow with legal rules
   and distinctions into the domain of morality. It weighs in the balance
   of precedent and authority the impalpable acts of a spiritual being.
   Law is a real science which has its roots in history, which grasps
   fact; seeking, in idea, to rest justice on truth only, and to reconcile
   the rights of individuals with the well-being of the whole. But
   casuistry is but the ghost or ape of a science; it has no history and
   no facts corresponding to it; it came into the world by the ingenuity
   of man; its object is to produce an artificial disposition of human
   affairs, at which nature rebels.

   3. The distinctions of the casuist are far from equalling the subtlety
   of human life, or the diversity of its conditions. It is quite true
   that actions the same in name are, in the scale of right and wrong, as
   different as can be imagined; varying with the age, temperament,
   education, circumstances of each individual. The casuist is not in
   fault for maintaining this difference, but for supposing that he can
   classify or distinguish them so as to give any conception of their
   innumerable shades and gradations. All his folios are but the weary
   effort to abstract or make a brief of the individuality of man. The
   very actions which he classifies change their meaning as he writes them
   down, like the words of a sentence torn away from their context. He is
   ever idealizing and creating distinctions, splitting straws, dividing
   hairs; yet any one who reflects on himself will idealize and
   distinguish further still, and think of his whole life in all its
   circumstances, with its sequence of thoughts and motives, and, withal,
   many excuses. But no one can extend this sort of idealism beyond
   himself; no insight of the confessor can make him clairvoyant of the
   penitent's soul. Know ourselves we sometimes truly may, but we cannot
   know others, and no other can know us. No other can know or understand
   us in the same wonderful or mysterious way; no other can be conscious
   of the spirit in which we have lived; no other can see us as a whole or
   get within. God has placed a veil of flesh between ourselves and other
   men, to screen the nakedness of our soul. Into the secret chamber He
   does not require that we should admit any other judge or counsellor but
   himself. Two eyes only are upon us,--the eye of our own soul--the eye
   of God, and the one is the light of the other. That is the true light,
   on the which if a man look he will have a knowledge of himself,
   different in kind from that which the confessor extracts from the books
   of the casuists.

   4. There are many cases in which our first thoughts, or, to speak more
   correctly, our instinctive perceptions, are true and right; in which it
   is not too much to say, that he who deliberates is lost. The very act
   of turning to a book, or referring to an other, enfeebles our power of
   action. Works of art are produced we know not how, by some simultaneous
   movement of hand and thought, which seem to lend to each other force
   and meaning. So in moral action, the true view does not separate the
   intention from the act, or the act from the circumstances which
   surround it, but regards them as one and absolutely indivisible. In the
   performance of the act and in the judgement of it, the will and the
   execution, the hand and the thought are to be considered as one. Those
   who act most energetically, who in difficult circumstances judge the
   most truly, do not separately pass in review the rules, and principles,
   and counter principles of action, but grasp them at once, in a single
   instant. Those who act most truthfully, honestly, firmly, manfully,
   consistently, take least time to deliberate. Such should be the
   attitude of our minds in all questions of right and wrong, truth and
   falsehood: we may not inquire, but act.

   5. Casuistry not only renders us independent of our own convictions, it
   renders us independent also of the opinion of mankind in general. It
   puts the confessor in the place of ourselves, and in the place of the
   world. By making the actions of men matters of science, it cuts away
   the supports and safe guards which public opinion gives to morality;
   the confessor in the silence of the closet easily introduces principles
   from which the common sense or conscience of mankind would have shrunk
   back. Especially in matters of truth and falsehood, in the nice sense
   of honour shown in the unwillingness to get others within our power,
   his standard will probably fall short of that of the world at large.
   Public opinion, it is true, drives men's vices inwards; it teaches them
   to conceal their faults from others, and if possible from themselves,
   and this very concealment may sink them in despair, or cover them with
   self-deceit. And the soul--whose house is its castle'--has an enemy
   within, the strength of which may be often increased by communications
   from without. Yet the good of this privacy is on the whole greater than
   the evil. Not only is the outward aspect of society more decorous, and
   the confidence between man and man less liable to be impaired; the mere
   fact of men's sins being known to themselves and God only, and the
   support afforded even by the undeserved opinion of their fellows, are
   of themselves great helps to a moral and religious life. Many a one by
   being thought better than he was has become better; by being thought as
   bad or worse has become worse. To communicate our sins to those who
   have no claim to know them is of itself a diminution of our moral
   strength. It throws upon others what we ought to do for ourselves; it
   leads us to seek in the sympathy of others a strength which no sympathy
   can give. It is a greater trust than is right for us commonly to repose
   in our fellow-creatures; it places us in their power; it may make us
   their tools.

   To conclude, the errors and evils of casuistry may be summed up as
   follows:--It makes that abstract which is concrete, scientific which is
   contingent, artificial which is natural, positive which is moral,
   theoretical which is intuitive and immediate. It puts the parts in the
   place of the whole, exceptions in the place of rules, system in the
   place of experience, dependence in the place of responsibility,
   reflection in the place of conscience. It lowers the heavenly to the
   earthly, the principles of men to their practice, the tone of the
   preacher to the standard of ordinary life. It sends us to another for
   that which can only be found in ourselves. It leaves the high way of
   public opinion to wander in the labyrinths of an imaginary science; the
   light of the world for the darkness of the closet. It is to human
   nature what anatomy is to our bodily frame; instead of a moral and
   spiritual being, preserving only a body of death'.
     __________________________________________________________________

ESSAY ON NATURAL RELIGION

  § 1.

   THE revelation of righteousness by faith in the Epistle to the Romans
   is relative to a prior condemnation of Jew and Gentile, who are alike
   convicted of sin. If the world had not been sitting in darkness and the
   shadow of death, there would have been no need of the light. And yet
   this very darkness is a sort of contradiction, for it is the darkness
   of the soul, which, nevertheless, sees itself and God. Such darkness
   visible' St. Paul had felt in himself, and, passing from the individual
   to the world, he lifts up the veil partially, and lets the light of
   God's wrath shine upon the corruption of man. What he himself in the
   searchings of his own spirit had become conscious of was written in
   large letters' on the scene around. To all Israelites at least, the law
   stood in the same relation as it had once done to himself; it placed
   them in a state of reprobation. Without law they had not had sin', and
   now, the only way to do away with sin is to do away the law itself.

   But, if sin is not imputed where there is no law', it might seem as
   though the heathen could not be brought within the sphere of the same
   condemnation. Could we suppose men to be like animals, nourishing a
   blind life within the brain', the seed that is not quickened except it
   die' would have no existence in them. Common sense tells us that all
   evil implies a knowledge of good, and that no man can be responsible
   for the worship of a false God who has no means of approach to the
   true. But this was not altogether the case of the Gentile; without the
   law sin was in the world'; as the Jew had the law, so the Gentile had
   the witness of God in creation. Nature was the Gentile's law,
   witnessing against his immoral and degraded state, leading him upward
   through the visible things to the unseen power of God. He knew God, as
   the Apostle four times repeats, and magnified Him not as God; so that
   he was with out excuse, not only for his idolatry, but because he
   worshipped idols in the presence of God himself.

   Such is the train of thought which we perceive to be working in the
   Apostle's mind, and which leads him, in accordance with the general
   scope of the Epistle to the Romans, to speak of natural religion. In
   two passages in the Acts he dwells on the same subject. It was one that
   found a ready response in the age to which St. Paul preached.
   Reflections of a similar kind were not uncommon among the heathen
   themselves. If at any time in the history of mankind natural religion
   can be said to have had a real and independent existence, it was in the
   twilight of heathenism and Christianity. Seeking after God, if haply
   they might feel after Him and find Him', is a touching description of
   the efforts of philosophy in its later period. That there were
   principles in Nature higher and purer than the creations of mythology
   was a reflection made by those who would have deemed the cross of
   Christ foolishness', who mocked at the resurrection of the dead'. The
   Olympic heaven was no longer the air which men breathed, or the sky
   over their heads. The better mind of the world was turning from dumb
   idols'. Ideas about God and man were taking the place of the old
   heathen rites. Religions, like nations, met and mingled. East and West
   were learning of each other, giving and receiving spiritual and
   political elements; the objects of Gentile worship fading into a more
   distant and universal God; the Jew also travelling in thought into
   regions which his fathers knew not, and beginning to form just
   conceptions of the earth and its inhabitants.

   While we remain within the circle of Scripture language, or think of
   St. Paul as speaking only to the men of his own age in words that were
   striking and appropriate to them, there is no difficulty in
   understanding his meaning. The Old Testament denounced idolatry as
   hateful to God. It was away from Him, out of His sight; except where it
   touched the fortunes of the Jewish people, hardly within the range
   either of His judgements or of His mercies. No Israelite, in the elder
   days of Jewish history, supposed the tribes round about, or the
   individuals who composed them, to be equally with himself the objects
   of God's care. The Apostle brings the heathen back before the judgement
   seat of God. He sees them sinking into the condition of the old
   Canaanitish nations. He regards this corruption of Nature as a
   consequence of their idolatry. They knew, or might have known, God, for
   creation witnesses of Him. This is the hinge of the Apostle's argument:
   If they had not known God they had not had sin'; but now they know Him,
   and sin in the light of knowledge. Without this consciousness of sin
   there would be no condemnation of the heathen, and therefore no need of
   justification for him,--no parallelism or coherence between the
   previous states of Jew and Gentile, or between the two parts of the
   scheme of redemption.

   But here philosophy, bringing into contrast the Scriptural view of
   things and the merely historical or human one, asks the question, How
   far was it possible for the heathen to have seen God in Nature?' Could
   a man anticipate the true religion any more than he could anticipate
   discoveries in science or in art? Could he pierce the clouds of
   mythology, or lay aside language as it were a garment? Three or four in
   different ages, who have been the heralds of great religious
   revolutions, may have risen above their natural state under the
   influence of some divine impulse. But men in general do as others do;
   single persons in India or China do not dislocate themselves from the
   customs, traditions, prejudices, rites, in which they have been brought
   up. The mind of a nation has its own structure, which receives and also
   idealizes in various degrees the forms of outward Nature. Religions,
   like languages, conform to this mental structure; they are prior to the
   thoughts of individuals; no one is responsible for them. Homer is not
   to blame for his conception of the Grecian gods; it is natural and
   adequate to his age. For no one in primitive times could disengage
   himself from that world of sense which grew to him and enveloped him;
   we might as well imagine that he could invent a new language, or change
   the form which he inherited from his race into some other type of
   humanity.

   The question here raised is one of the most important, as it is perhaps
   one that has been least considered, out of the many questions in which
   reason and faith, historical fact and religious belief, come into real
   or apparent conflict with each other. Volumes have been written on the
   connexion of geology with the Mosaic account of the creation,--a
   question which is on the outskirts of the great difficulty,--a sort of
   advanced post, at which theologians go out to meet the enemy. But we
   cannot refuse seriously to consider the other difficulty, which affects
   us much more nearly, and in the present day almost forces itself upon
   us, as the spirit of the ancient religions is more understood, and the
   forms of religion still existing among men become better known.

   It sometimes seems as if we lived in two, or rather many distinct
   worlds,--the world of faith and the world of experience,--the world of
   sacred and the world of profane history. Between them there is a gulf;
   it is not easy to pass from one to the other. They have a different set
   of words and ideas, which it would be bad taste to intermingle; and of
   how much is this significant? They present themselves to us at
   different times, and call up a different train of associations. When
   reading Scripture we think only of the heavens which are made by the
   word of God', of the winds and waves obeying his will', of the
   accomplishment of events in history by the interposition of His hand.
   But in the study of ethnology or geology, in the records of our own or
   past times, a curtain drops over the Divine presence; human motives
   take the place of spiritual agencies; effects are not without causes;
   interruptions of Nature repose in the idea of law. Race, climate,
   physical influences, states of the human intellect and of society, are
   among the chief subjects of ordinary history; in the Bible there is no
   allusion to them; to the inspired writer they have no existence. Were
   men different, then, in early ages, or does the sacred narrative show
   them to us under a different point of view? The being of whom Scripture
   gives one account, philosophy another,--who has a share in Nature and a
   place in history, who partakes also of a hidden life, and is the
   subject of an unseen power,--is he not the same? This is the difficulty
   of our times, which presses upon us more and more, both in speculation
   and practice, as different classes of ideas come into comparison with
   each other. The day has passed in which we could look upon man in one
   aspect only, without interruption or confusion from any other. And
   Scripture, which uses the language and ideas of the age in which it was
   written, is inevitably at variance with the new modes of speech, as
   well as with the real discoveries of later knowledge.

   Yet the Scriptures lead the way in subjecting the purely supernatural
   and spiritual view of human things to the laws of experience. The
   revocation in Ezekiel of the old proverb in the house of Israel'. is
   the assertion of a moral principle, and a return to fact and Nature.
   The words of our Saviour,--Think ye that those eighteen on whom the
   tower of Siloam fell, were sinners above all the men who dwelt in
   Jerusalem?' and the parallel passage respecting the one born
   blind,--Neither this man did sin, nor his parents', are an enlargement
   of the religious belief of the time in accordance with experience. When
   it is said that faith is not to look for wonders; or the kingdom of God
   cometh not with observation', and neither will they be persuaded though
   one rose from the dead', here, too, is an elevation of the order of
   Nature over the miraculous and uncommon. The preference of charity to
   extraordinary gifts is another instance, in which the spirit of Christ
   speaks by the lips of Paul, of a like tendency. And St. Paul himself,
   in recognizing a world without the Jewish, as responsible to God, and
   subject to His laws, is but carrying out, according to the knowledge of
   his age, the same principle which a wider experience of the world and
   of antiquity compels us to extend yet further to all time and to all
   mankind.

   It has been asked: How far, in forming a moral estimate of an
   individual, are we to consider his actions simply as good or evil; or
   how far are we to include in our estimate education, country, rank in
   life, physical constitution, and so forth? Morality is rightly jealous
   of our resolving evil into the influence of circumstances: it will no
   more listen to the plea of temptation as the excuse for vice, than the
   law will hear of the same plea in mitigation of the penalty for crime.
   It requires that we should place ourselves within certain conditions
   before we pass judgement. Yet we cannot deny a higher point of view
   also,--of him that judged not as a man judgeth', in which we fear to
   follow only because of the limitation of our faculties. And in the case
   of a murderer or other great criminal, if we were suddenly made aware,
   when dwelling on the enormity of his crime, that he had been educated
   in vice and misery, that his act had not been unprovoked, perhaps that
   his physical constitution was such as made it nearly impossible for him
   to resist the provocation which was offered to him, the knowledge of
   these and similar circumstances would alter our estimate of the
   complexion of his guilt. We might think him guilty, but we should also
   think him unfortunate. Stern necessity might still require that the law
   should take its course, but we should feel pity as well as anger. We
   should view his conduct in a larger and more comprehensive way, and
   acknowledge that, had we been placed in the same circumstances, we
   might have been guilty of the same act.

   Now the difference between these two views of morality is analogous to
   the difference between the way in which St. Paul regards the heathen
   religions, and the way in which we ourselves regard them, in proportion
   as we become better acquainted with their true nature. St. Paul
   conceives idolatry separate from all the circumstances of time, of
   country, of physical or mental states by which it is accompanied, and
   in which it may be almost said to consist. He implies a deliberate
   knowledge of the good, and choice of the evil. He supposes each
   individual to contrast the truth of God with the error of false
   religions, and deliberately to reject God. He conceives all mankind,
   creatures as they are one of another', and

   Moving all together if they move at all'.

   to be suddenly freed from the bond of nationality, from the customs and
   habits of thought of ages. The moral life which is proper to the
   individual, he breathes into the world collectively. Speaking not of
   the agents and their circumstances, but of their acts, and seeing these
   reflected in what may be termed in a figure the conscience, not of an
   individual but of mankind in general, he passes on all men everywhere
   the sentence of condemnation. We can hardly venture to say what would
   have been his judgement on the great names of Greek and Roman history,
   had he familiarly known them. He might have felt as we feel, that there
   is a certain impropriety in attempting to determine, with a Jesuit
   writer, or even in the spirit of love and admiration which the great
   Italian poet shows for them, the places of the philosophers and heroes
   of antiquity in the world to come. More in his own spirit, he would
   have spoken of them as a part of the mystery which was not then
   revealed as it now is'. But neither can we imagine how he could have
   become familiar with them at all without ceasing to be St. Paul.

   Acquainted as we are with Greek and Roman literature from within,
   lovers of its old heroic story, it is impossible for us to regard the
   religions of the heathen world in the single point of view which they
   presented to the first believers. It would be a vain attempt to try and
   divest ourselves of the feelings towards the great names of Greek and
   Roman history which a classical education has implanted in us; as
   little can we think of the deities of the heathen mythology in the
   spirit of a Christian of the first two centuries. Looking back from the
   vantage ground of ages, we see more clearly the proportions of
   heathenism and Christianity, as of other great forms or events of
   history, than was possible for contemporaries. Ancient authors are like
   the inhabitants of a valley who know nothing of the countries beyond:
   they have a narrow idea either of their own or other times; many
   notions are entertained by them respecting the past history of mankind
   which a wider prospect would have dispelled. The horizon of the sacred
   writers too is limited; they do not embrace the historical or other
   aspects of the state of man to which modern reflection has given rise;
   they are in the valley still, though with the light of the world'
   above. The Apostle sees the Athenians from Mars' Hill wholly given to
   idolatory': to us, the same scene would have revealed wonders of art
   and beauty, the loss of which the civilized nations of Europe still
   seem with a degree of seriousness to lament. He thinks of the heathen
   religions in the spirit of one of the old prophets; to us they are
   subjects of philosophy also. He makes no distinction between their
   origin and their decline, the dreams of the childhood of the human race
   and the fierce and brutal lusts with which they afterwards became
   polluted; we note many differences between Homer and the corruption of
   later Greek life, between the rustic simplicity of the old Roman
   religion and the impurities of the age of Clodius or Tiberius. More and
   more, as they become better known to us, the original forms of all
   religions are seen to fall under the category of nature and less under
   that of mind, or free will. There is nothing to which they are so much
   akin as language, of which they are a sort of after-growth,--in their
   fantastic creations the play or sport of the same faculty of speech;
   they seem to be also based on a spiritual affection, which is
   characteristic of man equally with the social ones. Religions, like
   languages, are inherent in all men everywhere, having a close sympathy
   or connexion with political and family life. It would be a shallow and
   imaginary explanation of them that they are corruptions of some
   primaeval revelation, or impostures framed by the persuasive arts of
   magicians or priests. There are many other respects in which our first
   impressions respecting the heathen world are changed by study and
   experience. There was more of true greatness in the conceptions of
   heathen legislators and philosophers than we readily admit, and more of
   nobility and disinterestedness in their character. The founders of the
   Eastern religions especially, although indistinctly seen by us, appear
   to be raised above the ordinary level of mortality. The laws of our own
   country are an inheritance partly bequeathed to us by a heathen nation;
   many of our philosophical and most of our political ideas are derived
   from a like source. What shall we say to these things? Are we not
   undergoing, on a wider scale and in a new way, the same change which
   the Fathers of Alexandria underwent, when they became aware that
   heathenism was not wholly evil, and that there was as much in Plato and
   Aristotle which was in harmony with the Gospel as of what was
   antagonistic to it.

   Among the many causes at present in existence which will influence the
   Church of the future', none is likely to have greater power than our
   increasing knowledge of the religions of mankind. The study of them is
   the first step in the philosophical study of revelation itself. For
   Christianity or the Mosaic religion, standing alone, is hardly a
   subject for scientific inquiry: only when compared with other forms of
   faith do we perceive its true place in history, or its true relation to
   human nature. The glory of Christianity is not to be as unlike other
   religions as possible, but to be their perfection and fulfilment. Those
   religions are so many steps in the education of the human race. One
   above an other, they rise or grow side by side, each nation, in many
   ages, contributing some partial ray of a divine light, some element of
   morality, some principle of social life, to the common stock of
   mankind. The thoughts of men, like the productions of Nature, do not
   endlessly diversify; they work themselves out in a few simple forms. In
   the fulness of time, philosophy appears, shaking off, yet partly
   retaining, the nationality and particularity of its heathen origin. Its
   top reaches to heaven', but it has no root in the common life of man.
   At last, the crown of all, the chief corner-stone of the building, when
   the impressions of Nature and the reflections of the mind upon itself
   have been exhausted, Christianity arises in the world, seeming to stand
   in the same relation to the inferior religions that man does to the
   inferior animals.

   When, instead of painting harsh contrasts between Christianity and
   other religions, we rather draw them together as nearly as truth will
   allow, many thoughts come into our minds about their relation to each
   other which are of great speculative interest as well as of practical
   importance. The joyful words of the Apostle: Is he the God of the Jews
   only, is he not also of the Gentiles?' have a new meaning for us. And
   this new application the Apostle himself may be regarded as having
   taught us, where he says: When the Gentiles which know not the law do
   by nature the things contained in the law, these not having the law are
   a law unto themselves'. There have been many schoolmasters to bring men
   to Christ, and not the law of Moses only. Ecclesiastical history
   enlarges its borders to take in the preparations for the Gospel, the
   anticipations of it, the parallels with it; collecting the scattered
   gleams of truth which may have revealed themselves even to single
   individuals in remote ages and countries. We are no longer interested
   in making out a case against the heathen religions in the spirit of
   party,--the superiority of Christianity will appear sufficiently
   without that--we rather rejoice that, at sundry times and in divers
   manners, by ways more or less akin to the methods of human knowledge,
   God spake in time past to the fathers', and that in the darkest ages,
   amid the most fanciful aberrations of mythology, He left not Himself
   wholly without a witness between good and evil, in the natural
   affections of mankind.

   Some facts also begin to appear, which have hitherto been unknown or
   concealed. They are of two kinds, relating partly to the origin or
   development of the Jewish or Christian religion; partly also
   independent of them, yet affording remarkable parallels both to their
   outward form and to their inner life. Christianity is seen to have
   partaken much more of the better mind of the Gentile world than the
   study of Scripture only would have led us to conjecture: it has
   received, too, many of its doctrinal terms from the language of
   philosophy. The Jewish religion is proved to have incorporated with
   itself some elements which were not of Jewish origin; and the Jewish
   history begins to be explained by the analogy of other nations. The
   most striking fact of the second kind is found in a part of the world
   which Christianity can be scarcely said to have touched, and is of a
   date some centuries anterior to it. That there is a faith [15] which
   has a greater number of worshippers than all sects of Christians put
   together, which originated in a reformation of society, tyrannized over
   by tradition, spoiled by philosophy, torn asunder by caste,--which
   might be described, in the words of Scripture, as a preaching of the
   Gospel to the poor'; that this faith, besides its more general
   resemblance to Christianity, has its incarnation, its monks, its
   saints, its hierarchy, its canonical books, its miracles, its councils,
   the whole system being full blown' before the Christian era; that the
   founder of this religion descended from a throne to teach the lesson of
   equality among men--(there is no distinction of' Chinese or Hindoo,
   Brahmin or Sudra, such at least was the indirect consequence of his
   doctrine)--that, himself contented with nothing, he preached to his
   followers the virtues of poverty, self-denial, chastity, temperance,
   and that once, at least, he is described as taking upon himself the
   sins of mankind':--these are facts which, when once known, are not
   easily forgotten; they seem to open an undiscovered world to us, and to
   cast a new light on Christianity itself. And it harrows us with fear
   and wonder', to learn that this vast system, numerically the most
   universal or catholic of all religions, and, in many of its leading
   features, most like Christianity, is based, not on the hope of eternal
   life, but of complete annihilation.

   The Greek world presents another parallel with the Gospel, which is
   also independent of it; less striking, yet coming nearer home, and
   sometimes overlooked because it is general and obvious. That the
   political virtues of courage, patriotism, and the like, have been
   received by Christian nations from a classical source is commonly
   admitted. Let us ask now the question, Whence is the love of knowledge?
   who first taught men that the pursuit of truth was a religious duty?
   Doubtless the words of one greater than Socrates come into our minds:
   For this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that
   they might know the truth'. But the truth here spoken of is of another
   and more mysterious kind; not truth in the logical or speculative sense
   of the word, nor even in its ordinary use. The earnest inquiry after
   the nature of things, the devotion of a life to such an inquiry, the
   forsaking all other good in the hope of acquiring some fragment of true
   knowledge,--this is an instance of human virtue not to be found among
   the Jews, but among the Greeks. It is a phenomenon of religion, as well
   as of philosophy, that among the Greeks too there should have been
   those who, like the Jewish prophets, stood out from the world around
   them, who taught a lesson, like them, too exalted for the practice of
   mankind in general; who anticipated out of the order of nature the
   knowledge of future ages; whose very chance words and misunderstood
   modes of speech have moulded the minds of men in remote times and
   countries. And that these teachers of mankind, as they were finishing
   their course' in the decline of Paganism, like Jewish prophets, though
   unacquainted with Christianity, should have become almost Christian,
   preaching the truths which we sometimes hold to be foolishness to the
   Greek', as when Epictetus spoke of humility, or Seneca told of a God
   who had made of one blood all nations of the earth,--is a sad and
   touching fact.

   But it is not only the better mind of heathenism in East or West that
   affords parallels with the Christian religion: the corruptions of
   Christianity, its debasement by secular influences, its temporary decay
   at particular times or places, receive many illustrations from similar
   phenomena in ancient times and heathen countries. The manner in which
   the Old Testament has taken the place of the New; the tendency to
   absorb the individual life in the outward church; the personification
   of the principle of separation from the world in monastic orders; the
   accumulation of wealth with the profession of poverty; the
   spiritualism, or childlike faith, of one age, and the rationalism or
   formalism of another; many of the minute controversial disputes which
   exist between Christians respecting doctrines both of natural and
   revealed religion;--all these errors or corruptions of Christianity
   admit of being compared with similar appearances either in Buddhism or
   Mahomedanism. Is not the half-believing half-sceptical attitude in
   which Socrates and others stood to the orthodox' pagan faith very
   similar to that in which philosophers, and in some countries educated
   men generally, have stood to established forms of Christianity? Is it
   only in Christian times that men have sought to consecrate art in the
   service of religion? Did not Paganism do so far more completely? or was
   it Plato only to whom moral ideas represented themselves in sensual
   forms? Has not the whole vocabulary of art, in modern times, become
   confused with that of morality? The modern historian of Greece and Rome
   draws our attention to other religious features in the ancient world,
   which are not without their counterpart in the modern,--old friends
   with new faces',--which a few words are enough to suggest. The
   aristocratic character of Paganism, the influence which it exerted over
   women, its galvanic efforts to restore the past, the ridicule with
   which the sceptic assails its errors, and the manner in which the
   antiquarians Pausanias and Dionysius contemptuously reply; also the
   imperfect attempts at reconcilement of old and new, found in such
   writers as Plutarch, and the obscure sense of the real connexion of the
   Pagan worship with political and social life, the popularity of its
   temporary hierophants; its panics, wonders, oracles, mysteries,--these
   features make us aware that however unlike the true life of
   Christianity may have been even to the better mind of heathenism, the
   corruptions and weaknesses of Christianity have never been without a
   parallel under the sun.

   Those religions which possess sacred books furnish some other curious,
   though exaggerated, likenesses of the use which was been sometimes made
   of the Jewish or Christian Scriptures. No believer in organic or verbal
   inspiration has applied more high-sounding titles to the Bible than the
   Brahmin or Mussulman to the Koran or the Vedas. They have been loaded
   with commentaries--buried under the accumulations of tradition; no care
   has been thought too great of their words and letters, while the
   original meaning has been lost, and even the language in which they
   were written ceased to be understood. Every method of interpretation
   has been practised upon them; logic and mysticism have elicited every
   possible sense; the aid of miracles has been called in to resolve
   difficulties and reconcile contradictions. And still, not withstanding
   the perverseness with which they are interpreted, these half-understood
   books exercise a mighty spell; single verses, misapplied words,
   disputed texts, have affected the social and political state of
   millions of mankind during a thousand or many thousand years. Even
   without reference to their contents, the mere name of these books has
   been a power in the Eastern world. Facts like these would be greatly
   misunderstood if they were supposed to reduce the Old and New Testament
   to the level of other sacred books, or Christianity to the level of
   other religions. But they may guard us against some forms of
   superstition which insensibly, almost innocently, spring up among
   Christians; and they reveal weaknesses of human nature, from which we
   can scarcely hope that our own age or country is exempt.

   Let us conclude this digression by summing up the use of such
   inquiries; as a touchstone and witness of Christian truth; as bearing
   on our relations with the heathens themselves.

   Christianity, in its way through the world, is ever taking up and
   incorporating with itself Jewish, secular, or even Gentile elements.
   And the use of the study of the heathen religions is just this: it
   teaches us to separate the externals or accidents of Christianity from
   its essence; its local, temporary type from its true spirit and life.
   These externals, which Christianity has in common with other religions
   of the East, may be useful, may be necessary, but they are not the
   truths which Christ came on earth to reveal. The fact of the possession
   of sacred books, and the claim which is made for them, that they are
   free from all error or imperfection, if admitted, would not distinguish
   the Christian from the Mahomedan faith. Most of the Eastern religions,
   again, have had vast hierarchies and dogmatic systems; neither is this
   a note of divinity. Also, they are witnessed to by signs and wonders;
   we are compelled to go further to find the characteristics of the
   Gospel of Christ. As the Apostle says: And yet I show you a more
   excellent way,'--not in the Scriptures, nor in the church, nor in a
   system of doctrines, nor in miracles, does Christianity consist, though
   some of these may be its necessary accompaniments or instruments, but
   in the life and teaching of Christ.

