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~7C^aL 
 
LITERATURE 
 AND DOGMA 
 
 AN ESSAY TOWARDS A BETTER 
 APPREHENSION OF THE BIBLE 
 
 By MATTHEW ARNOLD, D.C.L. 
 
 Formerly Professor of Poetry in the University 
 of Oxford and Fellow of Oriel College 
 
 NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS: NEW YORK, 1902 
 
hsSoLUO 
 
Introduction, 
 
 Matthew Arnold, called the Sainte-Beuve of 
 England, and eminent ae a poet, as a critic, as an 
 essayist, and master of the most exquisite literary 
 style known among modem writers, was a son of 
 Dr. Arnold of Rugby. He was born at Laleham, 
 England, 24th December, 1822, and educated at 
 Winchester, Rugby, and Balliol College, Oxford. 
 He won the Newdigate prize with a poem on 
 Cromwell in 1843, and the following year, gradu- 
 ating with honors, was elected a fellow of Oriel 
 in 1845. Soon after he became private secretary 
 to Lord Lansdowne, which position he held for 
 several years till 1851, when he was appointed 
 one of the lay inspectors of Schools. During his 
 term of office, which lasted till 1885, he was more 
 than once sent by Grovernment to inquire into the 
 state of education on the Continent, and his 
 masterly reports thereon attracted much atten- 
 tion throughout the English-speaking world. In 
 1883 a pension was conferred on him, and in the 
 same year he paid his first visit to the United 
 States. He died suddenly at Liverpool, 15th 
 April, 1888. 
 
 Although ranking high as a poet Arnold's repu- 
 tation as a writer rests mainly upon his exquisite 
 prose. Nowhere can we find greater dignity of 
 thought and sentiment united to a high distinc- 
 tion of manner and utterance. His criticisms on 
 poetry did much to raise criticism in England to 
 the level of a serious and almost systematic sci- 
 ence. His literary judgments have long been re- 
 ceived by the literary world with a respect much 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 higher than that paid to the utterances of any 
 other writer. His literary style is as nearly per- 
 fect as it was possible for it to be ; and it would 
 be difficult to overestimate the benefit to all later 
 writers of such an admirable model and such a 
 high standard for comparison. 
 
 Among his many prose works "Literature and 
 Dogma" has been accorded the first place, and 
 therefore it has been selected as being most wor- 
 thy of starting the series of world-fanious books 
 which will form the ** Commonwealth Library." 
 
 Robert Waite. 
 
 IV 
 
Preface. 
 
 An inevitable revolution, of which we all recog- 
 nize the beginnings and signs, but which has 
 already spread, perhaps, farther than most of us 
 think, is befalling the religion in which we have 
 been brought up. In those countries where re- 
 ligion has been most loved, this revolution will be 
 felt the most keenly; felt through all its stages 
 and in all its incidents. In no country will it be 
 more felt than in England. This cannot be other- 
 wise ; it cannot be but that the revolution should 
 come, and that it should be here felt passionately, 
 profoundly, painfully; but no one is on that ac- 
 count in the least dispensed from the utmost duty 
 of consideratenesB and caution. There is no surer 
 proof of a narrow and ill-instructed mind, than to 
 think and uphold that what a man takes to be 
 the truth on religious matters is always to be 
 proclaimed. Our truth on these matters, and 
 likewise the error of others, is something so rela- 
 tive, that the good or harm likely to be done by 
 speaking ought always to be taken into account. 
 "I keep silence at many things," says Groethe, 
 "for I would not mislead men, and am well con- 
 tent if others can find satisfaction in what gives 
 me oflfence." The man who believes that his truth 
 on religious matters is so absolutely the truth, 
 that say it when, and where, and to whom he 
 will, he cannot but do good with it, is in our 
 day almost always a man whose truth is half 
 blunder, and wholly useless. 
 
 To be convinced, therefore, that our current 
 theology is false, is not necessarily a reason for 
 
 V 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 publishing that conviction. The theology may be 
 false, and yet one may do more harm in attack- 
 ing it than by keeping silence and waiting. To 
 judge rightly the time and its conditions is the 
 great thing ; there is a time, as the Preacher says, 
 to speak, and a time to keep silence. If the pres- 
 ent time is a time to speak, there must be a rea- 
 son why it is so. 
 
 And there is a reason; and it is this. Clergy- 
 men and ministers of religion are full of lamenta- 
 tions over what they call the spread of scepticism, 
 and because of the little hold which religion now 
 has on the masses of the people,~the lapsed 
 masses, as some writers call them. Practical hold 
 on them it never, perhaps, had very much, but 
 they did not question its truth, and they held it 
 in considerable awe ; as the best of them raised 
 themselves up out of a merely animal life, religion 
 attracted and engaged them. But now they seem 
 to have hardly any awe of it at all, and they 
 freely question its truth ; and many of the most 
 successful, energetic, and ingenious of the artisan 
 class, who are steady and rise, are now found 
 either of themselves rejecting the Bible altogether, 
 or following teachers who tell them the Bible is 
 an exploded superstition. Let me quote from the 
 letter of a workingman — a man, himself, of no 
 common intelligence and temper — a passage that 
 sets this forth very clearly. "Despite the efforts of 
 the churches," he says, "the speculations of the 
 day are working their way down among the 
 people, many of whom are asking for the reason 
 and authority for the things they have been 
 taught to believe. Questions of this kind, too, 
 mostly reach them through doubtful channels; 
 and owing to this, and to their lack of culture, a 
 discovery of imperfection and fallibility in the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Bible leads to its contemptuous rejection as a 
 great priestly imposture. And thus those among 
 the working class who eschew the teachings of 
 the orthodox, slide off towards, not the late Mr. 
 Maurice, nor yet Professor Huxley, but towards 
 Mr. Bradlaugh." 
 
 Despite the efforts of the churches, the writer 
 tells us, this contemptuous rejection of the Bible 
 happens. And we regret the rejection as much as 
 the clergy and ministers of religion do. There 
 may be many others who do not regret it, but 
 we do; all that the churches can say about the 
 importance of the Bible and its religion, we con- 
 cur in. And it is the religion of the Bible that is 
 professedly in question with all the churches, when 
 they talk of religion and lament its prospects. 
 With Catholics as well as Protestants, and with 
 all the sects of Protestantism, this is so; and 
 from the nature of the case it must be so. What 
 the religion of the Bible is, how it is to be got at, 
 they may not agree ; but that it is the religion of 
 the Bible for which they contend, they all aver. 
 "The Bible," says Dr. Newman, "is the record of 
 the whole revealed faith ; so far all parties agree." 
 Now, this religion of the Bible we say they can- 
 not value more than we do. If we hesitate to 
 adopt strictly their language about its a7/-impor- 
 tance, that is only because we take an uncom- 
 monly large view of human perfection, and say, 
 speaking strictly, that there go to this certain 
 things, — art, for instance, and science, which the 
 Bible hardly meddles with. The difference be- 
 tween us and them, however, is more a difference 
 of theoretical statement than of practical conclu- 
 sion; speaking practically, and looking at the very 
 large part of human life engaged by the Bible, at 
 the comparatively small part unengaged by it, we 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 are quite "willing, like the churches, to call the 
 Bible and its religion a7/-important. 
 
 And yet, with all this agreement both in words 
 and in things, when we behold the clergy and 
 ministers of religion lament the neglect of religion, 
 and aspire to restore it, how must one feel that 
 to restore religion as they understand it, to re- 
 enthrone the Bible as explained by our current 
 theology, whether learned or popular, is abso- 
 lutely and forever impossible I— as impossible as to 
 restore the predominance of the feudal system, or 
 of the belief in witches. Let us admit that the 
 Bible cannot possibly die; but then the churches 
 cannot even conceive the Bible without the gloss 
 they at present put upon it, and this gloss, as 
 certainly, cannot possibly live. And it is not a 
 gloss which one church or sect puts upon the 
 Bible and another does not; it is the gloss they 
 all put upon it, and call the substratum of belief 
 common to all Christian churches, and largely 
 shared with them, even, by natural religion. It 
 is this so-called axiomatic basis which must go, 
 and it supports all the rest ; and if the Bible were 
 really inseparable from this and depended upon it, 
 then Mr. Bradlaugh would have his way, and the 
 Bible would go too; for this basis is inevitably 
 doomed. For whatever is to stand must rest 
 upon something which is verifiable, not unverifi- 
 able. Now, the assumption with which all the 
 churches and sects set out, that there is "a great 
 Personal First Cause, the moral and intelligent 
 Governor of the universe," and that from him the 
 Bible derives its authority, can never be verified. 
 
 Those who "ask for the reason and authority 
 for the things they have been taught to believe," 
 as the people, we are told, are now doing, will 
 begin at the beginning. Rude and hard reasoners 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 as they are, they will never consent to admit, as 
 a self-evident axiom, the preliminary assumption 
 with vrhich the churches start. But this prelimi- 
 nary assumption governs everything which in our 
 current theology follows it; and it is certain, 
 therefore, that the people will not receive our cur- 
 rent theology. So, if they are to receive the Bible, 
 we must find for the Bible some other basis than 
 that which the churches assign to it, a verifiable 
 basis, and not an assumption; and this, again, 
 will govern everything which comes after. This 
 new religion of the Bible the people may receive ; 
 the version now current of the religion of the 
 Bible they never will receive. 
 
 Here, then, is the problem: to find for the 
 Bible a basis in something which can be verified, 
 instead of in something which has to be assumed. 
 So true and prophetic are Vinet'e words: "We 
 must,^' he said, "make it our business to bring 
 forward the rational side of Christianity, and to 
 show that for thinkers, too, it has a right to be 
 an authority." Yes, and the problem we have 
 stated must be the first stage in the business; 
 with this unsolved, all other religious discussion 
 is idle trifling. 
 
 This is why Dissent, as a religious movement of 
 our day, would be almost droll, if it were not, 
 from the tempers and actions it excites, eo ex- 
 tremely irreligious. But what is to be said for 
 men, aspiring to deal with the cause of religion, 
 who either cannot see that what the people now 
 require is a religion of the Bible quite different 
 from that which any of the churches or sects sup- 
 ply; or who, seeing this, spend their energies in 
 fiercely battling as to whether the Church shall be 
 connected with the nation in its collective and 
 corporate character or no? The question, at the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 present juncture, is in itself so absolutely unim- 
 portant ! The thing is, to recast religion. If this 
 is done, the new religion will be the national one ; 
 if it is not done, separating the nation in its col- 
 lective and corporate character from religion will 
 not do it. It is as if men's minds were much un- 
 settled about mineralogy, and the teachers of it 
 were at variance, and no teacher was convincing, 
 and many people, therefore, were disposed to throw 
 the study of mineralogy overboard altogether. 
 What would naturally be the first business for every 
 friend of the study? Surely to establish on sure 
 grounds the value of the study, and to put its 
 claims in a new light where they could no longer 
 be denied. But if he acted as our Dissenters act 
 in religion, what would he do? Give himself, 
 heart and soul, to a furious crusade against keep- 
 ing the Grovernment School of Mines. 
 
 But meanwhile there is now an end to all fear of 
 doing harm by gainsaying the received theology 
 of the churches and sects. For this theology is 
 itself now a hindrance to the Bible rather than a 
 help ; nay, to abandon it, to put some other con- 
 struction on the Bible than this theology puts, to 
 find some other basis for the Bible than this the- 
 ology finds, is indispensable, if we would have the 
 Bible reach the people. And this is the aim of the 
 following essay : to show that, when we come to 
 put the right construction on the Bible, we give 
 to the Bible a real experimental basis, and keep 
 on this basis throughout ; instead of any basis of 
 unverifiable assumption to start with, followed by 
 a string of other unverifiable assumptions of the 
 like kind, such as the received theology necessi- 
 tates. 
 
 And this aim we cannot seek without coming in 
 sight of another aim, too, which we have often 
 
 X 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 and often pointed out, and tried to recommend : 
 culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best 
 that has been known and said in the world, and 
 thus with the history of the human spirit. One 
 cannot go far in the attempt to bring in, for the 
 Bible, a right construction, without seeing how 
 necessary is something of culture to its being ad- 
 mitted and used. The correspondent we have 
 above quoted notices how the lack of culture dis- 
 poses the people to conclude at once, from any 
 imperfection or fallibility in the Bible, that it is a 
 priestly imposture. To a large extent, this is the 
 fault, not of the people's want of culture, but of 
 the priests and theologians, who for centuries 
 have kept assuring the people that perfect and in- 
 fallible the Bible is. Still, even without this con- 
 fusion added by his theological instructors, the 
 homo UDJus hbri, the man of no range in his read- 
 ing, must almost inevitably misunderstand the 
 Bible, cannot treat it largely enough, must be in- 
 clined to treat it all alike, and to press every 
 word. 
 
 For, on the one hand, he has not enough ex- 
 perience of the way in which men have thought 
 and spoken, to feel what the Bible writers are 
 about ; to read between the lines, to discern where 
 he ought to rest with his whole weight, and 
 where he ought to pass lightly. On the other 
 hand, the void and hunger in his mind, from want 
 of aliment, almost irresistibly impels him to fill it 
 by taking literally and amplifying certain data 
 which he finds in the Bible, whether they ought to 
 be so dealt with or no. Our mechanical and 
 materializing theology, with its insane license of 
 aflB.rmation about God, its insane license of aflBr- 
 mation about a future state, is really the result of 
 the poverty and inanition of our minds. It is be- 
 
PEEPACE. 
 
 cause we cannot trace God in history that we 
 stay the craving of our minds with a fancy ac- 
 count of him, made up by putting scattered ex- 
 pressions of the Bible together, and taking them 
 literally; it is because we have such a scanty 
 sense of the life of humanity, that we proceed in 
 the like manner in our scheme of a future state. 
 He that cannot watch the God of the Bible, and 
 the salvation of the Bible, gradually and on an 
 immense scale discovering themselves and becom- 
 mgj will insist on seeing them ready made, and 
 in such precise and reduced dimensions as may 
 suit his narrow mind. 
 
 To understand that the language of the Bible is 
 fluid, passing, and literary, not rigid, fixed, and 
 scientific, is the first step towards a right under- 
 standing of the Bible. But to take this very first 
 step, some experience of how men have thought 
 and expressed themselves, and some flexibility of 
 spirit, are necessary; and this is culture. Much 
 fruit may be got out of the Bible without it, and 
 with those narrow and materialized schemes of 
 God and a future state which we have mentioned ; 
 that we do not deny, but it is not the important 
 point at present. The important point is, that 
 the diffusion everywhere of some notion of the 
 habits of the experimental sciences,— habits fall- 
 ing in, too, very well with the hard and positive 
 character of the life of "the people,"— the point is, 
 that this diffusion does lead "the people" to nsk 
 for the ground and authority for these precise 
 schemes of God and a future state which are pre- 
 sented to them, and to see clearly and scornfully 
 the failure to give it. The failure to give it is in- 
 evitable, because given it cannot be ; but whereas 
 in the training, life, and sentiment of the educated 
 classes there is much to make them disguise the 
 xii 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 failure to themselves and not insist upon it, in the 
 training, life, and sentiment of the people there is 
 nothing. So that, as far as the people are con- 
 cerned, the old traditional scheme of the Bible is 
 gone ; while neither they nor the so-called educated 
 classes have yet anything to put in its place. 
 
 And thus we come back to our old remedy of 
 culture,— knowing the best that has been thought 
 and known in the world ; which turns out to be, 
 in another shape, and in particular relation to the 
 Bible: getting the power, through reading, to 
 estimate the proportion and relation in what we 
 read. If we read but a very little, we naturally 
 want to press it all ; if we read a great deal, we 
 are willing not to press the whole of what we 
 read, and we learn what ought to be pressed and 
 what not. Now this is really the very foundation 
 of any sane criticism. We have told the Dissenters 
 that their "spirit of watchful jealousy" is wholly 
 destructive and exclusive of the spirit of Chris- 
 tianity. They answer us, that St. Paul talks of 
 "a godly jealousy," and that Christ uses severe 
 invectives against the Scribes and Pharisees. The 
 Dissenters conclude, therefore, that their jealousy 
 is Christian. And so, too, as to the frank, un- 
 varnished language of Mr. Miall at home, Mr. 
 Miall speaking out of the abundance of his heart 
 as a Dissenter to Dissenters, before he draped him- 
 self philosophically for the House of Commons 
 and the world in his garment of blazing principles, 
 as messenger and minister of the sublime truth, 
 that the best way to get religion known and 
 honored is to abolish all national recognition of 
 it. "A State Church I" cries the real Mr. Miall; 
 "have people never pondered upon the practical 
 meaning of that word? have they never looked 
 into that dark, polluted inner chamber of which 
 iriii 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 it is the door? have they never caught a glimpse 
 of the loathsome things that live and crawl and 
 gender there?" This, I say, the Dissenters think 
 Christian, because covered by Christ's use of in- 
 vective. 
 
 Now, there can be no doubt whatever, that in 
 his invectives against the Scribes and Pharisees 
 Christ abandoned the mild, uncontentious, win- 
 ning, inward mode of working (He shall not 
 strive nor cry!) which was his true characteristic, 
 and in which his charm and power lay ; and that 
 there was no chance at all of his gaining by 
 such invectives the persons at whom they were 
 launched. The same may be said of the cases 
 where St. Paul lets loose his "godly jealousy," 
 and employs objurgation instead of the mildness 
 which was Christ's means, and which Paul 
 — though himself no special adept at it — never- 
 theless appreciated so worthily, and so earnestly 
 extols. St. Paul certainly had no chance of con- 
 vincing those whom he calls "dogs," the "con- 
 cision," utterers of "profane and vain babblings," 
 by such a manner of dealing with them. 
 
 What may, indeed, fairly be said is, that the 
 Pharisees against whom Jesus denounced his 
 woes, or the Judaizers against whom Paul ful- 
 minated, were people whom there could be no 
 hope of gaining ; and that not their conversion, 
 but a strong impression on the faithful who read 
 or heard, was the thing aimed at, and very 
 rightly aimed at. And so far, at any rate, as 
 Christ's use of invective against the Pharisees is 
 concerned, this may be quite true; but what a 
 criticism is that which can gather hence any gen- 
 eral defence of jealousy and objurgation as Chris- 
 tian, or any particular defence of them as we see 
 the Dissenters and Mr. Miall using them 1 For, in 
 xiv 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 the first place, such weapons can have no defence 
 at all except as employed against individuals who 
 are past hope, or against institutions which are 
 palpably monstrosities; they can have none as 
 employed against institutions containing at least 
 half a great nation, and therefore a multitude of 
 individuals good as well as bad. And therefore 
 we see that Christ never dreamed of assailing the 
 Jewish Church ; all he cared for was to transform 
 it, by transforming as many as were transform- 
 able of the individuals composing it. In the 
 second place, when such means of action have a 
 defence, they are defensible although violations of 
 Christ's established rule of working, never com- 
 mendable as exemplifications of it. Mildness and 
 sweet reasonableness is the one established rule 
 for Christian working, and no other rule has it or 
 can it have. But, using the Bible in the mechan- 
 ical and helpless way in which one uses it when 
 one has hardly any other book, men fail to see 
 this, clear as it is. And they do really come to 
 imagine that the Dissenters' "spirit of watchful 
 jealousy" may be a Christian temper; or that a 
 movement like Mr. Miall's crusade against the 
 Church of England may be a Christian work. 
 And it is in this way that Christianity gets dis- 
 credited. 
 
 Now, simple as it is, It is not half enough under- 
 stood, this reason for culture: namely, that to 
 read to good purpose we must read a great deal, 
 and be content not to use a great deal of what 
 we read. We shall never be content not to use the 
 whole, or nearly the whole, of what we read, un- 
 less we read a great deal. Yet things are on such 
 a scale, and progress is so gradual, and what 
 one man can do is so bounded, that the moment 
 we press the whole of what any writer says we 
 
 XV 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 fall into error. He touches a great deal; the 
 thing to know is where he is all himself and his 
 best self, where he shows his power, where he 
 goes to the heart of the matter, where he gives 
 us what no other man gives us, or gives us so 
 well. In his valuable ''Church History," Dr. 
 Stoughton says of Hooker: "The Puritan princi- 
 ple of the authority and unehangeableness of a 
 revealed Church polity Hooker substantially ad- 
 mits. Although this deep thinker sometimes talks 
 perilously of altering Christ's laws, he says: 'In 
 the matter of external discipline itself, we do 
 not deny but there are some things whereto the 
 Church is bound till the world's end.' " Dr. 
 Stoughton does not see that to use his Hooker in 
 this way is entirely fallacious; Hooker, this "deep 
 thinker," ae Dr. Stoughton truly calls him, one of 
 the four great names of the English Church, is 
 great by having, signally and above others, or 
 before others and when others had not, the sense, 
 in religion, of history, of historic development. 
 So Butler is great by having the sense of philoso- 
 phy, Barrow by having that of morals, Wilson 
 that of practical Christianity. But if Hooker 
 spoke, as he did, of Church history like a his- 
 torian, and exploded the Puritan figment, due to 
 a defective historic sense, of a revealed Church 
 polity, a Scriptural Church order,— if Hooker did 
 this, this was so new that he could not possibly 
 do it without reservations, limitations, apologies ; 
 he could not help saying, "We do not deny there 
 may be some external things whereto the Church 
 is eternally bound." But he is truly himself, he is 
 the great Hooker, the man from whom we learn 
 when he shatters the Puritan error, not when he 
 uses the language of compliment and ceremony 
 after shattering it. 
 
 xvi 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 In like manner that eloquent orator, Mr. Lid- 
 don, looking about him for authorities which com- 
 mend the Athanasian Creed, finds Hooker com- 
 mending it, and quotes him as an authority. 
 This, again, is to make a use of Hooker which 
 has no soundness in it. Hooker's greatness is 
 that he gives the real method of criticism for 
 Church dogma, the historic method. Church dog- 
 ma is not written in black and white in the Bible, 
 he says ; it has to be collected from it ; it is, as we 
 now say, a development from it. This and that 
 dogma, says Hooker, "are in Scripture nowhere 
 to be found by express literal mention, only de- 
 duced they are out of Scripture by collection." 
 And he assigns the one right criterion for de- 
 termining whether a dogma is justly deduced, and 
 what Scripture means, and what is its true char- 
 acter: the criterion of reason. He assigns this 
 with splendid boldness: "It is not the word of 
 God itself," says he, "which doth, or possibly can, 
 assure us that we do well to think it his word" ; 
 no, it is reason, much-reviled reason. Surely this 
 is enough to expect a sixteenth-century divine to 
 give us in theology,— the very method of true sci- 
 ence I without expecting him to make the full 
 application of it, without expecting him to say 
 that the Church dogmas of hie time, the dogma 
 of the Athanasian Creed among the rest, which 
 were not seriously in question yet, on which the 
 Time-Spirit had not then turned his light, were 
 false developments; without wondering at his 
 saying that they were developments, "the neces- 
 sity whereof is by none denied" 1 This is all that 
 Hooker's warranty of the Athanasian Creed really 
 comes to, or can come to. To fix the method by 
 which the creed must finally be judged was the 
 main issue for him; to judge the Creed by that 
 2 xvli 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 method was a side issue, whereon he never really 
 entered nor could enter, but treated the thing 
 as already settled. Therefore Hooker is no real 
 authority in favor of the Athanasian Creed; 
 though we might think he was if we read him 
 without discrimination. And to read him with 
 discrimination, culture is necessary. 
 
 Luther, again, Mr. Liddon cites as a witness on 
 the question of the Athanasian Creed; and he 
 might as well cite him as a witness on the ques- 
 tion of the origin of species. Luther's greatness is 
 in his revival of the sense of conscience and per- 
 sonal responsibility, and in the fresh vigorous 
 power which this sense, joined to his robust 
 mother-wit, gave him in using the Bible. He had 
 enough to do in attacking Romish developments 
 from the Bible, which by their practical side were 
 evidently, to a plain moral sense and a plain 
 mother-wit, false developments, without attack- 
 ing speculative dogma, which had no visible con- 
 nection with practice, which had all antiquity in 
 its favor, on which, as we say, the Time-Spirit 
 had not then turned his light, of which— so Luther 
 might say, like Hooker— "the necessity is by none 
 denied." All this high speculative dogma he could 
 not but affirm, and the more emphatically the 
 more he questioned lower practical dogma. But 
 his affirmation of it is not one of those things 
 we can use; and whoever reads in the folios of 
 Luther's works without passing lightly over very 
 much, and, amongst it, over this, reads there ill. 
 And without culture, without the use of so many 
 books that he can afford not to over-use and 
 mis-use one, ill a man is likely to read there. 
 
 We can hardly urge this topic too much, of so 
 great a practical importance is it, and above all 
 at the present time. To be able to control what 
 xviii 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 one reads by means of the tact coming, in a clear 
 and fair mind, from a wide experience, was never 
 perhaps so necessary as in the England of our 
 own day, and in theology, and in what concerns 
 the Bible. To get the feicts, the data, in all mat- 
 ters of science, but notably in theology and Bibli- 
 cal learning, one goes to Germany. Germany, 
 and it is her high honor, has searched out the 
 facts and exhibited them. And without knowl- 
 edge of the facte, no clearness or fairness of mind 
 can in any study do anything; this cannot be 
 laid down too rigidly. Now, English religion 
 does not know the facts of its study, and has to 
 go to Germany for them ; this is half apparent to 
 English religion even now, and it will become 
 more and more apparent. And so overwhelming 
 is the advantage given by knowing the facts of a 
 study, that a student who comes to a man who 
 knows them is tempted to put himself into his 
 hands altogether; and this we in general see 
 English students do, when they have recourse to 
 the theologians of Germany. They put themselves 
 altogether into their hands, and take all that they 
 give them, conclusions as well as facts. 
 
 But they ought not to use them in this man- 
 ner ; for a man may have the facts and yet be un- 
 able to draw the right conclusions from them. In 
 general, he may want power; as one may say of 
 Dr. Strauss, for instance, that to what is unsolid 
 in the New Testament he applies the historic 
 method ably enough, but that to deal with the 
 reality which is still left in the New Testament, 
 requires a larger, richer, deeper, more imaginative 
 mind than his. But perhaps the quality specially 
 needed for drawing the right conclusion from the 
 facts, when one has got them, is best called per- 
 ception, delicacy of perception. And this no man 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 can have who is a mere specialist, who has not 
 what we call culture in addition to the knowledge 
 of his particular study ; and many theologians, in 
 Germany as well as elsewhere, are specialists. 
 And even when we have added culture to special 
 knowledge, a good fortune, a natural tact, a per- 
 ception, must go with our culture, to make our 
 criticism sure. And here is what renders criticism 
 so large a thing: namely, that learning alone is 
 not enough, one must have perception too. ^*I, 
 wisdom, dwell with subtlety,^^ says the Wise Man ; 
 and, taking subtlety in a good sense, this is most 
 true. After we have acquainted ourselves with 
 the best that has been known in the world, after 
 we have got all the facts of our special study, 
 fineness and delicacy of perception to deal with 
 the facts is still required, and is, even, the prin- 
 cipal thing of all. 
 
 And in this the German mind, if one may speak 
 in such a general way, does seem to be somewhat 
 wanting. In the German mind, as in the German 
 language, there does seem to be something splay, 
 something blunt-edged, unhandy, and infelicitous, 
 —some want of quick, fine, sure perception, which 
 tends to balance the great superiority of the Ger- 
 mans in knowledge, and in the disposition to deal 
 impartially with knowledge. For impartial they 
 are, as well as learned ; and this is a signal merit. 
 While M. Barth^lemy St.-Hilaire cannot translate 
 Aristotle without dragging in his pompous and 
 false platitudes in glorification of the French gos- 
 pel of the Rights of Man, while one English his- 
 torian writes history to extol the Whigs and an- 
 other to execrate the Church, German workers 
 proceed in a more philosophical fashion. Still, in 
 quickness and delicacy of perception they do seem 
 to come short. 
 
 XX 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Of course in a man of genius this delicacy and 
 dexterity of perception is much less lacking ; but 
 even in Germans of genius there seems some lack 
 of it. Groethe, for instance, has less of it, one 
 must surely own, than the great men of other 
 nations whom alone one can cite as his liter- 
 ary compeers : Shakespeare, Voltaire, Macchiavel, 
 Cicero, Plato. Or, to go a little lower down, 
 compare Bentley as a critic with Hermann ; Bent- 
 ley treating Menander with Hermann treating 
 Aeschylus. Both are on ground favorable to 
 them; both know thoroughly, one may say, the 
 facts of their case ; yet such is the diflference be- 
 tween them, somehow, in dexterousness and sure- 
 ness of perception, that the gifted English scholar 
 is wrong hardly ever, whereas the gifted German 
 scholar is wrong very often. And then every 
 learned German is not gifted, is not a man of 
 genius. Whether it be, as we have elsewhere 
 speculated,* from race ; or whether this quickness 
 and sureness of perception comes, rather, from a 
 long practical conversance with great affairs, and 
 only those nations which have at any time had a 
 practical lead of the civilized world, the Greeks, 
 the Romans, the Italians, the French, the English, 
 can have it ; and the Germans have till now had 
 no such practical lead, though now they have got 
 it, and may now, therefore, acquire the practical 
 dexterity of perception ; however this may be, the 
 thing is so, and a learned German has by no 
 means, in general, a fine and practically sure per- 
 ception in proportion to his learning. Give a 
 Frenchman, an Italian, an Englishman, the same 
 knowledge of the facts, and you could, In general, 
 trust his perception more than you can the Ger- 
 man's. This, I say, shows how large a thing 
 
 * On the Study of Celtic Literature, p. 97, 
 xxi 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 criticism is; since ev6n of those from whom we 
 take what we now in theology most want, 
 knowledge of the facts of our study, and to whom 
 therefore we are, and ought to be, under deep 
 obligations, even of them we must not take too 
 much, or take anything like all that they offer; 
 but we must take much and leave much, and 
 must have experience enough to know what to 
 take and what to leave. And without culture 
 we cannot have this experience; although it is 
 true that even culture itself, without good fortune 
 and tact, will not fully give it. Still, our best 
 and only chance of it is through means of culture. 
 But it is for the Bible itself that this discrimina- 
 tive experience, so necessary in all our theological 
 studies, is most needed. And to our popular re- 
 ligion it is especially difl&cult; because we have 
 been trained to regard the Bible, not as a book 
 whose parts have varying degrees of value, but as 
 the Jews came to regard their Scriptures, as a 
 sort of talisman given down to us out of Heaven, 
 with all its parts equipollent. And yet there was 
 a time when Jews knew well the vast difference 
 there is between books like Esther, Chronicles, or 
 Daniel, and books like Genesis or Isaiah; there 
 was a time when Christians knew well the vast 
 difference between the First Epistle of Peter and 
 his so-called Second Epistle, or between the Epis- 
 tle to the Hebrews and the Epistles to the Ro- 
 mans or the Corinthians. This, indeed, is what 
 makes the religious watchword of the British and 
 Foreign School Society: The Bible, the whole 
 Bible, and nothing but the Bible! so ingeniously 
 (one must say it) absurd ; it is treating the Bible 
 as Mahometans treat the Koran, as if it were a 
 tahsman all of one piece, and with all its sen- 
 tences equipollent. 
 
 xxii 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Yet the very expressions, Canon of Scripture, 
 Canonical Books, recall a time when degrees of 
 value were still felt, and all parts of the Bible did 
 not stand on the same footing, and were not 
 taken equally. There was a time when books 
 were read as part of the Bible which are in no 
 Bible now ; there was a time when books, which 
 are in every Bible now, were by many disallowed 
 as genuine parts of the Bible. St. Athanasius re- 
 jected the Book of Esther, and the Greek Chris- 
 tianity of the East repelled the Apocalypse, and 
 the Latin Christianity of the West repelled the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews. And a true critical sense 
 of relative value lay at the bottom of all these 
 rejections. No one rejected Isaiah or the Epistle 
 to the Romans; the books rejected were such 
 books as those which we now print as the Apoc- 
 rypha, or as the Book of Esther, or the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, or the so-called Epistle of Jude, 
 or the so-called Second Epistle of St. Peter, or the 
 two short Epistles following the main Epistle 
 attributed to St. John, or the Apocalypse. 
 
 Now, whatever value one may assign to these 
 works, no sound critic would rate their intrinsic 
 worth as high as that of the great undisputed 
 books of the Bible. And so far from their finally 
 getting where they are after a thorough trial of 
 their claims, and with indisputable propriety, 
 they got placed by the force of circumstances, by 
 chance or by routine, rather than on their merits. 
 Indeed, by merit alone the Book of Esther could 
 have now no right to be in our Canon while 
 Ecclesiasticus is not, nor the Epistle of Jude and 
 the Second Epistle of Peter rather than the Epis- 
 tle of Clement. But the whole discussion died out, 
 not because the matter was sifted and settled and 
 a perfect Canon of Scripture deliberately formed ; 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 it died out as mediaeTal ignorance deepened, and 
 because there was no longer knowledge or criti- 
 cism enough left in the world to keep such a dis- 
 cussion alive. 
 
 And so things went on till the Renascence, when 
 criticism came to life again. But the Church had 
 now long since adopted the Vulgate, and her 
 authority was concerned in maintaining what she 
 had adopted. Luther and Calvin, on the other 
 hand, recurred to the old true notion of a differ- 
 ence in rank and genuineness among the Bible 
 books. For they both of them insisted on the 
 criterion of internal evidence for Scripture: "the 
 witness of the Spirit." How freely Luther used 
 this criterion, we may see by reading in the old 
 editions of his Bible his prefaces, which in succeed- 
 ing editions have long ceased to appear ; whether 
 he used it aright we do not now inquire, but he 
 used it freely. Taunted, however, by Rome with 
 their divisions, their want of a fixed authority 
 like the Church, Protestants were driven to make 
 the Bible this fixed authority; and so the Bible 
 came to be regarded as a thing all of a piece, 
 endued with talismanic virtues. It came to be 
 regarded as something different from anything it 
 had originally ever been, or primitive times had 
 ever imagined it to be. And Protestants did prac- 
 tically in this way use the Bible more irrationally 
 than Rome practically ever used it ; for Rome had 
 her hypothesis of the Church Catholic endued 
 with talismanic virtues, and did not want a talis- 
 manic Bible too. All this has made a discriminat- 
 ing use of the Bible-documents very difficult in 
 our country ; yet without it a sound criticism of 
 the Bible is impossible, and even, as we say, the 
 very word Canon, the Canon of Scripture, points 
 to such a use. 
 
 xxiv 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 But, indeed, there is hardly any great thing per- 
 verted by men, which does not in some sort thus 
 indicate its own perversion. The idea of the in- 
 fallible Church Catholic itself, as we have else- 
 where said,* is an idea the most fatal of all possi- 
 ble ideas to the concrete so-called infallible Church 
 of Rome, such as we see it. The infallible Church 
 Catholic is, really, the prophetic soul of the wide 
 world dreaming on things to come; the whole 
 race, in its onward progress, developing truth 
 more complete than the parcel of truth any mo- 
 mentary individual can seize. Nay, even that 
 amiable old pessimist in St. Peter's Chair, whose 
 allocutions we read and call them impotent and 
 vain,— the Pope himself is, in his idea, the very 
 Time-Spirit taking flesh, the incarnate '*Zeit- 
 Geist" I O man, how true are thine instincts, how 
 over-hasty thine interpretations of them I 
 
 But to return. Difficult, certainly, is the right 
 reading of the Bible, and true culture, too, is 
 difficult. For true culture implies not only knowl- 
 edge, but right tact and delicacy of judgment, 
 forming themselves by knowledge; without this 
 tact it is not true culture. Difficult, however, as 
 culture is, it is necessary. For, after all, the Bible 
 is not a talisman, to be taken and used literally ; 
 neither is any existing Church a talisman, what- 
 ever pretensions of the sort it may make, for giv- 
 ing the right interpretation of the Bible. Only 
 true culture can give us this; so that if conduct 
 is, as it is, inextricably bound up with the Bible 
 and the right interpretation of it, then the impor- 
 tance of culture becomes unspeakable. For if con- 
 duct is necessary (and there is nothing so neces- 
 sary), culture is necessary. 
 
 And the poor require it as much as the rich; 
 
 *St. Paul aud Protestantism, p. 156. 
 XXV 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 and at present their education, even when they 
 get education, gives them hardly anything of 
 it. Yet hardly less of it, perhaps, than the edu- 
 cation of the rich gives to the rich. For when 
 we say that culture is, to know the best 
 that has been thought and said in the world, 
 we imply that, for culture, a system directly 
 tending to this end is necessary in our reading. 
 Now, there is no such system yet present to guide 
 the reading of the rich any more than of the 
 poor. Such a system is hardly even thought of; 
 a man who wants it must make it for himself. 
 And our reading being so without purpose as it 
 is, nothing can be truer than what Butler says, 
 that really, in general, no part of our time is 
 more idly spent than the time spent in reading. 
 
 Still, culture is indispensably necessary, and 
 culture is reading ; but reading with a purpose to 
 guide it, and with system. He does a good work 
 who does anything to help this ; indeed, it is the 
 one essential service now to be rendered to edu- 
 cation. And the plea, that this or that man has 
 no time for culture, will vanish as soon as we de- 
 sire culture so much that we begin to examine 
 seriously our present use of our time. It has often 
 been said, and cannot be said too often : Grive to 
 any man all the time that he now wastes, not 
 only on his vices (when he has them), but on use- 
 less business, wearisome or deteriorating amuse- 
 ments, trivial letter- writing, random reading, and 
 he will have plenty of time for culture. ^'Die Zeit 
 ist unendlich langy' says Groethe; and so it really 
 is. Some of us waste all of it, most of us waste 
 much ; but all of us waste some. 
 
 XXVI 
 
Contents. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Introduction . .... 29 
 
 Chapter 
 
 I. Religion GiTen 36 
 
 n. Aberglaube Invading . . . 76 
 
 III. Religion New-Given . . 90 
 
 IV. The Proof From Prophecy 112 
 V. The Proof From Miracles . . . 119 
 
 VI. The New Testament Record 144 
 VII. The Testimony of Jesue to Himself 169 
 VIII. The Early Witnesses . . . 222 
 IX. Aberglaube Reinvading . . . 241 
 X. Our ''Masses" and The Bible . . 269 
 XI. The True Greatness of The Old Tes- 
 tament .... . 291 
 XII. The True Greatness of Christianity 311 
 Conclusion 325 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Mr. Disraeli, treating Hellenic things with the 
 scornful negligence natural to a Hebrew, said the 
 other day, in a weU-known book, that our aristo- 
 cratic class, the polite flower of the nation, were 
 truly Hellenic in this respect among others,— that 
 they cared nothing for letters, and never read. 
 Now, there seems to be here some inaccuracy, if 
 we take our standard of what is Hellenic from 
 Hellas at its highest pitch of development; for the 
 latest historian of Greece, Dr. Curtius, tells us 
 that in the Athens of Pericles "reading was uni- 
 versally diffused"; and, again, that "what more 
 than anything distinguishes the Greeks from the 
 barbarians of ancient and modem times, is the 
 idea of a culture comprehending body and soul in 
 an equal measure." And we have ourselves called 
 our aristocratic class barbarians, which is the 
 contrary of Hellenes, from this very reason : be- 
 cause, with all their fine, fresh appearance, their 
 open-air life, and their love for field-sports, for 
 reading and thinking they have in general no 
 turn. But no doubt Mr. Disraeli was thinking of 
 the primitive Hellenes of Northwestern Greece, 
 from among whom the Dorians of Peloponnesus 
 originally came, but who themselves remained in 
 their old seats, and did not migrate and develop 
 like their more famous brethren; and of these 
 primitive Hellenes, of Greeks like the Chaonians 
 and Molossians, it is probably a very just account 
 29 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 to give, that they lived in the open air, loved 
 field-sports, and never read. And, explained in 
 this way, Mr. Disraeli's parallel of our aristocratic 
 class with what he somewhat mieleadingly calls 
 the old Hellenic race, appears ingenious and 
 sound ; to those lusty northerners, the Molossian 
 or Chaonian Greeks, — Greeks untouched by the 
 development which contra-distinguishes the Hel- 
 lene from the barbarian,— our aristocratic class, as 
 he exhibits it, has a strong resemblance. At any 
 rate, this class — which from its great possessions, 
 its beauty and attractiveness, the admiration felt 
 for it by the Philistines or middle-class, its actual 
 power in the nation, and the still more consider- 
 able destinies to which its politeness, in Mr. Car- 
 lyle's opinion, entitles it, cannot but attract our 
 notice pre-eminently — shows at present a great 
 and genuine disregard for letters. 
 
 And, perhaps, if there is any other body of men 
 which strikes one, even after looking at our aris- 
 tocratic class, as being In the sunshine, as exer- 
 cising great attraction, as being admired by the 
 Philistines or middle-class, and as having before 
 it a future still more brilliant than its present, it 
 is the friends of physical science. Now, their re- 
 volt against the tyranny of letters is notorious. 
 To deprive letters of the too great place they have 
 hitherto filled in men's estimation, and to substi- 
 tute other studies for these, is the object of a sort 
 of crusade with a body of people important in 
 itself, but still more important because of the 
 gifted leaders who march at its head. 
 
 Religion has always hitherto been a great 
 power in England ; and, on this account, perhaps, 
 whatever humiliations may be in store for re- 
 ligion in the future, the friends of physical science 
 will not object to our saying that, after them and 
 30 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the aristocracy, the leaders of the religious world 
 fill a prominent place in the public eye even now, 
 and one cannot help noticing what their opinions 
 and likings are. And it is curious how the feeling 
 of the chief people in the religious world, too, 
 seems to be just now against mere letters, which 
 they slight as the vague and inexact instrument 
 of shallow essayists and magazine- wri ters ; and in 
 favor of dogma, of a scientific and exact present- 
 ment of religious things, instead of a literary pre- 
 sentment of them. "Dogmatic theology," eays 
 the "Guardian," speaking of our existing dog- 
 matic theology, — "dogmatic theology, that is, 
 precision and deGniteness of religious thought." 
 "Maudlin eentimentalism," says the Dean of Nor- 
 wich, "with its miserable disparagements of any 
 de&nite doctrine; a nerve/eAS religion, without the 
 sinew and bone of doctrine." The distinguished 
 Chancellor of the University of Oxford thought it 
 needful to tell us on a public occasion lately that 
 "religion is no more to be severed from dogma 
 than light from the sun." Every one, again, re- 
 members the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester 
 making, in Convocation, the other day, their re- 
 markable effort "to do something," as they said, 
 "for the honor of Our Lord's Godhead," and to 
 mark their sense of "that infinite separation for 
 time and for eternity which is involved in rejecting 
 the Godhead of the Eternal Son." In the same 
 way: "To no teaching," says one champion of 
 dogma, "can the appellation of Christian be truly 
 given which does not involve the idea of a Per- 
 sonal God." Another lays like stress on correct 
 ideas about the Personality of the Holy Ghost. 
 "Our Lord unquestionably," eays a third, "an- 
 nexes eternal life to a right knowledge of the 
 Godhead,"— that is, to a right speculative, dog- 
 31 
 
LITERATURE AND DOaMA. 
 
 matic knowledge of it. A fourth appeals to his- 
 tory and human nature for proof that *'an un- 
 dogmatic Church can no more satisfy the hunger 
 of the soul than a snowball, painted to look like 
 fruit, would stay the hunger of the stomach." 
 And all these friends of theological science are, 
 like the friends of physical science, though from 
 another cause, severe upon letters. Attempts 
 made at a literary treatment of religious history 
 and ideas they call ''a subverting of the faith 
 once delivered to the saints"; those who make 
 them they speak of as "those who have made 
 shipwreck of the faith"; and when they talk of 
 "the poison openly disseminated by infidels," and 
 describe the "progress of infidelity," which more 
 and more, according to their account, "denies 
 God, rejects Christ, and lets loose every human 
 passion," though they have the audaciousness of 
 physical science most in their eye, yet they have 
 a direct aim, too, at the looseness and dangerous 
 temerity of letters. 
 
 Keeping in remembrance the Scriptural comment 
 on the young man who had great possessions, 
 to be able to work a change of mind in our aris- 
 tocratic class we never have pretended, we never 
 shall pretend. But to the friends of physical sci- 
 ence and to the friends of dogma we do feel em- 
 boldened, after giving our best consideration to 
 the matter, to say a few words on behalf of let- 
 ters, and in deprecation of the slight which, on 
 different grounds, they both put upon them. 
 
 But particularly to the friends of dogma do we 
 wish to insist on the case for letters, because of 
 the great issues which seem to us to be here in- 
 volved. Therefore we shall take leave, in spite of 
 modern fashions, still to treat theology with so 
 much respect as to give her the first place; and 
 32 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 with the subject of the present volume, "literature 
 and dogma,^^ we shall make our beginning. 
 
 It is clear that dogmatists love religion,— for 
 else why do they occupy themselves with it so 
 much, and make it, most of them, the business, 
 even the professional business, of their lives?— 
 and clearly religion seeks man's salvation. How 
 distressing, therefore, must it be to them to think 
 that "salvation is unquestionably annexed to a 
 right knowledge of the Godhead," and that a 
 right knowledge of the Godhead depends upon 
 reasoning, for which so many people have not 
 much aptitude ; and upon reasoning from ideas or 
 terms, such as substancCj identity, causation, de- 
 sign, about which there is endless disagreement I 
 It is true, a right knowledge of geometry also 
 depends upon reasoning, and many people never 
 get it ; but then, in the first place, salvation is not 
 annexed to a right knowledge of geometry ; and 
 in the second, the ideas or terms, such as pointy 
 line, angle, from which we reason in geometry, 
 are terms about which there is no ambiguity or 
 disagreement. But as to the demonstrations and 
 terms of theology we cannot comfort ourselves in 
 this manner. How must this thought mar the 
 Archbishop of York's enjoyment of such a solem- 
 nity as that in which, to uphold and renovate 
 religion, he lectured lately to Lord Harrowby, 
 Dean Payne Smith, and other kindred souls, upon 
 the theory of causation I And what a consola- 
 tion to us, who are eo perpetually being taunted 
 with our known inaptitude for abstruse reason- 
 ing, if we can find that for this great concern of 
 religion, at any rate, abstruse reasoning does not 
 seem to be the appointed help, and that as good 
 3 33 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 or better a help— for, indeed, there can hardly, to 
 judge by the present state of things, be a worse — 
 may be something which is in an ordinary man's 
 power 1 
 
 For the good of letters is that they require no 
 extraordinary acuteness such as is required to 
 handle the theory of causation like the Archbishop 
 of York, or the doctrine of the Godhead of the 
 Eternal Son like the Bishops of Winchester and 
 Gloucester. The good of letters may be had 
 without skill in arguing, or that formidable log- 
 ical apparatus, not unlike a guillotine, which 
 Professor Huxley epeaks of somewhere as the 
 young man's best companion, — and so it would 
 be, no doubt, if all wisdom were come at by hard 
 reasoning; in that case, all who could not man- 
 age this apparatus (and only a few picked crafts- 
 men can manage it) would be in a pitiable condi- 
 tion. 
 
 But the valuable thing in letters — that is, in the 
 acquainting one's self with the best which has 
 been thought and said in the world— is, as we 
 have often remarked, the judgment which forms 
 itself insensibly in a fair mind along with fresh 
 knowledge; and this judgment almost any one 
 with a fair mind, who will but trouble himself to 
 try and make acquaintance with the best which 
 has been thought and uttered in the world, may, 
 if he is lucky, hope to attain to. For this judg- 
 ment comes almost of itself; and what it dis- 
 places it displaces easily and naturally, and with- 
 out any turmoil of controversial reasonings. The 
 thing comes to look differently to us, as we look 
 at it by the light of fresh knowledge. We are not 
 beaten from our old opinion by logic, we are not 
 driven off our ground ; our ground itself changes 
 with us. 
 
 3i 
 
INTKODUCTION. 
 
 Far more of our mistakes come from want of 
 fresh knowledge than from want of correct rea- 
 soning; and, therefore, letters meet a greater want 
 in us than does logic. The idea of a triangle is a 
 definite and ascertained thing, and to deduce the 
 properties of a triangle from it is an affair of rea- 
 soning. There are heads unapt for this sort of 
 work, and some of the blundering to be found in 
 the world is from this cause. But how far 
 more of the blundering to be found in the world 
 comes from people fancying that some idea is a 
 definite and ascertained thing, like the idea of a 
 triangle, when it is not ; and proceeding to deduce 
 properties from it, and to do battle about them, 
 when their first start was a mistake I And how 
 liable are people with a talent for hard, abstruse 
 reasoning to be tempted to this mistake 1 And 
 what can clear up such a mistake except a wide 
 and familiar acquaintance with the human spirit 
 and its productions, showing how ideas and 
 terms arose, and what is their character? and 
 this is letters and history, not logic. 
 
 So that minds with small aptitude for abstruse 
 reasoning may yet, through letters, gain some 
 hold on sound judgment and useful knowledge, 
 and may even clear up blunders committed, out 
 of their very excess of talent, by the athletes of 
 logic. 
 
 35 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Religion Given. 
 
 We have said elsewhere* how much it has con- 
 tributed to the misunderstanding of St. Paul, that 
 terms like grace, new birth, jnstMcatioBj—which. 
 he used in a fluid and passing way, as men use 
 terms in common discourse or in eloquence and 
 poetry, to describe approximately, but only ap- 
 proximately, what they have present before their 
 mind, but do not profess that their mind does or 
 can grasp exactly or adequately, — that such terms 
 people have blunderingly taken in a fixed and 
 rigid manner, as if they were symbols with as 
 definite and fully grasped a meaning as the names 
 line or angle, and proceeded to use them on this 
 supposition ; terms, in short, which with St. Paul 
 are literary terms, theologians have employed as 
 if they were scientiSc terms. 
 
 But if one desires to deal with this mistake 
 thoroughly, one must observe it in that supreme 
 term with which religion is filled, — the term God. 
 The seemingly incurable ambiguity in the mode of 
 employing this word is at the root of all our re- 
 ligious differences and difl&culties. People use it as 
 if it stood for a perfectly definite and ascertained 
 idea, from which we might, without more ado, 
 extract propositions and draw inferences, just as 
 we should from any other definite and ascertained 
 idea. For instance, I open a book which contro- 
 verts what its author thinks dangerous views 
 about religion, and I read : "Our sense of morality 
 * Culture and Anarchy, p. 178. 
 36 
 
RELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 tells us so and so ; our sense of God, on the other 
 hand, tells us so and so." And again, "the im- 
 pulse in man to seek God" is distinguished, as if 
 the distinction were self-evident and explained it- 
 self, from "the impulse in man to seek his highest 
 perfection." Now, morality represents for every- 
 body a thoroughly definite and ascertained idea, — 
 the idea of human conduct regulated in a certain 
 manner. Everybody, again, understands dis- 
 tinctly enough what is meant by man's perfec- 
 tion, — his reaching the beet which his powers and 
 circumstances allow him to reach. And the word 
 "God" is used, in connection with both these 
 words, Morality and Perfection, as if it stood for 
 just as definite and ascertained an idea as they 
 do; an idea drawn from experience, just as the 
 ideas are which they stand for; an idea about 
 which every one was agreed, and from which we 
 might proceed to argue and to make inferences, 
 with the certainty that, as in the case of moral- 
 ity and perfection, the basis on which we were 
 going every one knew and granted. But, in truth, 
 the word "God" is used in most cases — not by the 
 Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester, but by 
 mankind in general— as by no means a term of 
 science or exact knowledge, but a term of poetry 
 and eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak, at 
 a not fully grasped object of the speaker's con- 
 sciousness, — a literary term, in short; and man- 
 kind mean different things by it as their conscious- 
 ness differs. 
 
 The first question, then, is, how people are using 
 the word, whether in this literary way, or in the 
 scientific way of the Bishops of Winchester and 
 Gloucester. The second question is, what, sup- 
 posing them to use the term ae one of poetry and 
 eloquence, and to import into it, therefore, a great 
 37 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 from this. Yet Burely the difficulty of religion is 
 great enough by itself, if men would but consider 
 it, to satisfy the most voracious appetite for diffi- 
 culties. It extends to Tightness in the whole range 
 of what we call conduct; in three fourths, there- 
 fore, at the very lowest computation, of human 
 life. The only doubt is whether we ought not to 
 make the range of conduct wider still, and to say 
 it is four fifths of human life, or five sixths, ^ut 
 it is better to be under the mark than over it ; so 
 let us be content with reckoning conduct as three 
 fourths of human life.. 
 
 And to recognize in what way conduct is this, 
 let us eschew all school-terms, like moral sense, 
 and volitional, and altriiTStic, which philosophers 
 employ, and let us help ourselves by the most 
 palpable and plain examples. When the rich man 
 in the Bible parable says, **Soul, thou hast much 
 goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, 
 eat, drink, and be merry I" — those ^oocZs which he 
 thus assigns as the stuff* with which human life 
 is mainly concerned (and so in practice it really 
 is),— those goods and our dealings with them,— 
 our taking our ease, eating, drinking, and being 
 merry, — are the matter of conduct, the range 
 where it is exercised. Eating, drinking, ease, 
 pleasure, money, the intercourse of the sexes, the 
 ffiving free swing to one's temper and instincts, — 
 these are the matters with which conduct is con- 
 cerned, and with which all mankind know and 
 feel it to be concerned. 
 
 Or when Protagoras points out of what things 
 we are, from childhood till we die, being taught 
 and admonished, and says (but it is lamentable 
 that here we have not at hand Mr. Jowett, who 
 so excellently introduces the enchanter Plato and 
 his personages, but must use our own words) : 
 40 
 
RELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 "From the time he can understand what is said 
 to him, nurse and mother, and teacher, and 
 father, too, are bending their efforts to this end,— 
 to make the child good; teaching and showing 
 him, as to everything he has to do or say, how 
 this is right and that not right, and this is hon- 
 orable and that vile, and this is holy and that un- 
 holy, and this do and that do not" ; Protagoras, 
 also, when he says this, bears his testimony to the 
 scope and nature of conduct, tells us what con- 
 duct is. Or, once more, when Monsieur Littr^ 
 (and we hope to make our peace with the Com- 
 tists by quoting an author of theirs in preference 
 to those authors whom all the British public is 
 now reading and quoting), when Monsieur Littr6, 
 in a most ingenious essay on the origin of morals, 
 traces up, better, perhaps, than any one else, all 
 our impulses into two elementary instincts, the 
 instinct of self-preservation and the reproductive 
 instinct, then we take his theory and we say, that 
 all the impulses which can be conceived as deriva- 
 ble from the instinct of self-preservation in us and 
 the reproductive instinct, these terms being ap- 
 plied in their ordinary sense, are the matter of 
 conduct. It is evident this includes, to say no 
 more, every impulse relating to temper, every im- 
 pulse relating to sensuality; and we all know 
 how much that is. 
 
 How we deal with these impulses is the matter 
 of conduct, — how we obey, regulate, or restrain 
 them,— that and nothing else. Not whether M. 
 Littrg's theory is true or false; for whether it be 
 true or false, there the impulses confessedly now 
 are, and the business of conduct is to deal with 
 them. But it is evident, if conduct deals with 
 these, both how important a thing conduct is, 
 and how simple a thing. Important, because it 
 41 
 
LITEKATUBE AND DOGMA. 
 
 deal of their own individual feelings and character, 
 is yet the common substratum of idea on which, 
 in using it, they all rest. For this will then be, 
 so far as they are concerned, the scientific sense of 
 the word, the sense in which we can use it for 
 purposes of argument and inference without am- 
 biguity. Is this substratum, at any rate, coinci- 
 dent with the scientific idea of the Bishops of 
 Winchester and Gloucester?— will then be the 
 question. 
 
 Strictly and formally the word "God," we now 
 learn from the philologists, means, like its kindred 
 Aryan words Theos, Deus, and Deva, simply 
 brilliant. In a certain narrow way, therefore, 
 this is the one exact and scientific sense of the 
 word. It was long thought to mean good, and 
 so Luther took it to mean the best that man 
 knows or can know; and in this sense, as a mat- 
 ter of act and history, mankind constantly use the 
 word. But then there is also the scientific sense 
 held by theologians, deduced from the ideas of 
 substance, identity, causation, design, and so on ; 
 but taught, they say, or at least implied, in the 
 Bible, and on which all the Bible rests. According 
 to this scientific sense of theology, God is a per- 
 son, the great first cause, the moral and intelli- 
 gent governor of the universe; Jesus Christ con- 
 substantial with him; and the Holy Ghost a 
 person proceeding from the other two. This is 
 the sense for which, or for portions of which, the 
 Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester are so 
 zealous to do something. 
 
 Other people, however, who fail to perceive the 
 force of such a deduction from the abstract ideas 
 above mentioned, who indeed think it quite hol- 
 low, but who are told that this sense is in the 
 Bible, and that they must receive it if they receive 
 38 
 
EELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 the Bible, conclude that in that case they had 
 better receive neither the one nor the other. \^ome- 
 thing of this sort it was, no doubt, which made 
 Professor Huxley tell the London School Board 
 lately, that * 'if these islands had no religion at all, 
 it would not enter into his mind to introduce the 
 religious idea by the agency of the Bible." ;0f 
 such people there are now a great many ; and in- 
 deed there could hardly, for those who value the 
 Bible, be a greater example of the sacrifices one is 
 sometimes called upon to make for the truth, than 
 to find that, far the truth as held by the Bishops 
 of Winchester and Gloucester, if it is the truth, 
 one must sacrifice the allegiance of so many peo- 
 ple to the Bible. 
 
 But surely, if there be anything with which 
 metaphysics have nothing to do, and where a 
 plain man, without skill to walk in the arduous 
 paths of abstruse reasoning, may yet find himself 
 at home, it is religion." For the object of religion 
 is conduct; and conduct is really, however men 
 may overlay it with philosophical disquisitions, 
 the simplest thing in the world. That is to say, 
 it is the simplest thing in the world as far as 
 understanding is concerned ; as regards doing, it is 
 the hardest thing in the world. Here is the diffi- 
 culty, — to do what we very well know ought to 
 be done ; and instead of facing this, men have 
 searched out another with which they occupy 
 themselves by preference, — the origin of what is 
 called the moral sense, the genesis and physiology 
 of conscience, and so on. No one denies that here, 
 too, is difficulty, or that the difficulty is a proper 
 object for the human faculties to be exercised 
 upon ; but the difficulty here is speculative. It is 
 not the difficulty of religion, which is a practical 
 one; and it often tends to divert the attention 
 39 
 
LITERATURE AND DOaMA. 
 
 from this. Yet surely the difficulty of religion is 
 great enough by itself, if men would but consider 
 it, to satisfy the most voracious appetite for diffi- 
 culties. It extends to rightness in the whole range 
 of what we call conduct; in three fourths, there- 
 fore, at the very lowest computation, of human 
 life. The only doubt is whether we ought not to 
 make the range of conduct wider still, and to say 
 it is four fifths of human life, or five sixths. .JBut 
 it is better to be under the mark than over it ; so 
 let us be content with reckoning conduct as three 
 fourths of human life.^ 
 
 And to recognize in what way conduct is this, 
 let us eschew all school-terms, like moral sense, 
 and volitional, and altruistic, which philosophers 
 employ, and let us help ourselves by the most 
 palpable and plain examples. When the rich man 
 in the Bible parable says, "Soul, thou hast much 
 goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, 
 eat, drink, and be merry 1" — those ^oocfe which he 
 thus assigns as the ^t\}S with which human life 
 is mainly concerned (and so in practice it really 
 is), — those goods and our dealings with them, — 
 our taking our ease, eating, drinking, and being 
 merry, — are the matter of conduct, the range 
 where it is exercised. Eating, drinking, ease, 
 pleasure, money, the intercourse of the sexes, the 
 giving free swing to one's temper and instincts,— 
 these are the matters with which conduct is con- 
 cerned, and with which all mankind know and 
 feel it to be concerned. 
 
 Or when Protagoras points out of what things 
 we are, from childhood till we die, being taught 
 and admonished, and says (but it is lamentable 
 that here we have not at hand Mr. Jowett, who 
 so excellently introduces the enchanter Plato and 
 his personages, but must use our own words) : 
 40 
 
KELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 "From the time he can understand what is said 
 to him, nurse and mother, and teacher, and 
 father, too, are bending their efforts to this end,— 
 to make the child good; teaching and showing 
 him, as to everything he has to do or say, how 
 this is right and that not right, and this is hon- 
 orable and that vile, and this is holy and that un- 
 holy, and this do and that do not" ; Protagoras, 
 also, when he says this, bears his testimony to the 
 scope and nature of conduct, tells us what con- 
 duct is. Or, once more, when Monsieur Littre 
 (and we hope to make our peace with the Com- 
 tists by quoting an author of theirs in preference 
 to those authors whom aU the British public is 
 now reading and quoting) , when Monsieur Littr^, 
 in a most ingenious essay on the origin of morals, 
 traces up, better, perhaps, than any one else, all 
 our impulses into two elementary instincts, the 
 instinct of self-preservation and the reproductive 
 instinct, then we take his theory and we say, that 
 all the impulses which can be conceived as deriva- 
 ble from the instinct of self-preservation in us and 
 the reproductive instinct, these terms being ap- 
 plied in their ordinary sense, are the matter of 
 conduct. It is evident this includes, to say no 
 more, every impulse relating to temper, every im- 
 pulse relating to sensuality; and we all know 
 how much that is. 
 
 How we deal with these impulses is the matter 
 of conduct, — how we obey, regulate, or restrain 
 them,— that and nothing else. Not whether M. 
 Littr^'s theory is true or false; for whether it be 
 true or false, there the impulses confessedly now 
 are, and the business of conduct is to deal with 
 them. But it is evident, if conduct deals with 
 these, both how important a thing conduct is, 
 and how simple a thing. Important, because it 
 41 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 covers so large a portion of human life, and the 
 portion common to all sorts of people; simple, 
 because, though there needs perpetual admonition 
 to form conduct, the admonition is needed, not to 
 determine what we ought to do, but to make us 
 do it. 
 
 And as to this simplicity, all moralists are 
 agreed. "Let any plain, honest man," says 
 Bishop Butler, "before he engages in any course of 
 action" (he means action of the very kind we call 
 conduct) f "ask himself, 'Is this I am going about 
 right, or is it wrong? is it good, or is it evil?' I 
 do not in the least doubt but that this question 
 would be answered agreeably to truth and virtue 
 by almost any fair man in almost any circum' 
 stance." And Bishop Wilson says: "Look up to 
 G-od" (by which he means just this, consult your 
 conscience) "at all times, and he will, as in a 
 glass, discover what is fit to be done." And the 
 Preacher's well-known sentence is exactly to the 
 same effect, "G-od made man upright; but they 
 have sought out many inventions," — or, as it 
 more correctly is, "manj abstruse reasonings." 
 Let us hold fast to this, and we shall find we 
 have a stay by the help of which even poor weak 
 men, with no pretensions to be athletes, may 
 stand firmly. 
 
 And so, when we are asked, What is the object 
 of religion? let us reply. Conduct. And when we 
 are asked further. What is conduct? let us answer. 
 
 Three fourths of Iife,~ 
 
 -J 
 
 2. 
 
 And certainly we need not go far about to prove 
 
 that conduct, or "righteousness,'' which is the 
 
 object of religion, is in a special manner the object 
 
 of Bible religion. The word "righteousness" is 
 
 42 
 
RELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 the master-word of the Old Testament. "Keep 
 judgment and do righteousness I Cease to do 
 evil, learn to do welll" these words being taken in 
 their plainest sense of conduct ; Offer the s&cri£ce, 
 not of victims and ceremonies, as the way of the 
 world in religion then was, but, Offer the sacrifice 
 of lighteousness! The great concern of the New 
 Testament is likewise righteousness, but right- 
 eousness reached through particular means, right- 
 eousness by the power of Christ. A sentence 
 which sums up the New Testament, and assigns 
 the ground whereon the Christian Church stands, 
 is, as we have elsewhere said,* this : "Let every one 
 that nameth the name of Christ depart from in- 
 iquity 1" If we are to take a sentence which in 
 like manner sums up the Old Testament, such a 
 sentence is this: "0 ye that love the Eternal, see 
 that ye hate the thing which is evil I to him that 
 ordereth his conversation right shall be shown 
 the salvation of God." 
 
 But instantly there will be raised the objection 
 that this is morality, not religion; morality, 
 ethics, conduct, being by many people, and above 
 all by theologians, carefully contra-distinguished 
 from religion, which is supposed in some special 
 way to be connected with propositions about the 
 Godhead of the Eternal Son, like those for which 
 the ^Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester want to 
 do something, or propositions about the person- 
 ality of God, or about election or justification. 
 Religion, however, means simply either a binding 
 to righteousness, or else a serious attending to 
 righteousness and dwelling upon it ; which of these 
 two it most nearly means, depends upon the view 
 we take of the word's derivation; but it means 
 one of them, and they are really much the same. 
 * St. Paul and Protestantism, p. 169, 
 43 
 
LITEBATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 And the antithesis between ethical and religious 
 IB thus quite a false one. Ethical means practical, 
 it relates to practice or conduct passing into 
 habit or disposition. Religious also means prac- 
 tical, but practical in a still higher degree; and 
 the right antithesis to both ethical and religious 
 is the same as the right antithesis to practical: 
 namely, theoretical. 
 
 Now, the propositions of the Bishops of Win- 
 chester and Grlouceeter are theoretical, and they 
 therefore are very properly opposed to proposi- 
 tions which are moral or ethical; but they are 
 with equal propriety opposed to propositions 
 which are religious. They differ in kind from 
 what is religious while what is ethical agrees in 
 kind with it. But is there, therefore, no difference 
 between what is ethical, or morality, and religion? 
 There is a difference, a difference of degrees. -JRe- 
 ligion, if we follow the intention of human 
 thought and human language in the use of the 
 word, is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by 
 feeling ; the passage from morality to reli^on is 
 made, when to morality is applied emotion.^ And 
 the true meaning of religion is thus not simply 
 morality, but morality touched by emotion. And 
 this new elevation and inspiration of morality is 
 well marked by the word "righteousness." t- Con- 
 duet is the word of common life, morality is the 
 word of philosophical disquisition, righteousness 
 is the word of religion. 
 
 Some people, indeed, are for calling all high 
 thought and feeling by the name of religion ; ac- 
 cording to that saying of Goethe, "He who has 
 art and science has also religion." But let us use 
 words as mankind generally use them. We may 
 call art and science touched by emotion religion, 
 if we will ; as we may make the instinct of eelf- 
 44 
 
RELIGION GIVEN, 
 
 preservation, into which M. Littre traces up all 
 our private affections, include the perfecting our- 
 selves by the study of what is beautiful in art; 
 and the reproductive instinct, into which he 
 traces up all our social affections, include the per- 
 fecting mankind by political science. But men 
 have not yet got to that stage, when we think 
 much of either their private or their social affec- 
 tions at all, except as exercising themselves in 
 conduct; neither do we yet think of religion as 
 otherwise exercising itself. When mankind speak 
 of religion, they have before their mind an activity 
 engaged, not with the whole of life, but with that 
 three fourths of life which is conduct. This is 
 wide enough range for one word, surely ; but at 
 any rate, let us at present limit ourselves as man- 
 kind do. 
 
 And if some one now asks. But what is this ap- 
 plication of emotion to moraUty, and by what 
 marks may we know it? — we can quite easily 
 satisfy him; not, indeed, by any disquisition of 
 our own, but in a much better way, by examples. 
 "By the dispensation of Providence to mankind," 
 says Quintilian, "goodness gives men most pleas- 
 ure."* That is morality. "The path of the just 
 is as the shining light which shineth more and 
 more unto the perfect day." That is morality 
 touched with emotion or religion. "JHold off from 
 sensuality," says Cicero; "f(fr, if you have given 
 yourself up to it, you will find yourself unable to 
 think of anything else."! That is morality. 
 "Blessed are the pure in heart," says Jedhs; "for 
 they shall see God." That is religion. "We all 
 want to live honestly, but cannot," says the 
 
 * Dedlt hoc Providentia homiuibus munus, ut honesta ma^ 
 juvarent. 
 
 t Sis a venerels amoribxis aversus ; qulbus si te dediderls, non 
 allud quidquam possis cogitare quam illud quod dlUgls. 
 45 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 Greek maxim-maker.* That is morality. "0 
 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me 
 from the body of this death 1" says St. Paul. 
 That is religion. *'Would thou wert of as good 
 conversation in deed as in wordl" is morality.t 
 "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, 
 shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven, but he 
 that doeth the will of my Father which is in 
 Heaven 1" is religion. V'Live as you were meant 
 to livel" is morality.t "Lay hold on eternal 
 life I" is religion. 
 
 Or we may take the contrast within the bounds 
 of the Bible itself. "Love not sleep, lest thou 
 come to poverty," is morality. "My meat is to 
 do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his 
 work," is religion.^ Or we may even observe a 
 third stage between these two stages, which 
 shows to us the transition from one to the other. 
 "If thou givest thy soul the desires that please 
 her, she will make thee a laughing-stock to thine 
 enemies"; — that is morality. "He that resisteth 
 pleasure crowneth his life" ; — that is morality 
 with the tone heightened, passing, or trying to 
 pass, into religion. "Flesh and blood cannot in- 
 herit the kingdom of God" ; — there the passage is 
 made, and we have religion. Our religious exam- 
 ples are here all taken from the Bible, and from 
 the Bible sifch examples can best be taken, but 
 we might also find *them elsewhere. "0 that my 
 lot might lead me in the path of holy innocence of 
 thought and deed, the path which august laws 
 ordain0 laws which in the highest heaven had 
 their birth, neither did the race of mortal man 
 beget them, nor shall oblivion ever put them to 
 
 t ElO' ^ffOa via^pmv epya Toic ^dyoic lira. 
 t Z^ffov Kara ^vtriv. 
 
 46 
 
RELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 sleep ; the power of God is mighty in them, and 
 groweth not oldl" That is from Sophocles, but 
 it is as much religion as any of the things which 
 we have quoted as religious. Like them, it is not 
 the mere enjoining of conduct, but it is this en- 
 joining touched, strengthened, and almost trans- 
 formed by the addition of feeling. 
 
 So what is meant by the application of emo- 
 tion to morality has now, it is to be hoped, been 
 made clear. The next question will, I suppose, be, 
 But how does one get the application made? 
 Why, how does one get to feel much about any 
 matter whatever? By dwelling upon it, by stay- 
 ing our thoughts upon it, by having it perpetually 
 in our mind. The very words mind, memory^ 
 remain, come, probably, all from the same root, 
 from the notion of staying, attending. Possibly 
 even the word man comes from the same ; so en- 
 tirely does the idea of humanity, of intelligence, of 
 looking before and after, of raising one's self out 
 of the flux of things, rest upon the idea of steady- 
 ing one's self, concentrating one's self, making 
 order in the chaos of one's impressions, by at- 
 tending to one impression rather than the other. 
 The rules of conduct, of morality, were l^em- 
 selves, philosophers suppose, reached in this way ; 
 — the notion of a whole self as opposed to a par- 
 tial self, a best self to an inferior, to a momen- 
 tary self a permanent self requiring the restraint 
 of impulses a man would naturally have indulged ; 
 —because, by attending to his life, man found it 
 had a scope beyond the wants of the .present 
 moment. Suppose it was so ; then the first man 
 who, as "a being," comparatively, "of a large 
 discourse, looking before and after," controlled 
 the native, instantaneous, mechanical impulses of 
 the instinct of self-preservation, controlled the 
 47 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 native, instantaneous, mechanical impulses of the 
 reproductive instinct, had morality revealed to 
 him. 
 
 But there is a long way from this to that ha- 
 bitual dwelling on the rules thus reached, that 
 constant turning them over in the mind, that 
 near and lively experimental sense of their bene- 
 ficence, which communicates emotion to our 
 thought of them, and thus incalculably heightens 
 their power. And the more mankind attended to 
 the claims of that part of our nature which does 
 not belong to conduct, properly so called, or to 
 morality (and we have seen that, after all, about 
 one fourth of our nature is in this case), the more 
 they would have distractions to take off their 
 thoughts from those moral conclusions which all 
 races of men, one may say, seem to have reached, 
 and to prevent these moral conclusions from being 
 quickened by emotion, and thus becoming relig- 
 
 Only with one people, — the people from whom 
 we get the Bible, — these distractions did not hap- 
 pen. 
 
 The Old Testament, I suppose nobody will deny, 
 is filled with the word and thought of righteous- 
 ness. "In the way of righteousness is life, and in 
 the pathway thereof is no death" ; "Righteousness 
 tendeth to life"; "The wicked man troubleth his 
 own flesh" ; "The way of transgressors is hard" ; 
 — nobody will deny that those texts may stand 
 for the fundamental and ever-recurring idea of the 
 Old Testament. No people ever felt so strongly as 
 the people of the Old Testament, the Hebrew peo- 
 ple, that conduct is three fourths of our life and 
 its largest concern ; no people ever felt so strongly 
 48 
 
RELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 that succeeding, going right, hitting the mark in 
 this great concern, was the way of peace, the 
 highest possible satisfaction, "He that keepeth 
 the law, happy is he ; its ways are ways of pleas- 
 antness, and all its paths are peace ; if thou hadst 
 walked in its ways, thou shouldet have dwelt in 
 peace forever r* Jeshurun, one of the ideal names 
 of their race, is the upiigbt; Israel, the other and 
 greater, is the wrestler with God, he who has 
 known the contention and strain it costs to stand 
 upright. That mysterious personage, by whom 
 their history first touches the hill of Sion, is 
 Melchisedek, the righteous Idng,; their holy city, 
 Jerusalem, is the foundation, or vision, or inherit- 
 ance, of that which righteousness achieves, — 
 peace. The law of righteousness was such an 
 object of attention to them, that its words were 
 to "be in their heart, and thou shalt teach them 
 diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of 
 them when thou sittest in thine house, and when 
 thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest 
 down, and when thou risest up." To keep them 
 ever in mind, they wore them, went about with 
 them, m^e talismans of them; "Bind them upon 
 thy fingers, bind them about thy neck ; write them 
 upon the table of thine heart I" "Take fast hold 
 of her," they said of the doctrine of conduct, 
 or righteousness, "let her not gol keep her, for 
 she is thy Me!" 
 
 People who thus spoke of righteousness could 
 not but have had their minds long and deeply 
 engaged with it; much more than the generality 
 of mankind, who have nevertheless, as we saw, 
 got as far as the notion of morals or conduct. 
 And, if they were so deeply attentive to it, one 
 thing could not fail to strike them. It is this : 
 the very great part in righteousness which belongs, 
 4 49 
 
LITERATUBE AND DOGMA. 
 
 we may eay, to not ourselves. In the first place, 
 we did not make ourselves, or our nature, or con- 
 duct as the object of three fourths of that nature; 
 we did not provide that happiness should follow 
 conduct, as it undeniably does ; that the sense of 
 succeeding, going right, hitting the mark, in con- 
 duct, should give satisfaction, and a very high 
 satisfaction, just as really as the sense of doing 
 well in his work gives pleasure to a poet or 
 painter, or accomplishing what he tries gives 
 pleasure to a man who is learning to ride or 
 shoot; or as satisfying his hunger, also, gives 
 pleasure to a man who is hungry. 
 
 All this we did not make; and, in the next 
 ' place, our dealing with it at all, when it is made, 
 is not wholly, or even nearly wholly, in our 
 power. Our conduct is capable, irrespective of 
 what we can ourselves certainly answer for, of 
 almost infinitely dififerent degrees of force and 
 energy in the performance of it, of lucidity and 
 vividness in the perception of it, of fulness in the 
 satisfaction from it ; and these degrees may vary 
 from day to day, and quite incalculably. Facili- 
 ties and felicities, whence do they com^? sugges- 
 tions and stimulations, where do they tend? 
 hardly a day passes but we have some experience 
 of them. And so Henry More was led to say 
 "that there was something about us that knew 
 better, often, what we would be at than we 
 ourselves." For instance, every one can under- 
 stand how health and freedom from pain may 
 give energy for conduct, and how a neuralgia, 
 suppose, may diminish it; it does not depend on 
 ourselves, indeed, whether we have the neuralgia 
 or not, but we can understand its impairing our 
 spirit. But the strange thing is, that with the 
 ■ame neuralgia we may find ourselves one day 
 50 
 
RELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 without spirit and energy for conduct, and an- 
 other day with them. So that we may most 
 truly say, "Left to ourselves, we sink and perish; 
 visited, we lift up our heads and live."* And we 
 may well give ourselves, in grateful and devout 
 self-surrender, to that by which we are thus 
 visited. So much is there incalculable, so much 
 that belongs to not ourselves^ in conduct; and the 
 more we attend to conduct, and the more we 
 value it, the more we shall feel this. 
 
 The not ourselves, which is in us and in the 
 world round us, has almost everywhere, as far as 
 we can see, struck the minds of men, as they 
 awoke to consciousnesSj and has inspired them 
 with awe. Every one knows how the mighty 
 natural objects which most took their regards 
 became the objects to which this awe addressed 
 itself. Our very word God is a reminiscence of 
 these times, when men invoked "The Brilliant on 
 high," sublime hoc candens quod iavocent omnes 
 Jovem, as the power representing to them that 
 which transcended the limits of their narrow 
 selves, and that by which they lived and moved 
 and had their being. Every one knows of what 
 differences of operation men's dealing with this 
 power has in different places and times shown 
 itself capable; how here they have been moved by 
 the not ourselves to a cruel terror, there to a 
 timid religiosity, there again to a play of imagina- 
 tion; almost always, however, connecting with 
 it, by some string or other, conduct. 
 
 But we are not writing a history of religion ; 
 we are only tracing its effect on the language of 
 the men from whom we get the Bible. At the 
 time they produced those documents which give 
 
 * Rellctl merglmur et perimus, vlsitatt vero eriglmur et yivl- 
 mua. 
 
 61 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 to the Old Testament its power and true char- 
 acter, the not ourselves which weighed upon the 
 mind of Israel, and engaged its awe, was the not 
 ourselves by which we get the sense for righteous- 
 ness and whence we find the help to do right. 
 This conception was indubitably what lay at the 
 bottom of that remarkable change which, under 
 Moses, at a certain stage of their religious history, 
 befell their mode of naming God ; this was what 
 they intended in that name, which we wrongly 
 convey either without translation, by Jehovah, 
 which gives us the notion of a mere mythological 
 deity, or by a wrong translation, Lord, which 
 gives us the notion of a magnified and non-nat- 
 ural man. The name they used was : The Eternal. 
 Philosophers dispute whether moral ideas, as 
 they call them, the simplest ideas of conduct and 
 righteousness which now seem instinctive, did not 
 all grow, were not once inchoate, embryo, dubi- 
 ous, unformed ; that may have been so ; the ques- 
 tion is an interesting one for science. But the 
 interesting question for conduct is whether those 
 ideas are unformed or formed now; they are 
 formed now, and they were formed when the 
 Hebrews named the power, out of themselves, 
 which pressed upon their spirit: The Eternal. 
 Probably the life of Abraham, the Mend of God, 
 however imperfectly the Bible traditions by them- 
 selves convey it to us, was a decisive step for- 
 wards in the development of these ideas of right- 
 eousness. Probably this was the moment when 
 such ideas became fixed and solid for the Hebrew 
 people, and marked it permanently off from all 
 others who had not made the same step. But 
 long before the first beginnings of recorded his- 
 tory, long before the oldest word of Bible litera- 
 ture, these ideas must have been at work; we 
 52 
 
RELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 know it by the result, although they may have 
 for a long while been but rudimentary. In Israel's 
 earliest history and earliest literature, under the 
 name of Eloah, Elohim, The Mighty, there may 
 have lain and matured, there did lie and mature, 
 ideas of God more as a moral power, more as a 
 power connected above everything with conduct 
 and righteousness, than were entertained by other 
 races ; not only can we judge by the result that 
 this must have been so, but we can see that it 
 was so. Still their name, The Mighty, does not in 
 itself involve any true and deep religious ideas, 
 any more than our name, The Brilhant, With 
 The Eternal it is otherwise. For what did they 
 mean by the Eternal; the Eternal what? The 
 Eternal cause? Alas, these poor people were not 
 Archbishops of York. They meant the Eternal 
 righteous, who loveth righteousness. They had 
 dwelt upon the thought of conduct and right and 
 wrong, till the not ourselves which is in us and 
 around us became to them adorable eminently 
 and altogether as a power which makes for right- 
 eousness; which makes for it unchangeably and 
 eternally, and is therefore called The Eternal, 
 
 There is not a particle of metaphysics in their 
 use of this name, any more than in their concep- 
 tion of the not ourselves to which they attached 
 it. Both came to them, not from abstruse reason- 
 ing, but from experience, and from experience in 
 the plain region of conduct. Theologians with 
 metaphysical heads render Israel's Eternal by, the 
 self-existent, and Israel's not ourselves by the 
 absolute, and attribute to Israel their own subtle- 
 ties. According to them, Israel had his head full 
 of the necessity of a first cause, and therefore 
 said. The Eternal; as, again, they imagine him 
 looking out into the world, noting everywhere the 
 53 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 marks of design and adaptation to his wants, 
 and reasoning out and inferring thence the father- 
 hood of Grod. All these fancies come from an 
 excessive turn for reasoning, and a neglect of ob- 
 serving men's actual course of thinking and way 
 of using words. Israel, at this stage when The 
 Eternal was revealed to him, inferred nothing, 
 reasoned out nothing. He felt and experienced. 
 When he begins to speculate in the schools of 
 Rabbinism, he quickly shows how much lees na- 
 tive talent than the Bishops of Winchester and 
 Gloucester he has for this perilous business. 
 
 Happily, when The Eternal was revealed to 
 him, he had not yet begun to speculate. He per- 
 sonified, indeed, his Eternal, for he was strongly 
 moved, and an orator and poet. "Man never 
 knows how anthropomorphic he is," says Goethe, 
 and so man tends always to represent everything 
 under his own figure. In poetry and eloquence, 
 man may and must follow this tendency, but in 
 science it often leads him astray. Israel, how- 
 ever, did not scientifically predicate personality of 
 God ; he would not even have had a notion what 
 was meant by it. He called him the maker of all 
 things, who gives drink to all out of his pleasures 
 as out of a river ; but he was led to this by no 
 theory of a first cause. The grandeur of the spec- 
 tacle given by the world, the grandeur of the 
 sense of its all being not ourselves, being above and 
 beyond ourselves and immeasurably dwarfing us, 
 a man of imagination instinctively personifies as 
 a single mighty living and productive power; as 
 Goethe tell us that the words which rose natu- 
 rally to his lips, when he stood on the top of the 
 Brocken, were: "Lord, what is man, that thou 
 mindest him, or the son of man, that thou makest 
 account of him?" But Israel's confessing and ex- 
 54 
 
RELIGION aiVEN. 
 
 tolling of this power came not even from his im- 
 aginative feeling, but came first from his gratitude 
 for righteousnees. To one who knows what con- 
 duct is, it is a joy to be alive; the not ourselves^ 
 which by revealing to us righteousness makes our 
 happiness, adds to the boon this glorious worid 
 to be righteous in. 
 
 That is the notion at the bottom of the He- 
 brew's praise of a Creator ; and if we attend, we 
 can see this quite clearly. Wisdom and understand- 
 ing mean, for Israel, "the fear of the Eternal" ; 
 and the fear of the Eternal means for him **to 
 depart from evil," righteousness. Righteousness, 
 order, conduct, is for him the essence of .The 
 Eternal, and the source of all man's happiness; 
 and it is only as a further and natural working 
 of this essence that he conceives creation. "The 
 fear of the Eternal, that is wisdom ; and to de- 
 part from evil, that is understanding I Happy is 
 the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that 
 getteth understanding I She is a tree of life to 
 them that lay hold upon her, and happy is every 
 one that retaineth her. The Eternal by wisdom 
 hath founded the earth, by understanding hath he 
 established the heavens" ;— and so the Bible writer 
 passes into the account of creation. It all comes 
 to him from the idea of righteousness. 
 
 And it is the same with all the language our 
 Hebrew speaker uses. Grod is a fkther, because 
 the power in and around us which makes for 
 righteousness is indeed best described by the name 
 of this authoritative but yet tender and protect- 
 ing relation. So, too, with the intense fear and 
 abhorrence of idolatry. Conduct, righteousness, 
 is, above all, an inward motion and rule; no 
 sensible forms can represent it, or help us to it; 
 ■uch attempts at representation can only distract 
 55 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 us from it. So, too, with the sense of the oneness 
 of God. "Hear, Israeli The Lord our God is 
 one Lord." People think that in this unity of 
 God — this monotheistic idea, as they call it — they 
 have certainly got metaphysics at last. It is 
 nothing of the kind. The monotheistic idea of 
 Israel is simply seriousness. There are, indeed, 
 many aspects of the not ourselves; but Israel re- 
 garded one aspect of it only, that by which it 
 makes for righteousness. He had the advantage, 
 to be sure, that with this aspect three fourths of 
 human life is concerned. But there are other as- 
 pects which may be taken. "Frail and striving 
 mortality," says the elder Pliny, in a noble pas- 
 sage, "mindful of its own weakness, has distin- 
 guished these aspects severally, so as for each man 
 to be able to attach himself to the divine by this 
 or that part, according as he has most need." 
 That is an apology for polytheism, as answering 
 to man's many-sidedness. But Israel felt that 
 being thus many-sided degenerated into an im- 
 aginative play, and bewildered what Israel recog- 
 nized as our sole religious consciousness, — the 
 consciousness of right. "Let thine eyelids look 
 right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before 
 thee ; turn not to the right hand nor to the left ; 
 remove thy foot from evill" 
 
 Does not Ovid say,* in excuse for the immo- 
 rality of his verses, that the sight and mention of 
 the gods themselves — the rulers of human life — 
 often raised immoral thoughts? and so the sight 
 and mention of all aspects of the not ourselves 
 must. Yet how tempting are many of these as- 
 pects I Even at this time of day, the grave au- 
 
 *Tristia, II. 387. 
 
 *' Quia locus est templls augustlor ? hsec quoque vitet 
 In culpam si qua est ingenlosa euam." 
 
 See the whole passage. 
 
 56 
 
EELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 thorities of the Uniyersity of Cambridge are so 
 struck by one of them, that of pleasure, life, and 
 fecundity, — of the hommum divomque voluptas, 
 alma Venus, — that they set it publicly up as an 
 object for their scholars to fix their minds upon, 
 and to compose yerses in honor of. That is all 
 yery well at present; but with this natural bent 
 in the authorities of the TJniyersity of Cambridge, 
 and in the Indo-European race to which they be- 
 long, where would they be now if it had not been 
 for Israel, and the stem check which Israel put 
 upon the glorification and divinization of this 
 natural bent of mankind, this attractiye aspect of 
 the not ourselves? Perhaps going in procession, 
 Vice-Chancellor, bedels, masters, scholars, and all, 
 in spite of their Professor of Moral Philosophy, to 
 the temple of Aphrodite I Nay, and yery likely 
 Mr. Birks himself, his brows crowned with myrtle 
 and scarcely a shade of melancholy on his counte- 
 nance, would haye been going along with them I 
 It is Israel and his seriousness that haye sayed 
 the authorities of the University of Cambridge 
 from carrying their diyinization of pleasure to 
 these lengths, or from making more of it, indeed, 
 than a mere passing intellectual play; and eyen 
 this play Israel would haye beheld with displeas- 
 ure, saying, **0 turn away mine eyes lest they 
 behold yanity, but quicken Thou me in thy lawl" 
 So earnestly and exclusiyely were Israel's regards 
 bent on one aspect of the not ourselves: its aspect 
 as a power making for conduct, righteousness. 
 Israel's Eternal was the Eternal which says, "To 
 depart from eyil, that is understanding!" "Be ye 
 hoty, for I am holyT Now, as righteousness is \ 
 but a heightened conduct, so holiness is but a • 
 heightened righteousness ; a more finished, entire, 
 and awe-filled righteousness. It was such a 
 57 
 
LITERATUBE AND DOGMA. 
 
 righteousness which "was Israel's ideal; and there- 
 fore it was that Israel said, not indeed what our 
 Bibles make him say, but this: ''Hear, O Israeli 
 The Eternal is our God, The Eternal alone." 
 
 And in spite of his turn for personification, his 
 want of a clear boundary line between poetry and 
 science, his inaptitude to express even abstract 
 notions by other than highly concrete terms, — 
 in spite of these scientific disadyantages, or rather, 
 perhaps, because of them, because he had no 
 talent for abstruse reasoning to lead him astray, 
 —the spirit and tongue of Israel kept a propriety, 
 a reserve, a sense of the inadequacy of language 
 in conveying man's ideas of God, which contrast 
 strongly with the license of affirmation in our 
 Western theology. "The high and holy One that 
 inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy," is far 
 more proper and felicitous language, than, "the 
 moral and intelligent Governor of the universe," 
 just because it far less attempts to be precise, but 
 keeps to the language of poetry and does not 
 essay the language of science. As he had devel- 
 oped his idea of God from personal experience, 
 Israel knew what we, who have developed our 
 idea from his words about it, so often are igno- 
 rant of: that his words were but thrown out at 
 a vast object of consciousness, which he could not 
 fully grasp, and which he apprehended clearly by 
 one point alone, — that it made for the great con- 
 cern of life, conduct. How little we know of it 
 besides, how impenetrable is the course of its 
 ways with us, how we are baffled in our attempts 
 to name and describe it, how, when we personify 
 it and call it "the moral and intelligent Governor 
 of the universe," we presently find it not to be a 
 person as man conceives of person, nor moral as 
 man conceives of moral, nor intelligent as man 
 58 
 
RELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 conceives of intelligent, nor a governor as man 
 conceives of governors,— all this, which scientific 
 theology loses sight of, Israel, who had but poetry 
 and eloquence, and no system, and who did not 
 mind contradicting himself, knew. "Is it any 
 pleasure to the Almighty, that thou art right- 
 eous?" What a blow to our ideal of that mag- 
 nified and non-natural man, "the moral and in- 
 telligent Governor"! Say what we can about 
 God, say our best, we have yet, Israel knew, to 
 add instantly: "Lo, these are parts of his ways; 
 but how little a portion is heard of him I" Yes, 
 indeed, Israel remembered that, far better than 
 our bishops do. "Canst thou by searching find 
 out God ; canst thou find out the perfection of the 
 Almighty? It is more high than heaven, what 
 canst thou do? deeper than hell, what canst thou 
 know?" 
 
 Will it be said, experience might also have 
 shown to Israel a not ourselves which did not 
 make for his happiness, but rather made against 
 it, baffled his claims to it? But no man, as we 
 have elsewhere remarked, who simply follows his 
 own consciousness, is aware of any claims^ any 
 riglits, whatever;* what he gets of good makes 
 him thankful, what he gets of ill seems to him 
 natural. It is true, the not ourseives of which he 
 is thankfully conscious he inevitably speaks of and 
 speaks to as a man; for "man never knows how 
 anthropomorphic he is." As time proceeds, im- 
 agination and reasoning keep working upon this 
 substructure, and build from it a magnified and 
 non-natural man. Attention is then drawn, after- 
 wards, to causes outside ourselves which seem to 
 make for sin and sufiering ; and then either these' 
 causes have to be reconciled by some highly in- 
 
 *CaiUire and Anarcliy, p. 214. 
 59 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 genious scheme with the magnified and non- 
 natural man's power, or a second magnified and 
 non-natural man has to be supposed, who pulls 
 the contrary way to the first. So arise Satan 
 and his angels. But all this is secondary, and 
 comes much later ; Israel, the founder of our re- 
 ligion, did not begin with this. He began with 
 experience. He knew from thankful experience the 
 not ourselves which makes for righteousness, and 
 knew how little we know about God besides. 
 
 ijrhe language of the Bible, then, is literary, not 
 scientific language; language tiirowD out at an ob- 
 ject of consciousness not fully grasped, which in- 
 spired emotion^ Evidently, if the object be one not 
 fully to be grasped, and one to inspire emotion, the 
 language of figure and feeling will satisfy us bet- 
 ter about it, will cover more of what we seek to 
 express, than the language of literal fact and sci- 
 ence; the language of science about it will be 
 below what we feel to be the truth. 
 
 The question however has arisen and confronts 
 us ; what was the scientific basis of fact for this 
 consciousness. When we have once satisfied our- 
 selves both as to the tentative, poetic way in 
 which the Bible personages used language, and 
 also as to their having no pretensions to meta- 
 physics at all, let us, therefore, when there is this 
 question raised as to the scientific account of 
 what they had before their minds, be content 
 with a very unpretending answer. And in this 
 way such a phrase as that which we have for- 
 merly used concerning Grod, and have been much 
 blamed for using,— the phrase, namely, that, "for 
 science, Grod is simply the stream of tendency by 
 which all things fulfil the law of their being,"— 
 60 
 
RELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 may be allowed, and even prove useful. Certainly 
 it is inadequate; certainly it is a less proper 
 phrase than, for instance: "Clouds and darkness 
 are round about him, righteousness and judgment 
 are the habitation of his seat.''* But then it is, 
 in however humble a degree and with however 
 narrow a reach, a scienti&c definition, which the 
 other is not. The phrase, "A Personal First 
 Cause, the moral and intelligent Governor of the 
 universe," has also, when applied to God, the 
 character, no doubt, of a scientific definition ; but 
 then it goes far beyond what is admittedly cer- 
 tain and verifiable, which is what we mean by 
 scientific. It attempts far too much ; if we want 
 here, as we do want, to have what is admittedly^ 
 certain and verifiable, we must content ourselves 
 with very little. No one will say, that it is ad- 
 mittedly certain and verifiable, that there is a per- 
 sonal first cause, the moral and intelligent gov- 
 ernor of the universe, whom we may call God if 
 we will. But that all things seem to us to have 
 what we call a law of their being, and to tend to 
 fulfil it, is certain and admitted ; though whether 
 we will call this God or not is a matter of choice. 
 Suppose, however, we call it God, we then give 
 the name of God to a certain and admitted real- 
 ity; this, at least, is an advantage. 
 
 And the notion does, in fact, enter into the 
 term God, in men's common use of it. To please 
 God, to serve God, to obey God's will, does mean 
 
 * It iias been urged that If ttils personifying mode of expression 
 is more proper and adequate. It must also be more sclentlflcally 
 exact. But surely it must on reflection appear tMt this is by no 
 means so. Wordsworth calls tiie earth "the mighty mother of 
 mankind," and the geographers call her " an oblate spheroid " ; 
 Wordsworth's expression is more proper and adequate to convey 
 what men feel about the earth, but it is not therefore the more 
 scientlflcaUy exact. 
 
 61 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 to follow a law of things which is found in con- 
 science, and which is an indication, irrespective of 
 our arbitrary wish and fancy, of what we ought 
 to do. There is, then, a real power which makes 
 for righteousness; and it is the greatest of reali- 
 ties for us. When Paul says, our business is "to 
 serve the spirit of God," "to serve the living and 
 true God" ; and when Epictetus says, "What do I 
 want? to acquaint myself with the true order of 
 things, and comply with it," — they both mean, so 
 far, the same, in that they both mean we should 
 obey a tendency, which is not ourselves, but 
 which appears in our consciousness, by which 
 things fulfil the real law of their being. 
 
 It is true, the not ourselves, by which things 
 fulfil the real law of their being, extends a great 
 deal beyond that sphere where alone we usually 
 think of it. That is, a man may disserve God, 
 disobey indications not of our own making but 
 which appear, if we attend, in our consciousness, 
 — he may disobey, I say, such indications of the 
 real law of our being in other spheres besides the 
 sphere of conduct. He does disobey them, when 
 he sings a hymn like, "My Jesus to know, and feel 
 his blood flow," or, indeed, like nine tenths of our 
 hymns, or when he frames and maintains a blun- 
 dering and miserable constitution of society, as 
 well as when he commits some plain breach of the 
 moral law. That is, he may disobey them in art 
 and science as well as in conduct. But he attends, 
 and the generality of men attend, only to the 
 indications of a true law of our being as to con- 
 duct; and hardly at all to indications, though 
 they as really exist, of a true law of our being 
 on its aesthetic and intelligential side. The rea- 
 son is, that the moral side, though not more real, 
 is so much larger; taking in, as we have said, at 
 62 
 
RELiaiON GIVEN. 
 
 least three fourths of life. Now, the indications on 
 this mora/ side of that tendency, not of our mak- 
 ing, by which things fulfil the law of their being, 
 we do very much mean to denote and to sum up 
 when we speak of the will of God^ pleasing God, 
 serving God, Let us keep firm footing on this 
 basis of plain fact, narrow though it may be. 
 
 To feel that one is fulfilling in any way the law 
 of one's being, that one is succeeding and hitting 
 the mark, brings us, we know, happiness ; to feel 
 this in regard to so great a thing as conduct 
 brings, of course, happiness proportionate to the 
 thing's greatness. We have already had Quin- 
 tilian's witness, how right conduct gives joy. 
 Who could value knowledge more than Goethe? 
 but he marks it as being without question a lesser 
 source of joy than conduct; conduct he ranks with 
 health as beyond all compare primary. "Noth- 
 ing, after health and virtue,' ' he says, "can give 
 so much satisfaction as learning and knowing." 
 Nay, and Bishop Butler, at the view of the happi- 
 ness from conduct, breaks free from all that hesi- 
 taney and depression which so commonly hangs 
 on his masterly thinking. "Self-love, methinks, 
 should be alarmed I May she not pass over 
 greater pleasures than those she is so wholly 
 taken up with?" And Bishop Wilson, always 
 hitting the right nail on the head in matters of 
 this sort, remarks that, "if it were not for the 
 practical diflaculties attending it, virtue would 
 hardly be distinguishable from a kind of sensu- 
 ality." The practical difficulties are indeed exceed- 
 ing great; plain as is the course, and high the 
 prize, we all find ourselves daily led to say, with 
 the Imitation, "Would that foi one single day we 
 had lived in this world as we ought 1" Yet the 
 course is so evidently plain, and the prize so high, 
 63 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 that the same Imitation cries out presently, "If 
 a man would but take notice, what peace he 
 brings himself, and what joy to others, merely by 
 managing himself right I" And for such happi- 
 ness, since certainly we ourselves did not make it, 
 we instinctively feel grateful; according to that 
 remark of one of the wholesomest and truest of 
 moralists, Barrow: "He is not a man who doth 
 not delight to make some returns thither whence 
 he hath found great kindness." And this sense of 
 gratitude, again, is itself an addition to our hap- 
 piness I So strong, altogether, is the witness and 
 sanction happiness gives to going right in con- 
 duct, to fulfilling, so far as conduct is concerned, 
 the law indicated to us of our being ; and there 
 can be no sanction to compare, for force, with the 
 strong sanction of happiness, if it is true what 
 Bishop Butler, who is here but the mouthpiece of 
 humanity itself, says so irresistibly: "It is mani- 
 fest that nothing can be of consequence to man- 
 kind, or any creature, but happiness." 
 
 And now let us see how exactly Israel's per- 
 ceptions about Grod follow and confirm this simple 
 line, which we have here reached quite indepen- 
 dently. First: "It isjoj^to the just to do judg- 
 ment." Then: "It becometh well the just to be 
 thankfal" Finally: "A pleasant thing it is to be 
 thankful." What can be simpler than this, and at 
 the same time more soUd? But again: "There is 
 nothing sweeter than to take heed unto the com- 
 mandments of the Eternal" And then: "Thou 
 art my portion, O Eternal! at midnight will I 
 rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy right- 
 eous judgments." And lastly: "0 praise the 
 Eternal, for it is a good thing to sing praises 
 unto our God!" Why, these are the very same 
 propositions as the others, only with a power 
 
 64: 
 
BELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 and depth of emotion added t Emotion has been 
 applied to morality. 
 
 ]^God is here really, at bottom, a deeply moved 
 way of saying conduct or righteousness, "Trust 
 in God^^ is trust in the law of conduct; "delight 
 in the Etemal" is, in a deeply moved way of ex- 
 pression, the happiness we all feel to spring from 
 conduc^ Attending to conduct, to judgment, 
 makes ffie attender feel that it is joy to do it; 
 attending to it more still makes him feel that it 
 is the commandment of the Eternal, and that the 
 joy got from it is joy got from fulfilling the com- 
 mandment of the Eternal. The thankfulness for 
 this joy is thankfulness to the Eternal ; and to the 
 Eternal, again, is due that further joy which 
 comes from this thankfulness. "The fear of the 
 Eternal, that is wisdom ; and to depart from evil, 
 that is understanding.'* "The fear of the Eternal" 
 and "To depart from evil" here mean, and are 
 put to mean, and, by the very laws of Hebrew 
 composition which make the second phrase in a 
 parallelism repeat the first in other words, they 
 must mean, just the same thing. Yet what man 
 of soul, after he had once risen to feel that to 
 depart from evil was to walk in awful observance 
 of an enduring clew, within us and without us, 
 which leads to happiness, but would prefer to 
 say, instead of "to depart from evil," "the fear of 
 the Eternal"? 
 
 Henceforth, then, Israel transferred to this 
 Eternal all his obligations. Instead of saying, 
 "Whoso keepeth the commandment keepeth his 
 own soul," he rather said, "My soul, wait thou 
 still upon God, for of him cometh my salvation I" 
 Instead of saying, "Bind them (the laws of right- 
 eousness) continually upon thine heart, and tie 
 them about thy neckl" he rather said, "Have I 
 5 65 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 not remembered Thee on my bed, and thought of 
 Tbee when I was waking?" The obligation of a 
 grateful and devout eelf-eurrender to the Eternal 
 replaced all sense of obligation to one's own 
 better self, one's own permanent welfare. The 
 moralist's rule: *'Take thought for your perma- 
 nent, not your momentary, well-being," became 
 now: * 'Honor the Eternal, not doing thine own 
 ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speak- 
 ing thine own words I" That is, with Israel re- 
 JjgioB replaced morality. 
 
 Lit is true, out of the humble yet divine ground 
 of attention to conduct, of care for what in con- 
 duct is right and wrong, grew morality and re- 
 ligion both; but, from the time the soul felt the 
 motive of religion, it dropped and could not but 
 drop the other.j And the motive of doing right, to 
 a sincere soul, is now really no longer his own 
 welfare, but to please God; and it bewilders his 
 consciousness if you tell him that he does right 
 out of self-love. So that as we have said that the 
 first man who, as ''a being of a large discourse, 
 looking before and after," controlled the blind 
 momentary impulses of the instinct of self-preser- 
 vation, controlled the blind momentary impulses 
 of the sexual instinct, had morality revealed to 
 him ; so in like manner we may say, that the first, 
 man who was thrilled with gratitude, devotion, 
 and awe at the sense of joy and peace, not of his 
 own making, which followed the exercise of this 
 self-control, had religion revealed to him. And, 
 for us at least, this man was Israel. 
 
 And here, as we have already pointed out the 
 falseness of the common antithesis between ethical 
 and religious, let us anticipate the objection that 
 the religion now spoken of is but natural religion, 
 by pointing out the falseness of the common 
 66 
 
RELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 antithesis, also, between natural and revealed. 
 For that in us which is really natural is, in truth, 
 revealed. We awake to the consciousness of it, we 
 are aware of it coming forth in our mind ; but we 
 feel that we did not make it, that it is discovered 
 to us, that it is what it is whether we will or no. 
 If we are little concerned about it, we say it is 
 natural; if much, we eay it is revealed. But the 
 difference between the two is not one of kind, 
 only of degree. The real antithesis, to natural 
 and revealed alike, is invented, artMcial. Ke- 
 ligion springing out of an experience of the power, 
 the grandeur, the necessity of righteousness, is re- 
 vealed religion, whether we find it in Sophocles or 
 Isaiah; "the will of mortal men did not beget it, 
 neither shall oblivion ever put it to sleep." A 
 system of theological notions about personality, 
 essence, existence, consubstantiality, is arti£cial 
 religion, and is the proper opposite to revealed; 
 since it is a religion which comes forth in no one's 
 consciousness, but is invented by the Bishops of 
 Winchester and Gloucester, and personages of 
 their stamp,— able men with uncommon talents 
 for abstruse reasoning. This religion is in no 
 sense revealed, just because it is in no sense nat- 
 ural ; and revealed reUgion is properly so named, 
 just in proportion as it is in a pre-eminent degree 
 natural. 
 
 The religion of the Bible, therefore, is well said 
 to be revealed J because the great natural truth, 
 that "Righteousness tendeth to life," is seized and 
 exhibited there with such incomparable force and 
 efficacy. All, or very nearly all, the nations of 
 mankind have recognized the importance of con- 
 duct, and have attributed to it a natural obliga- 
 tion. They, however, looked at conduct, not as 
 something full of happiness and joy, but as some- 
 67 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 thing one could not manage to do without. But : 
 "Zion heard of it and rejoiced, and the daughters 
 of Judah were glad, because of thy judgments, 
 Eternal I" Happiness is our being's end and aim, 
 and no one has ever come near Israel in feeling, 
 and in making others feel, that "to righteousness 
 belongs happiness I" The prodigies and the mar- 
 vellous of Bible-religion are common to it with all 
 religions; the love of righteousness, in this em- 
 inency, is its own. 
 
 5. 
 UThe real germ of religious consciousness, there- 
 fore, out of which sprang Israel's name for Grod, 
 to which the records of his history adapted them- 
 selves, and which came to be clothed upon, in 
 time, with a mighty growth of poetry and tradi- 
 tion, was a consciousness of the not ourselves 
 which makes for righteousness.^ And the way to 
 convince one's self of this is by studying their lit- 
 erature with a fair mind, and with the tact which 
 letters, surely, alone can give. For the thing 
 turns upon understanding the manner in which 
 men have thought, their way of using words, and 
 what they mean by them. And if to know letters 
 is to know the best that has been thought and 
 uttered in the world, then, by knowing letters, we 
 become acquainted not only with the history, but 
 also with the scope and powers, of the instru- 
 ments men employ in thinking and speaking. And 
 this is just what is sought for. 
 
 And with the sort of experience thus gained, 
 objections, as we have said, will be found not so 
 much to be refuted by logical reasoning as to fall 
 of themselves. Is it objected: "Why, if the He- 
 brews of the Bible had thus eminently the sense 
 for righteousness, does it not equally distinguish 
 the Jews now?" But does not experience show 
 68 
 
RELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 ua, how entirely a change of circumstances may 
 change a people's character; and have the modern 
 Jews lost more of what distinguished their an- 
 cestors, or even so much, as the modern Greeks of 
 what distinguished theirs? Where is now, among 
 the Greeks, the dignity of life of Pericles, the dig- 
 nity of thought and of art of Phidias and Plato? 
 Is it objected, that the Jews' God was not the 
 enduring power that makes for righteousness, but 
 only their tribal God, who gave them the victory 
 in the battle, and plagued them that hated them? 
 But how, then, comes their literature to be full of 
 such things as: *'Show me thy ways, Eternal, 
 and teach me thy paths; let integrity and np- 
 rightness preserve me, for I put my trust in thee ! 
 if I incline unto wickedness with my heart, the 
 Eternal will not hear me, for they who do no 
 wickedness walk in his ways." From the sense 
 that with men thus guided and going right in 
 goodness it could not but be well, that their leaf 
 could not wither, and that whatsoever they did 
 must prosper, would naturally come the sense 
 that in their wars with an enemy the enemy 
 should be put to confusion and tbey should tri- 
 umph. But how, out of the mere sense that their 
 enemy should be put to confusion and they should 
 triumph, could the desire for goodness come? Is 
 it objected, that "the law of the Lord" was a 
 positive traditionary code to them, standing as a 
 mechanical rule which held them in awe? that 
 their "fear of the Lord" was superstitious dread 
 of an assumed, magnified, and non-natural man? 
 But why, then, are they always saying: ^'Teach 
 me thy law, open mine eyes, make me to under- 
 stand wisdom secretly!" if all the law they were 
 thinking of stood stark and fixed before their eyes 
 already? And what could they mean by: "I will 
 69 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 Jove thee, Eternal, my strength 1" if the fear 
 they meant was not the awe-filled observance 
 from deep attachment, but a servile terror? Is it 
 objected, that their conception of righteousness 
 was a narrow and rigid one, centring mainly in 
 what they caXled Judgment : "Hate the evil and 
 love the good, and establish judgment in the 
 gatel" so that *'evil," for them, did not take in 
 all faults whatever of heart and conduct, but 
 meant chiefly oppression, graspingness, a violent, 
 mendacious tongue, insolent and riotous excess? 
 True, their conception of righteousness was much 
 of this kind, and it was narrow. But whoever 
 sincerely attends to conductj along however lim- 
 ited a line, is on his way to bring under the eye 
 of conscience all conduct whatever ; and already, 
 in the Old Testament, the somewhat monotonous 
 inculcation of the social virtues of judgment and 
 justice is continually broken through by deeper 
 movements of personal religion. Every time that 
 the words contrition or humility drop from the 
 lips of prophet or psalmist, Christianity appears. 
 Is it objected, finally, that even their own narrow 
 conception of righteousness this people could not 
 follow, but were perpetually oppressive, grasping, 
 slanderous, sensual? Why, the very interest and 
 importance of their witness to righteousness lies 
 in their having felt so deeply the necessity of what 
 they were so little able to accomplish 1 They had 
 the strongest impulses in the world to violence 
 and excess, the keenest pleasure in gratifying 
 these impulses. And yet they had such a sense of 
 the natural, necessary connection between conduct 
 and happiness, that they kept always saying, in 
 spite of themselves : "To him that ordereth his con- 
 versation right shall be shown the salvation of 
 Godl'^ 
 
 70 
 
RELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 Now manifestly this sense of theirs has a double 
 force for the rest of mankind, — an evidential force 
 and a practical force. Its evidential force is in 
 keeping in men's view, by the example of the sig- 
 nal apparition in one branch of our race of the 
 sense for conduct and righteousness, the reality 
 and naturalness of that sense. Clearly, unless a 
 sense or endowment of human nature, however in 
 itself real and beneficent, has some signal repre- 
 sentative among mankind, it tends to be pressed 
 upon by other senses and endowments, to suffer 
 from its own want of energy, and to be more and 
 more pushed out of sight. /Any one, for instance, 
 who will go to the Potteries, and will look at the 
 tawdry, glaring, ill-proportioned ware which is 
 being made there for certain American and colo- 
 nial markets, will easily convince himself how, in 
 our people and kindred, the sense for the arts of 
 design, though it is certainly planted in human 
 nature, might dwindle and sink to almost noth- 
 ing, if it were not for the witness borne to this 
 sense, and the protest offered against its extinc- 
 tion, by the brilliant aesthetic^endowment and 
 artistic work of ancient Greece. ' And one cannot 
 look out over the world without seeing that the 
 same sort of thing might very well befall conduct, 
 too, if it were not for the signal witness borne by 
 Isreiel. 
 
 Then there is the practical force of their ex- 
 ample; aijd this is even more important. ][Every 
 one knows, how those who want to cultivate any 
 sense or endowment in themselves must be habitu- 
 ally conversant with the works of people who 
 have been eminent for that sense, must study 
 them, catch inspiration from them ; only in 
 this way, indeed, can progress be made.^)And 
 as long as the world lasts, all who want to 
 71 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 make progress in righteousness "will come to 
 Israel for inspiration, as to the people who have 
 had the sense for righteousness most glowing 
 and strongest; and in hearing and reading the 
 words Israel has uttered for us, carers for con- 
 duct will find a glow and a force they could find 
 nowhere else. As well imagine a man with a 
 sense for sculpture not cultivating it by the help 
 of the remains of Greek art, or a man with a 
 sense for poetry not cultivating it by the help 
 of Homer and Shakespeare, as a man with a sense 
 for conduct not cultivating it by the help of the 
 Bible I And this sense, in the satisfying of which 
 we come naturally to the Bible, is a sense which 
 the generality of men have far more decidedly 
 than they have the sense for art or for science ; at 
 any rate, whether we have it decidedly or no, it 
 is the sense which has to do with three fourths 
 of human life. 
 
 This does truly constitute for Israel a most 
 extraordinary distinction. In spite of all which 
 in them and their character is unattractive, nay, 
 repellent ; — ^in spite of their short-comings even in 
 righteousness itself and their insignificance in 
 everything else, — this petty, unsuccessful, unami- 
 able people, without politics, without science, 
 without art, without charm, deserve their great 
 place in the world's regard, and are likely to have 
 it greater, as the world goes on, rather than less. 
 It is secured to them by the facts of human na- 
 ture, and by the unalterable constitution of 
 things. "God has given commandment to bless, 
 and he hath blessed, and we cannot reverse itl 
 He hath not seen iniquity in Jacob, and he hath 
 not seen perverseness in Israel; the Eternal, his 
 God, is with him I" 
 
 Any one does a good deed who removes stum- 
 72 
 
RELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 bling-blocks out of the way of feeling and profiting 
 by the witness left by this people. And so, in- 
 stead of making our Hebrew speakers mean, in 
 their use of the word God, a scientific affirmation 
 which never entered into their heads, and about 
 which many will dispute, let us content ourselves 
 with making them mean, as matter of scientific 
 fact and experience, what they really did mean as 
 such, and what is unchallengeable. Let us put into 
 their "Eternal" and "God" no more science than 
 they did, — "the enduring power, not ourselves'- 
 which makesforrighteousness." They meantmore 
 by these names, but they meant this; and what 
 they meant more they could not grasp fully, but 
 this they grasped fully. The sense which this will 
 give us for their words is at least solid ; so that 
 we may find it of use as a guide to steady us, 
 and to give us a constant clew in following what 
 they say. 
 
 And is it so unworthy? It is true, unless we 
 can fill it with as much feeling as they did, the 
 mere possessing it will not carry us far. But 
 matters are not much mended by taking their 
 language of approximative figure and using it for 
 the language of scientific definition; or by crediting 
 them with our own dubious science, deduced from 
 metaphysical ideas which they never had. A bet- 
 ter way than this, surely, is to take their fact of 
 experience, to keep it steadily for our basis in 
 using their language, and to see whether from 
 using their language with the ground of this real 
 and firm sense to it, as they themselves did, some- 
 what of their feeling, too, may not grow upon us. 
 At least we shall know what we are saying ; and 
 that what we are saying is true, however inade- 
 quate. 
 
 But is this confessed inadequateness of our 
 73 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 speech, concerning that which we will not call by 
 the negative name of the unknown and unknow- 
 able, but rather by the name of the unexplored 
 and the inexpressible, and of which the Hebrews 
 themselves said, ^^It is more high than heaven, 
 what canst thou do? deeper than hell, what canst 
 thou know?" — ie this reservedness of affirmation 
 about G-od less worthy of him, than the astound- 
 ing particularity and license of affirmation of our 
 dogmatists, as if he were a man in the next 
 street? Nay, and nearly all the difficulties which 
 torment theology— as the reconciling God's justice 
 with his mercy, and so on — come from this license 
 and particularity ; theologians having precisely, as 
 it would often seem, built up a wall first, in order 
 afterwards to run their own heads against it. 
 
 This, we say, is what comes of too much talent 
 for abstract reasoning. One cannot help seeing 
 the theory of causation and such things, where 
 one should only see a far simpler matter: the 
 power, the grandeur, the necessity of righteous- 
 ness. To be sure, a perception of these is at the 
 bottom of popular religion, underneath all the 
 extravagances theologians have taught people to 
 utter, and makes the whole value of it. For the 
 sake of this true practical perception one might 
 be quite content to leave at rest a matter where 
 practice, after all, is everything, and theory noth- 
 ing. [Only, when religion is called in question be- 
 cause of the extravagances of theology being 
 passed off as religion, one disengages and helps 
 religion by showing their utter delusiveness.^ 
 They arose out of the talents of able men for 
 reasoning, and their want (not through lack of 
 talent, for the thing needs none; it needs only 
 time, trouble, good fortune, and a fair mind ; but 
 through their being taken up with their reasoning 
 74 
 
RELIGION GIVEN. 
 
 power), — their want of literary experience. Un- 
 luckily, the sphere where they show their talents 
 is one for literary experience rather than for rea- 
 soning. And this at the very outset, in the deal- 
 ings of theologians with that starting-point of 
 our religion, — the experience of Israel as set forth 
 in the Old Testament,— has produced, we have 
 seen, great confusion. Naturally, as we shall 
 hereafter see, the confusion becomes worse con- 
 founded as they proceed. 
 
 75 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 Aberglattbe Invading. 
 
 When people ask for our attention because of 
 what has passed, they say, ''in the Council of the 
 Trinity," and been promulgated, for our direc- 
 tion, by "a Personal First Cause, the moral and 
 intelligent Governor of the universe," it is cer- 
 tainly open to any man to refuse to hear them, 
 on the plea that the very thing they start with 
 they have no means of proving. And we see that 
 many do so refuse their attention; and that the 
 breach there is, for instance, between popular re- 
 ligion and what is called science, comes from this 
 cause. But it is altogether different when people 
 ask for our attention on the strength of this other 
 first principle: "To righteousness belongs happi- 
 ness"; or this: "There is an enduring power, not 
 ourselves, which makes for righteousness." The 
 more we meditate on this starting-ground of 
 theirs, the more we shall find that there is solidity 
 in it, and the more we shall be inclined to go 
 along with them, and to see what they can make 
 of it. 
 
 And herein is the advantage of giving this plain, 
 though restricted, sense to the Bible phrases: "He 
 that keepeth the law, happy is he I" and, "Whoso 
 trusteth in the Eternal, happy is he!" By tradi- 
 tion, emotion, imagination, the Hebrews, no 
 doubt, came to attach more than this plain sense 
 to these phrases ; but this plain, solid, and experi- 
 mental sense they attached to them at bottom, 
 they attached originally ; and in attaching it they 
 76 
 
ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 
 
 were on sure ground of fact, where we can all go 
 with them. Their words, we shall find, taken in 
 this sense have quite a new force for us, and an 
 indisputable one. It is worth while accustoming 
 ourselves to use them thus, in order to bring out 
 this force and to see how real it is, limited though 
 it be, and unpretending as it may appear. The 
 very substitution of the word Eternal for the 
 word Lord is something gained in this direction. 
 The word Eternal has less of particularity and 
 palpability for the imagination, but what it does 
 affirm is real and verifiable. 
 
 Let us fix firmly in our minds, with this limited 
 but real sense to the words we employ, the con- 
 nection of ideas which was ever present to the 
 spirit of the Hebrew people. "In the way of right- 
 eousness is life, and in the pathway thereof is no 
 death ; as righteousness tendeth to life, so he that 
 pursueth evil, pursueth it to hie own death; as 
 the whirlwind passeth, so is the vricked no more, 
 but the righteous is an everlasting foundation" ; — 
 here is the ground idea, Xet there are continual 
 momentary suggestions which make for gratifying 
 our apparent self, for unrighteousness; neverthe- 
 less, what makes for our real self, for righteous- 
 ness, is lasting, and holds good in the end. There- 
 fore: "Trust in the Eternal with all thine heart, 
 and lean not imto thine own understanding; 
 there is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor coun- 
 sel against the Eternal; there is a way that 
 seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof 
 are the ways of death ; there are many devices in 
 a man's heart, nevertheless the counsel of the 
 Eternal, that shall stand." To follow this counsel 
 of the Eternal is the only true wisdom and under- 
 standing: "The fear of the Eternal, that is wisdom, 
 and to depart from evil, that is understanding.*' 
 77 
 
LITEEATUKE AND DOGMA, 
 
 It is also happiness: "Blessed is every one that 
 feareth the Eternal, that walketh in his ways; 
 happy shall he be, and it shall be well with him I 
 taste and see how gracious the Eternal isl 
 blessed is the man that trusteth in him. Blessed 
 is the man whose delight is in the law of the 
 Eternal; his leaf shall not wither, and whatso- 
 ever he doeth, it shall prosper." And the more a 
 man walks in this way of righteousness, the more 
 he feels himself borne by a power not his own : 
 *'Not by might and not by power, but by my 
 spirit, saith the Eternal. O Eternal, I know that 
 the way of man is not in himself I all things come 
 of thee; in thy light do we see light; the prepara- 
 tion of the heart in man is from the Eternal. The 
 Eternal ordereth a good man's going, and making 
 his way acceptable to himself." But man feels, 
 too, how far he comes from fulfilling or even from 
 fully perceiving this true law of his being, these 
 indications of the Eternal, the way of righteous- 
 ness. He says, and must say: "I am a stranger 
 upon earth, O, hide not thy commandments from 
 me I Enter not into judgment with thy servant, 
 O Eternal, for in thy sight shall no man living be 
 justified I" Nevertheless, as a man holds on to 
 practise as well as he can, and avoids, at any 
 rate, "presumptuous sins," courses he can clearly 
 see to be wrong, films fall away from his eyes, the 
 indications of the Eternal come out more and 
 more fully, we are cleansed from faults which 
 were hitherto secret to us: "Examine me, O Grod, 
 and prove me, try out my reins and my heart; 
 look well if there be any way of wickedness in 
 me, and lead me in the way everlasting I O 
 cleanse thou me from my secret faults I thou hast 
 proved my heart, thou hast visited me in the 
 night, thou hast tried me and shalt find nothing." 
 78 
 
ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 
 
 And the more we thus get to keep innoeency, the 
 more we wonderfully find joy and peace: "O how 
 plentiful is thy goodness which thou hast laid up 
 for them that fear thee I Thou shalt hide them in 
 the secret of thy presence from the provoking of 
 men. Thou wilt show me the path of life, in thy 
 presence is the fulness of joy, at thy right hand 
 there are pleasures forevermore." More and more 
 this dwelling on the joy and peace from righteous- 
 ness, and on the power which makes for right- 
 eousness, becomes a man's consolation and refuge: 
 "Thou art my hiding-place, thou shalt preserve 
 me from trouble; if my delight had not been in 
 thy law, I should have perished in my trouble. 
 When I am in heaviness, I will think upon God; 
 a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat 1 
 O set me up upon the rock that is higher than 1 1 
 The name of the Eternal is as a strong tower, the 
 righteous runneth into it and is safe." And the 
 more we experience this shelter, the more we come 
 to feel that it is protecting even to tenderness; 
 "Like as a father pitieth his own children, even so 
 is the Eternal merciful unto them that fear him." 
 Nay, every other support, we at last find, every 
 other attachment, may fail us, this alone fails 
 not: "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that 
 she should not have compassion on the son of her 
 womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not for- 
 get thee I" 
 
 All this, we say, rests originally upon the simple 
 but solid experience; "Conduct brings happiness" 
 or, "Bighteousness tendeth to ii/e/" And, by 
 making it again rest there, we bring out in a new 
 but most real and sure way its truth and its 
 power. 
 
 For it has not always continued to rest there, 
 and in popular religion now, as we manifestly see* 
 79 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 it rests there no longer. It is worth while to fol- 
 low the way in which this change gradually hap- 
 pened, and the thing ceased to rest there. Israel's 
 original perception was true: Righteousness tend- 
 etb to life! The workers of righteousness have a 
 covenant with the Eternal, that their work shall 
 be blessed and blessing, and shall endure forever. 
 But what apparent contradictions was this true 
 original perception destined to meet with; what 
 vast delays, at any rate, were to be interposed 
 before its truth could become manifest 1 And how 
 instructively the successive documents of the Bible 
 —which popular religion treats as if it were all of 
 one piece, one time, and one mind — bring out the 
 effect on Israel of these delays and contradictions! 
 What a distance between the eighteenth Psalm 
 and the eighty-ninth, between the Book of Prov- 
 erbs and the Book of Ecclesiastes 1 A time some 
 thousand years before Christ, the golden age of 
 Israel, is the date to which the eighteenth Psalm 
 and the chief part of the Book of Proverbs be- 
 long; this is the time in which the sense of the 
 necessary connection between righteousness and 
 happiness appears with its full simplicity and 
 force. "The righteous shall be recompensed in the 
 earth, much more the wicked and the sinner I" is 
 the constant burden of the Book of Proverbs. 
 And David, in the eighteenth Psalm, expresses his 
 conviction of the intimate dependence of happiness 
 upon conduct, in terms which, though they are 
 not without a certain crudity, are yet far more 
 edifying in their truth and naturalness than 
 those morbid sentimentalities of Protestantism 
 about man's natural vileness and Christ's im- 
 puted righteousness, to which they are diametri- 
 cally opposed. "I have kept the ways of the 
 Eternal," he says; "I was also upright before 
 80 
 
ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 
 
 him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity ; there' 
 fore hath the Eternal rewarded me according to 
 my righteousness, according to the cleanness of 
 my hands hath he recompensed me; great pros- 
 perity showeth he unto his king, and showeth 
 loving-kindness unto David, his anointed, and 
 unto his seed forevermore.'' That may be called 
 the classic passage for that covenant Israel al- 
 ways thinks and speaks of, as made by God with 
 his servant David, Israel's second founder. And 
 this covenant was but a renewal of the covenant 
 made with Israel's first founder,— God's servant 
 Abraham, — that "righteousness shall inherit a 
 blessing," and that "in his seed all nations of 
 the earth shall be blessed." 
 
 But what a change in the eighty-ninth Psalm, a 
 few hundred years later I "Eternal, where are thy 
 former loving-kindnesses which thou swarest unto 
 David? thou hast abhorred and forsaken thine 
 anointed, thou hast made void the covenant; 
 remember how short my time is I" "The right- 
 eous shall be recompensed in the earth I" the 
 speaker means; "my death is near, and death 
 ends all; where, Eternal, is thy promise?" 
 
 Most remarkable, indeed, is the inward travail 
 to which, in the six hundred years that followed 
 the age of David and Solomon, the many and 
 rude shocks befalling Israel's fundamental idea, 
 "Righteousness tendeth to life and he that pursueth 
 evil pursueth it to his own death," gave occasion. 
 "Wherefore do the wicked live," asks Job, "become 
 old, yea, are mighty in power? Their houses are 
 safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them?" 
 Job himself is righteous, and yet: "On mine eyelids 
 is the shadow of death, not for any injustice in 
 mine hands." All through the Book of Job, the 
 question how this can be is over and over again 
 6 81 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 asked and never answered; inadequate solutions 
 are offered and repelled, but an adequate solution 
 is never _j'eaclied. The only solution reached is 
 that of silence before the insoluble: "I will lay 
 mine hand upon my mouth.*' The two percep- 
 tions are left confronting one another like Kant- 
 ian antimonies. "The earth is given unto the 
 hand of the wicked I" and yet: "The council of the 
 wicked is far from me, Grod rewardeth him, and 
 he shall know it I'* And this last, the original 
 perception, remains indestructible. The Book of 
 Ecclesiastes, again, has been called sceptical, 
 epicurean; it is certainly without the glow and 
 hope which animate the Bible in general. It be- 
 longs, probably, to the latter half of the fifth 
 century before Christ, to the time of Nehemiah 
 and Malachi, with difficulties pressing the newly 
 restored Jewish community on all sides, with a 
 Persian governor lording it in Jerusalem, with 
 resources light and taxes heavy, with the cancer 
 of poverty eating into the mass of the people, 
 with the rich estranged from the poor and from 
 the national traditions, with the priesthood 
 slack, insincere, and worthless. Composed under 
 such circumstances, the book has been said, and 
 with justice, to breathe "resignation at the grave 
 of Israel"; its author sees "the tears of the op- 
 pressed, and they had no comforter, and on the 
 side of their oppressors there was power ; where- 
 fore I praised the dead which are already dead 
 more than the living which are yet alive." He 
 sees "all things come alike to all, there is one 
 event to the righteous and to the wicked." At- 
 tempts at a philosophic indifference appear, at a 
 sceptical suspension of judgment, at an easy ne 
 quid nimis: "Be not righteous overmuch, neither 
 make thyself over- wise I why shouldst thou destroy 
 82 
 
ABEBGLAUBE INVADING. 
 
 thyself?" Vain attempts, even at a moment 
 which farored them I shows of scepticism, vanish- 
 ing as soon as uttered before the intractable con- 
 scientiousness of Israel I For the Preacher makes 
 answer against himself: "Though a sinner do evil 
 a hundred times and his days be prolonged, yet 
 surely I know that it shall be well with them 
 that fear God ; but it shall not be well with the 
 wicked, because he feareth not before God." 
 The Preacher's contemporary, too, Malachi, felt 
 the pressure of the same circumstances, had the 
 same occasions of despondency. All around him 
 people were saying: "Every one that doeth ovil is 
 good in the sight of the Eternal, and he delighteth 
 in them; where is the God of judgment? it is vain 
 to serve God, and what profit is it that we have 
 kept his ordinance?" What a change from the 
 clear certitude of the golden age: "As the whirl- 
 wind passeth, so is the wicked no more ; but the 
 righteous is an everlasting foundation I" But yet, 
 with all the certitude of this happier past, Mala- 
 chi answers on behalf of the Eternal: "Unto you 
 that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness 
 arise with healing in his wings 1" 
 
 Many there were, no doubt, who had lost all 
 living sense that the promises were made to 
 ligbteousness ; who took them mechanically, as 
 made to them and sure to them because they 
 were the seed of Abraham, because they were, in 
 St. Paul's words: "Israelites, to whom pertain 
 the adoption and the glory and the covenants 
 and the giving of the law and the service of God, 
 and whose are the fathers." These people were 
 perplexed and indignant when the privileged seed 
 became unprosperous ; and they looked for some 
 great change to be wrought in the fallen fortunes 
 of Israel, wrought miraculously and mechanically. 
 83 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 And they were, no doubt, the great majority, and 
 of the mass of Jewish expectation about the fut- 
 ure they stamped the character. With them, how- 
 ever, our interest does not for the present lie; it 
 lies with the prophets and those whom the proph- 
 ets represent. It lies with the continued depos- 
 itaries of the original revelation to Israel, Eight- 
 eousuess tendetb to life! who saw cleariy enough 
 that the promises were to righteousness, and that 
 what tendeth to Me was not the seed of Abraham 
 taken in itself, but righteousness. With this 
 minority, and with its noble representatives the 
 prophets, our present interest lies ; and the devel- 
 opment of their conviction about righteousness is 
 what it here imports us to trace. An indestructi- 
 ble faith that "the righteous is an everlasting 
 foundation" they had; yet they, too, as we have 
 seen, could not but notice, as time went on, many 
 things which seemed apparently to contradict 
 this their belief. In private life, there was the fre- 
 quent prosperity of the sinner. In the life of na- 
 tions, there was the rise and power of the great 
 unrighteous kingdoms of the heathen, the unsuc- 
 cessfulness of Israel ; though Israel was undoubt- 
 edly, as compared with the heathen, the deposi- 
 tary and upholder of the idea of righteousness. 
 Therefore prophets and righteous men also, like 
 the unspiritual crowd, could not but look ar- 
 dently to the future, to some great change and 
 redress in store. 
 
 At the same time, although their experience, 
 that the righteous were often afflicted and the 
 wicked often prosperous, could not but perplex 
 pious Hebrews ; although their conscience felt, and 
 could not but feel, that, compared with the other 
 nations with whom they came in contact, they 
 themselves and their fathers had a concern for 
 84 
 
ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 
 
 righteousness, and an unremitting sense of its 
 necessity, which put them in covenant with the 
 Eternal who makes for righteousness, and which 
 rendered the triumph of other nations over them 
 a triumph of people who cared little for righteous- 
 ness over people who cared for it much, and a 
 cause of perplexity, therefore, to men's trust in the 
 Eternal,— though their conscience told them this, 
 yet of their own short-comings and perversities it 
 told them louder still, and that their sins had in 
 truth been enough to break their covenant with 
 the Eternal a thousand times over, and to bring 
 justly upon them all the miseries they suffered. 
 To enable them to meet the terrible day, when the 
 Eternal would avenge him of his enemies and 
 make up his jewels, they themselves needed, they 
 knew, the voice of a second Elijah, a change of 
 the inner man, repentance, 
 
 2. 
 