   The study of comparative theology' not only helps to distinguish the
   accidents from the essence of Christianity; it also affords a new kind
   of testimony to its truth; it shows what the world was aiming at
   through many cycles of human history--what the Gospel alone fulfilled.
   The Gentile religions, from being enemies, become witnesses of the
   Christian faith. They are no longer adverse positions held by the
   powers of evil, but outworks or buttresses, like the courts of the
   Temple on Mount Sion, covering the holy place. Granting that some of
   the doctrines and teachers of the heathen world were nearer the truth
   than we once supposed, such resemblances cause no alarm or uneasiness;
   we have no reason to fable that they are the fragments of some primeval
   revelation. We look forwards, not backwards; to the end, not to the
   beginning; not to the garden of Eden, but to the life of Christ. There
   is no longer any need to maintain a thesis; we have the perfect freedom
   and real peace which is attained by the certainty that we know all, and
   that nothing is kept back. Such was the position of Christianity in
   former ages; it was on a level with the knowledge of mankind. But in
   later years unworthy fear has too often paralysed its teachers: instead
   of seeking to readjust its relations to the present state of history
   and science, they have clung in agony to the past. For the Gospel is
   the child of light; it lives in the light of this world; it has no
   shifts or concealments; there is no kind of knowledge which it needs to
   suppress; it allows us to see the good in all things; it does not
   forbid us to observe also the evil which has incrusted upon itself. It
   is willing that we should look calmly and steadily at all the facts of
   the history of religion. It takes no offence at the remark, that it has
   drawn into itself the good of other religions; that the laws and
   institutions of the Roman Empire have supplied the outer form, and
   heathen philosophy some of the inner mechanism which was necessary to
   its growth in the world. No violence is done to its spirit by the
   enumeration of the causes which have led to its success. It permits us
   also to note, that while it has purified the civilization of the West,
   there are soils of earth on which it seems hardly capable of living
   without becoming corrupt or degenerate. Such knowledge is innocent and
   a creature of God'. And considering how much of the bitterness of
   Christians against one another arises from ignorance and a false
   conception of the nature of religion, it is not chimerical to imagine
   that the historical study of religions may be a help to Christian
   charity. The least differences seem often to be the greatest; the
   perception of the greater differences makes the lesser insignificant.
   Living within the sphere of Christianity, it is good for us sometimes
   to place ourselves without; to turn away from the weak and beggarly
   elements' of worn-out controversies to contemplate the great phases of
   human existence. Looking at the religions of mankind, succeeding one
   another in a wonderful order, it is hard to narrow our minds to party
   or sectarian views in our own age or country. Had it been known that a
   dispute about faith and works existed among Buddhists, would not this
   knowledge have modified the great question of the Reformation? Such
   studies have also a philosophical value as well as a Christian use.
   They may, perhaps, open to us a new page in the history of our own
   minds, as well as in the history of the human race. Mankind, in
   primitive times, seem at first sight very unlike ourselves: as we look
   upon them with sympathy and interest, a likeness begins to appear; in
   us too there is a piece of the primitive man; many of his wayward
   fancies are the caricatures of our errors or perplexities. If a clearer
   light is ever to be thrown either on the nature of religion or of the
   human mind, it will come, not from analyses of the individual or from
   inward experience, but from a study of the mental history of mankind,
   and especially of those ages in which human nature was fusile, still
   not yet cast in a mould, and rendered incapable of receiving new
   creations or impressions.

   The study of the religions of the world has also a bearing on the
   present condition of the heathen. We cannot act upon men unless we
   understand them; we cannot raise or elevate their moral character
   unless we are able to draw from its concealment the seed of good which
   they already contain. It is a remarkable fact, that Christianity,
   springing up in the East, should have conquered the whole western
   world, and that in the East itself it should have scarcely extended its
   border, or even retained its original hold. Westward the course of
   Christianity has taken its way'; and now it seems as if the two ends of
   the world would no longer meet; as if differences of degree had
   extended to differences of kind in human nature, and that we cannot
   pass from one species to another. Whichever way we look, difficulties
   appear such as had no existence in the first ages: either barbarism,
   paling in the presence of a superior race, so that it can hardly be
   kept alive to receive Christianity, or the mummy-like civilization of
   China, which seems as though it could never become instinct with a new
   life, or Brahminism, outlasting in its pride many conquerors of the
   soil, or the nobler form of Mahomedanism; the religion of the
   patriarchs, as it were, overliving itself, preaching to the sons of
   Ishmael the God of Abraham, who had not yet revealed himself as man.
   These great systems of religious belief have been subject to some
   internal changes in a shifting world: the effect produced upon them
   from without is as yet scarcely perceptible. The attempt to move them
   is like a conflict between man and nature. And in some places it seems
   as if the wave had receded again after its advance, and some
   conversions have been dearly bought, either by the violence of
   persecution or the corruption or accommodation of the truth. Each sect
   of Christians has been apt to lend itself to the illusion that the
   great organic differences of human nature might be bridged over, could
   the Gospel of Christ be preached to the heathen in that precise form in
   which it is received by themselves; if we could but land in remote
   countries, full armed in that particular system or way after which we
   in England worship the God of our Fathers'. And often the words have
   been repeated, sometimes in the spirit of delusion, some times in that
   of faith and love: Lift up your eyes, and behold the fields, that they
   are already white for harvest', when it was but a small corner of the
   field that was beginning to whiten, a few ears only which were ready
   for the reapers to gather.

   And yet the command remains: Go forth and preach the Gospel to every
   creature'. Nor can any blessing be conceived greater than the spread of
   Christianity among heathen nations, nor any calling nobler or higher to
   which Christians can devote themselves. Why are we unable to fulfil
   this command in any effectual manner? Is it that the Gospel has had
   barriers set to it, and that the stream no longer overflows on the
   surrounding territory; that we have enough of this water for ourselves,
   but not enough for us and them? or that the example of nominal
   Christians, who are bent on their own trade or interest, destroys the
   lesson which has been preached by the ministers of religion? Yet the
   lives of believers did not prevent the spread of Christianity at
   Corinth and Ephesus. And it is hard to suppose that the religion which
   is true for ourselves has lost its vital power in the world.

   The truth seems to be, not that Christianity has lost its power, but
   that we are seeking to propagate Christianity under circumstances
   which, during the eighteen centuries of its existence, it has never yet
   encountered. Perhaps there may have been a want of zeal, or discretion,
   or education in the preachers; sometimes there may have been too great
   a desire to impress on the mind of the heathen some peculiar doctrine,
   instead of the more general lesson of righteousness, temperance,
   judgement to come'. But however this may be, there is no reason to
   believe that even if a saint or apostle could rise from the dead, he
   would produce by his preaching alone, without the use of other means,
   any wide or deep impression on India or China. To restore life to those
   countries is a vast and complex work, in which many agencies have to
   co-operate,--political, industrial, social; and missionary efforts,
   though a blessed, are but a small part; and the Government is not the
   less Christian because it seeks to rule a heathen nation on principles
   of truth and justice only. Let us not measure this great work by the
   number of communicants or converts. Even when wholly detached from
   Christianity, the true spirit of Christianity may animate it. The
   extirpation of crime, the administration of justice, the punishment of
   falsehood, may be regarded, without a figure of speech, as the word of
   the Lord' to a weak and deceitful people. Lessons of purity and love
   too flow insensibly out of improvement in the relations of social life.
   It is the disciple of Christ, not Christ himself, who would forbid us
   to give these to the many, because we can only give the Gospel to a
   very few. For it is of the millions, not of the thousands, in India
   that we must first give an account. Our relations to the heathen are
   different from those of Christians in former ages, and our progress in
   their conversion slower. The success which attends our efforts may be
   disparagingly compared with that of Boniface or Augustine; but if we
   look a little closer, we shall see no reason to regret that Providence
   has placed in our hands other instruments for the spread of
   Christianity besides the zeal of heroes and martyrs. The power to
   convert multitudes by a look or a word has passed away; but God has
   given us another means of ameliorating the condition of mankind, by
   acting on their circumstances, which works extensively rather than
   intensively, and is in some respects safer and less liable to abuse.
   The mission is one of governments rather than of churches or
   individuals. And if, in carrying it out, we seem to lose sight of some
   of the distinctive marks of Christianity, let us not doubt that the
   increase of justice and mercy, the growing sense of truth, even the
   progress of industry, are in themselves so many steps towards the
   kingdom of heaven.

   In the direct preaching of the Gospel, no help can be greater than that
   which is gained from a knowledge of the heathen religions. The resident
   in heathen countries readily observes the surface of the world; he has
   no difficulty in learning the habits of the natives; he avoids
   irritating their fears or jealousies. It requires a greater effort to
   understand the mind of a people; to be able to rouse or calm them; to
   sympathize with them, and yet to rule them. But it is a higher and more
   commanding knowledge still to comprehend their religion, not only in
   its decline and corruption, but in its origin and idea,--to understand
   that which they misunderstand, to appeal to that which they reverence
   against themselves, to turn back the currents of thought and opinion
   which have flowed in their veins for thousands of years. Such is the
   kind of knowledge which St. Paul had when to the Jews he became as a
   Jew, that he might win some; which led him while placing the new and
   old in irreconcilable opposition, to bring forth the new out of the
   treasure-house of the old. No religion, at present existing in the
   world, stands in the same relation to Christianity that Judaism once
   did; there is no other religion which is prophetic or anticipatory of
   it. But neither is there any religion which does not contain some idea
   of truth, some notion of duty or obligation, some sense of dependence
   on God and brotherly love to man, some human feeling of home or
   country. As in the vast series of the animal creation, with its many
   omissions and interruptions, the eye of the naturalist sees a kind of
   continuity,--some elements of the higher descending into the lower,
   rudiments of the lower appearing in the higher also,--so the Christian
   philosopher, gazing on the different races and religions of mankind,
   seems to see in them a spiritual continuity, not without the thought
   crossing him that the God who has made of one blood all the nations of
   the earth may yet renew in them a common life, and that our increasing
   knowledge of the present and past history of the world, and the
   progress of civilization itself, may be the means which He has
   provided, working not always in the way which we expect,--that his
   banished ones be not expelled from him'.

  § 2.

   Natural religion, in the sense in which St. Paul appeals to its
   witness, is confined within narrower limits. It is a feeling rather
   than a philosophy; and rests not on arguments, but on impressions of
   God in nature. The Apostle, in the first chapter of the Romans, does
   not reason from first causes or from final causes; abstractions like
   these would not have been understood by him. Neither is he taking an
   historical survey of the religions of mankind; he touches, in a word
   only, on those who changed the glory of God into the likeness of man,
   and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things' (Rom. i. 23),
   as on the differences of nations, in Acts xvii. 26. More truly may we
   describe him in the language of the Psalmist, the very vacancy of which
   has a peculiar meaning: He lifts up his eyes to the hills from whence
   cometh his salvation'. He wishes to inspire other men with that
   consciousness of God in all things which he himself feels: in a dry and
   thirsty land where no water is', he would raise their minds to think of
   Him who gave them rain from heaven and fruitful seasons'; in the city
   of Pericles and Phidias he bids them turn from gilded statues and
   temples formed with hands, to the God who made of one blood all the
   nations of the earth, who is not far from every one of us'. Yet it is
   observable that he also begins by connecting his own thoughts with
   theirs, quoting their own poets', and taking occasion, from an
   inscription which he found in their streets, to declare the mystery
   which was once hidden, but now revealed'.

   The appeal to the witness of God in nature has passed from the Old
   Testament into the New; it is one of the many points which the Epistles
   of St. Paul and the Psalms and Prophets have in common. The invisible
   things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being
   understood by the things that are made', is another way of saying, The
   heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His
   handywork'. Yet the conception of the Old Testament is not the same
   with that of the New: in the latter we seem to be more disengaged from
   the things of sense; the utterance of the former is more that of
   feeling, and less of reflection. One is the poetry of a primitive age,
   full of vivid immediate impressions; in the other nature is more
   distant,--the freshness of the first vision of earth has passed away.
   The Deity Himself, in the Hebrew Scriptures, has a visible form: as He
   appeared with the body of heaven in his clearness'; as He was seen by
   the prophet Ezekiel out of the midst of the fire and the whirlwind,
   full of eyes within and without, and the spirit of the living creature
   in the wheels'. But in the New Testament, No man hath seen God at any
   time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath
   declared him'. And this difference leads to a further difference in His
   relation to His works. In what we term nature, the prophet beheld only
   the covering cherubim that veil the face of God: as He moves, earth
   moves to meet Him; He maketh the winds his angels', the heavens also
   bow before him'. His voice, as the Psalmist says, is heard in the
   storm: The Highest gives his thunder; at thy chiding, O Lord, the
   foundations of the round world are discovered'. The wonders of creation
   are not ornaments or poetical figures, strewed over the pages of the
   Old Testament by the hand of the artist, but the frame in which it
   consists. And yet in this material garb the moral and spiritual nature
   of God is never lost sight of: in the conflict of the elements He is
   the free Lord over them; at His breath--the least exertion of His
   power--they come and flee away'. He is spirit, not light,--a person,
   not an element or principle; though creating all things by His word,
   and existing without reference to them, yet also, in His condescension,
   the God of the Jewish nation, and of individuals who serve Him. The
   terrible imagery in which the Psalmist delights to array His power is
   not inconsistent with the gentlest feelings of love and trust, such as
   are also expressed in the passage just now quoted: I will love thee, O
   Lord, my strength'. God is in nature because He is near also to the cry
   of His servants. The heart of man expands in His presence; he fears to
   die lest he should be taken from it. There is nothing like this in any
   other religion in the world. No Greek or Roman ever had the
   consciousness of love towards his God. No other sacred books can show a
   passage displaying such a range of feeling as the eighteenth or
   twenty-ninth Psalm--so awful a conception of the majesty of God, so
   true and tender a sense of His righteousness and lovingkindness. It is
   the same God who wields nature, who also brought up Israel out of the
   land of Egypt; who, even though the mother desert her sucking child',
   will not forget the work of his hands'.

   But the God of nature in the Old Testament is not the God of storms or
   of battles only, but of peace and repose. Sometimes a sort of
   confidence fills the breast of the Psalmist, even in that land of
   natural convulsions: He hath set the round world so fast that it cannot
   be moved'. At other times the same peace seems to diffuse itself over
   the scenes of daily life: The hills stand round about Jerusalem, even
   so is the Lord round about them that fear him'. He maketh me to lie
   down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.' Then
   again the Psalmist wonders at the contrast between man and the other
   glories of creation: When I consider the heavens, the work of thy
   hands, the moon and the stars, that thou hast ordained; what is man,
   that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest
   him?' Yet these glories' are the images also of a higher glory;
   Jerusalem itself is transfigured into a city in the clouds, and the
   tabernacle and temple become the pavilion of God on high. And the dawn
   of day in the prophecies, as well as in the Epistles, is the light
   which is to shine for the healing of the nations'. There are other
   passages in which the thought of the relation of God to nature calls
   forth a sort of exulting irony, and the prophet speaks of God, not so
   much as governing the world, as looking down upon it and taking His
   pastime in it: It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the heavens,
   and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers'; or He measureth the
   waters in the hollow of His hand'; or He taketh up the isles as a very
   little thing': the feeling of which may be compared with the more
   general language of St. Paul: We are the clay and He the potter'. The
   highest things on earth reach no farther than to suggest the reflection
   of their inferiority: Behold even the sun, and it shineth not; and the
   moon is not pure in his sight'.

   It is hard to say how far such meditations belong only to particular
   ages, or to particular temperaments in our own. Doubtless, the
   influence of natural scenery differs with difference of climate,
   pursuits, education. The God of the hills is not the God of the valleys
   also'; that is to say, the aspirations of the human heart are roused
   more by the singular and uncommon, than by the quiet landscape which
   presents itself in our own neighbourhood. The sailor has a different
   sense of the vastness of the great deep and the infinity of the heaven
   above, from what is possible to another. Dwellers in cities, no less
   than the inhabitants of the desert, gaze upon the stars with different
   feelings from those who see the ever-varying forms of the seasons. What
   impression is gathered, or what lesson conveyed, seems like matter of
   chance or fancy. The power of these sweet influences often passes away
   when language comes between us and them. Yet they are not mere dreams
   of our own creation. He who has lost, or has failed to acquire, this
   interest in the beauty of the world around, is without one of the
   greatest of earthly blessings. The voice of God in nature calls us away
   from selfish cares into the free air and the light of day. There, as in
   a world the face of which is not marred by human passion, we seem to
   feel that the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest'.

   It is impossible that our own feeling towards nature in the present day
   can be the same with that of the Psalmist; neither is that of the
   Psalmist the same with that of the Apostle; while, in the Book of Job
   and Ecclesiastes we seem to catch the echo of a strain different from
   either. To us, God is not in the whirlwind nor in the storm, nor in the
   earth quake, but in the still small voice. Is it not for the attempt to
   bring God nearer to us in the works of nature than we can truly
   conceive Him to be, that a poet of our own age has been subject to the
   charge of pantheism? God has removed himself out of our sight, that He
   may give us a greater idea of the immensity of His power. Perhaps it is
   impossible for us to have the wider and the narrower conception of God
   at the same time. We cannot see Him equally in the accidents of the
   world, when we think of Him as identified with its laws. But there is
   another way into His presence through our own hearts. He has given us
   the more circuitous path of knowledge; He has not closed against us the
   door of faith. He has enabled us, not merely to gaze with the eye on
   the forms and colours of Nature, but in a measure also to understand
   its laws, to wander over space and time in the contemplation of its
   mechanism, and yet to return again to the meanest flower that
   breathes', for thoughts such as the other wonders of earth and sky are
   unable to impart.

   It is a simpler, not a lower, lesson which we gather from the Apostle.
   First, he teaches that in Nature there is something to draw us from the
   visible to the invisible. The world to the Gentiles also had seemed
   full of innumerable deities; it is really full of the presence of Him
   who made it. Secondly, the Apostle teaches the universality of God's
   providence over the whole earth. He covered it with inhabitants, to
   whom He gave their times and places of abode, that they should seek the
   Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him'. They are one
   family, His offspring', notwithstanding the varieties of race,
   language, religion. As God is one, even so man is one in a common human
   nature--in the universality of sin, no less than the universality of
   redemption. A third lesson is the connexion of immorality and
   idolatory. They who lower the nature of God lower the nature of man
   also. Greek philosophy fell short of these lessons. Often as Plato
   speaks of the myths and legends of the gods, he failed to perceive the
   immorality of a religion of sense. Still less had any Greek imagined a
   brotherhood of all mankind, or a dispensation of God reaching backwards
   and forwards over all time. Its limitation was an essential principle
   of Greek life; it was confined to a narrow spot of earth, and to small
   cities; it could not include others besides Greeks; its gods were not
   gods of the world, but of Greece.

   Aspects of Nature in different ages have changed before the eye of man;
   at times fruitful of many thoughts; at other times either unheeded or
   fading into insignificance in comparison of the inner world. When the
   Apostle spoke of the visible things which witness of the divine power
   and glory', it was not the beauty of particular spots which he
   recalled; his eye was not satisfied with seeing the fairness of the
   country any more than the majesty of cities. He did not study the
   flittings of shadows on the hills, or even the movements of the stars
   in their courses. The plainest passages of the book of nature were,
   equally with the sublimest, the writing of a Divine hand. Neither was
   it upon scenes of earth that he was looking when he spoke of the whole
   creation groaning together until now'. Whatever associations of
   melancholy or pity may attach to places or states of the heavens, or to
   the condition of the inferior animals who seem to suffer for our sakes;
   it is not in these that the Apostle traces the indications of a ruined
   world, but in the misery and distraction of the heart of man. And the
   prospect on which he loves to dwell is not that of the promised land,
   as Moses surveyed it far and wide from the top of Pisgah, but the human
   race itself, the great family in heaven and earth, of which Christ is
   the head, reunited to the God who made it, when there shall be neither
   barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but all one in Christ', the Apostle
   himself also waiting for the fuller manifestation of the sons of God,
   and sometimes carrying his thoughts yet further to that mysterious
   hour, when the Son shall be subject to him that put all things under
   him, that God may be all in all.'

   When thoughts like these fill the mind, there is little room for
   reflection on the world without. Even the missionary in modern times
   hardly cares to go out of his way to visit a picturesque country or the
   monuments of former ages. He is determined to know one thing only,
   Christ crucified'. Of the beauties of creation, his chief thought is
   that they are the work of God. He does not analyse them by rules of
   taste, or devise material out of them for literary discourse. The
   Apostle, too, in the abundance of his revelations, has an eye turned
   inward on another world. It is not that he is dead to Nature, but that
   it is out of his way; not as in the Old Testament, the veil or frame of
   the Divine presence, but only the background of human nature and of
   revelation. When speaking of the heathen, it comes readily into his
   thoughts; it never seems to occur to him in connexion with the work of
   Christ. He does not read mysteries in the leaves of the forest, or see
   the image of the cross in the forms of the tree, or find miracles of
   design in the complex structures of animal life. His thoughts
   respecting the works of God are simpler, and also deeper. The child and
   the philosopher alike hear a witness in the first chapter of the
   Romans, or in the discourse of the Apostle on Mars' Hill, or at Lystra,
   which the mystic fancies of Neoplatonism, and the modern evidences of
   natural theology, fail to convey to them.

  § 3.

   In the common use of language natural religion is opposed to revealed.
   That which men know, or seem to know, of themselves, which if the
   written word were to be destroyed would still remain, which existed
   prior to revelation, and which might be imagined to survive it, which
   may be described as general rather than special religion, as
   Christianity rationalized into morality, which speaks of God, but not
   of Christ,--of nature, but not of grace,--has been termed natural
   religion. Philosophical arguments for the being of a God are
   comprehended under the same term. It is also used to denote a supposed
   primitive or patriarchal religion, whether based on a primeval
   revelation or not, from which the mythologies or idolatries of the
   heathen world are conceived to be offshoots.

   The line has been sometimes sharply drawn between natural and revealed
   religion; in other ages of the world, the two have been allowed to
   approximate, or be almost identified with each other. Natural religion
   has been often depressed with a view to the exaltation of revealed; the
   feebleness of the one seeming to involve a necessity for the other.
   Natural religion has sometimes been regarded as the invention of human
   reason; at other times, as the decaying sense of a primeval revelation.
   Yet natural and revealed religion, in the sense in which it is
   attempted to oppose them, are contrasts rather of words than of ideas.
   For who can say where the one begins and the other ends? Who will
   determine how many elements of Scriptural truth enter into modern
   philosophy or the opinions of the world in general? Who can analyse how
   much, even in a Christian country, is really of heathen origin?
   Revealed religion is ever taking the form of the voice of Nature
   within; experience is ever modifying our application of the truths of
   Scripture. The ideal of Christian life is more easily distinguishable
   from the ideal of Greek and Roman, than the elements of opinion and
   belief which have come from a Christian source are from those which
   come from a secular or heathen one. Education itself tends to
   obliterate the distinction. The customs, laws, principles of a
   Christian nation may be regarded either as a compromise between the
   two, or as a harmony of them. We cannot separate the truths of
   Christianity from Jewish or heathen anticipations of them; nor can we
   say how far the common sense or morality of the present day is in
   directly dependent on the Christian religion.

   And if, turning away from the complexity of human life in our own age
   to the beginning of things, we try to conceive revelation in its purity
   before it came into contact with other influences, or mingled in the
   great tide of political and social existence, we are still unable to
   distinguish between natural and revealed religion. Our difficulty is
   like the old Aristotelian question, how to draw the line between the
   moral and intellectual faculties. Let us imagine a first moment at
   which revelation came into the world; there must still have been some
   prior state which made revelation possible: in other words, revealed
   religion presupposes natural. The mind was not a tabula rasa, on which
   the characters of truth had to be inscribed; that is a mischievous
   notion, which only perplexes our knowledge of the origin of things,
   whether in individuals or in the race. If we say that this prior state
   is a Divine preparation for the giving of the Law of Moses, or the
   spread of Christianity, the difference becomes one of degree which
   admits of no sharp contrast. Revealed religion has already taken the
   place of natural, and natural religion extended itself into the
   province of revealed. Many persons who are fond of discovering traces
   of revelation in the religions of the Gentile world, resent the
   intrusion of natural elements into Scripture or Christianity. Natural
   religion they are willing to see identified with revealed, but not
   revealed with natural; all Nature may be a miracle, but miracles are
   not reducible to the course of Nature. But here is only a play between
   words which derive their meaning from contrast; the phenomena are the
   same, but we read them by a different light. And sometimes it may not
   be without advantage to lay aside the two modes of expression, and
   think only of that increasing purpose which through the ages ran'.
   Religious faith strikes its roots deeper into the past, and wider over
   the world, when it acknowledges Nature as well as Scripture.

   But although the opposition of natural and revealed religion is an
   opposition of abstractions, to which no facts really correspond, the
   term natural religion may be conveniently used to describe that aspect
   or point of view in which religion appears when separated from Judaism
   or Christianity. It will embrace all conceptions of religion or
   morality which are not consciously derived from the Old or New
   Testament. The favourite notion of a common or patriarchal religion
   need not be excluded. Natural religion, in this comprehensive sense,
   may be divided into two heads, which the ambiguity of the word nature
   has sometimes helped to confuse. First, (i.) the religion of nature
   before revelation, such as may be supposed to have existed among the
   patriarchs, or to exist still among primitive peoples, who have not yet
   been enlightened by Christianity, or debased by idolatry; such (ii.)
   more truly, as the religions of the Gentile world were and are.
   Secondly, the religion of nature in a Christian country; either the
   evidences of religion which are derived from a source independent of
   the written word, or the common sense of religion and morality, which
   affords a rule of life to those who are not the subjects of special
   Christian influences.

   i. Natural religion in the first sense is an idea and not a fact. The
   same tendency in man which has made him look fondly on a golden age,
   has made him look back also to a religion of nature. Like the memory of
   childhood, the thought of the past has a strange power over us;
   imagination lends it a glory which is not its own. What can be more
   natural than that the shepherd, wandering over the earth beneath the
   wide heavens, should ascend in thought to the throne of the Invisible?
   There is a refreshment to the fancy in thinking of the morning of the
   world's day, when the sun arose pure and bright, ere the clouds of
   error darkened the earth. Everywhere, as a fact, the first inhabitants
   of earth of whom history has left a memorial are sunk in helpless
   ignorance. Yet there must have been a time, it is conceived, of which
   there are no memorials, earlier still; when the Divine image was not
   yet lost, when men's wants were few and their hearts innocent, ere
   cities had taken the place of fields, or art of nature. The revelation
   of God to the first father of the human race must have spread itself in
   an ever-widening circle to his posterity. We pierce through one layer
   of superstition to another, in the hope of catching the light beyond,
   like children digging to find the sun in the bosom of the earth.

   The origin of an error so often illustrates the truth, that it is worth
   while to pause for an instant and consider the source of this fallacy,
   which in all ages has exerted a great influence on mankind, reproducing
   itself in many different forms among heathen as well as Christian
   writers. In technical language, it might be described as the fallacy of
   putting what is intelligible in the place of what is true. It is easy
   to draw an imaginary picture of a golden or pastoral age, such as
   poetry has always described it. The mode of thought is habitual and
   familiar, the phrases which delineate it are traditional, handed on
   from one set of poets to another, repeated by one school of theologians
   to the next. It is a different task to imagine the old world as it
   truly was, that is, as it appears to us, dimly yet certainly, by the
   unmistakable indications of language and of mythology. It is hard to
   picture scenes of external nature unlike what we have ever beheld: but
   it is harder far so to lay aside ourselves as to imagine an inner world
   unlike our own, forms of belief, not simply absurd, but indescribable
   and unintelligible to us. No one, probably, who has not realized the
   differences of the human mind in different ages and countries, either
   by contact with heathen nations or the study of old language and
   mythology, with the help of such a parallel as child hood offers to the
   infancy of the world, will be willing to admit them in their full
   extent.

   Instead of this difficult and laborious process, we readily conceive of
   man in the earliest stages of society as not different, but only less
   than we are. We suppose him deprived of the arts, unacquainted with the
   truths of Christianity, without the knowledge obtained from books, and
   yet only unlike us in the simplicity of his tastes and habitudes. We
   generalize what we are ourselves, and drop out the particular
   circumstances and details of our lives, and then suppose ourselves to
   have before us the dweller in Mesopotamia in the days of Abraham, or
   the patriarchs going down to gather corn in Egypt. This imaginary
   picture of a patriarchal religion has had such charms for some minds,
   that they have hoped to see it realized on the wreck of Christianity
   itself. They did not perceive that they were deluding themselves with a
   vacant dream which has never yet filled the heart of man.

   Philosophers have illustrated the origin of government by a picture of
   mankind meeting together in a large plain, to determine the rights of
   governors and subjects; in like manner we may assist imagination, by
   conceiving the multitude of men with their tribes, races, features,
   languages, convoked in the plains of the East, to hear from some
   inspired legislator as Moses, or from the voice of God himself, a
   revelation about God and nature, and their future destiny; such a
   revelation in the first day of the world's history as the day of
   judgement will be at the last. Let us fix our minds, not on the Giver
   of the revelation, but on the receivers of it. Must there not have been
   in them some common sense, or faculty, or feeling, which made them
   capable of receiving it? Must there not have been an apprehension which
   made it a revelation to them? Must they not all first have been of one
   language and one speech? And, what is implied by this, must they not
   all have had one mental structure, and received the same impressions
   from external objects, the same lesson from nature? Or, to put the
   hypothesis in another form, suppose that by some electric power the
   same truth could have been made to sound in the ears and flash before
   the eyes of all, would they not have gone their ways, one to tents,
   another to cities; one to be a tiller of the ground, another to be a
   feeder of sheep; one to be a huntsman, another to be a warrior; one to
   dwell in woods and forests, another in boundless plains; one in
   valleys, one on mountains, one beneath the liquid heaven of Greece and
   Asia, another in the murky regions of the north? And amid all this
   diversity of habits, occupations, scenes, climates, what common truth
   of religion could we expect to remain while man was man, the creature
   in a great degree of outward circumstances? Still less reason would
   there be to expect the preservation of a primeval truth throughout the
   world, if we imagine the revelation made, not to the multitude of men,
   but to a single individual, and not committed to writing for above two
   thousand years.

   ii. The theory of a primitive tradition, common to all mankind, has
   only to be placed distinctly before the mind, to make us aware that it
   is the fabric of a vision. But, even if it were conceivable, it would
   be inconsistent with facts. Ancient history says nothing of a general
   religion, but of particular national ones; of received beliefs about
   places and persons, about animal life, about the sun, moon, and stars,
   about the Divine essence permeating the world? about gods in the
   likeness of men appearing in battles and directing the course of
   states, about the shades below, about sacrifices, purifications,
   initiations, magic, mysteries. These were the religions of nature,
   which in historical times have received from custom also a second
   nature. Early poetry shows us the same religions in a previous stage,
   while they are still growing, and fancy is freely playing around the
   gods of its own creation. Language and mythology carry us a step
   further back, into a mental world yet more distant and more unlike our
   own. That world is a prison of sense, in which outward objects take the
   place of ideas; in which morality is a fact of nature, and wisdom at
   one entrance quite shut out'. Human beings in that pre-historic age
   seem to have had only a kind of limited intelligence; they were the
   slaves, as we should say, of association. They were rooted in
   particular spots, or wandered up and down upon the earth, confusing
   themselves and God and nature, gazing timidly on the world around,
   starting at their very shadows, and seeing in all things a super human
   power at the mercy of which they were. They had no distinction of body
   and soul, mind and matter, physical and moral. Their conceptions were
   neither here nor there; neither sensible objects, nor symbols of the
   unseen. Their gods were very near; the neighbouring hill or passing
   stream, brute matter as we regard it, to them a divinity, because it
   seemed inspired with a life like their own. They could not have formed
   an idea of the whole earth, much less of the God who made it. Their
   mixed modes of thought, their figures of speech, which are not figures,
   their personifications of nature, their reflections of the individual
   upon the world, and of the world upon the individual, the omnipresence
   to them of the sensuous and visible, indicate an intellectual state
   which it is impossible for us, with our regular divisions of thought,
   even to conceive. We must raze from the table of the mind their
   language, ere they could become capable of a universal religion.

   But although we find no vestiges of a primeval revelation, and cannot
   imagine how such a revelation could have been possible consistently
   with those indications of the state of man which language and mythology
   supply, it is true, nevertheless, that the primitive peoples of mankind
   have a religious principle common to all. Religion, rather than reason,
   is the faculty of man in the earliest stage of his existence. Reverence
   for powers above him is the first principle which raises the individual
   out of himself; the germ of political order, and probably also of
   social life. It is the higher necessity of nature, as hunger and the
   animal passions are the lower. The clay' falls before the rising dawn;
   it may stumble over stocks and stones; but it is struggling upwards
   into a higher day. The worshipper is drawn as by a magnet to some
   object out of himself. He is weak and must have a god; he has the
   feeling of a slave towards his master, of a child towards its parents,
   of the lower animals towards himself. The Being whom he serves is, like
   himself, passionate and capricious; he sees him starting up everywhere
   in the unmeaning accidents of life. The good which he values himself he
   attributes to him; there is no proportion in his ideas; the great power
   of nature is the lord also of sheep and oxen. Sometimes, with childish
   joy, he invites the god to drink of his beverage or eat of his food; at
   other times, the orgies which he enacts before him, lead us seriously
   to ask the question whether religion may not in truth have been a kind
   of madness'. He propitiates him and is himself soothed and comforted;
   again he is at his mercy, and propitiates him again. So the dream of
   life is rounded to the poor human creature: in capable as he is of
   seeing his true Father, religion seems to exercise over him a fatal
   overpowering influence; the religion of nature we cannot call it, for
   that would of itself lead to a misconception, but the religion of the
   place in which he lives, of the objects which he sees, of the tribe to
   which he belongs, of the animal forms which range in the wilds around
   him, mingling strangely with the witness of his own spirit that there
   is in the world a Being above him.

   Out of this troubled and perplexed state of the human fancy the great
   religions of the world arose, all of them in different degrees
   affording a rest to the mind, and reducing to rule and measure the way
   ward impulses of human nature. All of them had a history in antecedent
   ages; there is no stage in which they do not offer indications of an
   earlier religion which preceded them. Whether they came into being,
   like some geological formations, by slow deposits, or, like others, by
   the shock of an earth quake, that is, by some convulsion and settlement
   of the human mind, is a question which may be suggested, but cannot be
   answered. The Hindoo Pantheon, even in the antique form in which the
   world of deities is presented in the Vedas, implies a growth of fancy
   and ceremonial which may have continued for thousands of years.
   Probably at a much earlier period than we are able to trace them,
   religions, like languages, had their distinctive characters with
   corresponding differences in the first rude constitution of society. As
   in the case of languages, it is a fair subject of inquiry, whether they
   do not all mount up to some elementary type in which they were more
   nearly allied to sense; a primeval religion, in which we may imagine
   the influence of nature was analogous to the first impressions of the
   outward world on the infant's wandering eyesight, and the earliest
   worship may be compared with the first use of signs or stammering of
   speech. Such a religion we may conceive as springing from simple
   instinct; yet an instinct higher, even in its lowest degree, than the
   instinct of the animal creation; in which the fear of nature combined
   with the assertion of sway over it, which had already a law of
   progress, and was beginning to set bounds to the spiritual chaos. Of
   this aboriginal state we only entertain conjecture'; it is beyond the
   horizon, even when the eye is strained to the uttermost.

   But if the first origin of the heathen religions is in the clouds,
   their decline, though a phenomenon with which we are familiar in
   history, of which in some parts of the world we are living witnesses,
   is also obscure to us. The kind of knowledge that we have of them is
   like our knowledge of the ways of animals; we see and observe, but we
   cannot get inside them; we cannot think or feel with their worshippers.
   Most or all of them are in a state of decay; they have lost their life
   or creative power; once adequate to the wants of man, they have ceased
   to be so for ages. Naturally we should imagine that the religion itself
   would pass away when its meaning was no longer understood; that with
   the spirit, the letter too would die; that when the circumstances of a
   nation changed, the rites of worship to which they had given birth
   would be forgotten. The reverse is the fact. Old age affords examples
   of habits which become insane and inveterate at a time when they have
   no longer an object; that is an image of the antiquity of religions.
   Modes of worship, rules of purification, set forms of words, cling with
   a greater tenacity when they have no meaning or purpose. The habit of a
   week or a month may be thrown off; not the habit of a thousand years.
   The hand of the past lies heavily on the present in all religions; in
   the East it is a yoke which has never been shaken off. Empire, freedom,
   among the educated classes belief may pass away, and yet the routine of
   ceremonial continues; the political glory of a religion may be set at
   the time when its power over the minds of men is most ineradicable.

   One of our first inquiries in reference to the elder religions of the
   world is how we may adjust them to our own moral and religious ideas.
   Moral elements seem at first sight to be wholly wanting in them. In the
   modern sense of the term, they are neither moral nor immoral, but
   natural; they have no idea of right and wrong, as distinct from the
   common opinion or feeling of their age and country. No action in Homer,
   however dishonourable or treacherous, calls forth moral reprobation.
   Neither gods nor men are expected to present any ideal of justice or
   virtue; their power or splendour may be the theme of the poet's verse,
   not their truth or goodness. The only principle on which the Homeric
   deities reward mortals, is in return for gifts and sacrifices, or from
   personal attachment. A later age made a step forwards in morality and
   backwards at the same time; it acquired clearer ideas of right and
   wrong, but found itself encumbered with conceptions of fate and
   destiny. The vengeance of the Eumenides has but a rude analogy with
   justice; the personal innocence of the victim whom the gods pursued is
   a part of the interest, in some instances, of Greek tragedy. Higher and
   holier thoughts of the Divine nature appear in Pindar and Sophocles,
   and philosophy sought to make religion and mythology the vehicles of
   moral truth. But it was no part of their original meaning.

   Yet, in a lower sense, it is true that the heathen religions, even in
   their primitive form, are not destitute of morality. Their morality is
   unconscious morality, not man a law to himself', but man bound by the
   will of a superior being'. Ideas of right and wrong have no place in
   them, yet the first step has been made from sense and appetite into the
   ideal world. He who denies himself something, who offers up a prayer,
   who practises a penance, performs an act, not of necessity, nor of
   choice, but of duty; he does not simply follow the dictates of passion,
   though he may not be able to give a reason for the performance of his
   act. He whose God comes first in his mind has an element within him
   which in a certain degree sanctifies his life by raising him above
   himself. He has some common interest with other men, some unity in
   which he is comprehended with them. There is a preparation for thoughts
   yet higher; he contrasts the permanence of divine and the fleeting
   nature of human things; while the generations of men pass away like
   leaves', the form of his God is unchanging, and grows not old.

   Differences in modes of thought render it difficult for us to
   appreciate what spiritual elements lurked in disguise among the
   primitive peoples of mankind. Many allowances must be made before we
   judge them by our own categories. They are not to be censured for
   indecency because they had symbols which to after ages became indecent
   and obscene. Neither were they mere Fetish worshippers because they use
   sensuous expressions. Religion, like language, in early ages takes the
   form of sense, but that form of sense is also the embodiment of
   thought. The stream and the animal are not adored by man in heathen
   countries because they are destitute of life or reason, but because
   they seem to him full of mystery and power. It was with another feeling
   than that of a worshipper of matter that the native of the East first
   prostrated himself before the rising sun, in whose beams his nature
   seemed to revive, and his soul to be absorbed. The most childish
   superstitions are often nothing more than misunderstood relics of
   antiquity. There are the remains of Fetishism in the charms and cures
   of Christian countries; no one regards the peasant who uses them as a
   Fetish worshipper. Many other confusions have their parallel among
   ourselves; if we only knew it. For indeed our own ideas in religion, as
   in everything else, seem clearer to us than they really are, because
   they are our own. To expect the heathen religions to conform to other
   modes of thought, is as if the inhabitant of one country were to
   complain of the inhabitant of another for not speaking the same
   language with him. Our whole attitude towards nature is different from
   theirs: to us all is law'; to them it was all life and fancy,
   inconsecutive as a dream. Nothing is more deeply fixed to us than the
   dualism of body and soul, mind and matter; they knew of no such
   distinction. But we cannot infer from this a denial of the existence of
   mind or soul; because they use material images, it would be ridiculous
   to describe the Psalmist or the prophet Isaiah as materialists; whether
   in heathen poets or in the Jewish Scriptures, such language belongs to
   an intermediate state, which has not yet distinguished the spheres of
   the spiritual and the sensuous. Childhood has been often used as the
   figure of such a state, but the figure is only partially true, for the
   childhood of the human race is the childhood of grown up men, and in
   the child of the nineteenth century there is a piece also of the man of
   the nineteenth century. Less obvious differences in speech and thought
   are more fallacious. The word God' means something as dissimilar among
   ourselves and the Greeks as can possibly be imagined; even in Greek
   alone the difference of meaning can hardly be exaggerated. It includes
   beings as unlike each other as the muscular, eating and drinking
   deities of Homer, and the abstract Being of Parmenides, or the Platonic
   idea of good. All religions of the world use it, however different
   their conceptions of God may be--polytheistic, pantheistic,
   monotheistic: it is universal, and also individual; or rather, from
   being universal, it has become individual, a logical process which has
   quickened and helped to develope the theological one. Other words, such
   as prayer, sacrifice, expiation, in like manner vary in meaning with
   the religion of which they are the expression. The Homeric sacrifice is
   but a feast of gods and men, destitute of any sacrificial import. Under
   expiations for sin are included two things which to us are distinct,
   atonement for moral guilt and accidental pollution. Similar ambiguities
   occur in the ideas of a future life. The sapless ghosts in Homer are
   neither souls nor bodies, but a sort of shadowy beings. A like
   uncertainty extends in the Eastern religions to some of the first
   principles of thought and being: whether the negative is not also a
   positive; whether the mind of man is not also God; whether this world
   is not another; whether privation of existence may not in some sense be
   existence still.

   These are a few of the differences for which we have to allow in a
   comparison of our own and other times and countries. We must say to
   ourselves, at every step, human nature in that age was unlike the human
   nature with which we are acquainted, in language, in modes of thought,
   in morality, in its conception of the world. Yet it was more like than
   these differences alone would lead us to suppose. The feelings of men
   draw nearer than their thoughts; their natural affections are more
   uniform than their religious systems. Marriage, burial, worship, are at
   least common to all nations. There never has been a time in which the
   human race was absolutely with out social laws; in which there was no
   memory of the past; no reverence for a higher power. More defined
   religious ideas, where the understanding comes into play, grow more
   different; it is by comparison they are best explained; like natural
   phenomena, they derive their chief light from analogy with each other.
   Travelling in thought from China, by way of India, Persia, and Egypt,
   to the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, we distinguish a
   succession of stages in which the worship of nature is developed; in
   China as the rule or form of political life, almost grovelling on the
   level of sense; in India rising into regions of thought and fancy, and
   allowing a corresponding play in the institutions and character of the
   people; in Egypt wrapping itself in the mystery of antiquity, becoming
   the religion of death and of the past; in Persia divided between light
   and darkness, good and evil, the upper and the under world; in
   Phoenicia, fierce and licentious, imbued with the spirit of conquest
   and colonization. These are the primary strata of the religions of
   mankind, often shifting their position, and sometimes overlapping each
   other; they are distinguished from the secondary strata, as the
   religions of nations from the inspirations of individuals. Thrown into
   the form of abstraction, they express the various degrees of
   distinctness with which man realizes his own existence or that of a
   Divine Being and the relations between them. But they are also powers
   which have shaped the course of events in the world. The secret is
   contained in them, why one nation has been free, another a slave; why
   one nation has dwelt like ants upon a hillock, another has swept over
   the earth; why one nation has given up its life almost without a
   struggle, while another has been hewn limb from limb in the conflict
   with its conquerors. All these religions contributed to the polytheism
   of Greece; some elements derived from them being absorbed in the first
   origin of the Greek religion and language, others acting by later
   contact, some also by contrast.


   Nature through five cycles ran,

   And in the sixth she moulded man.'

   We may conclude this portion of our subject with a few remarks on the
   Greek and Roman religions, which have a peculiar interest to us for
   several reasons: first, because they have exercised a vast influence on
   modern Europe, the one through philosophy, the other through law, and
   both through literature and poetry; secondly, because, almost alone of
   the heathen religions, they came into contact with early Christianity;
   thirdly, because they are the religions of ancient, as Christianity is
   of modern civilization.

   The religion of Greece is remarkable for being a literature as well as
   a religion. Its deities are nameless' to us before Homer; to the Greek
   himself it began with the Olympic family. Whatever dim notions existed
   of chaos and primaeval night--of struggles for ascendency between the
   elder and younger gods, these fables are buried out of sight before
   Greek mythology begins. The Greek came forth at the dawn of day,
   himself a youth in the youth of the world, drinking in the life of
   nature at every pore. The form which his religion took was fixed by the
   Homeric poems, which may be regarded as standing in the same relation
   to the religion of Greece as sacred books to other forms of religion.
   It cannot be said that they aroused the conscience of men; the more the
   Homeric poems are considered, the more evident it becomes that they
   have no inner life of morality like Hebrew prophecy, no Divine presence
   of good slowly purging away the mist that fills the heart of man. What
   they implanted, what they preserved in the Greek nation, was not the
   sense of truth or right, but the power of conception and
   expression--harmonies of language and thought which enabled man to
   clothe his ideas in forms of everlasting beauty. They stamped the Greek
   world as the world of art; its religion became the genius of art. And
   more and more in successive generations, with the co-operation of some
   political causes, the hand of art impressed itself on religion; in
   poetry, in sculpture, in architecture, in festivals and dramatic
   contests, until in the artistic phase of human life the religious is
   absorbed. And the form of man, and the intellect of man, as if in
   sympathy with this artistic development, attained a symmetry and power
   of which the world has never seen the like.

   And yet the great riddle of existence was not answered: its deeper
   mysteries were not explored. The strife of man with himself was healed
   only superficially; there was beauty and proportion everywhere, but no
   true being'. The Jupiter Olympius of Phidias might seem worthy to
   preside over the Greek world which he summoned before him; the Olympic
   victor might stand godlike in the fulness of manly vigour; but where
   could the weak and mean appear? what place was found for the slave or
   captive? Could bereaved parents acquiesce in the sapless shades' of
   Homer, or the moral reflections of Thucydides? Was there not some
   deeper intellectual or spiritual want which man felt, some taste of
   immortality which he had sometimes experienced, which made him
   dissatisfied with his earthly state?

   No religion that failed to satisfy these cries of nature could become
   the religion of mankind. Greek art and Greek literature, losing
   something of their original refinement, spread themselves over the
   Roman world; except Christianity, they have be come the richest
   treasure of modern Europe. But the religion of Greece never really grew
   in another soil, or beneath another heaven; it was local and national:
   dependent on the fine and subtle perceptions of the Greek race; though
   it amalgamated its deities with those of Egypt and Rome, its spirit
   never swayed mankind. It has a truer title to permanence and
   universality in the circumstance that it gave birth to philosophy.

   The Greek mind passed, almost unconsciously to itself, from polytheism
   to monotheism. While offering up worship to the Dorian Apollo,
   performing vows to Esculapius, panic-stricken about the mutilation of
   the Hermae, the Greek was also able to think of God as an idea, Theo's
   not Zeu's. In this generalized or abstract form the Deity presided over
   daily life. Not a century after Anaxagoras had introduced the
   distinction of mind and matter, it was the belief of all philosophic
   inquirers that God was mind, or the object of mind. The Homeric gods
   were beginning to be out of place; philosophy could not distinguish
   Apollo from Athene, or Leto from Here. Unlike the saints of the middle
   ages, they suggested no food for meditation; they were only beautiful
   forms, without individual character. By the side of religion and art,
   speculation had arisen and waxed strong, or rather it might be
   described as the inner life which sprang from their decay. The clouds
   of mythology hung around it; its youth was veiled in forms of sense; it
   was itself a new sort of poetry or religion. Gradually it threw off the
   garment of sense; it revealed a world of ideas. It is impossible for us
   to conceive the intensity of these ideas in their first freshness: they
   were not ideas, but gods, penetrating into the soul of the disciple,
   sinking into the mind of the human race; objects, not of speculation
   only, but of faith and love. To the old Greek religion, philosophy
   might be said to stand in a relation not wholly different from that
   which the New Testament bears to the Old; the one putting a spiritual
   world in the place of a temporal, the other an intellectual in the
   place of a sensuous; and to mankind in general it taught an everlasting
   lesson, not indeed that of the Gospel of Christ, but one in a lower
   degree necessary for man, enlarging the limits of the human mind
   itself, and providing the instruments of every kind of knowledge.

   What the religion of Greece was to philosophy and art, that the Roman
   religion may be said to have been to political and social life. It was
   the religion of the family; the religion also of the empire of the
   world. Beginning in rustic simplicity, the traces of which it ever
   afterwards retained, it grew with the power of the Roman state, and
   became one with its laws. No fancy or poetry moulded the forms of the
   Roman gods; they are wanting in character and hardly distinguishable
   from one another. Not what they were, but their worship, is the point
   of interest about them. Those inanimate beings occasionally said a
   patriotic word at some critical juncture of the Roman affairs, but they
   had no attributes or qualities; they are the mere impersonation of the
   needs of the state. They were easily identified in civilized and
   literary times with the Olympic deities, but the transformation was
   only superficial. Greece never conquered the religion of its masters.
   Great as was the readiness in later times to admit the worship of
   foreign deities, endless as were the forms of private superstition,
   these intrusions never weakened or broke the legal hold of the Roman
   religion. It was truly the established' religion. It represented the
   greatness and power of Rome. The deification of the Emperor, though
   disagreeable to the more spiritual and intellectual feelings of that
   age of the world, was its natural development. While Rome lasted the
   Roman religion lasted; like some vast fabric which the destroyers of a
   great city are unable wholly to demolish, it continued, though in
   ruins, after the irruption of the Goths, and has exercised, through the
   medium of the civil law, a power over modern Europe.

   More interesting for us than the pursuit of this subject into further
   details is the inquiry, in what light the philosopher regarded the
   religious system within the circle of which he lived; the spirit of
   which animated Greek and Roman poetry, the observance of which was the
   bond of states. In the age of the Antonines, more than six hundred
   years had passed away since the Athenian people first became conscious
   of the contrariety of the two elements; and yet the wedge which
   philosophy had inserted in the world seemed to have made no impression
   on the deeply rooted customs of mankind. The ever-flowing stream of
   ideas was too feeble to overthrow the intrenchments of antiquity. The
   course of individuals might be turned by philosophy; it was not
   intended to reconstruct the world. It looked on and watched, seeming,
   in the absence of any real progress, to lose its original force.
   Paganism tolerated; it had nothing to fear. Socrates and Plato in an
   earlier, Seneca and Epictetus in a later age, acquiesced in this
   heathen world, unlike as it was to their own intellectual conceptions
   of a divine religion. No Greek or Roman philosopher was also a great
   reformer of religion. Some, like Socrates, were punctual in the
   observance of religious rites, paying their vows to the gods, fearful
   of offending against the letter as well as the spirit of divine
   commands; they thought that it was hardly worth while to rationalize
   the Greek mythology, when there were so many things nearer home to do.
   Others, like the Epicureans, transferred the gods into a distant
   heaven, where they were no more heard of; some, like the Stoics, sought
   to awaken a deeper sense of moral responsibility. There were devout
   men, such as Plutarch, who thought with reverence of the past, seeking
   to improve the old heathen faith, and also lamenting its decline; there
   were scoffers, too, like Lucian, who found inexhaustible amusement in
   the religious follies of mankind. Others, like Herodotus in earlier
   ages, accepted with childlike faith the more serious aspect of
   heathenism, or contented themselves, like Thucydides, with ignoring it.
   The world, wholly given to idolatry', was a strange inconsistent
   spectacle to those who were able to reflect, which was seen in many
   points of view. The various feelings with which different classes of
   men regarded the statues, temples, sacrifices, oracles, and festivals
   of the gods, with which they looked upon the conflict of religions
   meeting on the banks of the Tiber, are not exhausted in the
   epigrammatic formula of the modern historian: All the heathen religions
   were looked upon by the vulgar as equally true, by the philosopher as
   equally false, by the magistrate as equally useful.'

   Such was the later phase of the religion of nature, with which
   Christianity came into conflict. It had supplied some of the needs of
   men by assisting to build up the fabric of society and law. It had left
   room for others to find expression in philosophy or art. But it was a
   world divided against itself. It contained two nations or opinions
   struggling in its womb'; the nation or opinion of the many, and the
   nation or opinion of the few. It was bound together in the framework of
   law or custom, yet its morality fell below the natural feelings of
   mankind, and its religious spirit was confused and weakened by the
   admixture of foreign superstitions. It was a world of which it is not
   difficult to find traces that it was self-condemned. It might be
   compared to a fruit, the rind of which was hard and firm, while within
   it was soft and decaying. Within this outer rind or circle, for two
   centuries and a half, Christianity was working; at last it appeared
   without, itself the seed or kernel of a new organization. That when the
   conflict was over, and the world found itself Christian, many elements
   of the old religion still remained, and reasserted themselves in
   Christian forms; that the ghost of the dead Roman Empire' lingered
   about the grave thereof'; that Christianity accomplished only
   imperfectly what heathenism failed to do at all, is a result unlike
   pictures that are sometimes drawn, but sadly in accordance with what
   history teaches of mankind and of human nature.

  § 4.

   Natural religion is not only concerned with the history of the
   religions of nature, nor does it only reflect that light of the
   Gentiles' which philosophy imparted; it has to do with the present as
   well as with the past, with Christian as well as heathen countries.
   Revealed religion passes into natural, and natural religion exists side
   by side with revealed; there is a truth independent of Christianity;
   and the daily life of Christian men is very different from the life of
   Christ. This general or natural religion may be compared to a
   wide-spread lake, shallow and motionless, rather than to a living
   water,--the overflowing of the Christian faith over a professing
   Christian world, the level of which may be at one time higher or lower;
   it is the religion of custom or prescription, or rather the unconscious
   influence of religion on the minds of men in general; it includes also
   the speculative idea of religion when taken off the Christian
   foundation. Natural religion, in this modern sense, has a relation both
   to philosophy and life. That is to say (1), it is a theory of religion
   which appeals to particular evidences for the being of a God, though
   resting, perhaps more safely, on the general conviction that this
   universal frame cannot want a mind'. But it has also a relation to life
   and practice (2), for it is the religion of the many; the average, as
   it may be termed, of religious feeling in a Christian land, the leaven
   of the Gospel hidden in the world. St. Paul speaks of those who knowing
   not the law are a law unto themselves'. Experience seems to show that
   something of the same kind must be acknowledged in Christian as well as
   in heathen countries; which may be conveniently considered under the
   head of natural religion.

   Arguments for the being of a God are of many kinds. There are arguments
   from final causes, and arguments from first causes, and arguments from
   ideas; logical forms, as they appear to be, in which different
   metaphysical schools mould their faith. Of the first sort the following
   may be taken as an instance:--A person walking on the seashore finds a
   watch or other piece of mechanism; he observes its parts, and their
   adaptation to each other; he sees the watch in motion, and comprehends
   the aim of the whole. In the formation of that senseless material he
   perceives that which satisfies him that it is the work of intelligence,
   or, in other words, the marks of design. And looking from the watch to
   the world around him, he seems to perceive innumerable ends, and
   innumerable actions tending to them, in the composition of the world
   itself, and in the structure of plants and animals. Advancing a step
   further, he asks himself the question, why he should not acknowledge
   the like marks of design in the moral world also; in passions and
   actions, and in the great end of life. Of all there is the same account
   to be given--the machine of the world', of which God is the Maker.

   This is the celebrated argument from final causes for the being of a
   God, the most popular of the arguments of natural religion, partly
   because it admits of much ingenious illustration, and also because it
   is tangible and intelligible. Ideas of a Supreme Being must be given
   through something, for it is impossible that we should know Him as He
   is. And the truest representation that we can form of God is, in one
   sense, that which sets forth His nature most vividly; yet another
   condition must also be remembered, viz. that this representation ought
   not only to be the most distinct, but the highest and holiest possible.
   Because we cannot see Him as He is, that is no reason for attributing
   to Him the accidents of human personality. And, in using figures of
   speech, we are bound to explain to all who are capable of
   understanding, that we speak in a figure only, and to remind them that
   names by which we describe the being or attributes of God need a
   correction in the silence of thought. Even logical categories may give
   as false a notion of the Divine nature in our own age, as graven images
   in the days of the patriarchs. However legitimate or perhaps necessary
   the employment of them may be, we must place ourselves not below, but
   above them.

   (a) In the argument from final causes, the work of the Creator is
   compared to a work of art. Art is a poor figure of nature; it has no
   freedom or luxuriance. Between the highest work of art and the lowest
   animal or vegetable production, there is an interval which will never
   be spanned. The miracle of life derives no illustration from the
   handicraftsman putting his hand to the chisel, or anticipating in idea
   the form which he is about to carve. More truly might we reason, that
   what the artist is, the God of nature is not. For all the processes of
   nature are unlike the processes of art. If, instead of a watch, or some
   other piece of curious and exquisite workmanship, we think of a
   carpenter and a table, the force of the argument seems to vanish, and
   the illustration becomes inappropriate and unpleasing. The ingenuity
   and complexity of the structure, and not the mere appearance of design,
   makes the watch a natural image of the creation of the world.

   (b) But not only does the conception of the artist supply no worthy
   image of the Creator and His work; the idea of design which is given by
   it requires a further correction before it can be transferred to
   nature. The complication of the world around us is quite different from
   the complexity of the watch. It is not a regular and finite structure,
   but rather infinite in irregularity; which instead of design often
   exhibits absence of design, such as we cannot imagine any architect of
   the world contriving; the construction of which is far from appearing,
   even to our feeble intelligence, the best possible, though it, and all
   things in it, are very good. If we fix our minds on this very phrase
   the machine of the world', we become aware that it is unmeaning to us.
   The watch is separated and isolated from other matter; dependent indeed
   on one or two general laws of nature, but otherwise cut off from things
   around. But nature, the more we consider it, the more does one part
   appear to be linked with another; there is no isolation here; the
   plants grow in the soil which has been preparing for them through a
   succession of geological eras, they are fed by the rain and nourished
   by light and air; the animals depend for their life on all inferior
   existences.

   (g) This difference between art and nature leads us to observe another
   defect in the argument from final causes--that, instead of putting the
   world together, it takes it to pieces. It fixes our minds on those
   parts of the world which exhibit marks of design, and withdraws us from
   those in which marks of design seem to fail. There are formations in
   nature, such as the hand, which have a kind of mechanical beauty, and
   show in a striking way, even to an uneducated person, the wonder and
   complexity of creation. In like manner we feel a momentary surprise in
   finding out, through the agency of a micro scope, that the minutest
   creatures have their fibres, tissues, vessels. And yet the knowledge of
   this is but the most fragmentary and superficial knowledge of nature;
   it is the wonder in which philosophy begins, very different from the
   comprehension of this universal frame in all its complexity and in all
   its minuteness. And from this elementary notion of nature, we seek to
   form an idea of the Author of nature. As though God were in the animal
   frame and not also in the dust to which it turns; in the parts, and not
   equally in the whole; in the present world, and not also in the
   antecedent ages which have prepared for its existence.

   (d) Again, this teleological argument for the being of God gives an
   erroneous idea of the moral government of the world. For it leads us to
   suppose that all things are tending to some end; that there is no
   prodigality or waste, but that all things are, and are made, in the
   best way possible. Our faith must be tried to find a use for barren
   deserts, for venomous reptiles, for fierce wild beasts, nay, for the
   sins and miseries of mankind. Nor does there seem to be any resting
   place', until the world and all things in it are admitted to have some
   end impressed upon them by the hand of God, but unseen to us.
   Experience is cast aside while our meditations lead us to conceive the
   world under this great form of a final cause. All that is in nature is
   best; all that is in human life is best. And yet every one knows
   instances in which nature seems to fail of its end,--in which life has
   been cut down like a flower, and trampled under foot of man.

   (e) There is another way in which the argument from final causes is
   suggestive of an imperfect conception of the Divine Being. It presents
   God to us exclusively in one aspect, not as a man, much less as a
   spirit holding communion with our spirit, but only as an artist. We
   conceive of Him, as in the description of the poet, standing with
   compasses over sea and land, and designing the wondrous work. Does not
   the image tend to make the spiritual creation an accident of the
   material? For although it is possible, as Bishop Butler has shown, to
   apply the argument from final causes, as a figure of speech, to the
   habits and feelings, this adaptation is un natural, and open even to
   greater objections than its application to the physical world. For how
   can we distinguish true final causes from false ones? how can we avoid
   confusing what ought to be with what is--the fact with the law?

   (z) If we look to the origin of the notion of a final cause, we shall
   feel still further indisposed to make it the category under which we
   sum up the working of the Divine Being in creation. As Aristotle, who
   probably first made a philosophical use of the term, says, it is
   transferred from mind to matter; in other words, it clothes facts in
   our ideas. Lord Bacon offers another warning against the employment of
   final causes in the service of religion: they are like the vestals
   consecrated to God, and are barren.' They are a figure of speech which
   adds nothing to our knowledge. When applied to the Creator, they are a
   figure of a figure; that is to say, the figurative conception of the
   artist embodied or idealized in his work, is made the image of the
   Divine Being. And no one really thinks of God in nature under this
   figure of human skill. As certainly as the man who found a watch or
   piece of mechanism on the seashore would conclude, here are marks of
   design, indications of an intelligent artist', so certainly, if he came
   across the meanest or the highest of the works of nature, would he
   infer, this was not made by man, nor by any human art'. He sees in a
   moment that the seaweed beneath his feet is something different in kind
   from the productions of man. What should lead him to say, that in the
   same sense that man made the watch, God made the seaweed? For the
   seaweed grows by some power of life, and is subject to certain
   physiological laws, like all other vegetable or animal substances. But
   if we say that God created this life, or that where this life ends
   there His creative power begins, our analogy again fails, for God
   stands in a different relation to animal and vegetable life from what
   the artist does to the work of his hands. And, when we think further of
   God, as a Spirit without body, creating all things by His word, or
   rather by His thought, in an instant of time, to whom the plan and
   execution are all one, we become absolutely bewildered in the attempt
   to apply the image of the artist to the Creator of the world.

   These are some of the points in respect of which the argument from
   final causes falls short of that conception of the Divine nature which
   reason is adequate to form. It is the beginning of our knowledge of
   God, not the end. It is suited to the faculties of children rather than
   of those who are of full age. It belongs to a stage of metaphysical
   philosophy, in which abstract ideas were not made the subject of
   analysis; to a time when physical science had hardly learnt to conceive
   the world as a whole. It is a devout thought which may well arise in
   the grateful heart when contemplating the works of creation, but must
   not be allowed to impair that higher intellectual conception which we
   are able to form of a Creator, any more than it should be put in the
   place of the witness of God within.

   Another argument of the same nature for the being of a God is derived
   from first causes, and may be stated as follows:--All things that we
   see are the results or effects of causes, and these again the effects
   of other causes, and so on through an immense series. But somewhere or
   other this series must have a stop or limit; we cannot go back from
   cause to cause without end. Otherwise the series will have no basis on
   which to rest. Therefore there must be a first cause, that is, God.
   This argument is sometimes strengthened by the further supposition that
   the world must have had a beginning, whence it seems to follow, that it
   must have a cause external to itself which made it begin; a principle
   of rest, which is the source of motion to all other things, as ancient
   philosophy would have expressed it,--hovering in this as in other
   speculations intermediate between the physical and metaphysical world.