 And then, with Malachi's testimony on its lips 
 to the truth of Israel's ruling idea, Righteousness 
 tendeth to life I died prophecy. For four hundred 
 years the mind of Israel revolved those wonder- 
 ful utterances, which, on the ear of even those 
 who only half understand them, and who do not 
 at all believe them, strike with such strange, in- 
 comparable power, — the promises of prophecy. 
 For four hundred years, through defeat and hu- 
 miliation, the Hebrew race pondered those magnifi- 
 cent assurances that "the Eternal's arm is not 
 shortened," that "righteousness shall be forever," 
 and that the future would prove this, even if the 
 present did not. "The Eternal fainteth not, 
 neither is weary; he giveth power to the faint. 
 They that wait on the Eternal shall renew their 
 strength; the redeemed of the Eternal shall return 
 85 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 and come with singing to Zion, and eyerlaBting 
 joy shall be upon their head ; they shall repair the 
 old wastes, the desolations of many generations ; 
 and I, the Eternal, will make an everlasting cov- 
 enant with them. The Eternal shall be thine ever- 
 lasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall 
 be ended ; the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and 
 kings to the brightness of thy rising, and my 
 righteousness shall be forever, and my salvation 
 shall not be abolished I" 
 
 The prophets themselves, speaking when the 
 ruin of their country was impending, or soon 
 after it had happened, had had in prospect the 
 actual restoration of Jerusalem, the submission of 
 the nations around, and the empire of David and 
 Solomon renewed. But as time went on, and 
 Israel's return from captivity and resettlement of 
 Jerusalem by no means answered his glowing 
 anticipations from them, these anticipations had 
 more and more a construction put upon them 
 which set at defiance the unworthiness and in- 
 felicities of the actual present, which filled up 
 what prophecy left in outline, and which em- 
 braced the world. The Hebrew Amos, of the 
 eighth century before Christ, promises to his hear- 
 ers a recovery from their ruin in which they "shall 
 possess the remnant of Edom;" the Greek or Ara- 
 maic Amos of the Christian era, whose words 
 St. James produces in the Conference at Jerusa- 
 lem, promises a recovery for Israel in which "the 
 residue of men shall seek the Eternal." This is but 
 a specimen of what went forward on a large 
 scale. The redeemer, whom the unknown prophet 
 of the captivity foretold to Zion, has, a few hun- 
 dred years later, for the writer whom we call 
 Daniel and for his contemporaries, become the 
 miraculous agent of Israel's new restoration, the 
 86 
 
ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 
 
 heaven-sent executor of the Eternal's judgment, 
 and the bringer-in of the kingdom of righteoua- 
 ness; the Messiah, in short, of our popular re- 
 ligion. "One like the Son of Man came with the 
 clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of 
 Days, and there was given him dominion and 
 glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, 
 and languages should serve him; and the king- 
 dom and dominion shall be given to the people of 
 the saints of the Most High." An impartial criti- 
 cism will hardly find in the Old Testament writers 
 before the times of the Maccabees (and certainly 
 not in the passages usually quoted to prove it) 
 the doctrine of the immortality of the soul or 
 of the resurrection of the dead. But by the time of 
 the Maccabees, when this passage of the Book of 
 Daniel was written, in the second century before 
 Christ, the Jews have undoubtedly become famil- 
 iar, not indeed with the idea of the immortality 
 of the soul as philosophers like Plato conceived it, 
 but with the notion of a resurrection of the dead 
 to take their trial for acceptance or rejection in 
 the Messiah's judgment and kingdom. 
 
 To this has swelled Israel's original and fruitful 
 thesis: "Righteousness tendeth to life I as the whirl- 
 wind passeth, ^o is the wicked no more, but the 
 righteous is an everlasting foundation I" The 
 phantasmagories of more prodigal and wild im- 
 aginations have mingled with the work of Israel's 
 austere spirit ; Babylon, Persia, Egypt, even 
 Greece, have left their trace there; but the un- 
 changeable substructure remains, and on that 
 substructure is everything built which comea 
 after. 
 
 Qn one sense the lofty Messianic ideas of "the 
 
 day of the Eternal's coming," "the consolation of 
 
 Israel," "the restitution of all things," are even 
 
 87 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 more important than the solid but humbler idea, 
 Righteousness tendetb to life! out of which they 
 arose; in another sense they are much less im- 
 portant. J They are more important, because they 
 are the development of this idea and prove its 
 strength. It might have been crushed and baffled 
 by the falsification events seemed to delight in 
 giving it; that instead of being crushed and 
 baffled, it took this magnificent flight, shows its 
 innate power. And they also in a wonderful man- 
 ner attract emotion to the ideas of conduct and 
 morality, attract it to them and combine it with 
 them. On the other hand, the idea that right' 
 eousness tendeth to life has a firm, experimental 
 ground, which the Messianic ideas have not. And 
 the day comes when the possession of such a 
 ground is invaluable. 
 
 (That the spirit of man should entertain hopes 
 and anticipations beyond what it actually knows 
 and can verify, is quite natural. Human life could 
 not have the scope, and depth, and progress it 
 has, were this otherwise/) It is natural, too, to 
 make these hopes and anticipations give in their 
 turn support to the simple and humble experience 
 which was their original ground. Israel, there- 
 fore, who originally followed righteousness be- 
 cause he felt that it tended to life, might natu- 
 rally come at last to follow it because it would 
 enable him to stand before the Son of Man at his 
 coming, and to share in the triumph of the saints. 
 But this later belief has not the same character 
 as the belief which it is thus set to confirm. It is 
 a kind of fairy-tale, which a man tells himself, 
 which no one, we grant, can prove impossible to 
 turn out true, but which no one, also, can prove 
 certain to turn out true. It is exactly what is 
 expressed by the Grerman word "Aberglaube," 
 88 
 
ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 
 
 extra-belief, belief beyond what is certain and 
 verifiable. Our word "superstition" had by its 
 derivation this same meaning, but it has come to 
 be used in a merely bad sense, and to mean a 
 childish and craven religiosity. With the German 
 word it is not so ; therefore Goethe can say with 
 propriety and truth: ^'Aberglaube is the poetry of 
 life,— c7er Aberglavbe ist die Poesie des Lebens." 
 It is so ; extrarbeJief, that which we hope, augur, 
 imagine, is the poetry of life, and has the rights 
 of poetry. But it is not science ; and yet it tends 
 always to imagine itself science, to substitute it- 
 self for science, to make itself the ground of the 
 very science out of which it has grown. The 
 Messianic ideas, which were the poetry of life to 
 Israel in the age when Christ came, did this; and 
 it is the more important to mark that they did 
 it, because similar ideas have so signally done the 
 same thing in popular Christianity. 
 
 89 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 E-ELTGiON New-Given. 
 
 JesuB Christ was undoubtedly the very last sort 
 of Messiah whom the Jews expected. Christian 
 theologians say confidently that the characters of 
 humility, obscureness, and depression were com- 
 monly attributed to the Jewish Messiah ; and even 
 Bishop Butler, in general the most severely exact 
 of writers, gives countenance to this error. What 
 is true is, that we find these characters attributed 
 to some one by the prophets; that we attribute 
 them to Christ; that Christ is for us the Messiah, 
 and that Christ they Buit. But for the prophets 
 themselves, and for the Jews who heard and read 
 them, these characters of lowliness and depression 
 belonged to Grod's chastened servant, the idealized 
 Israel. When Israel had been purged and renewed 
 by these, the Messiah was to appear; but with 
 glory and power for his attributes, not humility 
 and weakness. It is impossible to resist acknowl- 
 edging this, if we read the Bible to find from it 
 what those who wrote it really intended to think 
 and say, and not to put in it what we wish them 
 to have thought and said. To find in Jesus the 
 genuine Jewish Messiah, the Messiah of Daniel, 
 one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of 
 heaven and having universal dominion given him, 
 must certainly, to a Jew, have been extremely 
 difficult. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly in the Old 
 Testament the germ of Christianity. In develop- 
 ing this germ lay the future of righteousness itself, 
 90 
 
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 
 
 of Israel's primary and immortal concern ; and the 
 incomparable greatness of the religion founded by 
 Christ comes from his having developed it. He is 
 not the Messiah to whom the hopes of his nation 
 pointed; and yet Christendom with perfect justice 
 has made him the Messiah, because he alone took, 
 when his nation was on another and a false tack, 
 a way obscurely indicated in the Old Testament, 
 and the one possible and successful way, for the 
 accomplishment of the Messiah's function: — "to 
 bring in everlasting righteousness." Let ue see 
 how this was. 
 
 i^Religion in the Old Testament is a matter of 
 national and social conduct mainly/] First, it 
 consists in devotion to Israel's Grod, the Eternal 
 who loveth righteousness, and of separation from 
 other nations whose concern for righteousness 
 was less fervent, of abhorrence of their idolatries, 
 which were sure to bewilder and diminish this 
 fervent concern. Secondly, it consists in doing 
 justice, hating all wrong, robbery, and oppres- 
 sion, abstaining from insolence, lying, and slan- 
 dering. The Jews' polity, their theocracy, was of 
 such immense importance, because religion, when 
 conceived as having its existence in these national 
 and social duties mainly, requires a polity to put 
 itself forth in; and the Jews' polity was adapted 
 to such a religion. But this religion, as it devel- 
 oped itself, was by no means entirely worthy of 
 the intuition out of which it had grown. We have 
 seen how, in its intuition of God — of that not 
 ourselves of which all mankind form some concep- 
 tion or other— as the Eternal that makes for 
 righteousness, the Hebrew race found the revela- 
 tion needed to breathe emotion into the laws of 
 morality, and to make morality religion. This 
 revelation is the capital fact of the Old Testa- 
 91 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 ment, and the source of its grandeur and power. 
 But it is evident that this revelation lost, as time 
 went on, its nearness and clearness ; and that for 
 the mass of the Hebrews their Grod came to be a 
 mere magnified and non-natural man, like the Grod 
 of our popular religion now, who has commanded 
 certain courses of conduct and attached certain 
 sanctions to them. 
 
 And though prophets and righteous men, among 
 the Hebrews, might preserve always the imme- 
 diate and truer apprehension of their G-od as the 
 Eternal who makes for righteousness, they in vain 
 tried to communicate this apprehension to the 
 mass of their countrymen. They had, indeed, a 
 special difficulty to contend with in communicat- 
 ing it ; and the difficulty was this. Those courses 
 of conduct, which Israel's intuition of the Eternal 
 had originally touched with emotion and made 
 religion, lay chiefly, we have seen, in the line of 
 national and social duties. By reason of the stage 
 of their own growth and the world's, at which 
 this revelation found the Hebrews, the thing could 
 not well be otherwise. And national and social 
 duties are peculiarly capable of a mechanical, ex- 
 terior performance, in which the heart has no 
 share. One may observe rites and ceremonies, 
 hate idolatry, abstain from murder and theft and 
 false witness, and yet have one's inward thoughts 
 bad, callous, and disordered. Then even the ad- 
 mitted duties themselves come to be ill-discharged 
 or set at naught, because the emotion which was 
 the only certain security for their good discharge 
 n' is wanting. TThe very power of religion, as we 
 have seen, lies in its bringing emotion to bear on 
 our rules of conduct, and thus making us care for 
 them so much, consider them so deeply and rever- 
 entially, that we surmount the great practical 
 92 
 
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 
 
 difficulty of acting in obedience to them, and fol- 
 low them heartily and easily^^ ' Therefore the Is- 
 raelites, when they lost their primary Intuition 
 and the deep feeling which went with it, were 
 perpetually idolatrous, slack or niggardly in the 
 service of Jehovah, violators of judgment and 
 justice. 
 
 The prophets perpetually reminded their nation 
 of the superiority of judgment and justice to any 
 exterior ceremony like sacrifice. But judgment 
 and justice themselves, as Israel in general con- 
 ceived them, have something exterior in them; 
 now, what was wanted was more inwardness, 
 more feeJiugj This was given by adding mercy 
 and humbleness to judgment and justice. Mercy 
 and humbleness are something inward, they are 
 affections of the heart. And even in the Proverbs 
 these appear: "The mercifal man doeth good to 
 his own soul" ; "He that hath mercy on the poor, 
 happy is he" ; "Honor shall uphold the humble in 
 spirit" ; "When pride cometh, shame cometh, but 
 with the lowly is wisdom." So that Micah asked 
 his nation: "What doth the Eternal require of 
 thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to 
 walk humbly with thy God?" — adding mercy and 
 humility to the old judgment and justice. But a 
 further development is given to humbleness, when 
 the second Isaiah adds contrition to it: "I" (the 
 Eternal) "dwell with him that is of a contrite 
 and humble spirit" ; or when the Psalmist says, 
 "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a 
 broken and a contrite heart, God, thou wilt 
 not despise I" • 
 
 This is personal religion; religion consisting in 
 the inward feeling and disposition of the individ- 
 ual himself, rather than in the performance of 
 outward acts toward religion or society. It ia 
 93 
 
LITEKATUEE AND DOGMA. 
 
 the essence of Christianity, it is what the Jews 
 needed, it is the line in which their religion was 
 ripe for development; and it appears in the Old 
 Testament. Still, in the Old Testament it by no 
 means comes out fully. The leaning, there, is to 
 make religion social rather than personal, an 
 affair of duties rather than of dispositions. Soon 
 after the very words we have just quoted from 
 him, the second Isaiah adds: "If thou take away 
 from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth 
 of the finger and speaking vanity, and if thou 
 draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the 
 afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in obscurity 
 and thy darkness be as the noon-day, and the 
 Eternal shall guide thee continually and make fat 
 thy bones." This stands, or at least appears to 
 stand, as a full description of righteousness ; and 
 as such, it is unsatisfying. 
 
 )^ What was wanted, then, was a fuller descrip- 
 tion of righteousness. Now, it is clear that right- 
 eousness, the central object of Israel's concern, 
 was the central object of Christ's concern also.H 
 Of the development and cardinal points of his 
 teaching we shall have to speak more at length 
 by and by; all we have to do here is to pass 
 them in a rapid preliminary review. Israel had 
 said: "To him that ordereth his conversation 
 right shall be shown the salvation of God." And 
 Christ said: "Except your righteousness exceed 
 the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees,"— 
 that is, of the very people who then passed for 
 caring most about righteousness and practising it 
 most rigidly, — "ye shall in no wise enter into the 
 kingdom of heaven.'' But righteousness had by 
 Christ's time lost, in great measure, the mighty 
 94 
 
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 
 
 impulse which emotion gives; and in losing this, 
 had lost also the mighty sanction which happi- 
 ness gives. "The whole head was sick and the 
 whole heart faint" ; the glad and immediate sense 
 of being in the right way, in the way of peace, 
 was gone ; the sense of being wrong and astray, 
 of sin, and of helplessness under sin, was oppres- 
 sive. The thing was, by giving a fuller idea of 
 righteousness, to reapply emotion to it, and by 
 thus reapplying emotion, to disperse the feeling of 
 being amiss and helpless, to give the sense of be- 
 ing right and effective; to restore, in short, to 
 righteousness the sanction of happiness. 
 
 But this could only be done by attending to 
 that inward world of feelings and dis^sitions 
 which Judaism had too much neglected. / The first 
 need, therefore, for Israel at that time^ was to 
 make religion cease to be mainly a national and 
 social matter, and become mainly a personal mat- 
 ter/? "Thou bhnd Pharisee, cleanse first the inside 
 of the cup, that the outside may be clean also 1" — 
 this was the very ground-principle in Christ's 
 teaching. Instead of attending so much to your 
 outward acts, attend, he said, first of all to your 
 inward thoughts, to the state of your heart and 
 feelings. This doctrine has perhaps been over- 
 strained and misapplied by certain people since; 
 but it was the lesson which at that time was 
 above all needed. It is a great progress beyond 
 even that advanced maxim of pious Jews: "To do 
 justice and judgment is more acceptable than 
 sacrifice," For to do justice and judgment is still, 
 as we have remarked, something external, and 
 may leave the feelings untouched, uncleared, and 
 dead ; what was wanted was to plough up, clear, 
 and quicken the feehngs themselves. And this is 
 what Christ did. 
 
 95 
 
IjlTUiKATUKlIi AJNU UUtxMA. 
 
 "My son, give me thy beartT' eays the teacher 
 of righteousnese in the golden age of Israel. And 
 when Israel had the Eternal revealed to him, and 
 founded our religion, he gave bis heart. But the 
 time came when this direct vision ceased, and 
 Israel's religion was a mere aftair of tradition, 
 and of doctrines and rules received from without. 
 Then it might be truly said of this professed ser- 
 vant of the Eternal: "This people honor me with 
 their lips, but have removed their heart far from 
 me, and their fear toward me is taught by the 
 precept of men." With little or no power of dis- 
 tinguishing between what was rule of ceremonial 
 and what was rule of conduct, they followed the 
 prescriptions of their religion with a servile and 
 sullen mind, "precept upon precept, line upon line, 
 here a little and there a little," and no end to it 
 all. What a change since the days when it was 
 Joy to the just to do judgment! The prophets 
 saw clearly enough the evil, nay, they even 
 could point to the springs which must be touched 
 In order to work a cure ; but they could not press 
 these springs steadily enough or skilfully enough 
 to work the cure themselves. 
 
 Christ's new and different way of putting things 
 was the secret of his succeeding where the proph- 
 ets could not. And this new way he had of put- 
 ting things is what is indicated by the expression 
 epieikeia, best rendered, as we have elsewhere 
 said,* by these two words, — "sweet reasonable- 
 ness." For that which is epieikes is that which 
 has an air of truth and likelihood ; and that which 
 has an air of truth and likelihood is prepossess- 
 ing. Now, never were utterances concerning con- 
 duct and righteousnese— Israel's master-concern, 
 and the master-topic of the New Testament as 
 * St. Paul and Protestantism, p. xlx. 
 96 
 
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 
 
 well as of the Old — which so carried with them an 
 air of consummate truth and likelihood as Christ's 
 did ; and never, therefore, were any utterances so 
 irresistibly prepossessing. He put things in such 
 a way that his hearer was led to take each rule 
 or fact of conduct by its inward side, its efiect on 
 the heart and character ; then the reason of the 
 thing, the meaning of what had been mere matter 
 of blind rule, flashed upon him. He could distin- 
 guish between what was only ceremony, and 
 what was conduct; and the hardest rule of con- 
 duct came to appear to him infinitely reasonable 
 and natural, and therefore infinitely prepossess- 
 ing. To And his own soul, his true and perma- 
 nent self, became set up in man's view as his chief 
 concern, as the secret of happiness; and so it 
 really is. "How is a man advantaged if he gain 
 the whole world and suffer the loss of bimself?'' 
 was the searching question which Jesus made 
 men ask themselves. A return upon themselves, 
 and a consequent intuition of the truth and rea- 
 son of the thing in question, gave men for right 
 action the clearness, spirit, energy, happiness, they 
 had lost. 
 
 LThis power of returning upon themselves, and 
 seeing by a flash the truth and reason of things, 
 his disciples learnt of Christ. They learnt, too, 
 from observing him and his example, much which, 
 without, perhaps, any conscious process of being 
 apprehended in its reason, was discerned instinc- 
 tively to be true and life-giving as soon as it was 
 recommended in Christ's words and illustrated by 
 Christ's example.jTwo lessons in particular they 
 learnt in this way, and added them to the great 
 lesson of self-examination, and an appeal to the 
 inner man, with which they started. "Whoever 
 will come after me, let him deny himself and take 
 T 97 
 
Up his cross daily and follow me I" was one of the 
 two; "Learn of me that I am mild and lowly in 
 heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls 1" 
 was the other. LChrist made his followers first 
 look within and examine themselves; he made 
 them feel that they had a best and real self as 
 opposed to their ordinary and apparent one, and 
 that their happiness depended on saving this best 
 self from being overborne/7 And then, by recom- 
 mending, and still more by himself exemplifying 
 in his own pra^ctice, by the exhibition in himself 
 with the most prepossessing pureness, clearness, 
 and beauty, of the two qualities by which our 
 ordinary self is indeed most essentially counter- 
 acted, self-renonncement and mildness, he made 
 his followers feel that in these qualities lay the 
 secret of their best self; that to attain them was 
 in the highest degree requisite and natural, and 
 that a man's whole happiness depended upon it. 
 
 Self-examination, self-renouncement, and mild- 
 ness were, therefore, the great means by which 
 Christ renewed righteousness and religion. All 
 these means are indicated in the Old Testament: 
 "Crod requireth truth in the inward parts; Not do- 
 ing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleas- 
 ure ; Before honor is humility." But how far more 
 strongly are they forced upon the attention in the 
 New Testament, and set up clearly as the central 
 mark for our endeavors I "Thou blind Pharisee, 
 cleanse first the inside of the cup that the outside 
 may be clean also I Whoever will come after me, 
 let him renounce himself and take up his cross 
 daily and follow me I Learn of me that I am mild 
 and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto 
 your souls I" So that, although personal religion 
 is clearly present in the Old Testament, neverthe- 
 less these injunctions of the New Testament effect 
 98 
 
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 
 
 80 much more for the extrication and establish' 
 ment of personal religion than the general exhor. 
 tations in the Old to "ofler the sacrifice of right 
 eousness," to "do judgment," that, comparatiTely 
 with the Old, the New Testament may be said to 
 hare really founded inward and personal religion, 
 [while the Old Testament says, "Attend to conduct T' 
 the New Testament says, "Attend to the feelings 
 and dispositions whence conduct proceeds V'J] And 
 as attending to conduct had very much degener- 
 ated into deadness and formality, attending to 
 the springs of conduct was a revelation, a revival 
 of intuitive and fresh perceptions, a touching of 
 morals with emotion, a discovering of religion, 
 similar to that which had been effected when 
 Israel, struck with the abiding power, not of 
 man's causing, which makes for righteousness, 
 and filled with joy and awe by it, had, in the old 
 days, named God the Eternal Man came under 
 a new dispensation, and made with God a second 
 covenant. 
 
 3. 
 To rivet the attention on the indications of per- 
 sonal religion furnished by the Old Testament ; to 
 take the humble, inward, and suffering "servant 
 of God" of the prophets, and to elevate this as the 
 Messiah, the seed of Abraham and David, in 
 whom all nations should be blessed, whose throne 
 should be as the days of heaven, who should re- 
 deem his people and restore the kingdom to 
 Israel, — was a work of the highest originality. It 
 cannot, as we have seen, be said that, by the 
 suffering Servant of God and by the triumphant 
 Messiah, the prophets themselves meant one and 
 the same person. But language of hope and as- 
 piration, such as theirs, is in its very nature 
 malleable. Criticism may and must determine 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 what the original speakers seem to have directly 
 meant; but the very nature of their language 
 justifies any powerful and fruitful application of 
 it, and every such application may be said, in the 
 words of popular religion, to have been lodged 
 there from the first by the spirit of Grod. Cer- 
 tainly it was a somewhat violent exegetical pro- 
 ceeding, to fuse together into one personage Dan- 
 iel's Son of Man coming with the clouds of Heaven, 
 the first Isaiah's "Branch out of the root of 
 Jesse," who should smite the earth with the rod 
 of his mouth and reign in glory, peace, and right- 
 eousness, and the second Isaiah's meek and af- 
 flicted Servant of God, who was charged with the 
 precious message of a golden future ; — to fuse to- 
 gether in one these three by no means identical 
 personages, to add to them the sacrificial lamb of 
 the passover and of the temple-service which was 
 constantly before a Jew's eyes, to add, besides, 
 the Prophet like to himself whom Moses promised 
 to the children of Israel, to add, further, the Holy 
 One of Israel the Redeemer, who for the prophets 
 was the Eternal himself; and to say, that the 
 combination thence resulting was the Messiah 
 or Christ whom all the prophets meant and pre- 
 dicted, and that Jesus was this Messiah. To us, 
 who have been fashioned by a theology whose set 
 purpose is to efface all the difficulties in such a 
 combination, and to make it received easily and 
 unhesitatingly, it may appear natural; in itself, 
 and with the elements of which it is composed 
 viewed singly and impartially, it cannot but be 
 pronounced violent. 
 
 But the elements in question have their chief 
 use and value, we repeat, not as objects of criti- 
 cism ; they belong of right to whoever can best 
 possess himself of them for practice and edifica- 
 100 
 
BELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 
 
 tion. Of the Messiah coming in the clouds, of the 
 Branch of Jesse smiting the earth with the rod 
 of his mouth, slaying the wicked with his breath, 
 and re-establishing in unexampled splendor 
 David's kingdom, nothing could be made. With 
 such a Messiah filling men's thoughts and hopes, 
 the real defects of Israel still remained, because 
 these chiefly proceeded from Israel's making his 
 religion too much a national and social affair, too 
 little a personal affair. But a Messiah who did 
 not strive nor cry, who was oppressed and af- 
 flicted without opening his mouth, who worked 
 obscurely and patiently, yet failed not nor was 
 discouraged until his doctrine made its way and 
 transformed the world, — this was the Messiah 
 whom Israel needed, and in whom the lost great- 
 ness of Israel could be restored and culminate. 
 LFor the true greatness of Israel was righteous- 
 ness; and only by an inward personal religion 
 could the sense revive of what righteousneee 
 really was,— revive in Israel and bear fruit for the 
 world. J 
 
 Instead, then, of "the Boot of David who should 
 set up an ensign for the nations and assemble the 
 outcasts of Israel," Christ took from prophecy 
 and made pre-eminent "the Servant whom man 
 despieeth and the people abhorreth," but "who 
 bringeth good tidings, who publisheth peace, pub- 
 lisheth salvation." And instead of saying hke the 
 prophets, "This people must mend, this nation 
 must do so and so, Israel must follow such and 
 such ways," Christ took the individual Israelite 
 by himself apart, made him listen for the voice of 
 his conscience, and said to him in effect, "If every 
 one would mend onej we should have a new 
 world." So vital for the Jews was this change of 
 character in their religion, that the Old Testament 
 101 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 abounds, as we have said, in pointings and ap- 
 proximations to it; and most truly might Christ 
 say to his followers, that many prophets and 
 kings had desired, though unavailingly, to see the 
 things which his disciples saw and heard. 
 
 The desire felt by pious Israelites for some new 
 aspect of religion such as Christ presented, is, un- 
 doubtedly, the best proof of its timeliness and 
 salutariness. Perhaps New Testament witnesses 
 to the workings of this desire may be received 
 with suspicion, as having arisen after the event 
 and when the new Ideal of Christ had become es- 
 tablished. Otherwise, John the Baptist's char- 
 acterization of the Messiah as "the Lamb of Grod 
 that taketh away the sins of the world," and the 
 bold Messianic turn given in the twelfth chapter 
 of St. Matthew to the prophecy there quoted from 
 the forty-second chapter of Isaiah, would be evi- 
 dence of the highest importance. "A bruised reed 
 breaketh he not," says Isaiah of the meek servant 
 and messenger of God, "and a glimmering wick 
 quencheth he not; he declareth judgment with 
 truth; far lands wait for his doctrine." "A 
 bruised reed shall he not break," runs the passage 
 in St, Matthew, "and smoking flax shall he not 
 quench, until he send forth judgment unto vic- 
 tory; in his name shall the Gentiles trust," The 
 words, "until he send forth judgment unto victory," 
 words giving a clear Messianic stamp to the per- 
 sonage described, are neither in the original He- 
 brew nor in the Greek of the Septuagint ;— where 
 did the Gospel-writer find them? If, as is possible, 
 they were in some version of Isaiah then extant, 
 they prove in a striking way the existence and 
 strength of the aspiration which Christ satisfied 
 by transforming the old popular ideal of the Mes- 
 siah. But there is in any case proof of the ex- 
 102 
 
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 
 
 istence of such an aspiration, since a Jewish com- 
 mentator, contemporary, probably, with the 
 Christian era but not himself a Christian, assigns 
 to the prophecy a Messianic intention. I^nd, in- 
 deed, the rendering of the final words, "in his name 
 shall the Gentiles trust," which is in the Greek of 
 the Septuagint as well as in that of St. Mat- 
 thew, shows, perhaps, a similar leaning in the 
 Jews of Alexandria some two centuries before 
 Christ.. 7 
 
 reigns there are, then, without doubt, of others 
 trying to identify the Messiah of popular hope— 
 the triumphant Root of David, the mystic Son of 
 Man— with an ideal of meekness, inwardness, pe- 
 tienee, and self-denial; and well might reformers 
 try to effect this identification, for the true hue of 
 Israel's progress lay through itij But not he who 
 tries makes an epoch, but he who effects ; and the 
 identification which was needed Jesus effected. 
 Henceforth the true Israelite was, undoubtedly, he 
 who allied himself with this identification; who 
 perceired its incomparable fruitfulness, its con- 
 tinuance of the real tradition of Israel, its corre- 
 spondence with the ruling idea of the Hebrew 
 spirit: "Through righteousness to happiness I" or, 
 in Bible words, "To him that ordereth his conver- 
 sation right shall be shown the salvation of God." 
 That the Jewish nation at large, and its rulers, 
 refused to accept the identification, shows simply 
 that want of power to penetrate through wraps 
 and appearances to the essence of things, which 
 the majority of mankind always display. The 
 national and social character of their theocracy 
 was everything to the Jews, and they could see 
 no blessings in a revolution which annulled 
 it. 
 It has often been remarked, that the Puritans 
 103 
 
are like the Jews of the Old Testament ; and Mr. 
 Fronde thinks he defends the Puritans by saying 
 that they, like the Jews of the Old Testament, 
 had their hearts set on a theocracy, on a fashion- 
 ing of poUtics and society to suit the government 
 of Grod. How strange that he does not perceive 
 that he thus passes, and with justice, the gravest 
 condemnation on the Puritans as followers of 
 Christ! At the Christian era the time had passed, 
 in religion, for outward constructions of this 
 kind, and for all care about establishing or abol- 
 ishing them. The time had come for inwardness 
 and self-reconstruction,— a time to last till the 
 self-reconstruction is fully achieved. It was the 
 error of the Jews that they did not perceive this ; 
 and the error of the Jews the Puritans, without 
 the Jews' excuse, faithfully repeated. And the 
 blunder of both had the same cause,— a want of 
 tact to perceive what is really most wanted for 
 the attainment of their own professed ideal, the 
 reign of righteousness. 
 
 When Jesus appeared, his disciples were those 
 who did not make this blunder. They were, in 
 general, simple souls, without pretensions which 
 Christ's new religious ideal cut short, or self- 
 consequence which it mortified ; and any Israelite 
 who was, on the one hand, not warped by per- 
 sonal pretensions and self-consequence, and on the 
 other, not dull of feeling and gross of life like 
 the common multitude, might well be open to the 
 spell which, after all, was the great confirmation 
 of Christ's religion, as it was the great confirma- 
 tion of the original religion of Israel, — the spell of 
 its happiness. "Be glad, O ye righteous, and re- 
 joice in the Eternal," the old and lost prerogative 
 of Israel, Christianity offered to make again a 
 living and true word to him. 
 104 
 
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 
 
 4. 
 
 For we have already remarked, how it is the 
 great achievement of the Israel of the Old Testa- 
 ment, happiness being mankind's confessed end 
 and aim, to have more than any one else felt, and 
 more than any one else succeeded in making 
 others feel, that "to righteousness belongs happi- 
 ness." Now, it will be denied by no one that 
 Christ, In his turn, was eminently characterized 
 by professing to bring, and by being felt to bring, 
 happiness. All the words that belong to his mis- 
 sion— g'ospe7, kingdom of God, savjour, grace, 
 peace, living water, bread of]ife—&re brimful of 
 promise and of joy. "I am come," he said, "that 
 ye might have life, and that ye might have it 
 more abundantly^ ; "Come to me, and ye shall 
 find rest unto jour souls" ; "I speak, that my 
 disciples may \xa,YQmyjoy fuMUed in themselves," 
 That the operation, professed and actual, of this 
 "son of peace" was to replace his followers in 
 "the way of peace," no one can question; the 
 only matter of dispute can be how he replaced 
 them there. 
 
 Now, that we may see this more clearly, let us 
 return for a moment to what we said of conduct, 
 — of conduct, which we found to be three fourths, 
 at least, of human life, and the object with which 
 religion is concerned. We said of conduct, that it 
 is the simplest thing in the world as far as knowl- 
 edge is concerned, but the hardest thing in the 
 world as far as doing is concerned. We added 
 that going right, succeeding, in the management 
 of this vast concern, gave naturally the liveliest 
 possible sense of satisfaction and happiness ; that 
 attending to it was naturally the secret of suc- 
 cess, that attachment makes us attend, and that 
 whatever, therefore, made us love to attend to it 
 105 
 
LITERATTJBE AOT) DOGMA. 
 
 must inspire us with gratitude. We found the 
 central point of the religion of the Old Testament 
 in Israel's keen perception of a power, not our- 
 selves, which makes for righteousness and disposes 
 us to attend to it, and in his energy of grateful 
 self-surrender to this power. Let us take, to guide 
 ourselves in the New Testament, the help of the 
 clew furnished by all this. 
 
 First, as to the extreme simplicity of the matter 
 concerned ; a matter sopliisticated, overlaid, and 
 hidden in a thousand ways. The artless, un- 
 schooled perception of a child is, Christ says, the 
 right organ for apprehending it: "Whosoever does 
 not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, 
 cannot enter therein." And yet it is so difficult of 
 attainment that it seems we cannot attain it of 
 ourselves: "No man can come to me unless it be 
 given him of the Father." The things to be done 
 are so simple and necessary that the doctrine 
 about them proves itself as soon as we do them : 
 "Whoever will do God's will, shall know of the 
 doctrine, whether it be of God." Only it is in- 
 dispensable to do them; speculating and profess- 
 ing are absolutely useless, here, without doing: 
 "Why call ye me. Lord, Lord, and do not the 
 things that I say?" The great and learned people, 
 the masters in Israel, have their authoritative 
 version of what righteousness and the will of God 
 is, of what the ideal for the Jewish nation is, of 
 the correct way to interpret the prophets. But: 
 "Judge not according to the appearance, but 
 judge righteous judgment" ; "beware of iziffin- 
 cerity ; "God sees the heart; what comes from 
 withiuj that defiles us." The new covenant, the 
 New Testament, consists in the rule of this very 
 inwardness, in a state of things when God "puts 
 his law in the inward parts and writes it in the 
 106 
 
RELIGION NEW-GIYEN. 
 
 heart," in conscience being made the test. You 
 can see, Jeeus says, — you can see the leading re- 
 ligionists of the Jewish nation, with the current 
 notions about righteousness, Glod's will, and the 
 meaning of prophecy, you can see them saying 
 and not doing, full of fierce temper, pride, and 
 sensuality; this shows they can be but blind 
 guides for you. The sayiour of Israel is he who 
 makes Israel use his conscience simply and sin- 
 cerely, who makes him change and sweeten his 
 temper, conquer and annul his sensuality. The 
 prophets all point to such a sayiour, and he is the 
 Messiah, and the promised happiness to Israel is 
 in him and in his reign. He is, in the exalted lan- 
 guage of prophecy, the holy one of God, the son 
 of God, the beloyed of God, the anointed of God, 
 the son of man in an eminent and unique sense, 
 the Messiah and Christ; in plainer language, he is 
 ^*a man who tells you the truth which he has 
 heard of God"; who came not of himself and 
 speaks not of himself, but who "came forth from 
 God,"— from the original God of Israel's worship, 
 the God of righteousness, and of happiness joined 
 to righteousness, "and is come to you." Israel is 
 perpetually talking of God and calling him his 
 Father, and "every one," says Christ, "who hears 
 the Father comes to me. for I know Him, and 
 know His will, and utter His word." God's will 
 and wordj in the Old Testament, was righteous- 
 ness; in the New Testament, it is righteousness 
 explained to haye its essence in inwardness, mild- 
 ness, and self-renouncement. This is, in substance, 
 the word of Christ, which he who hears "shall 
 neyer see death"; of which he who follows it 
 "shall know by experience whether it be of God." 
 But as the Israel of the Old Testament did not 
 say or feel that he followed righteousness by his 
 107 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 own power, or out of self-interest and self-love, 
 but said and felt that he followed it in thankful 
 self-surrender to ^'the Eternal who loveth right- 
 eousness," and that "the Eternal ordereth a good 
 man's going, and maketh his way acceptable to 
 Himself,^' — so, in the restoration effected by Jesus, 
 the motive which is of force is not the moral mo- 
 tive that inwardness, mildness, and self-renounce- 
 ment make for man's happiness, but a far stronger 
 motive, full of ardent affection and gratitude, 
 and which, though it really has its ground and 
 confirmation in the fact that inwardness, mild- 
 ness, and self-renouncement do make for man's 
 happiness, yet keeps no consciousness of this as 
 its ground. For it finds a far surer ground in 
 personal devotion to Christ, who brought the 
 doctrine to his disciples and made a passage for 
 it into their hearts; in believing that Christ is 
 come from Grod, following Christ, loving Christ. 
 And, in the happiness which thus believing in him, 
 following him, and loving him gives, it finds the 
 mightiest of sanctions. 
 
 And thus was the great doctrine of the Old 
 Testament, "To righteousness belongs happiness I" 
 made a true and potent word again. Christ was 
 the Messiah to restore the all things of Israel, — 
 righteousness, and happiness with righteousness ; 
 to bring light and recovery after long days of 
 darkness and ruin, and to make good the belief 
 written on Israel's heart, "The righteous is an ever- 
 lasting foundation I" [Butwe have seen how in the 
 hopes of the nation and in the promises of proph- 
 ecy this true and vital belief of Israel was 
 mixed with a quantity of what we have called 
 Aberglaube or extra-belief, adding all manner of 
 108 
 
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 
 
 shape and circumstance to the original thought. ^ 
 The kingdom of David and Solomon was to be 
 restored on a grander scale, the enemies of Israel 
 were to lick the dust, kings were to bring gifts; 
 there was to be the Son of Man coming in the 
 clouds, judgment given to the saints of the Most 
 High, and an eternal reign of the saints after- 
 wards. 
 
 Now, most of this has a poetical value, some of 
 it has a moral value. All of it is, in truth, a 
 testimony to the strength of Israel's idea of right- 
 eousness. For the order of its growth is, as we 
 have seen, this, "To lighteousneBS belongs happi- 
 ness!— this sure rule is often broken in the state of 
 things which now is ; there must, therefore, be in 
 store for us, in the future, a state of things where 
 it will hold good." But none of it has a scientific 
 value, a certitude arising from proof and experi- 
 ence. And, indeed, it cannot have this, for it pro- 
 fesses to be an anticipation of a state of things 
 not yet actually experienced. 
 
 But human nature is such, that the mind easily 
 dwells on an anticipation of this kind until we 
 come to forget the order in which it arose, place 
 it first when it is by rights second, and make it 
 support that by which it is in truth supported. 
 And so there came to be many Israelites— most 
 likely they were the great majority of their na- 
 tion—who supposed that righteousness was to be 
 followed, not out of thankful self-surrender to "the 
 Eternal who loveth righteousness," but because 
 the Ancient of Days was coming before long, and 
 judgment was to be given to the saints and they 
 were to possess the kingdom, and from the king- 
 dom those who did not follow righteousness 
 would be excluded. From this way of conceiving 
 religion came naturally the religious condition of 
 109 
 
the Jews as Christ at his coining found it; and 
 from which, by his new and living way of pre- 
 senting the Messiah, he sought to extricate the 
 whole nation, and did extricate his disciples. He 
 did extricate these, in that he fixed their thoughts 
 upon himself and upon an ideal of inwardness, 
 mildness, and self-renouncement, instead of a 
 phantasmagory of outward grandeur and self-as- 
 sertion. But at the same time the whole train of 
 extra-belief, or Aherglauhe, which had attached it- 
 self to Israel's old creed, "The righteous is an ever- 
 lasting foundation!" transferred itself to the new 
 creed brought by Christ, "I am the door 1 by me if 
 any man enter in, he shall be saved I" And there 
 arose, accordingly, a new Aherglaube like the old. 
 The mild, inward, self-renouncing, and sacrificed 
 Servant of the Eternal, the new and better Mes- 
 siah, was yet, before the present generation 
 passed, to come on the clouds of heaven in power 
 and glory, like the Messiah of Daniel, to gather by 
 trumpet-call his elect from the four winds, and to 
 set his apostles on twelve thrones judging the 
 twelve tribes of Israel. The motive of Christian- 
 ity, — which was, in truth, that pure souls "knew 
 the voice" of Jesus as sheep know the voice of 
 their shepherd, and felt after seeing and hearing 
 him that his doctrine and ideal was what they 
 wanted, that he was "indeed the saviour of the 
 world,"— this simple motive became a mixed mo- 
 tive, adding to its first contents a vast extrarbehef 
 of a phantasmagorical Advent of Christ, a resur- 
 rection and judgment, Christ's adherents glorified, 
 his rejectors punished everlastingly. 
 
 And when the generation for which this Advent 
 was first fixed had passed away without it, Chris- 
 tians discovered by a process of criticism common 
 enough in popular theology, but by which, as 
 110 
 
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 
 
 Bishop Butler says of a like kind of procesB, "any- 
 thing may be made out of anything," — they die- 
 covered that the Advent had never really been 
 fixed for that first generation, but that it was 
 foretold, and certainly in store, for a later time. 
 So the Aberglaube was perpetuated, placed out of 
 reach of all practical test, and made stronger 
 than ever, ^ith the multitude this Aberglaube or 
 extra-belief inevitably came soon to surpass the 
 original conviction in attractiveness and seeming 
 certitude. The future and the miraculous engaged 
 the chief attention of Christians; and, in accord- 
 ance with this strain of thought, they more and 
 more rested the proof of Christianity, not on its 
 internal evidence, but on prediction and miracle. " I 
 
 111 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Proof From Prophecy. 
 
 --"Aberg2aube is the poetry of life." That men 
 should, by help of their imagination, take short 
 cuts to what they ardently desire, whether the 
 triumph of Israel or the triumph of Christianity, 
 should tell themselves fairy-tales about it, should 
 make these fairy-tales the basis for what is far 
 more sure and solid than the fairy-tales, the desire 
 itself, — all this has in it, we repeat, nothing which 
 is not natural, nothing blamable. ' Nay, the region 
 of our hopes and presentiments extends, as we 
 have also said, far beyond the region of what we 
 can know with certainty. What we reach by hope 
 and presentiment may yet be true, and he would 
 be a narrow reasoner who denied, for instance, all 
 validity to the idea of immortality, because this 
 idea rests on presentiment mainly, and does not 
 admit of certain demonstration. In religion, 
 above all, extraj-belief is in itself no matter, as- 
 suredly, for blame. The object of religion is con- 
 duct ; and if a man helps himself in his conduct by 
 taking an object of hope and presentiment as if it 
 were an object of certainty, he may even be said 
 to gain thereby an advantage. 
 
 And yet there is always a drawback to a man's 
 advantage in thus treating, in religion and con- 
 duct, what is extra-belief, and not certain, as if it 
 were matter of certainty, and in making it his 
 ground of action ;—be payff for it. The time comes 
 112 
 
when he discovers that it is not certain ; and then 
 the whole certainty of religion seems discredited, 
 and the basis of conduct gone. This danger at- 
 tends the reliance on prediction and miracle as 
 evidences of Christianity. They have been at- 
 ta-cked as a part of the ''cheat" or "imposture" of 
 religion and of Christianity. For us, religion is 
 the solidest of realities, and Christianity the great- 
 est and happiest stroke ever yet made for human 
 perfection. Prediction and miracle were attrib- 
 uted to it as its supports, because of its grandeur, 
 and because of the awe and admiration which it 
 inspired. Greneratipns of men have helped them- 
 selves to hold firmer to it, helped themselves in 
 conduct, by the aid of these supports. "Miracles 
 provej'^ men have said and thought, "that the 
 order of physical nature is not fate, nor a mere 
 material constitution of things, but the subject 
 of a free, omnipotent master. Prophecy fulfilled 
 proves that neither fate nor man are masters of 
 the world."* 
 
 And to take prophecy first. "The conditions," 
 it is said, "which form the true conclusive stand- 
 ard of a prophetic inspiration are these: That the 
 prediction be known to have been promulgated 
 before the event ; that the event be such as could 
 not have been foreseen, when it was predicted, by 
 any effort of human reason ; and that the event 
 and the prediction correspond together in a clear 
 accomplishment. Pphere are prophecies in Scrip- 
 ture answering to the standard of an absolute 
 proof. Their publication, their fulfilment, their 
 supernatural prescience, are all fully ascertained."! 
 On this sort of ground men came to rest the proof 
 of Christianity.^ 
 
 ♦ Davison's Discourses on Prophecy ; Discourse II. Part 2, 
 t Discourses IX. and XII. 
 
 8 113 
 
Now, it may be said, indeed, that a prediction 
 fulfilled, an exhibition of supernatural prescience, 
 proves nothing for or against the truth and ne- 
 cessity of conduct and righteousness. But it must 
 be allowed, notwithstanding, that while human 
 nature is what it is, the mass of men are likely to 
 listen more to a teacher of righteousness, if he ac- 
 companies his teaching by an exhibition of super- 
 natural prescience. And what were called the 
 "signal predictions" concerning the Christ of pop- 
 ular theology, as they stand in our Bibles, had 
 and have undoubtedly a look of supernatural pre- 
 science. The employment of capital letters, and 
 other aids, such as the constant use of the future 
 tense, naturally and innocently adopted by inter- 
 preters who were profoundly convinced that 
 Christianity needed these express predictions and 
 that they must be in the Bible, enhanced, cer- 
 tainly, this look ; but the look, even without these 
 aids, was sufficiently striking. 
 
 That Jacob on his death-bed should, two thou- 
 sand years before Christ, have "been enabled," as 
 the phrase is, to foretell to his son Judah that 
 "the sceptre shall not depart from Judah until 
 Shilob (or the Messiah) come, and to him shall the 
 gathering of the people be," does seem, when the 
 explanation is put with it that the Jewish king- 
 dom lasted till the Christian era and then per- 
 ished, a miracle of prediction in favor of our cur- 
 rent Christian theology. That Jeremiah should 
 have "been enabled" to foretell, in the name of 
 Jehovah: "The days come when I will raise to 
 David a righteous Branch ; in his days Judah shall 
 be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely ; and this is 
 the name whereby he shall be called, The Lord 
 Our Righteousness 1" does seem a wonder of pre- 
 
 114: 
 
THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 diction in favor of that tenet of the Godhead of 
 the Eternal Son, for which the Bishops of Win- 
 chester and Gloucester are so anxious to do some- 
 thing. For unquestionably Jehovah is often 
 spoken of as the saviour of Judah and Israel: 
 *'A11 flesh shall know that I the Eternal am thy 
 saviour and thy redeemer, the mighty one of 
 Jacob" ; and in the prophecy given above as Jere- 
 miah's, the Branch of David is clearly identified 
 with Jehovah. Again, that David should say, 
 "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my 
 right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool," 
 does seem a prodigy of prediction to the same 
 effect. That he should say, "Kiss the Son, lest he 
 be angry and so ye perish," does seem a super- 
 naturally prescient assertion of the Eternal Son- 
 ship. And so long as these prophecies stand as 
 they are here given, they no doubt bring to 
 Christianity all the support (and with the mass of 
 mankind this is by no means inconsiderable) 
 which it can derive from the display of super- 
 natural prescience. 
 
 But who will dispute that it more and more be- 
 comes known that these prophecies cannot stand 
 as we have here given them? Manifestly, it more 
 and more becomes known, that the passage from 
 Genesis, with its mysterious Sbiloh and the gath- 
 ering of the people to him, is rightly to be ren- 
 dered as follows: "The pre-eminence shall not de- 
 part from Judah ^o long as the people resort to 
 Shiloh (the national sanctuary before Jerusalem 
 was won) ; and the nations (the heathen Canaan- 
 ites) shall obey him" We here purposely leave 
 out of sight any such consideration as that our 
 actual books of the Old Testament came first to- 
 gether through the piety of the house of Judah, 
 and when the destiny of Judah was already 
 115 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 traced; and that to say roundly: '^ Jacob was en- 
 abled to foretell: The sceptre shall not depart 
 from Judah," as if "we were speaking of a proph- 
 ecy preached and published by Dr. Gumming, 
 is wholly inadmissible. For this consideration 
 is of force, indeed, but it is a consideration 
 drawn from the rules of literary history and 
 criticism, and not likely to have weight with 
 the mass of mankind. Palpable error and mis- 
 translation are what will have weight with 
 them. 
 
 And what, then, will they say as they come to 
 know (and do not and must not more and more 
 of them come to know it every day?) that Jere- 
 miah's supposed signal identification of Christ 
 with the Grod of Israel: *'I will raise to David a 
 righteous Branch, and this is the name whereby 
 he shall be called. The Lord Our Righteousness," 
 runs really: *'I will raise to David a righteous 
 branch; in his days Judah shall be saved and 
 Israel shall dwell safely; and this is the name 
 whereby they shall call themselves: The Eternal 
 is our righteousness!^' The prophecy thus be- 
 comes simply one of the many promises of a suc- 
 cessor to David under whom the Hebrew people 
 should trust in the Eternal and follow righteous- 
 ness ; just as the prophecy from Genesis is one of 
 the many prophecies of the enduring continuance 
 of the greatness of Judah. "The Lord said unto 
 my Lord," in like manner — will not people be 
 startled when they find that it ought to run in- 
 stead: "The Eternal said unto my lord the king," 
 —a simple promise of victory to a prince of God's 
 chosen people?— and that, "Kiss the Son," is in 
 reality, "Be warned," or, "be instructed" ; "lay 
 hold," according to the Septuagint, "on instruc- 
 tion"? 
 
 116 
 
THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 3. 
 
 Leslie, in his once famous **Short and Easy 
 Method with the Deists," speaks of the impugners 
 of the current evidences of Christianity as men 
 who consider the Scripture histories and the 
 Christian religion ''cheats and impositions of cun- 
 ning and designing men upon the credulity of 
 simple people." Collins, and the whole array of 
 writers at whom Leslie aims this, greatly need to 
 be re-surveyed from the point of view of our own 
 age. Nevertheless, we may grant that some of 
 them, at any rate, conduct their attacks on the 
 current evidences for Christianity in such a man- 
 ner as to give the notion that in their opinion 
 Christianity itself, and religion, is a cheat and an 
 imposture. But how far more prone will the mass 
 of mankind be to hearken to this opinion, if they 
 have been kept intent on predictions such as those 
 of which we have given specimens ; if they have 
 been kept full of the great importance of this nar- 
 row line of mechanical evidence, and then suddenly 
 find that this line of evidence gives way at all 
 points? It can hardly be gainsaid, that, to a deli- 
 cate and penetrating criticism, it has long been 
 manifest that the chief iziera7 fulfilment by Christ 
 of things said by the prophets was the fulfilment 
 such as would naturally be given by one who 
 nourished his spirit on the prophets and on living 
 and acting their words. The great prophecies of 
 Isaiah and Jeremiah are, critics can now see, not 
 strictly predictions at all ; and predictions which 
 are strictly meant as such, like those in the Book 
 of Daniel, are an embarrassment to the Bible 
 rather than a main element of it. The "Zeit- 
 Greist," and the mere spread of what is called en- 
 ligbtenment, superficial and barren as this often 
 is, will inevitably, before long, make this convio- 
 117 
 
tion of criticism a popular opinion held far and 
 wide. And then, what will be their case, who 
 have been so long and sedulously taught to rely 
 on supernatural predictions as a mainstay? 
 
 The same must be said of miracles. The substi- 
 tution of some other proof of Christianity for this 
 accustomed proof is now to be desired most by 
 those who most think Christianity of importance. 
 That old friend of ours on whom we have for- 
 merly commented,* who insists upon it that Chris- 
 tianity is and shall be nothing else but this, "that 
 Christ promised Paradise to the saint and threat- 
 ened the worldly man with hell-fire, and proved 
 his power to promise and threaten by rising from 
 the dead and ascending into heaven," is certainly 
 not the guide whom lovers of Christianity, if they 
 could discern what it is that he really expects and 
 aims at, and what it is which they themselves 
 really desire, would think it wise to follow. 
 I But the subject of miracles is a very great one ; 
 it includes within itself, indeed, the whole question 
 about "supernatural prescience," which meets us 
 when we deal with prophecy ."1 And this great sub- 
 ject requires, in order that we may deal with it 
 properly, some little recapitulation of our original 
 design in this essay, and of the circumstances in 
 which the cause of religion and of the Bible seems 
 to be at this moment placed. 
 
 * St. Paul and Protestajitlsm, p. 167. 
 
 118 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Proof From Miracles. 
 
 We have seen that some new treatment or other 
 the religion of the Bible certainly seems to require, 
 for it is attacked on all sides, and the theologians 
 are not so successful as one might wish in defend- 
 ing it. One critic says, that if these islands had 
 no religion at all, it would not enter into his 
 mind to introduce the religious and ethical idea by 
 the agency of the Bible; another, that though 
 certain commonplaces are common to all systems 
 of morality, yet the Bible way of enunciating 
 these commonplaces no longer suits us. And we 
 may rest assured, he adds, that by saying what 
 we think in some other, more congenial, language, 
 we shall really be taking the shortest road to dis- 
 covering the new doctrines which will satisfy at 
 once our reason and our imagination. Another 
 critic goes farther still, and calls Bible religion 
 not only destitute of a modern and congenial way 
 of stating its commonplaces of morality, but a 
 defacer and disfigurer of moral treasures which 
 were once in better keeping. {The more one stud- 
 ies, the more, says he, one is convinced, that the 
 religion which calls itself revealed contains, in 
 the way of what is good, nothing which is not the 
 incoherent and ill-digested residue of the wisdom 
 of the ancients. 7 To the same effect the Duke of 
 Somerset,— who has been affording lately proof to 
 the world that our aristocratic class are not, as 
 has been said, inaccessible to ideas and merely po- 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 lite, but that they are familiar, on the contrary, 
 with modem criticism of the most advanced kind, 
 — the Duke of Somerset finds very much to be dis- 
 satisfied with in the Bible and its teaching; al- 
 though the soul, he says, has (outside the Bible, 
 apparently) one unassailable fortress to which she 
 may retire, — faith in Grod. 
 
 All this seems to threaten to push Bible religion 
 from the place it has long held in our affections. 
 And even what the most modern criticism of all 
 sometimes does, to save it and set it up again, 
 can hardly be called very flattering to it. For 
 whereas the Hebrew race imagined that to them 
 were committed the oracles of Grod, and that their 
 God, "the Eternal who loveth righteousness," was 
 the God to whom every knee should bow and 
 every tongue swear, there now comes Monsieur 
 Emile Bumouf, the accomplished son of a gifted 
 father, and will prove to us in a thick volume* 
 that the oracles of God were not committed to a 
 Semitic race at all, but to the Aryan; that the 
 true God is not Israel's God at all, but is ''the 
 idea of the absolute" which Israel could never 
 properly master. This "sacred theory of the 
 Aryas," it seems, passed into Palestine from Per- 
 sia and India, and got possession of the founder 
 of Christianity and of his greatest apostles, St. 
 Paul and St. John; becoming more perfect, and 
 returning more and more to its true character of 
 a "transcendent metaphysic," as the doctors of 
 the Christian Church developed it. So that we 
 Christians, who are Aryas, may have the satis- 
 faction of thinking that "the religion of Christ has 
 not come to us from the Semites," and that "it is 
 in the hymns of the Veda and not in the Bible 
 that we are to look for the primordial source of 
 
 * La Science des Eeligions. PariSf 1872. 
 120 
 
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 
 
 our religion." The theory of Christ is accordingly 
 the theory of the Vedie Agni, or ^re; the Incar- 
 nation represents the Vedic solemnity of the pro- 
 duction of Arej symbol of force of every kind, of 
 all movementj life, and thought; the Trinity 
 of Father, Son, and Spirit is the Vedic Trinity of 
 Sun, Fire, and Wind; and God, finally, is "acos- 
 mic unity." 
 
 Such speculations almost take away the breath 
 of a mere man of letters. What one is inclined to 
 say of them is this : Undoubtedly these exploits of 
 the Aryan genius are gratifying to us members of 
 the Aryan race. The Grod of the Hebrews, M. 
 Burnouf says expressly, **was not a cosmic 
 unity" ; the religion of the Hebrews "had not that 
 transcendent metaphysic which the genius of the 
 Aryas requires"; and, "in passing from the Aryan 
 race to the inferior races, religion underwent a 
 deterioration due to the physical and moral con- 
 stitution of these races." For reUgion, it must be 
 remembered, is, in M. Bumouf's view, fundamen- 
 tally a science; "a metaphysical conception, a 
 theory, a synthetic explanation of the universe." 
 Now "the perfect Arya is capable of a great deal 
 of science; the Semite is inferior to him." As 
 Aryas or Aryans, then, we ought to be pleased at 
 having vindicated the greatness of our race, and 
 having not borrowed a Semitic religion, but trans- 
 formed it by importing our own metaphysics into 
 it. 
 
 And this seems to harmonize very well with 
 what the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester 
 say about "doing something for the honor of Our 
 Lord's Godhead," and about "the infinite separa- 
 tion for time and for eternity which is involved in 
 rejecting the Godhead of the Eternal Son, Very 
 God of Very God, Light of Light" ; and also with 
 121 
 
LITERATUBE AND DOGMA. 
 
 the Athanasian Creed generally, and with what 
 the clergy write to the "Gruardian" about "eternal 
 life being unquestionably annexed to a right 
 knowledge of the Grodhead." For all these have 
 in view high science and metaphysics, worthy of 
 the Aryas. But to Bible religion, in the plain 
 sense of the word, it is not flattering; for it 
 throws overboard almost entirely the Old Testa- 
 ment, and makes the essence of the New to con- 
 sist in an esoteric doctrine not very visible there, 
 but more fully developed outside of it. The meta- 
 physical element is made the fundamental element 
 in religion; but "the Bible books, especially the 
 more ancient of them, are destitute of metaphys- 
 ics, and consequently of method and classification 
 in their ideas.'* Israel, therefore, instead of being 
 a light of the Gentiles and a salvation to the ends 
 of the earth, falls to a place in the world's re- 
 ligious history behind the Arya, He is dismissed 
 as ranking anthropologically between the Aryas 
 and the yellow men ; as having frizzled hair, thick 
 lips, small calves, flat feet, and belonging, above 
 all, to those "occipital races" whose brain cannot 
 grow after the age of sixteen ; whereas the brain 
 of a theological Arya, such as one of our bishops, 
 may go on growing all his life. 
 
 But we who think that the Old Testament leads 
 surely up to the New, who believe that, indeed, 
 "salvation is of the Jews," and that, for what 
 concerns conduct or righteousness (that is, for 
 what concerns three fourths of human life), they 
 and their documents can no more be neglected by 
 whoever would make proficiency in it, than Greece 
 can be neglected by any one who would make 
 proficiency in art, or Newton's discoveries by 
 whoever would comprehend the world's physical 
 laws,— Tre are naturally not satisfied with this 
 122 
 
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 
 
 treatment of Israel and the Bible. And admitting 
 that Israel shows no talent for metaphysics, we 
 say that his religious greatness is just this, that 
 he does not found religion on metaphysics, but on 
 moral experience, which is a much simpler matter ; 
 and that, ever since the apparition of Israel and 
 the Bible, religion is no longer what, according to 
 M. Bumouf, to our Aryan forefathers in the valley 
 of the Oxus it was,— and what perhaps it really 
 was to thenii — a metaphysical theory, but is what 
 Israel has made it. 
 
 And what Isra-el made, and how he made it, we 
 seek to show from the Bible itself. Thus we hope 
 to win for the Bible and its religion, which seem 
 to us so indispensable to the world, an access to 
 many of those who now neglect them. For there 
 is this to be said against M. Burnouf's meta- 
 physics: no one can allege that the Bible has 
 failed to win access for want of metaphysics being 
 applied to it. Metaphysics are just what all our 
 theology runs up into, and our bishops, as we 
 have seen, are here particularly strong. But we 
 have seen that the making religion into meta- 
 physics is the weakening of religion; now M. 
 Burnouf makes religion into metaphysics more 
 than ever. Yet evidently the metaphysical method 
 lacks power for laying hold on people, and com- 
 pelling them to receive the Bible from it ; it is felt 
 to be inconclusive as thus employed, and its in- 
 conclusiveness tells against the Bible. This is the 
 case with the metaphysics of our bishops, and it 
 will be the same with M. Burnouf's new meta- 
 physics also. They will be found, we fear, to have 
 an inconclusiveness in their recommendation of 
 Christianity. To very many persons, indeed to 
 the great majority, such a method, in such a mat- 
 ter, must be inconclusive. 
 123 
 
LITERATURE AND DO&MA. 
 
 2. 
 
 Therefore we "would not allow ourselves to start 
 with any metaphysical conception at all, not 
 with the monotheistic idea, as it is styled, any 
 more than with the pantheistic idea; and, indeed, 
 we are quite sure thatJsrael himself began with 
 nothing of the kind. \The idea of God, as it is 
 given us in the Bible, rests, we say, not on a 
 metaphysical conception of the necessity of certain 
 deductions from our ideas of cause, existence, 
 identity, and the like ; but on a moral perception 
 of a rule of conduct not of our own making, into 
 which we are born, and which exists whether we 
 will or no ; of awe at its grandeur and necessity, 
 and of gratitude at its beneficence-^This is the 
 great original revelation made to Israel, this is 
 his "Eternal." 
 
 Man, however, as GToethe says, "never knows 
 how anthropomorphic he is." Israel described his 
 Eternal in the language of poetry and emotion, 
 and could not thus describe him but with the 
 character of a man. Scientifically he never at- 
 tempted to describe him at all. But stiU the 
 Eternal was ever at last reducible, for Israel, to 
 the reality of experience out of which the revela- 
 tion sprang; he was "the righteous Eternal who 
 loveth righteousness.'' They who "seek the Eter- 
 nal," and they who "follow after righteousness," 
 were identical; just as, conversely, they who "fear 
 the Eternal," and they who "depart from evil," 
 were identical. Above all: "He that feareth the 
 Eternal happy is he" ; "it is joy to the just to do 
 judgment"; "righteousness tendeth to 7i/e"; "the 
 righteous is an everlasting foundation.'" 
 
 But, as time went on, facts seemed, we saw, to 
 contradict this fundamental belief, to refute this 
 faith in the Eternal ; material forces prevailed, and 
 
 124; 
 
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 
 
 God appeared, as they say, to be on the side of 
 the big battalions. The great unrighteous king- 
 doms of the world, kingdoms which cared far less 
 than Israel for righteousness, and for the Eternal 
 who makes for righteousness, overpowered Israel. 
 Prophecy assured him that the triumph of the 
 Eternal's cause and people was certain: "Behold, 
 the Eternal's hand is not shortened that it can- 
 not save." The triumph was but adjourned 
 through Israel's own sins: "Tour iniquities have 
 separated between you and your God." Prophecy 
 directed his thoughts to the future, and promised 
 to him a new everlasting kingdom under a heav- 
 en-sent leader. The characters of this kingdom 
 and leader were more spiritualized by one prophet, 
 more materialized by another. As time went on, 
 in the last centuries before our era, they became 
 increasingly turbid and phantasmagorical. In ad- 
 dition to his original experimental belief in the 
 almighty Eternal who makes for righteousness, 
 Israel had now a vast Aberglaubej an after or 
 extra^belief, not experimental, in an approaching 
 kingdom of the saints, to be established by an 
 Anointed, a Messiah, "one like the Son of Man," 
 commissioned from the Ancient of Days and com- 
 ing in the clouds of heaven. 
 
 Jesus came, calling himself the Messiah, the Son 
 of Man, the Son of Grod; and the question is. 
 What is the true meaning of these assertions of 
 his, and of all his teaching? It is the same ques- 
 tion we had about the Old Testament. Is the 
 language scientific, or, as we say, literary; that 
 is, the language of poetry and emotion, approxi- 
 mative language, thrown outj as it were, at cer- 
 tain great objects which the human mind augurs 
 and feels after, but not language accurately defin- 
 ing them? Popular religion says, we know, that 
 125 
 
the language is scientific: that the God of the Old 
 Testament is a great Personal First Cause, who 
 thinks and loves (for this too, it seems, we ought 
 to have added), the moral and intelligent Grover- 
 nor of the universe. Learned religion, the meta- 
 physical theology of our bishops, proves or con- 
 firms this by abstruse reasoning of our ideas from 
 cause, design, existence, identity, and so on. Pop- 
 ular religion rests it altogether on miracles. 
 
 The Grod of Israel, for popular religion, is a mag- 
 nified and non-natural man who has really 
 worked stupendous miracles, whereas the Grods of 
 the heathen were vainly imagined to be able to 
 work them, but could not, and had therefore no 
 real existence. Of this Grod, Jesus for popular re- 
 ligion is the Son. He came to appease Grod's 
 wrath against sinful men by the sacrifice of him- 
 self ; and he proved his Sonship by a course of 
 stupendous miracles, and by the wonderful accom- 
 plishment in him of the supernatural Messianic 
 predictions of prophecy. Here, again, learned re- 
 ligion elucidates and develops the relation of the 
 Son to the Father by a copious exhibition of 
 metaphysics ; but for popular religion the relation- 
 ship, and the authority of Jesus which derives 
 from it, is altogether established by miracle. 
 
 Now, we have seen that our bishops and their 
 metaphysics are so little convincing, that many 
 people throw the Bible quite aside, and will not 
 attend to it, because they are given to under- 
 stand that the metaphysics go necessarily along 
 with it, and that one cannot be taken without 
 the other. So far, then, the talents of the Bishops 
 of Winchester and Grloucester, and their zeal to do 
 something for the honor of the Eternal Son's Grod- 
 head, may be said to be actual obstacles to the 
 receiving and studying of the Bible. But the same 
 126 
 
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 
 
 may now be also said of the popular theology 
 which rests the Bible's authority and the Chris- 
 tian religion on miracle. To a great many per- 
 sons this is tantamount to stopping their use of 
 the Bible and of the Christian religion; for they 
 have made up their minds that what is popularly 
 called miracle never really happens nor can hap- 
 pen, and that the belief in it arises out of igno- 
 rance, fraud, or mistake. To these persons we re- 
 store the use of the Bible, if, while showing them 
 that the Bible language is not scientific, but the 
 language of common speech or of poetry and elo- 
 quence, approximative language thrown out at 
 certain great objects of consciousness which it 
 does not pretend to define fully, we convince them 
 at the same time that this language deals with 
 facts of experience most momentous and real. 
 