   The difficulty about this argument is much the same as that respecting
   the preceding. So long as we conceive the world under the form of cause
   and effect, and suppose the first link in the chain to be the same with
   those that succeed it, the argument is necessary and natural; we cannot
   escape from it without violence to our reason. Our only doubt will
   probably be, whether we can pass from the notion of a first cause to
   that of an intelligent Creator. But when, instead of resting in the
   word cause', we go on to the idea, or rather the variety of ideas which
   are signified by the word cause'. the argument begins to dissolve. When
   we say, God is the cause of the world', in what sense of the word cause
   is this? Is it as life or mind is a cause, or the hammer or hand of the
   workman, or light or air, or any natural substance? Is it in that sense
   of the word cause, in which it is almost identified with the effect? or
   in that sense in which it is wholly external to it? Or when we
   endeavour to imagine or conceive a common cause of the world and all
   things in it, do we not perceive that we are using the word in none of
   these senses; but in a new one, to which life, or mind, or many other
   words, would be at least equally applicable? God is the life of the
   world.' That is a poor and somewhat unmeaning expression to indicate
   the relation of God to the world; yet life is a subtle and wonderful
   power, pervading all things, and in various degrees animating all
   things. God is the mind of the world.' That is still inadequate as an
   expression, even though mind can act where it is not, and its ways are
   past finding out. But when we say, God is the cause of the world', that
   can be scarcely said to express more than that God stands in some
   relation to the world touching which we are unable to determine whether
   He is in the world or out of it, immanent' in the language of
   philosophy, or transcendent'.

   There are two sources from which these and similar proofs of the being
   of a God are derived: first, analogy; secondly, the logical necessity
   of the human mind. Analogy supplies an image, an illustration. It wins
   for us an imaginary world from the void and formless infinite. But
   whether it does more than this must depend wholly on the nature of the
   analogy. We cannot argue from the seen to the unseen, unless we
   previously know their relation to each other. We cannot say at random
   that another life is the double or parallel of this, and also the
   development of it; we cannot urge the temporary inequality of this
   world as a presumption of the final injustice of another. Who would
   think of arguing from the vegetable to the animal world, except in
   those points where we had already discovered a common principle? Who
   would reason that animal life must follow the laws of vegetation in
   those points which were peculiar to it? Yet many theological arguments
   have this fundamental weakness; they lean on faith for their own
   support; they lower the heavenly to the earthly, and may be used to
   prove anything.

   The other source of these and similar arguments is the logical
   necessity of the human mind. A first cause, a beginning, an infinite
   Being limiting our finite natures, is necessary to our conceptions. We
   have an idea of God, there must be something to correspond to our
   idea,' and so on. The flaw here is equally real, though not so
   apparent. While we dwell within the forms of the understanding and
   acknowledge their necessity, such arguments seem unanswerable. But once
   ask the question, Whence this necessity? was there not a time when the
   human mind felt no such necessity? is the necessity really satisfied?
   or is there not some further logical sequence in which I am involved
   which still remains unanswerable? the whole argument vanishes at once,
   as the chimera of a metaphysical age. The seventeenth and eighteenth
   centuries have been peculiarly fertile in such arguments; the belief in
   which, whether they have any value or not, must not be imposed upon us
   as an article of faith.

   If we say again, that our highest conception must have a true
   existence', which is the well-known argument of Anselm and Des Cartes
   for the being of God, still this is no more than saying, in a technical
   or dialectical form, that we cannot imagine God without imagining that
   He is. Of no other conception can it be said that it involves
   existence; and hence no additional force is gained by such a mode of
   statement. The simple faith in a Divine Being is cumbered, not
   supported, by evidences derived from a metaphysical system which has
   passed away. It is a barren logic that elicits the more meagre
   conception of existence from the higher one of Divinity. Better for
   philosophy, as well as faith, to think of God at once and immediately
   as Perfect Being'.

   Arguments from first and final causes may be regarded as a kind of
   poetry of natural religion. There are some minds to whom it would be
   impossible to conceive of the relation of God to the world under any
   more abstract form. They, as well as all of us, may ponder in amazement
   on the infinite contrivances of creation. We are all agreed that none
   but a Divine power framed them. We differ only as to whether the Divine
   power is to be regarded as the hand that fashioned, or the intelligence
   that designed them, or an operation inconceivable to us which we dimly
   trace and feebly express in words.

   That which seems to underlie our conception both of first and final
   causes, is the idea of law which we see not broken or intercepted, or
   appearing only in particular spots of nature, but everywhere and in all
   things. All things do not equally exhibit marks of design, but all
   things are equally subject to the operation of law. The highest mark of
   intelligence pervades the whole; no one part is better than an other;
   it is all very good'. The absence of design, if we like so to turn the
   phrase, is a part of the design. Even the less comely parts, like the
   plain spaces in a building, have elements of use and beauty. He who has
   ever thought in the most imperfect manner of the universe which modern
   science unveils, needs no evidence that the details of it are incapable
   of being framed by anything short of a Divine power. Art, and nature,
   and science, these three,--the first giving us the conception of the
   relation of parts to a whole; the second, of endless variety and
   intricacy, such as no art has ever attained; the third, of uniform laws
   which amid all the changes of created things remain fixed as at the
   first, reaching even to the heavens,--are the witnesses of the Creator
   in the external world.

   Nor can it weaken our belief in a Supreme Being, to observe that the
   same harmony and uniformity extend also to the actions of men. Why
   should it be thought a thing incredible that God should give law and
   order to the spiritual, no less than the natural creation? That human
   beings do not thrust or break their ranks'; that the life of nations,
   like that of plants or animals, has a regular growth; that the same
   strata or stages are observable in the religions, no less than the
   languages of man kind, as in the structure of the earth, are strange
   reasons for doubting the Providence of God. Perhaps it is even
   stranger, that those who do not doubt should eye with jealousy the
   accumulation of such facts. Do we really wish that our conceptions of
   God should only be on the level of the ignorant; adequate to the
   passing emotions of human feeling, but to reason inadequate? That
   Christianity is the confluence of many channels of human thought does
   not interfere with its Divine origin. It is not the less immediately
   the word of God because there have been preparations for it in all
   ages, and in many countries.

   The more we take out of the category of chance in the world either of
   nature or of mind, the more present evidence we have of the
   faithfulness of God. We do not need to have a chapter of accidents in
   life to enable us to realize the existence of a personal God, as though
   events which we can account for were not equally His work. Let not use
   or custom so prevail in our minds as to make this higher notion of God
   cheerless or uncomfortable to us. The rays of His presence may still
   warm us, as well as enlighten us. Surely He, in whom we live and move
   and have our being, is nearer to us than He would be if He interfered
   occasionally for our benefit.

   The curtain of the physical world is closing in upon us': What does
   this mean but that the arms of His intelligence are embracing us on
   every side? We have no more fear of nature; for our knowledge of the
   laws of nature has cast out fear. We know Him as He shows himself in
   them, even as we are known of Him. Do we think to draw near to God by
   returning to that state in which nature seemed to be without law, when
   man cowered like the animals before the storm, and in the meteors of
   the skies and the motions of the heavenly bodies sought to read the
   purposes of God respecting himself? Or shall we rest in that stage of
   the knowledge of nature which was common to the heathen philosophers
   and to the Fathers of the Christian Church? or in that of two hundred
   years ago, ere the laws of the heavenly bodies were discovered? or of
   fifty years ago, before geology had established its truths on sure
   foundations? or of thirty years ago, ere the investigation of old
   language had revealed the earlier stages of the history of the human
   mind. At which of these resting-places shall we pause to renew the
   covenant between Reason and Faith? Rather at none of them, if the first
   condition of a true faith be the belief in all true knowledge.

   To trace our belief up to some primitive revelation, to entangle it in
   a labyrinth of proofs or analogies, will not infix it deeper or elevate
   its character. Why should we be willing to trust the convictions of the
   father of the human race rather than our own, the faith of primitive
   rather than of civilized times? Or why should we use arguments about
   the Infinite Being, which, in proportion as they have force, reduce him
   to the level of the finite; and which seem to lose their force in
   proportion as we admit that God's ways are not as our ways, nor His
   thoughts as our thoughts? The belief is strong enough without those
   fictitious supports; it cannot be made stronger with them. While nature
   still presents to us its world of unexhausted wonders; while sin and
   sorrow lead us to walk by faith, and not by sight; while the soul of
   man departs this life knowing not whither it goes; so long will the
   belief endure of an Almighty Creator, from whom we came, to whom we
   return.

   Why, again, should we argue for the immortality of the soul from the
   analogy of the seed and the tree, or the state of human beings before
   and after birth, when the ground of proof in the one case is wanting in
   the other, namely, experience? Because the dead acorn may a century
   hence become a spreading oak, no one would infer that the corrupted
   remains of animals will rise to life in new forms. The error is not in
   the use of such illustrations as figures of speech, but in the
   allegation of them as proofs or evidences after the failure of the
   analogy is perceived. Perhaps it may be said that in popular discourse
   they pass unchallenged; it may be a point of honour that they should be
   maintained, because they are in Paley or Butler. But evidences for the
   many which are not evidences for the few are treacherous props to
   Christianity. They are always liable to come back to us detected, and
   to need some other fallacy for their support.

   Let it be considered, whether the evidences of religion should be
   separated from religion itself. The Gospel has a truth perfectly
   adapted to human nature; its origin and diffusion in the world have a
   history like any other history. But truth does not need evidences of
   the truth, nor does history separate the proof of facts from the facts
   themselves. It was only in the decline of philosophy the Greeks began
   to ask about the criterion of knowledge. What would be thought of an
   historian who should collect all the testimonies on one side of some
   disputed question, and insist on their reception as a political creed?
   Such evidences do not require the hand of some giant infidel to pull
   them down; they fall the moment they are touched. But the Christian
   faith is in its holy place, uninjured by the fall; the truths of the
   existence of God, or of the immortality of the soul, are not periled by
   the observation that some analogies on which they have been supposed to
   rest are no longer tenable. There is no use in attempting to prove by
   the misapplication of the methods of human knowledge, what we ought^
   never to doubt.

   There are two things,' says a philosopher of the last century; of which
   it may be said, that the more we think of them, the more they fill the
   soul with awe and wonder,--the starry heaven above, and the moral law
   within. I may not regard either as shrouded in darkness, or look for or
   guess at either in what is beyond, out of my sight. I see them right
   before me, and link them at once with the consciousness of my own
   existence. The former of the two begins with place, which I inhabit as
   a member of the outward world, and extends the connexion in which I
   stand with it into immeasurable space; in which are worlds upon worlds,
   and systems upon systems; and so on into the endless times of their
   revolutions, their beginning and continuance. The second begins with my
   invisible self; that is to say, my personality, and presents me in a
   world which has true infinity, but which the lower faculty of the soul
   can hardly scan; with which I know myself to be not only as in the
   world of sight, in an accidental connexion, but in a necessary and
   universal one. The first glance at innumerable worlds annihilates any
   importance which I may attach to myself as an animal structure; whilst
   the matter out of which it is made must again return to the earth
   (itself a mere point in the universe), after it has been endued, one
   knows not how, with the power of life for a little season. The second
   glance exalts me infinitely as an intelligent being, whose personality
   involves a moral law, which reveals in me a life distinct from that of
   the animals, independent of the world of sense. So much at least I may
   infer from the regular determination of my being by this law, which is
   itself infinite, free from the limitations and conditions of this
   present life.'

   So, in language somewhat technical, has Kant described two great
   principles of natural religion. There are two witnesses,' we may add in
   a later strain of reflection, of the being of God; the order of nature
   in the world, and the progress of the mind of man. He is not the order
   of nature, nor the progress of mind, nor both together; but that which
   is above and beyond them; of which they, even if conceived in a single
   instant, are but the external sign, the highest evidences of God which
   we can conceive, but not God Himself. The first to the ancient world
   seemed to be the work of chance, or the personal operation of one or
   many Divine beings. We know it to be the result of laws endless in
   their complexity, and yet not the less admirable for their simplicity
   also. The second has been regarded, even in our own day, as a series of
   errors capriciously invented by the ingenuity of individual men. We
   know it to have a law of its own, a continuous order which cannot be
   inverted; not to be confounded with, yet not wholly separate from, the
   law of nature and the will of God. Shall we doubt the world to be the
   creation of a Divine power, only because it is more wonderful than
   could have been conceived by "them of old time"; or human reason to be
   in the image of God, because it too bears the marks of an overruling
   law or intelligence?'

  § 5.

   Natural religion, in the last sense in which we are to consider it,
   carries us into a region of thought more practical, and therefore more
   important, than any of the preceding; it comes home to us; it takes in
   those who are near and dear to us; even ourselves are not excluded from
   it. Under this name, or some other, we cannot refuse to consider a
   subject which involves the religious state of the greater portion of
   mankind, even in a Christian country. Every Sunday the ministers of
   religion set before us the ideal of Christian life; they repeat and
   expand the words of Christ and his Apostles; they speak of the approach
   of death, and of this world as a preparation for a better. It is good
   to be reminded of these things. But there is another aspect of
   Christianity which we must not ignore, the aspect under which
   experience shows it, in our homes and among our acquaintance, on the
   level of human things; the level of education, habit, and circumstances
   on which men are, and on which they will probably remain while they
   live. This latter phase of religion it is our duty to consider, and not
   narrow ourselves to the former only.

   It is characteristic of this subject that it is full of contradictions;
   we say one thing at one time about it, another thing at another. Our
   feelings respecting individuals are different in their lifetime, and
   after their death, as they are nearly related to us, or have no claims
   on our affections. Our acknowledgement of sin in the abstract is more
   willing and hearty than the recognition of particular sins in
   ourselves, or even in others. We readily admit that the world lieth in
   wickedness'; where the world is, or of whom it is made up, we are
   unable to define. Great men seem to be exempt from the religious
   judgement which we pass on our fellows; it does not occur to persons of
   taste to regard them under this aspect; we deal tenderly with them, and
   leave them to themselves and God. And sometimes we rest on outward
   signs of religion; at other times we guard ourselves and others against
   trusting to such signs. And commonly we are ready to acquiesce in the
   standard of those around us, thinking it a sort of impertinence to
   interfere with their religious concerns; at other times we go about the
   world as with a lantern, seeking for the image of Christ among men, and
   are zealous for the good of others, out of season or in season. We need
   not unravel further this tangled web of thoughts and feelings, which
   religion, and affection, and habit, and opinion weave. A few words will
   describe the fact out of which these contradictions arise. It is a side
   of the world from which we are apt to turn away, perhaps hoping to make
   things better by fancying them so, instead of looking at them as they
   really are.

   It is impossible not to observe that innumerable persons--shall we say
   the majority of mankind?--who have a belief in God and immortality,
   have nevertheless hardly any consciousness of the peculiar doctrines of
   the Gospel. They seem to live away from them in the routine of business
   or of society, the common life of all men', not without a sense of
   right, and a rule of truth and honesty, yet insensible to what our
   Saviour meant by taking up the cross and following Him, or what St.
   Paul meant by being one with Christ'. They die without any great fear
   or lively faith; to the last more interested about concerns of this
   world than about the hope of another. In the Christian sense they are
   neither proud nor humble; they have seldom experienced the sense of
   sin, they have never felt keenly the need of forgiveness. Neither on
   the other hand do they value themselves on their good deeds, or expect
   to be saved by their own merits. Often they are men of high moral
   character; many of them have strong and disinterested attachments, and
   quick human sympathies; sometimes a stoical feeling of uprightness, or
   a peculiar sensitiveness to dishonour. It would be a mistake to say
   they are without religion. They join in its public acts; they are
   offended at profaneness or impiety; they are thankful for the blessings
   of life, and do not rebel against its misfortunes. Such persons meet us
   at every turn. They are those whom we know and associate with; honest
   in their dealings, respectable in their lives, decent in their
   conversation. The Scripture speaks to us of two classes represented by
   the Church and the world, the wheat and the tares, the sheep and the
   goats, the friends and enemies of God. We cannot say in which of these
   two divisions we should find a place for them.

   The picture is a true one, and, if we turn the light round, some of us
   may find in it a resemblance of ourselves no less than of other men.
   Others will include us in the same circle in which we are including
   them. What shall we say to such a state, common as it is to both us and
   them? The fact that we are considering is not the evil of the world,
   but the neutrality of the world, the indifference of the world, the
   inertness of the world. There are multitudes of men and women
   everywhere, who have no peculiarly Christian feelings, to whom, except
   for the indirect influence of Christian institutions, the life and
   death of Christ would have made no difference, and who have,
   nevertheless, the common sense of truth and right almost equally with
   true Christians. You cannot say of them there is none that doeth good;
   no, not one'. The other tone of St. Paul is more suitable,--When the
   Gentiles that know not the law do by nature the things contained in the
   law, these not knowing the law are a law unto themselves.' So of what
   we commonly term the world, as opposed to those who make a profession
   of Christianity, we must not shrink from saying,--When men of the world
   do by nature whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are
   lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, these not being conscious
   of the grace of God, do by nature what can only be done by His grace'.
   Why should we make them out worse than they are? We must cease to speak
   evil of them, ere they will judge fairly of the characters of religious
   men. That, with so little recognition of His personal relation to them,
   God does not cast them off, is a ground of hope rather than of
   fear,--of thankfulness, not of regret.

   Many strange thoughts arise at the contemplation of this intermediate
   world, which some blindness, or hardness, or distance in nature,
   separates from the love of Christ. We ask ourselves what will become of
   them after death?' For what state of existence can this present life be
   a preparation?' Perhaps they will turn the question upon us; and we may
   answer for ourselves and them, that we throw ourselves on the mercy of
   God'. We cannot deny that in the sight of God they may condemn us;
   their moral worth may be more acceptable to Him than our Christian
   feeling. For we know that God is not like some earthly sovereign, who
   may be offended at the want of attention which we show to him. He can
   only estimate us always by our fulfilment of moral and Christian
   duties. When the balance is struck, it is most probable, nay, it is
   quite certain, that many who are first will be last, and the last
   first. And this transfer will take place, not only among those who are
   within the gates of the Christian Church, but from the world also into
   the Church. There may be some among us who have given the cup of cold
   water to a brother, not knowing it was the Lord'. Some again may be
   leading a life in their own family which is not far from the kingdom of
   heaven'. We do not say that for ourselves there is more than one way;
   that way is Christ. But, in the case of others, it is right that we
   should take into account their occupation, character, circumstances,
   the manner in which Christianity may have been presented to them, the
   intellectual or other difficulties which may have crossed their path.
   We shall think more of the unconscious Christianity of their lives,
   than of the profession of it on their lips. So that we seem almost
   compelled to be Christian and Unchristian at once: Christian in
   reference to the obligations of Christianity upon ourselves;
   Unchristian, if indeed it be not a higher kind of Christianity, in not
   judging those who are unlike ourselves by our own standard.

   Other oppositions have found their way into statements of Christian
   truth, which we shall sometimes do well to forget. Mankind are not
   simply divided into two classes; they pass insensibly from one to the
   other. The term world is itself ambiguous, meaning the world very near
   to us, and yet a long way off from us; which we contrast with the
   Church, and which we nevertheless feel to be one with the Church, and
   incapable of being separated. Some times the Church bears a high and
   noble witness against the world, and at other times, even to the
   religious mind, the balance seems to be even, and the world in its turn
   begins to bear witness against the Church. There are periods of history
   in which they both grow together. Little cause as there may be for
   congratulation in our present state, yet we cannot help tracing, in the
   last half-century, a striking amelioration in our own and some other
   countries, testified to by changes in laws and manners. Many reasons
   have been given for this change: the efforts of a few devoted men in
   the last, or the beginning of the present [19th], century; a long
   peace; diffusion of education; increase of national wealth; changes in
   the principles of government; improvement in the lives of the ministers
   of religion. No one who has considered this problem will feel that he
   is altogether able to solve it. He cannot venture to say that the
   change springs from any bold aggression which the Church has made upon
   the vices of mankind; nor is it certain that any such effort would have
   produced the result. In the Apostle's language it must still remain a
   mystery why mankind collectively often become better'; and not less so,
   why, when deprived of all the means and influences of virtue and
   religion, they do not always become worse'. Even for evil, Nature, that
   is, the God of nature, has set limits; men do not corrupt themselves
   endlessly. Here, too, it is, Hitherto shalt thou go, but no further'.

   Reflections of this kind are not a mere speculation; they have a
   practical use. They show us the world as it is, neither lighted up with
   the aspirations of hope and faith, nor darkened beneath the shadow of
   God's wrath. They teach us to regard human nature in a larger and more
   kindly way, which is the first step towards amending and strengthening
   it. They make us think of the many as well as of the few; as ministers
   of the Gospel, warning us against preaching to the elect only, instead
   of seeking to do good to all men. They take us out of the straits and
   narrownesses of religion, into wider fields in which the analogy of
   faith is still our guide. They help us to reconcile nature with grace;
   they prevent our thinking that Christ came into the world for our sakes
   only, or that His words have no meaning when they are scattered beyond
   the limits of the Christian Church. They remind us that the moral state
   of mankind here, and their eternal state hereafter, are not wholly
   dependent on our poor efforts for their religious improvement; and that
   the average of men who seem often to be so careless about their own
   highest interest, are not when they pass away uncared for in His sight.

   Doubtless, the lives of individuals that rise above this average are
   the salt of the earth. They are not to be confounded with the many,
   because for these latter a place may be found in the counsels of
   Providence. Those who add the love of their fellow-creatures to the
   love of God, who make the love of truth the rule of both, bear the
   image of Christ until His coming again. And yet, probably, they would
   be the last persons to wish to distinguish themselves from their
   fellow-creatures. The Christian life makes all things kin; it does not
   stand out angular' against any part of mankind. And that humble spirit
   which the best of men have ever shown in reference to their brethren,
   is also the true spirit of the Church towards the world. If a tone of
   dogmatism and exclusiveness is unbecoming in individual Christians, is
   it not equally so in Christian communities? There is no need, be cause
   men will not listen to one motive, that we should not present them with
   another; there is no reason, because they will not hear the voice of
   the preacher, that they should be refused the blessings of education;
   or that we should cease to act upon their circumstances, because we
   cannot awaken the heart and conscience. We are too apt to view as
   hostile to religion that which only takes a form different from
   religion, as trade, or politics, or professional life. More truly may
   religious men regard the world, in its various phases, as in many
   points a witness against themselves. The exact appreciation of the good
   as well as the evil of the world is a link of communion with our
   fellow-men; may it not also be, too, with the body of Christ? There are
   lessons of which the world is the keeper no less than the Church.
   Especially have earnest and sincere Christians reason to reflect, if
   ever they see the moral sentiments of man kind directed against them.

   The God of peace rest upon you, is the concluding benediction of most
   of the Epistles. How can He rest upon us, who draw so many hard lines
   of demarcation between ourselves and other men; who oppose the Church
   and the world, Sundays and working days, revelation and science, the
   past and present, the life and state of which religion speaks and the
   life which we ordinarily lead? It is well that we should consider these
   lines of demarcation rather as representing aspects of our life than as
   corresponding to classes of mankind. It is well that we should
   acknowledge that one aspect of life or knowledge is as true as the
   other. Science and revelation touch one another: the past floats down
   in the present. We are all members of the same Christian world; we are
   all members of the same Christian Church. Who can bear to doubt this of
   themselves or of their family? What parent would think otherwise of his
   child?--what child of his parent? Religion holds before us an ideal
   which we are far from reaching; natural affection softens and relieves
   the characters of those we love; experience alone shows men what they
   truly are. All these three must so meet as to do violence to none. If,
   in the age of the Apostles, it seemed to be the duty of the believers
   to separate themselves from the world and take up a hostile position,
   not less marked in the present age is the duty of abolishing in a
   Christian country what has now become an artificial distinction, and
   seeking by every means in our power, by fairness, by truthfulness, by
   knowledge, by love unfeigned, by the absence of party and prejudice, by
   acknowledging the good in all things, to reconcile the Church to the
   world, the one half of our nature to the other; drawing the mind off
   from speculative difficulties, or matters of party and opinion, to that
   which almost all equally acknowledge and almost equally rest short
   of--the life of Christ.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [15] Buddhism.
     __________________________________________________________________

ESSAY ON RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH

   No doctrine in later times has been looked at so exclusively through
   the glass of controversy as that of justification. From being the
   simplest it has be come the most difficult; the language of the heart
   has lost itself in a logical tangle. Differences have been drawn out as
   far as possible, and then taken back and reconciled. The extreme of one
   view has more than once produced a reaction in favour of the other.
   Many senses have been attributed to the same words, and simple
   statements carried out on both sides into endless conclusions. New
   formulas of conciliation have been put in the place of old-established
   phrases, and have soon died away, because they had no root in language
   or in the common sense or feeling of mankind. The difficulty of the
   subject has been increased by the different degrees of importance
   attached to it: while to some it is an articulus stantis aut cadentis
   ecclesiae, others have never been able to see in it more than a verbal
   dispute.

   This perplexity on the question of righteousness by faith is partly due
   to the character of the age in which it began to revive. Men felt at
   the Reformation the need of a spiritual religion, and could no longer
   endure the yoke which had been put upon their fathers. The heart
   rebelled against the burden of ordinances; it wanted to take a nearer
   way to reconciliation with God. But when the struggle was over, and
   individuals were seeking to impart to others the peace which they had
   found themselves, they had no simple or natural expression of their
   belief. They were alone in a world in which the human mind had been
   long enslaved. It was necessary for them to go down into the land of
   the enemy, and get their weapons sharpened before they could take up a
   position and fortify their camp.

   In other words, the Scholastic Logic had been for six centuries
   previous the great instrument of training the human mind; it had grown
   up with it, and become a part of it. Neither would it have been more
   possible for the Reformers to have laid it aside than to have laid
   aside the use of language itself. Around theology it lingers still,
   seeming reluctant to quit a territory which is peculiarly its own. No
   science has hitherto fallen so completely under its power; no other is
   equally unwilling to ask the meaning of terms; none has been so fertile
   in reasonings and consequences. The change of which Lord Bacon was the
   herald has hardly yet reached it; much less could the Reformation have
   anticipated the New Philosophy.

   The whole mental structure of that time rendered it necessary that the
   Reformers, no less than their opponents, should resort to the
   scholastic methods of argument. The difference between the two parties
   did not lie here. Perhaps it may be said with truth that the Reformers
   were even more schoolmen than their opponents, because they dealt more
   with abstract ideas, and were more concentrated on a single topic. The
   whole of Luther's teaching was summed up in a single article,
   Righteousness by Faith'. That was to him the Scriptural expression of a
   Spiritual religion. But this, according to the manner of that time,
   could not be left in the simple language of St. Paul. It was to be
   proved from Scripture first, then isolated by definition; then it might
   be safely drawn out into remote consequences.

   And yet, why was this? Why not repeat, with a slight alteration of the
   words rather than the meaning of the Apostle, Neither justification by
   faith nor justification by works, but a new creature'? Was there not
   yet a more excellent way to oppose things to words,--the life, and
   spirit, and freedom of the Gospel, to the deadness, and powerlessness,
   and slavery of the Roman Church? So it seems natural to us to reason,
   looking back after an interval of three centuries on the weary
   struggle; so absorbing to those who took part in it once, so distant
   now either to us or them. But so it could not be. The temper of the
   times, and the education of the Reformers themselves, made it necessary
   that one dogmatic system should be met by another. The scholastic
   divinity had become a charmed circle, and no man could venture out of
   it, though he might oppose or respond within it.

   And thus justification by faith, and justification by works, became the
   watchword of two parties. We may imagine ourselves at that point in the
   controversy when the Pelagian dispute had been long since hushed, and
   that respecting Predestination had not yet begun; when men were not
   differing about original sin, and had not begun to differ about the
   Divine decrees. What Luther sought for was to find a formula which
   expressed most fully the entire, unreserved, immediate dependence of
   the believer on Christ. What the Catholic sought for was so to modify
   this formula as not to throw dishonour on the Church by making religion
   a merely personal, or individual, matter; or on the lives of holy men
   of old, who had wrought out their salvation by asceticism; or endanger
   morality by appearing to undervalue good works. It was agreed by all,
   that men are saved through Christ;--[that men are saved] not of
   themselves, but of the grace of God, was equally agreed since the
   condemnation of Pelagius;--that faith and works imply each other, was
   not disputed by either. A narrow space is left for the combat, which
   has to be carried on within the outworks of an earlier creed, in which,
   nevertheless, great subtlety of human thought and the greatest
   differences of character admit of being displayed.

   On this narrow ground the first question that naturally arises is, how
   faith is to be defined? is it to include love and holiness, or to be
   separated from them? If the former, it seems to lose its apprehensive
   dependent nature, and to be scarcely distinguishable from works; if the
   latter, the statement is too refined for the common sense of mankind;
   though made by Luther, it could scarcely be retained even by his
   immediate followers. Again, is it an act or a state? are we to figure
   it as a point, or as a line? Is the whole of our spiritual life
   anticipated in the beginning, or may faith no less than works,
   justification equally with sanctification, be conceived of as going on
   to perfection? Is justification an objective act of Divine mercy, or a
   subjective state of which the believer is conscious in himself? Is the
   righteousness of faith imputed or inherent, an attribution of the
   merits of Christ, or a renewal of the human heart itself? What is the
   test of a true faith? And is it possible for those who are possessed of
   it to fall away? How can we exclude the doctrine of human merit
   consistently with Divine justice? How do we account for the fact that
   some have this faith, and others are without it, this difference being
   apparently independent of their moral state? If faith comes by grace,
   is it imparted to few or to all? And in what relation does the whole
   doctrine stand to Predestinarianism on the one hand, and to the
   Catholic or Sacramental theory on the other?

   So at many points the doctrine of righteousness by faith touches the
   metaphysical questions of subject and object, of necessity and freedom,
   of habits and actions, and of human consciousness, like a magnet
   drawing to itself philosophy, as it has once drawn to itself the
   history of Europe. There were distinctions also of an earlier date,
   with which it had to struggle, of deeper moral import than their
   technical form would lead us to suppose, such as that of congruity and
   condignity, in which the analogy of Christianity is transferred to
   heathenism, and the doer of good works before justification is regarded
   as a shadow of the perfected believer. Neither must we omit to observe
   that, as the doctrine of justification by faith had a close connexion
   with the Pelagian controversy, carrying the decision of the Church a
   step further, making Divine Grace not only the source of human action,
   but also requiring the consciousness or assurance of grace in the
   believer himself: so it put forth its roots in another direction,
   attaching itself to Anselm as well as Augustine, and comprehending the
   idea of satisfaction; not now, as formerly, of Christ offered in the
   sacrifice of the mass, but of one sacrifice, once offered for the sins
   of men, whether considered as an expiation by suffering, or implying
   only a reconciliation between God and man, or a mere manifestation of
   the righteousness of God.

   Such is the whole question, striking deep, and spreading far and wide
   with its offshoots. It is not our intention to enter on the
   investigation of all these subjects, many of which are interesting as
   phases of thought in the history of the Church, but have no bearing on
   the interpretation of St. Paul's Epistles, and would be out of place
   here. Our inquiry will embrace two heads: (1) What did St. Paul mean by
   the expression righteousness of faith', in that age ere controversies
   about his meaning arose? and (2) What do we mean by it, now that such
   controversies have died away, and the interest in them is retained only
   by the theological student, and the Church and the world are changed,
   and there is no more question of Jew or Gentile, circumcision or
   uncircumcision, and we do not become Christians, but are so from our
   birth? Many volumes are not required to explain the meaning of the
   Apostle; nor can the words of eternal life be other than few and simple
   to ourselves.