 We have sought to do this for the language of 
 the Old Testament first, and we now seek to do 
 it for that of the New. Our attempt, therefore, 
 has in view those who now throw the Bible aside, 
 not those who receive it on the ground supplied 
 either by popular theology or by metaphysical 
 theology. For persons of this kind, what we say 
 neither will have, nor seeks to have, any con- 
 straining force at all ; only it is rendered necessary 
 by the want of constraining force, for others than 
 themselves, in their own theology. How little 
 constraining force metaphysical dogma has, we all 
 see. And we have shown, too, how the proof from 
 the fulfilment in Christ of a number of definite, de- 
 tailed predictions, supposed to have been made 
 with supernatural prescience about him long before- 
 hand, is losing, and seems likely more and more to 
 lose, its constraining force. It is found that the 
 predictions and their fulfilment are not what they 
 are said to be. 
 
 127 
 
Now we come to miracleSj more specially so 
 called ; and we have to see whether the constrain- 
 ing force of this proof, too, must not be admitted 
 to be far less than it used to be, and whether 
 some other source of authority for the Bible is not 
 much to be desired. 
 
 3. 
 (^That miracles, when fully believed, are felt by 
 men in general to be a source of authority, it is 
 absurd to deny. 7 One may say, indeed: Suppose I 
 could change the pen with which I write this into 
 a pen-wiper, I should not thus make what I write 
 any the truer or more convincing. That may be 
 so in reality, but the mass of mankind feel differ- 
 ently. In the judgment of the mass of mankind, 
 could I visibly and undeniably change the pen 
 with which I write this into a pen- wiper, not only 
 would this which I write acquire a claim to be 
 held perfectly true and convincing, but I should 
 even be entitled to affirm, and to be believed in 
 affirming, propositions the most palpably at war 
 with common fact and experience. Jit is almost 
 impossible to exaggerate the proneness of the hu- 
 man mind to take miracles as evidence, and to 
 seek for miracles as evidence; or the extent to 
 which religion, and religion of a true and admi- 
 rable kind, has been, and is still, held in connec- 
 tion with a reliance upon miracles. 1 This reliance 
 will long outlast the reliance on the supernatural 
 prescience of prophecy, for it is not exposed to the 
 same tests. To pick Scripture miracles one by 
 one to pieces is an odious and repulsive task ; it is 
 also an unprofitable one, for whatever we may 
 think of the affirmative demonstrations of them, 
 a negative demonstration of them is, from the 
 circumstances of the case, impossible. And yet the 
 human mind is assuredly passing away, however 
 128 
 
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 
 
 slowly, from this hold of reliance also ; and those 
 who make it their stay will more and more find 
 it fail them, will be more and more disturbed, 
 shaken, distressed, and bewildered. 
 
 iFor it is what we call the Time-Sphit that is 
 sapping the proof from mlra<jles, — it is the "Zeit- 
 Greist' ' itself. Whether we attack them, or 
 whether we defend them, does not much matter ; 
 the human mind, as its experience widens, is turn- 
 ing away from them j And for this reason: it 
 sees, as its experience widens, how they arise. It 
 sees that, under certain circumstances, they al- 
 ways do arise; and that they have not more so- 
 Udity in one case than another. Under certain 
 circumstances, wherever men are found, there is, 
 ire says,— 
 
 " No natural exlaalatlon In the sky. 
 No scape of nature, no dlstemper'd day. 
 No common wind, no customed event, 
 But they will pluck away his natural cause. 
 And call them meteors, prod^es, and signs. 
 Abortives, presages, and tongues ol heaven." 
 
 Imposture is so far from being the general rule in 
 these eases, that it is the rare exception. Signs 
 and wonders men's minds will have, and they 
 create them honestly and naturally; yet not so 
 but that we can see bow they created them, 
 
 Roman Catholics fancy that Bible miracles and 
 the miracles of their Church form a class by them- 
 selves; Protestants fancy that Bible miracles, 
 alone, form a class by themselves. This was emi- 
 nently the posture of mind of the late Archbishop 
 Whately:— to hold that all other miracles would 
 turn out to be impostures, or capable of a natural 
 explanation, but that Bible miracles would stand 
 sifting by a London special jury or by a commit- 
 tee of scientific men. No acutenees can save such 
 9 129 
 
LITERATUEE AND DOGMA. 
 
 notions, as our knowledge widens, from being seen 
 to be mere extravagances, and the Protestant no- 
 tion is doomed to an earlier ruin than the Cath- 
 olic. For the Catholic notion admits miracles in 
 the mass ; the Protestant notion invites to a criti- 
 cism by which it must finally itself perish. When 
 Stephen was martyred, he looked up into heaven 
 and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on 
 the right hand of God. That, says the Protes- 
 tant, is solid fact. At the martyrdom of St. 
 Fruetuosus, Babylas and Mygdone, the Christian 
 servants of the Roman governor, saw the heavens 
 open, and the saint and his deacon Eulogius car- 
 ried up on high with crowns on their heads. 
 That is, says the Protestant, imposture or else 
 illusion. St. Paul hears on his way to Damascus 
 the voice of Jesus say to him: "Saul, Saul, why 
 persecutest thou me?" That, again, is solid fact. 
 The companion of St. Thomas Aquinas hears a 
 voice from the crucifix say to the praying saint: 
 "Thou hast written well of me, Thomas; what 
 recompense dost thou desire?" That, again, is 
 imposture or else illusion. Why? It is impossible 
 to find any criterion by which one of these inci- 
 dents may establish its claim to a solidity which 
 we refuse to the others. 
 
 [One of two things must be made out in order to 
 place either the Bible miracles alone, or the Bible 
 miracles and the miracles of the Catholic Church 
 with them, in a class by themselves. Either they 
 must be shown to have arisen in a time eminently 
 unfavorable to such a process as Shakespeare de- 
 scribes, to amplification and the production of 
 legend ; or they must be shown to be recorded in 
 documents of an eminently historical mode of 
 birth and publication. / But surely it is manifest 
 that the Bible miracles fulfil neither of these con- 
 130 
 
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 
 
 ditions. It was said that the waters of the Pam- 
 phyiian Sea miraculouBly opened a passage for the 
 army of Alexander the Great. Admiral Beaufort, 
 however, tells us that, "though there are no tides 
 in this part of the Mediterranean, a considerable 
 depression of the sea is caused by long-continued 
 north winds ; and Alexander, taking advantage of 
 such a moment, may have dashed on without im- 
 pediment" ;* and we accept the explanation as a 
 matter of course. But the waters of the Red Sea 
 are said to have miraculously opened a passage 
 for the children of Israel; and we insist on the 
 literal truth of this story, and reject natural ex- 
 planations as monstrous. Tet the time and cir- 
 cumstances of the flight from Egypt were a thou- 
 sand times more favorable to the rise of some 
 natural incident into a miracle, than the age of 
 Alexander. They were a time and circumstances of 
 less broad daylight. It was said, again, that dur- 
 ing the battle of Leuctra the gates of the Her- 
 acleum at Thebes suddenly opened and the armor 
 of Hercules vanished from the temple, to enable 
 the god to take part with the Thebans in the 
 battle. Probably there was some real circum- 
 stance, however slight, which gave a foundation 
 for the story. But this is the most we think of 
 saying in its favor ; the literal story it never even 
 occurs to one of us to believe. But that the walls 
 of Jericho literally fell down at the sound of the 
 trumpets of Joshua, we are asked to believe, told 
 that it is impious to disbeheve it. Yet which 
 place and time were most hkely to generate a 
 miraculous story with ease, — Hellas and the days 
 of Epaminondas, or Palestine and the days of 
 Joshua? And of documentary records, which are 
 the most historical in their way of being gener- 
 
 * Beaulort^s Earamania, p. 116. 
 131 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 ated and propagated, which are the most favorable 
 for the admission of legend and miracle of all 
 kinds,— the Old Testament narratives with their 
 incubation of centuries, and the New Testament 
 narratives with their incubation of a century (and 
 tradition active all the while), or the narratives, 
 say, of Herodotus or Plutarch? 
 
 None of them are what we call critical. Ex- 
 perience of the history of the human mind, and of 
 men's habits of seeing, sifting, and relating, con- 
 vinces us that the miraculous stories of Herodotus 
 or Plutarch do grow out of the process described 
 by Shakespeare. But we shall find ourselves in- 
 evitably led, sooner or later, to extend the same 
 rule to all miraculous stories ; nay, the considera- 
 tions which apply in other cases apply, we shall 
 most surely discover, with even greater force in 
 the case of Bible miracles. 
 
 This being so, there is nothing one would more 
 desire for a person or document one greatly 
 values, than to make them independent of mira- 
 cles. And with regard to the Old Testament we 
 have done this ; for we have shown that the essen- 
 tial matter in the Old Testament is the revelation 
 to Israel of the immeasurable grandeur, the eter- 
 nal necessity, the priceless blessing of that with 
 which not less than three fourths of human life is 
 indeed concerned, — righteousness^ And it makes 
 no difference to the preciousness of this revela- 
 tion, whether we believe that the Red Sea miracu- 
 lously opened a passage to the Israelites, and the 
 walls of Jericho miraculously fell down at the 
 blast of Joshua's trumpet, or that these stories 
 arose in the same way as other stories of the 
 kind. In the New Testament the essential thing 
 132 
 
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 
 
 is the revelation of Christ. For this too, then, if 
 one values it, one's great wish must in like man- 
 ner be to make it independent of miracle ; if mira^ 
 cle is a stay which one perceives, as more and 
 more we are all coming to perceive it, to be not 
 solid. 
 
 CNow, it may look at first sight a strange thing 
 to say, but it is a truth which we will make 
 abundantly clear as we go on, that one of the 
 very best helps to prepare a way for the revela- 
 tion of Christ is to convince one's self of the lia- 
 bility to mistake in his reportersTJ Our popular 
 theology imagines that the Old Testament writers 
 were miraculously inspired, and could make no 
 mistakes; that the New Testament writers were 
 miraculously inspired, and could make no mis- 
 takes ; and that there this miraculous inspiration 
 stopped, and all writers on religion have been 
 liable to make mistakes ever since. It is as if a 
 hand had been put out of the sky presenting us 
 with the Bible, and the rules of criticism which 
 apply to other books did not apply to the Bible. 
 Now, the fatal thing for this fancy is, that its 
 owners stab it to the heart the moment they use 
 any palliation or explaining away, however 
 small, of the literal words of the Bible; and Bome 
 they always use. For instance, it is said in the 
 eighteenth Psalm, that a consuming fire went out 
 of the mouth of God, so that coals were kindled 
 at it. The veriest literalist will cry out; Every 
 one knows that this is not to be taken literally I 
 The truth is, even he knows that this is not to be 
 taken literally; but others know that a great 
 deal more is not to be taken literally. He knows 
 very little ; but, as far as his little knowledge goes, 
 he gives up his theory, which is, of course, palpa- 
 bly hollow. For indeed it is only by applying to 
 133 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 the Bible his criticism, such as it is, that any man 
 makes out that criticism does not apply to the 
 Bible. 
 
 But suppose that the Bible itself put forth 
 (which it does not) this theory, and made its own 
 value all depend on the truth of it, then the result 
 would be, at the best, not firmer conviction, but 
 utter puzzle and bewilderment. Contradictions 
 would meet us, and we should have no means of 
 escape from them. There would grow up an ir- 
 resistible sense that the belief in miracles was due 
 to man's want of experience, to his ignorance, 
 agitation, and helplessness; and yet we should 
 have a book, which we felt to be precious, pur- 
 porting to be put out of the sky, to be full of 
 miracles, and to depend for all its value upon their 
 being true. Then it is that the cry, imposture I 
 would more and more, in spite of all we could do, 
 gather strength, and the book be thrown aside 
 more and more. But when we convince ourselves 
 that, in the New Testament as in the Old, what 
 is given us is words thrown out at an immense 
 reality, not fully or half fully grasped by the 
 writer, but, even thus, able to aflfect us with in- 
 describable force; when we convince ourselves 
 that, as in the Old Testament we have Israel's 
 inadequate yet inexhaustibly fruitful testimony to 
 "the Eternal that makes for righteousness," so we 
 have in the New Testament a report inadequate, 
 indeed, but the only report we have and therefore 
 priceless, by men, some more able and clear, 
 others less able and clear, but all full of the in- 
 fluences of their time and condition, partakers of 
 some of its simple or its learned ignorance,— in- 
 evitably, in fine, expecting miracles and demand- 
 ing them,— a report, I say, by these men of that 
 immense reality not fully or half fully grasped by 
 134 
 
THE PROOF FEOM MIRACLES. 
 
 them, the mind of Christ; then we shall be drawn 
 to the G-OBpels with a new zest and as by a fresh 
 spell. We shall throw ourselves upon their nar- 
 ratives with an ardor answering to the value of 
 the pearl of great price they hold, and to the 
 difficulty of reaching it. 
 
 ^CSo, to profit fully by the New Testament, the 
 first thing to be done is to make it perfectly clear 
 to one's self that its reporters both could err and 
 did err.j For a plain person, an incident in the 
 report of St. Paul's conversion— which comes into 
 our minds the more naturally as this incident has 
 been turned against something we have ourselves 
 Baid*~would, one would think, be enough. We 
 had spoken of the notion that St. Paul's miracu- 
 lous vision at his conversion proved the truth of 
 his doctrine. We related a vision which converted 
 Sampson Staniforth, one of the early Methodists ; 
 and we said that just so much proving force, and 
 no more, as Sampson Staniforth's vision had to 
 confirm the truth of anything he might afterwards 
 teach, St. Paul's vision had to establish bis sub- 
 sequent doctrine. It was eagerly rejoined that 
 Staniforth's vision was but a fancy of his own, 
 whereas the reality of Paul's was proved by his 
 companions hearing the voice that spoke to him. 
 And so in one place of the Acts we are told they 
 did ; but in another place of the Acts we are told 
 by Paul himself just the contrary : that his com- 
 panions did not hear the voice that spoke to him. 
 Need we say that the two statements have been 
 "reconciled"? They have, over and over again; 
 but by one of those processes which are the op- 
 probrium of our Bible criticism, and by which, as 
 Bishop Butler says, anything can be made to 
 mean anything. There is between the two state- 
 
 * St. Paul aad Protestantism, p. 54. 
 135 
 
LiirtaaAiutii^ ajnu liuujma, 
 
 ments a contradiction as clear as can be. The 
 contradiction proves nothing against the good 
 faith of the reporter, and St. Paul undoubtedly 
 had his vision; he had it as Sampson Staniforth 
 had his. What the contradiction proves is, the in- 
 curable looseness "with which the circumstances of 
 what is called and thought a miracle are related ; 
 and that this looseness the Bible relators of a 
 mirficle exhibit, just like other people. And the 
 moral is, what an unsure stay, then, must mira- 
 cles be I 
 
 But, after all, that there is here any contradic- 
 tion or mistake, some do deny ; so let us choose a 
 case where the mistake is quite undeniably clear. 
 Such a case we find in the confident expectation 
 and assertion, on the part of the New Testament 
 writers, of the approaching end of the world. 
 Even this mistake people try to explain away; 
 but it is so palpable that no words can cloud our 
 perception of it. "The time is short." "TheLordis 
 athand." "Theendofallthingsisathand." "Little 
 children, it is the final time." "The Lord's coming 
 is at hand ; behold the judge standeth before the 
 door."* Nothing can really obscure the evidence 
 furnished by such sayings as these. When Paul 
 told the Thessalonians that they and he, at the 
 approaching coming of Christ, should have their 
 turn after, not before, the faithful dead : "For the 
 Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a 
 shout, with the voice of the archangel and with 
 the trump of G-od, and the dead in Christ shall 
 rise first, then we which are alive and remain 
 shall be caught up together with them in the 
 clouds, to meet the Lord in the air," — when he 
 
 *1 Cor. vll. 39; PHUlpp. iv. 5; 1 Pet. Iv. 7; 1 Jolin il. 18; 
 James v. 8, 9. We have bere the express declaratioiis of St. Paul, 
 St. Peter, St. John, and St. James. 
 136 
 
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 
 
 said this, St. Paul was simply mistaken in hie 
 notion of what was going to happen. This is as 
 clear as anything can be. 
 
 And not only were the New Testament writers 
 thus demonstrably liable to commit, like other 
 men, mistakes in fact; they were also demonstra- 
 bly liable to commit mistakes in argument. As 
 before, let us take a case which will be manifest 
 and palpable to every one. St. Paul, arguing to 
 the G-alatians that salvation was not by the 
 Jewish law but by Jesus Christ, proves his point 
 from the promise to Abraham having been made 
 to him and his seed, not seeds. The words are 
 not, he says, "to seedSy as of many, but as of 
 one; to thy seedj which is Christ." Now, as to 
 the point to be proved, we all agree with St. 
 Paul; but his argument is that of a Jewish Rabbi, 
 and is clearly both fanciful and false. The writer 
 in Genesis never intended to draw any distinction 
 between one of Abraham's seed, and Abraham's 
 seed 2D general. And even if he had expressly 
 meant, what Paul says he did not mean, Abra- 
 ham's seed in general, he would still have said 
 seed, and not seeds. This is a good instance to 
 take, because the Apostle's substantial doctrine is 
 here not at all concerned. As to t? e root of the 
 matter in question, we are all a one with St. 
 Paul. But it is evident how he could, hke the 
 rest of us, bring a quite false argument in support 
 of a quite true thesis. 
 
 And the use of prophecy by the writers of the 
 New Testament furnishes really, almost at every 
 turn instances of false argument of the same kind. 
 Habit makes us so lend ourselves to their way of 
 speaking, that nothing checks us; but, the mo- 
 ment we begin to attend, we perceive how much 
 there is that ought to check us. Take the famous 
 137 
 
allegation of the parted clothes but lot-assigned 
 coat of Christ as fulfilment of the supposed proph- 
 ecy in the Psalms: "They parted my garments 
 among them, and for my vesture did they cast 
 lots." The -words of the Psalm are taken to 
 mean contrast, when they do in truth mean 
 identity. According to the rules of Hebrew poet- 
 ry, "for my vesture they did cast lots" is merely a 
 repetition, in different words, of "they parted my 
 garments among them," not an antithesis to it. 
 The alleged "prophecy" is, therefore, due to a 
 dealing with the Psalmist's words which is arbi- 
 trary and erroneous. So, again, to call the words, 
 "a bone of him shall not be broken," a prophecy of 
 Christ, fulfilled by his legs not being broken on 
 the cross, is evidently, the moment one considers 
 it, a playing with words which nowadays we 
 should account childish. For what do the words, 
 taken as alone words can rationally be taken, 
 along with their context, really prophesy? The 
 entire safety of the righteous, not his death. 
 "Many are the troubles of the righteous, but the 
 Eternal delivereth him out of all; hekeepeth all his 
 bones, so that not one of them is broken." Worse 
 words, therefore, could hardly have been chosen 
 from the Old Testament to apply in that connec- 
 tion where they come ; for they are really contra- 
 dicted by the death of Christ, not fulfilled by it. 
 
 It is true, this verbal and unintelligent use of 
 Scripture is just what was to be expected from the 
 circumstances of the New Testament writers. It 
 was inevitable for them ; it was the sort of trifling 
 which then, in common Jewish theology, passed 
 for grave argument and made a serious impres- 
 sion, as it has in common Christian theology ever 
 since. But this does not make it the less really 
 trifling; or hinder one nowadays seeing it to be 
 138 
 
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 
 
 trifling, directly we examine it. The mistake 
 made will strike some people more forcibly in one 
 of the cases cited, some in another, but in one or 
 another of the cases the mistake will be visible to 
 everybody, 
 
 \Now, this recognition of the liability of the New 
 Testament writers to make mistakes, both of fact 
 and of argument, will certainly, as we have said, 
 more and more gain strength, and spread wider 
 and wider.", The futility of their mode of demon- 
 stration from prophecy, of which we have just 
 given examples, will be more and more felt. The 
 fallibility of that demonstration from miracles to 
 which they and all about them attached such pre- 
 ponderating weight, which made the disciples of 
 Jesus believe in him, which made the people be- 
 lieve in him, will be more and more recognized. 
 
 Reverence for all, who, in those first dubious 
 days of Christianity, chose the better part, and 
 resolutely cast in their lot with "the despised and 
 rejected of men" I Gratitude to all, who, while 
 the tradition was yet fresh, helped by their writ- 
 ings to preserve and set clear the precious record 
 of the words and life of Jesus I And honor, eter- 
 nal honor, to the great and profound qualities of 
 soul and mind which some of these writers die- 
 play I But the writers are admirable for what 
 they are, not for what, by the nature of things, 
 they could not be. It was superiority enough in 
 them to attach themselves firmly to Jesus; to 
 feel to the bottom of their hearts that power of 
 his words which alone held permanently, — held 
 when the miracles, in which the multitude believed 
 as well as they, failed to hold. ' The good faith of 
 the Bible writers is above all question ; it speaks 
 for itself; and the very same criticism, which 
 shows us the defects of their exegesis and of their 
 139 
 
demonstrations from miracles, establishes their 
 good faith. J But this could not, and did not, pre- 
 vent them from arguing in the methods by which 
 every one around them argued, and from expect- 
 ing miracles where everybody else expected them. 
 [in one respect alone have the miracles recorded 
 by them a more real ground than the mass of 
 miracles of which we have the relation. Medical 
 science has never gauged — never, perhaps, enough 
 set itself to gauge — the intimate connection be- 
 tween moral fault and disease. To what extent, 
 or in how many cases, what is called illness is 
 due to moral springs having been used amiss, 
 whether by being over-used or by not being used 
 sufficiently, we hardly at all know, and we too 
 little inquired Certainly it is due to this very 
 much more than we commonly think; and the 
 more it is due to this, the more do moral thera- 
 peutics rise in possibility and importance.* The 
 bringer of light and happiness, the calmer and 
 pacifier or invigorator and stimulator, is one of 
 the chiefest of doctors. Such a doctor was Jesus; 
 such an operator, by an efficacious and real 
 though little observed and little employed agency, 
 upon what we, in the language of popular super- 
 stition, call the unclean spirits^ but which are to 
 be designated more literally and more correctly as 
 the uncleared, unpuri^ed spirits^ which came rag- 
 ing and madding before him. This his own lan- 
 guage shows, if we know how to read it. "What 
 does it matter whether I say, Thy sins are for- 
 given thee I or whether I say, Arise and walk?" 
 And again: "Thou art made whole; sin no more, 
 lest a worse thing befall thee." His reporters, we 
 
 •Consult the Cbarmides of Plato (Cbap. V.) for a remarkable 
 account of the theory of such a treatment, attributed by Socrates 
 to Zamolxls, the god-king of the Thraclans. 
 140 
 
THE PBOOF FEOM MIRACLES. 
 
 must remember, are men who saw thaumaturgy 
 in all that Jesus did, and who saw in all sickness 
 and disaster visitations from God, and they bend 
 his language accordingly. But indications enough 
 remain to show the line of the Master, his per- 
 ception of the large part of moral cause in many 
 kinds of disease, and his method of addressing to 
 this part his cure. 
 
 It would never have done, indeed, to have men 
 pronouncing right and left that this and that was 
 a judgment, and how, and for what, and on 
 whom; and so, when the disciples, seeing an af- 
 flicted person, asked whether this man had done 
 sin or Ms parents, Jesus checked them and said : 
 "Neither the one nor the other, but that the 
 works of Grod might be made manifest in him." 
 Not the less clear is his own belief in the moral 
 root of much physical disease, and in moral thera- 
 peutics; and it is important to note well the 
 branch of miracles where this belief comes in. For 
 the action of Jesus in these cases, however it may 
 be amplified in the reports, was real; but it is 
 not, therefore, as popular religion fancies, thau- 
 maturgy, — it is not what people are fond of call- 
 ing the BupernatuTSili but what is better called the 
 DOB-naturaL It is, on the contrary, like the grace 
 of Raphael, or the grand style of Phidias, emi- 
 nently natural; but it is above common low- 
 pitched nature ; it is a line of nature not yet mas- 
 tered or followed out. 
 
 Its significance as a guaranty of the authen- 
 ticity of Christ's mission is trivial, however, com- 
 pared with the guaranty furnished by his sayings. 
 Its importance is in its necessary effect upon the 
 beholders and reporters. This element of what 
 was really wonderful, unprecedented,* and unac- 
 countable, they had actually before them ; and we 
 141 
 
LITEBATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 may estimate how it must have helped and seemed 
 to sanction that tendency which in any case 
 would have carried them, circumstanced as they 
 were, to find all the performances and career of 
 Jesus miraculous. 
 
 \ Butj except for this, the miracles related in the 
 Grospels will appear to us more and more, the 
 more our experience and knowledge increases, to 
 have but the same ground which is common to all 
 miracles, the ground indicated by Shakespeare ; to 
 have been generated under the same kind of condi- 
 tions as other miracles, and to follow the same 
 laws. .When once the "Zeil^G-eist" has made us 
 entertain the notion of this, a thousand things in 
 the manner of relating will strike us which never 
 struck us before, and will make us wonder how 
 we could ever have thought differently. Discrep- 
 ancies which we now labor with such honest 
 pains and by such astonishing methods to explain 
 away, — the voice at Paul's conversion, heard by 
 the bystanders according to one account, not 
 heard by them according to another; the Holy 
 Dove at Christ's baptism, visible to John the 
 Baptist in one narrative, in two others to Jesus 
 himself, in another, finally, to all the people as 
 well ; the single blind man in one relation, grow- 
 ing into two blind men in another ; the speaking 
 with tongues, according to St. Paul a sound with- 
 out meaning, according to the Acts an intelligent 
 and intelligible utterance,— all this will be felt to 
 require really no explanation at all, to explain 
 itself, to be natural to the whole class of incidents 
 to which these miracles belong, and the inevitable 
 result of the looseness with which the stories of 
 them arise and are propagated. 
 
 And the more the miraculousness of the story 
 deepens, as after the death of Jesus, the more does 
 142 
 
THE PROOF PROM MIRACLES. 
 
 the texture of the incidents become loose and 
 floating, the more does the very air and aspect cf 
 things seem to tell us we are in wonderland. 
 Jesus after his resurrection not known by Mary 
 Magdalene, taken by her for the gardener; not 
 known by the two disciples going with him to 
 Emmaus and at supper with him there; not 
 known by his most intimate apostles on the bor- 
 ders of the Sea of Gahlee ; — and presently, out of 
 these vague beginnings, the recognitions getting 
 asserted, then the ocular demonstrations, the su- 
 preme commissions, the ascension; — one hardly 
 knows which of the two to call the most evident 
 here, the perfect simplicity and good faith of the 
 narrators, or the plainness with which they them- 
 selves really say to ue, "Behold a legend growing 
 under your eyesl" 
 
 And suggestions of this sort, with respect to the 
 whole miraculous side of the New Testament, will 
 meet us at every turn; we do but give a sample 
 of them. It is neither our wish nor our design 
 to accumulate them, to marshal them, to insist 
 upon them, to make their force felt. Let those 
 who desire to keep them at arms' length continue 
 to do so, if they can, and go on placing the sanc- 
 tion of the Christian religion in its miracles. [jOur 
 point is, that the objections to miracles do, and 
 more and more will, without insistence, without 
 attack, without controversy, make their own 
 force felt ; and that the sanction of Christianity, if 
 Christianity is not to be lost along with its mira- 
 cles, must be found elsewhere. T 
 
 143 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The New Testament Record. 
 
 Now, then, will be perceived the bearing and 
 gravity of what we some little way back said, 
 that the more we convince ourselves of the lia- 
 bility of the New Testament writers to mistake, 
 the more we really bring out the greatness and 
 worth of the New Testament. [For the New 
 Testament exists to reveal Jesue, not to establish 
 the immunity of its writers from error. Jesus 
 himself is not a New Testament writer ; he is the 
 object of description and comment to the New 
 Testament writers. ' As the Old Testament speaks 
 about the Eternal and bears an invaluable wit- 
 ness to him, without yet ever adequately in 
 words defining and expressing him; so, and even 
 yet more, do the New Testament writers speak 
 about Jesus and give a priceless record of him, 
 without adequately and accurately comprehend- 
 ing him. 
 
 They are altogether on another plane from 
 Jesus, and their mistakes are not his. It is not 
 Jesus himself who relates his own miracles to 
 us ; who tells ue of his own apparitions after his 
 death; who alleges his crucifixion and sufierings 
 as afulfilment of the prophecy: **The Eternal keep- 
 eth all the bones of the righteous so that not one 
 of them is broken ;" who proves salvation to be by 
 Christ alone, from the promise to Abraham being 
 made to seed in the singular number, not the 
 plural. If, therefore, the human mind is now 
 drawing away from reliance on miracles, coming 
 144 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 
 
 to perceive the community of character which per- 
 vades them all, to understand their natural laws, 
 so to speak,— their loose mode of origination and 
 their untrustworthiness, — and is inclined rather to 
 distrust the dealer in them than to pin its faith 
 upon him; then it is good for the authority of 
 Jesus, that his reporters are evidently liable to 
 ignorance and error. He is reported to deal in 
 miracles, to be above all a thaumaturgist. But 
 the more his reporters were intellectually men of 
 their nation and time, and of its current beliefs, — 
 the more, that is, they were open to mistakes, — 
 the more certain they were to impute miracles to 
 a wonderful and half-understood personage like 
 Jesus, whether he would or no. He himself may, 
 at the same time, have had quite other notions as 
 to what he was doing and intending. 
 
 Again, the mistake of imagining that the world 
 was to end, as St. Paul announces, within the 
 lifetime of the first Christian generation, is now 
 palpable. The reporters of Jesus make him an- 
 nouncing just the same thing: "This generation 
 shall not pass away till they shall see the Son of 
 Man coming in the clouds with great power and 
 glory, and then shall he send his angels and 
 gather his elect from the four winds." Popular 
 theology can put a plain satisfactory sense upon 
 this, but, as usual, through that process described 
 by Butler by which anything can be made to 
 mean anything; and from this sort of process the 
 human mind is beginning to shrink. A more 
 plausible theology will say that the words are an 
 accommodation ; that the speaker lends himself to 
 the fancies and expectations of his hearers. A 
 good deal of such accommodation there is in this 
 and other sayings of Jesus ; but accommodation 
 to the fall extent here supposed would surely have 
 10 145 
 
LITERATUBE AND DOGMA. 
 
 been impossible. To suppose it, is most violent 
 and unsatisfactory. Either, then, the words were, 
 like St. Paul's announcement, a mistake, or they 
 are not really the very words Jesus said, just as 
 he said them. That is, the reporters have given 
 them a turn, however slight, a tone and a color, 
 to make them comply with a fixed idea in their 
 own minds, which they unfeignedly believed was a 
 fixed idea with Jesus also. jNow, the more we 
 regard the reporters of Jesus as men liable to err, 
 full of the turbid Jewish fancies about "the grand 
 consummation" which were then current, the eas- 
 ier we can understand these men inevitably put- 
 ting their own eschatology into the mouth of 
 Jesus, when they had to report his discourse 
 about the kingdom of God and the troubles in 
 store for the Jewish nation, and the less need 
 have we to make Jesus a copartner in their escha- 
 tology. 
 
 Again, the futility of such demonstrations from 
 prophecy as those of which we have given ex- 
 amples, and generally of all that Jewish exegesis, 
 based on a mere unintelligent catching at the let- 
 ter of the Old Testament, isolated from its con- 
 text and real meaning, of which the New Testa- 
 ment writers give us so much, begins to disconcert 
 attentive readers of the Bible more and more, and 
 to be felt by them as an embarrassment to the 
 cause of Jesus, not a support. Well, then, it is 
 good for the authority of Jesus, that those who 
 establish it by arguments of this sort should be 
 clearly men of their race and time, not above its 
 futile methods of reasoning and demonstration. 
 The more they were this, and the more they were 
 sure to mix up much futile logic and exegesis with 
 their presentation of Jesus, the less is Jesus him- 
 self responsible for such logic and exegesis, or at 
 146 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 
 
 all dependent upon it. He may himself have rated 
 such argumentation at precisely its true value, 
 and have based his mission and authority upon 
 no grounds but solid ones. Whether he did so or 
 not, his hearers and reporters were sure to base 
 it on their own fantastic grounds also, and to 
 credit Jesus with doing the same. 
 
 ! In short, the more we conceive Jesus, as almost 
 as much over the heads of his disciples and re- 
 porters as he is over the heads of the mass of so- 
 called Christians now, the more we see his disci- 
 ples to have been, as they were, men raised by a 
 truer moral susceptiveness above their country- 
 men, but in intellectual conceptions and habits 
 much on a par with them, all the more do we 
 make room, so to speak, for Jesus to be incon- 
 ceivably great and wonderful; as wonderful as 
 anything his reporters imagined him to be, though 
 in a diflTerent manner. 
 
 We make room for him to be this, and through 
 the inadequate reporting of his followers there 
 breaks and shines, and will more and more break 
 and shine the more the matter is examined, abun- 
 dant evidence that he was this. It is most re- 
 markable, and the bes^^roof of the simplicity, 
 seriousness, and good fstith which intercourse with 
 Christ inspired, that witnesses with a fixed pre- 
 possession, and having no doubt at all as to the 
 interpretation to be put on Christ's acts and 
 career, should yet admit so much of what makes 
 against themselves and their own power of inter- 
 preting. For them, it was a thing beyond all 
 doubt that by miracles Christ manifested forth 
 his glory and induced the faithful to believe in 
 him ; yet what checks to this paramount and all- 
 147 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 governing belief of theira do they report from 
 Christ himselfl Everybody will be able to recall 
 such checks, although he may never yet have been 
 accustomed to consider their full significance. 
 "Except ye see signs and vronders, ye will not be- 
 lieve I" — as much as to say: "Believe on right 
 grounds you cannot, and you must needs believe 
 on wrong I'^ And again: "Believe me that I am 
 in the Father and the Father in me; or else be- 
 lieve for the very works^ sake"I—ebe much as to 
 say : "Acknowledge me on the ground of my heal- 
 ing and restoring acts being miraculous, if you 
 must; but it is not the right ground." No, not 
 the right ground ; and when Nicodemus came, and 
 would put conversion on this ground ("We know 
 that thou art a teacher come from G-od, for no 
 one can do the miracles that thou doest except 
 God be with him") Jesus rejoined: "Verily, verily, 
 I say unto thee, except a man be born from 
 above, he cannot see the kingdom of God !" thus 
 tacitly changing his disciple's ground, and cor- 
 recting him. Even distress and impatience at this 
 false ground being taken is visible sometimes: 
 "Jesus groaned in his spirit and said, Why doth 
 this generation ask for a sign? Verily I say unto 
 you, there shall no sign be given to this genera- 
 tion!" Who does not see what double and treble 
 importance these checks of Jesus to the reliance on 
 miracles gain, from their being reported by those 
 who relied on miracles devoutly? Who does not 
 see what a clew they offer as to the real mind of 
 Jesus? To convey at all to such hearers of him 
 that there was any objection to miracles, his own 
 ^ense of the objection must have been profound ; 
 and to get them, who neither shared nor under- 
 stood it, to repeat it a few times, he must have 
 repeated it many times. 
 
 148 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 
 
 Take, again, the esehatology of the disciples, 
 their notion of final things and of the approach- 
 ing great judgment and end of the world. This 
 consisted mainly in a literal appropriation of the 
 apocalyptic pictures of the Book of Daniel and the 
 Book of Enoch, and a transference of them to 
 Christ and his kingdom. It is not surprising, cer- 
 tainly, that men with the mental range of their 
 time, and with so little flexibility of thought, 
 that, when Jesus told them to beware of "the 
 leaven of the Pharisees," or when he called him- 
 self "the bread of life," and said, "He that eateth 
 me shall live by me!" they stuck hopelessly fast in 
 the literal meaning of the words, and were accord- 
 ingly puzzled or else offended by them, — it is not 
 surprising that these men should have been in- 
 capable of dealing in a large spirit with the proph- 
 ecies of Daniel, that they should have applied 
 them to Christ narrowly and literally, and should 
 therefore have conceived his kingdom unintelli- 
 gently. This is not remarkable ; what is remark- 
 able is, that they should themselves supply us 
 with their Master's blame of their too literal 
 criticism, his famous sentence: "The kingdom of 
 God is within you I" Such an account of the 
 kingdom of God has more right, even if recorded 
 only once, to pass with us for Christ's own ac- 
 count, than the common materializing accounts, 
 if repeated twenty times; for it was manifestly 
 quite foreign to the disciples' own notions, and 
 they could never have invented it. Evidence of 
 the same kind, again, evidence borne by the re- 
 porters themselves against their own power of 
 rightly understanding what Christ, on this topic 
 of the kingdom of God and its coming, meant to 
 say, is Christ's warning to his apostles, that the 
 subject of final things was one where they were 
 
 14:9 
 
all out of their depth: "It is not for you to know 
 the times and the seasons which the Father hath 
 put in his own power." 
 
 So, too, with the use of prophecy and of the 
 Old Testament generally. A very small experience 
 of Jewish exegesis will convince us that, in the 
 disciples, their catching at the letter of the Scrip- 
 tures, and mistaking this play with words for 
 serious argument, was nothing extraordinary. 
 The extraordinary thing is that Jesus, even in the 
 report of these critics, uses Scripture in a totally 
 different manner ; he wields it as an instrument of 
 which he truly possesses the use. Either he puts 
 prophecy into act, and by the startling point thus 
 made he engages the popular imagination on his 
 side, makes the popular familiarity with prophecy 
 serve him ; as when he rides into Jerusalem on an 
 ass, or clears the Temple of buyers and sellers. 
 Or else he applies Scripture in what is called "a 
 superior spirit," to make it yield to narrow- 
 minded hearers a lesson of wisdom; as, for in- 
 stance, to rebuke a superstitious observance of the 
 Sabbath, he employs the incident of David's tak- 
 ing the shewbread. His reporters, in short, are 
 the servants of the Scripture-letter, Jesus is its 
 master; and it is from the very men, who were 
 servants to it themselves, that we learn that he 
 was master of it. How signal, therefore, must 
 this mastery have been I how eminently and strik- 
 ingly different from the treatment known and 
 practised by the disciples themselves 1 
 
 Finally, for the reporters of Jesus the rule was, 
 undoubtedly, that men "believed on Jesus when 
 they saw the miracles which he did." Miracles 
 were in these reporters' eyes, beyond question, the 
 evidence of the Christian religion. And yet these 
 same reporters indicate another and a totally 
 150 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECOi^. 
 
 different eyidence offered for the Christian religion 
 by Jesus himself. "Every one that heareth and 
 learneth from the Father cometh unto me. As the 
 Father hath taught me, so I speak ; he that is of 
 God heareth the words of God ; if God was your 
 Father, ye would have loved me 1" This is inward 
 evidence, direct evidence. From that previous 
 knowledge of God, as "the Eternal that loveth 
 righteousness," which Israel possessed, the hearers 
 of Jesus could and should have concluded irresisti- 
 bly, when they heard his words, that he came 
 from God. Now, miracles are outward evidence, 
 indirect evidence, not conclusive in this fashion. 
 To walk on the sea cannot really prove a man to 
 proceed from the Eternal that loveth righteous- 
 ness; although undoubtedly, as we have said, a 
 man who walks on the sea will be able to make 
 the mass of mankind believe about him anything 
 he chooses to eay. But there is, after all, no 
 necessary connection between walking on the sea 
 and proceeding from the Eternal that loveth 
 righteousness. Jesus propounds, on the other 
 hand, an evidence of which the whole force lies in 
 the necessary connection between the proving 
 matter and the power that makes for righteous- 
 ness. This is bis evidence for the Christian re- 
 ligion. 
 
 His disciples experienced the evidence, indeed. 
 Peter's answer to the question "Will ye also go 
 away?" — "To whom should we go? thou bast the 
 words of eternal hfe!" proves it. But experiencing 
 a thing is very different from understanding and 
 possessing it. 'The evidence, which the disciples 
 were conscious of understanding and possessing, 
 was the evidence from miracles. And yet, in their 
 report, Jesus is plainly shown to us insisting on a 
 different evidence, an internal one. J The character 
 151 " 
 
LITEKATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 of the reporters giyes to this indication a para- 
 mount importance. That they should indicate 
 this internal evidence once, as the evidence on 
 which Jesus insisted, is more significant, we re- 
 peat, than their indicating, twenty times, the evi- 
 dence from miracles as the evidence naturally con- 
 vincing to mankind and recommended, as they 
 thought, by Jesus. The notion of the one evidence 
 they would have of themselves ; the notion of the 
 other they could only get from a superior mind. 
 This mind must have been full of it to make them 
 feel it at all ; and their exhibition of it, even then, 
 must of necessity be inadequate and broken. 
 
 But is it possible to overrate the value of the 
 ground thus gained for showing the riches of the 
 New Testament to those who, sick of the popular 
 arguments from prophecy, sick of the popular ar- 
 guments from miracles, are for casting the New 
 Testament aside altogether? IjThe book contains 
 all that we know of a wonderful spirit, far above 
 the heads of his reporters, still farther above the 
 head of our popular theology, which has added its 
 own misunderstanding of the reporters to the re- 
 porters* misunderstanding of Jesus.J And it was 
 quite inevitable that anything so superior and so 
 profound should be imperfectly understood by 
 those amongst whom it first appeared, and for a 
 very long time afterwards; and that it should 
 come at last gradually to stand out clearer only 
 by time, — "Time," as the Greek maxim says, "the 
 vrisest of all things, for he is the unfailing dis- 
 coverer." 
 
 Yet, however much is discovered, the object of 
 our scrutiny must still be beyond us, must still 
 transcend our adequate knowledge, if for no other 
 reason, because of the character of the first and 
 only records of him. But in the view now taken 
 152 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 
 
 we hare — even at the point to which we have al- 
 ready come — at least a wonderful figure transcend- 
 ing his time, transcending his disciples, attaching 
 them but transcending them; in very much that 
 he uttered going far above their heads, treating 
 Scripture and prophecy like a master while they 
 treated it like children, resting his doctrine on in- 
 ternal evidence while they rested it on miracles; 
 and yet, by his incomparable lucidity and pene- 
 trativeness, planting his profound veins of 
 thought in their memory along with their own 
 notions and prepossessions, to come out all mixed 
 up together, but still distinguishable one day and 
 separable ;~and lesjving his word thus to bear 
 fruit for the future. 
 
 3. 
 
 Surely to follow and extract these veins of true 
 ore is a wise man's business; not to let them lie 
 neglected and unused, because the beds where they 
 are found are not all of the same quality with 
 them. The beds are invaluable because they con- 
 tain the ore; and, though the search for it in 
 them is undoubtedly a grave and difficult quest, 
 yet it is not a quest of the elaborate and endless 
 kind that it will at first, perhaps, be fancied to 
 be. It is a quest with this for its governing idea : 
 "Jesus was over the heads of his reporters ; what, 
 therefore, in the report of him, is Jesus', and 
 what is the reporters'?" 
 
 Now, this excludes as unessential much of the 
 criticism which is bestowed on the New Testa- 
 ment, and gives a sure point of view for the re- 
 mainder. And what it excludes is those questions 
 as to the exact date, the real authorship, the first 
 publication, the rank of priority, of the Grospels; — 
 questions which have a great attraction for crit- 
 ics, which are in themselves good to be enter- 
 153 
 
tained, which lead to much close and fruitful 
 observation of the texts, and in which very high 
 ingenuity may be shown and very great plausibil- 
 ity reached, but not more ;— they cannot be really 
 settled, the data are insufficient. And for our pur- 
 pose they are not essential. Neither is it essential 
 for our purpose to get at the very primitive text 
 of the New Testament writers, deeply interesting 
 and deeply important as this is. The changes 
 that have befallen the text show, no doubt, the 
 constant tendency of popular Christianity to add 
 to the element of theurgy and thaumaturgy, to 
 increase and develop it. To clear the text of these 
 will show the New Testament writers to have 
 been less preoccupied with this tendency, and is, 
 so far, very instructive. But it will not, by re- 
 establishing the real words of the writers, neces- 
 sarily give the real truth as to Christ's religion; 
 because to the writers themselves this religion 
 was, in a considerable degree certainly, a theurgy 
 and a thaumaturgy, although not in the mechan- 
 ical and extravagant way that it is in our present 
 popular theology. 
 
 For instance : the famous text of the three heav- 
 enly witnesses is an imposture, and an extrava- 
 gant one. It shows us, no doubt, theologians 
 like the Bishop of Grloucester already at work, — 
 men with more metaphysics than literary tact, 
 full of the Aryan genius, of the notion that re- 
 ligion is a metaphysical conception ; anxious to do 
 something for the thesis of "the Godhead of the 
 Eternal Son," or of "the blessed truth that 
 the Grod of the universe is a person," — or, as the 
 Bishop of Gloucester writes it, "Person,"— and so 
 on. But something of the same intention is un- 
 questionably visible,— never, indeed, in Jesus, but 
 in the author of the Fourth Gospel. Much of the 
 ^ 154 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 
 
 conversation with Nicodemus is a proof of it; the 
 46th verse of the 6th chapter is a signal proof of 
 it. One can there almost see the author, after 
 recording Christ's words, "Every one that heareth 
 and learneth of the Father cometh unto me," take 
 alarm at the notion that this looks too down- 
 right and natural, and, sincerely persuaded that 
 he "did something" for the honor of Jesus by 
 making him more abstract, bring in and put into 
 the mouth of Jesus the 46th verse : "Not that any 
 one hath seen the Father, except he that is from 
 Grod, he hath seen the Father." This verse has 
 neither rhyme nor reason where it stands in 
 Christ's discourse; it jars with the words which 
 precede and follow, and is in quite another vein 
 from them. Yet it is the author's own; it is no 
 interpolation. 
 
 Again : Socinians lay much stress on the proba- 
 bility that in the first words of St. Mark's Gros- 
 pel, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, 
 the Son of God," the Son of God is an interpola- 
 tion. And, no doubt, if the words are an inter- 
 polation, this shows that the desire to prove the 
 dogma of Christ's Grodhead was not so painfully 
 ever-present to the writer of the Second Grospel as 
 it became to later theologians. But it shows no 
 more; it does not show that he had the least 
 doubt about Jesus being the Son of Grod. Ten 
 verses later, in an undisputed passage, he calls 
 him so. 
 
 Again, in the last chapter of the same Grospel, 
 all that follows the eighth verse — all the account of 
 Christ's resurrection and ascension — is probably 
 an addition by a later hand. But the resurrection 
 is plainly indicated in the first eight verses; and 
 that the writer of the Second Gospel stops after 
 the eighth verse proves rather that he was writ- 
 155 
 
LilTJiitiATVKt} AJNi) UUtrMA. 
 
 ing briefly than that he did not believe in the res- 
 urrection and ascension as much as, for instance, 
 the writer of the Third Grospel; unless, indeed, 
 there are other signs (for example, in his way of 
 relating such an incident as the Transfiguration) 
 to show that he was suspicious of the preter- 
 natural. But there are none ; and he plainly was 
 not, and could not have been. 
 
 Again : it seems impossible that the very primi- 
 tive original of the First Gospel should have made 
 Jesus say that "the sign of Jonas" consisted in 
 his being three days and three nights in the 
 whale's belly, as the Son of Man was to be a 
 like time in the heart of the earth. It spoils the 
 argument, and in another place the argument is 
 given simply and rightly. Jonas was a sign to 
 the Jews, because the Ninevites repented at his 
 preaching and a greater than Jonas stood now 
 preaching to the Jews. But whether the words 
 are genuine (and there seems no evidence to the 
 contrary) in that particular place or not, to get 
 rid of them brings us really but a very little way, 
 when it is plain that their argument is exactly 
 one which the evangelists would be disposed to 
 use, and to think that Jesus meant to use. For 
 so they make him to have said, for instance: "De- 
 stroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it 
 up I" in prediction of his own death and resurrec- 
 tion. 
 
 L In short, to know accurately the history of our 
 documents is impossible, and even if it were possi- 
 ble, we should yet not know accurately what 
 Jesus said and did ; for his reporters were incapa- 
 ble of rendering it, he was so much above them. 
 This is the important thing to get clearly fixed in 
 our minds. And the more it becomes estabhshed 
 to us, the more we shall see the futility of what 
 156 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECOED. 
 
 is called rationalism, and the rationalistic treat- 
 ment of the New Testament ;— of the endeavor, 
 that is, to reduce all the supernatural in it to real 
 events, much resembling what is related, which 
 have got a little magnified and colored by being 
 seen through the eyes of men having certain pre- 
 possessions, but may easily be brought back to 
 their true proportions and made historical and 
 reasonable. "^A famous specimen of this kind of 
 treatment is Schleiermacher's fancy of the death 
 on the cross having been a swoon, and the resur- 
 rection of Jesus a recovery from this swoon. Vic- 
 torious indeed, whatever may be in other ways 
 hie own shortcomings, is Dr. Strauss's demolition 
 of this error of Schleiermacher's I Like the ration- 
 alistic treatment of Scripture throughout, it 
 makes far more difficulties than it solves, and 
 rests on too narrow a conception of the history of 
 the human mind, and of its diversities of opera- 
 tion and production. It puts ourselves in the 
 original disciples' place, imagines the original dis- 
 ciples to have been men rational in our sense and 
 way, and then explains their record as it might 
 be made explicable if it were ours. And it may 
 safely be said that in this fashion it is not ex- 
 plicable. Imaginations so Httle creative and with 
 so substantial a framework of fact for each of 
 their wonderful stories as this theory assumes, 
 would never have created so much as they did; 
 at least, they could not have done so and retained 
 their manifest simplicity and good faith. They 
 must have fallen, we in like case should fall, into 
 arrangement and artifice. 
 
 But the original disciples were not men rational 
 
 in our sense and way. The real wonderfulness of 
 
 Jesus, and their belief in him, being given, they 
 
 needed no such full and parallel body of fact for 
 
 157 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 each miracle as we suppose. Some hint and help 
 of fact, undoubtedly, there always was, and we 
 naturally seek to explore it. Sometimes our 
 guesses may be right, sometimes wrong, but we 
 can never be sure, the range of possibility is so 
 wide; and we may easily make them too elabo- 
 rate. Shakespeare's explanation is far the sound- 
 est:— 
 
 '* No natural exbalatlon In the sky. 
 No scape of nature, no distemper'd day* 
 No common wind, no customed event. 
 But they ■will pluck away his natural cause* 
 And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs. 
 Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven." 
 
 And it must be remembered, moreover, that of 
 none of these recorders have we, probably, the 
 very original record. The record, when we first 
 get it, has passed through at least half a century, 
 or more, of oral tradition, and through more than 
 one written account. Miraculous incidents swell 
 and grow apace ; they are just the elements of a 
 tradition that swell and grow most. These inci- 
 dents, therefore, in the history of Jesus, the pre- 
 ternatural things he did, the preternatural things 
 that befell him, are just the parts of the record 
 which are least solid. Beyond the historic out- 
 lines of the life of Jesus, — his Gralilean origin, his 
 preaching in Galilee, his preaching in Jerusalem, 
 his crucifixion, — much the firmest element in the 
 record is his words. Happily it is of these that he 
 himself said: "The words that I speak unto you, 
 they are spirit and they are life." But in reading 
 them, we have still to bear in mind our governing 
 idea, that they are words of one "inadequately 
 comprehended by his hearers," men though these be 
 of pureness of heart, discernment to know and 
 love the good, perfect uprightness of intention, 
 faithful simplicity. 
 
 158 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 
 
 What they will have reported beet, probably, is 
 discourse where there was the framework of a 
 story and its applicatioB to guide them, — dis- 
 course such as the parables. Instructive and 
 beautiful as the parables are, however, they have 
 not the importance of the direct teaching of Jesus. 
 But in his direct teaching we are on the surest 
 ground in single sentences, which have their in- 
 eflfaceabie and unforgettable stamp: * 'My yoke is 
 kindly and my burden light;"— "Many are called, 
 few chosen;" — "They that are whole need not a 
 physician, but they that are sick;'^ — "No man hav- 
 ing put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is 
 fit for the kingdom of God." The longer trains of 
 discourse, and many sayings in immediate con- 
 nection with miracles, present much more diffi- 
 culty. Probably there are very few sayings at- 
 tributed to Jesus which do not contain what he 
 on some occasion actually said, or much of what 
 he actually said. But the connection, the junc- 
 ture, is plainly often missed ; things are put out of 
 their true place and order. Failure of memory 
 would occasionally cause this with any reporters ; 
 failure of comprehension would with the reporters 
 of Jesus frequently cause it. The surrounding tra- 
 dition insensibly biases them, their love of mira- 
 cles biases them, their eschatology biases them. 
 All these three exercise an attraction on words of 
 Jesus, and draw them into occasions, placings, 
 and turns which are not exactly theirs. The one 
 safe guide to the extrication and right reception 
 of what comes from Jesus is the internal evidence. 
 And wherever we find what enforces this evidence 
 or builds upon it, there we may be especially sure 
 that we are on the trace of Jesus ; because turn 
 or bias in this direction the disciples were more 
 likely to omit from his discourse than to import 
 15^ 
 
into it, they were themselves bo wholly preoccu- 
 pied with the evidence from miracles. 
 
 This is what gives such eminency and value to 
 the Fourth Grospel. The confident certainty with 
 which Professor Ewald settles the authorship of 
 this gospel, and assigns it to St. John, is an exhi- 
 bition of that learned man's weakness. To settle 
 the authorship is impossible, the data are insuf- 
 ficient; but from what data we have, to believe 
 that the Grospel is St. John's is extremely difficult. 
 But, on the other hand, the stress which Professor 
 Ewald, following Luther, lays on this gospel, the 
 value he attributes to it, is an exhibition of his 
 power, — of his deep, surefeeUng, and true insight, 
 in the essential matters of religious history ; and 
 of his superiority, here, to the best of his rivals, 
 Baur, Dr. Strauss, M. Renan. *'The true evan- 
 gelical bread," says Dr. Strauss, ^'Christians have 
 always gone to the three first gospels fori" But 
 what then means this sentence of Luther, who 
 stands as such a good, though favorable, repre- 
 sentative of ordinary Christianity: "John's gospel 
 is the one proper chief-gospel, and far to be pre- 
 ferred to the three others"? Again, M. Renan, 
 often so ingenious as well as eloquent, says that 
 the narrative and incidents in the Fourth Gospel 
 are probably in the main historical, the discourses 
 invented I Reverse the proposition, and it would 
 be more plausible I The narrative, so meagre, and 
 skipping so unaccountably backwards and for- 
 wards between G-alilee and Jerusalem, might well 
 be thought, not indeed invented, but a matter of 
 infinitely little care and attention to the writer of 
 the gospel, a mere slight framework in which to 
 set the doctrine and discourses of Jesus. The doc- 
 f 160 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 
 
 trine and discourses of Jesus, on the other hand, 
 cannot in the main be the writer's, because in the 
 main they are clearly out of his reach. 
 
 The Fourth Grospel delights the heart of M. 
 Burnouf. For its writer shows, M. Bumouf 
 thinks, signal traces of the Aryan genius, has 
 much to favor the notion that religion is a meta- 
 physical conception, and was perhaps even capa- 
 ble, with time, of reaching the grand truth that 
 God is a cosmic unity. And undoubtedly the 
 writer of the Fourth Gospel seems to have come 
 in contact, in Asia or Egypt, with Aryan meta- 
 physics whether from India or Greece; and to 
 have had this advantage, whatever it was, in 
 writing his gospel. But who, that has eyes to 
 read, cannot see the difference between the places 
 in his gospel, such as the introduction, where the 
 writer speaks in his own person, and the places 
 where Jesus himself speaks? \The moment Jesus 
 speaks, the metaphysical apparatus falls away, 
 the simple intuition takes its place ; and wherever 
 in the discourse of Jesus the metaphysical appara- 
 tus is intruded, it jars with the context, breaks 
 the unity of the discourse, impairs the thought, 
 and comes evidently from the writer, not Jesus-l 
 It may seem strange and incredible to M. Bur- 
 nouf that metaphysics should not always confer 
 the superiority upon their possessor; but such is 
 the case. 
 
 Who, again, cannot understand that the philo- 
 sophical acquirements of the author of the Fourth 
 Gospel, like the rabbinical training and intellectual 
 activity of Paul, though they may have some- 
 times led each of them astray, must yet have 
 given each of them a range of thought, and an 
 enlarged mental horizon, enabling them to per- 
 ceive and follow ideas of Jesus which escaped the 
 11 161 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 ken of the more scantily endowed authors of the 
 synoptical gospels? Plato sophisticates some- 
 what the genuine Socrates ; but it is very doubt- 
 ful whether the culture and mental energy of 
 Plato did not give him a more adequate vision 
 of the true Socrates than Xenophon had. It 
 proves nothing for the superiority of the first 
 three gospels that their authors are without the 
 logic of Paul and the metaphysics of John (by this 
 commonly received name let us for shortness' sake 
 call the author of the Fourth Gospel), and that 
 Jesus also was without them. Jesus was with- 
 out them because he was above them ; the authors 
 of the synoptical gospels because they were (we 
 say it without any disrespect) below them. 
 Therefore, the author of the Fourth Gospel, by the 
 very characters which make him inferior to Jesus, 
 was made superior to the three synoptics, and 
 better able than they to seize and reproduce the 
 higher teaching of Jesus. 
 
 Does it follow, then, that his picture of Christ's 
 teaching can have been his own invention? By no 
 means; since it is as plainly over his head (at 
 that time of day it could not have been other- 
 wise) as it is over theirs. He deals in miracles as 
 confidingly as they do, while unconsciously in- 
 dicating, far more than they do, that the evidence 
 of miracles is superseded. In those two great 
 chapters, the fifth and sixth, where Jesus deals 
 with the topics of life, death, and judgment, and 
 with his thesis, "He that eateth me shall live by 
 mel" invaluable and full of light as is what is 
 given, the eschatology and the materializing con- 
 ceptions of the writer do yet evidently intervene, 
 as they did with all the disciples, as they did with 
 the Jews in general, to hinder a perfectly faithful 
 mirroring of the thought of Jesus. We have al- 
 162 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECOBD. 
 
 ready remarked how his metaphysical acquire- 
 ments intervene in like manner. In the discourse 
 with Nicodemus in the third chapter, from the 
 thirteenth verse to the end, phrases and expres- 
 sions of Jesus of the highest worth are scattered ; 
 but they are manifestly set in a short theological 
 lecture interposed by the writer himself, a lecture 
 which is, as a whole, without vital connection 
 with the genuine discourse of Jesus, and needing 
 only to be carefully studied side by side with this 
 for its disparateness to become apparent. 
 
 But a failure of right understanding, which will 
 be visible to every one, occurs with this writer in 
 his seventh chapter. Jesus, with a reference to 
 words of the prophet Zechariah, says: "He that 
 believeth on me, as the Scripture saith, out of his 
 belly shall flow rivers of living water." The 
 thought is plain ; it belongs to the same order as 
 that of the saying, *'If any thirst, let him come 
 unto me and drink"; or of the words to the 
 woman of Samaria, "If thou hadst known the 
 gift of God, and who it is that talketh with thee, 
 thou wouldst have asked of him and he would 
 have given thee living water." It means that a 
 man, receiving Jesus, finds a source of refresh- 
 ment for himself and becomes a source of refresh- 
 ment for others; and it means this generally, 
 without any limitation to a special time. But the 
 reporter explains: "Now this he said concerning 
 the Spirit {Pneuma) which they who believed on 
 him should receive ; for Pneuma, was not yet, be- 
 cause Jesus was not yet glorified." A clearer in- 
 stance of a narrow and mechanical interpretation 
 of a great and free thought can hardly be im- 
 agined ; and the words of Jesus himself enable us 
 here to control the inadequacy of the interpreta- 
 tion, and to make it palpable. 
 163 
 
LITERATUKE AND DOGMA. 
 
 So that the superior point of view in the Fourth 
 Gospel, the more spiri.tual treatment of things, the 
 insistence on internal evidence, not external, can- 
 not, we say, be the writers, for they are above 
 him; and while his gifts and acquirements are 
 such as to make him report them, they are not 
 such as to enable him to originate them. The 
 great evidential line of this gospel: "You are al- 
 ways talking about God, and about your founder 
 Abraham, the father of God's faithful people; here 
 is a man who says nothing of his own head, who 
 tells you the truth, as he has learnt it of God ; if 
 you were really of God you would hear the words 
 of God I if you were really Abraham's children you 
 would follow the truth like Abraham I" — this sim- 
 ple but profound line, sending Israel back to 
 amend its conventional, barren notions of God, of 
 righteousness, and of the founders of its religion, 
 leading it to explore them afresh, to sound them 
 deeper, to gather from them a new revelation and 
 a new life, was, we say, at once too simple and 
 too profound for the author of the Fourth Gospel 
 to have invented. Our endless gratitude is due to 
 him, however, for having caught and preserved so 
 much of it. And our business is to keep hold of 
 the clew he has thus given us, and to use it as 
 well as possible. 
 
 5. 
 
 Truly, then, some one will exclaim, we may say 
 with the "Imitation" : "Magna ars est scire con- 
 versari cum Jesu ! ' ' And so it is. To extract from 
 his reporters the true Jesus entire is even impossi- 
 ble ; to extract him in considerable part is one of 
 the greatest conceivable tasks of criticism. And 
 it is vain to use that favorite argument of popu- 
 lar theology that man could never have been left 
 164 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 
 
 by Providence in difficulty and obscurity about a 
 matter of so much importance to him. For the 
 cardinal rule of our present inquiry is that rule of 
 Newton's: Hypotheses non fingo; and this argu- 
 ment of popular theology rests on its eternal 
 hypothesis of a magnified and non-natural man at 
 the head of mankind's and the world's affairs. 
 And a further answer is, that, as to the argu- 
 ment itself, even if we allowed the hypothesis, yet 
 the course of things, so far as we can see, is not 
 so; they do not proceed in this fashion. Because 
 a man has frequently to make sea-passages, he is 
 not gifted with an immunity from sea-sickness; 
 because a thing is of the highest interest and im- 
 portance to know, it is not, therefore, easy to 
 know ; on the contrary, in general, in proportion 
 to its magnitude it is difficult and requires time. 
 
 But the right commentary on the sentence of the 
 "Imitation" is given by the "Imitation" itself in 
 the sentence following: "Fsto bumilis et paci&cus, 
 et erit tecum JesusP^ What men could take at the 
 hands of Jesus, what they could use, what could 
 save them, he made as clear as light, and Chris- 
 tians have never been able, even if they would, to 
 miss seeing it. No, never; but still they have 
 superadded to it a vast Aberglaube, an after or 
 extra-belief of their own; and the Aberglaube has 
 pushed on one side, for very many, the saving 
 doctrine of Jesus, has hindered attention from be- 
 ing riveted on this and on its line of growth and 
 working, has nearly effaced it, has developed all 
 sorts of faults contrary to it. This Aberglaube 
 has sprung out of a false criticism of the literary 
 records in which the doctrine is conveyed ; what 
 is called "orthodox divinity" is, in fact, an im- 
 mense literary misapprehension. Having caused 
 the saving doctrines enshrined in these records to 
 165 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 be neglected, and credited the records with exist- 
 ing for the sake of its own Aberglaube, this blun- 
 der now threatens to cause the records themselves 
 to be neglected by all those (and their numbers 
 are fast increasing) whom its own Aberglaube fills 
 with impatience and aversion. Therefore it is 
 needful to show the line of growth of this Aber- 
 glaubej and its delusiveness; to show anew, and 
 with more detail than we have admitted hitherto, 
 the line of growth of Christ's doctrine, and the 
 far-reaching sanctions, the inexhaustible attrac- 
 tiveness, the grace and truth, with which he in- 
 vested it. But the doctrine itself is essentially 
 simple ; and what is difficult — the literary criticism 
 of the documents containing the doctrine — is not 
 the doctrine. 
 
 This literary criticism, however, is extremely 
 difficult. It calls into play the highest requisites 
 for the study of letters ;— great and wide acquaint- 
 ance with the history of the human mind, knowl- 
 edge of the manner in which men have thought, 
 their way of using words and what they mean by 
 them, delicacy of perception and quick tact, and, 
 besides all these, a favorable moment and the 
 "Zei-^Geist." And yet every one among us criti- 
 cises the Bible, and thinks it is of the essence of 
 the Bible that it can be thus criticised with suc- 
 cess I And the Four Gospels, the part of the Bible 
 to which this sort of criticism is most applied and 
 most confidently, are just the part which for lit- 
 erary criticism is infinitely the hardest, however 
 simple they may look, and however simple the 
 saving doctrine they contain really is. For Proph- 
 ets and Epistlers speak for themselves ; but in the 
 Four Gospels reporters are speaking for Jesus, 
 who is far above them. 
 
 Now, we all know what the literary criticism of 
 166 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 
 
 the mass of mankind is. To be worth anything, 
 literary and scientific criticism require, both of 
 them, the finest heads, and the most sure tact; 
 and they require, besides, that the world and the 
 world's experience shall have come some consider- 
 able way. Now, since this last condition has 
 been fulfilled, the finest heads for letters and sci- 
 ence, the surest tact for these, have turned them- 
 selves in general to other regions of work than 
 criticism of the Bible, this region being occupied 
 already in such force of numbers and hands, if not 
 of heads, and there being so many annoyances 
 and even dangers in freely approaching it. As our 
 Reformers were to Shakespeare and Bacon in tact 
 for letters and science, or as Luther, even, was to 
 Groethe in this respect, such almost has on the 
 whole been, since the Renascence, the general pro- 
 portion in rate of power for criticism between 
 those who have given themselves to secular letters 
 and science, and those who have given themselves 
 to interpreting the Bible, and who, in conjunction 
 with the popular interpretation of it both tradi- 
 tional and contemporary, have made what is 
 called "orthodox theology." It is as if some sim- 
 ple and saving doctrines, essential for men to 
 know, were enshrined in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" 
 or Newton's "Principia" (though the Gospels are 
 really a far more complex and difficult object of 
 criticism than either) ; and a host of second-rate 
 critics, and official critics, and what is called "the 
 popular mind" as well, threw themselves upon 
 "Hamlet" and the "Principia" with the notion 
 that they could and should extract from these 
 documents, and impose on us for our belief, not 
 only the saving doctrines enshrined there, but also 
 the right literary and scientific criticism of the en- 
 tire documents. A pretty mess they would make 
 167 
 
of it I and just this sort of mess is our so-called 
 orthodox theology. And its professors are never- 
 theless bold, overweening, and even abusive, in 
 maintaining their criticism against all question- 
 ers; although really, if one thinks seriously of it, 
 it was a kind of impertinence in such professors to 
 attempt any such criticism at all. 
 