   There is one interpretation of the Epistles of St. Paul which is
   necessarily in some degree false; that is, the interpretation put upon
   them by later controversy. When the minds of men are absorbed in a
   particular circle of ideas they take possession of any stray verse,
   which becomes the centre of their world. They use the words of
   Scripture, but are incapable of seeing that they have another meaning
   and are used in a different connexion from that in which they employ
   them. Sometimes there is a degree of similarity in the application
   which tends to conceal the difference. Thus Luther and St. Paul both
   use the same term, justified by faith'; and the strength of the
   Reformer's words is the authority of St. Paul. Yet, observe how far
   this agreement is one of words: how far of things. For Luther is
   speaking solely of individuals, St. Paul also of nations; Luther of
   faith absolutely, St. Paul of faith as relative to the law. With St.
   Paul faith is the symbol of the universality of the Gospel. Luther
   excludes this or any analogous point of view. In St. Paul there is no
   opposition of faith and love; nor does he further determine
   righteousness by faith as meaning a faith in the blood or even in the
   death of Christ; nor does he suppose consciousness or assurance in the
   person justified. But all these are prominent features of the Lutheran
   doctrine. Once more: the faith of St. Paul has reference to the evil of
   the world of sight; which was soon to vanish away, that the world in
   which faith walks might be revealed; but no such allusion is implied in
   the language of the Reformer. Lastly: the change in the use of the
   substantive righteousness' to justification' is the indication of a
   wide difference between St. Paul and Luther; the natural, almost
   accidental, language of St. Paul having already passed into a technical
   formula.

   These contrasts make us feel that St. Paul can only be interpreted by
   himself, not from the systems of modern theologians, nor even from the
   writings of one who had so much in common with him as Luther. It is the
   spirit and feeling of St. Paul which Luther represents, not the meaning
   of his words. A touch of nature in both makes them kin'. And without
   bringing down one to the level of the other, we can imagine St. Paul
   returning that singular affection, almost like an attachment to a
   living friend, which the great Reformer felt to wards the Apostle. But
   this personal attachment or resemblance in no way lessens the necessary
   difference between the preaching of Luther and of St. Paul, which arose
   in some degree perhaps from their individual character, but chiefly out
   of the different circumstances and modes of thought of their respective
   ages. At the Reformation we are at another stage of the human mind, in
   which system and logic and the abstractions of Aristotle have a kind of
   necessary force, when words have so completely taken the place of
   things, that the minutest distinctions appear to have an intrinsic
   value.

   It has been said (and the remark admits of a peculiar application to
   theology), that few persons know sufficient of things to be able to say
   whether disputes are merely verbal or not. Yet, on the other hand, it
   must be admitted that, whatever accidental advantage theology may
   derive from system and definition, mere accurate statements can never
   form the substance of our belief. No one doubts that Christianity could
   be in the fullest sense taught to a child or a savage, without any
   mention of justification or satisfaction or predestination. Why should
   we not receive the Gospel as little children'? Why should we not choose
   the poor man's part in the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven? Why
   elaborate doctrinal abstractions which are so subtle in their meaning
   as to be in great danger of being lost in their translation from one
   language to another? which are always running into consequences
   inconsistent with our moral nature, and the knowledge of God derived
   from it? which are not the prevailing usage of Scripture, but technical
   terms which we have gathered from one or two passages, and made the
   key-notes of our scale? The words satisfaction and predestination
   nowhere occur in Scripture; the word regeneration only twice, and but
   once in a sense at all similar to that which it bears among ourselves;
   the word justification twice only, and nowhere as a purely abstract
   term.

   But although language and logic have strangely transfigured the meaning
   of Scripture, we cannot venture to say that all theological
   controversies are questions of words. If from their winding mazes we
   seek to retrace our steps, we still find differences which have a deep
   foundation in the opposite tendencies of the human mind, and the
   corresponding division of the world itself. That men of one temper of
   mind adopt one expression rather than another may be partly an
   accident; but the adoption of an expression by persons of marked
   character makes the difference of words a reality also. That can
   scarcely be thought a matter of words which cut in sunder the Church,
   which overthrew princes, which made the line of demarcation between
   Jewish and Gentile Christians in the Apostolic age, and is so, in
   another sense, between Protestant and Catholic at the present day. And
   in a deeper way of reflection than this, if we turn from the Church to
   the individual, we seem to see around us opposite natures and
   characters, whose lives really exhibit a difference corresponding to
   that of which we are speaking. The one incline to morality, the other
   to religion; the one to the sacramental, the other to the spiritual;
   the one to multiplicity in outward ordinances, the other to simplicity;
   the one consider chiefly the means, the other the end; the one desire
   to dwell upon doctrinal statements, the other need only the name of
   Christ; the one turn to ascetic practices, to lead a good life, and to
   do good to others, the other to faith, humility, and dependence on God.
   We may sometimes find the opposite attributes combine with each other
   (there have ever been cross-divisions on this article of belief in the
   Christian world; the great body of the Reformed Churches, and a small
   minority of Roman Catholics before the Reformation, being on the one
   side; and the whole Roman Catholic Church since the Reformation, and a
   section of the Protestant Episcopalians, and some lesser communions, on
   the other); still, in general, the first of these characters answers to
   that doctrine which the Roman Church sums up in the formula of
   justification by works; the latter is that temper of mind which finds
   its natural dogmatic expression in the words We are justified by
   faith'.

   These latter words have been carried out of their original circle of
   ideas into a new one by the doctrines of the Reformation. They have
   become hardened, stiffened, sharpened by the exigencies of controversy,
   and torn from what may be termed their context in the Apostolical age.
   To that age we must return ere we can think in the Apostle's language.
   His conception of faith, although simpler than our own, has
   nevertheless a peculiar relation to his own day; it is at once wider,
   and also narrower, than the use of the word among ourselves,--wider in
   that it is the symbol of the admission of the Gentiles into the Church,
   but narrower also in that it is the negative of the law. Faith is the
   proper technical term which excludes the law; being what the law is
   not, as the law is what faith is not. No middle term connects the two,
   or at least none which the Apostle admits, until he has first widened
   the breach between them to the utter most. He does not say, Was not
   Abraham our father justified by works (as well as by faith), when he
   had offered up Isaac his son on the altar?' but only, What saith the
   Scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for
   righteousness.'

   The Jewish conception of righteousness was the fulfilment of the
   Commandments. He who walked in all the precepts of the law blameless,
   like Daniel in the Old Testament, or Joseph and Nathanael in the New,
   was righteous before God. What shall I do to inherit eternal life? Thou
   knowest the commandments. Do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not
   bear false witness. All these have I kept from my youth up.' This is a
   picture of Jewish righteousness as it presents itself in its most
   favourable light. But it was a righteousness which comprehended the
   observance of ceremonial details as well as moral precepts, which
   confused questions of a new moon or a sabbath with the weightier
   matters of common honesty or filial duty. It might be nothing more than
   an obedience to the law as such, losing itself on the surface of
   religion, in casuistical distinctions about meats and drinks, or vows
   or forms of oaths, or purifications, without any attempt to make clean
   that which is within. It might also pierce inward to the dividing
   asunder of the soul. Then was heard the voice of conscience crying, All
   these things cannot make the doers thereof perfect'. When every
   external obligation was fulfilled, the internal began. Actions must
   include thoughts and intentions,--the Seventh Commandment extends to
   the adultery of the heart; in one word, the law must become a spirit.

   But to the mind of St. Paul the spirit presented itself not so much as
   a higher fulfilment of the law, but as antagonistic to it. From this
   point of view, it appeared not that man could never fulfil the law
   perfectly, but that he could never fulfil it at all. What God required
   was something different in kind from legal obedience. What man needed
   was a return to God and nature. He was burdened, straitened, shut out
   from the presence of his Father,--a servant, not a son; to whom, in a
   spiritual sense, the heaven was become as iron, and the earth brass.
   The new righteousness must raise him above the burden of ordinances,
   and bring him into a living communion with God. It must be within, and
   not without him,--written not on tables of stone, but on fleshly tables
   of the heart. But inward righteousness was no peculiar privilege of the
   Israelites; it belonged to all mankind. And the revelation of it, as it
   satisfied the need of the individual soul, vindicated also the ways of
   God to man; it showed God to be equal in justice and mercy to all
   mankind.

   As the symbol of this inward righteousness, St. Paul found an
   expression--righteousness by faith--derived from those passages in the
   Old Testament which spoke of Abraham being justified by faith. It was
   already in use among the Jews; but it was the Apostle who stamped it
   first with a permanent and universal import. The faith of St. Paul was
   not the faith of the Patriarchs only, who believed in the promises made
   to their descendants; it entered within the veil--out of the reach of
   ordinances--beyond the evil of this present life; it was the instrument
   of union with Christ, in whom all men were one; whom they were
   expecting to come from heaven. The Jewish nation itself was too far
   gone to be saved as a nation: individuals had a nearer way. The Lord
   was at hand; there was no time for a long life of laborious service. As
   at the last hour, when we have to teach men rather how to die than how
   to live, the Apostle could only say to those who would receive it,
   Believe; all things are possible to him that believes'.

   Such are some of the peculiar aspects of the Apostle's doctrine of
   righteousness by faith. To our minds it has become a later stage or a
   particular form of the more general doctrine of salvation through
   Christ, of the grace of God to man, or of the still more general truth
   of spiritual religion. It is the connecting link by which we
   appropriate these to ourselves,--hand which we put out to apprehend the
   mercy of God. It was not so to the Apostle. To him grace and faith and
   the Spirit are not parts of a doctrinal system, but different
   expressions of the same truth. Beginning in the Spirit' is another way
   of saying Being justified by faith'. He uses them indiscriminately, and
   therefore we cannot suppose that he could have laid any stress on
   distinctions between them. Even the apparently precise antithesis of
   the prepositions en dia' varies in different passages. Only in
   reference to the law, faith, rather than grace, is the more correct and
   natural expression. It was Christ or not Christ, the Spirit or not the
   Spirit, faith and the law, that were the dividing principles: not
   Christ through faith, as opposed to Christ through works; or the Spirit
   as communicated through grace, to the Spirit as independent of grace.

   Illusive as are the distinctions of later controversies as guides to
   the interpretation of Scripture, there is another help, of which we can
   hardly avail ourselves too much,--the interpretation of fact. To read
   the mind of the Apostle, we must read also the state of the world and
   the Church by which he was sur rounded. Now, there are two great facts
   which correspond to the doctrine of righteousness by faith, which is
   also the doctrine of the universality of the Gospel: first, the vision
   which the Apostle saw on the way to Damascus; secondly, the actual
   conversion of the Gentiles by the preaching of the Apostle.
   Righteousness by faith, admission of the Gentiles, even the rejection
   and restoration of the Jews, are--himself under so many different
   points of view. The way by which God had led him was the way also by
   which he was leading other men. When he preached righteousness by
   faith, his conscience also bore him witness that this was the manner in
   which he had himself passed from darkness to light, from the burden of
   ordinances to the power of an endless life. In proclaiming the
   salvation of the Gentiles, he was interpreting the world as it was;
   their admission into the Church had already taken place before the eyes
   of all mankind; it was a purpose of God that was actually fulfilled,
   not waiting for some future revelation. Just as when doubts are raised
   respecting his Apostleship, he cut them short by the fact that he was
   an Apostle, and did the work of an Apostle; so, in adjusting the
   relations of Jew and Gentile, and justifying the ways of God, the
   facts, read aright, are the basis of the doctrine which he teaches. All
   that he further shows is, that these facts were in accordance with the
   Old Testament, with the words of the Prophets, and the dealings of God
   with the Jewish people. And the Apostles at Jerusalem, equally with
   himself, admitted the success of his mission as an evidence of its
   truth.

   But the faith which St. Paul preached was not merely the evidence of
   things not seen, in which the Gentiles also had part, nor only the
   reflection of the violence' of the world around him, which was taking
   the kingdom of heaven by force. The source, the hidden life, from which
   justification flows, in which it lives, is--Christ. It is true that we
   no where find in the Epistles the expression justification by Christ'
   exactly in the sense of modern theology. But, on the other hand, we are
   described as dead with Christ, we live with Him, we are members of His
   body, we follow Him in all the stages of His being. All this is another
   way of expressing We are justified by faith'. That which takes us out
   of ourselves and links us with Christ, which anticipates in an instant
   the rest of life, which is the door of every heavenly and spiritual
   relation, presenting us through a glass with the image of Christ
   crucified, is faith. The difference between our own mode of thinking
   and that of the Apostle is mainly this,--that to him Christ is set
   forth more as in a picture, and less through the medium of ideas or
   figures of speech; and that while we conceive the Saviour more
   naturally as an object of faith, to St. Paul He is rather the
   indwelling power of life which is fashioned in him, the marks of whose
   body he bears, the measure of whose sufferings he fills up.

   When in the Gospel it is said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
   thou shalt be saved'. this is substantially the same truth as We are
   justified by faith'. It is another way of expressing Therefore being
   justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
   Christ'. Yet we may note two points of difference, as well as two of
   resemblance, in the manner in which the doctrine is set forth in the
   Gospel as compared with the manner of the Epistles of St. Paul. First,
   in the omission of any connexion between the doctrine of faith in
   Christ, and the admission of the Gentiles. The Saviour is within the
   borders of Israel; and accordingly little is said of the sheep not of
   this fold', or the other husbandmen who shall take possession of the
   vine yard. Secondly, there is in the words of Christ no antagonism or
   opposition to the law, except so far as the law itself represented an
   imperfect or defective morality, or the perversions of the law had
   become inconsistent with every moral principle. Two points of
   resemblance have also to be remarked between the faith of the Gospels
   and of the Epistles. In the first place, both are accompanied by
   forgiveness of sins. As our Saviour to the disciple who affirms his
   belief says, Thy sins be forgiven thee'; so St. Paul, when seeking to
   describe, in the language of the Old Testament, the state of
   justification by faith, cites the words of David, Blessed is the man to
   whom the Lord will not impute sin'. Secondly, they have both a kind of
   absoluteness which raises them above earthly things. There is a sort of
   omnipotence attributed to faith, of which the believer is made a
   partaker. Whoso hath faith as a grain of mustard seed, and should say
   unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, it
   shall be done unto him', is the language of our Lord. I can do all
   things through Christ that strengtheneth me', are the words of St.
   Paul.

   Faith, in the view of the Apostle, has a further aspect, which is
   freedom. That quality in us which in reference to God and Christ is
   faith, in .reference to ourselves and our fellow-men is Christian
   liberty. With this freedom Christ has made us free'; where the spirit
   of the Lord is, there is liberty.' It is the image also of the
   communion of the world to come. The Jerusalem that is above is free',
   and the creature is waiting to be delivered into the glorious liberty
   of the children of God'. It applies to the Church as now no longer
   confined in the prison-house of the Jewish dispensation; to the grace
   of God, which is given irrespectively to all; to the individual, the
   power of whose will is now loosed; to the Gospel, as freedom from the
   law, setting the conscience at rest about questions of meats and
   drinks, and new moons and sabbaths; and, above all, to the freedom from
   the consciousness of sin: in all these senses the law of the spirit of
   life is also the law of freedom.

   In modern language, assurance has been deemed necessary to the
   definition of a true faith. There is a sense, too, in which final
   assurance entered into the conception of the faith of the Epistles.
   Looking at men from without, it was possible for them to fall away
   finally; it was possible also to fall without falling away; as St. John
   says, there is a sin unto death, and there is a sin not unto death. But
   looking inwards into their hearts and consciences, their salvation was
   not a matter of probability; they knew whom they had believed, and were
   confident that He who had begun the good work in them would continue it
   unto the end. All calculations respecting the future were to them lost
   in the fact that they were already saved; to use a homely expression,
   they had no time to inquire whether the state to which they were called
   was permanent and final. The same intense faith which separated them
   from the present world, had already given them a place in the world to
   come. They had not to win the crown,--it was already won: this life,
   when they thought of themselves in relation to Christ, was the next; as
   their union with Him seemed to them more true and real than the mere
   accidents of their temporal existence.

   A few words will briefly recapitulate the doctrine of righteousness by
   faith as gathered from the Epistles of St. Paul.

   Faith, then, according to the Apostle, is the spiritual principle
   whereby we go out of ourselves to hold communion with God and Christ;
   not like the faith of the Epistle to the Hebrews, clothing itself in
   the shadows of the law; but opposed to the law, and of a nature purely
   moral and spiritual. It frees man from the flesh, the law, the world,
   and from himself also; that is, from his sinful nature, which is the
   meeting of these three elements in his spiritual consciousness. And to
   be justified' is to pass into a new state; such as that of the
   Christian world when compared with the Jewish or Pagan; such as that
   which St. Paul had himself felt at the moment of his conversion; such
   as that which he reminds the Galatian converts they had experienced,
   before whose eyes Jesus Christ was evidently set forth crucified'; an
   inward or subjective state, to which the outward or objective act of
   calling, on God^s part, through the preaching of the Apostle,
   corresponded; which, considered on a wider scale, was the acceptance of
   the Gentiles and of every one who feared God; corresponding in like
   manner to the eternal purpose of God; indicated in the case of the
   individual by his own inward assurance; in the case of the world at
   large, testified by the fact; accompanied in the first by the sense of
   peace and forgiveness, and implying to mankind generally the last final
   principle of the Divine Government,--God concluded all under sin that
   he might have mercy upon all'.

   We acknowledge that there is a difference between the meaning of
   justification by faith to St. Paul and to ourselves. Eighteen hundred
   years cannot have passed away, leaving the world and the mind of man,
   or the use of language, the same as it was. Times have altered, and
   Christianity, partaking of the social and political progress of
   mankind, receiving, too, its own intellectual development, has
   inevitably lost its simplicity. The true use of philosophy is to
   restore this simplicity; to undo the perplexities which the love of
   system or past philosophies, or the imperfection of language or logic,
   have made; to lighten the burden which the traditions of ages have
   imposed upon us. To understand St. Paul we found it necessary to get
   rid of definitions and deductions, which might be compared to a mazy
   undergrowth of some noble forest, which we must clear away ere we can
   wander in its ranges. And it is necessary for ourselves also to return
   from theology to Scripture; to seek a truth to live and die in,--not to
   be the subject of verbal disputes, which entangle the religious sense
   in scholastic refinements. The words of eternal life are few and
   simple, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved'.

   Remaining, then, within the circle of the New Testament, which we
   receive as a rule of life for ourselves, no less than for the early
   Church, we must not ignore the great differences by which we are
   distinguished from those for whom it was written. Words of life and
   inspiration, heard by them with ravishment for the first time, are to
   us words of fixed and conventional meaning; they no longer express
   feelings of the heart, but ideas of the head. Nor is the difference
   less between the state of the world then and now; not only of the
   outward world in which we live, but of that inner world which we
   ourselves are. The law is dead to us, and we to the law; and the
   language of St. Paul is relative to what has passed away. The
   transitions of meaning in the use of the word law tend also to a
   corresponding variation in the meaning of faith. We are not looking for
   the immediate coming of Christ, and do not anticipate, in a single
   generation, the end of human things, or the history of a life in the
   moment of baptism or conversion. To us time and eternity have a fixed
   boundary, between them there is a gulf which we cannot pass; we do not
   mingle in our thoughts earth and heaven. Last of all, we are in a
   professing Christian world, in which religion, too, has become a sort
   of business; moreover, we see a long way off truths of which the first
   believers were eye-witnesses. Hence it has become difficult for us to
   conceive the simple force of such expressions as dead with Christ', if
   ye then be risen with Christ',--which are repeated in prayers or
   sermons, but often convey no distinct impression to the minds of the
   hearers.

   The neglect of these differences between ourselves and the first
   disciples has sometimes led to a distortion of doctrine and a
   perversion of life; where words had nothing to correspond to them,
   views of human nature have been invented to suit the supposed meaning
   of St. Paul. Thus, for example, the notion of legal righteousness is
   indeed a fiction as applied to our own times. Nor, in truth, is the
   pride of human nature, or the tendency to rebel against the will of
   God, or to attach an undue value to good works, bet ter founded. Men
   are evil in all sorts of ways: they deceive themselves and others; they
   walk by the opinion of others, and not by faith; they give way to their
   passions; they are imperious and oppressive to one another. But if we
   look closely, we perceive that most of their sins are not consciously
   against God; the pride of rank, or wealth, or power, or intellect, may
   be shown towards their brethren, but no man is proud towards God. No
   man does wrong for the sake of rebelling against God. The evil is not
   that men are bound under a curse by the ever-present consciousness of
   sin, but that sins pass unheeded by: not that they wantonly offend God,
   but that they know Him not. So, again, there may be a false sense of
   security towards God, as is some times observed on a death-bed, when
   mere physical weakness seems to incline the mind to patience and
   resignation; yet this more often manifests itself in a mistaken faith,
   than in a reliance on good works. Or, to take another instance, we are
   often surprised at the extent to which men who are not professors of
   religion seem to practise Christian virtues; yet their state, however
   we may regard it, has nothing in common with legal or
   self-righteousness.

   And besides theories of religion at variance with experience, which
   have always a kind of unsoundness, the attempt of men to apply
   Scripture to their own lives in the letter rather than in the spirit,
   has been very injurious in other ways to the faith of Christ. Persons
   have confused the accidental circumstances or language of the Apostolic
   times with the universal language of morality and truth. They have
   reduced human nature to very great straits; they have staked salvation
   upon the right use of a word; they have enlisted the noblest feelings
   of mankind in opposition to their Gospel'. They have become mystics in
   the attempt to follow the Apostles, who were not mystics. Narrowness in
   their own way of life has led to exclusiveness in their judgements on
   other men. The undue stress which they have laid on particular precepts
   or texts of Scripture has closed their minds against its general
   purpose; the rigidness of their own rules has rendered it impossible
   that they should grow freely to the stature of the perfect man'. They
   have ended in a verbal Christianity, which has preserved words when the
   meaning of them had changed, taking the form, while it quenched the
   life, of the Gospel.

   Leaving the peculiar and relative aspect of the Pauline doctrine, as
   well as the scholastic and traditional one, we have again to ask the
   meaning of justification by faith. We may divide the subject, first, as
   it may be considered in the abstract; and, secondly, as personal to
   ourselves.

   I. Our justification may be regarded as an act on God's part. It may be
   said that this act is continuous, and commensurate with our whole
   lives; that although known unto God are all his works from the
   beginning', yet that, speaking as men, and translating what we term the
   acts of God into human language, we are ever being more and more
   justified, as in theological writers we are said also to be more and
   more sanctified. At first sight it seems that to deny this involves an
   absurdity; it may be thought a contradiction to maintain that we are
   justified at once, but sanctified all our life long. Yet perhaps this
   latter mode of statement is better than the other, because it presents
   two aspects of the truth instead of one only; it is also a nearer
   expression of the inward consciousness of the soul itself. For must we
   not admit that it is the unchangeable will of God that all mankind
   should be saved? Justification in the mind of the believer is the
   perception of this fact, which always was. It is not made more a fact
   by our knowing it for many years or our whole life. And this is the
   witness of experience. For he who is justified by faith does not go
   about doubting in himself or his future destiny, but trusting in God.
   From the first moment that he turns earnestly to God he believes that
   he is saved; not from any confidence in himself, but from an
   overpowering sense of the love of God and Christ.

   II. It is an old problem in philosophy,--What is the beginning of our
   moral being? What is that prior principle which makes good actions
   produce good habits? Which of those actions raises us above the world
   of sight? Plato would have answered, the contemplation of the idea of
   good. Some of ourselves would answer, by the substitution of a
   conception of moral growth for the mechanical theory of habits. Leaving
   out of sight our relation to God, we can only say, that we are
   fearfully and wonderfully made, with powers which we are unable to
   analyse. It is a parallel difficulty in religion which is met by the
   doctrine of righteousness by faith. We grow up spiritually, we cannot
   tell how; not by outward acts, nor always by energetic effort, but
   stilly and silently, by the grace of God descending upon us, as the dew
   falls upon the earth. When a person is apprehensive and excited about
   his future state, straining every nerve lest he should fall short of
   the requirements of God, overpowered with the memory of his past
   sins,--that is not the temper of mind in which he can truly serve God,
   or work out his own salvation. Peace must go before as well as follow
   after; a peace, too, not to be found in the necessity of law (as
   philosophy has sometimes held), but in the sense of the love of God to
   His creatures. He has no right to this peace, and yet he has it; in the
   consciousness of his new state there is more than he can reasonably
   explain. At once and immediately the Gospel tells him that he is
   justified by faith, that his pardon is simultaneous with the moment of
   his belief, that he may go on his way rejoicing to fufil the duties of
   life; for, in human language, God is no longer angry with him.

   III. Thus far, in the consideration of righteousness by faith, we have
   obtained two points of view, in which, though regarded in the abstract
   only, the truth of which these words are the symbol has still a
   meaning; first, as expressing the unchangeableness of the mercy of God;
   and, secondly, the mysteriousness of human action. As we approach
   nearer, we are unavoidably led to regard the gift of righteousness
   rather in reference to the subject than to the object, in relation to
   man rather than God. What quality, feeling, temper, habit in ourselves
   answers to it? It may be more or less conscious to us, more of a state
   and less of a feeling, showing itself rather in our lives than our
   lips. But for these differences we can make allowance. It is the same
   faith still, under various conditions and circumstances, and sometimes
   taking different names.

   IV. The expression righteousness by faith' indicates the personal
   character of salvation; it is not the tale of works that we do, but we
   ourselves who are accepted of God. Who can bear to think of his own
   actions as they are seen by the eye of the Almighty? Looking at their
   defective performance, or analysing them into the secondary motives out
   of which they have sprung, do we seem to have any ground on which we
   can stand; is there anything which satisfies ourselves? Yet, knowing
   that our own works cannot abide the judgement of God, we know also that
   His love is not proportioned to them. He is a Person who deals with us
   as persons over whom He has an absolute right, who have nevertheless an
   endless value to Him. When He might exact all, He forgives all; the
   kingdom of heaven' is like not only to a Master taking account with his
   servants, but to a Father going out to meet his returning son. The
   symbol and mean of this personal relation of man to God is faith; and
   the righteousness which consists not in what we do, but in what we are,
   is the righteousness of faith.

   V. Faith may be spoken of, in the language of the Epistle to the
   Hebrews, as the substance of things unseen. But what are the things
   unseen? Not only an invisible world ready to flash through the material
   at the appearance of Christ; not angels, or powers of darkness, or even
   God Himself sitting', as the Old Testament described, on the circle of
   the heavens'; but the kingdom of truth and justice, the things that are
   within, of which God is the centre, and with which men everywhere by
   faith hold communion. Faith is the belief in the existence of this
   kingdom; that is, in the truth and justice and mercy of God, who
   disposes all things--not, perhaps, in our judgement for the greatest
   happiness of His creatures, but absolutely in accordance with our moral
   notions. And that this is not seen to be the case here, makes it a
   matter of faith that it will be so in some way that we do not at
   present comprehend. He that believes on God believes, first, that He
   is; and, secondly, that He is the Rewarder of them that seek Him.

   VI. Now, if we go on to ask what gives this assurance of the truth and
   justice of God, the answer is, the life and death of Christ, who is the
   Son of God, and the Revelation of God. We know what He himself has told
   us of God, and we cannot conceive perfect goodness separate from
   perfect truth; nay, this goodness itself is the only conception we can
   form of God, if we confess what the mere immensity of the material
   world tends to suggest, that the Almighty is not a natural or even a
   supernatural power, but a Being of whom the reason and conscience of
   man have a truer conception than imagination in its highest flights. He
   is not in the storm, nor in the thunder, nor in the earthquake, but in
   the still small voice'. And this image of God as He reveals himself in
   the heart of man is Christ in us the hope of glory'; Christ as He once
   was upon earth in His sufferings rather than His miracles,--the image
   of goodness and truth and peace and love.

   We are on the edge of a theological difficulty; for who can deny that
   the image of that goodness may fade from the mind's eye after so many
   centuries, or that there are those who recognize the idea and may be
   unable to admit the fact? Can we say that this error of the head is
   also a corruption of the will? The lives of such unbelievers in the
   facts of Christianity would sometimes refute our explanation. And yet
   it is true that Providence has made our spiritual life dependent on the
   belief in certain truths, and those truths run up into matters of fact,
   with the belief in which they have ever been associated; it is true,
   also, that the most important moral consequences flow from unbelief. We
   grant the difficulty: no complete answer can be given to it on this
   side the grave. Doubtless God has provided a way that the sceptic no
   less than the believer shall receive his due; He does not need our
   timid counsels for the protection of the truth. If among those who have
   rejected the facts of the Gospel history some have been rash,
   hypercritical, inflated with the pride of intellect, or secretly
   alienated by sensuality from the faith of Christ,--there have been
   others, also, upon whom we may conceive to rest a portion of that
   blessing which comes to such as have not seen and yet have believed'.

   VII. In the Epistles of St. Paul, and yet more in the Epistle to the
   Hebrews, the relation of Christ to mankind is expressed under figures
   of speech taken from the Mosaic dispensation: He is the Sacrifice for
   the sins of men, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the
   world'; the Antitype of all the types, the fulfilment in His own person
   of the Jewish law. Such words may give comfort to those who think of
   God under human imagery, but they seem to require explanation when we
   rise to the contemplation of Him as the God of truth, without parts or
   passions, who knows all things, and cannot be angry with any, or see
   them other than they truly are. What is indicated by them, to us who
   are dead to the law', is, that God has manifested himself in Christ as
   the God of mercy; who is more ready to hear than we to pray; who has
   forgiven us almost before we ask Him; who has given us His only Son,
   and how will He not with Him also give us all things? They intimate, on
   God's part, that He is not extreme to mark what is done amiss; in human
   language, he is touched with the feeling of our infirmities': on our
   part, that we say to God, Not of ourselves, but of thy grace and mercy,
   O Lord'. Not in the fulness of life and health, nor in the midst of
   business, nor in the schools of theology; but in the sick chamber,
   where are no more earthly interests, and in the hour of death, we have
   before us the living image of the truth of justification by faith, when
   man acknowledges, on the confines of another world, the
   unprofitableness of his own good deeds, and the goodness of God even in
   afflicting him, and his absolute reliance not on works of righteousness
   that he has done, but on the Divine mercy.

   VIII. A true faith has been sometimes defined to be not a faith in the
   unseen merely, or in God or Christ, but a personal assurance of
   salvation. Such a feeling may be only the veil of sensualism; it may be
   also the noble confidence of St. Paul. I am persuaded that neither
   death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things
   present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
   creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in
   Christ Jesus our Lord.' It may be an emotion, resting on no other
   ground except that we believe; or, a conviction deeply rooted in our
   life and character. Scripture and reason alike seem to require this
   belief in our own salvation: and yet to assume that we are at the end
   of the race may make us lag in our course. Whatever danger there is in
   the doctrine of the Divine decrees, the danger is nearer home, and more
   liable to influence practice, when our faith takes the form of personal
   assurance. How, then, are we to escape from the dilemma, and have a
   rational confidence in the mercy of God?