 Happily, the faith which saves is attached to 
 the saving doctrines in the Bible, which are very 
 simple ; not to its literary and scientific criticism, 
 which is very hard. And no man is to be called 
 "infidel" for his bad literary and scientific criti- 
 cism of the Bible ; but if he were, how dreadful 
 would the state of our orthodox theologians be I 
 They themselves freely fling about this word in- 
 fidel at all those who reject their literary and 
 scientific criticism, which we see to be quite false. 
 It would be but just to mete to them with their 
 own measure, and to condemn them by their own 
 rule; and, when they air their unsound criticism 
 in public, to say indignantly: "The Bishop of So- 
 and-so, the Dean of So-and-so, and other infidel 
 lecturers of the present day I" or: "That rampant 
 infidel, the Archdeacon of So-and-so, in his recent 
 letter on the Athanasian Creed I" or: " 'The Bock,' 
 'The Church Times,' and the rest of the infidel 
 press I" or: "The torrent of infidelity which pours 
 every Sunday from our pulpitsl" Just itwould be, 
 and by no means inurbane ; but hardly, perhaps, 
 Christian. Therefore we will not permit ourselves 
 to say it; but it is only kind to point out, in 
 passing, to these loud and rash people to what 
 they expose themselves, at the hands of adver- 
 saries less scrupulous than we are. 
 
 168 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 The Testimony of Jesus to BLcmself. 
 
 We hare said— and it cannot be repeated too 
 often— that what is called orthodox theology is, 
 in fact, an immense misunderstanding of the Bible, 
 due to the junction of a talent for abstruse reas- 
 oning with much literary inexperience. It cannot 
 be repeated too often; because our dogmatic 
 friends seem to imagine that the truth of their 
 dogma is conceded on all hands, and that the 
 only objection is to the harsh or over-rigid way 
 in which it is put. Dr. Pusey and the *' Church 
 Review" assume that what the Athanasian Creed, 
 for instance, does, is "to take up the admitted 
 facts of Christian faith, and arrange them sentence 
 after sentence"; and then they ask us why we 
 should be so squeamish about "letting the Prayer 
 Book contain once, at least, the statement that 
 Christian faith is necessary to salvation." Others 
 talk of the contest going on between "definite re- 
 ligion," "religion with the sinew and bone of doc- 
 trine," and "indefinite religion," "nerveless relig- 
 ion," "vague, negative, and cloudy religion" ; and 
 Lord Salisbury, as we have seen, declares that 
 "religion is no more to be severed from dogma 
 than light from the sun," 
 
 To be sure, to make this maxim of Lord Salis- 
 bury's go on all fours, it ought to be: "Religion 
 is no more to be severed from the truth of religion 
 than light from the sun." And dogma, and the 
 truth of religion are not exactly synonymes; 
 dogma means, not necessarily a true doctrine, but 
 169 
 
L*lTii;±tATUKli; AJND UOtrMA. 
 
 merely a doctrine or system of doctrine deter- 
 mined, decreed, and received. Lord Salisbury, 
 however, takes it as in this case another word 
 for truth, and so do the other speakers. And they 
 accordingly represent their opponents as either 
 secret enemies of the truth of religion, men who 
 are, as the "Eock" says in a Biblical figure ad- 
 dressed to the Dean of Westminster, "the degener- 
 ate plant of a strange vine bringing forth the 
 grapes of Sodom and the clusters of Gomorrah" ; 
 or, at best, as amiable, soft-headed people, afraid 
 of clear thought and plain speech, and requiring 
 with their light a very unnecessary dose of sweet- 
 ness. 
 
 We, however, try to keep our love of sweetness 
 within reasonable bounds; and the *'Rock" will 
 hardly call us a Gromorrah vine, when we agree to 
 say heartily after it, as we do, that "Christian 
 faith is necessary to salvation." But what is 
 Christian faith? Is it the "admitted facts taken 
 up and arranged, sentence after sentence, in the 
 Athanasian Creed"? Are these facts admitted?^ 
 the whole question is here. So far from these 
 facts being admitted, or from the enumeration of 
 them being the enumeration of the facts of the 
 Christian faith, we say that they are deductions 
 from the Bible of matters which are not the real 
 matters of Christian faith at all; and that, more- 
 over, they are false deductions from the Bible, blun- 
 ders arising from a want of skill and experience in 
 dealing with a very complex literary problem. 
 
 Therefore we can honestly tell our dogmatic 
 friends that we agree with them in disliking an 
 indefinite religion, in preferring a definite one. 
 Our quarrel with them is, not that they define 
 religion, but that they define it so abominably. 
 And to the eloquent and impetuous Chancellor of 
 170 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 Oxford, who cannot away with a hazy amiability 
 in religious matters, and brandishes before us his 
 dogma, not vague, he says, but precise: — "Precise 
 enough," we answer, "precisely wrong I" And 
 haying thus, we hope, put ourselves right with 
 our adversaries as to the real question between 
 us and them, we will proceed with our endeavor 
 to free the Bible,— by showing that it is not meta- 
 physics but literature, by following it continu- 
 ously and by interpreting it naturally, — to free the 
 Bible from the serious dangers with which their 
 advocacy threatens it. For when the Bishops of 
 Winchester and Grloucester talk of "doing some- 
 thing for the Godhead of the Eternal Son," they 
 are doing nothing, we say, for the Bible, they are 
 endangering it. For their notions about the God- 
 head of the Eternal Son, and what it is, cannot 
 possibly stand ; and yet these notions they have 
 drawn, they tell us, from the Bible, they impute 
 them to the Bible. But they have drawn them 
 wrongly, and the Bible is to be made answerable 
 for no such doctrine. And we have now come to 
 that point where we may see, clearer than we 
 were in a position to see before, what is rightly 
 to be drawn from the Bible on this matter, and 
 what the doctrine of Jesus himself about his own 
 Godhead really is. 
 
 Following the Bible continuously and interpret- 
 ing it naturally, we saw the people of "the Eter- 
 nal that loveth righteousness," and that "blesseth 
 the man that putteth his trust in Him," we saw 
 Israel, confounded and perplexed by the misfor- 
 tunes of God's people and the success of the un- 
 righteous world, construct a vast Aberglavbe, an 
 after or extra-belief, according to which there 
 171 
 
should come about, in no distant future, a grand 
 and wonderful change. God should send his Mes- 
 siah, judge the -world, punish the wicked, and re- 
 store the kingdom to Israel. For Israel's original 
 revelation and intuition had been: "The Eternal 
 loveth righteousness; to him that ordereth his 
 conversation right shall be shown the salvation 
 " of Grod." And the natural corollary from this was, 
 "As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no 
 more ; but the righteous is an everlasting founda- 
 tion." 
 
 Both the revelation and the corollary from it 
 were true; but the virtue of both, for Israel, 
 turned upon knowing what righteousness and 
 righteous meant. And this indispensable intuition 
 Israel is always represented as having once had, 
 and with time in great measure lost. "Stand ye 
 in the ways and see," says Jeremiah, "and ask 
 for the old paths, where is the good way, and 
 walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your 
 souls." The prophets may be seen trying to re- 
 awaken in Israel this intuition, by inculcating in- 
 wardness, humbleness, sincerity. But the mass of 
 people naturally inclined to place righteousness 
 rather in something mechanically to be given or 
 done, — in being endowed with the character of 
 God's chosen people, or in punctually observing a 
 law full of minute observances. And the promises 
 to righteousness they in like manner construed as 
 promises of things material: a mighty Jewish 
 kingdom, God's people reigning, the heathen lick- 
 ing the dust. 
 
 'i_This material conception of the promises to 
 righteousness fell in with the mechanical concep- 
 tion of righteousness itself, and each heightened 
 the hurtfulness of the other .17 Between them 
 both, a type of soul more and more hard, imper- 
 172 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 vious, and impracticable, was formed in the Jew- 
 ish people ; and the intuition, in which their great- 
 ness began, died out more and more. There still 
 remained of it so much as this : that of all the 
 nations of the world they were the only one that 
 felt the all-importance of righteousness, and the 
 eternity of the promises made to it. But what 
 righteousness really was they knew not; and 
 their situation, when Christ came, is admirably 
 summed up in these two verses of prophecy, which 
 every one who wishes for a clear sense of the 
 Jews' relations with Christ would do well to 
 write as a reminder on the blank page between 
 the Old Testament and the New: — 
 
 "Forasmuch as this people draw near me with 
 their mouth, and with their lips do honor me, but 
 have removed their heart far from me, and their 
 fear towards me is taught by the precept of men ; 
 
 "Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a mar- 
 vellous work among this people, even a marvel- 
 lous work and a wonder; for the wisdom of their 
 wise men shall perish, and the understanding of 
 their prudent men shall be hid." 
 
 Meanwhile, the Jews were full of their Abei- 
 glaube, their added or extra-belief in a Messianic 
 advent, a great judgment, a world-wide reign of 
 the saints ; and it is well to have distinctly before 
 us the main texts which they had gathered from 
 the Old Testament in support of this belief, and 
 which were in everybody's mind and mouth. 
 They are all given us by the New Testament. 
 Mosee had said: "The Eternal thy God will raise 
 up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of 
 thy brethren, like unto me; unto him shall ye 
 hearken." In the Psalms it was written: "The 
 Eternal hath sworn a faithful oath unto David : 
 Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy seat; 
 173 
 
thy seed will I stablish forever, and set up thy 
 throne from one generation to another." Isaiah 
 had said: "There shall come forth a Bod out of 
 the stem of Jesse and a Branch shall grow out of 
 his roots ; and the Spirit of the Eternal shall rest 
 upon him, and he shall smite the earth with the 
 breath of his mouth, and with the breath of his 
 lips shall he slay the wicked." Finally, Malachi, 
 the last prophet, had announced from Grod : "Be- 
 hold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the 
 coming of the great and dreadful day of the 
 Eternal." 
 
 These may stand, perhaps, as four fundamental 
 texts forming the ground for popular Jewish 
 AbergJaube as it developed itself; and it will be 
 seen of what large and loose construction they 
 admit. But the ground-plan thus given was filled 
 out from later and inferior scriptures, full of the 
 spirit of the time, grandiose, but turbid and 
 phantasmagoric, such as the Book of Enoch and 
 the Book of Daniel. The Book of Daniel is in our 
 Bibles ; we can all verify there the elements which 
 constituted, when Christ came, the popular re- 
 ligious hope and belief of the Jews. It may be 
 hoped that we ourselves, most of us, read other 
 parts of the Bible far more than the Book of 
 Daniel ; but we know how, in general, those who 
 use the Bible most unintelligently have a peculiar 
 fondness for the apocalyptic and phantasmagoric 
 parts of it. The Book of Daniel gave form and 
 body to the Prophet of Moses, the seed of David 
 of the Psalms, the great and terrible day of Mala- 
 chi ; it enabled the popular imagination to see and 
 figure them. "A time of trouble such as never 
 was since there was a nation to that time I The 
 Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white 
 as snow and the hair of his head like the pure 
 174 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 wool; his throne was like the fiery flame; the 
 judgment was set and the books were opened. 
 And behold, one like the Son of Man came with 
 the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of 
 days, and there was given him dominion and 
 glory, that all people, nations, and languages 
 should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting 
 dominion which shall not pass away. And judg- 
 ment was given to the saints of the Most High, 
 and the time came that the saints possessed the 
 kingdom. At that time the people of God shall be 
 delivered, every one that shall be found written in 
 the book ; and many of them that sleep in dust 
 shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to 
 shame and everlasting contempt.'' 
 
 Other figures which laid hold on men's memories 
 the Book of Enoch supplied. It told how, in the 
 great visitation: "They shall rise up to destroy 
 one another, neither shall a man acknowledge his 
 friend and his brother, nor the son his father and 
 his mother" ; how: "Xe shall enter into the holes 
 of the earth and into the clefts of the rocks" ; and 
 how, finally, the proud rulers of the world "shall 
 see the Son of Man sitting on the throne of his 
 glory." The Book of Enoch described this Son of 
 Man, also, as "The Son of Man, living with the 
 Lord of Spirits," "The Elect One, whom the Lord 
 of Spirits hath gifted and glorified." Both books 
 gave him the name of "Son of Grod" and of "Mes- 
 siah." 
 
 It was of all this that the heart of the Jews 
 was full when Christ came; it was on this that 
 their thoughts fed and their hopes brooded. The 
 old words, Grod, the Eternal, the Father, the Re- 
 deemer, were perpetually in their mouths ; but in 
 this connection. The goal of their lives was still, 
 as of old, "the salvation of Grod"; but this was 
 175 
 
jLiTiiiJiATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 what they understood the salvation of God to be. 
 They had lost the intuition, and they had thrown 
 themselves, heart and soul, upon an extra-belief, 
 or Aberglaube, 
 
 Now, if we describe the work of Christ by a 
 short expression which may give the clearest view 
 of it, w^ shall describe it thus : that he came to 
 restore the intuition. He came, it is true, to save, 
 and to give eternal life; but the way in which he 
 did this was by restoring the intuitionij 
 
 This we have already touched upon in our third 
 chapter, for we there passed in brief review the 
 tea;Ching of Jesus. But there the objection met us, 
 that what attested Christ was miracles, and the 
 preternatural fulfilment in him of certain minute 
 predictions made about him long before ; and that 
 such is the teaching of Christ himself and of the 
 Bible. We had to pause and deal with this objec- 
 tion; and now, as it disperses, we come in full 
 view of our old point again, — that what did at- 
 test Christ was his restoration of the intuition* 
 He found Israel all astray, with an endless talk 
 about God, the law, righteousness, the kingdom, 
 everlasting life, — and no real hold upon any one of 
 them. Israel's old, sure proof of being in the 
 right way— the sanction of joy and peace— was 
 plainly wanting ; and this was a test which any- 
 body could at once apply. "O Eternal, blessed is 
 the man that putteth his trust in thee," was a 
 corner-stone of Israel's religion. Now, the Jewish 
 people, however they might talk about putting 
 their trust in the Eternal, were evidently, as they 
 stood there before Jeeus, not blessed at all; and 
 they knew it themselves as well as he did. "Great 
 peace have they who love thy law," was another 
 corner-stone. But the Jewish people had at that 
 176 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 time in its soul as little peace as it had joy and 
 blessedness; it was seething with inward unrest, 
 irritation, and trouble. Yet the way of the Eter- 
 nal was most indubitably a way of peace and 
 joy; so, if Israel felt no peace and no joy, it could 
 not be walking in the way of the Eternal. Here 
 we have the firm unchanging ground on which the 
 operations of Jesus both began, and always pro- 
 ceeded. 
 
 And it is to be observed that Jesus by no 
 means gave a new, more precise, scientific defini- 
 tion of Grod, but took up this term just as Israel 
 used it, to stand for the Eternal that loveth 
 righteousness^ If therefore this term was, in 
 Israel's use of it, not a term of science, but, as 
 we say, a term of common speech, of poetry and 
 eloquence, thrown out at a vast object of con- 
 sciousness not fully covered by it, so it was in 
 Christ's use of it also. And if the substratum of 
 scientific affirmation in the term was, with Israel, 
 not the affirmation of "a great Personal First 
 Cause, the moral and intelligent Governor of the 
 universe," but the affirmation of "an enduring 
 Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteous- 
 ness," so it remained with Christ likewise. He 
 set going a great process of searching and sifting, 
 but this process had for its direct object the idea 
 of righteousness, and only touched the idea of God 
 through this, and not independently of this and 
 immediately. If the idea of righteousness was 
 changed, this implied, undoubtedly, a correspond- 
 ing change in the idea of the Power that makes 
 for righteousness ; but in this manner only, and to 
 this extent, does the teaching of Jesus re-define the 
 idea of God. 
 
 But search and sift and renew the idea of right- 
 eousness Jesus did. And though the work of 
 13 177 
 
Jesus, like the name of God, calls up in the be- 
 liever a multitude of emotions and associations 
 far more than any brief definition can cover, yet, 
 remembering Jeremy Taylor's advice to avoid ex- 
 hortations to get Christ, to be in Christ, and to 
 seek some more distinct and practical way of 
 speaking of him, we shall not do ill, perhaps, if 
 we summarize to our own minds his work by 
 saying, that he restored the intuition of G-od 
 through transforming the idea of righteousness; 
 and that, to do this, he brought a method, 
 and he brought a secret. And of those two great 
 words which fill such a place in his gospel, re- 
 pentance and peace, — as we see that his Apostles, 
 when they preached his gospel, preached "Repent- 
 ance unto life" and "Peace through Jesus Christ," 
 — of these two great words, one, repentance, at- 
 taches itself, we shall find, to his method, and the 
 other, peace, to his secret. 
 
 There was no question between Jesus and the 
 Jews as to the object to aim at. "If thou wouldst 
 enter into life, keep the commandments," said 
 Jesus. And Israel, too, on his part, said: "He 
 that keepeth the commandments keepeth his own 
 soul." But what commandments? The com- 
 mandments of Grod; about this, too, there was 
 no question. But : "Leaving the commandment of 
 G-od, ye hold the tradition of men; ye make the 
 commandment of God of none efffect by your tra- 
 dition, ' ' said Jesus. Therefore the command- 
 ments which Israel followed were not the com- 
 mandments of God, by which a man keeps his 
 own soul, enters into life. And the practical proof 
 of this was, that Israel stood before the eyes of 
 the world manifestly neither joyful, nor blessed, 
 nor at peace ; yet these characters of joy, bUss, 
 and peace, the following of the real command- 
 178 
 
THE TESTIMONY OP JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 ments was confessed to give. So a rule, or meth- 
 od, was wanted, by which to determine what 
 the real commandments were. 
 
 [And Jesus gave one: "The things that come 
 from within a man's hearty they it is that defile 
 him I" We have seen what an immense matter 
 conduct is ; — that it is three fourths of life. We 
 have seen how plain and simple a matter it is, so 
 far as knowledge is concerned. We have seen how, 
 moreover, philosophers are for referring all con- 
 duct to one or other of man's two elementary in- 
 stincts, — the instinct of self-preservation and the 
 reproductive instinct; it is the suggestions of one 
 or other of these instincts, they say, which call 
 forth all cases in which there is scope for exercis- 
 ing morality, or conduct. And this does, we saw, 
 cover the facts well enough. For we can run up 
 nearly all faults of conduct into two classes, — 
 faults of temper and faults of sensuality ; to be re- 
 ferred, all of them, to one or other of these two 
 instincts.^ 
 
 J Now Jesus not only says that things coming 
 from within a man's heart defile him, he adds ex- 
 pressly what these things that, coming from 
 within a man, defile him, are. And what he enu- 
 merates are the following; "Evil thoughts, forni- 
 cations, stealings, murders, adulteries, greed, 
 vices, fraud, dissoluteness, envy, evil-speaking, 
 pride, folly." These fall into two groups: one, of 
 faults of self-assertion, graspingness, and violence, 
 all of which we may call faults of temper; and the 
 other, of faults of sensuality, j And the two 
 groups, between them, do for practical purposes 
 cover all the range of faults proceeding from 
 these two sources, and therefore all the range of 
 conduct. So the motions or impulses to faults of 
 conduct were what Jesus said the real command- 
 179 
 
LITERATUEE AND DOGMA. 
 
 ments are concerned with. And it was plain what 
 such faults are; but, to make assurance more 
 sure, he, as we have seen, Baid what they are. 
 
 No outward observances were conduct, were 
 that keeping of the commandments which was the 
 keeping of a man's own soul and made him enter 
 into life. To have the thoughts in order as to 
 certain matters was conduct. This was the 
 "method" of Jesus: setting up a great unceasing 
 inward movement of attention and verification in 
 matters which are three fourths of human life, 
 where to see true and to verify is not difficult, the 
 difficult thing is to care and to attend. And the 
 inducement to attend was, because joy and peeice, 
 missed on every other line, were to be reached on 
 this. 
 
 "Keep judgment and do righteousness I" had 
 not been guidance enough. The Jews found them- 
 selves taking "meats and drinks and divers wash- 
 ings" for judgment; taking for righteousness 
 "gifts and sacrifices which cannot perfect the wor- 
 shipper as to his consciences^ (here is the word of 
 Jesus I) ; tithing mint, anise, and cummin ; saying 
 to their parents, It is Corban ! evil-disposed, and 
 not at all blessed. But : "As to all wherein what 
 men commonly call conduct is exercised, — eating, 
 drinking, ease, pleasure, money, the intercourse of 
 the sexes, the giving full swing to one's tempers 
 and instincts, — as to all this, watch attentively 
 what passes within you, that you may obey the 
 voice of conscience I so you will keep God's com- 
 mandment and be blessed" ;— this is the new and 
 much more exact guidance. ';'The things that 
 come from within a man's hearty they defile himl 
 cleanse the inside of the cup I beware of the leaven 
 of the Pharisees, which is insincerity! judge not 
 after the appearance, but judge righteous judg- 
 180 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 ment I"— thiB, we say, is the "method" of Jesus. 1 
 To it belongs his use of that important word ^ 
 which in the Greek is "metanoia." We translate 
 it repentancet a mourning and lamenting over 
 one's sins; and we translate it wrong. Of "meta- 
 noia," as Jesus used the word, the lamenting 
 one's sins was a small part; the main part was 
 something far more active and fruitful, the setting 
 up an immense new inward movement for obtain- 
 ing the rule of life. And "metanoia," accordingly, 
 is: "a change of the inner man." 
 
 Mention and recommendation of this inward- 
 ness there often was, we know, in prophet or 
 psalmist; but to make mention of it was one 
 thing, to erect it into a positive method was an- 
 other. Christianity has made it so familiar, that 
 to give any freshness to one's words about it is 
 now not easy; but to its first recipients it was 
 abundantly fresh and novel. { It was the introduc- V 
 tion, in morals and religion, of the famous know 
 thyself of the G-reeks ; and this among a people 
 deeply serious, but also wedded to moral and re- 
 ligious routine, and singularly devoid of flexibility 
 and play of mind. For them it was a revolution. J 
 Of course the hard thing is nottosay, "Cleansethe 
 inside of the cup," but to make people do it; in 
 morals and religion, the man who is "founded upon 
 rock" is always, as Jesus said, the man who doea, 
 never the man who only hears. To say. Look 
 withiBj was therefore not everything ; yet we none 
 of us, probably, enough feel the power which at 
 first resided in the mere saying of it, as Christ 
 said it. And this is because his words have be- 
 come so trite to us that we fail to see how power- 
 fully they were all adapted to call forth the new 
 habit of inwardness ; and if we want to see this, 
 we must for a time either re-translate his words 
 181 
 
JLiiX'liJlt.ATUJK.Jii AINJJ JJUtrMA. 
 
 for ourselves, or paraphrase them. And not only 
 the words he employed, but also the words he 
 excited; the words which the eflect produced by 
 him made men use about him. Just as it is well 
 to substitute Eternal for Lord, and the good news 
 for the gospel, so we must put new words in the 
 place of the now hackneyed repentance, truth, 
 grace, spirit, if we wish at all to know how these 
 words worked originally. "Metanoia," we have 
 seen, is a change of the inner man: "repentance 
 unto life" was "a life-giving change of the inner 
 man." "Aletheia" is not so well rendered truth, 
 which is often speculative only, as it is reality; 
 "charis" is the boon of happiness, '^Jfnstead, then, 
 of "Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ," 
 let us say: "Happiness and reaizir/ came through 
 Jesus Christ" ; instead of, "To know the grace of 
 Grod in truth," "To know the happiness of God in 
 reality." i Even if the new rendering is not so lit- 
 erally correct as the old, not permanently to be 
 adopted, it will be of use to us for a while to 
 show us how the words worked. 
 
 Above all is this true in regard to the word 
 spirit, made so mechanical by popular religion 
 that it has come to mean "a person without a 
 body," which is the child's definition of a ghost. 
 This word, specially designed by Jesus to serve in 
 restoring the intuition and in bringing Israel's re- 
 Ugion face to face with Israel's inward conscious- 
 ness, is rather inSuence; "Except a man be born 
 of a new induence, he cannot see the kingdom of 
 God." Instead of proclaiming what the Bishop of 
 Gloucester calls "the blessed truth that the God 
 of the universe is a Person," Jesus uttered a warn- 
 ing for all time against this unprofitable jargon 
 by saying: "God is an influence, and those who 
 would serve him must serve him not by any form 
 182 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 of words or rites, but by inward motion and in 
 reality 1" No rendering can too strongly bring 
 out the original bent to inwardness and intuition 
 in language of this kind, which has now become 
 almost formal to us. 
 
 Just the same bent appears in Christ's taking, 
 as the rule for a man's action in regard to an- 
 other's conduct, simply and solely the effect on the 
 actor's own character. This is what is so strik- 
 ing in the story of the woman taken in adultery : 
 *'Let him that is without fault cast the first 
 stone I and they were all convicted by their con- 
 science." And who is without fault, and where is 
 the judge whom the conviction of conscience 
 might not thus paralyze? Punishment, then, is 
 impossible; and, with punishment, government 
 and society? But punishment, government, and 
 society are all of them after-inventions, creations 
 of man, and unintuitive. Jesus regarded simply 
 what was primary, — the individual and the intui- 
 tion. And in truth if the individual and the in- 
 tuition are once reached, the after-inventions may 
 be left to take care of themselves; and if con- 
 science ever became enough of a power, there 
 would be no offenders to punish. This is the true 
 line of religion ; it was the line of Jesus. [To work 
 the renovation needed, he concentrated his efforts 
 upon a method of inwardness, of taking counsel 
 of conscience, f 
 
 4. 
 
 But for this world of busy inward movement 
 created by the method of Jesus, a rule of action 
 was wanted; and this rule was found in his 
 secret. It was the same of which the Apostle 
 Paul afterwards possessed himself with such en- 
 ergy, and called "the word of the cross,"* or, 
 
 * ■ O \6yoi 6 Tov iXTavpov. 1 OOF. 1. 18. 
 
 183 
 
necrosis, "dying." The rule of action Paul gave 
 was: "Always bearing about in the body the dy- 
 ing of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus 
 may be made manifest in our body I" In the 
 popular theurgy, these words are commonly re- 
 ferred to what is called "pleading the blood of the 
 covenant,"— relying on the death and merits of 
 Christ, in pursuance of the contract originally 
 passed in the Council of the Trinity, to satisfy 
 God's wrath against sinners and to redeem us. 
 But they do really refer to words of Jesus, often 
 and often repeated, and of which the following 
 may very well stand as pre-eminently representa- 
 tive: "He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he 
 that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto 
 life eternal. Whosoever would come after me, let 
 him renounce himself, and take up his cross daily, 
 and follow me." 
 
 These words, or words like them, were repeated 
 again and again, so that no reporter could miss 
 them. No reporter did miss them. We find them, 
 as we find the "method" of conscience, in all the 
 four G-ospels. Perhaps there is no maxim of Jesus 
 that has such a combined stress of evidence for it, 
 and may be taken as so eminently his. And no 
 wonder; for the maxim contains his secret^ the 
 secret by which, emphatically, his gospel "brought 
 life and immortality to light." His "method" di- 
 rected the disciple's eye inward and set his con- 
 sciousness to work ; and the first thing his con- 
 sciousness told him was, that he had two selves 
 pulling him difierent ways. [Till we attend, till 
 the method is set at work, it seems as if "the 
 wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts"* 
 were to be followed as a matter of course ; as if 
 an impulse to do a thing means that we should 
 
 ■^Td Oik^^aTa r^f aapKOi Kal rui/ fiiavoLui'. — Epll. 11. 3. 
 
 184 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 do it. But when we attend, we find that an im- 
 pulse to do a thing is really in itself no reason at 
 all why we should do it ; because impulses proceed 
 from two sources, quite different, and of quite 
 different degrees of authority. St. Paul contrasts 
 them as the inward man, and the man in our 
 members ; the mind of the flesh, and the spiritual 
 mind, Jesus contrasts them as life, properly so 
 named, and Ufe in this world,* And the moment 
 we seriously attend to conscience, to the sugges- 
 tions which concern practice and conduct, we can 
 see plainly enough from which source a suggestion 
 comes, and that the suggestions from one source 
 are to overrule those from the other. 
 
 But this is a negative state of things, a reign of 
 check and constraint, a reign, merely, of morality. 
 Jesus changed it into what was positive and at- 
 tractive, lighted it up, made it religion, by the 
 idea of two lives. One of them, life properly so 
 called, full of light, endurance, felicity, in connec- 
 tion with the higher and permanent self; and the 
 other of them, life improperly so called, in connec- 
 tion with the lower and transient self. The first 
 kind of life was already a cherished ideal with 
 Israel ("Thou wilt show me the path of lifeP*); 
 and a man might be placed in it, Jesus said, by 
 dying to the second. For it is to be noted that 
 our common expression, "denj' himself," is an in- 
 adequate and misleading version of the words used 
 by Jesus. To deny one's self is commonly under- 
 stood to mean that one refuses one's self some- 
 thing; but what Jesus says is: "Let a man dis- 
 own himself, renounce himself, die as regards his 
 old self, and so live. Himself, the old man, the 
 
 "* The strict grammatical and logical connection of the words 
 
 iy T^ Koo-ju^ T0VT4> is With o /xLauf, but thQ SGUSQ fllXd eflOCt Is 08 
 
 given above. 
 
 185 
 
iilTJUKATDRE AND DOGMA. 
 
 life in this world, meant following those "wishes of 
 the flesh and of the current thoughts" which Jesus 
 had, by his method, already put his disciples in 
 the way of sifting and scrutinizing, and of trying 
 by the standard of conformity to conscience. 
 
 Thus, after putting him by his method in the 
 way to find what doing righteousness was, by 
 his secret Jesus put the disciple in the way of do- 
 ing it. For the breaking the sway of what is 
 commonly called one's self, ceasing our concern 
 with it and leaving it to perish, is not, he said, 
 being thwarted or crossed, but living. And the 
 proof of this is that it has the characters of life 
 in the highest degree, — the sense c2 going right, 
 hitting the mark, succeeding. That is, it has the 
 characters of happiness; and happiness is, for 
 Israel, the same thing as having the Eternal with 
 uB, seeing the salvation of Grod. "The tree," as 
 Jesus was always saying, "is known by its 
 iruits'' ; Jesus was to be received by Israel as sent 
 from Grod, because the secret of Jesus leads to the 
 salvation of G-od, which is what Israel most de- 
 sired, "The word of the cross," in short, turned 
 out to be at the same time "the word of the king- 
 dom."* And to this experimental sanction of his 
 secret, this sense it gives of having the Eternal on 
 our side and approving us, Jesus appealed when 
 he said of himself: "Therefore doth my Father 
 love me, because I lay down my life, that I may 
 take it again," This, again, in our popular 
 theurgy, is materialized into the First Person of 
 the Trinity approving the Second, because he 
 stands to the contract already in the Council of 
 the Trinity passed. But what it really means is, 
 that the joy of Jesus, of this "Son of peace," the 
 "joy" he was bo desirous that his disciples should 
 
 * 'O Adyoc r^; fia^r^\eias, — Matt. xiil. 19. 
 
 1S6 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 find "fulfilled in themselves," was due to his hav- 
 ing himself followed his own secret.j And the 
 great counterpart to : "A life-giving change of the 
 inner man/' — the promise: "Peace through Jesus 
 Christ I "—is peace through this secret of his. 
 
 Now, the value of this rule that one should die 
 to one's apparent self, Uve to one's real self, de- 
 pends upon whether it is true. And true it cer- 
 tainly is ; — a profound truth of what our scientific 
 friends, who have a systematic philosophy and a 
 nomenclature to match, and who talk of Egoism 
 and Altruism, would call, perhaps, psycho-physi- 
 ology- -A-nd we may trace men's experience affirm- 
 ing and confirming it, from a very plain and level 
 account of it to an account almost as high and 
 solemn as that of Jesus. That an opposition 
 there is, in all matter of what we call conduct, 
 between a man's first impulses and what he ulti- 
 mately finds to be the real law of his being ; that 
 a man accompUshes his right function as a man, 
 fulfils his end, hits the mark, in giving effect to the 
 real law of his being ; and that happiness attends 
 his thus hitting the mark, — all good observers re- 
 port. No statement of this general experience can 
 be simpler or more faithful than one given us by 
 that great naturalist, Aristotle.* "In all wholes 
 made up of parts," says he, "there is a ruler and 
 a ruled; throughout nature this is so; we see it 
 even in things without life, they have their har- 
 mony or Jaw. The Hving being is composed of 
 soul and body, whereof the one is naturally ruler 
 and the other ruled. Now what is natural we 
 are to learn from what fulfils the law of its na- 
 ture most, and not from what is depraved. So 
 we ought to take the man who has the best dis- 
 position of body and soul ; and in him we shall 
 
 ♦Politics, L 5. 
 187 
 

 find that this is bo ; for in people that are griev- 
 ous both to others and to themselves the body 
 may often appear ruling the soul, because such 
 people are poor creatures and false to nature." 
 And Aristotle goes on to distinguish between the 
 body, over which, he says, the rule of the soul is 
 absolute, and the "movement of thought and de- 
 sire," over which reason has, says he, "a constitu- 
 tional rule," in words which exactly recall St. 
 Paul's phrase for our double enemy: "the fesb 
 and the current thoughts" So entirely are we 
 here on ground of general experience. And if we 
 go on and take this maxim from Stobaeus: "All 
 fine acquirement implies a foregoing exercise of 
 self-control" ;* or this from the Latin poet: **Eule 
 your current self or it will rule you I bridle it in 
 and chain it downI"t or this from Goethe's auto- 
 biography: "Everything cries out to us that 
 we must renounce" ;t or still more this from his 
 Faust; "Thou must go without, go without! 
 that is the everlasting song which every hour, all 
 our life through, hoarsely sings to usl "§ — then we 
 have testimony not only to the necessity of this 
 natural law of rule and suppression, but also to 
 the strain and labor and suffering which attend 
 it. But when we come a little farther and take a 
 sentence like this of Plato: "Of suff*erings and 
 pains Cometh help, for it is not possible by any 
 other way to be ridded of our iniquity" ;|| then 
 
 * Uavrhi Kokov KTrjixaTOi ttovos it party viTai, ® ''*^' iyKpintav* 
 + . . . Anlmum rege, qui nisi paret 
 
 Imperat ; hunc fraenis hunc tu compesce catenls. 
 $ Alles rvlt uns zu, dass wlr entsagen sollen. 
 6 Entbehren sollst du ! soUst entbelirezi I 
 
 Das 1st der ewlge Gesang, 
 
 Den unser ganzes Leben lang 
 
 Uns helser jede Stunde slnfirt. 
 H Ai dAy7j£di'a)i' Kat oBvviliv yiyfeTai 17 ut(f>i\€ia ' ov yap ol6v ri 
 oAAus aSiKtas a.iraWarT€<r0ai, — GorglOS, C. 81* 
 
 188 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 we get a higher strain, a strain like St. Peter's: 
 "He that hath Buffered in the flesh hath ceased 
 from sin ;'* and we are brought to see, not only the 
 necessity of the law of rule and suppression, not 
 only the pain and suffering in it, but also its be- 
 neficence. And this positive sense of beneficence, 
 ealutariness, and hope, comes out yet more 
 strongly when Wordsworth says to Duty: "Nor 
 know we anything so fair as is the smile upon 
 thy face'*; or when Bishop Wilson says; "They 
 that deny themselves will be sure to find their 
 strength increased, their afiections raised, and 
 their inward peace continually augmented" ; and 
 most of all, perhaps, when we hear from Goethe: 
 "Die and re-exist I for so long as this is not ac- 
 complished thou art but a troubled guest upon an 
 earth of gloom I"* But this is evidently borrowed 
 from Jesus, and by one whose testimony is of the 
 more weight, because he certainly would not have 
 become thus a borrower from Jesus, unless the 
 truth held compelled him. 
 
 And never, certainly, was the joy which in self- 
 renouncement underlies the pain, so brought out, 
 as when Jesus boldly called the suppression of 
 our first Impulses and current thoughts, life, real 
 life, eternal life. So that Jesus not only saw this 
 great necessary truth of their being, as Aristotle 
 says, in human nature a part to rule and a part 
 to be ruled ; he saw it so thoroughly, that he saw 
 through the suffering at its surface to the joy at 
 its centre, filled it with promise and hope, and 
 made it infinitely attractive. As Israel, therefore, 
 is "the people of righteousness," because, though 
 others have perceived the importance of righteous- 
 *Stirbund werdel 
 
 Denn, so lang du das nlcht hast* 
 
 Blst du uur eln trUber Gast 
 
 Auf der dunkeln Erde I 
 189 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA, 
 
 ness, Israel, above every one, perceived the bappir 
 ness of it; so self-renouncement, the main factor in 
 conduct or righteousness, is "the secret of Jesus," 
 because, though others have seen that it vras 
 necessary, Jesus, above every one, saw that it 
 was peace, joy, life. 
 
 Now, we may observe, that even Aristotle (and 
 it is a mark of his greatness) does not, in the 
 passage we have quoted from him, begin with a 
 complete system of psycho-physiology, and show 
 ns where and how and why in this system the 
 rule of renouncement comes in, and draw out for 
 us definitively the law of our being towards which 
 this rule leads up. He says that the rule exists, 
 that it is ancillary to the law of our being, and 
 that we are to study the best men, in whom it 
 most exists, to make us see that it is thus ancil- 
 lary. He here appeals throughout to a verifying 
 sense, such as we have said that every one in 
 this great but plain matter of conduct really has ; 
 he does not appeal to a speculative theory of the 
 system of things, and deduce conclusions from it. 
 And he shows his greatness in this, because the 
 law of our being is not something which is al- 
 ready definitively known and can be exhibited as 
 part of a speculative theory of the system of 
 things; it is something which discovers itself and 
 becomes, as we follow (among other things) the 
 rule of renouncement. What we can say with 
 most certainty about the law of our being is, 
 that we find the rule of renouncement lead sensi- 
 bly up to it. In matters of practice and conduct 
 therefore, an experience, like this, is really a far 
 safer ground to insist on than any speculative 
 theory of the system of things. And to a theory 
 of such sort Jesus never appeals. Here is what 
 characterizes his teaching, and distinguishes him, 
 190 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 for instance, from the author of the Fourth Gros- 
 pel. This author handles what we may call 
 theosophical speculation in a beautiful and im- 
 pressive manner ; his introduction is undoubtedly 
 in a very noble and profound strain. But it is 
 theory; an intellectual theory of the divine nature 
 and the system of things, which was then, and is 
 still at present, utterly irreducible to experience. 
 And therefore it is impossible even to conceive 
 Jesus himself uttering the introduction to the 
 Fourth Gospel ; because theory Jesus never 
 touches, but bases himself invariably on experi- 
 ence. True, the experience must, for philosophy, 
 have its place in a theory of the system of human 
 nature, when the theory is perfect ; but the point 
 is, that the experience is ripe, and solid, and to be 
 used safely, long before the theory. And it was 
 the experience which Jesus always used. 
 , Undoubtedly, however, attempts may not im- 
 properly be made, even now,— by those, at least, 
 who have a talent for these matters, — to exhibit 
 the experience, with what leads to it and what 
 derives from it, in a system of psycho-physiology. 
 And then, perhaps, it will be found to be con- 
 nected with other truths of psycho-physiology, 
 such as the unity of life, as it is called, and the 
 impersonality of reason. Only then it will be 
 philosophy, mental exercitation, and will concern 
 us as a matter of science, not of conduct. And, 
 as the discipline of conduct is three fourths of life, 
 for our aesthetic and intellectual disciplines, real 
 as these are, there is but one fourth of life left ; 
 and if we let art and science divide this one fourth 
 fairly between them, they will have just one 
 eighth of life each. ■ 
 
 So the exhibition of the truth, "He that loveth 
 his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in 
 191 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 this world shall keep it unto life eternal," in its 
 order and place as a truth of psycho-physiology, 
 concerns one eighth of our life and no more. But 
 Jesus, we say, exhibited nothing for the benefit of 
 this one eighth of us ; this is what distinguishes 
 him from all moralists and philosophers, and 
 even from the greatest of his own disciples. How 
 he reached a doctrine we cannot say; but he al- 
 ways exhibited it as an intuition and a practical 
 rule, and a practical rule which, if adopted, would 
 have the force of an intuition for its adopter also. 
 This is why none of his doctrines are of the char- 
 acter of that favorite doctrine of the Bishop of 
 Gloucester, "the blessed truth that the God of the 
 universe is a Person" ; because this doctrine is in- 
 capable of application as a practical rule, and can 
 never come to have the force of an intuition, t^ut 
 what we call the secret of Jesus, "He that loveth 
 his lif^ shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in 
 this world shall keep it unto life eternal" was a 
 truth of which he could say: "It is so; try it 
 yourself and you will see it is so, by the sense of 
 living, of going right, hitting the mark, succeed- 
 ing, which you will get.'*] 
 
 And the same with the commandment, "Love 
 one another" which is the positive side of the 
 commandment, "Renounce thjself,'^ and, like this, 
 can be drawn out as a truth of psycho-physi- 
 ology. Jesus exhibited it as an intuition and a 
 practical rule ; and as what, by being practised, 
 would, through giving happiness, prove its own 
 truth as a rule of life. This, we say, is of the 
 very essence of his secret of self-renouncement, as 
 of his method of inwardness ; — that its truth will 
 be found to commend itself by happiness, to prove 
 itself by happiness. And of the secret more espe- 
 cially is this true; and as We have said, that 
 193 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 though there gathers round the word "God" very 
 much besides, yet we shall in general, in reading 
 the Bible, get the surest hold on the word "God" 
 by giving it the sense of the Eternai Power not 
 ourselves, which makes for nghteonsness, so we 
 shall get the best hold on many expressions of 
 Jesus by referring them, though they include 
 more, yet primarily and pointedly to his "secret," 
 and to the happiness which this contained. Bread 
 of life, hving water, these are, in general, Jesus, 
 Jesus in his whole being and in his total effect; 
 but in especial they are Jesus as offering his 
 secret. And when Jesus says: "He that eateth 
 me shall live by me I" we shall understand the 
 words best if we think of hie secret. 
 
 And so again with the famous words to the 
 woman by the well in Samaria: "Whosoever 
 drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but 
 whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give 
 him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall 
 give him shall be in him a fount of water spring- 
 ing up unto everlasting Ufe." These words, how 
 are we to take them, so as to reach their mean- 
 ing best? What distinctly is this "water that I 
 shall give him"? Jesus himself and his word, no 
 doubt; yet eo we come but to that very notion, 
 which Jeremy Taylor warns us against as vague, 
 of getting Christ. The Bishop of Gloucester will 
 tell us, perhaps, that it is "the blessed truth that 
 the Creator of the universe is a Person," or the 
 doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Eternal 
 Son. But surely it would be a strong figure of 
 speech to say of these doctrines, that a man, after 
 receiving them, could never again feel thirsty I 
 See, on the contrary, how the words suit the 
 seci'et: "He that loveth his life shall lose it, and 
 he that hateth his life in this world shall keep It 
 13 193 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 unto life eternal." This ''secret of Jeeus," as we 
 call it, will be found applicable to all the thou- 
 sand problems which the exercise of conduct daily 
 ofiers; it alone can solve them all happily, and 
 may indeed be called "a fount of water springing 
 up unto everlasting life." And, in general, wher- 
 ever the words life and death are used by Jesus, 
 we shall do well to have his "secret" at hand; 
 for in his thoughts, on these occasions, it is never 
 far off. 
 
 And now, too, we can see why it is a mistake, 
 and may lead to much error, to exhibit any series 
 of maxims, like those of the Sermon on the Mount, 
 as the ultimate sum and formula into which 
 Christianity may be run up. Maxims of this 
 kind are but applications of the method and the 
 secret of Jesus ; and the method and secret are 
 capable of yet an infinite number more of such 
 applications. Christianity is a source; no one 
 supply of water and refreshment that comes from 
 it can be called the sum of Christianity. 
 
 A method of inwardness, a secret of seM~ 
 renouncement; — but can any statement of what 
 Jesus brought be complete, which does not take 
 in his mildness? To the representative texts al- 
 ready given there is certainly to be added this 
 other; "Learn of me that I am mild and lowly in 
 heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls I" 
 Shall we attach mildness to the method, because, 
 without it, a clear and limpid view inwards is 
 impossible? Or shall we atta<jh it to the secret?— 
 the dying to faults of temper is a part, certainly, 
 of dying to one's ordinary self, one's life in this 
 world. Mildness, however, is rather an element in 
 which, in Jesus, both method and secret worked ; 
 194 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 the medium through which both the method and 
 the secret were exhibited. We may think of it as 
 perfectly illustrated and exemplified in his answer 
 to the foolish question, " Who is the greatest in the 
 kingdom of heaven?" — when, taking a little child 
 and setting him in the midst, he said: "Whoso- 
 ever receives the kingdom of Grod as a little child, 
 the same is the greatest in it." Here are both in- 
 ward appraisal and eelf-renouncement ; but what 
 is most admirable is the "sweet reasonableness," 
 the exquisite, mild, winning felicity, with which 
 the renouncement and the inward appraisal are 
 applied and conveyed. /And the conjunction of the 
 three in Jesus, — the method of inwardness, and 
 the secret of self-renouncement, working in and 
 through this element of mildness, — produced the 
 total impression of his "epieikeia," or sweet rea- 
 sonableness; a total impression ineffable and in- 
 describable for the disciples, as also it was irre- 
 sistible for them, but at which their descriptive 
 words, words like this "sweet reasonableness.^^ 
 and like "full of grace and trutb,^^ are thrown 
 out and aimed. "/ 
 
 And this total stamp of "grace and truth," this 
 exquisite conjunction and balance, in an element 
 of mildness, of a method of inwardness perfectly 
 handled and a self-renouncement perfectly kept, 
 was found in Jesus alone. Yet what is the meth- 
 od of inwardness, and the secret of eelf-renounce- 
 ment, without the sure balance of Jesus, without 
 his epieikeia? Much, but very far indeed from 
 what he showed or what he meant ; they come to 
 be used bUndly, used mechanically, used amiss, 
 and lead to the strangest aberrations. St. Simeon 
 Stylites on his column, Lacordaire flogging him- 
 self on his death-bed, are what the secret by itself 
 produces. The method by itself gives us our polit- 
 195 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 ieal Dissenter, pluming himself on some irrational 
 "conscientious objections," and not knowingthat 
 with conscience he has done nothing until he has 
 got to the bottom of conscience, and ma4e it tell 
 him right. Therefore the disciples of Christ were 
 not told to believe in his method, or to believe in 
 his secret, but to believe in him; they were not 
 told to follow the method or to follow the secret, 
 but they were told: "Follow me!" It was only 
 by fixing their heart and mind on him that they 
 could learn to use the method and secret right ; by 
 *^ feeding on him," by, as he often said, ^'remainiDg 
 in him." 
 
 But this is just what Israel had been told to do 
 as regards the Eternal himself. "I have set the 
 Eternal always before zee"; "Mine eyes are ever 
 toward the Eternal" ; "The Eternal is thestrengtb 
 of my life " ; " Wait, I say, ou the Eternal I ' ' Now, 
 then, let us go back again for a little to Israel, 
 and to Israel's belief. 
 
 6. 
 
 We have seen how the Jews, at the coming of 
 Christ, had their thoughts full of a grand and 
 turbid phantasmagory ; a vision of God judging 
 the world, sending his Messiah on the clouds of 
 heaven, taking vengeance on his enemies, restoring 
 the kingdom to Israel. And we marked the line 
 of texts which this expectation followed : from the 
 "Prophet" of Moses to the victorious "Rod out of 
 the stem of Jesse" of Isaiah, and thence to the 
 "Messiah," the "Son of Man," the "Son of God," 
 of the Book of Daniel. 
 
 ^;But there was another line of texts pointing to 
 
 a servant and emissary of God, besides the line 
 
 pointing to the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the 
 
 princely and conquering Root of David, ] It stood 
 
 196 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 written: "Behold my servant whom I uphold, 
 mine elect in whom my soul delightethi I have 
 put my spirit upon him ; he shall declare judgment 
 to the Gentiles. He shall not strive nor cry, nor 
 cause his voice to be heard in the streets ; he shall 
 declare judgment with truth. He shall not fail 
 nor be discouraged, until he set judgment in the 
 earth; far lands wait for his law." Who is this? 
 
 And again: "He was despised, and we esteemed 
 him not ; but he was wounded for our transgres- 
 sions, he was bruised for our iniquities. All we 
 like sheep were gone astray, we were turned every 
 one to his own way; and the Eternal hath laid 
 on him the iniquity of us all. And he made his 
 grave with the wicked, although he had done no 
 violence ; yet it pleased the Eternal to bruise him. 
 When Thou hast made his soul an offering for sin, 
 he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, 
 and the pleasure of the Eternal shall prosper in 
 his hand ; he shall see of the travail of his soul and 
 shall be satisfied 1" Who, again, is this? 
 
 Is it the "Prophet" like great Moses? Is it the 
 brilliant "Branch" out of the root of Jesse, smit- 
 ing the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with 
 the breath of his lips slaying the wicked? with 
 his dominion from the one sea to the other, all 
 things falling down before him, all nations serving 
 him; with his seed to endure forever, and his 
 throne as the days of heaven? This Branch it 
 was, whom Israel identified with the Messiah 
 coming in the clouds of heaven to give the king- 
 dom to the saints of the Most High, with the Son 
 of Man sitting on the throne of his glory. Was 
 the afflicted and lowly servant at the same time 
 the Branch, and therefore the Messiah, the Son of 
 Grod, and the bringer of the kingdom? Israel 
 never identified them. Here and there he made 
 197 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 guesses and snatches at the truth; momentary 
 elevations of it there were, faint approaches to- 
 wards connecting the two ideals, isolated tentar 
 tives; but the Jewish people at large had never 
 grasped the idea of the identification, and it had 
 never been so presented to them that they could 
 grasp it. 
 
 And, as we have already said, it was an extra- 
 ordinary novelty, although the profound and the 
 only true solution of Israel's wonderful history, 
 when this identification was by Jesus boldly 
 made. "A little while," the Jews were saying, 
 "and the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom 
 which shall never be destroyed."*— "Nay," an- 
 swered Jesus, "the time is fulfilled and the king- 
 dom of God is at hand 1 change the inner man, 
 and believe the good newsl" — "But," said the 
 Jews, "Elias must first come." Jesus replied: 
 "Ehas is come already I John the Baptist, my 
 precursor, who preached a change of the inner 
 man as I do."— "But there shall be a time of 
 trouble," the Jews urged, "such as never was 
 since there was a nation to that time ; abomina- 
 tion and desolation ; a fiery stream issuing from 
 before the throne of the Ancient of days; one like 
 the Son of Man coming with the clouds of 
 heaven I" f Jesus beheld the fierce and impractica- 
 ble people before him, with their inevitable future : 
 "Fear not," he answered mournfully, "where the 
 carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered to- 
 gether! soon enough you will have the affliction 
 such as was not from the beginning of the world 
 to this time, the Son of Man coming, Jerusalem 
 encompassed with armies, abomination and deso- 
 lation, not one stone of the Temple left on an- 
 
 *Daii.U.44. 
 
 tDan.xIl. 1. 11; vll. 10, 13. 
 198 
 
THE TESTIMONY OP JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 other."— "Bui the judgment shall sit!" said the 
 Jews, ''and at that time the people shall be de- 
 Uvered, every one that shall be found written in 
 the book I"— To the outward crisis, or world- 
 judgment of Jerusalem's ruin, shall correspond, 
 Jesus answered, an inward judgment, the new 
 crisis of conscience. "The hour is coming, and 
 now isj when the dead shall hear the voice of the 
 Son of God; and they who hear shall live. Every 
 one that is of the truth heareth my voice; the 
 word that I speak, the same shall Jud^e him." — 
 "But the righteous," the Jews said, "shall awake 
 to everlasting lifef'' — "If a man keep my word," 
 answered Jesus, "he shall never see death; but it 
 shall be in him a fount of water, springing up 
 unto everlasting life." — "But God's Messiah," 
 finally rejoined the Jews, "shall smite the earth 
 with the breath of his mouth! his throne shall en- 
 dure forever, and his dominion shall be from the 
 one sea to the other; the Gentiles shall be given 
 to him!"— "Ye know not what spirit ye are of," 
 said Jesus: "He is mild and Jowly in heart; he 
 must suffer many things and be rejected of his 
 generation. Except a corn of wheat &,11 into the 
 ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die it 
 bringeth forth much fruit ; and I, if I be lifted up 
 A'om the earth, will draw all men unto me" 
 Then, turning to the disciples: "Fear not, little 
 flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give 
 you the kingdom! And other sheep I have, not of 
 this fold I they also shall be brought; and there 
 shall be one fold, one shepherd." 
 
 OBy a line like this did Jesus identify the two 
 ideals,— the ideal of popular Aberglaube and his 
 own. And this is why the phrases of the popular 
 Aberglaube come so often from his lips; he was 
 forever translating it into the sense of the higher 
 199 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 ideal, the only sense in which it had truth and 
 grandeur." It was hopeless that the Jews should 
 go along with him. The best of his disciples went 
 along with him but imperfectly, and popular 
 Christianity has fallen far behind the best of his 
 disciples. "The hour is coming, and now is, when 
 the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, 
 and they who hear shall live,"— this saying could 
 not lift the Jews out of their Aberglaube into the 
 ideal of Jesus, with its new meaning for the 
 words hfe and death. But neither has it lifted 
 popular Christianity, which out of this and other 
 like sayings has fashioned for itself an Aberglaube 
 precisely corresponding to that of the Jews. 
 
 Yet Jesus could not but use the dominant 
 phrases of the Jewish religion, if he was to talk 
 to the Jewish people about religion at all. And 
 we have now seen that he did use them, and how. 
 And this leads us farther, and explains his way of 
 using such words as the Christy the Son of Man ^ 
 the Son of God. For, as the Jews were always 
 talking about the Messiah, so they were always 
 talking, we know, about Grod. And they believed 
 in G-od's Messiah after their notion of him, because 
 they believed in God after their notion of Mm ;— 
 but both notions were wrong. All their aspira- 
 tions were now turned towards the Messiah; 
 whoever would do them good, must first change 
 their ideal of the Messiah. But their ideal of 
 God's Messiah depended upon their notion of God. 
 This notion was now false, hke their ideal of the 
 Messiah ; but once it had been true, or, at least, 
 true comparatively; — once Israel had had the in- 
 tuition of God, as the Eternal that loveth right- 
 eousness. And the intuition had never been so 
 lost but that it was capable of being revived. To 
 change their dangerous and misleading ideal of 
 200 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 God's Messiah, therefore, and to make the Jews 
 believe in the true Messiah, eould only be accom- 
 plished by bringing them back to a truer notion 
 of God and his righteousness. By this it could, 
 perhaps, be accomplished, but by this only. 
 
 And this is what Jesus sought to do. He 
 sought to do it in the way we have seen, by his 
 ^'method" and his ''secret." First, by his "meth- 
 od" of a change of the inner man: — "Do not be 
 all abroad, do not be in the air,"* he said to his 
 nation; "you look for the kingdom of God; the 
 kingdom of God is the reign of righteousness, 
 God's will done by all mankind ; well, then, seek 
 the kingdom of God I the kingdom of God is 
 within j^ou.^^ And, next, by his "secret" of peace: 
 —"Renounce thyself, and take up thy cross daily 
 and follow me. He that loveth his life shall lose 
 it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall 
 keep it unto life eternal." And the revolution thus 
 made was so immense, that the least in this new 
 kingdom of heaven, this realm of the "method" 
 and the "secret," was greater, Jesus said, than 
 one who, like John the Baptist, was even great- 
 est in the old realm of Jewish religion. And 
 those who obeyed the gospel of this new kingdom 
 came to the light : they had joy; they entered into 
 peace; they ceased to thirst; the word became in 
 them a fount of water springing up unto everlast- 
 ing life. But these were the admitted tests of 
 righteousness, of obeying the voice of the Eternal 
 who loveth righteousness. "There ariseth light 
 for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in 
 heart; he that feareth the Eternal, happy is he I" 
 
 Now, the special value of the Fourth Gospel is, 
 not that it exhibits the method and secret of 
 Jesus,^for all the Gospels exhibit them, — but that 
 
 * Mi) fJieT€<api^€<r9e. 
 
 201 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 it exhibits the establishment of them by means of 
 Israel's own idea of Grod, cleared and reawakened. 
 The argument is: "You are always talking about 
 God, God's word, righteousness; always saying 
 that God is your Father, and will send his Mes- 
 siah for your salvation. Well, he who receives me 
 shows that he talks about God with a knowledge 
 of what he is saying ; he sets to his se<%l that God 
 is true. He who is of God heareth the words of 
 God ; every one that heareth and learneth of the 
 Father cometh unto me; my doctrine is not mine 
 but his that sent me, and ye have not his word 
 abiding in you, because, whom he hath sent, him 
 ye believe not; if any one will do God's will he 
 shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." 
 This, therefore, is what Jesus said: — "I, whose 
 message of salvation is, // a man keep my word 
 be shall never see death! am sent of God ; because 
 he, who obeys my saying. Renounce thyself and 
 follow me! shall feel that he truly lives, and that 
 he is following, therefore, Israel's God of whom it 
 is said : Thou wilt show me the path of life," 
 1 The doctrine therefore is double -.—Renounce thy- 
 self, the secret of Jesus, involving a foregoing exer- 
 cise of his method ; and Follow me, who am sent 
 from God! That is the favorite expression: Sent 
 from God; "The Father hath sent me, God hath 
 sent me.'* Now this identified Jesus and his sal- 
 vation with the Messiah whom, with his salva- 
 tion, the Jews were expecting.] For his disciples, 
 therefore, and for Christendom after them, Jesus 
 was and is the Christ. This, we say, his disciples, 
 and Christendom after them, have comprehended 
 and accepted : his identification of himself with the 
 Messiah. On the other hand, his fruitful and pro- 
 found harmonization of the twa ideals — the mild 
 and suffering Servant of God, and the Anointed 
 202 
 
THE TESTIMONY OP JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 Prince smiting the earth with the breath of his 
 mouth and giving the kingdom to the saints — 
 was not understood and accepted. Nevertheless, 
 the turbid Aberg2aube, with which the Jews had 
 surrounded this latter ideal, was by the disciples 
 of Jesus borrowed, and transferred wholesale to 
 Christ and Christ's future advent. 
 
 Meanwhile, as with the word God, so with the 
 word Christ; Jesus did not give any scientific 
 definitionofit,— such as, for instance, that Christ 
 was the Logos. He took the word Christ as the 
 Jews used it, as he took the word God as the 
 Jews used it; and as he amended their notion of 
 God, the Eternal who loveth righteousness^ by 
 showing what righteousness really was, so he 
 amended their notion ol the Messiah, the chosen 
 hringer of God's salvation, by showing what sal- 
 vation really was. And though his own appUca- 
 tion of terms to designate himself is not a matter 
 where we can perfectly trust his reporters (as it ie 
 clear, for instance, that the writer of the Fourth 
 Gospel was more metaphysical than Jesus him- 
 self),* yet there is no difficulty in supposing him 
 to have applied to himself each and all of the 
 terms which the Jews in any way used to describe 
 the Messiah, — Messiah or Christ, God's Chosen or 
 Beloved or Consecrated or GloriHed One, the Son 
 of God, the Son of Man; because his concern, as 
 we have said, was with his countrymen's idea of 
 salvation, not with their terms for designating 
 the bringer of it. But the simplest term, the term 
 
 *It is to be remembered, too, that whereas Jesus spoke in 
 Aramaic, the most concrete and unmetaphyalcal of languages, he 
 is reported In Greek, the most metaphysical. What, In the 
 mouth of Jesus, was ttie word which comes to us as MOi'ove*"!? 
 {onVy-hegotten) ? And yet, in the Greek record, this word la 
 not, like only-begotten in our translation, reserved for Christ ; 
 See Luke ix. 38. 
 
 203 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 which gives least opening into theosophy, — Son of 
 Man, — he certainly preferred. So, too, he loved 
 the simple expressions, "God sent me," "The 
 Father hatb sent me" ; and he chose bo often to 
 say, in a general manner, "I am He,'' rather than 
 to say positively, "I am Christ." 
 
 And evidently this mode of speaking struck his 
 hearers. We find the Jews saying: "How long 
 dost thou make us to doubt? if thou be Christ, 
 tell us plainly!" And even then Jesus does not 
 answer point-blank, but prefers to say: " I have 
 told you, and ye believe not." Yet this does not 
 imply that he had the least doubt or hesitation 
 in naming himself the Messiah, the Son of God ; 
 but only that his concern was, as we have said, 
 with God's righteousness and Christ's salvationj 
 and that he avoided all use of the names God, 
 and Christy which might give an opening into 
 mere theosophical speculation. And this is shown, 
 moreover, by the largeness and freedom — almost, 
 one may say, indifference— of his treatment of 
 both names ; as names, in using which, his hearers 
 were always in danger of going off into a the- 
 osophy that did them no good and had better 
 occupy them as little as possible. "I and my 
 Father are one I" he would say at onetime; and 
 "My Father is greater than 1 1" at another. IjVhen 
 the Jews were offended at his calling himself the 
 Son of God, he quotes Scripture to show that 
 even mere men were in Scripture called Gods; and 
 for you, he says, who go by the letter of Scrip- 
 ture, surely this is sanction enough for calling any 
 one, whom God sends, the Son of God! He did 
 not at all mean that the Messiah was a son of 
 God merely in the sense in which any great man 
 might be so called ; but he meant that these ques- 
 tions of theosophy were useless for his hearers, 
 204 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF, 
 
 and that they puzzled themselves with them in 
 Tain. J All they were concerned with was, th&the 
 was the Messiah they expected, sent to them with 
 salvation from God. 
 
 It is the same when Jesus says: "Before Abra- 
 ham was, I ami" He was baffling his country- 
 men's theosophy, showing them how little his doc- 
 trine was meant to offer a field for it. "Life," he 
 means, "the Hfe of him who lays down bis life 
 that he may take it again, is not what you sup- 
 pose; your notions of everlasting life are all false, 
 and with your present notions you cannot discuss 
 theology with me; follow me I" So, again, to the 
 Jews in the rut of their traditional theology, and 
 haggling about the Son of David ;— Jesus, they in- 
 sisted, could not be the Christ, because the Christ 
 was the Son of David. Jesus answers them by 
 the objection that in the Psalms (and the Scrip- 
 ture cannot be broken I) David calls the Christ 
 his Lord; and "if he call him Lord, how is he 
 then his son?" The argument as a serious argu- 
 ment is perfectly futile ; the King of Isra.el is going 
 out to war, and what the Psalmist really sings 
 is: "The Eternal eaith unto the king's majesty, 
 Thou Shalt conquer!^' St. Peter in the Acts 
 gravely uses the same verse to prove Jesus to be 
 Christ; "Crod," says he, "tells my Lord, Sit thou 
 upon my right baud! Yet David never went up 
 into heaven." And this is exactly of a piece with 
 St. Paul's proving salvation to be by Christ 
 alone, from ^eed^ in the promise to Abraham, be- 
 ing in the singular, not the plural. It is merely 
 false criticism of the Old Testament, such as the 
 Jews were full of, and of which the Apostles re- 
 tained far too much. But the Jews were full of 
 it, and therefore the objection of Jesus was just 
 such an objection as the Jews would think 
 205 
 
LltERATDRE AND DOGMA. 
 
 weighty. He used it as he might have used a 
 crux about personaUty or consubstantiality with 
 the Bishops of Winchester or Grloucester ;— to baffle 
 and put to rout their false dogmatic theology, to 
 disenchant them with it and make them cast it 
 aside and come simply to Mm. *'See/' he says to 
 the Jewish doctors, "what a mess you make of it 
 with your learning, and evidences, and orthodox 
 theology; with the wisdom of jour wise men and 
 the understanding of your prudent men! You can 
 do nothing with them, your arms break in your 
 hands ; fling the rubbish away, and throw your- 
 selves upon my method and secret,— upon me! 
 Believe that the Father hath sent me ; he that re- 
 ceiveth me receiveth Him that sent me. If any 
 man will do His will, he shall know of the doc- 
 trine whether it be of God, or whether I have in- 
 vented itl" 
 
 And no grand performance or discovery of a 
 man's own to bring him thus to joy and peace, 
 but an attachment! the influence of One fall of 
 grace and truth! An influence, which we feel we 
 know not how, and which subdues us we know 
 not when; which, like the wind, blows where it 
 lists, passes here, and does not pass there I Once 
 more, then, we come to that root and ground of 
 religion, that element of awe and gratitude which 
 fills religion with emotion, and makes it other 
 and greater than morality,— the not ourselves. 
 We did not make the order of conduct, or provide 
 that happiness should belong to it, or dispose 
 our hearts to it. "The preparation of the heart in 
 man is," aslsrael said, "from the Eternal I" Wedid 
 not make the "grace and truth" of Jesus provide 
 that happiness should belong to feeling them, and 
 dispose our hearts to feel them. "No man can 
 come to me," as Jesus said, "except the Father 
 206 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 which sent me draw him I" So the revelation of 
 Christ in the New Testament, like the revelation 
 of the God of Israel in the Old, is the revelation of 
 "the Eternal, not ourselves, which makes for 
 righteousness." It is like it, and has the same 
 power of religion in it. 
 
 Now, then, we see what the doctrine, "I came 
 forth from God," really means. We see how far it 
 has any likeness with that doctrine of the God- 
 head of the Eternal Son, for which our two 
 bishops are so anxious to "do something." We 
 see how far the pseudo-scientific language of our 
 creeds, about persons, and substance, and god- 
 bead, and coequal, and coeternal, and created, 
 and begotten, and proceeding, has anything at 
 all to do with what Jesus said or meant. We see 
 how impossible it is that one should concede to 
 our clerical friends what they assume to be be- 
 yond dispute :~that the so-called Athanasian 
 Creed "takes the facts of Christian doctrine, and 
 just arranges them sentence after sentence." We 
 see how wide of the mark is that philosophical 
 clergyman, who writes to the "Guardian" that 
 "Our Lord unquestionably annexes eternal life to 
 a right knowledge of the Godhead," in imagining 
 that when Jesus said, "This is life eternal, to 
 know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ 
 whom thou hast sent," Jesus had in view any- 
 thing at all like the "facts" which the Athanasian 
 Creed "arranges, sentence after sentence." But we 
 see more than this. We see how much a very com- 
 mon use of the word faith, which gives rise to false 
 notions like that of this clergyman, needs amending. 
 
 For it is constantly assumed that there is an 
 opposition betweed faith and reason; and that 
 207 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 those, whom Christ calls to believe in him, he calls 
 to receive a doctrine puzzling to the reason, but 
 which, if adopted, will gradually become clear. It 
 is obvious how well this notion offaith suits the 
 recommenders of such doctrine as that which the 
 Athanasian Creed ''arranges, sentence after sen- 
 tence," which is certainly very puzzling to the rea- 
 son. But this is of the essence of faith, it is said : 
 — to take on trust what perplexes the reason. 
 Only adopt the doctrine which perplexes the rea- 
 son, be a Christian, and afterwards "you shall 
 know of the doctrine whether it be of God." And 
 with this is connected what is so often said in the 
 Bible about "receiving the kingdom of God as a 
 little child," about "babes seeing what is hidden 
 from the wise and prudent." The unlettered be- 
 liever is, in fact,— according to this version of 
 what the Bible means to say,— represented in the 
 Bible as a better judge about a thing which per- 
 plexes the reason than the philosopher. And this 
 explains the disdain with which the possessors of 
 gospel truth, as it is called, are apt to treat art 
 and literature and science. These happy men are 
 supposed to have, by faith, a certainty in matters 
 perplexing in the highest degree to the reason, 
 which the vaunted exercise of the reason can 
 never attain to. And as with faith in Christ, so 
 with faith in God : it is taking on trust something 
 perplexing to the reason. Texts like, "They that 
 seek the Eternal understand all things," and, "I am 
 wiser than the aged because I keep Thy command- 
 ments," mean, that we are better ofi" and see 
 clearer than men of study and experience, if, in 
 spite of its puzzling the reason, we accept in faith, 
 and they do not, some truth like the Bishop of 
 Gloucester's "blessed truth that the God of the 
 universe is a Person." 
 
 208 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 [N( 
 
 ^No one has more insisted on this opposition be- 
 tween faith and reason than a writer whom we 
 can never name but with respectj — Dr. Newman. ^ 
 "The moral trial involved in faith," he says, "lies 
 in the submi/ssion of the reason to external reali- 
 ties partially disclosed." And again: "Faith is, in 
 its very nature, the acceptance of what our reason 
 cannot reach, simply and absolutely upon testi- 
 mony." -But surely faith is, in its very nature, 
 (with all respect be it spoken 1) nothing of the 
 kind; else how could Christ say to the Jews: "If 
 I tell you the truth, why do ye not believe me?" 
 Surely this implies that faith, instead of being a 
 submission of the reason to what puzzles it, is 
 rather a recognition of what is perfectly clear, if 
 we will attend to it._! We cannot always attend, 
 all of us; and here is the not ourselves in the 
 matter, "the grace of God." But attention, 
 cleaving, attaching one's self fast to what is unde- 
 niably true, — this is what the faith of Scripture, 
 "in its very nature," is; and not the submission 
 of the reason to what puzzles it, or the accept- 
 ance, simply and absolutely upon testimony, of 
 what our reason cannot reach. And all that the 
 Bible says of bringing to naught the wisdom of 
 the wise, and of receiving the kingdom of Grod as 
 a little child, has nothing whatever to do with the 
 believer's acceptance of some dogma that per- 
 plexes the reason; it is aimed at those who so- 
 phisticate a very simple thing, religion, by import- 
 ing into it a so-called science with which it has 
 nothing to do. Jewish theological learning, the 
 system of divinity of the Jewish hierarchy, who 
 did not know how simple a thing righteousness 
 really was, and who, when simple souls saw it in 
 Christ and were drawn to it, cried out, "This 
 people that knoweth not the laws are cursed I" it 
 14 209 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 was at these, and at whatever resembles these, 
 that Christ aimed the words about receiving the 
 kingdom of Grod as a little child. 
 
 And the •'marvellous work and wonder'* about 
 the saving truth which the simple receive is, not 
 that, being difficult to the reason, it is yet got 
 hold of by the unlettered and not by the wise; 
 but that, being so simple, it should yet be so im- 
 mense, important, indispensable ; and that, being 
 eo immense, important, indispensable, it should 
 yet so often be followed by quite unlettered people 
 and neglected by such very clever ones. They are 
 attending to other things, — things which do task 
 the reason and intelligence, and in which the un- 
 lettered have no skill and no voice ; these things, 
 however, are, at most, only one fourth of life. 
 And this absurdity — for such it really is— we see 
 every day; — people attending to the difficult sci- 
 ence of matters where the plam practice they quite 
 let slip. How many people will be now busy 
 with Mr. Darwin's new book, so admirably in- 
 genious, on the natural history of the emotions, 
 who yet are always using their own emotions in 
 the worst possible manner! They are eager to 
 know how their emotions arose, how these came 
 to express themselves as they do; yet there the 
 emotions now are, and have for a long time been, 
 and the first thing for any sane man is, to make 
 a proper use of them, and to know how to make 
 a proper use is not difficult;— but all this we 
 never think of, but investigate zealously how 
 they arose I Such persons are just like those 
 learned inquirers the Cynic laughed at, who were 
 so busy about the strayings of Ulysses, so in- 
 attentive to their own. 
 
 And Israel's greatness was that he was so im- 
 patient of trifling of this kind, of being busy with 
 210 
 
THE TESTIMONY OP JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 one fourth of life, while the three fourths, conduct, 
 was forgotten. And Israel boldlj said: "They 
 that seek the Eternal understand aU things"; 
 that is, they are occupied with conduct, righteous- 
 ness, which truly is, as we have seen, at least 
 three fourths of life, and which Israel thought the 
 whole of it. They have a hold on three fourths of 
 life, while it may be that their great, clever, and 
 accomplished neighbors have a hold on only one 
 fourth, or part of one fourth of life. Which is the 
 solid and sensible man, which understands most, 
 which lives most? [Compare a Methodist day- 
 laborer with some dissolute, gifted, brilliant 
 grandee, who thinks nothing of him I — but the 
 first deals successfully with nearly the whole of 
 life, while the second is all abroad in it. ^/Com- 
 pare some simple and pious monk, at Rome, with 
 one of those frivolous men of taste whom we 
 have all seen there 1 — each knows nothing of what 
 interests the other ; but which is the more vital con- 
 cern for a man : conduct, or arts and antiquities? 
 fNay, and however false his science and Biblical 
 criticism, the believer who applies the method and 
 secret of Jesus has a width of range and sureness 
 of foothold in life, which even the best scientific 
 and Kterary critic of the Bible, who applies them 
 not, is without ; because the first is right in what 
 aflfects three fourths of life, and the second in 
 what affects but one fourth, or even but one 
 eighth.^ Each has a secret of which the other, 
 who has no experience of it, does not know the 
 value; but the value of the learned man's secret is 
 ridiculously least. This, I say, is the very glory 
 and marvel of the religion of the true Israel, and 
 what makes this religion, as Jesus called it, "the 
 good news to the poor" ; that it covers nearly the 
 whole of life, and yet is so simple. 
 211 
 
LITERATUBE AND DOGMA. 
 
 The only right contrast, therefore, to set up be- 
 tween faith and reason is, not that faith grasps 
 what is too hard for reason, but that reason does 
 not, like faith, attend to what is at once so great 
 and so simple. [The diMculty about faith is, to 
 attend to what is very simple and very impor- 
 tant, but liable to be pushed by more showy or 
 tempting matters out of sight ; the marvel about 
 faith is, that what is so simple should be so all- 
 snftiemg, so necessary, and so often neglected, [ 
 And faith is neither the submission of the 
 reason, nor is it the acceptance, simply and ab- 
 solutely upon testimony, of what reason can- 
 not reach. :!JPaith is: "the being able to cleave 
 to a power of goodness appealing to our higher 
 and real self, not to our lower and apoarent 
 self." V 
 
 8. 
 
 So we see how unlike is Christ's own doctrine 
 of his being the Son of Grod to the difficult doc- 
 trine of the Grodhead of the Eternal Son, as the 
 Athanasian Creed "arranges it, sentence after sen- 
 tence," and in the form in which our bishops 
 want to "do something" for it; as unlike as the 
 original revelation to Israel of the Eternal that 
 lovetb righteousness is to "the blessed doctrine 
 that the G-od of the universe is a Person." And 
 we see how the clergymen who write to the 
 "Guardian" deceive themselves, when they imag- 
 ine that it is to these doctrines of our bishops 
 that Christ "unquestionably attaches eternal life," 
 and how they are led into this error by having 
 more of turn for abstruse reasoning than of 
 literary experience. They are not conversant 
 enough with the many different ways in which 
 men think and speak, so as to be able to distin- 
 2ia 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 guish rightly between them, and to perceive that 
 the Bible is literature; and that its words are 
 used, like the words of common life and of poetry 
 and eloquence, approximately, and not like the 
 terms of science, adequately. 
 
 And if they fall into mistakes about words ap- 
 plied to the Father and the Son, by thus making 
 them scientific, how much more do they fall into 
 mistakes when they extend this treatment to 
 words applied to the Holy Spirit. We haye seen 
 how the word Pneuma, just by reason of its in- 
 ward and infinite character, was much employed 
 by Jesus for his method of inwardness and of 
 dehverance from binding traditions and formulas ; 
 and how, since Holy Ghost has become to us a 
 formula, just as God and righteousness were to 
 the Jews, to get the force of Christ's use of the 
 word "Pneuma," we ought to retranslate the 
 word for ourselves, and to call it, for a time at 
 any rate, rather induence, intuition, or some such 
 name. 
 
 For it was thus that Jesus himself used it. 
 When Jesus was going away, above all, and his 
 disciples were to be thrown on themselves and 
 left to use his method of inwardness more deeply 
 and thoroughly, not having him to go to, — then 
 they would find, he said, a new power come to 
 their help ; a power of insight such as they had 
 never had before, and which was none of their 
 making, but came from Grod as Jesus did, and 
 said nothing of itself, but only what God said or 
 Jesus said ; a "Paraclete," or reinforcement work- 
 ing in aid of God and Jesus: even the Spirit of 
 Truth. While Jesus was with them, the disciples 
 had lived in contact with aletbeia, or reality ; and 
 they were promised now an intuition of reality 
 within themselves. 
 
 213 
 
LITERATURE AND DOaMA, 
 
 Now, will it be believed that the Athanasian 
 Creed, and our bishops, and the clergymen who 
 write to the "Gruardian," and dogmatic theology 
 in general, should have imagined that Christ here 
 meant to convey to us the "blessed doctrine" 
 that this Spirit of truth, too, "is a Person'*? The 
 force of metaphysical talent outrunning literary 
 experience could really, we say, no farther got 
 The Muse, who visited Heeiod when he was tend- 
 ing his sheep on the side of Helicon, and "breathed 
 into him a divine voice, and taught him the 
 things to come and the former things," might 
 every bit as well be made, with much display of 
 metaphysical apparatus, "a Person." The influ- 
 ence which visited Hesiod was a real one ;— that 
 is as much metaphysics as we can without error, 
 in a case of this sort, apply. Whoever applies 
 more falls into absurdity. 
 
 The "Spirit of truth," indeed, which rejoiced the 
 wise poet of Ascra, was the Muse of art and sci- 
 ence, the Muse of the gifted few, the Muse who 
 brings to the ingenious and learned among man- 
 kind "a forgetfulness," as Hesiod sings, "of evils 
 and a truce from cares." It was the same Muse, 
 no doubt, who visits the Bishop of Grloucester 
 when he sits in his palace, meditating on person- 
 ality, or sometimes perhaps, in his lighter hours, 
 on political economy. The Paraclete that Jesus 
 promised, on the other hand, was the Muse of 
 righteousness; the Muse of the workday, care- 
 crossed, toil-stained millions of men,— the Muse of 
 humanity. ^To all who Uve, for all that concerns 
 three fourths of life, this divine Muse oflers "a 
 forgetfulness of evils and a truce from cares." 
 That is why it is far more real, and far greater, 
 than the Muse of Hesiod; not from any meta- 
 physical personality. 7 
 
 ■ 214 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 9. 
 
 But the whole centre of gravity of the Christian 
 religion, in the popular as well as in the so-called 
 orthodox notion of it, is placed in Christ's having, 
 by his death in satisfaction for man's sins, per- 
 formed the contract originally passed in the Coun- 
 cil of the Trinity, and having thus enabled the 
 magnified and non-natural Man in heaven, who is 
 the God of theology and of the multitude alike, to 
 consider his justice satisfied, and to allow his 
 mercy to go forth on all who heartily believe that 
 Christ has paid their debt for them. Now we 
 have seen how that whole structure of materializ- 
 ing mythology, which the Bible is supposed to 
 deliver, and in which this conception of the Atone- 
 ment, as it is called, holds the central place, drops 
 away and disappears as the Bible comes to be 
 better known. The true centre of gravity of the 
 Christian religion is in the method and the secret 
 of Jesus, approximating, in their application, ever 
 closer to the epieikeiaf the sweet reasonableness 
 and unerring sureness, of Jesus himself. And as 
 the method of Jesus led up to his secret, and his 
 secret was dying to "the life in this world" and 
 living to "the eternal life," both his method and 
 his secret, therefore, culminated in his "perfecting" 
 on the cross, which he foresaw and foretold. 
 
 The miracle of the corporeal resurrection ruled 
 the minds of those who have reported Christ's 
 sayings for us ; and their report, how he foretold 
 his death, cannot always be entirely accepted. 
 One of them alleges him to have foretold it by 
 pointing to his body and saying: "Destroy this 
 temple, and in three days I will raise it up 1" Now, 
 this is certainly an instance of the retrospective 
 pressure exercised on words of Jesus by the es- 
 tablished belief in the resurrection. He had said 
 215 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 of the Temple at Jerusalem: "There shall not be 
 left of it one stone upon another." He had said of 
 himself and this much-reverenced Temple : "There 
 standeth here One greater than the Temple." He 
 had said he should be put to death, and the death 
 of the worst malefactors, crucifixion. He had 
 said that this should happen after he had worked 
 but a little while longer: "l do cures to-day and 
 to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected." 
 Nothing more was needed. The miraculous pre- 
 diction concerning "the temple of his body" was 
 ready to the miracle- writer's hand I Jesus had 
 said : "Destroy this temple and in three days I will 
 raise it up I" 
 
 In sayings of this kind, the internal evidence is 
 all-important. Now, the sure clew of internal 
 evidence to follow, in tracing any words of Jesus 
 about his death and rising again, is the clew 
 given by the ideal of the stricken Servant of God 
 in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. This ideal, as 
 we have seen, Jesus had adopted and elevated as 
 the true ideal of Israel's Saviour; he had corrected 
 by it the favorite popular ideals he found regnant. 
 And, in this ideal of the stricken Servant of God, 
 the notion of sacrMce is, that this lover of right- 
 eousness falls because of a state of iniquity and 
 wickedness which he had no share in making, and 
 as the only remedy for it. The notion of redemp- 
 tion is, that by endurance to the end and by his 
 death crowning his life, he establishes all seekers 
 after good in their allegiance to good, enables 
 them to follow it and to reach true life through 
 it. Finally, the notion of resurrection is, that his 
 death makes an epoch of victory for him and his 
 cause, which thenceforward live and reign inde- 
 structibly. "He had done no violence, neither was 
 any deceit in his mouth ; he was bruised for our 
 216 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 iniquities, the Eternal hath laid on him the ini- 
 quity of U8 all ; "—there is the sacrifice. "With his 
 stripes "we are healed;" — there is the redemption. 
 But: "When Thou hast made his soul an offering 
 for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his 
 days, and the pleasure of the Eternal shall prosper 
 in his hand ; "—there, at the end of it all, is the 
 resurrection. 
 
 And just these stages we shall find again in 
 Jesus. "Which of you convicteth me of sin?" he 
 asked the Jews; neyertheless : "The Son of Man 
 must suffer many things and be rejected of this 
 generation; the Son of Man must be lifted up;" — 
 there is the sacrifice. " Except a grain of corn fall 
 into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; the Son 
 of Man came to give his life a ransomformany ;" — 
 there is the redemption. But : "If the grain of com 
 die, it bringeth forth much fruit ; I, if I be lifted 
 up from the earth, will draw all men unto -me ; if 
 I go not away the Spirit of truth will not come 
 unto you, but if I depart I will send him unto 
 you, and when he is come he will convince the 
 world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment;" — 
 there, there is the resurrection and triumph I 
 
 The use by Jesus of the words life and death 
 must on no account, however, be limited to this 
 his crucifixion and after-triumph, though in these, 
 no doubt, his dying and living culminated. Yet 
 both here, and always in his uf ^ of them, they 
 are to be referred to his secret: *'He that loveth 
 his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in 
 this world shall keep it unto life eternal ; renounce 
 thyself, and take up thy cross daily, and follow 
 Me I "fXong before his signal Crucifixion Jesus had 
 died, oy taking up daily that cross which his dis- 
 ciples, after his daily example, were to take up 
 also. "/"Therefore doth my Father love me," he 
 217 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 says, "because 1 lay down my life that I may take 
 it again." He had risen to life long before his 
 crowning Resurrection, risen to life in what he 
 calls "my joy" which he desired to see fulfilled in 
 his disciples also; "my joy, to have kept my 
 Father's commandment and abide in his love." 
 
 Nay, and there is no more powerful testimony 
 to Christ's real use of the words Me and death, 
 than a famous text, borrowed from Jewish Aber- 
 glaube, which popular Christianity has wrested in 
 support of its tenet of a physical resurrection at 
 the Messiah's second advent. Whatever we may 
 think of the narrative of the raising of Lazarus, 
 we need have no difficulty in believing that Jesus 
 really did say to the brother or sister of a dead 
 disciple: "Thy brother shall rise againl" and that 
 the mourner replied: "I know that he shall rise 
 again at the resurrection of the last day." For 
 the answer which follows has the certain stamp 
 of Jesus: "I am the resurrection and the life ; he 
 that believeth on me, though he die, shall live, 
 and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall 
 never die." Now, Martha believed already in the 
 resurrection of Jewish and Christian Aberglaube 
 —the resurrection according to the Book of Dan- 
 iel and the Book of Enoch, the resurrection of the 
 last day, when "they that sleep in the dust of the 
 earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and 
 some to shame and everlasting contempt." But 
 Jesus corrects her Aberglaube, by telling her that 
 her brother is not dead at all ; and his words, out 
 of which the story of the miracle very likely grew, 
 do really make the miracle quite unnecessary. 
 "He that has believed on me and had my secret," 
 says Jesus, "though his body die to the life of 
 this world, still lives ; for such an one had died to 
 the life of this world already, and found true life, 
 218 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 life out of himself, life in the Eternal that loveth 
 righteouenesa, by doing so." 
 jjust in the same way, again, in his promise to 
 see his disciples again after his crucifixion and to 
 take up his abode with them, Jesus corrects, for 
 those who have eyes to read, he corrects in the 
 clearest and most decisive way, those very errors 
 with which our common material conceptions of 
 life and death have made us invest his death and 
 resurrection. "Yet a little while," he says, "and 
 the world seeth me no more; but ye see me, be- 
 cause I live, and ye shall live too.J He that hath 
 my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that 
 loveth me; and him that loveth me I will love, 
 and will manifest myself to him." Jude naturally 
 objects : "How is it that thou wilt manifest thy- 
 self to us and not to the world?" And Jesus 
 answers: "If a man love me, he will keep my 
 word, and my Father will love him, and we will 
 come unto him and make our abode with him; he 
 that loveth me not, keepeth not my word." 
 Therefore the manifestation of himself he speaks of 
 is nothing external and material. It is,— like the 
 manifestation of Grod to him that ordereth his 
 conversation right, the internal life and joy in 
 keeping the commandments,— it is the life for the 
 disciples of Christ, in and with Christ, in "keeping 
 the commandments of God" ; those command- 
 ments, which had at last in their true scope been 
 made known to them, through Christ's method 
 and through his secret. 
 
 10. 
 
 Thus, then, did Jesus seek to transform the im- 
 mense materializing Aberglaube into which the 
 religion of Israel had fallen, and to spiritualize it 
 at all points ; while in his method and secret he 
 219 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 supplied a sure basis for practice. But to follow 
 him entirely there was needed an epieikeia,, an un- 
 failing sweetness and an unerring perception, like 
 his own. It was much if his disciples got firm 
 hold on his method and his secret ; and if they 
 transmitted fragments enough of his lofty spirit- 
 ualism, to make it in the fulness of time discerni- 
 ble, and to make it at once and from the first in 
 a large degree serviceable. Who can read in the 
 Grospels the comments preserved to us, both of 
 disciples and of others, on what he said, and not 
 feel that Jesus must have known, while he never- 
 theless persevered in saying them, how things 
 like : "The bread which I will give is my flesh for 
 the life of the world," or: "I will not leave you 
 comfortless, I will come unto you," would be 
 misapprehended by those who heard them? 
 
 But, indeed, Jesus himself tells us that he knew 
 and foresaw this. With the promise of the Spirit 
 of truth which should, after his departure, work 
 in his disciples first, then in the world, and which 
 should convince the world of sin, of righteousness, 
 and of judgment, and finally transform it, we are 
 all familiar. But how little we remark the im- 
 pressive words, uttered to the crowd around him 
 only a Uttle while before, and of far wider appli- 
 cation than the reporter imagined: "Yet a little 
 while is the light with you ; walk while ye have 
 the light, lest the darkness overtake you una- 
 wares 1" The real application cannot have been 
 to the unconverted only;— a call to the uncon- 
 verted to make haste because their chance of con- 
 version would soon, with Christ's departure, be 
 gone; no, converts came in far thicker after 
 Christ's departure than in his life. [The words are 
 for the converted also ; it is as if Jesus foresaw the 
 want of his sweet reasonableness which he could 
 220 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 not leave, to help his method and hie secret 
 which he could leave;— as if he foresaw his words 
 misconstrued, his rising to eternal life turned into 
 a physical miracle, the advent of the Spirit of 
 truth turned into a scene of thaumaturgy, Peter 
 proving his Master's Messiahship from a Fsalm 
 that does not prove it, the great Apostle of the 
 Gentiles word-splitting like a pedantic Rabbi, the 
 most beautiful soul among his own reporters 
 saddling him with metaphysics ;— foresaw the 
 growth of creeds, the growth of dogma, and so, 
 through ail the confusion worse confounded of 
 councils, schoolmen, and confessions of faith, 
 down to our own twin Bishops of Winchester and 
 Gloucester bent on "doing something" for the 
 honor of the Godhead of the Eternal Son I ^ 
 
 221 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Eakly Witnessbs. 
 
 Our object in this essay has never been to argue 
 against miracles. Even with Lourdes and La 
 Salette before our eyes, we may yet say that 
 miracles are doomed; they will drop out, like 
 fairies or witchcraft, from among the matters 
 which serious people believe. Our one object is to 
 save the revelation in the Bible from being made 
 solidary, as our Comtist friends say, with mira- 
 cles ; from being attended to or held cheap just in 
 proportion as miracles are attended to or are held 
 cheap. 
 
 In like manner, nay far more, our object is not, 
 and never can be, to pick holes in the apostles 
 and reporters of Jesus. But much which they say 
 cannot stand ; our one object is to hinder people 
 from making Jesus solidary with this, and with 
 his reporters' and apostles' character for infalli- 
 bility. To this extent, and to this only, we are 
 brought at moments into colUsion with miracles, 
 into collision with the disciples of Jesus and with 
 , the writers of the New Testament. [We have to 
 show that, the men being what and when and 
 whence they were, the miracles would certainly 
 grow up for them around and in the wake of 
 Jesus.j 
 
 How did Christ's words: "I will see you again, 
 I go to prepare a place for you I" grow into the 
 legend— so beautiful, and round which have for 
 centuries gathered such sacred feelings and aspira- 
 tions, yet a legend— of his corporeal resurrection 
 222 
 
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 
 
 and ascension? How? Why, Herod's first words, 
 when after the execution of John the Baptist he 
 heard of Jesus, were: ''It is John the Baptist; be 
 is risen £"0111 the dead!" In such an atmosphere 
 of belief were the disciples living, when their loss 
 of Jesus, the greatest loss that ever befell men, 
 happened. All his discourse, when he was with 
 them, had run on life and death,— apparent death, 
 enduring life ; and how many are the stories of the 
 survivors, in an atmosphere of belief like that of 
 those Palestine times, refusing to believe in the 
 death of a head even far less precious to them, 
 full of reports of his reappearance in this place 
 and that place, feeding themselves on the promise 
 of his triumphant return I How many thousands 
 at this moment, in Persia, refuse to credit the 
 death of the B§.b, their Gate o/iife, executed some 
 years ago I assert that he will return, that he has 
 been seen, that they have seen him I 
 
 But the reporters of Jesus were not as others; 
 they were infallible? So infallible that they report 
 themselves, when Jesus reappeared, after all his 
 labors to transform and spiritualize for them the 
 old Jewish ideal,— they report themselves to have 
 met him with the inquiry : "Lord, wilt thouat this 
 time restore the kingdom to Israeli" But the Holy 
 Grhost had not then been given? And after the 
 Holy Ghost was given, we find them with one 
 voice asserting that in the lifetime of that genera- 
 tion should come Christ's second advent and the 
 end of the world ; Peter falling back into Judaism, 
 so that Paul had to withstand him to the face 
 because he was to be blamed, and Paul himself 
 proving salvation to be by Jesus, from seed, in the 
 promise to Abraham, being used in the singular 1 
 That it is impossible the disciples of Jesus should 
 have been, alone of all the disciples in the world, 
 223 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 infallible^ that it is begging the question to say 
 they were infallible, need not be made out ; it is 
 conspicuous, on the face of their own showing of 
 themselves, that they were not infallible. And 
 well it is that it should be so ; for this favorite 
 Protestant doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible 
 writers, inherited, indeed, from the Fathers along 
 with that of the infallibility of the Church, but 
 kept and extolled by Protestants as the true 
 single anchor to ride at, whereas the other was 
 rotten,— this doctrine involves Christianity in 
 dangers quite as serious as its discarded rival 
 does. 
 
 But it was not for nothing that the Apostles 
 had lived with Jesus ; or even, in the case of a 
 great religious spirit like Paul, lived in his time, 
 lived in his country, had his presence and words 
 near and fresh to them. And, untrue and danger- 
 ous as is the popular Protestant doctrine of the 
 plenary inspiration of the Apostles, making them 
 infallible, and vouchsafed no more to any one 
 after the Apostles were gone, yet it rests on a 
 true perception of the vast distance which sepa- 
 rates them from after-writers on Christianity, 
 from the Fathers as from Luther and Calvin, all 
 alike. This they owe to their conteict with Jesus ; 
 or, in Paul's case, to their nearness to him. The 
 impression of him was too fresh and vivid, his 
 method and secret still had too firmly the promi- 
 nence he had given them, the atmosphere of his 
 sweet reasonableness still hung round his disciples 
 too much, to permit of the deep confusions and 
 misunderstandings of after-times. There is no 
 pleasure in proving that the Apostles sometimes 
 made mistakes ; but to trace in the Apostles the 
 reproduction of the method and secret of Jesus is 
 one of the most delightful of tasks. And since to 
 224 
 
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 
 
 show such reproduction of Jesus in his followers 
 throws light on what we have said of Jesus him- 
 self, and confirms it, we will permit ourselves to 
 do this very briefly. And we will show it, first 
 and above all, in the case of the three great wit- 
 nesses to him in the New Testament, — Peter, Paul, 
 and the writer who is called, properly or im- 
 properly, St. John. 
 
 2, 
 
 To begin with St. Peter. The First Epistle of 
 St, Peter commends itself almost as certainly as 
 the genuine work of the author whose name it 
 bears, as the Second Epistle bespeaks itself the 
 contrary. And, except for the one strange pas- 
 sage about the spirits in prison and Noah's flood, 
 at the end of the third chapter, — where the mean- 
 ing which was in the writer's mind is probably 
 now irrecoverable for us, — there is shed over this 
 whole production more, perhaps, of the epieikeia, 
 or what we call the sweet reasonableness, of 
 Christ, than over any other epistle we possess. 
 Very much this is due to its eimpUcity, to the un- 
 ambitious nature of its topics and of its treat- 
 ment of them ; because, clearly, the appUcation of 
 prophecy, the adjustment of the old ideal of Israel 
 to the new, the management of the ideas of life 
 and death, of justification, and the like,— in all of 
 which th.^ epieikeia of Christ himself shone forth so 
 matchlessly, — are much harder to treat with the 
 winning simplicity and limpid intuitiveness which 
 make the charm of epieiieia, than conduct itself is. 
 
 And conduct is what this epistle is concerned 
 with, almost from the first line to the last. 
 "Tour good conversation in Christ"; "As He 
 who called you is bolj, be ye also bolj in all 
 your conversation^^ \—ihi& is the head and front 
 of the matter with the writer. Holiness is but, as 
 15 225 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 "we have said, a deep and finished righteousness. 
 And the method for it is the method of Jesus — 
 the inward man awakened, conscience. "Bom 
 again through the word of Grod that liveth and 
 abideth" ; "The hidden man of the heart'' ; "Hav- 
 ing a good conscience"; — again and again this 
 word "conscience," so strange to the Old Testa- 
 ment, appears. And the two great groups of 
 faults which, in a rough way, do sufficiently com- 
 prehend all conduct, are again, as they were by 
 Jesus, marked as the matter to be dealt with:— 
 faults of temper and faults of sensuality. "Not 
 conformed to the former lusts of your time of 
 ignorance"; "The time past may suffice us to 
 have wrought the will of the Gentiles, having 
 walked in dissoluteness, lusts, excess of wine, 
 revellings'' ; "Abstain from ffeshljlustSj which-wsir 
 against the soul"; "Be temperate, be sober"; — 
 this is for faults of sensuality. "Putting away 
 all malice, and all deceit, and insincerities, and 
 envies, and all evil-speakings" ; "Be of one mind, 
 feel with one another, love as brethren"; "Be 
 tender-hearted, humble-minded" ; "The incorrupti- 
 ble of that mild and quiet spirit which is, in the 
 sight of God, of great price" ; — this is for the 
 faults of temper. 
 
 So far the "method" of Jesus; and now for his 
 "secret" of eelf-renouncement, of dying to our 
 apparent self, to our life in this world. "Even 
 though ye suffer for righteousness, happy are ye I " 
 "For to suffering ye are called, because Christ 
 also suffered for our sakes, leaving us an ensample 
 that we should follow his steps"; "As Christ 
 suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with 
 the same mind, for he that suffers in the flesh is 
 freed from sin" ; "Elected of God unto obedience 
 and sprinkMng with the blood of Christ" And 
 226 
 
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 
 
 nowhere does the joy, which with Christ is the 
 great test and sanction of his method and secret, 
 come out fuller and stronger than in this epistle. 
 "But ye are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a 
 holy nation, a peculiar people, to tell forth the 
 excellences of Him who called jou out of darkness 
 into his marvellous Jigbtl" 
 
 The belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ, 
 and the expectation of his second Advent in the 
 lifetime of the generation then living, are signal 
 supports to the writer's mind. But our popular 
 notion of the Atonements— Christ^ & death repre- 
 sented as a satisfaction of Grod's offended justice- 
 does not yet appear. The governing idea of the 
 fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, adopted by Jesus 
 himself, is still faithfully preserved. Christ died 
 for his people "to redeem them from their vain 
 conversation delivered by tradition"; Christ suf- 
 fered, "in order that we, dying to sins, might live 
 to righteousness." 
 
 3. 
 
 Next we come to St. Paul; but elsewhere* we 
 have spoken so fully of St. Paul's theology that 
 we shall be very brief here. Need we say that 
 righteousness is its ground-thought, — real right- 
 eousness discerned to be such by means of a 
 change of the inner man? "Circumcision is noth- 
 ing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping 
 of the commandments of God" Righteousness is 
 the end and aim. Then, in the words, "I exercise 
 myself to have a conscience void of offence to- 
 wards God and men continually," we find our- 
 selves in the method of Jesus. "Let every man 
 prove by experience his own work, and then shall 
 he have rejoicing in himself alone and not in an- 
 other"; "Prove all things by experience, keep 
 *See St, Paul and Protestantism. 
 227 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 what is good" ; "Prove by experience what things 
 are excellent" ; "Able to prove by experience what 
 is that good and perfect and acceptable will of 
 Grod." All this points to inward appraisal, the 
 method of inwardness, the individual conscience. 
 Jesus has given a new faculty of judging things, 
 light; "All things that are convicted as wrong 
 are shown to be what they really are by the 
 JSght: for whatever shows things to be what they 
 really are, is light. Wherefore he saith: Awake 
 thou tjiat sleepest, and arise from the dead, and 
 Christ shall give thee light T^* This is the new 
 power of the method of Jesus, of conscience. And 
 no one has so well described as St. Paul the work- 
 ing of conscience as first set going by Christianity. 
 "Commending ourselves, by the manifesting of the 
 reality,to every human conscience!" "Thehidden 
 things of a man's heart are made manifest" he 
 says; "all that he hears convicts him, sifts him to 
 the bottom; he falls on his face and worships, de- 
 claring that Grod is indeed here!" Nor does St. 
 Paul fail to specify again and again the matter 
 wherewith conscience deals: — ^*tbe works of thfi 
 fesb" as he calls them; 'Tornication, uncleanness, 
 dissoluteness, idol-worship, witchcraft, hatreds, 
 strife, jealousy, angers, contentions, divisions, sects, 
 envies, drunkenness, revellings, and such like." 
 " They are manifest," says he, and so they are ; for 
 they roughly cover what all the Corinthians, to 
 whom he wrote, understood by conductj—the 
 whole body of faults connected with our two 
 great primary instincts, faults of temper and 
 faults of sensuality. Elsewhere, to the Colossians, 
 he even seems to follow,— but still in an informal, 
 
 * Eph. V. 13, 14. The Epistle to the Ephesians cannot well be 
 altogether Paul's, but It is full of Pauline things, and this Is 
 certainly among them. 
 
 228 
 
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 
 
 approximative manner, Buch as one uses when one 
 speaks of matters so familiar that to be precise is 
 pedantic, — he even seems to actually follow this 
 division, and to throw faults of conduct into two 
 groups which nearly correspond to it. Finally, 
 to the works of the flesh, which are thus evidently 
 conduct wrong, he opposes the fruits of the Spirit, 
 which are as evidently conduct right: "Love, joy, 
 peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, mild- 
 ness, self-control." By following the inward meth- 
 od of Jesus, he tells us, we perceive that here 
 is the subject-matter of righteousness, that this is 
 what keeping the commandments of God really is. 
 But that the "secret" of Jesus was applied to 
 this subject-matter by Paul, who can doubt, when 
 that secret is the very heart of Paul's theology, 
 and he came to view the crucifixion and resurrec- 
 tion of Christ altogether in connection with it? 
 We would ask the student of the Pauline theology 
 to read again now, by the light of what we have 
 in this essay said of the teaching of Jesus, what 
 we have elsewhere said of Paul's theology.* At 
 present we will quote as Paul's witness to the 
 secret of Jesus but these three texts, so strong 
 and plain that they may well stand as the great 
 signal-marks to it: "I am cruciSed with. Christ"; 
 "If ye die with him, ye shall also live with him" ; 
 "Always bearing about in the body the dying of 
 the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be 
 manifested in our body." The word of the cross, 
 as he calls it, is his pole-star. By the method and 
 example of Jesus he has become aware of a new 
 principle of choosing and refusing, of going after 
 things and retiring from them. This principle acts 
 always in view of a new creature, the higher or 
 real self, agreeing with the "will of Grod," con- 
 
 *St. Paul and Protestantism, Fart IL 
 229 
 
LITERATUEE AND DOGMA. 
 
 flicting with the lower or apparent self, or the 
 wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts. 
 With this new principle, a man's great aim is now 
 *'to put off, as regards our former way of life, the 
 old man that perishes by compliance with the 
 misleading lusts;'' and to put on the new man, 
 that after God is created in righteousness." And 
 the secret for this is, says Paul, being cruci£ed 
 with Christ, or, being conformed to Christ's 
 death, or, always bearing about in the body the 
 dying of Jesus. Paul told his converts he was 
 "in travail of them till Christ be fashioned in 
 them," — the entire Christ, with his method, secret, 
 and sweet reasonableness; but the great stress is 
 laid on the "secret," on dying with him, because 
 this was Christ's secret, because the heart of the 
 matter is indeed here. And as we shall do well to 
 have the "secret" in our minds when Jesus talks 
 of "the living water," "the bread of life," so it is 
 of the possession of this same secret that Paul is 
 specially thinking, when he talks of "counting all 
 things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge 
 of Christ Jesus my Lord"; or when he says: 
 "Grod forbid that I should glory, save in the cross 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, wherein the world is 
 crucided unto me, and I unto the world! " 
 
 And the evidence of joy which testifies to the 
 salvation there is in Jesus and in his secret, and 
 the sense of "not ourselves" which fills this joy 
 with awe and gratitude, and makes it religious to 
 the core, who has rendered them like Paul? "Re- 
 joice evermore I" "Rejoice in the Lord alway; 
 again I say, rejoice!" "Sorrowful, yet alway re- 
 joicing!" "As the sufiferings of Christ abound 
 with us, so through Christ abounds also the con- 
 
 ♦Tbp froAaioF e^vQfHuiTOv^ TOi* ^Oeipofltvov Kara Tos effiflv/AittS Tqj 
 djrdTijs.— Eph. iv. 33, 
 
 230 
 
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 
 
 solation" "The unsearchable riches of Christ!" 
 "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" 
 "0 the depth of the riches both of the wisdom 
 and knowledge of Grodl" "It is God that work- 
 eth in you, both to will and to do, of his good 
 power." "He that glorieth, let him glory in the 
 Eternair 
 
 All this is in Paul; and there is, besides, the 
 Aberglauhe or eitra-beUef of the bodily resurrec- 
 tion, of Christ's second adyent during the lifetime 
 of men then living, of the God "willing to show 
 his wrath and to make his power known with 
 vessels of wrath fitted to destruction" ; there is 
 the Rabbinical logic, and the unsound use of 
 prophecy and of the Old Testament. For popular 
 theology the writings of Paul are a fatal rock ; 
 because they are the products of a mind that was 
 constantly growing, and because they afiect the 
 forms of logic and science which a complete no- 
 tional system adopts, while their true character 
 and force is that of an approximative experience. 
 So the mechanical theory of inspiration makes 
 strange work indeed with Paul's writings. They 
 are, however, to those who can use them right, 
 inexhaustible, not only in their power of anima- 
 tion and edification, but also in their illustration 
 of the genuine doctrine of Jesus. 
 4. 
 
 The author of the Fourth Gospel is undoubtedly 
 the author of the epistle which we call the First 
 Epistle of St. John ; and we of course might ex- 
 pect that the epistle should tally with the gospel. 
 And so it does ; only it upholds, one may say, in 
 one most important matter, the doctrine of Christ 
 against the Fourth Gospel itself. 
 
 We have seen how the author of this gospel had 
 a leaning to metaphysics ; so that he delights M, 
 231 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 Bumouf by showing a quite Indo-European turn 
 for making God into a metaphysical source of 
 things, such as is not unworthy, perhaps, of being 
 called a cosmic unity ; and Jesus into the Logos, 
 necessarily related, by some lofty metaphysical 
 law or other, to this cosmic unity. But presently 
 came the Gnostics, still more full of the Aryan 
 genius, and still more admired by M. Burnouf ; full 
 of religion's being a knowing rather than a doing, 
 a metaphysical conception rather than righteous- 
 ness. And, in feict, as we have said already, it 
 may well seem wonderful that so great a thing as 
 religion should be taken up with so simple a thing 
 as conduct; so that Christ says that he who re- 
 ceives the kingdom of God as a little child,— th&t 
 is, who simply receives it as concerned with this 
 simple matter, — the same is the greatest in that 
 kingdom, Christ does say so, however; and no 
 one who had lived with him, and felt his influence, 
 could doubt it. But the Gnostics, who had not 
 lived with him, did not think so ; and they natu- 
 rally imagined that a man who was right about 
 such grand things as the cosmic unity, and the 
 pleronaa, and emanation, and personality, and 
 consubstantiality, and the like, must have true 
 religion and be the perfect man. And they natu- 
 rally imagined, too, that the Christ, the Saviour 
 of the world, could not have been anything so 
 unmetaphysical, so unworthy of the cosmic unity, 
 as a mere man with flesh and blood; and the 
 Docetae, or Apparitionists, taught accordingly 
 that Jesus had been an apparition or phantom, 
 not a man at aU. The writings of the Apostles 
 can hardly be understood unless we know that 
 very often they are alluding to these Gnostics and 
 their writings, which had at the time a great 
 success. 
 
 232 
 
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 
 
 Now, the author of the Fourth GoBpel had a 
 turn, as we have seen, for metaphysics. But a 
 man who had been in vital contact with Jesus 
 and aletbeia knew what reality was, the reality 
 of Jesus, too well, to carry his play of meta- 
 physics into the domain of this. And by a sort of 
 retribution, glorious indeed to the writer, still 
 more ^glorious to the power of Christ's word, the 
 two great points of the document which we call 
 the First Epistle of St. John are these: "Jesus 
 Christ come in the flesh I" and, "He that doeth 
 righteousness is righteous I" Jesus is no meta- 
 physical phantom, but a living man having to do 
 with conduct. Religion is no intellectualism, but 
 righteousness. Here we have the substratum as 
 Jesus laid it: righteousness. 
 
 And we have, also, the "method" of conscience, 
 which tells us wha,t righteousness is, and how 
 great it is, and that it is indeed the substratum. 
 "Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye 
 know all things ; the unction ye received from him 
 abideth in you, and ye need not that any one 
 should teach you, but as his unction teacheth you 
 of all things, and is true and is no lie, and as it 
 teacheth you ye will abide in it." "If our heart 
 condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and 
 knoweth all things ; if our heart condemn us not, 
 then have we confidence towards Grod." 
 
 It is characteristic of this beautiful soul, that he 
 does not go into detail and give lists of faults. 
 He has fixed the method, conscience, and the sub- 
 ject-matter of the method, righteousness; and that 
 is enough. It is characteristic, in like manner, 
 that he states and restates the "secret" of Jesus 
 by its positive and loveliest side. The "method" 
 gives us hght, and the "secret" gives us the power 
 of ^^ walking in the light" ; and, "If we walk in the 
 233 
 
LITBBATUKE AND DOGMA. 
 
 light, we have fellowship one with another.^' For 
 to live by dying to our life in this world is to 
 transfer the natural love of life from the personal 
 self to the impersonal self,— the self that we share 
 with all other men; so that to die to one's self is 
 to love the brethren^ and by this side is the secret 
 of Jesus always in our Epistle presented. "Let 
 us love one another^' "We know that we have 
 passed from death to life because we love the 
 brethren,^' 
 
 And it agrees with what we have seen in the 
 Fourth Gospel of his ear for Christ's profounder 
 teaching, that in this writer's Epistle, too, we find 
 the proof of God, of Christ, and of eternal life, 
 made experimentalj rested on internal evidence. 
 "No man hath ever yet seen God; if we love one 
 another, God dwelleth in us." Therefore we must 
 not attempt to define God adequately, or in a 
 way that goes beyond our experience, — to say, 
 like the Bishop of Gloucester: God is a Person!— 
 but we define 'God approximately, according to 
 our actual experience of him. And as Jesus had 
 said of this infinite not ourselves, "God is an in- 
 fuencej^' so our Epistler says, "God is love^ And 
 he says indifferently, "He that loveth is born of 
 God," and "He that believeth that Jesus is the 
 Christ is born of God," because believing that 
 Jesus is the Christ means, mainly, admitting the 
 authority of his message or secret, and his secret 
 is: Love one another! And God's erifieiice for his 
 Son is this: "That God hath given to us eternal 
 life, and this life is in his Son." That is : In right- 
 eousness we have the sense of being truly alive, 
 and through the method, secret, and sweet rea- 
 sonableness of Jesus, and only through these, we 
 get at righteousness. 
 
 As in the Fourth Gospel, and indeed in all the 
 
 234: 
 
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 
 
 G-ospels, the joy which is the signal accompani- 
 ment of life is in this Epistle strongly marked : 
 "These things write I unto you, that your joy 
 may he fall" And the not ourselves, that ele- 
 ment wherein religion has its being: — "Herein is 
 loTC, not that we loved Grod, but that he loved 
 us; we love, because he first loved us I" As we 
 did not make the law of righteousness, so we did 
 not, the writer means, make "the fulfilling of the 
 law," which is love; it arises in us from the way 
 the not ourselves affbcts us. 
 
 In our Epistle, the ^i^er^iauZje of the approach- 
 ing second advent appears, of course, promi- 
 nently; not so that of Christ's physical resurrec- 
 tion. On the other hand, there are here launched 
 phrases destined to rank one day as foremost 
 texts for the doctrine of the Atonement: "The 
 blood of Christ Jesus cleanses us ^om all sin'' ; 
 "He is the propitiation for our sine." No devel- 
 opment is given to them. How much in them is 
 figure, how much is tenet or the commencements 
 of tenet, we cannot say ; but there they are, they 
 are launched, and the hint is given to popular 
 religion to materialize and blunder with. 
 
 5. 
 
 The Epistle of St. James and the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, though not of equal importance with 
 the documents we have been reviewing, suggest, 
 nevertheless, two or three remarks. The zeal of 
 St. James for works carries us back to Christ's 
 sentence: "If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the 
 commandments P' it is the voice of the indestructi- 
 ble sense in the writer that with Jesus righteous- 
 ness was always the end and aim. The opposi- 
 tion to St, Paul, of which so much has been said, 
 does not really exist ; with both Apostles the aim 
 235 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 is identical, rigbteousness. Only Paul observed 
 righteousness to be in danger from men using the 
 Jewish law as a kind of spell which they could 
 conjure mechanically with, and therefore he ele- 
 vated the faith by which we get hold of the 
 "secret" of Jesus, of the "doctrine of the cross." 
 James, in his turn, observed righteousness being 
 in danger from men using faith, as it may easily 
 be used, as a epell or charm to conjure mechani- 
 cally with ; and therefore he elevated workSj the 
 being a doer, not an idle hearer and talker. But 
 his noble expression, "If a man ofiend in one 
 point, he is guilty of all I" and his calling the law 
 which he had in view, "the law of liberty,^' proves 
 sufficiently that in no unsound sense did he elevate 
 works, as Paul in no unsound sense elevated 
 faith. 
 
 The matter whereon the "secret" of Jesus finds 
 exercise, "the wishes of the flesh and of the cur- 
 rent thoughts," is well called by St. James: "Our 
 pleasures which war in our members." And when 
 he goes on and says: "Being in with the world is 
 being out with GrodI"* he has on his lips, and in 
 his thoughts too, the very words of the "secret" : 
 "He that bateth his life in this world shall keep 
 it unto life eternal." For he means, not, as many 
 readers suppose: "He that stands well with the 
 world stands ill with God"; he means: "He that 
 is in with the pleasures which war in our mem- 
 bers, is out with God." 
 
 But we must not dwell at length on this writer, 
 instructive as he is, and ill as he has been often 
 judged. In fineness or richness of spiritual percep- 
 tion his Epistle may be inferior to that of others; 
 without undue disparagement of him we can own 
 this. All the more remarkable, as a testimony to 
 
 *'H ^t^ia ToG icd(r/xou ex^po- tov @eou strri'i',— James IV* 4> 
 
 236 
 
THE EABLY WITNESSES. 
 
 what was chiefly striking ia Christ, is his signal- 
 ling and extolling that character in Christianity 
 into which fineness of perception enters most: 
 epieikeia. "The wisdom from above," says St, 
 James, "is sweetly reasonable" 
 
 It is more difficult to limit ourselves in speaking 
 of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Almost alone in 
 the Bible, it is, like later theology, a notional 
 work as distinguished from an experimen tal 
 work ; that is, instead of being found to run up, 
 at last, into an experience of the Eternal that 
 makes for righteousness, it will be found to run 
 up into a notion of Jesus being the Logos, with 
 the characters of the Logos as they are stated, 
 for instance, in Philo ; and of this being provable 
 from Scripture and putting an end to the old 
 Jewish dispensation. And because of this no- 
 tional character, later theology has so much used 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, and is really in great 
 part built on it. For later theology is notional, 
 too ; the ground-thesis of the Bishop of Gloucester, 
 "the blessed truth that the Grod of the Universe is 
 a Person," is just such a notion as the ground- 
 thesis of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that Jesus 
 is the Logos of Jewish-Alexandrian philosophy. 
 Religion has nothing really to do with either 
 thesis, and that is fortunate; for neither thesis is 
 demonstrable, and the demonstrations attempted 
 are often palpably hollow. For instance, the 
 whole of the first chapter of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews is an allegation of text after text as 
 meaning Jesus, and as therefore establishing the 
 writer's thesis, not one of which texts does really 
 mean Jesus. The seventh chapter, again, is one 
 tissue of clever, learned trifling, such as we might 
 have from the Bishop of Grioucester, all based on 
 the false assumption that "Thou art a priest for- 
 237 
 
LITERATURE AND DOaMA, 
 
 ever after the order of Melchisedekl'' was really 
 said to Jesus, whereas it was not. 
 
 Now, just because of this notional character, the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews could not have been 
 Paul's ; for Paul goes upon experience, not notion. 
 And such a work can never have the value and 
 interest of Paul's writings, for it is, in truth, all 
 in the air. But a man who puts a hollow notion 
 as the basis of his theology may yet in treating 
 it give us all kinds of real and valuable experience; 
 of this we have abundant examples in the writ- 
 ings of theologians. And so the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews is full of beautiful things, and things of 
 real religious experience ; but they are independent 
 of the ground-thesis of the Epistle, their value has 
 another source than the value of the writer's 
 main design, and indeed is often marred by it. 
 Their value is as reminiscences of Jesus, and their 
 witness to Jesus is the more striking because of 
 the medium where they appear. To have sur- 
 vived and appear in such a medium they must 
 have been originally very strong. 
 
 The sense that in righteousness religion begins 
 and ends, the writer of the Epistle to the He- 
 brews has not; like the Bishops of Winchester and 
 Gloucester, he has lost it. He talks of "not laying 
 again the foundations," by which he means right- 
 eousness, but "going on unto perfection," by 
 which he means such things as the doctrine that 
 Christ is, like the Logos of theosophy, High 
 Priest, and as the demonstration about Melchi- 
 sedek. All this is of the same order with the 
 Bishop of Gloucester's "blessed truth that the God 
 of the universe is a Person," which he and his 
 friends imagine to be the marrow of religion, 
 whereas in truth it is not religion at all. But it 
 is remarkable how frequently the writer of our 
 238 
 
THE EARLY WITNESSES. 
 
 Epistle has the word of the "method," conscience; 
 again and again it recurs with him; nowhere in 
 the Bible does it appear, within equal limits of 
 space, so often. The word has evidently estab- 
 lished itself and become a power. 
 
 But most remarkable is the testimony of this 
 writer to the "secret." His view of the sacrifice 
 of Christ as replacing the sacrifices of the Jewish 
 law is all notional, and is really quite independent 
 of Christ's sacrifice as the "secret." Yet the 
 "secret" appears; and in phrases so striking and 
 so much profounder than the strain of this writ- 
 er's argument, that one is tempted to see in them 
 a tradition of words, not otherwise preserved, 
 of Jesus himself "It behooved God, in bringing 
 many sons to glory, to make the leader of their 
 salvation perfect through suffering." Christ 
 '^learned obedience £rom the things that he suf- 
 fered, and being perfected, became the author of 
 eternal salvation to all who obey him" Christ, 
 like mankind, partook of flesh and blood, "in 
 order that by death be might dehver them who 
 through fear of death were all their life subject to 
 bondage." This is precisely the "secret" ; the pain 
 and fear and gloom of dying to our apparent 
 self, to "the wishes of the flesh and the current 
 thoughts," are so great, that only Jesus and his 
 "secret," lighting the process up with joy by 
 showing it to be really life not death, could over- 
 come them, and could enable mankind to over- 
 come them. In Uke manner the noble phrase, 
 "without shedding of blood is no remission," 
 notional and unfruitful as is its use in the connec- 
 tion where our author employs it, is in itself, per- 
 haps, a reminiscence of actual words of Jesus; 
 certainly it is a reminiscence of his "secret," In 
 itself it ranks with the beautiful and profound 
 239 
 
LITERATURE AND DO&MA. 
 
 phrase of St, Peter: "He that euflers in the flesh 
 hath ceased from sin." 
 
 Finally, in the ardor for martyrdom which fol- 
 lowed the Christian Church a little later, in the 
 passion for seeking out this kind of death, court- 
 ing it, provoking it by every means discoverable, 
 we shall not err if we believe that here again is 
 visible the trace of the "secret." Assuredly many 
 martyrs, in the temper with which they pro- 
 voked their death, were false to the epieikeiaj the 
 "sweet reasonableness," of Jesus, and laid them- 
 selves open to that sentence of Paul, the sentence 
 which will be the final verdict of religious history 
 on Puritanism also, Puritanism glorying in its 
 resistances: "Though I give my body to be 
 burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me 
 nothing." And there was nothing to command 
 or advise the repetition, upon every disciple, of the 
 actual bodily execution of Jesus. But Jesus had 
 enjoined dying, taking up the cross, the "secret" ; 
 —a long inward travail, other, and often much 
 harder, than being once for all executed. Paul 
 still understood what Jesus meant by dying. But 
 the apostolic age passed ; and now the Christian 
 community took the word literally, and Chris- 
 tians vied with each other which could run fastest 
 to the place of execution. The wonderful specta- 
 cle accelerated Christianity's conquest of the 
 world; but it was already an evidence of failure, 
 in some sort, to follow the mind of Jesus and the 
 teaching of his greatest apostles. ''Yet a little 
 while is the light with you I walk while ye have 
 the light, lest the darkness overtake you una- 
 wares I" 
 
 240 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 Aberglatjbe EBimrADING. 
 
 So spoke the men who had had the Light with 
 them or near them. Mistakes they made and 
 could not but make. But they still knew that to 
 believe Jesus to be the Son of God meant to re- 
 ceive and apply the method and secret of Jesus; 
 and therefore their word is the Christian's great- 
 est source of instruction and inspiration after the 
 word of Christ himself. 
 
 But miracles, and the crowning miracles of the 
 Resurrection and Ascension, to be followed by the 
 second Advent, were from the first firmly fixed as 
 parts of the disciples' beUef. "Behold, hecometh 
 with clouds ; and every eye shall see him, and they 
 also which pierced him, and all kindreds of the 
 earth shall wail because of himl" As time went 
 on, and Christianity spread wider and wider 
 among the multitudes, and with less and less of 
 control from the personal influence of Jesus, Chris- 
 tianity developed more and more its side of mira- 
 cle and legend ; until to beUeve Jesus to be the 
 Son of God meant to believe the points of the 
 legend: — his preternatural conception and birth, 
 his miracles, his descent into hell, his bodily resur- 
 rection, his ascent into heaven, and his future 
 triumphant return to judgment. And these and 
 like matters are what popular reUgion drew forth 
 from the records of Jesus as the essentials of be- 
 lief. These essentials got embodied in a short 
 formulary; and so the creed which is called the 
 Apostles' Creed came together, 
 16 241 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 It is not the apostles' creed, for it took more 
 than five hundred years to grow to maturity ; it 
 was not the creed of any single doctor or body of 
 doctors, but it was the sort of summary of Chris- 
 tianity which the people, the Church at large, 
 would naturally develop ; it is the popular science 
 of Christianity. Given the alleged charge : *'Gro ye 
 and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name 
 of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," and 
 the candidate for baptism would naturally come 
 to have a profession of faith to make respecting 
 that whereinto he was baptized ; this profession of 
 faith would naturally become just such a sum- 
 mary as the Apostles' Creed. It contains no men- 
 tion of either the "method" or the "secret," it is 
 occupied entirely with external facts ; and it may 
 be safely said, not only that such a summary of 
 religious faith could never have been delivered by 
 Jesus, but it could never have been adopted as 
 adequate by any of his principal apostles, by 
 Peter, or Paul, or John. But it is, as we have 
 said, the popular science of Christianity. 
 
 As years proceeded, and the world came in 
 to Christianity, and the world's educated peo- 
 ple, and the educated people's Aryan genius, with 
 its turn for making religion a metaphysical 
 conception, — and all this in a time of declining 
 criticism, a time when the possibility of true sci- 
 entific criticism, in any direction whatever, was 
 lessening rather than increasing,— the popular 
 science was too rude to satisfy. Ingenious men 
 took its terms and its data, and appUed to them 
 not an historical criticism showing how they 
 arose, but abstruse metaphysical conceptions. 
 And so we have the so-called Nicene Creed, which 
 is the learned science of Christianity, as the Apos- 
 tles' Creed is the popular science. 
 242 
 
ABERaLAUBE BEINVADINa. 
 
 And how this learned science is related to the 
 Bible we shall feel, if we compare the religious 
 utterances of its doctors with the religious utter- 
 ances of the Bible;— if, for instance, we compare 
 with the Psalms the Soliloquies of St. Augustine, 
 a truly great and religious man; and this man, 
 not in school and controversy, but in religious 
 soliloquy. St. Augustine prays: "Holy Trinity, 
 superadmirable Trinity, and superinenarrable, and 
 superinscrutable, and superinaccessible, superin- 
 comprehenslble, superintelligible, supereesential, 
 euperessentially surpassing all sense, all reason, 
 all intellect, all intelligence, all essence of super- 
 celestial minds; which can neither be said, nor 
 thought, nor understood, nor known, even by the 
 eyes of angels 1" And again, more practically, 
 but still in the same style: "0 three coequal and 
 coeternal Persons, one and true Grod, Father and 
 Son and Holy Ghost, who by thyself inhabitest 
 eternity and light inaccessible, who hast founded 
 the earth in thy power, and rulest the world by 
 thy prudence, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord Grod of 
 Sabaoth, terrible and strong, just and merciful, 
 admirable, laudable, amiable, one God, three per- 
 sons, one essence, power, wisdom, goodness, one 
 and undivided Trinity, open unto me that cry 
 unto Thee the gates of righteousness I" 
 
 And now compare this with the Bible : — "Teach 
 me to do the thing that pleaseth thee, for thou 
 art my God I let thy loving spirit lead me forth 
 into the land of righteousness I" That is Israel's 
 way of praying I that is how a poor ill-endowed 
 Semite, belonging to the occipital races, unhelped 
 by the Aryan genius and ignorant that reUgion is 
 a metaphysical conception, talks religion I and we 
 see what a different thing he makes of it. 
 
 But, finally, the original Semite fell more and 
 243 
 
LITERATUBE AND DOGMA. 
 
 more into the shade. The Aryas came to the 
 front, the notion of religion being a metaphysical 
 conception prevailed. But the doctors differed in 
 their metaphysics; and the doctors who conquered 
 enshrined their victorious form of metaphysics in 
 a creed, the so-called Creed of St. Athanasius, 
 which is learned science like the Nicene Creed, but 
 learned science which has fought and got ruffled 
 by fighting, and is fiercely dictatorial now it has 
 won ; — learned science with a strong dash of vio- 
 lent and vindictive temper. So we have the three 
 creeds : the so-called Apostles' Creed, popular sci- 
 ence ; the Nicene Creed, learned science ; the Atha- 
 nasian Creed, learned science with a strong dash 
 of temper. And the two latter are founded on the 
 first, taking its data just as they stand, but 
 dressing them metaphysically. 
 
 Now this first Creed is founded on a supposed 
 final charge from Jesus to his apostles: "Gro ye 
 and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name 
 of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Grhostl" it 
 explains and expands what Jesus here told his 
 apostles to baptize the world into. But we have 
 already remarked the difference in character be- 
 tween the narrative, in theGroepels, of what hap- 
 pened before Christ's death and the narrative of 
 what happened after it. For all words of Jesus 
 placed after his death, the internal evidence be- 
 comes pre-eminently important. He may well 
 have said words attributed to him, but not then. 
 So the speech to Thomas: "Because thou hast 
 seen me thou hast believed ; blessed are they who 
 have not seen and yet have believed I" may quite 
 well have been a speech of Jesus uttered on some 
 occasion during hie life, and then transferred to 
 the story of the days after his resurrection and 
 made the centre of this incident of the doubt of 
 244 
 
ABERaLAUBE REINVADING. 
 
 Thomas. On the other hand, again, the prophecy 
 ofthe details of Peter's death* is almost certainly 
 an addition after the event, because it is not the 
 least in the manner of Jesus ; what is in his man- 
 ner, and what he had indeed said, are the words 
 given elsewhere: "Whither I go thou canst not 
 follow me now, but thou shalt follow me after- 
 wards." So, too, it is extremely Improbable that 
 Jesus should have ever charged his apostles to 
 "baptize all nations in the name ofthe Father, the 
 Son, and the Holy Ghost." There is no improba- 
 bility in his investing them with a very high com- 
 mission. He may perfectly well have said : 
 "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted; 
 whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." 
 But it is almost impossible he can have given this 
 charge to baptize in the name of the Father, the 
 Son, and the Holy Ghost ; it is by far too system- 
 atic, and what people are fond of calling an 
 anaebroDism, It is not the least like what Jesus 
 was in the habit of saying, and it is just like 
 what would be attributed to him as baptism and 
 its formula grew in importance. The genuine 
 charge of Jesus to his apostles was, almost cer- 
 tainly: "As my Father sent me, even so send I 
 you," and not this. So that our three creeds, and 
 with them the whole of our so-called orthodox 
 theology, are founded upon words which Jesus in 
 all probability never uttered. 
 
 2. 
 
 We may leave all questions about the Church, 
 its rise, and its organization, out of sight alto- 
 gether. Much as is made of them, they are com- 
 paratively unimportant. Jesus never troubled 
 himself with what are called Church matters at 
 * Jobn xil, 18. 
 245 
 
LITERATURE AND DOaMA. 
 
 all; hie attention was fixed solely upon the indi- 
 vidual. His apostles did what was necessary, as 
 such matters came to require a practical notice 
 and arrangement; but to the apostles, too, they 
 were still quite secondary. The Church grew into 
 something quite different from what they or Jesus 
 had, or could have had, any thought of. But this 
 was of no importance in itself; and how believers 
 should organize their society as circumstances 
 changed, circumstances themselves might very 
 well decide. 
 
 The one important question was and is, how 
 believers laid and kept hold on the revelations 
 contained in the Bible; because for the sake of 
 these it confessedly is that all churches exist. 
 Even the apostles, we have seen, did not lay hold 
 on them perfectly. In their attachment to mira- 
 cles, in the prominence they gave to the crowning 
 miracles of Christ's physical resurrection and 
 second advent, they went aside from the saving 
 doctrine of Jesus themselves, and were sure— 
 which was worse — to make others go aside from 
 it ten thousand times more. But they were 
 too near to Jesus not to have been able to pre- 
 serve the main lines of his teaching, and his way 
 of using words ; and they did, as we have shown, 
 preserve them. 
 
 But at their death the immediate remembrance 
 of Jesus faded away, and whatever Aberglaube 
 the apostles themselves had had and sanctioned 
 was left to work without check ; and, at the same 
 time, the world and society presented conditions 
 constantly less and less favorable to sane criti- 
 cism. And it was then, and under these condi- 
 tions, that the dogma which is now called ortho- 
 dox, and which our dogmatic friends imagine to 
 be purely a methodical arrangement of the ad- 
 246 
 
ABERGLAUBE REINVADING. 
 
 mitted facts of Christianity, grew up. We hare 
 shown from the thing itself, by putting the dogma 
 in comparison with the genuine teaching of Jesus, 
 how little it is this; but it is well to make clear 
 to one's self also (for one can) from the cir- 
 cumstances of the case, that it could not be 
 this. 
 
 For dogmatic theology is, in fact, an attempt 
 at both literary and scientific criticism of the high- 
 est order; and the age which developed dogma 
 had neither the resources nor the faculty for such 
 a criticism. It is idle to talk of the theological 
 instinct, the analogy of faith, as if by the mere 
 occupation with a limited subject-matter one 
 could reach the truth about it. It is as if one 
 imagined that by the mere study of Greek we 
 could reach the truth about the origin of G-reek 
 words, and dogmatize about them ; and could ap- 
 peal to our supposed possession, through our 
 labors, of the philological instinct, the analogy of 
 language, to make our dogmatism go down. In 
 general such an instinct, whether theological or 
 philological, will mean merely, that, having accus- 
 tomed ourselves to look at things through a glass 
 of a certain color, we see them always of that 
 color. What the science of Bible criticism, like all 
 other science, needs, is a very wide experience 
 from comparative observation in many directions, 
 and a very slowly acquired habit of mind. All 
 studies have the benefit of these guides, when they 
 exist, and one isolated study can never have the 
 benefit of them by itself. There is a common 
 order, a general level, an uniform possibility, for 
 these things. As were the geography, history, 
 physiology, cosmology, of the men who developed 
 dogma, so was also their faculty for a scientific 
 Bible criticism, such as dogma pretends to be. 
 
 24:7 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 Now, we know what their geography, history, 
 physiology, cosmology, were. 
 