   IX. This confidence must rest, first, on a sense of the truth and
   justice of God, rising above perplexities of fact in the world around
   us, or the tangle of metaphysical or theological difficulties. But
   although such a sense of the truth or justice of God is the beginning
   of our peace, yet a link of connexion is wanting before we can venture
   to apply to ourselves that which we acknowledge in the abstract. The
   justice of God may lead to our condemnation as well as to our
   justification. Are we then, in the language of the ancient tragedy, to
   say that no one can be counted happy before he dies, or that salvation
   is only granted when the end of our course is seen? Not so; the Gospel
   encourages us to regard ourselves as already saved; for we have
   communion with Christ and appropriate His work by faith. And this
   appropriation means nothing short of the renunciation of self and the
   taking up of the cross of Christ in daily life. Whether such an
   imitation or appropriation of Christ is illusive or real,--a new mould
   of nature or only an outward and superficial impression, is a question
   not to be answered by any further theological distinction, but by an
   honest and good heart searching into itself. Then only, when we
   surrender ourselves into the hands of God, when we ask Him to show us
   to ourselves as we truly are, when we allow ourselves in no sin, when
   we attribute nothing to our own merits, when we test our faith, not by
   the sincerity of an hour, but of months and years, we learn the true
   meaning of that word in which, better than any other, the nature of
   righteousness by faith is summed up,--peace.

   And now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of
   these is love.' There seems to be a contradiction in love being the
   greatest', when faith is the medium of acceptance. Love, according to
   some, is preferred to faith, because it reaches to another life; when
   faith and hope are swallowed up in sight, love remains still. Love,
   according to others, has the first place, because it is Divine as well
   as human; it is the love of God to man, as well as of man to God.
   Perhaps, the order of precedence is sufficiently explained by the
   occasion; to a Church torn by divisions the Apostle says, that the
   first of Christian graces is love'. Another thought, however, is
   suggested by these words, which has a bearing on our present subject.
   It is this, that in using the received terms of theology, we must also
   acknowledge their relative and transient character. Christian truth has
   many modes of statement; love is the more natural expression to St.
   John, faith to St. Paul. The indwelling of Christ or of the Spirit of
   God, grace, faith, hope, love, are not parts of a system, but powers or
   aspects of the Christian life. Human minds are different, and the same
   mind is not the same at different times; and the best of men nowadays
   have but a feeble consciousness of spiritual truths. We ought not to
   dim that consciousness by insisting on a single formula; and therefore
   while speaking of faith as the instrument of justification, because
   faith indicates the apprehensive, dependent character of the believer's
   relation to Christ, we are bound also to deny that the Gospel is
   contained in any word, or the Christian life inseparably linked to any
   one quality. We must acknowledge the imperfection of language and
   thought, and seek rather to describe than to define the work of God in
   the soul, which has as many forms as the tempers, capacities,
   circumstances, and accidents of our nature.
     __________________________________________________________________

ESSAY ON ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION

   Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not . . . Then said I, Lo, I come
   to do thy will, O God.'--Ps. xl. 6-8.

   THE doctrine of the Atonement has often been explained in a way at
   which our moral feelings revolt. God is represented as angry with us
   for what we never did; He is ready to inflict a disproportionate
   punishment on us for what we are; He is satisfied by the sufferings of
   His Son in our stead. The sin of Adam is first imputed to us; then the
   righteousness of Christ. The imperfection of human law is transferred
   to the Divine; or rather a figment of law which has no real existence.
   The death of Christ is also explained by the analogy of the ancient
   rite of sacrifice. He is a victim laid upon the altar to appease the
   wrath of God. The institutions and ceremonies of the Mosaical religion
   are applied to Him. He is further said to bear the infinite punishment
   of infinite sin. When He had suffered or paid the penalty, God is
   described as granting Him the salvation of mankind in return.

   I shall endeavour to show, (1) that these conceptions of the work of
   Christ have no foundation in Scripture; (2) that their growth may be
   traced in ecclesiastical history; (3) that the only sacrifice,
   atonement, or satisfaction, with which the Christian has to do, is a
   moral and spiritual one; not the pouring out of blood upon the earth,
   but the living sacrifice to do thy will, O God'; in which the believer
   has part as well as his Lord; about the meaning of which there can be
   no more question in our day than there was in the first ages.

  § 1.

   It is difficult to concentrate the authority of Scripture on points of
   controversy. For Scripture is not doctrine but teaching; it arises
   naturally out of the circumstances of the writers; it is not intended
   to meet the intellectual refinements of modern times. The words of our
   Saviour, My kingdom is not of this world', admit of a wide application,
   to systems of knowledge, as well as to systems of government and
   politics. The bread of life' is not an elaborate theology. The
   revelation which Scripture makes to us of the will of God, does not
   turn upon the exact use of language. (Lo, O man, he hath showed thee
   what he required of thee; to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk
   humbly with thy God.') The books of Scripture were written by different
   authors, and in different ages of the world; we cannot, there fore,
   apply them with the minuteness and precision of a legal treatise. The
   Old Testament is not on all points the same with the New; for Moses
   allowed of some things for the hardness of their hearts'; nor the Law
   with the Prophets, for there were proverbs in the house of Israel' that
   were reversed; nor does the Gospel, which is simple and universal, in
   all respects agree with the Epistles which have reference to the
   particular state of the first converts; nor is the teaching of St.
   James, who admits works as a coefficient with faith in the
   justification of man, absolutely identical with that of St. Paul, who
   asserts righteousness by faith only; nor is the character of all the
   Epistles of St. Paul, written as they were at different times amid the
   changing scenes of life, precisely the same; nor does he himself claim
   an equal authority for all his precepts. No theory of inspiration can
   obliterate these differences; or rather none can be true which does not
   admit them. The neglect of them reduces the books of Scripture to an
   unmeaning unity, and effectually seals up their true sense. But if we
   acknowledge this natural diversity of form, this perfect humanity of
   Scripture, we must, at any rate in some general way, adjust the
   relation of the different parts to one another before we apply its
   words to the establishment of any doctrine.

   Nor again is the citation of a single text sufficient to prove a
   doctrine; nor must consequences be added on, which are not found in
   Scripture, nor figures of speech reasoned about, as though they
   conveyed exact notions. An accidental similarity of expression is not
   to be admitted as an authority; nor a mystical allusion, which has been
   gathered from Scripture, according to some method which in other
   writings the laws of language and logic would not justify. When engaged
   in controversy with Roman Catholics, about the doctrine of purgatory,
   or transubstantiation, or the authority of the successors of St. Peter,
   we are willing to admit these principles. They are equally true when
   the subject of inquiry is the atoning work of Christ. We must also
   distinguish the application of a passage in religious discourse from
   its original meaning. The more obvious explanation which is received in
   our own day, or by our own branch of the Church, will sometimes have to
   be set aside for one more difficult, because less familiar, which is
   drawn from the context. Nor is it allowable to bar an interpretation of
   Scripture from a regard to doctrinal consequences. Further, it is
   necessary that we should make allowance for the manner in which ideas
   were represented in the ages at which the books of Scripture were
   written which cannot be so lively to us as to contemporaries. Nor can
   we deny that texts may be quoted on both sides of a controversy, as for
   example, in the controversy respecting predestination. For in
   religious, as in other differences, there is often truth on both sides.

   The drift of the preceding remarks is not to show that there is any
   ambiguity or uncertainty in the witness of Scripture to the great
   truths of morality and religion. Nay, rather the universal voice of the
   Old Testament and the New proclaims that there is one God of infinite
   justice, goodness, and truth: and the writers of the New Testament
   agree in declaring that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the Saviour of
   the world. There can never, by any possibility, be a doubt that our
   Lord and St. Paul taught the doctrine of a future life, and of a
   judgement, at which men would give an account of the deeds done in the
   body. It is no matter for regret that the essentials of the Gospel are
   within the reach of a child's understanding. But this clearness of
   Scripture about the great truths of religion does not extend to the
   distinctions and developments of theological systems; it rather seems
   to contrast with them. It is one thing to say that Christ is the
   Saviour of the world', or that we are reconciled to God through
   Christ', and another thing to affirm that the Levitical or heathen
   sacrifices typified the death of Christ; or that the death of Christ
   has a sacrificial import, and is an atonement or satisfaction for the
   sins of men. The latter positions involve great moral and intellectual
   difficulties; many things have to be considered, before we can allow
   that the phraseology of Scripture is to be caught up and applied in
   this way. For we may easily dress up in the externals of the New
   Testament a doctrine which is really at variance with the Spirit of
   Christ and His Apostles, and we may impart to this doctrine, by the
   help of living tradition, that is to say, custom and religious use, a
   sacredness yet greater than is derived from such a fallacious
   application of Scripture language. It happens almost unavoidably (and
   our only chance of guarding against the illusion is to be aware of it)
   that we are more under the influence of rhetoric in theology than in
   other branches of knowledge; our minds are so constituted that what we
   often hear we are ready to believe, especially when it falls in with
   previous convictions or wants. But he who desires to know whether the
   statements above referred to have any real objective foundation in the
   New Testament, will carefully weigh the following
   considerations:--Whether there is any reason for interpreting the New
   Testament by the analogy of the Old? Whether the sacrificial
   expressions which occur in the New Testament, and on which the question
   chiefly turns, are to be interpreted spiritually or literally? Whether
   the use of such expressions may not be a figurative mode of the time,
   which did not necessarily recall the thing signified any more than the
   popular use of the term Sacrifice' among ourselves? He will consider
   further whether this language is employed vaguely, or definitely?
   Whether it is the chief manner of expressing the work of Christ, or one
   among many? Whether it is found to occur equally in every part of the
   New Testament; for example, in the Gospels, as well as in the Epistles?
   Whether the more frequent occurrence of it in particular books, as for
   instance, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, may not be explained by the
   peculiar object or circumstances of the writer? Whether other figures
   of speech, such as death, life, resurrection with Christ, are not
   equally frequent, which have never yet been made the foundation of any
   doctrine? Lastly, whether this language of sacrifice is not applied to
   the believer as well as to his Lord, and whether the believer is not
   spoken of as sharing the sufferings of his Lord?

   I. All Christians agree that there is a connexion between the Old
   Testament and the New: Novum Testamentum in vetere patet; Vetus
   Testamentum in novo patet': I am not come to destroy the law and the
   prophets, but to fulfil.' But, respecting the nature of the revelation
   or fulfilment which is implied in these expressions, they are not
   equally agreed. Some conceive the Old and New Testaments to be double
   one against the other'; the one being the type, and the other the
   antitype, the ceremonies of the Law, and the symbols and imagery of the
   Prophets, supplying to them the forms of thought and religious ideas of
   the Gospel. Even the history of the Jewish people has been sometimes
   thought to be an anticipation or parallel of the history of the
   Christian world; many accidental circumstances in the narrative of
   Scripture being likewise taken as an example of the Christian life. The
   relation between the Old and New Testaments has been regarded by others
   from a different point of view, as a continuous one, which may be
   described under some image of growth or development; the facts and
   ideas of the one leading on to the facts and ideas of the other; and
   the two together forming one record of the increasing purpose which
   through the ages ran'. This continuity, however, is broken at one
   point, and the parts separate and reunite like ancient and modern
   civilization, though the connexion is nearer, and of another kind; the
   Messiah, in whom the hopes of the Jewish people centre, being the first
   born of a new creation, the Son of Man and the Son of God. It is
   necessary, moreover, to distinguish the connexion of fact from that of
   language and idea; because the Old Testament is not only the
   preparation for the New, but also the figure and expression of it.
   Those who hold the first of these two views, viz. the reduplication of
   the Old Testament in the New, rest their opinion chiefly on two
   grounds. First, it seems incredible to them, and repugnant to their
   conception of a Divine revelation, that the great apparatus of rites
   and ceremonies, with which, even at this distance of time, they are
   intimately acquainted, should have no inner and symbolical meaning;
   that the Jewish nation for many ages should have carried with it a load
   of forms only; that the words of Moses which they still hear read in
   the synagogue every Sabbath-Day', and which they often read in their
   own households, should relate only to matters of outward observance;
   just as they are unwilling to believe that the prophecies, which they
   also read, have no reference to the historical events of modern times.
   And, secondly, they are swayed by the authority of the Epistle to the
   Hebrews, the writer of which has made the Old Testament the allegory of
   the New.

   It will be considered hereafter what is to be said in answer to the
   last of these arguments. The first is perhaps sufficiently answered by
   the analogy of other ancient religions. It would be ridiculous to
   assume a spiritual meaning in the Homeric rites and sacrifices;
   although they may be different in other respects, have we any more
   reason for inferring such a meaning in the Mosaic? Admitting the
   application which is made of a few of them by the author of the Epistle
   to the Hebrews to be their original intention, the great mass would
   still remain un explained, and yet they are all alike contained in the
   same Revelation. It may seem natural to us to suppose that God taught
   His people like children by the help of outward objects. But no a
   priori supposition of this kind, no fancy, however natural, of a
   symmetry or coincidence which may be traced between the Old Testament
   and the New, nor the frequent repetition of such a theory in many
   forms, is an answer to the fact. That fact is the silence of the Old
   Testament itself. If the sacrifices of the Mosaical religion were
   really symbolical of the death of Christ, how can it be accounted for
   that no trace of this symbolism appears in the books of Moses
   themselves? that prophets and righteous men of old never gave this
   interpretation to them? that the lawgiver is intent only on the sign,
   and says nothing of the thing signified? No other book is ever supposed
   to teach truths about which it is wholly silent. We do not imagine the
   Iliad and Odyssey to be a revelation of the Platonic or Socratic
   philosophy. The circumstance that these poems received this or some
   other allegorical explanation from a school of Alexandrian critics,
   does not incline us to believe that such an explanation is a part of
   their original meaning. The human mind does not work in this occult
   manner; language was not really given men to conceal their thoughts;
   plain precepts or statements do not contain hidden mysteries.

   It may be said that the Levitical rites and offerings had a meaning,
   not for the Jews, but for us, on whom the ends of the world are come'.
   Moses, David, Isaiah were unacquainted with this meaning; it was
   reserved for those who lived after the event to which they referred had
   taken place to discover it. Such an afterthought may be natural to us,
   who are ever tracing a literary or mystical connexion between the Old
   Testament and the New; it would have been very strange to us, had we
   lived in the ages before the coming of Christ. It is incredible that
   God should have instituted rites and ceremonies, which were to be
   observed as forms by a whole people throughout their history, to teach
   mankind fifteen hundred years afterwards, uncertainly and in a figure,
   a lesson which Christ taught plainly and without a figure. Such an
   assumption confuses the application of Scripture with its original
   meaning; the use of language in the New Testament with the facts of the
   Old. Further, it does away with all certainty in the interpretation of
   Scripture. If we can introduce the New Testament into the Old, we may
   with equal right introduce Tradition or Church History into the New.

   The question here raised has a very important bearing on the use of the
   figures of atonement and sacrifice in the New Testament. For if it
   could be shown that the sacrifices which were offered up in the
   Levitical worship were anticipatory only; that the law too declared
   itself to be a shadow of good things to come'; that Moses had himself
   spoken of the reproach of Christ'; in that case the slightest allusion
   in the New Testament to the customs or words of the law would have a
   peculiar interest. We should be justified in referring to them as
   explanatory of the work of Christ, in studying the Levitical
   distinctions respecting offerings with a more than antiquarian
   interest, in disputing about purifying' and modes of expiation. But if
   not; if, in short, we are only reflecting the present on the past, or
   perhaps confusing both together, and interpreting Christianity by
   Judaism, and Judaism by Christianity; then the sacrificial language of
   the New Testament loses its depth and significance, or rather acquires
   a higher, that is, a spiritual one.

   II. Of such an explanation, if it had really existed when the Mosaic
   religion was still a national form of worship, traces would occur in
   the writings of the Psalmists and the Prophets; for these furnish a
   connecting link between the Old Testament and the New. But this is not
   the case; the Prophets are, for the most part, unconscious of the law,
   or silent respecting its obligations.

   In many places, their independence of the Mosaical religion passes into
   a kind of opposition to it. The inward and spiritual truth asserts
   itself, not as an explanation of the ceremonial observance, but in
   defiance of it. The undergrowth of morality' is putting forth shoots in
   spite of the deadness of the ceremonial hull. Isaiah i. 13: Bring no
   more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons
   and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is
   iniquity, even the solemn meeting.' Micah vi. 6: Wherewith shall I come
   before the Lord, or bow myself before the high God? shall I come before
   him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be
   pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of
   oil?' Psalm 1. 10: All the beasts of the forests are mine, and so are
   the cattle upon a thousand hills: If I were hungry I would not tell
   thee.' We cannot doubt that in passages like these we are bursting the
   bonds of the Levitical or ceremonial dispensation.

   The spirit of prophecy, speaking by Isaiah, does not say I will have
   mercy as well as sacrifice', but I will have mercy and not (or rather
   than) sacrifice'. In the words of the Psalmist, Sacrifice and offering
   thou wouldest not; then said I, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God'; The
   sacrifices of God are a broken spirit': or again, A bruised reed shall
   he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench; he shall bring
   forth judgement unto truth': or again, according to the image both of
   Isaiah and Jeremiah (Isa. liii. 7; Jer. xi. 19), which seems to have
   passed before the vision of John the Baptist (John i. 36), He is
   brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers
   is dumb'. These are the points at which the Old and New Testaments most
   nearly touch, the (tu'poi) types or ensamples of the one which we find
   in the other, the pre-notions or preparations with which we pass from
   Moses and the Prophets to the Gospel of Christ.

   III. It is hard to imagine that there can be any truer expression of
   the Gospel than the words of Christ himself, or that any truth omitted
   by Him is essential to the Gospel. The disciple is not above his
   master, nor the servant greater than his lord.' The philosophy of Plato
   was not better under stood by his followers than by himself, nor can we
   allow that the Gospel is to be interpreted by the Epistles, or that the
   Sermon on the Mount is only half Christian and needs the fuller
   inspiration or revelation of St. Paul or the author of the Epistle to
   the Hebrews. There is no trace in the words of our Saviour of any
   omission or imperfection; there is no indication in the Epistles of any
   intention to complete or perfect them. How strange would it have seemed
   in the Apostle St. Paul, who thought himself unworthy to be called an
   Apostle because he persecuted the Church of God', to find that his own
   words were preferred in after ages to those of Christ himself!

   There is no study of theology which is likely to exercise a more
   elevating influence on the individual, or a more healing one on
   divisions of opinion, than the study of the words of Christ himself.
   The heart is its own witness to them; all Christian sects acknowledge
   them; they seem to escape or rise above the region or atmosphere of
   controversy. The form in which they exhibit the Gospel to us is the
   simplest and also the deepest; they are more free from details than any
   other part of Scripture, and they are absolutely independent of
   personal and national influences. In them is contained the expression
   of the inner life, of mankind, and of the Church; there, too, the
   individual beholds, as in a glass, the image of a goodness which is not
   of this world. To rank their authority below that of Apostles and
   Evangelists is to give up the best hope of reuniting Christendom in
   itself, and of making Christianity a universal religion.

   And Christ himself hardly even in a figure uses the word sacrifice';
   never with the least reference to His own life or death. There are many
   ways in which our Lord describes His relation to His Father and to
   mankind. His disciples are to be one with Him, even as He is one with
   the Father; whatsoever things He seeth the Father do He doeth. He says,
   I am the resurrection and the life'; or, I am the way, the truth, and
   the life'; and, No man cometh unto the Father but by me'; and again,
   Whatsoever things ye shall ask in my name shall be given you'; and once
   again, I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another
   comforter'. Most of His words are simple, like a man talking to his
   friends'; and their impressiveness and beauty partly flow from this
   simplicity. He speaks of His decease too which he should accomplish at
   Jerusalem', but not in sacrificial language. And now I go my way to him
   that sent me'; and Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay
   down his life for his friends'. Once indeed He says, The bread that I
   give is my flesh, which I give for the salvation of the world'; to
   which He himself adds, The words that I speak unto you they are spirit
   and they are truth', a commentary which should be applied not only to
   these but to all other figurative expressions which occur in the New
   Testament. In the words of institution of the Lord's supper, He also
   speaks of His death as in some way connected with the remission of
   sins. But among all the figures of speech under which He describes His
   work in the world,--the vine, the good shepherd, the door, the light of
   the world, the bread of life, the water of life, the corner stone, the
   temple,--none contains any sacrificial allusion.

   The parables of Christ have a natural and ethical character. They are
   only esoteric in as far as the hardness or worldliness of men's hearts
   prevents their understanding or receiving them. There is a danger of
   our making them mean too much rather than too little, that is, of
   winning a false interest for them by applying them mystically or taking
   them as a thesis for dialectical or rhetorical exercise. For example,
   if we say that the guest who came to the marriage supper without a
   wedding-garment represents a person clothed in his own righteousness
   instead of the righteousness of Christ, that is an explanation of which
   there is not a trace in the words of the parable itself. That is an
   illustration of the manner in which we are not to gather doctrines from
   Scripture. For there is nothing which we may not in this way
   superinduce on the plainest lessons of our Saviour.

   Reading the parables, then, simply and naturally, we find in them no
   indication of the doctrine of atonement or satisfaction. They form a
   very large portion of the sayings which have been recorded of our
   Saviour while He was on earth; and they teach a great number of
   separate lessons. But there is no hint contained in them of that view
   of the death of Christ which is sometimes regarded as the centre of the
   Gospel. There is no difficulty in the nature of things' which prevents
   the father going out to meet the prodigal son. No other condition is
   required of the justification of the publican except the true sense of
   his own unworthiness. The work of those labourers who toiled for one
   hour only in the vine yard is not supplemented by the merits and
   deserts of another. The reward for the cup of cold water is not denied
   to those who are unaware that He to whom it is given is the Lord. The
   parables of the Good Samaritan, of the Fig-tree, of the Talents, do not
   recognize the distinction of faith and works. Other sayings and doings
   of our Lord while He was on earth imply the same unconsciousness or
   neglect of the refinements of later ages. The power of the Son of Man
   to forgive sins is not dependent on the satisfaction which He is to
   offer for them. The Sermon on the Mount, which is the extension of the
   law to thought as well as action, and the two great commandments in
   which the law is summed up, are equally the expression of the Gospel.
   The mind of Christ is in its own place, far away from the op positions
   of modern theology. Like that of the prophets, His relation to the law
   of Moses is one of neutrality; He has another lesson to teach which
   comes immediately from God. The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses'
   seat--' or, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts,--' or, Which
   of you hath an ox or an ass,--' or, Ye fools, did not he that made that
   which is without make that which is within'. He does not say, Behold in
   me the true Sacrifice'; or, I that speak unto you am the victim and
   priest'. He has nothing to do with legal and ceremonial observances.
   There is a sort of natural irony with which He regards the world around
   Him. It was as though He would not have touched the least of the
   Levitical commandments; and yet not one stone was to be left upon
   another' as the indirect effect of His teaching. So that it would be
   equally true: I am not come to destroy the law but to fulfil'; and
   Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again'. My
   kingdom is not of this world', yet it shall subdue the kingdoms of this
   world; and, the Prince of Peace will not bring peace on earth, but a
   sword'.

   There is a mystery in the life and death of Christ; that is to say,
   there is more than we know or are perhaps capable of knowing. The
   relation in which He stood both to His Father and to mankind is
   imperfectly revealed to us; we do not fully under stand what may be
   termed in a figure His inner mind or consciousness. Expressions occur
   which are like flashes of this inner self, and seem to come from
   another world. There are also mixed modes which blend earth and heaven.
   There are circumstances in our Lord's life, too, of a similar nature,
   such as the transfiguration, or the agony in the garden, of which the
   Scripture records only the outward fact. Least of all do we pretend to
   fathom the import of His death. He died for us, in the language of the
   Gospels, in the same sense that He lived for us; He bore our sins' in
   the same sense that He bore our diseases' (Matt. viii. 17). He died by
   the hands of sinners as a malefactor, the innocent for the guilty,
   Jesus instead of Barabbas, because it was necessary that one man should
   die for that nation, and not for that nation only'; as a righteous man
   laying down his life for his friends, as a hero to save his country, as
   a martyr to bear witness to the truth. He died as the Son of God, free
   to lay down His life; confident that He would have power to take it
   again. More than this is meant; and more than human speech can tell.
   But we do not fill up the void of our knowledge by drawing out figures
   of speech into consequences at variance with the attributes of God. No
   external mode of describing or picturing the work of Christ realizes
   its inward nature. Neither will the reproduction of our own feelings in
   a doctrinal form supply any objective support or ground of the
   Christian faith.

   IV. Two of the General Epistles and two of the Epistles of St. Paul
   have no bearing on our present subject. These are the Epistles of St.
   James and St. Jude, and the two Epistles to the Thessalonians. Their
   silence, like that of the Gospels, is at least a negative proof that
   the doctrine of Sacrifice or Satisfaction is not a central truth of
   Christianity. The remainder of the New Testament will be sufficiently
   considered under two heads: first, the remaining Epistles of St. Paul;
   and, secondly, the Epistle to the Hebrews. The difficulties which arise
   respecting these are the same as the difficulties which apply in a less
   degree to one or two passages in the Epistles of St. Peter and St.
   John, and in the book of Revelation.

   It is not to be denied that the language of Sacrifice and Substitution
   occurs in the Epistles of St. Paul. Instances of the former are
   furnished by Rom. iii. 23, 25; 1 Cor. v. 7: of the latter by Gal. ii.
   20; iii. 13.

   Rom. iii. 23-25: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of
   God; being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that
   is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation
   through faith by his blood, to declare his righteousness.

   1 Cor. v. 7: Christ our passover is sacrificed [for us]; therefore let
   us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of
   malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and
   truth.'

   These two passages are a fair example of a few others. About the
   translation and explanation of the first of them interpreters differ.
   But the differences are not such as to affect our present question. For
   that question is a general one, viz. whether these, and similar
   sacrificial expressions, are passing figures of speech, or appointed
   signs or symbols of the death of Christ. On which it may be observed:--

   First: That these expressions are not the peculiar or characteristic
   modes in which the Apostle describes the relation of the believer to
   his Lord. For one instance of the use of sacrificial language, five or
   six might be cited of the language of identity or communion, in which
   the believer is described as one with his Lord in all the stages of His
   life and death. But this language is really inconsistent with the
   other. For if Christ is one with the believer, He cannot be regarded
   strictly as a victim who takes his place. And the stage of Christ's
   being which coincides, and is specially connected by the Apostle, with
   the justification of man, is not His death, but His resurrection (Rom.
   iv. 25).

   Secondly: These sacrificial expressions, as also the vicarious ones of
   which we shall hereafter speak, belong to the religious language of the
   age. They are found in Philo; and the Old Testament itself had already
   given them a spiritual or figurative application. There is no more
   reason to suppose that the word sacrifice' suggested the actual rite in
   the Apostolic age than in our own. It was a solemn religious idea, not
   a fact. The Apostles at Jerusalem saw the smoke of the daily sacrifice;
   the Apostle St. Paul beheld victims blazing on many altars in heathen
   cities (he regarded them as the tables of devils). But there is no
   reason to suppose that they led him to think of Christ, or that the
   bleeding form on the altar suggested the sufferings of his Lord.

   Therefore, thirdly, We shall only be led into error by attempting to
   explain the application of the word to Christ from the original meaning
   of the thing. That is a question of Jewish or classical archaeology,
   which would receive a different answer in different ages and countries.
   Many motives or instincts may be traced in the worship of the first
   children of men. The need of giving or getting rid of something; the
   desire to fulfil an obligation or expiate a crime; the consecration of
   a part that the rest may be holy; the Homeric feast of gods and men, of
   the living with the dead; the mystery of animal nature, of which the
   blood was the symbol; the substitution, in a few instances, of the less
   for the greater; in later ages, custom adhering to the old rituals when
   the meaning of them has passed away;--these seem to be true
   explanations of the ancient sacrifices. (Human sacrifices, such as
   those of the old Mexican peoples, or the traditional ones in
   prehistoric Greece, may be left out of consideration, as they appear to
   spring from such monstrous and cruel perversion of human nature.) But
   these explanations have nothing to do with our present subject. We may
   throw an imaginary light back upon them (for it is always easier to
   represent former ages like our own than to realize them as they truly
   were); they will not assist us in comprehending the import of the death
   of Christ, or the nature of the Christian religion. They are in the
   highest degree opposed to it, at the other end of the scale of human
   development, as the weak and beggarly elements' of sense and fear to
   the spirit whereby we cry, Abba, Father; almost, may we not say, as the
   instinct of animals to the reasoning faculties of man. For sacrifice is
   not, like prayer, one of the highest, but one of the lowest acts of
   religious worship. It is the antiquity, not the religious import of the
   rite, which first gave it a sacredness. In modern times, the
   associations which are conveyed by the word are as far from the
   original idea as those of the cross itself. The death of Christ is not
   a sacrifice in the ancient sense (any more than the cross is to
   Christians the symbol of infamy); but what we mean by the word
   sacrifice' is the death of Christ.

   Fourthly: This sacrificial language is not used with any definiteness
   or precision. The figure varies in different passages; Christ is the
   Paschal Lamb, or the Lamb without spot, as well as the sin-offering;
   the priest as well as the sacrifice. It is applied not only to Christ,
   but to the believer who is to present his body a living sacrifice; and
   the offering of which St. Paul speaks in one passage is the offering up
   of the Gentiles'. Again, this language is everywhere broken by moral
   and spiritual applications into which it dissolves and melts away. When
   we read of sacrifice', or purification', or redemption'. these words
   isolated may for an instant carry our thoughts back to the Levitical
   ritual. But when we restore them to their context,--a sacrifice which
   is a spiritual sacrifice', or a spiritual and mental service', a
   purification which is a purging from dead works to serve the living
   God', a redemption by the blood of Christ from your vain conversation
   received by tradition from your fathers',--we see that the association
   offers no real help; it is no paradox to say that we should rather
   forget than remember it. All this tends to show that these figures of
   speech are not the eternal symbols of the Christian faith, but shadows
   only which lightly come and go, and ought not to be fixed by
   definitions, or made the foundation of doctrinal systems.

   Fifthly: Nor is any such use of them made by any of the writers of the
   New Testament. It is true that St. Paul occasionally, and the author of
   the Epistle to the Hebrews much more frequently, use sacrificial
   language. But they do not pursue the figure into details or
   consequences; they do not draw it out in logical form. Still less do
   they inquire, as modern theologians have done, into the objective or
   transcendental relation in which the sacrifice of Christ stood to the
   will of the Father. St. Paul says, We thus judge that if one died, then
   all died, and He died for all, that they which live shall not hence
   forth live to themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose
   again'. But words like these are far indeed from expressing a doctrine
   of atonement or satisfaction.