 And again, as one part of their scientific Bible 
 criticism, so the rest. We have seen in the Bible 
 writers themselves a quite uncritical use of the 
 Old Testament and of prophecy ; now, does this 
 become less in the authors of our dogmatic the- 
 ology, — a far more pretentious effort of criticism 
 than the Bible writers ever made, — or does it be- 
 come greater? It becomes a thousand times 
 greater. Not only are definite predictions found 
 where they do not exist, — as, for example, in 
 Isaiah's "I will restore thy judges asatthe first" is 
 found a definite foretelling of the Apostles,— but in 
 the whole Bible a secret allegorical sense is sup- 
 posed, higher than the natural sense; so that 
 Jerome calls tracing the natural sense an eating 
 dust like the serpent, in modum. serpentis terrain 
 comedere. Therefore, for one expounder, Isaiah's 
 prophecy against Egypt, "The Eternal rideth upon 
 a light cloud, and shall come into Egypt," is the 
 flight into Egypt of the Holy Family, and the 
 light cloud is the virgin-born body of Jesus ; for 
 another, *'The government shall be upon his shoul- 
 der" is Christ's carrying upon his shoulder the 
 cross ; for another, "The lion shall eat straw like 
 the ox" is the faithful and the wicked alike re- 
 ceiving the body of Christ in the Eucharist. 
 
 These are the men, this is the critical faculty, 
 from which our so-called orthodox dogma pro- 
 ceeded ; the worth of all the productions of such a 
 critical faculty is easy to estimate, for the worth 
 is nearly uniform. When the Rabbinical expound- 
 ers interpret "Woe unto them that lay field to 
 field I" as a prophetic curse on the accumulation of 
 Church property, or "Woe unto them that rise up 
 early in the morning that they may follow strong 
 248 
 
ABERGLAUBE REINVADING. 
 
 drink 1" as a prediction of the profligacy of the 
 Church clergy, or "Woe unto them that draw in- 
 iquity with cords of vanity 1" as God's malediction 
 on Church bells, we say at once that such critics 
 thus give their measure as extractors of the true 
 sense of the Bible. The moment we think seri- 
 ously and fairly, we must see that the Patristic 
 interpretations of prophecy give, in like manner, 
 their authors' measure as extractors of the true 
 sense of the Bible. Yet this is what the dogma 
 of the Nicene and Athanaeian Creeds professes to 
 be, and must be if it is to be worth anything, — 
 "the true sense extracted from the Bible ;" for "the 
 Bible is the record of the whole revealed faith," 
 says Dr. Newman. But we see how impossible it 
 is that this true sense the dogma of these creeds 
 should be. 
 
 Therefore it is, that it is useful to give signal 
 instances of the futility of patristic and mediaeval 
 criticism ; not to raise an idle laugh, but because 
 our whole dogmatic theology has a patristic and 
 mediaeval source, and from the nullity of the 
 deliverances of this criticism, where it can be 
 brought manifestly to book, may be inferred the 
 nullity of its deliverances, where, from the impal- 
 pable and incognizable character of the subjects 
 treated, to bring it manifestly to book is impossi- 
 ble. In the account of the Creation, in the first 
 chapter of Genesis, "the greater light to rule the 
 day" is the priesthood; "the lesser light to rule 
 the night," borrowing its beams from the greater, 
 is the Holy Roman Empire. When the disciples of 
 Jesus produced two swords, and Jesus said: "It 
 is enough," he meant, we are told, the temporal 
 and the spiritual power, and that both were nec- 
 essary and both at the disposal of the Church; 
 but by saying afterwards to Peter, after he had 
 249 
 
LITEEATUEE AND DO&MA. 
 
 cut off the ear of Malchus: "Put up thy sword 
 into the sheath," he meant that the Church was 
 not to wield the temporal power itself, but to 
 employ the secular government to wield it. Now, 
 this is the very same force of criticism which in 
 the Athanasian Creed "arranged, sentence after 
 sentence," that doctrine of the Godhead of the 
 Eternal Son for which the Bishops of Winchester 
 and Gloucester are so anxious to "do something." 
 The Schoolmen themselves are but the same 
 false criticism developed, and clad in an apparatus 
 of logic and system. In that grand and immense 
 repertory founded by the Benedictines, the His- 
 toire Litteraire de la France^ we read, that in the 
 theological faculty of the University of Paris, the 
 leading mediaeval university, it was seriously dis- 
 cussed whether Jesus at his ascension had his 
 clothes on or not. If he had not, did he appear 
 before his apostles naked? if he had, what became 
 of the clothes? Monstrous! every one will say.* 
 Yes, but the very same criticism, only full-blown, 
 which produced: "Neither confounding the Per- 
 sons nor dividing the Substance." The very same 
 criticism, which originally treated terms as scien- 
 tific which were not scientific; which, instead of 
 applying literary and historical criticism to the 
 deitsL of popular Aberglaube J tookthese data just as 
 they stood and merely dressed them scientifically. 
 Catholic dogma itself is true, urges, however. 
 Dr. Newman, because intelligent Catholics have 
 dropped errors and absurdities like the False 
 Decretals or the works of the pretended Dionysius 
 the Areopagite, but have not dropped dogma. 
 *Be it observed, however, that there Is an honest sclentlflc ef- 
 fort In the Schoohnen, and that to this sort of thing one really 
 does come, when one really sets one's self to treat miracles liter- 
 ally and exactly ; but most of us are content to leare them in a 
 half-light. 
 
 250 
 
ABERaLAUBE REINVADING. 
 
 This is only saying that men drop the more pal- 
 pable blunder before the less palpable. The ade- 
 quate criticism of the Bible is extremely difficult, 
 and slowly does the "Zeit-Greist" unveil it. Mean- 
 while, of the premature and false criticism to 
 which we are accustomed, we drop the evidently 
 weak parts first; we retain the rest, to drop it 
 gradually and piece by piece as it loosens and 
 breaks up. But it is all of one order, and in time 
 it will all go. Not the Athanasian Creed's dam- 
 natory clauses only, but the whole Creed ; not 
 this one Creed only, but the three Creeds,— our 
 whole received application of science, popular or 
 learned, to the Bible. For it was an inadequate 
 and false science, and could not, from the nature 
 of the case, be otherwise. 
 
 3. 
 
 And now we see how much that clergyman de- 
 ceives himself, who writes to the "Guardian": 
 "The objectors to the Athanasian Creed at any 
 rate admit that its doctrinal portions are truly 
 the carefully distilled essence of the scattered inti- 
 mations of Holy Scripture on the deep mysteries 
 in question, — priceless discoveries made in that 
 field." When one has travelled to the Athanasian 
 Creed along the gradual line of the historical 
 development of Christianity, instead of living 
 stationary all one's life with this Creed blocking 
 up the view, one is really tempted to say, when 
 one reads a deliverance like that of this clergy- 
 man: Sancta, simpUcitas! It is just because the 
 Athanasian Creed pretends to be, in its doctrine, 
 "the carefully distilled essence of the scattered in- 
 timations of Holy Scripture," and is so very far 
 &om ii, that it is worthless. It is "the carefully 
 distilled essence of the scattered intimations of 
 251 
 
LITERATUBE AND DOGMA. 
 
 Holy Scripture," just as that allegory of the two 
 swords was. It is really a mixture— for true 
 criticism, as it ripens, it is even a grotesque mix- 
 ture— of learned pseudo-science with popular Aber- 
 glaube. 
 
 But it cannot be too carefully borne in mind 
 that the real "essence of Holy Scripture," its sav- 
 ing truth, is no such criticism at all as the so- 
 called orthodox dogma attempts, and attempts 
 unsuccessfully. No, the real essence of Scripture is 
 a much simpler matter. It is, for the Old Testa- 
 ment; "To him that ordereth his conversation 
 right shall be shown the salvation of Grod I "—and 
 for the New Testament: "Follow Jesus 1 " This is 
 Bible dogma as opposed to the dogma of our 
 formularies. On this Bible dogma if Churches 
 were founded, and to preach this Bible dogma if 
 ministers were ordained, Churches and ministers 
 would have all the dogma to which the Bible 
 attaches eternal Ufe. Plain and precise enough it 
 is, in all conscience ; with the advantage of being 
 precisely Tight, whereas the plain dogma of our 
 formularies is precisely wrong. And if any one 
 finds it too simple, let him remember that its 
 hardness is practical, not speculative ; it is a rule 
 of conduct; let him act it, and he will find it hard 
 enough, Utmam per unum diem bene essemus 
 conversati in hoc mundo! But as a matter of 
 knowledge it is very simple, it lies on the surface 
 of the Bible and cannot be missed. 
 
 And the holders of ecclesiastical dogma have 
 always, we must remember, held and professed 
 this Bible dogma too. Their ecclesiastical dogma 
 may have prevented their attending closely 
 enough to the Bible dogma, may have led them 
 often to act false to it ; but they have always held 
 it. The method and the secret of Jesus have been 
 252 
 
ABEBGLAUBE EEINVADING, 
 
 always prized. The Catholic Church from the 
 first held aloft the secret of Jesus ; the monastic 
 orders were founded, we may say, in homage to 
 it. And from time to time, through the course 
 of ages, there have arisen men who threw them- 
 selves on the method and secret of Jesus with ex- 
 traordinary force, with intuitive sense that here 
 was salvation ; and who really cared for nothing 
 else, though ecclesiastical dogma, too, they pro- 
 fessed to beUeve, and sincerely thought they did 
 believe, — but their heart was elsewhere. These are 
 they who "received the kingdom of Grod as a little 
 child," who perceived how simple a thing Chris- 
 tianity was, though so inexhaustible, and who 
 are therefore **the greatest in the kingdom of 
 Grod." And they, not the theological doctors, are 
 the true lights of the Christian Church; not 
 Augustine, Luther, Bossuet, Butler, but the name- 
 less author of the "Imitation," Tauler, St. Francis 
 of Sales, Wilson of Sodor and Man. Yet not only 
 these men, but the whole body of Christian 
 churches and sects always, have all at least pro- 
 fessed the method and secret of Jesus, and to 
 some extent used them. And whenever these 
 were used, they have borne their natural fruits 
 of joy and life ; and this joy and this life have been 
 taken to flow from the ecclesiastical dogma held 
 along with them, and to sanction and prove it. 
 And people, meaning to praise the bridge which 
 carried them over from death to life, have taken 
 this dogma for the bridge, or part of the bridge, 
 that carried them over, and have eagerly praised 
 it. Thus religion has been made to stand on its 
 apex instead of its base; righteousness is sup- 
 ported on ecclesiastical dogma, instead of eccle- 
 siastical dogma being supported on righteousness. 
 But in the beginning it was not so. Because 
 253 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 righteouBnees is eternal, necessary, life-giying, 
 therefore the mighty ^'not ourselves which makes 
 for righteousness" was the Eternal, Israel's Grod; 
 was all-powerful, all-merciful; sends his Messiah, 
 elects his people, establishes his kingdom, receires 
 into everlasting habitations. But gradually this 
 petrifies, gradually it is added to more and more ; 
 until at last, because righteousness was originally 
 perceived to be eternal, necessary, life-giving, we 
 find ourselves "worshipping One Grod in Trinity 
 and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the 
 Persons nor dividing the Substance." And then 
 the original order is reversed. Because there is 
 One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, who re- 
 ceives into everlasting habitations, establishes his 
 kingdom, elects his people, sends his Messiah, is 
 all-merciful, all-powerful, Israel's God, the Eter- 
 nal, — therefore righteousness is eternal, necessary, 
 life-giving. And shake the belief in the One God 
 in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, the beUef in right- 
 eousness is shaken, it is thought, also. Whereas 
 righteousness and the God of righteousness, the 
 God of the Bible, are in truth quite independent 
 of the God of ecclesiastical dogma, the work of 
 critics of the Bible,— critics understanding neither 
 what they say nor whereof they affirm. 
 
 Nor did the Reformation and Protestantism 
 much mend the work of these critics; the time 
 was not yet ripe for it. Protestantism, neverthe- 
 less, was a strenuous and noble effort at improve- 
 ment; for it was an effort of return to the 
 ''method" of Jesus, — that leaven which never, 
 since he set it in the world, has ceased or can 
 cease to work. Catholicism, we have said, laid 
 hold on the "secret" of Jesus, and strenuously, 
 254 
 
ABERULAUBE EEINVADING. 
 
 howerer blindly, employed it ; this is the grandeur 
 and the glory of Catholicism. In like manner 
 Protestantism laid hold on his "method," and 
 strenuously, however blindly, employed it; and 
 herein is the greatness of Protestantism. The pre- 
 liminary labor of inwardness and sincerity in the 
 conscience of each individual man, which was the 
 method of Jesus and his indispensable discipline 
 for learning to employ his secret aright, had fallen 
 too much out of view; obedience had in a manner 
 superseded it. Protestantism drew it into light 
 and prominence again; was even, one may say, 
 over-absorbed by it, so as to leave too much out 
 of view the "secret." This, if one would be just 
 both to Catholicism and to Protestantism, is the 
 thing to bear in mind : Protestantism had hold of 
 Christ's "method" of inwardness and sincerity, 
 Catholicism had hold of his "secret" of self-re- 
 nouncement. The chief word with Protestantism 
 is the word of the method : repentance, conversion; 
 the chief word with Catholicism is the word of the 
 secret : peace, joy. 
 
 And since, though the method and the secret 
 are equally indispensable, the secret may be said 
 to have in it more of practice and conduct, Ca- 
 tholicism may claim perhaps to have more of 
 religion. On the other hand, Protestantism has 
 more light; and, as the method of inwardness and 
 sincerity, once gained, is of general application, 
 and a power for all the purposes of life, Protes- 
 tantism, we can see, has been accompanied by 
 most prosperity. And here is the answer to Mr. 
 Buckle's famous parallel between Spain and Scot- 
 land, that parallel which every one feels to be a 
 sophism. Scotland has had, to make her different 
 from Spain, the "method" of Jesus; and though, 
 in theology, Scotland may have turned it to no 
 255 
 
LITEBATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 great account, she has found her account in it in 
 almost everything else, Catholicism, again, has 
 had, perhaps, most happiness. When one thinks 
 of the bitter and contentious temper of Puritan- 
 ism,— temper being, nevertheless, such a vast part 
 of conducty—Sind then thinks of St. Theresa and 
 her sweetness, her never-sleeping hatred of "de- 
 traction," one is tempted almost to say, that 
 there was more of Jesus in St. Theresa's little 
 finger than in John Knox's whole body. Protes- 
 tantism has the method of Jesus with his secret 
 too much left out of mind, Catholicism has his 
 secret with his method too much left out of 
 mind ; neither has his unerring balance, his intui- 
 tion, his sweet reasonableness. But both have 
 hold of a great truth, and get from it a great 
 power. 
 
 And many of the reproaches cast by one on the 
 other are idle. K Catholicism is reproached with 
 being indifferent to much that is called civilizar 
 tion, it must be answered : So was Jesus, If Prot- 
 estantism, with its private judgment, is accused 
 of opening a wide field for individual fancies and 
 mistakes, it must be answered: So did Jesus 
 when he introduced his method. Private judg- 
 ment, "the fundamental and insensate doctrine of 
 Protestantism," as Joseph de Maistre calls it, is 
 in truth but the necessary "method," the eternally 
 incumbent duty, imposed by Jesus himself, when 
 he said: "Judge not according to the appearance, 
 but judge righteous judgment." "Judgen^iz^eous 
 judgment" is, however, the duty imposed; and the 
 duty is not, whatever many Protestants may 
 seem to think, fulfilled if the judgment be wrong. 
 But the duty of inwardly judging is the very 
 entrance into the way and walk of Jesus. 
 
 Luther, then, made an inward verifying move- 
 256 
 
ABERaLAUBE REINVADING. 
 
 ment, the individual conscience, once more the 
 base of operatione ; and he was right. But he did 
 so to the following extent only. When he found 
 the priest coming between the individual believer 
 and his conscience, standing to him in the stead 
 of conscience, he pushed the priest aside and 
 brought the believer face to face with his con- 
 science again. This explains, of course, his battle 
 against the sale of indulgences and other abuses 
 of the like kind ; but it explains also his treatment 
 of that cardinal point in the Catholic religious 
 system, the Mass. He substituted for it, as the 
 cardinal point in the Protestant system, justifica- 
 tion by faith. The miracle of Christ's atoning 
 sacrifice, satisfying God's wrath, and taking ofi" 
 the curse from mankind, is the foundation both of 
 the Mass and of the famous Lutheran tenet. But, 
 in the Mass, the priest makes the miracle over 
 again and applies its benefits to the believer. In 
 the tenet of justification, the believer is himself in 
 contact with the miracle of Christ's atonement, 
 and applies Christ's merits to himself. The con- 
 science is thus brought iuto direct communication 
 with Christ's saving act; but this saving act is 
 still taken — just as popular religion conceived it, 
 and as formal theology adopted it from popular 
 religion— as a miracle, the miracle of the Atone- 
 ment. This popular and imperfect conception of 
 the sense of Christ's death, and in general the 
 whole inadequate criticism of the Bible involved 
 in the Creeds, underwent at the Reformation no 
 scrutiny and no change. Luther's actual applica- 
 tion, then, of the "method" of Jesus to the inner 
 body of dogma, developed as we have seen, which 
 he found regnant, proceeded no farther than 
 this. 
 And JustiSeation by faitb, our being saved by 
 17 257 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 "giving our hearty consent to Christ's atoning 
 work on our behalf," by "pleading simply the 
 blood of the covenant," Luther made the essential 
 matter not only of his own religious system but 
 of the entire New Testament. We must be en- 
 abled, he said, and we are enabled, to distinguish 
 among the books of the Bible those which are the 
 best ; now, those are the best which show Cbriet, 
 and teach what would be enough for us to know, 
 even if no other parts of the Bible existed. And 
 this evangelicaJ element, as it has been called, 
 this fundamental thought of the Gospel, is, for 
 Luther, our "being justified by the alone merits of 
 Christ." This is the doctrine of "passive or Chris- 
 tian righteousness," as Luther is fond of naming 
 it, which consists in "doing nothing, but simply 
 knowing and believing that Christ is gone to the 
 Father and we see him no more; that he sits in 
 Heaven at the right hand of the Father, not as 
 our judge, but made unto us by Grod wisdom, 
 righteousness, sanctifieation, and redemption; in 
 sum, that he is our high-priest, making interces- 
 sion for us." Every one will recognize the conse- 
 crated watchwords of Protestant theology. 
 
 Such is Luther's criticism of the New Testa- 
 ment, of its fundamental thought ; and he picks 
 out, as the kernel and marrow of the New Testa- 
 ment, the Fourth Grospel and the First Epistle by 
 the author of this Gospel, St. Paul's Epistles,— 
 in especial those to the Romans, Galatians, and 
 Ephesians,— and the First Epistle of St. Peter. 
 Now, the common complaint against Luther is on 
 the score of his audacity in thus venturing to 
 make a table of precedence for the equally inspired 
 books of the New Testament. Yet in this he was 
 quite right, and was but following the method of 
 Jesus, if the good news conveyed in the whole 
 258 
 
ABERGLAUBE REINVADING-. 
 
 New Testament is, as it is, something definite, 
 and all parts do not convey it equally. Where he 
 was wrong, was in his delineation of this funda- 
 mental thought of the New Testament, in his de- 
 scription of the good news; and few, probably, 
 who have followed us thus far, will have difficulty 
 in admitting that he was wrong here, and quite 
 wrong. And this has been the fault of Protes- 
 tantism generally: not its presumption in inter- 
 preting Scripture for itself,— for the Church inter- 
 preted it no better, and Jesus has thrown on each 
 individual the duty of interpreting it for himself,— 
 but that it has interpreted it wrong, and no bet- 
 ter than the Church. "Calvinism has borne ever 
 an inflexible front to illusion and mendacity," 
 says Mr. Froude. This is a flourish of rhetoric; 
 for the Calvinistic doctrine is in itself, like the 
 Lutheran doctrine, and like Catholic dogma, a 
 false criticism of the Bible, an illusion. And the 
 Calvinistic and Lutheran doctrines both of them 
 sin in the same way; not by using a method 
 which, after all, is the method of Jesus, but by 
 not using the method enough, by not applying it 
 to the Bible thoroughly, by keeping too much of 
 what the traditions of men chose to tell them. 
 
 The time was not then ripe for doing more ; and 
 we, if we can do more, have the fulness of time to 
 thank for it, not ourselves. Yet it needs all one's 
 sense of the not ourselves in these things, to make 
 us understand how doctrines, supposed to be the 
 essence of the Bible by great Catholics and by 
 great Protestants, should ever have been supposed 
 to be so, and by such men. 
 
 To take that chief stronghold ofecclesiasticism 
 and sacerdotalism, the institution of the Eucha- 
 259 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 riet. As Catholics present it, it makes the Church 
 indispensable, with all her apparatus of an apos- 
 tolical succession, an authorized priesthood, a 
 power of absolution. Yet, as Jesus founded it, it 
 is the most anti-ecclesiastical of institutions, pul- 
 verizing alike the historic churches in their beauty 
 and the dissenting sects in their unloTeliness ;— it 
 is the consecration of absolute individualism. 
 "This cup is the new covenant in my blood which 
 is shed for you.'* When Jesus so spoke, what did 
 he mean, what was in his mind? Undoubtedly 
 these words of the prophet Jeremiah : "Behold the 
 days come, saith the Eternal, that I will make a 
 new covenant with the house of Israel, not ac- 
 cording to the covenant that I made with their 
 fathers, which covenant they brake ; but this shall 
 be the covenant that I will make with the house 
 of Israel: After those days, eaith the Eternal, I 
 will put my law in their inward parts, and write 
 it in their heartSj and they shall teach no more 
 every man his neighbor and every man his brother, 
 saying: Know the Eternal I for they shall all know 
 me, from the least to the greatest. ' ' No more scribes, 
 no more doctors, no more priests I the crowning 
 act in the "secret" of Jesus seals at the same time 
 his "method," — his method of pure inwardness, 
 individual responsibility, personal religion. 
 
 Take, again, the Protestant doctrine of Justifi- 
 cation; of trusting in the alone merits of Christ, 
 pleading the Blood of the Covenant, imputed 
 righteousness. In our railway stations are hung 
 up, as every one knows, sheets of Bible texts to 
 catch the passer's eye; and very profitable admo- 
 nitions to him they in general are. It is said that 
 the thought of thus exhibiting them occurred to 
 Dr. Marsh, a venerable leader of the so-called 
 Evangelical party in our Church, the party which 
 260 
 
ABEBGLAUBE REINVADING. 
 
 specially clings to the Bpecial Protestant doctrine 
 of Justification; and that he arranged the texts 
 we daily see. And there is one which we may all 
 remember to have often seen. Dr. Marsh asks the 
 prophet Micah's question: "Wherewith shall I 
 come before the Lord, and bow myself before the 
 high God?" and he answers it with one short sen- 
 tence from the Epistle to the Hebrews : "With the 
 precious blood of Christ." This is precisely the 
 popular Protestant notion of the Gospel; and we 
 are all so used to it that Dr. Marsh's application 
 of the text has probably surprised no one. And 
 yet, if one thinks of it, how astonishing an ap- 
 plication it is I For even the Hebrew Micah, 
 some seven or eight centuries before Christ, had 
 seen that this sort of gospel, or good news, was 
 none at all; for even he suggests this always 
 popular notion of atoning blood only to reject it, 
 and ends: "He hath showed thee, man, what is 
 good; and what doth the Eternal require of thee, 
 but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk 
 humbly with thy Grod?" So that the Hebrew Mi- 
 cah, nearly three thousand years ago, under the 
 old dispensation, was far in advance of this ven- 
 erable and amiable Coryphaeus of our Evangeli- 
 cal party now, under the Christian dispensation! 
 Dr. Marsh and his school go wrong, it will be 
 said, through their false criticism of the New 
 Testament, and we have ourselves admitted that 
 the perfect criticism of the New Testament is ex- 
 tremely difficult. True, the perfect criticism ; but 
 not such an elementary criticism of it as shows 
 the gospel of Dr. Marsh and of our so-called 
 EvangeUcal Protestants to be a false one. For 
 great as their literary inexperience is, and un- 
 practised as is their tact for perceiving the manner 
 in which men use words and what they mean by 
 261 
 
LITERATURE AND DOG-MA. 
 
 them, one "would think they could understand such 
 a plain caution against mistaking Christ's death 
 for a miraculous atonement as St. Paul has 
 actually given them. For St. Paul, who so ad- 
 mirably seized the secret of Jesus, who preached 
 *' Jesus Christ crucified in you," and who placed 
 salvation in being able to say "I am crucified with 
 Christ I"— St.Paul warns us clearly, that this "word 
 of the cross," as he calls it, is so simple, being 
 neither miracle nor metaphysics, that it would be 
 thought foolishness. The Jews want miracle, he 
 says, and the Greeks want metaphysics, but I 
 preach Christ cruciSed I—thabt is, the "secret" of 
 Jesus, as we call it. "The Jews want miracle 1"— 
 that is a warning against Dr. Marsh's doctrine, 
 and against Evangelical Protestantism's phan- 
 tasmagorles of the "Contract in the Council of the 
 Trinity," "the Atoning Blood," and "Imputed 
 Righteousness." "The&reeks want metaphysics 1 " 
 — that is a warning against the Bishops of Win- 
 chester and Gloucester, with their Aryan genius 
 (if so ill-sounding a word as Aryan, spell it how 
 one may, can ever be properly applied to our 
 bishops, and one ought not rather to say Indo- 
 European), dressing the popular doctrine out with 
 fine speculations about the Godhead of the Eter- 
 nal Son, his Consubstantiality with the Father, 
 and so on. But we preach, says St. Paul, Christ 
 cruciAedl to Mr. Spurgeon and to popular rehgion 
 a stumbling-block, to the bishops and to learned 
 rehgion foolishness ; but to them that are called, 
 Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 
 That is, we preach a doctrine, not thaumaturgical 
 and not speculative, but practical and experi- 
 mental ; a doctrine which has no meaning except 
 in positive apphcation to conduct, but in thia 
 application is inexhaustible. 
 262 
 
ABERGLAUBE REINYADING. 
 
 So false, so astoundingly false (thus one is in- 
 elined to say by the light which the "Zeit-G-eist" 
 is beginning to hold out over them), are both 
 popular and learned science in their criticism of 
 the Bible. And for the learned science one feels no 
 tenderness, because it has gone wrong with a 
 great parade of exactitude and philosophy ; 
 whereas, all it really did was to take the "mag- 
 nified and non-natural Man" of popular religion as 
 Grod, and to take Jesus as his son, and then to 
 state the relations between them metaphysically. 
 No difficulties suggested by the popular science of 
 religion has this learned science ever removed, and 
 it has created plenty of its own. 
 
 But for the popular science of religion one has, 
 or ought to have, an infinite tenderness. It is the 
 spontaneous work of nature; it is the travail of 
 the human mind to adapt to its grasp and employ- 
 ment great ideas of which it feels the attraction, 
 but for which, except as given to it by this tra- 
 vail, it would be immature. The imperfect science 
 of the Bible, formulated in the so-called Apostles' 
 Creed, was the only vehicle by which, to genera- 
 tion after generation of men, the method and 
 secret of Jesus could gain any access ; and in this 
 sense we may even call it, taking the point of 
 view of popular theology, ProvidentiaL And 
 this rude criticism is full of poetry, and in this 
 poetry we have been all nursed. To call it, as 
 many of our philosophical Liberal friends are fond 
 of caUing it, a "degrading superstition," is as un- 
 true as it is a poor compliment to human nature, 
 which produced this criticism and used it. It is 
 an Aberglaube, or extra-belief and fairy-tale, pro- 
 duced by taking certain great names and great 
 263 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 promises too literally and materially; but it is 
 not a degrading superstition. 
 
 Protestants, on their part, have no difficulty in 
 calling the Catholic doctrine of the Mass "a de- 
 grading superstition." It is indeed a rude and 
 blind criticism of Christ's words: *'He that eateth 
 me shall live by me." But once admit the miracle 
 of the "atoning sacrifice," once move in this order 
 of ideas, and what can be more natural and beau- 
 tiful than to imagine this miracle every day re- 
 peated, Christ ofltered in thousands of places, 
 everywhere the believer enabled to enact the work 
 of redemption and unite himself with the Body 
 whose sacrifice saves him? And the effect of this 
 belief has been no more degradi&g than the belief 
 itself. The fourth book of the "Imitation," which 
 treats of "The Sacrament of the Altar," is of later 
 date and lesser merit than the three books which 
 precede it; but it is worth while to quote from 
 this book a few words, for the sake of the tes- 
 timony they bear to the practical operation, in 
 many cases at any rate, of this belief. "To us in 
 our weakness thou hast given, for the refreshment 
 of mind and body, thy sacred Body. The devout 
 communicant thou, my God, raisest from the 
 depth of his own dejection to the hope of thy pro- 
 tection, and with a hitherto unknown grace re- 
 newest him and enlightenest him within ; so that 
 they who at first, before this Communion, had 
 felt themselves distressed and afiectionless, after 
 the refreshment of this meat and drink from 
 heaven find themselves changed to a new and 
 better man. For this most high and worthy 
 Sacrament is the saving health of soul and body, 
 the medicine of all spiritual languor; bf it my 
 vices are eared, my passions bridled, temptations 
 are conquered or diminishedy a larger grace is in- 
 264 
 
ABERaLAUBE REINVADING. 
 
 fiised, the beginnings oi virtue are made to grow, 
 faith is conSrmed, hope strengthened, and charity 
 takes £re and dilates into dame." So little is the 
 doctrine of the Mass to be called a "degrading 
 superstition," either in its character or in its 
 working. 
 
 But it is faJsel sternly breaks in the Evangelical 
 Protestant. O Evangelical Protestant, is thine 
 own doctrine, then, so true? As the Bomish doc- 
 trine of the Mass, the Real Presence, is a rude and 
 blind criticism of: "He that eateth me shall live 
 by me;" so the Protestant tenet of Justification, 
 "pleading the Blood of the Covenant,'' is a rude 
 and blind criticism of: "The Son of Man came to 
 give his life a ransom for many ; " — it is a taking of 
 the words of Scripture literally and unintelligently. 
 And our friends, the philosophical Liberals, are 
 not slow to call this, too, a degrading supersti- 
 tion, just as Protestants call the doctrine of the 
 Mass a degrading superstition. We say, on the 
 contrary, that a degrading superstition neither 
 the one nor the other is. In imagining a sort of 
 infinitely magnified and improved Lord Shaftes- 
 bury, with a race of vile offenders to deal with, 
 whom his natural goodness would incline him to 
 let off, only his sense of justice will not allow it, 
 then a younger Lord Shaftesbury, on the scale of 
 his father and very dear to him, who might live 
 in grandeur and sjplendor if he liked, but who pre- 
 fers to leave his home, to go and live among the 
 race of offenders, and to be put to an ignomini- 
 ous death, on condition that his merits shall be 
 counted against their demerits, and that his 
 father's goodness shall be restrained no longer 
 from taking effect, but any ofiender shall be ad- 
 mitted to the benefit of it on simply pleading the 
 satisfaction made by the son ; and then, finally, a 
 265 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 third Lord Shaftesbury, still on the same high 
 scale, who keeps yery much in the background, 
 and works in a very occult manner, but very 
 efficaciously nevertheless, and who is busy in ap- 
 plying everywhere the benefits of the son's satis- 
 faction and the father's goodness; — in an imagi- 
 nation, I say, such as this, there is nothing 
 degrading, and this is precisely the Protestant 
 story of Justi^catioB. And how awe of the first 
 Lord Shaftesbury, gratitude and love towards the 
 second, and earnest co-operation with the third, 
 may fill and rule men's hearts so as to transform 
 their conduct, we need not go about to show, for 
 we have all seen it with our eyes. Therefore in 
 the practical working of this tenet there is noth- 
 ing degrading; any more than there is anything 
 degrading in this tenet as an imaginative concep- 
 tion. And looking to the infinite importance of 
 getting right conduct — three fourths of human life 
 — established, and to the inevitable anthropomor- 
 phism and extra-belief of men in dealing with 
 ideas, one might well hesitate to attack an an- 
 thropomorphism or an extra-belief by which men 
 helped themselves in conduct, merely because an 
 anthropomorphism or an extra-belief it is, so long 
 as it served its purpose, so long as it was firmly 
 and undoubtingly held, and almost universally 
 prevailing. 
 
 But, after all, the question sooner or later 
 arises in respect to a matter taken for granted, 
 like the Catholic doctrine of the Mass or the 
 Protestant doctrine of Justification: Is it sure? 
 can what is here assumed be verified? And this is 
 the real objection both to the Catholic and Prot> 
 estant doctrine as a basis for conduct ;— not that 
 it is a degrading superstition, but that it is not 
 sure, that it assumes what cannot be verified. 
 266 
 
ABERGLAUBE EEINVADINa. 
 
 For a long time this objection occurred to 
 scarcely anybody. And there are still, and for a 
 long time yet there will be, many to whom it does 
 not occur. In particular, on those "devout 
 women" who in the history of religion have at 
 all times played a part in many respects so beau- 
 tiful but in some respects so mischievous, — on 
 them, and on a certain number of men hke them, 
 it has and can as yet have, so far as one can see, 
 no effect at all. Who that watches the energu- 
 mens during the celebration of the Communion at 
 some Kitualistic church, their gestures and be- 
 havior, the floor of the church strewn with what 
 seem to be the dying and the dead, progress to 
 the altar almost barred by forms suddenly drop- 
 ping as if they were shot in battle,— who that 
 observes this delighted adoption of vehement rites, 
 till yesterday unknown, adopted and practised 
 now with all that absence of tact, measure, and 
 correct perception, all that slowness to see when 
 they are making themselves ridiculous, which be- 
 longs to the people of our English race, — who, I 
 say, that sees this, can doubt, that for a not 
 small portion of the religious community, a diffi- 
 culty to the intelligence will for a long time yet 
 be no difficulty at all? With their mental condi- 
 tion and habits, given a story to which their re- 
 hgious emotions can attach themselves, and the 
 famous Credo quia ineptum will hold good with 
 them still. To think they know what passed in 
 the Council of the Trinity is not hard to them; 
 they could easily think they even knew what 
 were the hangings of the Trinity's council-cham- 
 ber. 
 
 Arbitrary and unsupported, however, as the 
 story they have taken up with may be, yet it 
 puts them in connection with the Bible and the 
 267 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 religion of the Bible,— that is, with righteousness 
 and with the method and secret of Jesus. These 
 are so clear in the Bible that no one who uses it 
 can help seeing them there ; and of these they do 
 take for their use something, though on a wrong 
 ground. But these, so far as they are taken into 
 use, are saying. 
 
 268 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 OuK "Masses" and the Bible. 
 
 Many, however, and of a much stronger and 
 more important sort, there now are, who will not 
 thus take on trust the story which is made the 
 ground for putting ourselves in connection with 
 the Bible and learning to use its rehgion ; be it the 
 story of the divine authority of the Church, as in 
 Catholic countries, or— as generally with us — the 
 story of three Lord Shaftesburys standing on its 
 own merits. Is what this story asserts true, they 
 are beginning to ask; can it be verified?— since 
 experience proves, they add, that whatever for 
 man is true, man can verify. And certainly the 
 fairy-tale of the three Lord Shaftesburys no man 
 can verify. They find this to be so, and then they 
 say: The Bible takes for granted this story and 
 depends on the truth of it ; what, then, can ra- 
 tional people have to do with the Bible? So they 
 get rid, to be sure, of a false ground for using the 
 Bible, but they at the same time lose the Bible 
 itself, and the true religion of the Bible: right- 
 eousness, and the method and secret of Jesus, 
 And those who lose this are the masseSj as they 
 are called ; or rather they are what is most strenu- 
 ous, intelligent, and aUve among the masses, and 
 what will give the direction for the rest to fol- 
 low. 
 
 This is what every one sees to constitute the 
 special moral feature of our times: the masses are 
 269 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 losing the Bible and its religion. At the Renas- 
 cence, many cultivated wits lost it ; but the great 
 solid mass of the common people kept it, and 
 brought the world back to it after a start had 
 seemed to be made in quite another direction. 
 But now it is the people which is getting detached 
 from the Bible ; the masses can no longer be relied 
 on to counteract what the cultivated wits are 
 doing, and stubbornly to make clever men's ex- 
 travagances and aberrations, if about the Bible 
 they commit them, of no avail. When our philo- 
 sophical Liberal friends say, that by universal 
 suffrage, public meetings, C hurch disestablish- 
 ment, marrying one's deceased wife's sister, secu- 
 lar schools, industrial development, man can very 
 well live; and that if he studies the writings, say, 
 of Mr. Herbert Spencer into the bargain, he will 
 be perfect, he will have "in modern and congenial 
 language the truisms common to all systems of 
 morality," and the Bible is become quite old- 
 fashioned and superfluous for him; — when our 
 philosophical friends now say this, the masses, far 
 from checking them, are disposed to applaud them 
 to the echo. Yet assuredly, of conduct, which is 
 more than three fourths of human life, the Bible, 
 whatever people may thus think and say, is the 
 great inspirer ; so that from the great inspirer of 
 more than three fourths of human life the masses 
 of our society seem now to be cutting themselves 
 off. This promises, certainly, if it does not al- 
 ready constitute, a very unsettled condition of 
 things. And the cause of it lies in the Bible being 
 made to depend on a story, or set of asserted 
 facts, which it is impossible to verify ; and which 
 hard-hearted people, therefore, treat as either an 
 imposture, or a fairy-tale that discredits all which 
 is found in connection with it. 
 270 
 
OUE "MASSES" AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 2. 
 
 Now if we look attentively at the story, or set 
 of asserted but unverified and unverifiable facts, 
 which we have summarized in popular language 
 above, and which is alleged as the basis of the 
 Bible, we shall find that the difficulty really lies 
 all in one point. The whole difficulty is with the 
 elder Lord Shaftesbury. If he could be verified, 
 the data we have are, possibly, enough to war- 
 rant our admitting the truth of the rest of the 
 story. It is singular how few people seem to see 
 this, though it is really quite clear. The Bible is 
 supposed to assume a great Personal First Cause, 
 who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent 
 Governor of the Universe ; a sort of elder Lord 
 Shaftesbury, as we call him, infinitely magnified. 
 This is the Grod, also, of natural rehgion, as peo- 
 ple call it; and this supposed certainty learned 
 reasoners take, and render it more certain still by 
 considerations of causality, identity, existence, 
 and so on. These, however, are not found to 
 help the certainty much ; but a certainty in itself 
 the great Personal First Cause, the Grod of both 
 natural and revealed religion, is supposed to be. 
 
 Then, to this given beginning all that the Bible 
 delivers has to fit itself on. And so arises the 
 account of the Grod of the Old Testament, and of 
 Christ and of the Holy Grhost, and of the incarna- 
 tion and atonement, and of the sacraments, and 
 of inspiration, and of the church, and of eternal 
 punishment and eternal bliss, as theology presents 
 them. But difficulties strike people in this or that 
 of these doctrines ; the incarnation seems incredi- 
 ble to one, the vicarious atonement to another, 
 the real presence to a third, inspiration to a- 
 fourth, eternal punishment to a fifth, and so on. 
 And they set to work to make rehgion more pure 
 271 
 
LITEBATUEE AND DOGMA. 
 
 and rational, as they suppose, by pointing out 
 that this or that of these doctrines is false, that 
 it must be a mistake of theologians ; and by in- 
 terpreting the Bible so as to show that the doc- 
 trine is not really there. The Socinians are, per- 
 haps, the great people for this sort of partial and 
 local rationalizing of religion; for taking what 
 here and there on the surface seems to conflict 
 most with common-sense, arguing that it cannot 
 be in the Bible and getting rid of it, and pro- 
 fessing to have thus relieved religion of its diflfi- 
 culties. And now, when there is much loosening 
 of authority and tradition, much impatience of 
 what conflicts with common-sense, the Socinians 
 are beginning to give themselves out as the 
 Church of the Future. 
 
 But in all this there is in reality a good deal of 
 what we must call intellectual shallowness. For, 
 granted that there are things in a system which 
 are puzzling, yet they belong to a, sj^stem; and it 
 is childish to pick them out by themselves and re- 
 proach them with error, when you leave un- 
 touched the basis of the system where they occur, 
 and indeed admit it for sound yourself. The 
 Socinians are very loud about the unreasonable- 
 ness and unscripturalness of the common doctrine 
 of the Atonement. But in the Socinian Catechism 
 it stands written: "It is necessary for salvation 
 to know that God is; and to know that Grod is, 
 is to be flrmly persuaded that there exists in 
 reality some One, who has supreme dominion over 
 all things." Presently afterwards it stands writ- 
 ten, that among the testimonies to Christ are, 
 "miracles very great and immense," miracula 
 admodnm magna et immensa. Now, with the 
 One Supreme Grovernor, and miracles, given to 
 start with, it may fairly be urged that the con- 
 272 
 
OUR "MASSES"' AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 struction put by common theology on the Bible 
 data, which we call the story of the three Lord 
 Shaftesburys, and in which the Atonement fills a 
 prominent place, is the natural and legitimate 
 construction to put on them, and not unecriptural 
 at all. Neither is it unreasonable,— in a system of 
 things where the Supreme Grovemor and miracles, 
 or even where the Supreme Grovernor without 
 miracles, are already given. 
 
 And this is Butler's great argument in the 
 "Analogy." You all concede, he says to his 
 deistical adversaries, a supreme Personal First 
 Cause, the moral and intelligent Governor of the 
 universe ; this, you and I both agree, is the order 
 of nature. But you are offended at certain things 
 in revelation ;~that is, at things, Butler means, 
 hke the story of the three Lord Shaftesburys as 
 theology collects it from the Bible. Well, I will 
 show you, he says, that in your and my admitted 
 system of nature there are just as great difficulties 
 as in the system of revelation. And he does show 
 it; and by adversaries such as his, who grant 
 what the Deist or Socinian grants, he never has 
 been answered, he never can be answered. The 
 spear of Butler's reasoning will even follow and 
 transfix the scientific Duke of Somerset, who dis- 
 likes so much in the Bible, but "retires into one 
 unassailable fortress, — faith in God." 
 
 The only question, perhaps, is whether Butler as 
 an Anglican bishop puts an adequate construction 
 upon what Bible revelation, this basis of the 
 Supreme Governor being supposed, may be al- 
 lowed to be; whether Cathohc dogma is not the 
 truer construction to put upon it. Dr. Newman 
 urges, fairly enough, Butler admits, analogy is in 
 some sort violated by the fact of revelation; only, 
 with the precedent of natural religion given, we 
 18 273 
 
LITERATUBE AND DOGMA. 
 
 have to own that the difficulties against revela- 
 tion are not greater than against this precedent, 
 and therefore the admission of this precedent of 
 natural religion may well be taken to clear them. 
 And must we not go farther in the same way, 
 says Dr. Newman, and own that the precedent of 
 revelation, too, may be taken to cover more than 
 itself; and that as, the Supreme Governor being 
 given, it is credible that the Incarnation is true, 
 so, the Incarnation being true, it is credible that 
 God should not have left the world to itself after 
 Christ and his Apostles disappeared, but should 
 have lodged divine insight in the Church and its 
 visible head? So pleads Dr. Newman ; and if it be 
 said that facts are against the infallibility of 
 the Church, or that Scripture is against it, yet to 
 wide, immense things, like facts and Scripture, a 
 turn may easily be given which makes them favor 
 it ; and so an endless field for discussion is opened, 
 and no issue is possible. For once launched on 
 this line of hypothesis and inference, with a Su- 
 preme Governor assumed, and the task thrown 
 upon us of making out what he means us to infer 
 and what we may suppose him to do and to in- 
 tend, one of us may infer one thing and another 
 of us another, and neither can possibly prove him- 
 self to be right or his adversary to be wrong. 
 
 Only, there may come some one, who says that 
 the basis of all our inference, the Supreme Gov- 
 ernor, is not the order of nature, is an assump- 
 tion, and not a fact ; and then, if this is so, our 
 whole superstructure falls to pieces like a house of 
 cards. And this is just what is happening at 
 present. The masses, with their rude practical 
 instinct, go straight to the heart of the matter. 
 They are told there is a great Personal First 
 Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and in- 
 274 
 
OUR "MASSES" AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 telligent Author and Governor of the universe; 
 and that the Bible and Bible-righteoueness eome 
 to us from him. Now, they do not begin by ask- 
 ing, with the intelligent Socinian, whether the 
 doctrine of the Atonement is worthy of this 
 moral and intelligent Ruler ; they begin by asking 
 what proof we have of him at all. Moreover, 
 they require plain experimental proof, such as 
 that fire burns them if they touch it. If they are 
 to study and obey the Bible because it comes 
 from the Personal First Cause who is Grovernor of 
 the universe, they require to be able to ascertain 
 that there is this Grovemor, just as they are able 
 to ascertain that fire burns. And if they cannot 
 ascertain it, they will let the intelligent Socinian 
 perorate about the Atonement if he likes, but 
 they themselves pitch the whole Bible to the 
 winds. 
 
 Now, it is remarkable what a resting on mere 
 probabilities, or even on less than probabilities, 
 the proof for religion comes, in the hands of its 
 great apologist, Butler, to be, even after he has 
 started with the assumption of his moral and in- 
 telligent Governor. And no wonder; for in the 
 primary assumption itself there is and can be 
 nothing experimental and clearly known. So that 
 of Christianity, as Butler grounds it, the natural 
 criticism would really be in these words of his 
 own: "Suppositions are not to be looked upon as 
 true, because not incredible." However, Butler 
 maintains that in matters of practice, such as 
 religion, this is not so ; in them it is prudent, he 
 says, to act on even a supposition, if it is not 
 incredible. Even the doubting about religion im- 
 plies, he argues, that it may be true. Now, in 
 matters of practice we are bound in prudence to 
 act upon what may be a low degree of evidence; 
 275 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 yes, even though it be so low as to leave the 
 mind in very great doubt what is the truth. 
 
 Was there ever such a way of establishing right- 
 eousness heard of? And suppose we tried this 
 with rude, hard, downright people, with the 
 masses, who for what is told them want a plain 
 experimental proof, such as that fire will burn you 
 if you touch it. Whether in prudence they oughtto 
 take the Bible and religion on a low degree of 
 evidence or not, it is quite certain that on this 
 ground they never will take them. And it is 
 quite certain, moreover, that never on this ground 
 did Israel, from whom we derive our religion, 
 take it himself or recommend it. He did not take it 
 in prudence, because he found at any rate a low 
 degree of evidence for itj he took it in rapture, 
 because he found for it an evidence irresistible. 
 But his own words are the best: "Thou, Eter- 
 nal, art the thing that I long for, thou art my 
 hope even from my youth; through thee have I been 
 holden up ever since I was born; there is nothing 
 sweeter than to take heed unto the command- 
 ments of the Eternal. The Eternal is my strength, 
 my heart hath trusted in him and I am helped; 
 therefore my heart daneeth for joy, and in my 
 song will I praise him.^' That is why Israel took 
 his religion. 
 
 3. 
 
 But if Israel spoke of the Eternal thus, it was, 
 we say, because he had a plain experimental proof 
 of him. Grod was to Israel neither an assumption 
 nor a metaphysical idea; he was a power that 
 can be verified as much as the power of fire to 
 burn or of bread to nourish : the power, not our- 
 selves, that makes for righteousness. And the 
 greatness of Israel in religion, the reason why he 
 is said to have had religion revealed to him, 
 276 
 
OUR "MASSES" AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 to have been entrusted with the oracles of Grod, ie 
 because he had in such extraordinary force and 
 vividness the perception of this power. And he 
 communicates it irresistibly because he feels it ir- 
 resistibly; that is why the Bible is not as other 
 books that inculcate righteousness. Israel speaks 
 of hia intuition as still feeling it to be an intui- 
 tion, an experience; not as something which 
 others have delivered to him, nor yet as a piece 
 of metaphysical notion-building. Anthropomor- 
 phic he is, for all men are, and especially men not 
 endowed with the Aryan genius for abstraction; 
 but he does not make arbitrary assertions which 
 can never be verified, like our popular religion, nor 
 is he ever pseudo-scientific, like our learned re- 
 ligion. 
 
 He is credited with the metaphysical ideas of the 
 personality of Grod, of the unity of God, and of 
 creation as opposed to evolution; ideas depending, 
 the first two of them, on notions of existence and 
 of identity, the last of them, on the notion of 
 cause and design. But he is credited with them 
 falsely. All the countenance he gives to the meta- 
 physical idea of the personality of God is given by 
 his anthropomorphic language, in which, being a 
 man himself, he naturally speaks of the Power, 
 with which he is concerned, as a man also. So he 
 says that Moses saw God's hinder parts; and he 
 gives just as much countenance to the scientific 
 assertion that God has hinder parts, as to the 
 scientific assertion of God's personality. That is, 
 he gives no countenance at all to either. As to 
 his asserting the unity of God the case is the 
 same. He would give, indeed, his heart and his 
 worship to no manifestation of power, except the 
 power which makes for nghteonsness ; but he af- 
 fords to the metaphysical idea of the unity of God 
 277 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 no more countenance than this, and this is none 
 at all. Then, lastly, as to the idea of creation. 
 He viewed, indeed, all order as depending on the 
 supreme order of righteousness, and all the ful- 
 ness and beauty of the world as a boon added 
 to that holder of the greatest of all boons al- 
 ready, the righteous ; this is as much countenance 
 as he gives to the famous argument from design, 
 or to the doctrine of creation as opposed to evo- 
 lution. And it is none at all. 
 
 Free as is bis use of anthropomorphic language, 
 Israel has far too keen a sense of reality not to 
 shrink, when he comes anywhere near to the no- 
 tion of exact speaking about Grod, from affirma- 
 tion, from professing to know a whit more than 
 he does know. "Lo, these are parts of his ways," 
 he says of what he has experienced, "but how 
 little a portion is known of him I" And again: 
 '^ The secret things belong unto the Eternal our 
 God; but the revealed things belong unto us and 
 to our children forever; that we may do all the 
 words of this law.^' How different from our 
 license of full and particular statement: **A Per- 
 sonal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the 
 moral and intelligent Grovernor of the universe 1" 
 Israel knew, of the Eternal not ourselveSj that it 
 was "a power that made for righteousness." 
 This was revealed to Israel and his children, and 
 through them to the world ; all the rest about the 
 Eternal not ourselves was this power's own 
 secret. And all Israel's language about this 
 power, except that it makes for righteousness, is 
 approximate language,— the language of poetry 
 and eloquence, thrown out at a vast object of our 
 consciousness not fully apprehended by it, but 
 extending infinitely beyond it. 
 
 ThiSf however, was "a revealed thing," Israel 
 278 
 
OUR "MASSES" AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 said, to him and to his children: "the Eternal not 
 ourselves that makes for righteousness." And 
 noWj then, let us go to the masses with what 
 Israel really did say, instead of what our popular 
 and our learned religion may choose to make him 
 say. Let us announce, not: "There rules a great 
 Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the 
 moral and intelligent Grovernor of the universe, 
 and therefore study your Bible and learn to obey 
 this I" No; but let us announce: "There rules an 
 enduring Power, not ourselves, which makes for 
 righteousness, and therefore study your Bible and 
 learn to obey this." For if we announce the 
 other instead, and they reply: "First let us verify 
 that there rules a great Personal First Cause, 
 who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent 
 Grovernor of the universe," — what are we to 
 answer? we cannot answer. 
 
 But if, on the other hand, they ask: "How are 
 we to verify that there rules an enduring Power, 
 not ourselves, which makes for righteousness?" — 
 we may answer at once: "How? why, as you 
 verify that fire burns,— foj experience! It is so; 
 try it I you can try it ; every case of conduct, of 
 that which is more than three fourths of your 
 own life and of the life of all mankind, will prove 
 it to you. Disbelieve it, and you will find out your 
 mistake, as sure as, if you disbelieve that fire 
 burns and put your hand into the fire, you will 
 find out your mistake. Believe it, and you will find 
 the benefit of it." This is the first experience. 
 
 But then they may go on, and say : "Why, 
 however, if there is an enduring Power, not our 
 selves, that makes for righteousness, should we 
 Rtudy the Bible that we may learn to obey him?— 
 will not other teachers or books do as well? " And 
 here again the answer is: "Why? why, because he 
 279 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 is revealed in Israel and the Bible, and not by 
 other teachers and books I" that is, there is in- 
 finitely more of him there, he is plainer and easier 
 to come at, and incomparably more impressive. 
 If you want to know plastic art, you go to the 
 Greeks ; if you want to know science, you go to 
 the Aryan genius. And why?* Because they have 
 the specialty for these things ; for making us feel 
 what they are and giving us an enthusiasm for 
 them. Well, and so have Israel and the Bible a 
 specialty for righteousness, for making us feel 
 what it is and giving us an enthusiasm for it. 
 And here again it is experience that we invoke: 
 try it! Having convinced yourself that there is 
 an enduring Power, not ourselves, that makes for 
 righteousness, set yourself next to try to learn 
 more about this, and to feel an enthusiasm for 
 this. And to this end, take a course of the Bible 
 first, and then a course of Benjamin Franklin, 
 Horace Greeley, Jeremy Bentham, and Mr. Her- 
 bert Spencer; see which has most effect, which 
 satisfies you most, which gives you most power. 
 Why, the Bible has such power for teaching right- 
 eousness, that even to those who come to it with 
 all sorts of false notions about the God of the 
 Bible, it yet teaches righteousness, and fills them 
 with the love of it ; how much more those who 
 come to it with a true notion about the God of 
 the Bible I And this is the second experience. 
 
 Now here, at the beginning of things, is the 
 point, we say, where to apply correction to our 
 current theology, if we are to bring the religion 
 of the Bible home to the masses. It is of no use 
 beginning lower down, and amending this or that 
 ramification, such as the Atonement, or the Real 
 280 
 
OUR ''MASSES" AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Presence, or Eternal Punishment, when the root 
 from which all springs is unsound. Those whom 
 it most concerns us to teach will never interest 
 themselves at all in our amended rehgion, so long 
 as the whole thing appears to them unsupported 
 and in the air. 
 
 Yet that original conception of God, on which 
 all our religion is and must be grounded, has been 
 very little examined, and very few of the contro- 
 versies which arise in rehgion go near it. Re- 
 ligious people say solemnly, as if we doubted it, 
 that "he that cometh to God must believe 
 that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that 
 seek him"; and that "a man who preaches that 
 Jesus Christ is not God is virtually out of the 
 pale of Christian communion.'' We entirely agree 
 with them; but we want to know what they 
 mean by God, Now on this matter the state of 
 their thoughts is, to say the truth, extremely 
 vague; but what they really do at bottom mean 
 is, in general: "The best one knows." And this is 
 the soundest definition they will ever attain : yet 
 scientifically it is not a satisfying definition, for 
 clearly "the best one knows" diflfers for every- 
 body. So they have to be more precise ; and when 
 they collect themselves a little, they find that they 
 mean by God "a magnified and non-natural man." 
 But this, again, they can hardly say in so many 
 words; therefore at last, when they are pressed, 
 they collect themselves all they can, and make a 
 great efibrt, and out they come with their piece of 
 science: God is "a great Personal First Cause, who 
 thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Gov- 
 ernor of the universe." But this piece of science of 
 theirs we will have nothing to say to, for we ac- 
 count it quite hollow; and we say, and have 
 shown (we think), that the Bible, rightly read, 
 281 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 will have nothing to Bay to it either. Yet the 
 whole pinch of the matter is here; and till we are 
 agreed as to what we mean by God, we can never, 
 in discussing religious questions, understand one 
 another, or discuss seriously. Yet, as we have 
 said, hardly any of the discussions which arise in 
 religion turn upon this cardinal point. This is 
 what cannot but strike one in that torrent of 
 petitiones prineipn (for so one really must call it) 
 in the shape of theological letters from clergy- 
 men, which pours itself every week in the columns 
 of the "Gruardian." They all employ the word 
 God with such extraordinary confidence! as if "a 
 great Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, 
 the moral and intelligent Governor of the uni- 
 verse," were a verifiable fact given beyond all 
 question ; and we had now only to discuss what 
 such a being would naturally think about Church 
 vestments and the use of the Athanasian Creed. 
 But everything people say, under these conditions, 
 is in truth quite in the air. 
 
 Even those who have treated Israel and his re- 
 ligion the most philosophically, seem not to have 
 enough considered that so wonderful an effect 
 must have had some cause to account for it other 
 than any they assign. Professor Kuenen, whose 
 excellent History of the Religion of Israel* ought 
 to find an English translator, suggests that the 
 Hebrew religion was so unlike that of other 
 Semitic people because of the simple and austere 
 life of the Beni-Israel as nomads of the desert; or 
 because they did not, like other Semitic people, 
 put a feminine divinity alongside of their mascu- 
 line divinity, and thus open the way to all sorts 
 of immoraUty. But many other tribes have had 
 *Dg GodstMenst vcm Israel tot d&n Ondergang vcm den 
 Joodschsn Stoat (The Bellgion of Israel till the Downfall of 
 the Jewish State); Haarlem. 
 
 282 
 
OUR "MASSES" AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 the simple and austere life of nomads of the 
 desert, without its bringing them to the religion 
 of Israel. And, if the Hebrews did not put a 
 feminine divinity alongside of their masculine 
 divinity while other Semitic people did, surely 
 there must have been something to cause this 
 difference I and what we want to know Is this 
 something. 
 
 And to this sometbingj I say, the "Zeit-Geist" 
 and a prolonged and large experience of men's ex- 
 pressions, and how they employ them, leads us. 
 It was because while other people, in the opera- 
 tion of that mighty not ourselves which is in us 
 and around us, saw this thing and that thing and 
 many things, Israel saw one thing only : — that it 
 made for conduct, for righteousness. And it does ; 
 and conduct is nearly the whole of human life. 
 And hence, therefore, the extraordinary reaUty 
 and power of Israel's God and of Israel's religion. 
 And the more we strictly limit ourselves, in at- 
 tempting to give a scientific account of God, to 
 Israel's authentic intuition of him, and say that 
 he is "the Eternal Power, not ourselves, that 
 makes for righteousness," the more real and pro- 
 found will Israel's words about God become to us, 
 for we can then verify his words as we use them. 
 
 "Eternal, Thou hast been our refuge from one 
 generation to another 1 " If we define the Eternal 
 to ourselves, "a great Personal First Cause, who 
 thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Gover- 
 nor of the universe," we can never verify that 
 this has from age to age been a refuge to men. 
 But if we define the Eternal, "the enduring power, 
 not ourselves, that makes for righteousness," then 
 we can know and feel the truth of what we say 
 when we declare: "Eternal, Thou hast been our 
 refuge from one generation to another I" For in 
 283 
 
LITERATURE AND DOaMA. 
 
 all the history of man we can verify it. Right- 
 eouBness has been salvation; and to verify the 
 God of Israel in man's long history is the most 
 animating, the most exalting, and the most pure 
 of delights. " Blessed is the nation whose God is 
 the Eternal I" is a text, indeed, of which the world 
 offers us the most inexhaustible and the most 
 marvellous illustration. 
 
 Nor is the change here proposed, in itself, any 
 difficult or startling change in our habits of re- 
 ligious thought, but a very simple one. However, 
 simple as is this change to be made high up and 
 at the outset, it undeniably governs everything 
 farther down. Jesus is the Son of Grod; the Holy 
 Spirit is the Spirit of truth that proceeds from 
 God, What God? **A great Personal First Cause, 
 who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent 
 Governor of the universe," — to whom Jesus and 
 the Holy Spirit are related in the way described 
 in the Athanasian Creed, so that the operations 
 of the three together produce what the West- 
 minster divines call "the Contract passed in the 
 Council of the Trinity," and we, for plainness, 
 describe as the fairy-tale of the three Lord Shaftes- 
 burys? This is all in the air, but in the air it all 
 hangs together. There stand the Bible words I 
 how you construe them depends entirely on the 
 definition of God you start with. If Jesus is the 
 Son of "a great Personal First Cause," then 
 the words of the Bible, literally taken, may well 
 enough lend themselves to a story like that of the 
 three Lord Shaftesburys. The story can never be 
 verified: but it may nevertheless be what the 
 Bible means to say, if the Bible have started, as 
 theology starts, with the "Great Personal First 
 Cause." And the story may, when it comes to be 
 examined, have many minor difficulties, have 
 284 
 
OUR "MASSES" AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 things to baffle us, things to shock us : but still it 
 may be what the Bible means to say. However, 
 the masses will get rid of all minor difficulties in 
 the simplest manner, by rejecting the Bible alto- 
 gether on account of the major difficulty, — its 
 starting with an assumption which cannot pos- 
 sibly be verified. 
 
 But suppose the Bible is discovered, when its 
 expressions are rightly understood, to start with 
 an assertion which can be verified : the assertion, 
 namely, not of "a great Personal First Cause," 
 but of "an enduring Power, not ourselves, that 
 makes for righteousness." Then by the light of 
 this discovery we read and understand all the ex- 
 pressions that follow. Jesus comes forth from this 
 enduring Power that makes for righteousness, is 
 sent by this Power, is this Power's Son; the 
 Holy Spirit proceeds from this same Power, and 
 so on. 
 
 Now, from the innumerable minor difficulties 
 that attend the story of the three Lord Shaftes- 
 burys, this right construction, put on what the 
 Bible says of Jesus, of the Father, and of the 
 Holy Spirit, is free. But it is free from the major 
 difficulty also ; for it neither depends upon what is 
 unverifiable, nor is it unverifiable itself. That Jesus 
 is the Son of a great Personal First Cause is it- 
 self unverifiable; and that there is a great Personal 
 First Cause is unverifiable too. But that there is 
 an enduring power, not ourselves, which makes 
 for righteousness, is verifiable, as we have seen, 
 by experience; and that Jesus is the ofispring of 
 this power is verifiable from experience also. For 
 God is the author of righteousness; now, Jesus is 
 the Son of God because he gives the method and 
 secret by which alone is righteousness possible. 
 And that he does give this, we can verify, again, 
 285 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 from experience : it is so 1 try, and you will find it 
 to be 80. Try all the ways to righteousness you 
 can think of, and you will find that no way 
 brings you to it except the way of Jesus, but that 
 this way does bring you to it. And, therefore, as 
 we found we could say to the masses: "Attempt 
 to do without Israel's Grod that makes for right- 
 eousness, and you will find out your mistake I" — 
 so we find we can now go on farther, and say: 
 "Attempt to reach righteousness hy any way ex- 
 cept that ot Jesus, and you will find out your 
 mistake 1" This is a thing that can prove itself, 
 if it is so ; and it will prove itself, because it is 
 so. 
 
 Thus we have the authority of both Old and 
 New Testament plfbced on just the same solid 
 basis as the authority of the injunction to take 
 food and rest : namely, that experience proves we 
 cannot do without them. And we have neglect of 
 the Bible punished just as putting one's hand into 
 the fire is punished : namely, by finding we are the 
 worse for it. Only, to attend to this experience 
 about the Bible needs more steadiness than to 
 attend to the momentary impressions of hunger, 
 fatigue, and pain ; therefore it is called faith, and 
 counted a virtue. But the appeal is to experience 
 in this case just as much as in the other ; only to 
 experience of a far deeper and greater kind. 
 
 So there is no doubt that we get a much firmer, 
 nay an impregnable, ground for the Bible, and for 
 recommending it to the world, if we put the con- 
 struction on it we propose. The only question is : 
 Is this the right construction to put on it? is it 
 the construction which properly belongs to the 
 Bible? And here, again, our appeal is to the 
 286 
 
OUR "MASSES" AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 same test which we have employed throughout, 
 the only possible test for men to employ, — the 
 test of^ reason and experience. Given the Bible 
 documents, what, it is required, is the right con- 
 struction to put upon them? Is it the construc- 
 tion we propose? or is it the construction of the 
 theologians, according to which the dogmas of 
 the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and 
 so on, are presupposed aU through the Bible, are 
 sometimes latent, sometimes come more visibly to 
 the surface, but are always there; and to them 
 every word in the Bible has reference, plain or 
 figured? 
 
 Now, the Bible does not and cannot tell us it- 
 self, in black and white, what is the right con- 
 struction to put upon it; we have to make this 
 out. And the only possible way to make it out — 
 for the dogmatists to make out their construc- 
 tion, or for us to make out ours— is by reason 
 and experience. "Even such as are readiest," says 
 Hooker, very well, "to cite for one thing five 
 hundred sentences of Scripture, what warrant 
 have they that any one of them doth mean the 
 thing for which it is alleged?" They can have 
 none, he replies, but reasoning and collection ; and 
 to the same effect Butler says of reason, that "it 
 is indeed the only faculty we have wherewith to 
 judge concerning anything, even revelation itself" 
 Now it is simply from experience of the human 
 spirit and its productions, from observing as 
 widely as we can the manner in which men have 
 thought, their way of using words and what they 
 mean by them, and from reasoning upon this ob- 
 servation and experience, that we conclude the 
 construction theologians put upon the Bible to be 
 false, and ours to be the truer one. 
 
 In the first place, from Israel's master-feeling, 
 287 
 
LITEIUTUBE AND DOGMA. 
 
 the feeling for righteousness, the predominant 
 sense that men are, as St. Paul says, "created 
 unto good works which Grod hath prepared be- 
 forehand that we should walk in them," we col- 
 lect the origin of Israel's conception of Grod,--of 
 that mighty not ourselves which more or less en- 
 gages all men's attention, — as the Eternal Power 
 that makes for righteousness. This we do, be- 
 cause the more we come to know how ideas and 
 terms arise, and what is their character, the more 
 this explanation of Israel's use of the word "God" 
 seems the true and natural one. Again, the con- 
 struction we put upon the doctrine and work ot^ 
 Jesus is collected in the same way. From the 
 data we have, and from comparison of these data 
 with what we have besides of the history of ideas 
 and expressions, this construction seems to us the 
 true and natural one. The Gospel narratives are 
 just that sort of account of such a work and 
 teaching' as the work and teaching of Christ, 
 according to our construction of it, was, which 
 would naturally have been given by devoted fol- 
 lowers who did not fully understand it. And 
 understand it fully they then could not, it was so 
 very new, great, and profound ; only time gradu- 
 ually brings its lines out more clear. 
 