   Lastly: The extent to which the Apostle employs figurative language in
   general, may be taken as a measure of the force of the figure in
   particular, expressions. Now there is no mode of speaking of spiritual
   things more natural to him than the image of death. Of the meaning of
   this word, in all languages, it may be said that there can be no doubt.
   Yet no one supposes that the sense which the Apostle gives to it is
   other than a spiritual one. The reason is, that the word has never been
   made the foundation of any doctrine. But the circumstance that the term
   sacrifice' has passed into the language of theology, does not really
   circumscribe or define it. It is a figure of speech still, which is no
   more to be interpreted by the Mosaic sacrifices than spiritual death by
   physical. Let us consider again other expressions of St. Paul: I bear
   in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.' Who hath taken the handwriting
   of ordinances that was against us, and nailed it to His cross.' Filling
   up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for
   His body's sake, which is the church.' The occurrence of these and many
   similar expressions is a sufficient indication that the writer in whom
   they occur is not to be interpreted in a dry or literal manner.

   Another class of expressions, which may be termed the language of
   substitution or vicarious suffering, are also occasionally found in St.
   Paul. Two examples of them, both of which occur in the Epistle to the
   Galatians, will indicate their general character.

   Gal. ii. 20: I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not
   I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh,
   I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself
   for me.' iii. 13: Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law,
   being made a curse for us.'

   This use of language seems to originate in what was termed before the
   language of identity. First, I am crucified with Christ', and secondly,
   Not I, but Christ liveth in me'. The believer, according to St. Paul,
   follows Christ until he becomes like Him. And this likeness is so
   complete and entire, that all that he was or might have been is
   attributed to Christ, and all that Christ is, is attributed to him.
   With such life and fervour does St. Paul paint the intimacy of the
   union between the believer and Christ: They two are One Spirit'. To
   build on such expressions a doctrinal system is the error of rhetoric
   turned logic'. The truth of feeling which is experienced by a few is
   not to be handed over to the head as a form of doctrine for the many.

   The same remark applies to another class of passages, in which Christ
   is described as dying for us', or for our sins'. Upon which it may be
   further observed, first, that in these passages the preposition used is
   not anti but upe'r; and, secondly, that Christ is spoken of as living
   and rising again, as well as dying, for us; whence we infer that He
   died for us in the same sense that He lived for us. Of what is meant,
   perhaps the nearest conception we can form is furnished by the example
   of a good man taking upon himself, or, as we say, identifying himself
   with, the troubles and sorrows of others. Christ himself has sanctioned
   the comparison of a love which lays down life for a friend. Let us
   think of one as sensitive to moral evil as the gentlest of man kind to
   physical suffering; of one whose love identified him with the whole
   human race as strongly as the souls of men are ever knit together by
   individual affections.

   Many of the preceding observations apply equally to the Epistle to the
   Hebrews and to the Epistles of St. Paul. But the Epistle to the Hebrews
   has features peculiar to itself. It is a more complete transfiguration
   of the law, which St. Paul, on the other hand, applies by way of
   illustration, and in fragments only. It has the interest of an
   allegory, and, in some respects, admits of a comparison with the book
   of Revelation. It is full of sacrificial allusions, derived, however,
   not from the actual rite, but from the description of it in the books
   of Moses. Probably at Jerusalem, or the vicinity of the actual temple,
   it would not have been written.

   From this source chiefly, and not from the Epistles of St. Paul, the
   language of sacrifice has passed into the theology and sermons of
   modern times. The Epistle to the Hebrews affords a greater apparent
   foundation for the popular or Calvinistical doctrines of atonement and
   satisfaction, but not perhaps a greater real one. For it is not the
   mere use of the terms sacrifice' or blood', but the sense in which they
   were used, that must be considered. It is a fallacy, though a natural
   one, to confuse the image with the thing signified, like mistaking the
   colour of a substance for its true nature.

   Long passages might be quoted from the Epistle to the Hebrews, which
   describe the work of Christ in sacrificial language. Some of the most
   striking verses are the following: ix. 11-14: Christ being come an high
   priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect
   tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building;
   neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, he
   entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption
   for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an
   heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the
   flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal
   Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from
   dead works to serve the living God.' x. 12: This man, after he had
   offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of
   God.'

   That these and similar passages have only a deceitful resemblance to
   the language of those theologians who regard the propitiatory sacrifice
   of Christ as the central truth of the Gospel, is manifest from the
   following considerations:--

   1. The great number and variety of the figures. Christ is Joshua, who
   gives the people rest (iv. 8); Melchisedec, to whom Abraham paid tithes
   (v. 6, vii. 6); the high priest going into the most holy place after he
   had offered sacrifice, which sacrifice He himself is, passing through
   the veil, which is His flesh.

   2. The inconsistency of the figures: an inconsistency partly arising
   from their ceasing to be figures and passing into moral notions, as in
   chap. ix. 14: the blood of Christ, who offered himself without spot to
   God, shall purge your conscience from dead works; partly from the
   confusion of two or more figures, as in the verse following: And for
   this cause he is the mediator of the new testament,' where the idea of
   sacrifice forms a transition to that of death and a testament, and the
   idea of a testament blends with that of a covenant.

   3. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews dwells on the outward
   circumstance of the shedding of the blood of Christ. St. Paul in the
   Epistle to the Galatians makes another application of the Old
   Testament, describing our Lord as enduring the curse which befell One
   who hanged on a tree'. Imagine for an instant that this latter had been
   literally the mode of our Lord's death. The figure of the Epistle to
   the Hebrews would cease to have any meaning; yet no one supposes that
   there would have been any essential difference in the work of Christ.

   4. The atoning sacrifice of which modern theology speaks, is said to be
   the great object of faith. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews
   also speaks of faith, but no such expression as faith in the blood, or
   sacrifice, or death of Christ is made use of by him, or is found
   anywhere else in Scripture. The faith of the patriarchs is not faith in
   the peculiar sense of the term, but the faith of those who confess that
   they are strangers and pilgrims', and endure seeing him that is
   invisible'.

   Lastly: The Jewish Alexandrian character of the Epistle must be
   admitted as an element of the inquiry. It interprets the Old Testament
   after a manner then current in the world, which we must either continue
   to apply or admit that it was relative to that age and country. It
   makes statements which we can only accept in a figure, as, for example,
   in chap. xi, that Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches
   than the treasures of Egypt'. It uses language in double senses, as,
   for instance, the two meanings of diathe'ke and of e pro'te in chap.
   viii. 13; ix. 1; and the connexion which it establishes between the Old
   Testament and the New, is a verbal or mystical one, not a connexion
   between the temple and offerings at Jerusalem and the offering up of
   Christ, but between the ancient ritual and the tabernacle described in
   the book of the law.

   Such were the instruments which the author of this great Epistle
   (whoever he may have been) employed, after the manner of his age and
   country, to impart the truths of the Gospel in a figure to those who
   esteemed this sort of figurative knowledge as a kind of perfection
   (Heb. vi. 1). Ideas must be given through something'; nor could mankind
   in those days, any more than our own, receive the truth except in modes
   of thought that were natural to them. The author of the Epistle to the
   Hebrews is writing to those who lived and moved in the atmosphere, as
   it may be termed, of Alexandrian Judaism. Therefore he uses the figures
   of the law, but he also guards against their literal acceptation.
   Christ is a priest, but a priest for ever after the order of
   Melchisedec; He is a sacrifice, but He is also the end of sacrifices,
   and the sacrifice which He offers is the negation of sacrifices, to do
   thy will, O God'. Everywhere he has a how much more', how much
   greater', for the new dispensation in comparison with the old. He
   raises the Old Testament to the New, first by drawing forth the spirit
   of the New Testament from the Old, and secondly by applying the words
   of the Old Testament in a higher sense than they at first had. The
   former of these two methods of interpretation is moral and universal,
   the latter local and temporary. But if we who are not Jews like the
   persons to whom the Epistle to the Hebrews is addressed, and who are
   taught by education to receive words in their natural and prima facie
   meaning, linger around the figure instead of looking forward to the
   thing signified, we do indeed make Christ the minister' of the Mosaic
   religion. For there is a Judaism not only of outward ceremonies or
   ecclesiastical hierarchies, or temporal rewards and punishments, but of
   ideas also, which impedes the worship of spirit and truth.

   The sum of what has been said is as follows:--

   Firstly: That our Lord never describes His own work in the language of
   atonement or sacrifice.

   Secondly: That this language is a figure of speech borrowed from the
   Old Testament, yet not to be explained by the analogy of the Levitical
   sacrifices; occasionally found in the writings of St. Paul; more
   frequently in the Epistle to the Hebrews; applied to the believer at
   least equally with his Lord, and indicating by the variety and
   uncertainty with which it is used that it is not the expression of any
   objective relation in which the work of Christ stands to His Father,
   but only a mode of speaking common at a time when the rites and
   ceremonies of the Jewish law were passing away and beginning to receive
   a spiritual meaning.

   Thirdly: That nothing is signified by this language, or at least
   nothing essential, beyond what is implied in the teaching of our Lord
   himself. For it cannot be supposed that there is any truer account of
   Christianity than is to be found in the words of Christ.

  § 2.

   Theology sprang up in the first ages independently of Scripture. This
   independence continued after wards; it has never been wholly lost.
   There is a tradition of the nineteenth century, as well as of the
   fourth or fourteenth, which comes between them. The mystical
   interpretation of Scripture has further parted them; to which may be
   added the power of system: doctrines when framed into a whole cease to
   draw their inspiration from the text. Logic has expressed the thoughts
   of many hearts' with a seeming necessity of form; this form of
   reasoning has led to new inferences. Many words and formulas have also
   acquired a sacredness from their occurrence in liturgies and articles,
   or the frequent use of them in religious discourse. The true interest
   of the theologian is to restore these formulas to their connexion in
   Scripture, and to their place in ecclesiastical history. The standard
   of Christian truth is not a logical clearness or sequence, but the
   simplicity of the mind of Christ.

   The history of theology is the history of the intellectual life of the
   Christian Church. All bodies of Christians, Protestant as well as
   Catholic, have tended to imagine that they are in the same stage of
   religious development as the first believers. But the Church has not
   stood still any more than the world; we may trace the progress of
   doctrine as well as the growth of philosophical opinion. The thoughts
   of men do not pass away without leaving an impress, in religion, any
   more than in politics or literature. The form of more than one article
   of faith in our own day is assignable to the effort of mind of some
   great thinker of the Nicene or medieval times. The received
   interpretation of texts of Scripture may not unfrequently be referred
   to the application of them first made in periods of controversy.
   Neither is it possible in any reformation of the Church to return
   exactly to the point whence the divergence began. The pattern of
   Apostolical order may be restored in externals; but the threads of the
   dialectical process are in the mind itself, and cannot be disposed of
   at once. It seems to be the nature of theology that while it is easy to
   add one definition of doctrine to another, it is hard to with draw from
   any which have been once received. To believe too much is held to be
   safer than to believe too little, and the human intellect finds a more
   natural exercise in raising the superstructure than in examining the
   foundations. On the other hand, it is instructive to observe that there
   has always been an undercurrent in theology, the course of which has
   turned towards morality, and not away from it. There is a higher sense
   of truth and right now than in the Nicene Church--after than before the
   Reformation. The laity in all Churches have moderated the extremes of
   the clergy. There may also be remarked a silent correction in men's
   minds of statements which have not ceased to appear in theological
   writings.

   The study of the doctrinal development of the Christian Church has many
   uses. First, it helps us to separate the history of a doctrine from its
   truth, and indirectly also the meaning of Scripture from the new
   reading of it, which has been given in many instances by theological
   controversy. It takes us away from the passing movement, and out of our
   own particular corner into a world in which we see religion on a larger
   scale and in truer proportions. It enables us to interpret one age to
   another, to understand our present theological position by its
   antecedents in the past; and perhaps to bind all together in the spirit
   of charity. Half the intolerance of opinion among Christians arises
   from ignorance; in history as in life, when we know others we get to
   like them. Logic too ceases to take us by force and make us believe.
   There is a pathetic interest and a kind of mystery in the long
   continuance and intensity of erroneous ideas on behalf of which men
   have been ready to die, which nevertheless were no better than the
   dreams or fancies of children. When we make allowance for differences
   in modes of thought, for the state of knowledge, and the conditions of
   the ecclesiastical society, we see that individuals have not been
   altogether responsible for their opinions; that the world has been
   bound together under the influence of the past; moreover, good men of
   all persuasions have been probably nearer to one another than they
   supposed, in doctrine as well as in life. It is the attempt to preserve
   or revive erroneous opinions in the present age, not their existence in
   former ages, that is to be reprobated. Lastly, the study of the history
   of doctrine is the end of controversy. For it is above controversy, of
   which it traces the growth, clearing away that part which is verbal
   only, and teaching us to understand that other part which is fixed in
   the deeper differences of human nature.

   The history of the doctrine of the atonement may be conveniently
   divided into four periods of unequal length, each of which is marked by
   some peculiar features. First, the Patristic period, extending to the
   time of Anselm, in which the doctrine had not attained to a perfect or
   complete form, but each one applied for himself the language of
   Scripture. Secondly, the Scholastic period, beginning with Anselm, who
   may be said to have defined anew the conceptions of the Christian world
   respecting the work of Christ, and including the great schoolmen who
   were his successors. Thirdly, the century of the Reformation, embracing
   what may be termed the after-thoughts of Protestantism, when men began
   to reason in that new sphere of religious thought which had been called
   into existence in the great struggle. Fragments of the great banquet'
   of the schoolmen survive throughout the period, and have floated down
   the stream of time to our own age. Fourthly, the last hundred years,
   during which the doctrine of the atonement has received a new
   development from the influences of German philosophy [16] . as well as
   from the speculations of English and American writers.

   1. The characteristics of the first period may be summed up as follows.
   All the Fathers agreed that man was reconciled to God through Christ,
   and received in the Gospel a new and divine life. Most of them also
   spoke of the death of Christ as a ransom or sacrifice. When we remember
   that in the first age of the Church the New Testament was exclusively
   taught through the Old, and that many of the first teachers, who were
   unacquainted with our present Gospels, had passed their lives in the
   study of the Old Testament Scriptures, we shall not wonder at the early
   diffusion of this sort of language. Almost every application of the
   types of the law which has been made since, is already found in the
   writings of Justin Martyr. Nor indeed, on general grounds, is there any
   reason why we should feel surprise at such a tendency in the first
   ages. For in all Churches, and at all times of the world^s history, the
   Old Testament has tended to take the place of the New; the law of the
   Gospel;--the handmaid has become the mistress;--and the development of
   the Christian priesthood has developed also the idea of a Christian
   sacrifice.

   The peculiarity of the primitive doctrine did not lie here, but in the
   relation in which the work of Christ was supposed to stand to the
   powers of evil. In the first ages we are beset with shadows of an under
   world, which hover on the confines of Christianity. From Origen
   downwards, with some traces of an earlier opinion of the same kind,
   perhaps of Gnostic origin, it was a prevailing though not quite
   universal belief among the Fathers, that the death of Christ was a
   satisfaction, not to God, but to the devil. Man, by having sinned,
   passed into the power of the evil one, who acquired a real right over
   him which could not be taken away without compensation. Christ offered
   himself as this compensation, which the devil eagerly accepted, as
   worth more than all mankind. But the deceiver was in turn deceived;
   thinking to triumph over the humanity, he was himself triumphed over by
   the Divinity of Christ. This theory was characteristically expressed
   under some such image as the following: that the devil snatching at the
   bait of human flesh, was hooked by the Divine nature, and forced to
   disgorge what he had already swallowed.' It is common in some form to
   Origen, Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the Great,
   Isidore of Seville, and much later writers; and there are indications
   of it in Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. v. i. 1). The meaning of this transaction
   with the devil it is hardly possible to explain consistently. For a
   real possession of the soul of Christ was not thought of; an imaginary
   one is only an illusion. In either case the absolute right which is
   assigned to the devil over man, and which requires this satisfaction,
   is as repugnant to our moral and religious ideas, as the notion that
   the right could be satisfied by a deception. This strange fancy seems
   to be a reflection or anticipation of Manicheism within the Church. The
   world, which had been hitherto a kingdom of evil, of which the devil
   was the lord, was to be exorcised and taken out of his power by the
   death of Christ.

   But the mythical fancy of the transaction with the devil was not the
   whole, nor even the leading conception, which the Fathers had of the
   import of the death of Christ. It was the negative, not the positive,
   side of the doctrine of redemption which they thus expressed; nobler
   thoughts also filled their minds. Origen regards the death of Christ as
   a payment to the devil, yet also as an offering to God; this offering
   took place not on earth only, but also in heaven; God is the high
   priest who offered. Another aspect of the doctrine of the atonement is
   presented by the same Father, under the Neo-Platonist form of the
   lo'gos (word), who reunites with God, not only man, but all
   intelligences. Irenaeus speaks, in language more human and more like
   St. Paul, of Christ coming to save all, and therefore passing through
   all the ages of man; becoming an infant among infants, a little one
   among little ones, a young man among young men, an elder with the
   aged(?), that each in turn might be sanctified, until He reached death,
   that He should be the first-born from the dead' (ii. 22, 147). The
   great Latin Father, though he believed equally with Origen in the right
   and power of the devil over man, delights also to bring forward the
   moral aspect of the work of Christ. The entire life of Christ,' he
   says, was an instruction in morals.' (De Ver. Rel. c. 16.) He died in
   order that no man might be afraid of death.' (De Fide et Symbolo, c.
   5.) The love which He displayed in his death constrains us to love Him
   and each other in return.' (De Cat. Rud. c. 4.) Like St. Paul,
   Augustine contrasts the second Adam with the first, the man of
   righteousness with the man of sin (De Ver. Relig. c. 26). Lastly, he
   places the real nature of redemption in the manifestation of the
   God-man.

   Another connexion between ancient and modern theology is supplied by
   the writings of Athanasius. The view taken by Athanasius of the atoning
   work of Christ has two characteristic features: First, it is based upon
   the doctrine of the Trinity;--God only can reconcile man with God.
   Secondly, it rests on the idea of a debt which is paid, not to the
   devil, but to God. This debt is also due to death, who has a sort of
   right over Christ, like the right of the devil in the former scheme. If
   it be asked in what this view differs from that of Anselm, the answer
   seems to be, chiefly in the circumstance that it is stated with less
   distinctness: it is a form, not the form, which Athanasius gave to the
   doctrine. In the conception of the death of Christ as a debt, he is
   followed, however, by several of the Greek Fathers. Rhetoric delighted
   to represent the debt as more than paid; the payment was even as the
   ocean to a drop in comparison with the sins of men' (Chrys. on Rom.
   Hom. x. 17). It is pleasing further to remark that a kind of
   latitudinarianism was allowed by the Fathers themselves. Gregory of
   Nazianzen (Orat. xxxiii. p. 536) numbers speculations about the
   sufferings of Christ among those things on which it is useful to have
   correct ideas, but not dangerous to be mistaken. On the whole the
   doctrine of the Fathers of the first four centuries may be said to
   oscillate between two points of view, which are brought out with
   different degrees of clearness. (1) The atonement was effected by the
   death of Christ; which was a satisfaction to the devil, and an offering
   to God: (2) The atonement was effected by the union in Christ of the
   Divine and human nature in the logos', or word of God. That neither
   view is embodied in any creed is a proof that the doctrine of atonement
   was not, in the first centuries, what modern writers often make it, the
   corner-stone of the Christian faith.

   An interval of more than 700 years separates Athanasius from Anselm.
   One eminent name occurs during this interval, that of Scotus Erigena,
   whose conception of the atonement is the co-eternal unity of all things
   with God; the participation in this unity had been lost by man, not in
   time, but in eternity, and was restored in the person of Christ
   likewise from eternity. The views of Erigena present some remarkable
   coincidences with very recent speculations; in the middle ages he
   stands alone, at the end, not at the beginning, of a great period;--he
   is the last of the Platonists, not the first of the schoolmen. He had
   consequently little influence on the centuries which followed. Those
   centuries gradually assumed a peculiar character; and received in after
   times another name, scholastic, as opposed to patristic. The intellect
   was beginning to display a new power; men were asking, not exactly for
   a reason of the faith that was in them, but for a clearer conception
   and definition of it. The Aristotelian philosophy furnished
   distinctions which were applied with a more than Aristotelian precision
   to statements of doctrine. Logic took the place of rhetoric; the school
   of the Church; figures of speech became abstract ideas. Theology was
   exhibited under a new aspect, as a distinct object or reality of
   thought. Questions on which Scripture was silent, on which councils and
   Popes would themselves pronounce no decision, were raised and answered
   within a narrow sphere by the activity of the human mind itself. The
   words sacrifice', satisfaction', ransom', could no longer be used
   indefinitely; it was necessary to determine further to whom and for
   what the satisfaction was made, and to solve the new difficulties which
   thereupon arose in the effort to gain clearer and more connected ideas.

   2. It was a true feeling of Anselm that the old doctrine of
   satisfaction contained an unchristian element in attributing to the
   devil a right independent of God. That man should be delivered over to
   Satan may be just; it is a misrepresentation to say that Satan had any
   right over man. Therefore no right of the devil is satisfied by the
   death of Christ. He who had the real right is God, who has been robbed
   of His honour; to whom is, indeed, owing on the part of man an infinite
   debt. For sin is in its nature infinite; the world has no compensation
   for that which a good man would not do in exchange for the world (Cur
   Deus Homo, i. 21). God only can satisfy himself. The human nature of
   Christ enables Him to incur, the infinity of his Divine nature to pay,
   this debt (ii. 6, 7). This payment of the debt, however, is not the
   salvation of man kind, but only the condition of salvation; a link is
   still wanting in the work of grace. The two parties are equalized; the
   honour of which God was robbed is returned, but man has no claim for
   any further favour. This further favour, however, is indirectly a
   result of the death of Christ. For the payment of the debt by the Son
   partakes of the nature of a gift which must needs have a recompense
   (ii. 20) from the Father, which recompense cannot be conferred on
   himself, and is therefore made at His request to man. The doctrine
   ultimately rests on two reasons or grounds; the first a noble one, that
   it must be far from God to suffer any rational creature to perish
   entirely (Cur Deus Homo, i. 4, ii. 4); the second a trifling one, viz.
   that God, having created the angels in a perfect number, it was
   necessary that man, saved through Christ, should fill up that original
   number, which was impaired by their fall. And as Anselm, in the spirit
   of St. Paul, though not quite consistently with his own argument,
   declares, the mercy of God was shown in the number of the saved
   exceeding the number of the lost (Cur Deus Homo, i. 16, 18).

   This theory, which is contained in the remarkable treatise Cur Deus
   Homo, is consecutively reasoned throughout; yet the least reasons seem
   often sufficient to satisfy the author. While it escapes one difficulty
   it involves several others; though conceived in a nobler and more
   Christian spirit than any previous view of the work of Christ, it
   involves more distinctly the hideous consequence of punishing the
   innocent for the guilty. It is based upon analogies, symmetries,
   numerical fitnesses; yet under these logical fancies is contained a
   true and pure feeling of the relation of man to God. The notion of
   satisfaction or payment of a debt, on the other hand, is absolutely
   groundless, and seems only to result from a certain logical position
   which the human mind has arbitrarily assumed. The scheme implies
   further two apparently contradictory notions; one, a necessity in the
   nature of things for this and no other means of redemption; the other,
   the free will of God in choosing the salvation of man. Anselm
   endeavours to escape from this difficulty by substituting the
   conception of a moral for that of a metaphysical necessity (ii. 5). God
   chose the necessity and Christ chose the fulfilment of His Father's
   commands. But the necessity by which the death of Christ is justified
   is thus reduced to a figure of speech. Lastly, the subjective side of
   the doctrine, which afterwards became the great question of the
   Reformation, the question, that is, in what way the death of Christ is
   to be apprehended by the believer, is hardly if at all touched upon by
   Anselm.

   No progress was made during the four centuries which intervened between
   Anselm and the Reformation, towards the attainment of clearer ideas
   respecting the relations of God and man. The view of Anselm did not,
   however, at once or universally prevail; it has probably exercised a
   greater influence since the Reformation (being the basis of what may be
   termed the evangelical doctrine of the atonement) than in earlier ages.
   The spirit of the older theology was too congenial to those ages
   quickly to pass away. Bernard and others continued to maintain the
   right of the devil: a view not wholly obsolete in our own day. The two
   great masters of the schools agreed in denying the necessity on which
   the theory of Anselm was founded. They differed from Anselm also
   respecting the conception of an infinite satisfaction; Thomas Aquinas
   distinguishing the infinite' Divine merit, and abundant' human
   satisfaction; while Duns Scotus rejected the notion of infinity
   altogether, declaring that the scheme of redemption might have been
   equally accomplished by the death of an angel or a righteous man.
   Abelard, at an earlier period, attached special importance to the moral
   aspect of the work of Christ; he denied the right of the devil, and
   declared the love of Christ to be the redeeming principle, because it
   calls forth the love of man. Peter Lombard also, who retained, like
   Bernard, the old view of the right of the devil, agreed with Abelard in
   giving a moral character to the work of redemption.

   3. The doctrines of the Reformed as well as of the Catholic Church were
   expressed in the language of the scholastic theology. But the logic
   which the Catholic party had employed in defining and distinguishing
   the body of truth already received, the teachers of the Reformation
   used to express the subjective feelings of the human soul. Theology
   made a transition, such as we may observe at one or two epochs in the
   history of philosophy, from the object to the subject. Hence, the
   doctrine of atonement or satisfaction became subordinate to the
   doctrine of justification. The reformers begin, not with ideas, but
   with the consciousness of sin; with immediate human interests, not with
   speculative difficulties; not with mere abstractions, but with a great
   struggle; without were fightings, within were fears'. As of Socrates
   and philosophy, so it may be also said truly of Luther in a certain
   sense, that he brought down the work of redemption from heaven to
   earth'. The great question with him was, how we might be freed from the
   punishment and guilt of sin', and the answer was, through the
   appropriation of the merits of Christ. All that man was or might have
   been, Christ became, and was; all that Christ did or was, attached or
   was imputed to man: as God, he paid the infinite penalty; as man, he
   fulfilled the law. The first made redemption possible, the second
   perfected it. The first was termed in the language of that age, the
   obedientia passiva', the second, the obedientia activa'.

   In this scheme the doctrine of satisfaction is far from being prominent
   or necessary; it is a remnant of an older theology which was retained
   by the Reformers and prevented their giving a purely moral character to
   the work of Christ. There were differences among them respecting the
   two kinds of obedience; some regarding the obedientia passiva' as the
   cause or condition of the obedientia activa'. while others laid no
   stress on the distinction. But all the great chiefs of the Reformation
   agreed in the fiction of imputed righteousness. Little had been said in
   earlier times of a doctrine of imputation. But now the Bible was
   reopened and read over again in one light only, justification by faith
   and not by works'. The human mind seemed to seize with a kind of
   avidity on any distinction which took it out of itself, and at the same
   time freed it from the burden of ecclesiastical tyranny. Figures of
   speech in which Christ was said to die for man or for the sins of man
   were understood in as crude and literal a sense as the Catholic Church
   had attempted to gain from the words of the institution of the
   Eucharist. Imputation and substitution among Protestant divines began
   to be formulas as strictly imposed as transubstantiation with their
   opponents. To Luther, Christ was not only the Holy One who died for the
   sins of men, but the sinner himself on whom the vials of Divine wrath
   were poured out. And seeing in the Epistles to the Galatians and the
   Romans the power which the law exercised in that age of the world over
   Jewish or half-Jewish Christians, he transferred the state which the
   Apostle there describes to his own age, and imagined that the burden
   under which he himself had groaned was the same law of which St. Paul
   spoke, which Christ first fulfilled in His own person and then
   abolished for ever.

   It was not unnatural that in the middle ages, when morality had no free
   or independent development, the doctrine of the atonement should have
   been drawn out on the analogy of law. Nor is there any reason why we
   should feel surprised that, with the revival of the study of Scripture
   at the Reformation, the Mosaic law should have exercised a great
   influence over the ideas of Protestants. More singular, yet an
   analogous phenomenon, is the attempt of Grotius to conceive the work of
   Christ by the help of the principles of political justice. All men are
   under the influence of their own education or profession, and they are
   apt to conceive truths which are really of a different or higher kind
   under some form derived from it; they require such a degree or kind of
   evidence as their minds are accustomed to, and political or legal
   principles have often been held a sufficient foundation for moral
   truth.

   The theory of the celebrated jurist proceeds from the conception of God
   as governor of the universe. As such, He may forgive sins just as any
   other ruler may remit the punishment of offences against positive law.
   But although the ruler possesses the power to remit sins, and there is
   nothing in the nature of justice which would prevent his doing so, yet
   he has also a duty, which is to uphold his own authority and that of
   the laws. To do so, he must enforce punishment for the breach of them.
   This punishment, however, may attach not to the offender, but to the
   offence. Such a distinction is not unknown to the law itself. We may
   apply this to the work of Christ. There was no difficulty in the nature
   of things which prevented God from freely pardoning the sins of men;
   the power of doing so was vested in His hands as governor of the world.
   But it was inexpedient that He should exercise this power without first
   making an example. This was effected by the death of Christ. It pleased
   God to act according to the pedantic rules of earthly jurisprudence. It
   is useless to criticize such a theory further; almost all theologians
   have agreed in reprobating it; it adopts the analogy of law, and
   violates its first principles by considering a moral or legal act
   without reference to the agent. The reason which Grotius assigns for
   the death of Christ is altogether trivial.

   4. Later theories on the doctrine of the atonement may be divided into
   two classes, English and German, logical and metaphysical; those which
   proceed chiefly by logical inference, and those which connect the
   conception of the atonement with speculative philosophy.

   Earlier English writers were chiefly employed in defining the work of
   Christ; later ones have been most occupied with the attempt to soften
   or moderate the more repulsive features of the older statements; the
   former have a dogmatical, the latter an apologetical character. The
   nature of the sufferings of Christ, whether they were penal or only
   quasi-penal, whether they were physical or mental, greater in degree
   than human sufferings, or different in kind; in what more precisely the
   compensation offered by Christ truly consisted; the nature of the
   obedience of Christ, whether to God or the law, and the connexion of
   the whole question with that of the Divine decrees:--these were among
   the principal subjects discussed by the great Presbyterian divines of
   the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Continuing in the same line
   of thought as their predecessors, they seem to have been unconscious of
   the difficulties to which the eyes of a later generation have opened.