 On the other hand, the theologians' notion of 
 dogmas presupposed in the Bible, and of a con- 
 stant latent reference to them, we reject, because 
 experience is against it. The more we know of 
 the history of ideas and expressions, the more we 
 are convinced that this account is not and cannot 
 be the true one; that the theologians have cred- 
 ited the Bible with this presupposition of dogmas 
 and this constant latent reference to them, but 
 that they are not really there. "The Fathers 
 recognized,'^ says Dr. Newman, "a certain truth 
 288 
 
OUR "MASSES" AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 lying hid under the tenor of the sacred text as a 
 whole, and showing itself more or less in this 
 verse or that, as it might be. The Fathers might 
 have traditionary informatioD of the general drift 
 of the inspired text which we have not." Born 
 into the world twenty years later, and touched 
 with the breath of the "Zeit-Geist," how would 
 this exquisite and delicate genius have been him- 
 self the first to feel the unsoundness of all this I 
 that we have heard the like about other books 
 before, and that it always turns out to be not 
 so, that the right interpretation of a document, 
 such as the Bible, is not in this fashion. Homer's 
 poetry was the Bible of the G-reeks, however 
 strange a one; and just in the same way there 
 grew up the notion of a mystical and inner sense 
 in the poetry of Homer, underlying the apparent 
 sense, but brought to light by the commentators ; 
 perhaps, even, they might have traditionary in- 
 formation of the drift of the Homeric poetry 
 which we have not; — who knows? But, once for 
 all, as our literary experience widens, this notion 
 of a secret sense in Homer proves to be a mere 
 dream. So, too, is the notion of a secret sense in 
 the Bible, and of the Fathers' disengagement of 
 it. 
 
 Demonstration in these matters is impossible; 
 it is a maintainable thesis that the allegorizing of 
 the Fathers is right, and that this is the true sense 
 of the Bible. It is a maintainable thesis that the 
 theological dogmas of the Trinity, the Incarna- 
 tion, and the Atonement underlie the whole Bible. 
 It is a maintainable thesis, on the other hand, 
 that Jesus was himself immersed in the Aber- 
 glaube of his nation and time, and that his disci- 
 ples have reported him with absolute fidelity; in 
 this case we should have, in our estimate of Jesus, 
 19 289 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 to make deductions for his Aberglaube, and to 
 admire him for the insight he displayed in spite of 
 it. This thesis, we repeat, or that thesis, or an- 
 other thesis, is maintainable, as to the construc- 
 tion to be put on such a document as the Bible. 
 Absolute demonstration is impossible, and the 
 only question is: Does experience, as it widens 
 and deepens, make for this or that thesis, or 
 make against it? And the great thing against 
 any such thesis as either of the two we have just 
 mentioned is, that the more we know of the his- 
 tory of the human spirit and its deUverances, the 
 more we have reason to think such a thesis im- 
 probable, and it loses hold on our assent more 
 and more. On the other hand, the great thing, 
 as we believe, in favor of such a construction as 
 we put upon the Bible is, that experience, as it in- 
 creases, constantly confirms it ; and that, though 
 it cannot command assent, it will be found to 
 win assent more and more. 
 
 290 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The True Greatness of the Old Testa- 
 ment. 
 
 Win assent in the end the new construction will, 
 but not at once; and there will be a passage- 
 time of confusion first. It is not for nothing, as 
 we have said, that people take short cuts and tell 
 themselves fairy-tales, because the immense scale 
 of the history of "bringing in everlasting right- 
 eousness" is too much for their narrow minds. 
 It is not for nothing ; they pay for it. It is not 
 for nothing that they found religion on prediction 
 and miracle, guarantee it by supernatural inter- 
 ventions and the coming of the Son of Man in the 
 clouds, consummate it by a banquet with Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, and Jacob, in a city shining with 
 gold and precious stones. They are like people 
 who have fed their minds on novels or their 
 stomachs on opium ; the reality of things is flat 
 and insipid to them, although it is in truth far 
 grander than the phantasmagorical world of 
 novels and opium. But it is long before the novel- 
 reader or opium-eater can rid himself of his bad 
 habits, and brace his nerves, and recover the tone 
 of his mind enough to see it. Distress and despair 
 at the loss of his accustomed stimulant are his 
 first sensations. 
 
 Miracles, the mainstay of popular religion, are 
 
 touched by Ithuriel's spear. They are beginning 
 
 to dissolve ; but what are we to expect during the 
 
 process? Probably, amongst many religious peo- 
 
 291 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 pie, vehement efforts at reaction, a recrudescence 
 of superstition; the passionate resolve to keep 
 hold on what is slipping away from them by 
 giving up more and more the use of reason in 
 religion, and by resting more and more on au- 
 thority. The Church of Rome is the great up- 
 holder of authority as against reason in religion ; 
 and it will be strange if in the coming time of 
 transition the Church of Rome does not gain. 
 
 But for many more than those whom Rome at- 
 tracts, there will be an interval, between the time 
 when men take the religion of the Bible to be a 
 thaumaturgy and the time when they perceive it 
 to be something different, in which they will be 
 prone to throw aside the religion of the Bible 
 altogether as a delusion. And this, again, will be 
 mainly the fault— if fault that can be called which 
 was an inevitable error— of the religious people 
 themselves, who, from the time of the Apostles 
 downwards, have insisted upon it that religion 
 shall be a thaumaturgy or nothing. For very 
 many, therefore, when it cannot be a thauma- 
 turgy, it will be nothing. And very likely there 
 will come a day when there will be less religion 
 than even now ; for the religion of the Bible is so 
 simple and powerful that even those who make 
 the Bible a thaumaturgy get hold of it, because 
 they read the Bible ; but if men do not read the 
 Bible, they cannot get hold of it. And then will 
 be fulfilled the saying of the prophet Amos: "Be- 
 hold, the days come, saith the Eternal, that I 
 will send a famine in the land, not a famine of 
 bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the 
 words of the Eternal; and they shall wander 
 from sea to sea, and from the north even to the 
 east they shall run to and fro to seek the word of 
 the Eternal, and shall not find it." 
 292 
 
TEUE GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 NevertheleBS, as after this mournful prophecy the 
 herdsman of Tekoah goes on to say: "There shall 
 yet not the least grain of Israel fall to the earth I" 
 To the Bible men will return ; and why? Because 
 they cannot do without it. Because happiness is 
 our being's end and aim, and happiness belongs to 
 righteousness, and righteousness is revealed in the 
 Bible. For this simple reason men will return to 
 the Bible, just as a man who tried to give up 
 food, thinking it was a vain thing and he could 
 do without it, would return to food ; or a man 
 who tried to give up sleep, thinking it was a 
 vain thing and he could do without it, would 
 return to sleep. Then there will come a time of 
 reconstruction ; and then, perhaps, will be the mo- 
 ment for labors like this essay of ours to be 
 found useful. For though every one must read 
 the Bible for himself, and the perfect criticism of 
 it is an immense matter, and it may be possible 
 to go much beyond what we here achieve or can 
 achieve, yet the method for reading the Bible we, 
 as we hope and believe, here give. And though, 
 in this or that detail, the construction we put 
 upon the Bible may be wrong, yet the main lines 
 of the construction will be found, we hope and 
 believe, right; and the reader who has the main 
 lines may easily amend the details for himself. 
 
 Meanwhile, to popular Christianity, from those 
 who can see its errors, is due an indulgence inex- 
 haustible, except where limits are required to it 
 for the good of religion itself. Two considera- 
 tions make this indulgence right : one is, that the 
 language of the Bible being— which is the great 
 point a sound criticism establishes against dog- 
 matic theology — approximate not scientific, in all 
 293 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 expressions of religious feeling approximate lan- 
 guage is lawful, and indeed is all we can attain 
 to. It cannot be adequate, more or less proper 
 it can be ; but, in general, approximate language 
 consecrated by use and religious feeling acquires 
 therefrom a propriety of its own. That is the 
 first consideration. The second is, that on the 
 "method" and "secret" of Jesus popular Chris- 
 tianity in no contemptible measure both can and 
 does, as we have said, lay hold, in spite of its 
 inadequate criticism of the Bible. Now, to lay 
 hold on the method and secret of Jesua is a very 
 great thing ; an inadequate criticism of the Bible 
 is a comparatively small one. 
 
 Certainly this consideration should govern our 
 way of regarding many things in popular Chris- 
 tianity ; — its missions, for instance. The non- 
 Christian religions are not to the wise man mere 
 monsters; he knows they have much good and 
 truth in them. He knows that Mahometanism, 
 and Brahminism, and Buddhism are not what the 
 miseionaries call them; and he knows, too, how 
 really unfit the missionaries are to cope with 
 them. For any one who weighs the matter well, 
 the missionary in clerical coat and gaiters whom 
 one sees in woodcuts preaching to a group of 
 picturesque Orientals, is, from the inadequacy 
 of his criticism both of his hearers' religion and of 
 his own, and his signal misunderstanding of the 
 very Volume he holds in his hand, a hardly less 
 grotesque object in his intellectual equipment for 
 his task than in his outward attire. Yet every 
 one allows that this strange figure carries some- 
 thing of what is called European civilization with 
 him, and a good part of this is due to Chris- 
 tianity. But even the Christianity itself that he 
 preaches, imbedded in a false theology though it 
 294 
 
TRUE GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 be, cannot but contain, in a greater or lesser 
 measure as it may happen, these three things: — 
 the all-importance of righteousness y the method of 
 Jesus, the secret of Jesus. No Christianity that 
 is ever preached but manages to carry something 
 of these along with it. 
 
 And if it carries them to Mahometanism, they 
 are carried where of the all-importance of right- 
 eousness there is a knowledge, but of the method 
 and secret of Jesus, by which alone is righteous- 
 ness possible, hardly any sense at all. If it carries 
 them to Brahminism, they are carried where of 
 the all-importance of righteousness, the founda- 
 tion of the whole matter, there is a wholly in- 
 sufficient sense; and where religion is, above all, 
 the metaphysical conception, or metaphysical 
 play, so dear to the Aryan genius and to M. 
 Emile Burnouf. If it carries them to Buddhism, 
 they are carried to a religion to be saluted with 
 respect, indeed ; for it has not only the sense for 
 righteousness, it has, even, it has the secret of 
 Jesus. But it employe the secret ill, because 
 greatly wanting in the method, because utterly 
 wanting in the sweet reasonableness, the unerring 
 balance, the epieikeia. Therefore, to all whom it 
 visits, the Christianity of our missions, inadequate 
 as may be its criticism of the Bible, brings what 
 may do them good. And if it brings the Bible it- 
 self, it brings what may not only help the good 
 preached, but may also with time dissipate the 
 erroneous criticism which accompanies this and 
 impairs it. All this is to be said for popular re- 
 ligion ; and it all makes in favor of treating popu- 
 lar religion tenderly, of sparing it as much as 
 possible, of trusting to time and indirect means to 
 transform it, rather than to sudden, violent 
 changes. 
 
 295 
 
LITERATURE AND DO&MA. 
 
 3. 
 
 Learned religion, howeyer, the pseudo-science of 
 dogmatic theology, merits no such indulgence. It 
 is a separable accretion, which never had any 
 business to be attached to Christianity, never did 
 it any good, and now does it great harm, and 
 thickens an hundred-fold the religious confusion in 
 which we live. Attempts to adopt it, to put a 
 new sense into it, to make it plausible, are the 
 most misspent labor in the world. Certainly no 
 religious reformer who tries it, or has tried it, 
 will find his work live. 
 
 Nothing is more common, indeed, than for re- 
 ligious writers who have a strong sense of the 
 genuine and moral side of Christianity and much 
 enlarge on the pre-eminence of this, to put them- 
 selves right, as it were, with dogmatic theology, 
 by a passing sentence expressing profound belief 
 in its dogmas, though in discussing them, it is 
 implied, there is little profit. So Mr. Erskine of 
 Linlathen, that unwearying and much-revered ex- 
 ponent of the moral side of the Bible: "It seems 
 difficult," he says, "to conceive that any man 
 should read through the New Testament candidly 
 and attentively, without being convinced that the 
 doctrine of the Trinity is essential to and implied 
 in every part of the system." Even already many 
 readers of Mr. Erskine feel, when they come across 
 such a sentence as that, as if they had suddenly 
 taken gravel or sand into their mouth. Twenty 
 years hence this feeling will be far stronger; the 
 reader will drop the book, saying that certainly 
 it can avail him nothing. So, also, Bunsen was 
 fond of saying, putting some peculiar meaning of 
 his own into the words, that the whole of Chris- 
 tianity was in the Lutheran doctrine of justifica- 
 tion by faith. Thus, too, the Bishop of Exeter 
 296 
 
TRUE GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 chooses to say that his main objection to keeping 
 the Athanasian Creed is, that it endangers the 
 doctrine of the Trinity, which is so important. 
 Mr. Maurice, again, that pure and devout spirit, — 
 of whom, however, the truth must at last be said, 
 that in theology he passed his life beating the 
 bush with deep emotion, and never starting the 
 hare,— Mr. Maurice declared that by reading be- 
 tween the lines he saw in the Thirty-nine Articles 
 and the Athanasian Creed the altogether perfect 
 expression of the Christian faith. 
 
 But all this is mischievous as well as vain. It 
 is vain, because it is meant to conciliate the so- 
 called orthodox, and it does not conciliate them. 
 Of his attachment to the doctrine of the Trinity 
 the Bishop of Exeter may make what protesta- 
 tions he will. Archdeacon Denison will still smell 
 a rat in them; and the time has passed when 
 Bunsen's Evangelical phrases could fascinate the 
 Evangelicals. Such language, however, does also 
 a<;tual harm, because it proceeds from a misunder- 
 standing and prolongs it. For it may be well to 
 read between the lines of a man laboring with an 
 experience he cannot utter ; but to read between 
 the lines of a notion- work is absurd, for it is of 
 the essence of a notion- work not to need it. And 
 the Athanasian Creed is a notion- work, of which 
 the fault is that its basis is a chimera. It is an 
 application of the forms of Greek logic to a chi- 
 mera, its own notion of the Trinity, a notion un- 
 established, not resting on observation and experi- 
 ence, but assumed to be given in Scripture, yet 
 not really given there. Indeed the very expres- 
 sion, the Trinity, jars with the whole idea and 
 character of Bible religion ; but, lest the Socinian 
 should be unduly elated at hearing this, let us 
 hasten to add that so too, and just as much, 
 297 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 does the expression, a great Personal First 
 Cause. 
 
 Learned pseudo-science applied to the data of 
 the Bible is best called plainly what it is,— utter 
 blunder ; criticism of the same order, and of which 
 the futility will one day be just as visible, as that 
 criticism about the two swords which we have 
 quoted. To try to tinker such criticism only 
 makes matters worse; the best way is to throw 
 it aside altogether, and forget it as fast as possi- 
 ble. This is what the good of religion demands, 
 and what all the enemies of religion would most 
 deprecate. The hour for softening down, and ex- 
 plaining away, is passed ; the whole false notion- 
 work has to go. Mild defences of it leave on the 
 mind a sense of the defender's hopeless inability to 
 perceive our actual situation; violent defences, 
 such as Archdeacon Denison's, read, alasl only 
 like "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and 
 fury, signifying nothing." 
 4c. 
 But the great work to be done for the better 
 time which will arrive, and for the time of transi- 
 tion which will precede it, is not a work of de- 
 struction, but to show that the truth is really, as 
 it is, incomparably higher, grander, more wide 
 and deep-reaching, than the Aberglaube and false 
 science which it displaces. 
 
 The propounders of "The great Personal First 
 Cause, who thinks and loves," are too modest 
 when they sometimes say, taking their lesson 
 from the Bible, that, after all, man can know 
 next to nothing of the Divine nature. They do 
 themselves signal injustice ; they themselves know 
 a great deal, far too much. They know so much, 
 that they make of Grod a magnified and non- 
 natural man, a sort, as we have said, of infinitely 
 298 
 
TRUE GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 extended Lord Shaftesbury; and when this leads 
 them into difficulties, and they think to escape 
 these by saying that God's ways are not man's 
 ways, they do not succeed in making their God 
 cease to resemble a man, they only make him re- 
 semble a man puzzled. But the truth is, that one 
 may have a great respect for Lord Shaftesbury, 
 and yet be permitted, even however much he be 
 magnified, to imagine something far beyond him. 
 And this is the good of such an unpretending 
 definition of God as ours: "the Eternal Power, zio^ 
 ourselves, that makes for righteousness ;" — it leaves 
 the infinite to the imagination, and to the gradual 
 efibrts of countless ages of men, slowly feeling 
 after more of it and finding it. Ages and ages 
 hence, no such adequate definition of the infinite 
 not ourselves will yet be possible, as any sciolist 
 of a theologian will now pretend to rattle you 
 off in a moment. But on one point of the opera- 
 tion of this uot ourselves we are clear: that it 
 makes for conduct, righteousness. So far we 
 know God, that he is "the Eternal that loveth 
 righteousness" \ and the farther we go in right- 
 eousness, the more we shall know him. 
 
 And as this true and authentic God of Israel is 
 far grander than the God of popular religion, so 
 is his real affirmation of himself in human afiairs 
 far grander than that poor machinery of predic- 
 tion and miracle, by which popular religion im- 
 agines that he affirms himself. The greatness of 
 the scale on which he operates makes it hard for 
 men to follow him ; but the greatness of the scale, 
 too, makes the grandeur of the operation. "As the 
 whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more ; but 
 the righteous is an everlasting foundation." And 
 again: "They shall call Jerusalem the throne of 
 the Eternal, and all the nations shall be gathered 
 299 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA, 
 
 unto it." "Men are impatient and for precipitating 
 things," says Butler; and Davison, whom on a 
 former occasion we quoted to differ from him,— 
 Davison, not the least memorable of that Oriel 
 group, whose reputation I, above most people, 
 am bound to cherish,— says with a weighty and 
 noble simplicity worthy of Butler: "Conscience 
 and the present constitution of things are not 
 corresponding terms ; it is conscience and the issue 
 of things which go together." It is so; and this 
 is what makes the spectacle of human affairs so 
 edifying and so sublime. Grive time enough for the 
 experience, and experimentally and demonstrably 
 it is true, that "the path of the just is as the 
 shining light which shineth more and more unto 
 the perfect day." Only the limits for the experi- 
 ence are wider than people think. "Yet a little 
 while, and the ungodly shall be clean gone I" but 
 a little while according to the scope and working 
 of that mighty Power, to which a thousand years 
 are as one day. The world goes on, nations and 
 men arrive and depart, with varying fortune, as 
 it appears, with time and chance happening unto 
 all. Look a little deeper, and you will see that 
 one strain runs through it all : nations and men, 
 whoever is shipwrecked, is shipwrecked on con- 
 duct. It is the Grod of Israel steadily and irre- 
 sistibly asserting himself; the Eternal that loveth 
 righteousness. 
 
 In this sense we should read the Hebrew proph- 
 ets. They did not foresee and foretell curious 
 coincidences, but they foresaw and foretold this 
 inevitable triumph of righteousness. First, they 
 foretold it for all the men and nations of their 
 own day, and especially for those colossal un- 
 righteous kingdoms of the heathen which looked 
 everlasting; then, for all time. "As the whirl- 
 300 
 
TRUE GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 wind paeseth, so is the wicked no more'* ; sooner 
 or later it is, it must be, so. Hebrew prophecy is 
 never read aright until it is read in this sense, 
 which indeed of itself it cries out for; it is, as 
 DaTison, again, finely says, "impatient for the 
 larger scope." How often, through the ages, 
 how often, even, by the Hebrew prophets them- 
 selves, has some immediate visible interposition 
 been looked fori "I beheld," they make God say, 
 "and there was no man, and I wondered that 
 there was no intercessor, therefore mine own arm 
 brought salvation unto me ; the day of vengeance 
 is in mine heart, the year of my redeemed is 
 come." O long delaying arm of might, will the 
 Eternal never put thee forth, to smite these who 
 go on as if righteousness mattered nothing? 
 There is no need ; they are smitten. Down they 
 come, one after another; Assyria falls, Babylon, 
 Greece, Rome; they all fall for want of conduct, 
 righteousness. "The heathen make much ado, 
 and the kingdoms are moved; but God hath 
 showed his voice, and the earth doth melt away." 
 Nay, but Judaea itself, the Holy Land, the land 
 of God's Israel, falls too, and falls for want of 
 righteousness. 
 
 Yes, Israel's visible Jerusalem is in ruins ; and 
 how then shall men "call Jerusalem the throne of 
 the Eternal, and all the nations shall be gathered 
 unto it"? But the true Israel was Israel the 
 bringer-in and defender of the idea of conduct, 
 Israel the lifter-up to the nations of the banner of 
 righteousness; the true Jerusalem was the city of 
 this ideal Israel. And this ideal Israel could not 
 and cannot perish, so long as his idea, righteous- 
 ness and its necessity, does not perish, but pre- 
 vails. Now, that it does prevail, the whole course 
 of the world proves, and the fall of the actual 
 301 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 Israel is of itself witness. Thus, therefore, the 
 ideal Israel forever lives and prospers; and its 
 city is the city whereto all nations and languages, 
 after endless trials of everything else except con- 
 duct, after incessantly attempting to do without 
 righteousness and failing, are slowly but surely 
 gathered. 
 
 To this Israel are the promises, and to this 
 Israel they are fulfilled. "The nation and king- 
 dom that will not serve thee shall perish, yea, 
 those nations shall be utterly wasted." It is so; 
 since all history is an accumulation of experiences 
 that what men and nations fall by is want of 
 conduct. To call it by this plain name is often 
 not amiss, for the thing is never more great than 
 when it is looked at in its simplicity and reality. 
 Yet the true name to touch the soul is the name 
 Israel gave : Righteousness, And to Israel, as the 
 representative of this imperishable and saving idea 
 of righteousness, aU the promises come true, and 
 the language of none of them is pitched too high. 
 The Eternal, Israel says truly, is on my side. 
 "Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and thou handful 
 Israel ; I will help thee, saith the Eternal. Behold, 
 I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands, 
 thy walls are continually before me. The Eternal 
 hath chosen Zion ; pray for the peace of Jerusa- 
 lem I they shall prosper that love thee. Men shall 
 call Jerusalem the throne of the Eternal, and all 
 the nations shall be gathered unto it. And he 
 will destroy in this mountain the face of the cov- 
 ering cast over all people, and the veil that is 
 spread over all nations ; he will swallow up death 
 in victory. And it shall be said in that day: 
 Lo, this is our Grod ; this is the Eternal, we have 
 waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his 
 salvation.'' 
 
 302 
 
TRUE GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 5. 
 
 And if Assyria and Babylon seem too remote, 
 let us look nearer home for testimonies to the in- 
 exhaustible grandeur and significance of the Old 
 Testament revelation, according to that construc- 
 tion which we here put upon it. Every educated 
 man loves Glreece, owes gratitude to Greece. 
 Greece was the liffcer-up to the nations of the ban- 
 ner, of art and science, as Israel was the lifter-up 
 of the banner of righteousness. Now, the world 
 cannot do without art and science. And the 
 Ufter-up of the banner of art and science was 
 naturally much occupied with them, and conduct 
 was a homely plain matter; not enough heed, 
 therefore, was given by him to conduct. But con- 
 duct, plain matter as it is, is six eighths of life, 
 while art and science are only two eighths. And 
 this brilliant Greece perished for lack of attention 
 enough to conduct; for want of conduct, stead- 
 iness, character. And there is this difference be- 
 tween Greece and Judaea; both were custodians 
 of a revelation and both perished; but Greece 
 perished of over-fidelity to her revelation, and 
 Judaea perished of uD£?er-fidelity to hers. Nay, 
 and the victorious revelation now, even now, — in 
 this age when more of beauty and more of knowl- 
 edge are so much needed, and knowledge, at any 
 rate, is so highly esteemed,— the revelation which 
 rules the world even now, is not Greece's revela- 
 tion, but Judaea's; not the pre-eminence of art 
 and science, but the pre-eminence of righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 It reminds one of what is recorded of Abraham, 
 before the true inheritor of the promises, the 
 humble and homely Isaac, was born. Abraham 
 looked upon the audacious and brilliant young 
 Ishmael, and said appealingly to God: **0 that 
 303 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 Isbmael might live before thee I" But it cannot 
 be; the promises are to conduetf conduct only. 
 And so, again, we behold, long after Greece has 
 perished, a brilliant successor of Greece, the Re- 
 nascence, present herself with high hopes. The 
 preachers of righteousness, blunderers as they 
 might be, have had it all their own way, art and 
 science have been forgotten, men's minds have 
 been enslaved, their bodies macerated. But. the 
 gloomy, oppressive dream is now over: "Let us 
 return to Nature 1" And all the world salutes 
 with pride and joy the Renascence, and prays to 
 Heaven: ''O that isAmae/ might live before thee I" 
 Surely the future belongs to this brilliant new- 
 comer, with hie animating maxim : "Let us return 
 to Nature." Ah, what pitfalls are in that word 
 Nature! Let us return to art and science, which 
 are a part of Nature; yes. Let us return to a 
 proper conception of righteousness, to a true use 
 of the method and secret of Jesus, which have 
 been all denaturalized; yes. But, "Let us return 
 to Nature" ;— do you mean that we are to give 
 full swing to our inclinations, to throw the reins 
 on the neck of our senses, of those sirens whom 
 Paul the Israelite called "the deceitful lusts," and 
 of following whom he said: "Let no man beguile 
 you with vain words, for because of these things 
 Cometh the wrath of God upon the children of 
 disobedience"? Do you mean that conduct is not 
 three fourths of life, and that the secret of Jesus 
 has no use? And the Renascence did mean this, 
 or half meant this ; so disgusted was it with the 
 cowled and tonsured Middle Age. And it died of 
 it, this brilliant Isbmael died of it I it died of pro- 
 voking a collision with the homely Isaac, right- 
 eousness. On the Continent came the Catholic 
 reaction ; in England, as we have said elsewhere, 
 304 
 
TRUE GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 "the great middle class, the kernel of the nation, 
 entered the prison of Puritanism, and had the 
 key turned upijn its spirit there for two hundred 
 years." After too much glorification of art, sci- 
 ence, and culture, too little; after Eabelais, George 
 Fox. 
 
 France, again, how often and how impetuously 
 for France has the prayer gone up to Heaven: 
 *'0 that Ishmael might live before theel" It is 
 not enough perceived what it is which gives 
 France her attractiveness for everybody, her suc- 
 cess, her repeated disasters. France is Thomme 
 sensuel moyen, the average sensual man; Paris is 
 the city of Thomme sensuel moyen. This has an 
 attraction for all of us. We ail have in us this 
 homme sensuelj the man of the "wishes of the 
 flesh and of the current thoughts"; but we de- 
 velop him under checks and doubts, and unsys- 
 tematically and often grossly. France, on the 
 other hand, develops him confidently and har- 
 moniously. She makes the most of him, because 
 she knows what she is about and keeps in a 
 mean, as her cUmate ia in a mean, and her situa- 
 tion. She does not develop him with madness, 
 into a monstrosity, as the Italy of the Renascence 
 did, she develops him equably and systematically ; 
 and hence she does not shock people with him 
 but attracts them, she names herself the France of 
 tact and measure, good sense, logic. In a way 
 this is true. As she develops the senses, the ap- 
 parent self, all round, in good faith, without 
 misgivings, without violence; she has much rea- 
 sonableness and clearness in all her notions and 
 arrangements ; a sort of balance even in conduct ; 
 as much art and science, and it is not a little, as 
 goes with the ideal of Thomme sensuel m.oyen. 
 And from her ideal of the average sensual man 
 20 305 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 France has deduced her famous gospel of the 
 Rights of Man, which she preaches with such an 
 infinite self-admiration. France takes "the wishes 
 of the flesh and of the current thoughts," for a 
 man's rights; and human happiness, and the per- 
 fection of society, she places in everybody's being 
 enabled to gratify these wishes, to get these 
 rights, as equally as possible and as much as 
 possible. In Italy, as in ancient Grreece, the satis- 
 fying development of this ideal of the average 
 sensual man is broken by the imperious ideal of 
 art and science disparaging it; in the Teutonic 
 nations, by the ideal of morality disparaging it. 
 Still, whenever, as often happens, the pursuers of 
 these higher ideals are a little weary of them or 
 unsuccessful with them, they turn with a sort of 
 envy and admiration to the ideal set up by 
 France, — so positive, intelligible, and up to a cer- 
 tain point satisfying. They are inclined to try it 
 instead of their own, though they can never 
 bring themselves to try it thoroughly, and there- 
 fore well. But this explains the great attraction 
 France exercises upon the world. All of us feel, at 
 some time or other in our lives, a hankering after 
 the French ideal, a disposition to try it. More 
 particularly is this true of the Latin nations ; and 
 therefore everywhere, among these nations, you 
 see the old indigenous type of city disappearing, 
 and the type of modern Paris, the city of Tbomme 
 sensuel moyeriy replacing it. La BoMme, the 
 ideal, free, pleasurable life of Paris, is a kind of 
 Paradise of Ishmaels, And all this assent from 
 every quarter, and the clearness and apparent 
 reasonableness of their ideal besides, fills the 
 French with a kind of ecstatic faith in it, a zeal 
 almost fanatical for propagating what they call 
 French civilization everywhere, for establishing its 
 306 
 
TBUE aREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 predominance, and their own predominance along 
 with it, as of the people entrusted with an oracle 
 so showy and taking. ''0 that Ishmael might live 
 before thee I" Since everybody has something 
 which conspires with this Ishmael, his success, 
 again and again, seems to be certain ; again and 
 again he seems drawing near to a world-wide 
 success, nay, to have succeeded; — but always, at 
 this point, disaster overtakes him, he signally 
 breaks down. At this crowning moment, when 
 all seems triumphant with him, comes what the 
 Bible calls a crisis, or judgment. "Now is the 
 judgment of this world I now shall the prince of 
 this world be cast outl" Cast out he is, and al- 
 ways must be, because his ideal, which is also 
 that of France, however she may have noble 
 spirits who contend against it and seek a better, 
 is after all a false one. Plausible and attractive 
 as it may be, the constitution of things turns out 
 to be somehow or other against it. And why? 
 Because the free development of our senses all 
 round, of our apparent self, has to undergo a pro- 
 found modification from the law of our higher 
 rea2 self, the law of righteousness; because he, 
 whose ideal is the development of the senses all 
 round, serves the senses, is a servant. But : *' The 
 servant abideth not in the house forever ; the son 
 abideth forever." 
 
 Is it possible to imagine grander testimony to 
 the truth of the revelation committed to Israel? 
 What miracle of making an iron axe-head float on 
 water, what successful prediction that a thing 
 should happen just so many years and months 
 and days hence, could be really half so impres- 
 sive? 
 
 6. 
 
 So that the whole history of the world to this 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 day 18 in truth one continual eBtablishing of the 
 Old Testament revelation: "0 ye that love the 
 Eternal, see that ye hate the thing that is evil I to 
 him that ordereth his conversation right, shall be 
 shown the salvation of Grod." And whether we 
 consider this revelation in respect to human af- 
 fairs at large, or in respect to individual happi- 
 ness, in either case its importance is so immense, 
 that the people to whom it was given, and whose 
 record is in the Bible, deserve fully to be singled out 
 as the Bible singles them. " Behold, darkness doth 
 cover the earth, and gross darkness the nations : 
 but the Eternal shall arise upon tbee, and his 
 glory shall be seen upon thee I" For, while other 
 nations had the misleading idea that this or that, 
 other than righteousness, is saving, and it is not ; 
 that this or that, other than conduct, brings 
 happiness, and it does not; Israel had the true 
 idea that righteousness is saving, that to conduct 
 belongs happiness. 
 
 Nor let it be said that other nations, too, had 
 at least something of this idea. They had, but 
 they were not possessed with it; and to feel it 
 enough to make the world feel it, it was neces- 
 sary to be possessed with it. It is not sufficient 
 to have been visited by such an idea at times, to 
 have had it forced occasionally on one's mind by 
 the teaching of experience. No ; "he that hath the 
 bride is the bridegroom" ; the idea belongs to him 
 who has most loved it. Common prudence can 
 say : Honesty is the best policy ; morality can say : 
 To conduct belongs happiness. But Israel and the 
 Bible are filled vsdth religious joy, and rise higher 
 and say: "Righteousness is salvation I" — and this 
 is what is inspiring. "I have stuck unto thy tes- 
 timonies. Eternal, what love have I unto thy 
 lawl all the day long is my study in it. Thy 
 308 
 
TRUE GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 testimonies have I claimed as mine bentage for- 
 ever, and why? they are the very joy of my 
 heart" This is why the testimonies of righteous- 
 ness are Israel's heritage forever, because they 
 were "the very joy of his heart." Herein Israel 
 stood alone, the friend and elect of the Eternal. 
 "He showeth his word unto Jacob, his statutes 
 and ordinances unto Israel He hath not dealt so 
 with any nation, neither have the heathen knowl- 
 edge of his laws." 
 
 Poor Israeli poor ancient people! It was re- 
 vealed to thee that righteousness is salvation ; the 
 question, what righteousness is, was thy stum- 
 bling-stone. Seer of the vision of peace, that yet 
 couldst not see the things which belong unto thy 
 peace I with that blindness thy solitary pre-emi- 
 nence ended, and the new Israel, made up out of 
 all nations and languages, took thy room. But, 
 thy visitation complete, thy temple in ruins, thy 
 reign over, thine office done, thy children dis- 
 persed, thy teeth drawn, thy shekels of gold and 
 silver plundered, did there yet stay with thee any 
 remembrance of thy primitive intuition, simple 
 and subUme, of the Eternal that loveth right- 
 eousness? Perhaps not; the Talmudists were 
 fully as weU able to efface it as the Fathers. But 
 if there did, what punishment can have been to 
 thee like the punishment of watching the perform- 
 ances of the Aryan genius upon the foundation 
 which thou hadet given it?— to behold this terrible 
 and triumphant philosopher, with his monothe- 
 istic idea and his metaphysical Trinity, "neither 
 confounding the Persons nor dividing the Sub- 
 stance"? Like the torture to a poet to hear peo- 
 ple laying down the law about poetry who have 
 not the sense what poetry is, — a sense with which 
 he was born I hke the affliction to a man of sci- 
 309 
 
LITERATUEE AND DOGMA. 
 
 ence to hear people talk of things as pro ved, who 
 do not even know what constitutes a fact I From 
 the Council of Nicaea down to Convocation, and 
 the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester "doing 
 something" for the Godhead of the Eternal Son, 
 what must thou have had to suffer I 
 
 310 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 The True Gtkeatness of Christianity. 
 
 No ; the mystery hidden from ages and genera- 
 tions, which none of the rulers of this world 
 knew, the mystery revealed finally by Christ and 
 rejected by the Jews, was not the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, nor anything speculative; it was the 
 method and the secret of Jesus. Jesus did not 
 change the object for men,— righteousness ; he 
 made clear what it was, and that it was this: 
 his method and his secret. 
 
 This was the mysteryj and the Apostles had 
 still the consciousness that it was. To "learn 
 Christ," to "be taught the truth as it is in Jesus," 
 was not, with them, to acquire certain tenets 
 about One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity; 
 it was, to "be renewed in the spirit of your 
 mind, and to put on the new man which after 
 Grod is created in righteousness and true holiness." 
 And this exactly amounts to the method and 
 secret of Jesus, 
 
 For Catholic and for Protestant theology alike, 
 this consciousness, which the Apostles had etill 
 preserved, was lost. For Catholic and Protestant 
 theology alike, the truth as it is in Jesus, the 
 mystery revealed in Christ, meant something 
 totally different from his method and secret. 
 But they recognized, and indeed the thing was so 
 plain that they could not well miss it, they recog- 
 nized that on all Christians the method and 
 secret of Jesus were enjoined. So to this extent 
 the method and secret of Jesus were preached and 
 had their effect. To this extent true Christianity 
 311 
 
LITERATUBE AND DOGMA. 
 
 has been known, and to the extent before stated 
 it has been neglected. Now, as we say that the 
 truth and grandeur of the Old Testament most 
 comes out experimentally,— th&t is, by the whole 
 course of the world establishing it, and confuting 
 what is opposed to it, — so it is with Christianity. 
 Its grandeur and truth are far most brought out 
 experimentally; and the thing is, to make people 
 see this. 
 
 But there is this difference between the religion 
 of the Old Testament and Christianity. Of the 
 religion of the Old Testament we can pretty well 
 see to the end, we can trace fully enough the ex- 
 perimental proof of it in history. But of Chris- 
 tianity the future is as yet almost unknown. For 
 that the world cannot get on without righteous- 
 ness we have the clear experience, and a grand 
 and admirable experience it is. But what the 
 world will become by the thorough use of that 
 which is really righteousness, the method and the 
 secret and the sweet reasonableness of Jesus, we 
 have as yet hardly any experience at all. There- 
 fore we, who in this essay limit ourselves to ex- 
 perience, shall speak here of Christianity and 
 its greatness very soberly. Yet Christianity is 
 really all the grander for that very reason which 
 makes us epeak about it in this sober manner,— 
 that it has such an immense development still 
 before it, and that it has as yet so little shown 
 all it contains, all it can do. Indeed, that Chris- 
 tianity has already done so much as it has, is a 
 witness to it; and that it has not yet done 
 more, is a witness to it too. Let us observe how 
 this is so. 
 
 2. 
 
 Few things are more melancholy than to ob- 
 312 
 
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY, 
 
 serve Christian apologists taunting the Jews 
 with the failure of Hebraism to fulfil the splendid 
 promises of prophecy, and Jewish apologists 
 taunting Christendom with the failure of Chris- 
 tianity to fulfil these. Neither has yet fulfilled 
 them, or could yet have fulfilled them. Certainly 
 the restoration by Cyrus, the Second Temple, the 
 Maccabean victories, are hardly more than the 
 shadows of a fulfilment of the magnificent words: 
 "The sons of them that afflicted thee shall come 
 bending unto thee, and all they that despised thee 
 shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy 
 feet; thy gates shall not be shut day nor night, 
 that men may bring unto thee the treasures of the 
 Gentiles and that their kings may be brought." 
 The Christianization of all the leading nations of 
 the world is, it is said, a much better fulfilment of 
 that promise. Be it so. Yet does Christendom, 
 let us ask, ofier more than a shadow of the fulfil- 
 ment of this: "Violence shall no more be heard in 
 thy land ; the vile person shall no more be called 
 liberal, nor the churl bountiful ; thy people shall 
 be alJ righteous ; they shall all know me, from the 
 least to the greatest; I will put my law in their 
 inward parts, and write it in their hearts; the 
 Eternal shall be thine everlasting light and the 
 days of thy mourning shall be ended"? Mani- 
 festly it does not; yet the two promises hang to- 
 gether, one of them is not truly fulfilled unless the 
 other is. 
 
 The promises were made to righteousness, with 
 all which the idea of righteousness involves ; and 
 it involves Christianity. They were made on the 
 immediate prospect of a small triumph for right- 
 eousness, the restoration of the Jews after the 
 captivity in Babylon; but they are not satisfied 
 by that triumph. The prevalence of the profes- 
 313 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 sion of Christianity ie a larger triumph; yet in 
 itself it hardly satisfies them any better. What 
 satisfies them is the prevailing of that which 
 righteousness really is, and nothing else satisfies 
 them. Now Christianity is that which righteous- 
 ness really is. Therefore, if something called 
 Christianity prevails, and yet the promises are 
 not satisfied, the inference is that this something 
 is not that which righteousness really is, and 
 therefore not really Christianity. And as the 
 course of the world is perpetually establishing the 
 pre-eminence of righteousness, and confounding 
 whatever denies this pre-eminence, so, too, the 
 course of the world is forever establishing what 
 righteousness really is, — that is to say, true Chris- 
 tianity, — and confounding whatever pretends to 
 be true Christianity and is not. 
 
 Now, just as the constitution of things turned 
 out to be against the great unrighteous kingdoms 
 of the heathen world, and against all the brilUant 
 Ishmaels we have seen since, so the constitution 
 of things turns out to be against all false presen- 
 tations of Christianity, such as the theology of 
 the Fathers or Protestant theology. They do not 
 work successfully, they do not reach the aim, 
 they do not bring the world to the fruition of the 
 promises made to righteousness. And the reason 
 is, because they substitute for what ie really right- 
 eousness something else. Catholic dogma or 
 Lutheran justification by faith they substitute for 
 the method and secret of Jesus. 
 
 Nevertheless, as all Christian Churches do rec- 
 ommend the method and the secret of Jesus, 
 though not in the right way or in the right 
 eminency, still the world is made acquainted with 
 what righteousness really is, and the doctrine pro- 
 duces some effect, although the full effect is much 
 
 314: 
 
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 thwarted and deadened by the false way in which 
 the doctrine is presented. Still the effect produced 
 is great ; for instance, the sum of individual hap- 
 piness that has been caused by Christianity is, 
 any one can see, enormous. But let us take the 
 effect of Christianity on the world. And if we 
 look at the thing closely, we shall find that its 
 effect has been this: Christianity has brought the 
 world, or at any rate all the leading part of the 
 world, "to regard righteousness as only the Jews 
 regarded it before the coming of Christ." The 
 world has accepted, so far as profession goes, 
 that original revelation made to Israel : the pre- 
 eminence of righteousness. The infinite truth and 
 attractiveness of the method and secret and char- 
 acter of Jesus, however falsely surrounded, have 
 prevailed with the world so far as this. And 
 this is an immense gain, and a signal witness to 
 Christianity. The world does homage to the pre- 
 eminence of righteousness ; and here we have one 
 of those fulfilments of prophecy which are so true 
 and so glorious. "Glorious things are spoken of 
 thee, O City of Godl I will make mention of 
 Rahab and Babylon as of them that know me 1 
 behold, the Philistines also, and Tyre, with the 
 Ethiopians, — these were born there! And of Zion 
 it shall be reported : This and that man was born 
 in Aer/— and the Most High shall stablish her. 
 The Eternal shall count, when he writeth up the 
 people: This man was born there P'' That proph- 
 ecy is at this present day abundantly fulfilled. 
 The world's chief nations have now all come, we 
 see, to reckon and profess themselves adherents of 
 the religion of Zion, the city of righteousness. 
 
 But there remains the question : what righteous- 
 ness really is. The method and secret and sweet 
 reasonableness of Jesus. But the world does not 
 315 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 see this; for it puts, as righteousness, something 
 else first and this second. So that here, too, as 
 to seeing what righteousness really is, the world 
 now is just in the same position in which the 
 Jews, when Christ came, were. It is often said : 
 If Christ came now, his religion would be rejected. 
 And this is only another way of saying that the 
 world now, as the Jewish people formerly, has 
 something which thwarts and confuses its percep- 
 tion of what righteousness really is. It is so ; and 
 the thwarting cause is the same now as then: — 
 the dogmatic system current, the so-called ortho- 
 dox theology. This prevents now, as it did then, 
 that which righteousness really is, the method 
 and secret of Jesus, from being rightly received, 
 from operating fully, and from accomplishing its 
 due effect. 
 
 So true is this, that we have only to look at our 
 own community to see the almost precise parallel, 
 so far as religion is concerned, to the state of 
 things presented in Judaea when Christ came. 
 The multitudes are the same everywhere. The 
 chief priests and elders of the people and the 
 scribes are our bishops and dogmatists, with 
 their pseudo-science of learned theology blinding 
 their eyes, and always— whenever simple souls 
 are disposed to think that the method and secret 
 of Jesus is true religion, and that the great Per- 
 sonal First Cause and the Godhead of the Eternal 
 Son have nothing to do with it—eager to cry 
 out; "This people that knoweth not the law are 
 cursed I " The Pharisees, with their genuine concern 
 for religion, but total want of perception of what 
 religion really is, and by their temper, attitude, 
 and aims doing their best to make religion impos- 
 sible, are the Protestant Dissenters. The Sad- 
 ducees are our friends the philosophical Liberals, 
 316 
 
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 who believe neither in angel nor spirit but in Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer. Even the Roman governor has 
 his close parallel in our celebrated aristocracy, 
 with its superficial good sense and good-nature, 
 its thorough inaptitude for ideas, its profound 
 helplessness in presence of all great spiritual move- 
 ments. And the result is, that the splendid prom- 
 ises to righteousness made by the Hebrew proph- 
 ets, claimed by the Jews as the property of 
 Judaism, claimed by us as the property of Chris- 
 tianity, are almost as ludicrously inappUcable to 
 our religious state now, as to theirs then. 
 
 And this, we say, is again a signal witness to 
 Christianity. Christ came to reveal what right- 
 eousness, to which the promises belong, really is ; 
 and so long as this, though shown by Christ, is 
 not seen by us, we may call ourselves Christen- 
 dom as much as we please, the true character of 
 a Christendom will be wanting to us, because the 
 great promises of prophecy will be still without 
 their fulfilment. Nothing will do, except right- 
 eousness ; and no other conception of righteous- 
 ness will do, except Christ's conception of it : his 
 method and his secret. 
 
 Yes, the grandeur of Christianity and the im- 
 posing and impressive attestation of it, if we 
 could but worthily bring the thing out, is here: 
 in that immense experimental proof of the neces- 
 sity of it, which the whole course of the world 
 has steadily accumulated, and indicates to us as 
 still continuing and extending. Men will not 
 admit assumptions, the popular legend they call 
 a fairy-tale, the metaphysical demonstrations do 
 not demonstrate, nothing but experimental proof 
 will go down ; and here is an experimental proof 
 317 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 which never fails, and which at the same time is 
 infinitely grander, by the yastness of its scale, the 
 scope of its duration, the gravity of its results, 
 than the - machinery of the popular fairy-tale. 
 Walking on the water, multiplying loaves, raising 
 corpses, a heavenly judge appearing with trum- 
 pets in the clouds while we are yet alive, — what 
 is this compared to the real experience ofiered as 
 witness to us by Christianity? It is like the dif- 
 ference between the grandeur of an extravaganza 
 and the grandeur of the sea or the sky, — immense 
 objects which dwarf us, but where we are in con- 
 tact with reality, and a reality of which we can 
 slowly trace the laws. 
 
 The more we trace the real law of Christianity's 
 action, the grander it will seem. Certainly in the 
 Gospels there is plenty of matter to call out our 
 feelings, but perhaps this has been somewhat over- 
 used and mis-used, applied, as it has been, chiefly 
 so as to be subservient to what we call the fairy- 
 tale of the three Lord Shaftesburys,— a story 
 which we do not deny to have, like other prod- 
 ucts of the popular imagination, its pathos and 
 power, but which we have seen to be no solid 
 foundation to rest our faith in the Bible on. And 
 perhaps, too, we do wrong, and inevitably fall 
 into what is artificial and unnatural, in laboring 
 so much to produce in ourselves, as the one im- 
 pulse determining us to use the method and 
 secret of Jesus, that conscious ardent sensation 
 of personal love to him, which we find the first 
 generation of Christians feeling and professing, 
 and which was the natural motor for those who 
 were with him or near him, and, so to speak, 
 touched him ; and in making this our first object. 
 At any rate, misemployed as this motor has often 
 been, it might be well to forego or at least sus- 
 318 
 
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 pend its use for ourselves and others for a time, 
 and to fix our minds exclusively on the recom- 
 mendation given to the method and secret of 
 Jesus by their being truej and by the whole 
 course of things proving this. 
 
 Now, just as the best recommendation of the 
 oracle committed to Israel, "Righteousness is sal- 
 vation," is found in our more and more discover- 
 ing, in our own history and in the whole history 
 of the world, that it is so, so we shall find it to 
 be with the method and secret of Jesus. That 
 this 18 the righteousness which is salvation, that 
 the method and secret of Jesus, that is to say, 
 conscience and self-renouncement, are righteous- 
 ness, bring about the kingdom of God or the 
 reign of righteousness, — this, which is the Chris- 
 tian revelation and what Jesus came to establish, 
 is best impressed, for the present at any rate, by 
 experiencing and showing again and again, in 
 ourselves and in the course of the world, that it 
 is so ; that this is the righteousness which is sav- 
 ing, and that there is none other. Let us but 
 well observe what comes, in ourselves or the 
 world, of trying any other, of not being con- 
 vinced that this is righteousness, and this only; 
 and we shall find ourselves more and more, as by 
 irresistible viewless hands, caught and drawn to- 
 wards the Christian revelation, and made to de- 
 sire more and more to serve it. No proof can be 
 so solid as this experimental proof; and none, 
 again, can be so grand, so fitted to fill us with 
 awe, admiration, and gratitude; so that feeling 
 and emotion will now well come in after it, 
 though not before it. For the whole course of 
 human things is really, according to this experi- 
 ence, leading up to the fulfilment of Christ's prom- 
 ise to his disciples : " Fear not, little flock I for it is 
 319 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 your Father's good pleasure to give you the king- 
 dom." And thus that comes after all to be true, 
 which St. Paul announced prematurely to the 
 first generation of Christians : "When Christ, who 
 is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also ap- 
 pear with him in glory." And the author of the 
 Apocalypse, in like manner, foretold: "The king- 
 dom of the world is become the kingdom of our 
 Lord and his Christ." The kingdom of the Eternal 
 the world is already become, by its chief nations 
 professing the religion of righteousness. The 
 kingdom of Christ the world will have to become, 
 it is on its way to become, because the profession 
 of righteousness, except as Christ interpreted 
 righteousness, is vain. We can see the process, we 
 are ourselves part of it, and can in our measure 
 forward or keep back its completion. 
 
 When the prophet, indeed, says to Israel, on the 
 point of being restored by Cyrus: "The nation 
 and kingdom that wiU not serve thee shall per- 
 ish 1" the promise, applied literally, fails. But ex- 
 tended to that idea of righteousness, of which 
 Israel was the depositary and in which the real 
 life of Israel lay, the promise is true, and we can 
 see it steadily fulfilling itself. In like manner, 
 when the Apostle says to the Colossians, in- 
 structed that the second advent would come in 
 their own generation: "When Christ, who is our 
 life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with 
 him in glory 1" the promise, applied literally as the 
 Apostle meant it and the Colossians understood 
 it, fails. But divested of this Aberglauhe or extra- 
 belief, it is true; if indeed the world can be shown 
 — and it can — to be moving necessarily towards 
 the triumph of that Christ in whom the Colos- 
 sian disciples lived, and whose triumph is the tri- 
 umph of all his disciples also. 
 320 
 
THE TRUE GREATNESS OP CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 4. 
 
 Let us keep hold of this same experimental pro- 
 cess in dealing with the promise of immortality ; 
 although here, if anywhere, Aberglaube, extra- 
 belief, hope, anticipation, may well be permitted 
 to come in. Still, what we need for our founda- 
 tion is not Aberglaube, but Glaube; not extra- 
 belief in what is beyond the range of possible 
 experience, but belief in what can and should be 
 known to be true. 
 
 By what futilities the demonstration of our 
 immortality may be attempted, is to be seen in 
 Plato's Phaedo. Man's natural desire for con- 
 tinuance, howeyer little it may be worth as a 
 scientific proof of our immortality, is at least a 
 proof a thousand times stronger than any such 
 demonstration. The want of solidity in such ar- 
 gument is so palpable that one scarcely cares to 
 turn a steady regard upon it at all. But of the 
 common Christian conception of immortality the 
 want of solidity is perhaps most conclusively 
 shown by the impossibility of so framing it, as 
 that it will at all support a steady regard turned 
 upon it. In our English popular religion, for in- 
 stance, the common conception of a future state 
 of bliss is that of the Vision of Mirza: "Persons 
 dressed in glorious habits with garlands on their 
 heads, passing among the trees, lying down by 
 the fountains, or resting on beds of flowers, amid 
 a confused harmony of singing birds, falling 
 waters, human voices, and musical instruments." 
 Or, even, with many, it is that of a kind of per- 
 fected middle-class home, with labor ended, the 
 table spread, goodness all around, the lost ones 
 restored, hymnody incessant. ''Poor fragments 
 all of this low earth 1" Keble might well say- 
 That this conception of immortality cannot pos- 
 21 321 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 sibly be true we feel, the moment we consider it 
 seriously ; and yet who can devise any conception 
 of a future state of bliss which shall bear close 
 examination better? 
 
 Here, again, it is far best to take what is ex- 
 perimentally true, and nothing else, as our foun- 
 dation, and afterwards to let hope and aspiration 
 grow, if so it may be, out of this. Israel had 
 said: "In the way of righteousness is life, and in 
 the pathway thereof there is no death.'* And by 
 a kind of short cut to the conclusion thus laid 
 down, the Jews constructed their fairy-tale of an 
 advent, judgment, and resurrection, as we find it 
 in the Book of Daniel. Jesus had said : "If a man 
 keep my word, he shall never see death'* ; and by 
 a kind of short cut to the conclusion thus laid 
 down, Christians constructed their fairy-tale of 
 the second advent, the resurrection of the body, 
 the New Jerusalem. But instead of fairy-tales, 
 let us begin, at least, with certainties. 
 
 And a certainty is the sense of hfOy of being 
 truly aJive, which accompanies righteousness. If 
 this experimental sense does not rise to be 
 stronger in us, does not rise to the sense of being 
 inextinguishable, that is probably because our 
 experience of righteousness is really so very small ; 
 and here we may well permit ourselves to trust 
 Jesus, whose practice and intuition both of them 
 went, in these matters, so far deeper than ours. At 
 anyrate, we have in ourexperience this strong sense 
 of life irom lighteonsness to start with ; capable of 
 being developed, apparently, by progress in right- 
 eousness into something immeasurably stronger. 
 Here is the true basis for all religious aspiration 
 after immortality. And it is an experimental 
 basis; and therefore, as to grandeur, it is again, 
 when compared with the popular AbergJaube, 
 322 
 
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 grand with all the superior grandeur, on a subject 
 of the highest seriousness, of reality over fantasy. 
 
 At present, the fantasy hides the grandeur of the 
 reality. But when all the Aherglauhe of the 
 second advent, with its signs in the sky, sounding 
 trumpets and opening graves, is cleared away, 
 then and not till then will come out the profound 
 truth and grandeur of words of Jesus like these : 
 "The hour is coming, when they that are in the 
 graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man ; 
 and they that hear shall 7iye." 
 5. 
 
 Finally, and above all. As, for the right incul- 
 cation of righteousness, we need the inspiring 
 words of Israel's love for it, that is, we need the 
 Bible ; so, for the right inculcation of the method 
 and secret of Jesus, we need the epieikeia, the 
 sweet reasonableness, of Jesus. That is, in other 
 words again, we need the Bible; for only through 
 the Bible-records of Jesus can we get at his epiei- 
 keia. Even in these records, it is and can be pre- 
 sented but imperfectly; but only by reading and 
 rereading the Bible can we get at it at all. 
 
 Now, greatly as the failure, from the stress laid 
 upon the pseudo-science of Church dogma, to lay 
 enough stress upon the method and secret of 
 Jesus, has kept Christianity back from showing 
 itself in its full power, it is probable that the 
 failure to apply to the method and secret of 
 Jesus, so far as these have at any rate been used, 
 his sweet reasonableness or epieikeia, has kept it 
 back even more. And the infinite of the religion 
 of Jesus— its immense capacity for ceaseless prog- 
 ress and farther development— lies principally, 
 perhaps, in the line of extricating more and more 
 his sweet reasonableness, and applying it to his 
 method and secret. For it is obvious from ex- 
 323 
 
LITEBATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 perience how much our use of Christ's method 
 and secret requires to be guided and governed by 
 his epieikeia; indeed, without this, his method and 
 secret seem often of no use at all. The Flagellants 
 imagined that they were employing his secret; 
 and the Dissenters, with their "spirit of watchful 
 jealousy," imagine that they are employing his 
 method. To be sure, Mr. Bradlaugh imagines 
 that the method and the secret of Jesus, nay and 
 Jesus himself too, are all baneful, and that the 
 sooner we get rid of them all, the better. So far, 
 then, the Flagellants and the Dissenters are in ad- 
 vance of Mr. Bradlaugh; they value Christianity, 
 and they profess the method and secret of Jesus. 
 But they employ them so ill that one is tempted 
 to say they might nearly as well be without 
 them. And this is because they are wholly with- 
 out his sweet reasonableness, or epieikeia. Now 
 this can only be got, first, by knowing that it is 
 in the Bible, and looking for it there; and then, by 
 reading and rereading the Grospele continually, 
 until we catch something of it. 
 
 This, again, is an experimental process. That 
 the epieikeia or sweet reasonableness of Jesus may 
 be brought to govern our use of his method and 
 secret, and that it can and will make our use of 
 his method and secret quite a different thing, is 
 proved by our actually finding this to be so when 
 we try. So that the culmination of Christian 
 righteousness in the applying, to guide our use of 
 the method and secret of Jesus, his sweet rea- 
 sonableness or epieikeia^ is proved from experi- 
 ence. We end, therefore, as we began. For the 
 whole series of experiences, of which the survey is 
 thus completed, rests, primarily, upon one ftinda- 
 mental fact,— itself, also, a fact of experience : the 
 necessity of righteousness, 
 324 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 But now, after all we have been saying of the 
 pre-eminence of righteousness, we remember what 
 we have said formerly in praise of culture and of 
 Hellenism, and against too much Hebraism, too 
 exclusive a pursuit of the "one thing needful," as 
 people call it. And we cannot help wondering 
 whether we shall not be reproached with incon- 
 sistency, and told that we ought at least to sing, 
 as the Greeks said, a palinode; and whether it 
 may not really be so, and we ought. And, cer- 
 tainly, if we had ever said that Hellenism was 
 three fourths of human life, and conduct or right- 
 eousness but one fourth, a palinode, as well as an 
 unmusical man may, we would sing. But we 
 have never said it. In praising culture, we have 
 never denied that conduct, not culture, is three 
 fourths of human life. 
 
 Only it certainly appears, when the thing is ex- 
 amined, that conduct comes to have relations of 
 a very close kind with culture. And the reason 
 seems to be given by some words of our Bible, 
 which though they may not be exeictly the right 
 rendering of the original in that place, yet in 
 themselves they explain the connection of culture 
 with conduct very well. "I have seen the trav- 
 ail," says the Preacher, "which God hath given to 
 the sons of men to be exercised in it; he hath 
 made everything beautiful in his time, also he 
 hath set the world in their heart." " He hath set 
 the world in their heart I" — that is why art and 
 science, and what we call culture, are necessary. 
 They may be only one fourth of man's life, but 
 325 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 they are there, as well as the three fourths which 
 conduct occupies ;— "he hath set the world in their 
 heart." And, really, the reason which we hence 
 gather for the close connection between culture 
 and conduct is so simple and natural that we are 
 almost ashamed to give it; but we have offered 
 so many simple and natural explanations in place 
 of the abstruse ones which are current, that our 
 hesitation is unreasonable. 
 
 Let us suggest then, that, having this one 
 fourth of their nature concerned with art and sci- 
 ence, men cannot but somehow employ it. If they 
 think that the three fourths of their nature con- 
 cerned with conduct are the whole of their nature, 
 and that this is all they have to attend to, still 
 the neglected one fourth is there, it ferments, it 
 breaks wildly out, it employsiteelf all at random 
 and amiss. And hence, no doubt, our hymns and 
 our dogmatic theology. Of our hymns we here 
 say nothing ; but what is our dogmatic theology, 
 except the misattribution to the Bible — the Book 
 of coDduct—of a science and an abstruse meta- 
 physic which is not there, because our theolo- 
 gians have in themselves a faculty for science? for 
 it makes one eighth of them. But they do not 
 employ it on its proper objects ; so it invades the 
 Bible, and tries to make the Bible what it is not, 
 and to put into it what is not there. And this 
 prevents their attending enough to what is in the 
 Bible, and makes them battle for what is not in 
 the Bible, but they have put it there ;— battle for 
 it in a manner clean contrary, often, to the teach- 
 ing of the Bible. So has arisen, for instance, all 
 religious persecution. And thus, we say, has con- 
 duct itself become impaired. 
 
 So that conduct is impaired by the want of sci- 
 ence and culture ; and our theologians really 
 326 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 suffer, not from having too much science, but 
 from having too little. Whereas, if they had 
 turned their faculty for abstruse reasoning to- 
 wards the proper objects, and had given them- 
 selves, besides, a wide and large acquaintance 
 with the productions of the human spirit and 
 with men's way of thinking and of using words, 
 then, on the one hand, they would not have been 
 tempted to misemploy on the Bible their faculty 
 for abstruse reasoning, for they would have had 
 plenty of other exercise for it; and, on the other 
 hand, they would have escaped that literary in- 
 experience, which now makes them fancy that the 
 Bible language is scientific and fit matter for the 
 application of their powers of abstruse reasoning 
 to it, when it is no such thing. Then they would 
 have seen the fallacy of confounding the obscurity 
 attaching to the idea of God, — that vast not our- 
 selves which transcends us, — with the obscurity 
 attaching to the idea of their Trinity, a confused 
 metaphysical speculation which puzzles, us. The 
 one, they would have perceived, is the obscurity of 
 the immeasurable depth of air, the other is the 
 obscurity of a fog. And fog, they would have 
 known, has no proper place in our conceptions of 
 Grod; since whatever our minds can possess of God 
 they know clearly, for no man, says Groethe, pos- 
 sesses what he does not understand ; but they can 
 possess of Him but a very little. All this our dog- 
 matic theologians would know, if they had had 
 more science and more literature. And therefore, 
 simple as the Bible and conduct are, still culture 
 seems to be required for them, — required to pre- 
 vent our mishandling and sophisticating them. 
 
 Culture, then, and literature are required, even 
 327 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA, 
 
 in the interest of religion itself, and when, taking 
 nothing but conduct into account, we make God, 
 as Israel made him, to be simply and solely "the 
 Eternal Power, not ourselres, that makes for 
 righteousness.^' But we are not to forget, that, 
 grand as this conception of God is, and well as it 
 meets the wants of far the largest part of our 
 being, of three fourths of it, yet there ie one fourth 
 of our being of which it does not strictly meet the 
 wants, the part which is concerned with art and 
 science ; or, in other words, with beauty and exact 
 knowledge. 
 
 For the total man, therefore, the truer concep- 
 tion of God is as "the Eternal Power, not our- 
 selves, by which all things fulfil the law of their 
 being"; by which, therefore, we fulfil the law of 
 our being so far as our being is aesthetic and 
 intellective, as well as so far as it is moral. And 
 it is evident, as we have before now remarked, 
 that in this wider sense God is displeased and dis- 
 served by many things which cannot be said, ex- 
 cept by putting a strain upon words, to displease 
 and disserve him as the God of righteousness. He 
 is displeased and disserved by men uttering such 
 doggerel hymns as; "Singglory, glory, glory to the 
 great God Triune I " and : " Out of my stony griefs 
 Bethels I'll raise I" and: "My Jesus to know, and 
 feel his blood flow, 'tis life everlasting, 'tis heaven 
 below I" or by the Bishop of Gloucester uttering 
 such pseudo-science as his "blessed truth that the 
 God of the universe is a Person." But it would 
 be harsh to give, at present, this turn to our em- 
 ployment of the phrases, pleasing God, displeasing 
 God, 
 
 And yet, as man makes progress, we shall 
 surely come to this; for, the clearer our concep- 
 tions in science and art become, the more will 
 328 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 they assimilate themselves to the conceptionB of 
 duty in conduct, will become practically stringent 
 like rules of conduct, and will invite the same sort 
 of language in dealing with them. And so far let 
 us venture to poach on M. Emile Bumouf s manor, 
 and to talk about the Aryan genius, as to say, 
 that the love of science, and the energy and 
 honesty in the pursuit of science, in the best of the 
 Aryan races, do seem to correspond in a remark- 
 able way to the love of conduct, and the energy 
 and honesty in the pursuit of conduct, in the best 
 of the Semitic. To treat science with the same 
 kind of seriousness as conduct, does seem, there- 
 fore, to be a not impossible thing for the Aryan 
 genius to come to. 
 
 But for all this, however, man is hardly yet 
 ripe. For our race, as we see it now and as our- 
 selves we form a part of it, the true God is and 
 must be pre-eminently the God of the Bible, the 
 Eternal who makes for righteousnessj from whom 
 Jesus came forth, and whose Spirit governs the 
 course of humanity. Only, we see that even for 
 apprehending this God of the Bible rightly and 
 not wrongly, letters, which so many people dis- 
 parage, and what we call, in general, culture, 
 seem to be necessary. 
 
 And meanwhile, to prevent our at all pluming 
 ourselves on having apprehended what so much 
 baffles our dogmatic friends (although indeed it is 
 not so much we who apprehended it as the "Zeit- 
 Geist" who discovers it to us), what a chastening 
 and wholesome reflection for us it is, that it is 
 only to our natural inferiority to these ingenious 
 men that we are indebted for our advantage over 
 theml For while *ie/ were born with talents for 
 metaphysical speculation and abstruse reasoning, 
 we are so notoriously deficient in everything of 
 329 
 
LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 that kind, that our adversaries often taunt us 
 with it, and hare held us up to public ridicule as 
 being "without a system of philosophy, based on 
 principles interdependent, subordinate and co- 
 herent." And so we were thrown on letters; 
 thrown upon reading this and that, — which any- 
 body can do,— and thus gradually getting a no- 
 tion of the history of the human mind, which 
 enables us (the ''Zeit-Geist" favoring) to correct 
 in reading the Bible some of the mistakes into 
 which men of more metaphysical talents than 
 literary have fallen. Cripples in like manner have 
 been known, now and then, to be cast by their 
 very infirmity upon some mental pursuit which has 
 turned out happily for them ; and a good fortune 
 of this kind has perhaps been ours. 
 
 But we do not forget that this good fortune we 
 owe to our weakness, and that the natural supe- 
 riority remains with our adversaries. And some 
 day, perhaps, the nature of God may be as well 
 known as the nature of a cone or a triangle ; and 
 then the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester 
 will deduce its properties with success, and make 
 their brilliant logical play about it,— rightly, in- 
 stead of, as now, wrongly; and will resume all 
 their advantage. But this will hardly be in our 
 time ; so that the superiority of this pair of dis- 
 tinguished metaphysicians will never, perhaps, 
 after all, be of any real advantage to them, but 
 they will be deluded and be mocked by it until 
 they die. 
 
 330