   But at last the question has arisen within, as well as without, the
   Church of England: How the ideas of expiation, or satisfaction, or
   sacrifice, or imputation, are reconcilable with the moral and spiritual
   nature either of God or man?' Some there are who answer from analogy,
   and cite instances of vicarious suffering which appear in the disorder
   of the world around us. But analogy is a broken reed; of use, indeed,
   in pointing out the way where its intimations can be verified, but
   useless when applied to the unseen world in which the eye of
   observation no longer follows. Others affirm revelation or inspiration
   to be above criticism, and, in disregard alike of Church history and of
   Scripture, assume their own view of the doctrine of the atonement to be
   a revealed or inspired truth. They do not see that they are cutting off
   the branch of the tree on which they are themselves sitting. For, if
   the doctrine of the atonement cannot be criticized, neither can it be
   determined what is the doctrine of the atonement; nor, on the same
   principles, can any true religion be distinguished from any false one,
   or any truth of religion from any error. It is suicidal in theology to
   refuse the appeal to a moral criterion. Others add a distinction of
   things above reason and things contrary to reason; a favourite
   theological weapon, which has, however, no edge or force, so long as it
   remains a generality. Others, in like manner, support their view of the
   doctrine of the atonement by a theory of accommodation, which also
   loses itself in ambiguity. For it is not determined whether, by
   accommodation to the human faculties, is meant the natural
   subjectiveness of knowledge, or some other limitation which applies to
   theology only. Others regard the death of Christ, not as an atonement
   or satisfaction to God, but as a manifestation of His righteousness, a
   theory which agrees with that of Grotius in its general character, when
   the latter is stripped of its technicalities. This theory is the shadow
   or surface of that of satisfaction; the human analogy equally fails;
   the punishment of the innocent for the guilty is not more unjust than
   the punishment of the innocent as an example to the guilty. Lastly,
   there are some who would read the doctrine of the atonement in the
   light of Divine love only'; the object of the sufferings and death of
   Christ being to draw men's hearts to God by the vision of redeeming
   love (compare Abelard), and the sufferings themselves being the natural
   result of the passage of the Saviour through a world of sin and shame.
   Of these explanations the last seems to do the least violence to our
   moral feelings. Yet it would surely be better to renounce any attempt
   at inquiry into the objective relations of God and man, than to rest
   the greatest fact in the history of mankind on so slender a ground as
   the necessity for arousing the love of God in the human heart, in this
   and no other way.

   German theology during the last hundred years has proceeded by a
   different path; it has delighted to recognize the doctrine of the
   atonement as the centre of religion, and also of philosophy. This
   tendency is first observable in the writings of Kant, and may be traced
   through the schools of his successors, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, as
   well as in the works of the two philosophical theologians Daub and
   Schleiermacher. These great thinkers all use the language of orthodoxy;
   it cannot be said, however, that the views of any of them agree with
   the teaching of the patristic or medieval Church, or of the Reformers,
   or of the simpler expressions of Scripture. Yet they often bring into
   new meaning and prominence texts on this subject which have been pushed
   aside by the regular current of theology. The difficulties which they
   all alike experience are two: first, how to give a moral meaning to the
   idea of atonement; secondly, how to connect the idea with the
   historical fact.

   According to Kant, the atonement consists in the sacrifice of the
   individual; a sacrifice in which the sin of the old man is ever being
   compensated by the sorrows and virtues of the new. This atonement, or
   reconcilement of man with God, consists in an end less progress towards
   a reconcilement which is never absolutely completed in this life, and
   yet, by the continual increase of good and diminution of evil, is a
   sufficient groundwork of hope and peace. Perfect reconcilement would
   consist in the perfect obedience of a free agent to the law of duty or
   righteousness. For this Kant substitutes the ideal of the Son of God.
   The participation in this ideal of humanity is an aspect of the
   reconcilement. In a certain sense, in the sight of God, that is, and in
   the wish and resolution of the individual, the change from the old to
   the new is not gradual, but sudden: the end is imputed or anticipated
   in the beginning. So Kant rationalizes' the ordinary Lutheran doctrine
   of justification; unconscious, as in other parts of his philosophy, of
   the influence which existing systems are exercising over him. Man goes
   out of himself to grasp at a reflection which is still--himself. The
   mystical is banished only to return again in an arbitrary and
   imaginative form,--a phenomenon which we may often observe in
   speculation as well as in the characters of individuals.

   Schleiermacher's view of the doctrine of the atonement is almost
   equally different from that of Kant who preceded him, and of Hegel and
   others who were his contemporaries or successors: it is hardly more
   like the popular theories. Reconciliation with God he conceives as a
   participation in the Divine nature. Of this participation the Church,
   through the Spirit, is the medium; the individual is redeemed and
   consoled by communion with his fellow-men. If in the terminology of
   philosophy we ask which is the objective, which the subjective part of
   the work of redemption, the answer of Schleiermacher seems to be that
   the subjective redemption of the individual is the consciousness of
   union with God; and the objective part, which corresponds to this
   consciousness, is the existence of the Church, which derives its life
   from the Spirit of God, and is also the depository of the truth of
   Christ. The same criticism, however, applies to this as to the
   preceding conception of the atonement, viz. that it has no real
   historical basis. The objective truth is nothing more than the
   subjective feeling or opinion which prevails in a particular Church.
   Schleiermacher deduces the historical from the ideal, and regards the
   ideal as existing only in the communion of Christians. But the truth of
   a fact is not proved by the truth of an idea. And the personal relation
   of the believer to Christ, instead of being immediate, is limited (as
   in the Catholic system) by the existence of the Church.

   Later philosophers have conceived of the reconciliation of man with God
   as a reconciliation of God with himself. The infinite must evolve the
   finite from itself; yet the true infinite consists in the return of the
   finite to the infinite. By slow degrees, and in many stages of
   morality, of religion, and of knowledge, does the individual, according
   to Fichte, lay aside isolation and selfishness, gaining in strength and
   freedom by the negation of freedom, until he rises into the region of
   the divine and absolute. This is reconcilement with God; a half
   Christian, half Platonic notion, which it is not easy to identify
   either with the subjective feeling of the individual, or with the
   historical fact. Daub has also translated the language of Scripture and
   of the Church into metaphysical speculation. According to this thinker,
   atonement is the realization of the unity of man with God, which is
   also the unity of God with himself. Deus Deum cum mundo conjunctum Deo
   manifestat.' Perhaps this is as near an approach as philosophy can make
   to a true expression of the words, That they all may be one, as thou
   Father art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us'. Yet
   the metaphysical truth is a distant and indistinct representation of
   the mind of Christ which is expressed in these words. Its defect is
   exhibited in the image under which Fichte described it--the absolute
   unity of light; in other words, God, like the being of the Eleatics, is
   a pure abstraction, and returning into himself is an abstraction still.

   It is characteristic of Schelling's system that he conceives the nature
   of God, not as abstraction, but as energy or action. The finite and
   manifold are not annihilated in the infinite; they are the revelation
   of the infinite. Man is the son of God; of this truth Christ is the
   highest expression and the eternal idea. But in the world this
   revelation or incarnation of God is ever going on; the light is
   struggling with darkness, the spirit with nature, the universal with
   the particular. That victory which was achieved in the person of Christ
   is not yet final in individuals or in history. Each person, each age,
   carries on the same conflict between good and evil, the triumphant end
   of which is anticipated in the life and death of Christ.

   Hegel, beginning with the doctrine of a Trinity, regards the atonement
   as the eternal reconciliation of the finite and the infinite in the
   bosom of God himself. The Son goes forth from the Father, as the world
   or finite being, to exist in a difference which is done away and lost
   in the absoluteness of God. Here the question arises, how individuals
   become partakers of this reconciliation? The answer is, by the finite
   receiving the revelation of God. The consciousness of God in man is
   developed, first, in the worship of nature; secondly, in the
   manifestation of Christ; thirdly, in the faith of the Church that God
   and man are one, of which faith the Holy Spirit is the source. The
   death of Christ is the separation of this truth from the elements of
   nature and sense. Hegelian divines have given this doctrine a more
   Pantheistic or more Christian aspect; they have, in some instances,
   studiously adopted orthodox language; they have laid more or less
   stress on the historical facts. But they have done little as yet to
   make it intelligible to the world at large; they have acquired for it
   no fixed place in history, and no hold upon life.

   Englishmen, especially, feel a national dislike at the things which
   accompany salvation' being perplexed with philosophical theories. They
   find it easier to caricature than to understand Hegel; they prefer the
   most unintelligible expressions with which they are familiar to great
   thoughts which are strange to them. No man of sense really supposes
   that Hegel or Schelling is so absurd as they may be made to look in an
   uncouth English translation, or as they unavoidably appear to many in a
   brief summary of their tenets. Yet it may be doubted whether this
   philosophy can ever have much connexion with the Christian life. It
   seems to reflect at too great a distance what ought to be very near us.
   It is metaphysical, not practical; it creates an atmosphere in which it
   is difficult to breathe; it is useful as supplying a light or law by
   which to arrange the world, rather than as a principle of action or
   warmth. Man is a microcosm, and we do not feel quite certain whether
   the whole system is not the mind itself turned inside out, and
   magnified in enormous proportions. Whatever interest it may arouse in
   speculative natures (and it is certainly of great value to a few), it
   will hardly find a home or welcome in England.

  § 3.

   The silence of our Lord in the Gospels respecting any doctrine of
   atonement and sacrifice, the variety of expressions which occur in
   other parts of the New Testament, the fluctuation and uncertainty both
   of the Church and individuals on this subject in after ages, incline us
   to agree with Gregory Nazianzen, that the death of Christ is one of
   those points of faith about which it is not dangerous to be mistaken'.
   And the sense of the imperfection of language and the illusions to
   which we are subject from the influence of past ideas, the
   consciousness that doctrinal perplexities arise chiefly from our
   transgression of the limits of actual knowledge, will lead us to desire
   a very simple statement of the work of Christ; a statement, however, in
   accordance with our moral ideas, and one which will not shift and alter
   with the metaphysical schools of the age; one, moreover, which runs no
   risk of being overthrown by an increasing study of the Old Testament or
   of ecclesiastical history. Endless theories there have been (of which
   the preceding sketch contains only a small portion), and many more
   there will be as time goes on, like mystery plays, or sacred dramas (to
   adapt Lord Bacon's image), which have passed before the Church and the
   world. To add another would increase the confusion: it is ridiculous to
   think of settling a disputed point of theology unless by some new
   method. That other method can only be a method of agreement; little
   progress has been made hitherto by the method of difference. It is not
   reasonable, but extremely unreasonable, that the most sacred of all
   books should be the only one respecting the interpretation of which
   there is no certainty; that religion alone should be able to perpetuate
   the enmities of past ages; that the influence of words and names, which
   secular knowledge has long shaken off, should still intercept the
   natural love of Christians towards one another and their Lord. On our
   present subject there is no difficulty in finding a basis of
   reconciliation; the way opens when logical projections are removed, and
   we look at the truth in what may be rightly termed a more primitive and
   Apostolical manner. For all, or al most all, Christians would agree
   that in some sense or other we are reconciled to God through Christ;
   whether by the atonement and satisfaction which He made to God for us,
   or by His manifestation of the justice of God or love of God in the
   world, by the passive obedience of His death or the active obedience of
   His life, by the imputation of His righteousness to us or by our
   identity and communion with Him, or likeness to Him, or love of Him; in
   some one of these senses, which easily pass into each other, all would
   join in saying that He is the way, the truth, and the life'. And had
   the human mind the same power of holding fast points of agreement as of
   discerning differences, there would be an end of the controversy.

   The statements of Scripture respecting the work of Christ are very
   simple, and may be used without involving us in the determination of
   these differences. We can live and die in the language of St. Paul and
   St. John; there is nothing there repugnant to our moral sense. We have
   a yet higher authority in the words of Christ himself. Only in
   repeating and elucidating these statements, we must remember that
   Scripture phraseology is of two kinds, simple and figurative, and that
   the first is the interpretation of the second. We must not bring the
   New Testament into bondage to the Old, but ennoble and transfigure the
   Old by the New.

   First; the death of Christ may be described as a sacrifice. But what
   sacrifice? Not the blood of bulls and of goats, nor the ashes of an
   heifer sprinkling the unclean', but the living sacrifice to do thy
   will, O God'. It is a sacrifice which is the negation of sacrifice;
   Christ the end of the law to them that believe'. Peradventure, in a
   heathen country, to put an end to the rite of sacrifice some one would
   even dare to die'; that expresses the relation in which the offering on
   Mount Calvary stands to the Levitical offerings. It is the death of
   what is outward and local, the life of what is inward and spiritual: I,
   if I be lifted up from the earth, shall draw all men after me'; and
   Neither in this mountain nor at Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father'.
   It is the offering up of the old world on the cross; the law with its
   handwriting of ordinances, the former man with his affections and
   lusts, the body of sin with its remembrances of past sin. It is the New
   Testament revealed in the blood of Christ, the Gospel of freedom, which
   draws men together in the communion of one spirit, as in St. Paul's
   time without respect of persons and nations, so in our own day without
   regard to the divisions of Christendom. In the place of Churches,
   priesthoods, ceremonials, systems, it puts a moral and spiritual
   principle which works with them, not necessarily in opposition to them,
   but beside or within them, to renew life in the individual soul.

   Again, the death of Christ may be described as a ransom. It is not that
   God needs some payment which He must receive before He will set the
   captives free. The ransom is not a human ransom, any more than the
   sacrifice is a Levitical sacrifice. Rightly to comprehend the nature of
   this Divine ransom, we must begin with that question of the Apostle:
   Know ye not that whose servants ye yield yourselves to obey, his
   servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of
   obedience unto righteousness?' There are those who will reply: We were
   never in bondage at any time'. To whom Christ answers: Whosoever
   committeth sin is the servant of sin'; and, If the Son shall make you
   free, ye shall be free indeed'. Ransom is deliverance to the captive'.
   There are mixed modes here also, as in the use of the term
   sacrifice,--the word has a temporary allusive reference to a Mosaical
   figure of speech. That secondary allusive reference we are constrained
   to drop, because it is unessential; and also because it immediately
   involves further questions--a ransom to whom? for what?--about which
   Scripture is silent, to which reason refuses to answer.

   Thirdly, the death of Christ is spoken of as a death for us, or for our
   sins. The ambiguous use of the preposition for', combined with the
   figure of sacrifice, has tended to introduce the idea of substitution;
   when the real meaning is not in our stead', but only in behalf of', or
   because of us'. It is a great assumption, or an unfair deduction, from
   such expressions, to say that Christ takes our place, or that the
   Father in looking at the sinner sees only Christ. Christ died for us in
   no other sense than He lived or rose again for us. Scripture affords no
   hint of His taking our place in His death in any other way than He did
   also in His life. He himself speaks of His decease which He should
   accomplish at Jerusalem', quite simply: greater love hath no man than
   this, that a man lay down his life for his friends'. The words of
   Caiaphas, It is expedient that one man should die for this nation', and
   the comment of the Evangelist, and not for that nation only, but that
   he should gather together in one the children of God that are scattered
   abroad', afford a measure of the meaning of such expressions. Here,
   too, there are mixed modes which seem to be inextricably blended in the
   language of Scripture, and which theology has not always distinguished.
   For the thing signified is, partly, that Christ died for our sakes,
   partly that he died by the hands of sinners, partly that He died with a
   perfect and Divine sympathy for human evil and suffering. But this
   ambiguity (which we may silently correct or explain) need not prevent
   our joining in words which, more perhaps than any others, have been
   consecrated by religious use to express the love and affection of
   Christians towards their Lord.

   Now suppose some one who is aware of the plastic and accommodating
   nature of language to observe, that in what has been written of late
   years on the doctrine of the atonement he has noticed an effort made to
   win for words new senses, and that some of the preceding remarks are
   liable to this charge; he may be answered, first, that those new senses
   are really a recovery of old ones (for the writers of the New
   Testament, though they use the language of the time, everywhere give it
   a moral meaning); and, secondly, that in addition to the modes of
   conception already mentioned, the Scripture has others which are not
   open to his objection. And those who, admitting the innocence and
   Scriptural character of the expressions already referred to, may yet
   fear their abuse, and therefore desire to have them excluded from
   articles of faith (just as many Protestants, though aware that the
   religious use of images is not idolatry, may not wish to see them in
   churches)--such persons may find a sufficient expression of the work of
   Christ in other modes of speech which the Apostle also uses. (1)
   Instead of the language of sacrifice, or ransom, or substitution, they
   may prefer that of communion or identity. (2) Or they may interpret the
   death of Christ by His life, and connect the bleeding form on Mount
   Calvary with the image of Him who went about doing good. Or (3) they
   may look inward at their own souls, and read there, inseparable from
   the sense of their own unworthiness, the assurance that God will not
   desert the work of His hands, of which assurance the death of Christ is
   the outward witness to them. There are other ways, also, of conceiving
   the redemption of man which avoid controversy, any of which is a
   sufficient stay of the Christian life. For the kingdom of God is not
   this or that statement, or definition of opinion, but righteousness,
   and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. And the cross of Christ is to be
   taken up and borne; not to be turned into words, or made a theme of
   philosophical speculation.

   1. Everywhere St. Paul speaks of the Christian as one with Christ. He
   is united with Him, not in His death only, but in all stages of His
   existence; living with Him, suffering with Him, crucified with Him,
   buried with Him, rising again with Him, renewed in His image, glorified
   together with Him; these are the expressions by which this union is
   denoted. There is something meant by this language which goes beyond
   the experience of ordinary Christians, something, perhaps, more
   mystical than in these latter days of the world most persons seem to be
   capable of feeling, yet the main thing signified is the same for all
   ages, the knowledge and love of Christ, by which men pass out of
   themselves to make their will His and His theirs, the consciousness of
   Him in their thoughts and actions, communion with Him, and trust in
   Him. Of every act of kindness or good which they do to others His life
   is the type; of every act of devotion or self-denial His death is the
   type; of every act of faith His resurrection is the type. And often
   they walk with Him on earth, not in a figure only, and find Him near
   them, not in a figure only, in the valley of death. They experience
   from Him the same kind of support as from the sympathy and communion of
   an earthly friend. That friend is also a Divine power. In proportion as
   they become like Him, they are reconciled to God through Him; they pass
   with Him into the relationship of sons of God. There is enough here for
   faith to think of, without sullying the mirror of God's justice, or
   overclouding His truth. We need not suppose that God ever sees us other
   than we really are, or attributes to us what we never did. Doctrinal
   statements, in which the nature of the work of Christ is most exactly
   defined, cannot really afford the same support as the simple conviction
   of His love.

   Again (2), the import of the death of Christ may be interpreted by His
   life. No theological speculation can throw an equal light on it. From
   the other side we cannot see it, but only from this. Now the life of
   Christ is the life of One who knew no sin, on whom the shadow of evil
   never passed; who went about doing good; who had not where to lay His
   head; whose condition was in all respects the reverse of earthly and
   human greatness; who also had a sort of infinite sympathy or communion
   with all men everywhere; whom, nevertheless, His own nation betrayed to
   a shameful death. It is the life of One who came to bear witness of the
   truth, who knew what was in man, and never spared to rebuke him, yet
   condemned him not; himself without sin, yet One to whom all men would
   soonest have gone to confess and receive forgiveness of sin. It is the
   life of One who was in constant communion with God as well as man; who
   was the inhabitant of another world while outwardly in this. It is the
   life of One in whom we see balanced and united the separate gifts and
   graces of which we catch glimpses only in the lives of His followers.
   It is a life which is mysterious to us, which we forbear to praise, in
   the earthly sense, because it is above praise, being the most perfect
   image and embodiment that we can conceive of Divine goodness.

   And the death of Christ is the fulfilment and consummation of His life,
   the greatest moral act ever done in this world, the highest
   manifestation of perfect love, the centre in which the rays of love
   converge and meet, the extremest abnegation or annihilation of self. It
   is the death of One who seals with His blood the witness of the truth
   which He came into the world to teach, which therefore confirms our
   faith in Him as well as animates our love. It is the death of One, who
   says at the last hour, Of them that thou gavest me, I have not lost
   one,'--of One who, having come forth from God, and having finished the
   work which He came into the world to do, returns to God. It is a death
   in which all the separate gifts of heroes and martyrs are united in a
   Divine excellence of One who most perfectly foresaw all things that
   were coming upon Him--who felt all, and shrank not--of One who, in the
   hour of death, set the example to His followers of praying for his
   enemies. It is a death which, more even than His life, is singular and
   mysterious, in which nevertheless we are all partakers,--in which there
   was the thought and consciousness of mankind to the end of time, which
   has also the power of drawing to itself the thoughts of men to the end
   of time.

   Lastly, there is a true Christian feeling in many other ways of
   regarding the salvation of man, of which the heart is its own witness,
   which yet admit, still less than the preceding, of logical rule and
   precision. He who is conscious of his own infirmity and sinfulness, is
   ready to confess that he needs reconciliation with God. He has no proud
   thoughts: he knows that he is saved not of himself, it is the gift of
   God'; the better he is, the more he feels, in the language of
   Scripture, that he is an unprofitable servant'. Sometimes he imagines
   the Father coming out to meet him, when he is yet a long way off', as
   in the parable of the Prodigal Son; at other times the burden of sin
   lies heavy on him; he seems to need more support--he can approach God
   only through Christ. All men are not the same; one has more of the
   strength of reason in his religion; another more of the tenderness of
   feeling. With some, faith partakes of the nature of a pure and
   spiritual morality; there are others who have gone through the struggle
   of St. Paul or Luther, and attain rest only in casting all on Christ.
   One will live after the pattern of the Sermon on the Mount, or the
   Epistle of St. James. Another finds a deep consolation and meaning in a
   closer union with Christ; he will put on Christ', he will hide himself
   in Christ; he will experience in his own person the truth of those
   words of the Apostle, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live;
   yet not I, but Christ liveth in me'. But if he have the spirit of
   moderation that there was in St. Paul, he will not stereotype these
   true, though often passing feelings, in any formula of substitution or
   satisfaction; still less will he draw out formulas of this sort into
   remote consequences. Such logical idealism is of another age; it is
   neither faith nor philosophy in this. Least of all will he judge others
   by the circumstance of their admitting or refusing to admit the
   expression of his individual feelings as an eternal truth. He shrinks
   from asserting his own righteousness; he is equally unwilling to affirm
   that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to him. He is looking for
   forgiveness of sins, not because Christ has satisfied the wrath of God,
   but because God can show mercy with out satisfaction: he may have no
   right to acquittal, he dare not say, God has no right to acquit. Yet
   again, he is very far from imagining that the most merciful God will
   indiscriminately forgive; or that the weakness of human emotions,
   groaning out at the last hour a few accustomed phrases, is a sufficient
   ground of confidence and hope. He knows that the only external evidence
   of forgiveness is the fact, that he has ceased to do evil; no other is
   possible. Having Christ near as a friend and a brother, and making the
   Christian life his great aim, he is no longer under the dominion of a
   conventional theology. He will not be distracted by its phrases from
   communion with his fellow men. He can never fall into that confusion of
   head and heart, which elevates matters of opinion into practical
   principles. Difficulties and doubts diminish with him, as he himself
   grows more like Christ, not because he forcibly suppresses them, but
   because they become unimportant in comparison with purity, and
   holiness, and love. Enough of truth for him seems to radiate from the
   person of the Saviour. He thinks more and more of the human nature of
   Christ as the expression of the Divine. He has found the way of
   life,--that way is not an easy way,--but neither is it beset by the
   imaginary perplexities with which a false use of the intellect in
   religion has often surrounded it.

   It seems to be an opinion which is gaining ground among thoughtful and
   religious men, that in theology, the less we define the better.
   Definite statements respecting the relation of Christ either to God or
   man are only figures of speech; they do not really pierce the clouds
   which round our little life'. When we multiply words we do not multiply
   ideas; we are still within the circle of our own minds. No greater
   calamity has ever befallen the Christian Church than the determination
   of some uncertain things which are beyond the sphere of human
   knowledge. A true instinct prevents our entangling the faith of Christ
   with the philosophy of the day; the philosophy of past ages is a still
   more imperfect exponent of it. Neither is it of any avail to assume
   revelation or inspiration as a sort of shield, or Catholicon, under
   which the weak points of theology may receive protection. For what is
   revealed or what inspired cannot be answered a priori; the meaning of
   the word Revelation must be determined by the fact, not the fact by the
   word.

   If our Saviour were to come again to earth, which of all the theories
   of atonement and sacrifice would he sanction with His authority?
   Perhaps none of them, yet perhaps all may be consistent with a true
   service of Him. The question has no answer. But it suggests the thought
   that we shrink from bringing controversy into his presence. The same
   kind of lesson may be gathered from the consideration of theological
   differences in the face of death. Who, as he draws near to Christ, will
   not feel himself drawn towards his theological opponents? At the end of
   life, when a man looks back calmly, he is most likely to find that he
   exaggerated in some things; that he mistook party spirit for a love of
   truth. Perhaps, he had not sufficient consideration for others, or
   stated the truth itself in a manner which was calculated to give
   offence. In the heat of the struggle, let us at least pause to imagine
   polemical disputes as they will appear a year, two years, three years
   hence; it may be, dead and gone--certainly more truly seen than in the
   hour of controversy. For the truths about which we are disputing cannot
   partake of the passing stir; they do not change even with the greater
   revolutions of human things. They are in eternity; and the image of
   them on earth is not the movement on the surface of the waters, but the
   depths of the silent sea. Lastly, as a measure of the value of such
   disputes, which above all other interests seem to have for a time the
   power of absorbing men's minds and rousing their passions, we may carry
   our thoughts onward to the invisible world, and there behold, as in a
   glass, the great theological teachers of past ages, who have
   anathematized each other in their lives, resting together in the
   communion of the same Lord.

    OXFORD: HORACE HART
    PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
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   [16] In the following pages I have derived great assistance from the
   excellent work of Baur über die Versöhnungslehre.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

   Psalms

   [1]40:6-8   [2]50:10

   Isaiah

   [3]1:13   [4]53:7

   Jeremiah

   [5]11:19

   Micah

   [6]6:6

   Matthew

   [7]8:17

   John

   [8]1:36

   Acts

   [9]17:26   [10]22:20

   Romans

   [11]1:23   [12]3:23   [13]3:23-25   [14]3:25   [15]4:25   [16]12:6
   [17]12:6   [18]14

   1 Corinthians

   [19]1:12   [20]5:7   [21]5:7   [22]8   [23]8:4   [24]9:3-7
   [25]10:19   [26]10:20   [27]10:25   [28]10:27   [29]12:28   [30]12:29
   [31]15:12   [32]15:32

   2 Corinthians

   [33]1:9   [34]6:12   [35]10:10   [36]11:23-27   [37]12:1-5
   [38]12:7-10

   Galatians

   [39]2:12   [40]2:20   [41]2:20   [42]2:20   [43]3:13   [44]3:13
   [45]4:13   [46]4:14   [47]4:14   [48]6:17

   Ephesians

   [49]4:11

   Philippians

   [50]1:15

   2 Timothy

   [51]1:15

   Philemon

   [52]1:9

   Hebrews

   [53]4:8   [54]5:6   [55]6:1   [56]7:6   [57]8:13   [58]9:1
   [59]9:11-14   [60]9:14   [61]10:12   [62]11:26

   Revelation

   [63]1:10
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Index of Greek Words and Phrases

     * Zeu's: [64]1
     * Theo's: [65]1
     * Oidate de hoti di' astheneian tes sarkos euengelisamen humin to
       proteron, kai ton peirasmon humon en te sarki mou ouk exouthenesate
       oude exeptusate, alla hos angelon theou edexasthe me, hos christon
       Iesoun: [66]1
     * a: [67]1
     * anti: [68]1
     * b: [69]1
     * g: [70]1
     * d: [71]1
     * diathe'ke: [72]1
     * e: [73]1
     * en dia': [74]1
     * e pro'te: [75]1
     * lo'gos: [76]1
     * tu'poi: [77]1
     * upe'r: [78]1
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Latin Words and Phrases

     * Deus Deum cum mundo conjunctum Deo manifestat.: [79]1
     * Novum Testamentum in vetere patet; Vetus Testamentum in novo patet:
       [80]1
     * a priori: [81]1 [82]2
     * animus: [83]1
     * articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae: [84]1
     * certum quia impossibile: [85]1
     * horror naturalis: [86]1
     * obedientia activa: [87]1 [88]2
     * obedientia passiva: [89]1 [90]2
     * prima facie: [91]1
     * tabula rasa: [92]1
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Pages of the Print Edition

   [93]i  [94]ii  [95]iii  [96]iv  [97]v  [98]vi  [99]vii  [100]x
   [101]xi  [102]xii  [103]xiii  [104]xiv  [105]xv  [106]xvi  [107]xvii
   [108]xviii  [109]xix  [110]xx  [111]1  [112]2  [113]3  [114]4  [115]5
   [116]6  [117]7  [118]8  [119]9  [120]10  [121]11  [122]12  [123]13
   [124]14  [125]15  [126]16  [127]17  [128]18  [129]19  [130]20  [131]21
   [132]22  [133]23  [134]24  [135]25  [136]26  [137]27  [138]28  [139]29
   [140]30  [141]31  [142]32  [143]33  [144]34  [145]35  [146]36  [147]37
   [148]38  [149]39  [150]40  [151]41  [152]42  [153]43  [154]44  [155]45
   [156]46  [157]47  [158]48  [159]49  [160]50  [161]51  [162]52  [163]53
   [164]54  [165]55  [166]56  [167]57  [168]58  [169]59  [170]60  [171]61
   [172]62  [173]63  [174]64  [175]65  [176]66  [177]67  [178]68  [179]69
   [180]70  [181]71  [182]72  [183]73  [184]74  [185]75  [186]76  [187]77
   [188]78  [189]79  [190]80  [191]81  [192]82  [193]83  [194]84  [195]85
   [196]86  [197]87  [198]88  [199]89  [200]90  [201]91  [202]92  [203]93
   [204]94  [205]95  [206]96  [207]97  [208]98  [209]99  [210]100
   [211]101  [212]102  [213]103  [214]104  [215]105  [216]106  [217]107
   [218]108  [219]109  [220]110  [221]111  [222]112  [223]113  [224]114
   [225]115  [226]116  [227]117  [228]118  [229]119  [230]120  [231]121
   [232]122  [233]123  [234]124  [235]125  [236]126  [237]127  [238]128
   [239]129  [240]130  [241]131  [242]132  [243]133  [244]134  [245]135
   [246]136  [247]137  [248]138  [249]139  [250]140  [251]141  [252]142
   [253]143  [254]144  [255]145  [256]146  [257]147  [258]148  [259]149
   [260]150  [261]151  [262]152  [263]153  [264]154  [265]155  [266]156
   [267]157  [268]158  [269]159  [270]160  [271]161  [272]162  [273]163
   [274]164  [275]165  [276]166  [277]167  [278]168  [279]169  [280]170
   [281]171  [282]172  [283]173  [284]174  [285]175  [286]176  [287]177
   [288]178  [289]179  [290]180  [291]181  [292]182  [293]183  [294]184
   [295]185  [296]186  [297]187  [298]188  [299]189  [300]190  [301]191
   [302]192  [303]193  [304]194  [305]195  [306]196  [307]197  [308]198
   [309]199  [310]200  [311]201  [312]202  [313]203  [314]204  [315]205
   [316]206  [317]207  [318]208  [319]209  [320]210  [321]211  [322]212
   [323]213  [324]214  [325]215  [326]216  [327]217  [328]218  [329]219
   [330]220  [331]221  [332]222  [333]223  [334]224  [335]225  [336]226
   [337]227  [338]228  [339]229  [340]230  [341]231  [342]232  [343]233
   [344]234  [345]235  [346]236  [347]237  [348]238  [349]239  [350]240
   [351]241  [352]242  [353]243  [354]244  [355]245  [356]246  [357]247
   [358]248  [359]249  [360]250  [361]251  [362]252  [363]253  [364]253
   [365]255  [366]256  [367]257  [368]258  [369]259  [370]260  [371]261
   [372]262  [373]263  [374]264  [375]265  [376]266  [377]267  [378]268
     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

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