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CXyV Y 
 
Christianity Re-interpreted 
 
 OTHER SERMO^^ 
 
 CHARLES STRONG, D.D. 
 
 Minister of the Austealian Church, Melbourne 
 
 GEORGE ROBERTSON AND COMPANY 
 MELBOURNE, SYDNEY, ADELAIDE, AND BRISBANE 
 

 "^be Hustraliau Cburcb is a Society field together by a common Religious SpiHt of liiist 
 and Hope towards Qod as our Fatlier, and of love towards man as our brother, and not by 
 a dogmatic creed or an unchanging ecclesiastical form.. It recognizes the principle of 
 development, and seeks to j'e-inlo-pret CJiristianiiy in the }ig?tt of present-day knowledge 
 and experience. It is a Brotherhood which exists not for itself alone, but for the purpose 
 of doing all the good, in its power, and aiding human progress. All in sympathy with 
 such aims are welcomed as membei's and fellow-workers for the Kingdom of Gcd. 
 
 The General Basis of Union adopted at the inaugural meeting of the Church on 
 llfh November, 1885, was as follows :—"■ The worship of God in spirit, and in ti'ufh; 
 the preaching of tlie Gospel of Jesus Chritt ; and the promotion, and practice of the 
 religious life of Faith, Hope, and Love. Tlie form of Church Government to be 
 representative ajid elective, due regard being had to liberty of conscience and congrega- 
 tional freedom." 
 
 The Australian Church is thus a humble, and doubtless imperfect, attempt to realize 
 the idea in many minds and hearts to-day, of a Religious Society which, accepting the 
 assured results of modern criticism of the Bible and theology, yet seeks to conserve 
 whatever spiritual truth is wj^apped up in ancient histoi^y and dogma, and to "folloio 
 the truth in love," into new stages of evolution, both speculative and practical. Its motto 
 is — " The letter killeth, hut the ^iHt giveth life." Its bond of union is a common 
 prayer for God's Kingdom, and a common endeavour aftei' the Christian Life. 
 
DEDICATED 
 
 TO 
 
 MY WIFE 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER FRIENDS AND FELLOW-WORKERS 
 
 IN 
 
 AUSTEALIA AND OTHEE LANDS. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031292893 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THESE Sermons are a few out of many addressed 
 to those who, like the wx'iter, have found it 
 impossible to live religiously within the narrow 
 limits of the old theologies and creeds, and who feel 
 that religion is a larger and a deeper thing than all 
 or any of its necessarily changing forms of expres- 
 sion. They do not form a connected series, but they 
 are all alike written from the one point of view of 
 religion and Christianity as being not a system of 
 belief once for all communicated to man from with- 
 out, but the gradual discovery to man and by man 
 of God and truth from within — Spirit unveiling 
 Himself in spirits, and recognized more and more 
 fully by them through experience and thought. 
 
 To those who are perfectly satisfied with the old 
 theology, and who regard religion as a fixed creed 
 once for all communicated to certain authoi-ized 
 custodians, and to be accepted on authority, these 
 Sermons cannot be of any assistance. It is hoped, 
 however, that they may speak to some who are 
 
vi Preface. 
 
 groping their way to that new and larger stage in 
 the evolution of religious thought, and feeling, and 
 action, which seeins opening out to us to-day, and 
 suggest at least the direction in which light is to 
 be looked for. 
 
 To each sermon are prefixed " texts," not only 
 from the recognized " Scriptures," but ' also from the 
 " Bible of the Race." The author thus acknowledges 
 his debt to others, and at the same time seeks to 
 direct his readers to writers in whose works they 
 may find light and guidance in studying the great 
 problems of religion and life. 
 
 Melbouknb, Octuher, 1894. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Christianity Re-interpeeted 1 
 
 II. The Differences and Unity of the Gospels 
 
 AND Epistles 19 
 
 III. Progress and the Church 37 
 
 IV. Christ's Narrow Wat to Life - 57 
 V. Individualism, Socialism", and Christianity 75 
 
 VI. Faith and Eeason 93 
 
 VII. Revelation 109 
 
 VIII. The Way, the Truth, and the Life 127 
 
I 
 CHRISTIANITY RE-INTERPRETED 
 
The Kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven. — Matthew xiii. 33. 
 
 We know in partj and we prophesy in part : but when that which is perfect is 
 comcj that which is in part shall be done away. — 1 OOUINTHIAN:!) xiii. 9, 10. 
 
 The thmgs of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God.— 1 Corinthians ii. II. 
 
 The letter killeth but the Spirit giveth life.— 2 Corinthians iii. 6. 
 
 The law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus,— ROMANS viii. 2. 
 
 He will give you another Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth.— JOHN xiv. 17. 
 
 God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in 
 truth.— John iv. 24. 
 
 Christianity, as intuitively presented in the life and words of Jesus, and as 
 •elevated to the form of reflexion by St. Paul, contains in itself a religious idea whose 
 compEiss and meaning is no less than infinite. It is indeed the principle underlying 
 all religion, which in it comes to self-consciousness. Tet, on the other hand, it has 
 to be admitted that this principle was as yet only stated in the most general way, 
 and not worked out to its consequences. In spite of the force and fnlness of ex- 
 pression which the Christian idea had attained in the New Testament, it still, in the 
 apostolic age, remained to a great extent undeveloped. It could not yet be seen 
 what change would come of its application to all the various interests of the 
 intellectual and moral life of man. It was only a germ thrown into an alien world, 
 which it had to conquer and transform. — The Evolution of Religion, hy Edward 
 Cairdt LL.D. 
 
CHRISTIANITY RE-INTERPRETED. 
 
 THERE was a correspondence carried on not very- 
 long ago in an English newspaper on the 
 question, " Is Christianity played out ? " Such a 
 correspondence is a straw showing what way the 
 wind blows, for assuredly there is in many minds 
 to-day something at least like this question, and it 
 seems inevitable, as time goes on, that this question 
 should, in some form or other, become burning. 
 
 For years it has seemed to us that a time was 
 coming when Christianity would be tried as in the 
 fire, and that it was wisdom to prepare for the day of 
 trial, as a wise sailor, warned by the falling barometer, 
 takes in sail and makes his ship ready to pass through 
 the storm. The time anticipated is arriving, and 
 around the Christian ship the waves begin to leap. 
 The minds of men and women are restless and un- 
 settled, and old beliefs have lost their power. 
 
4 Christianity 
 
 By all who take a serious view of life such a state 
 of matters must be deeply deplored. The world, it 
 seems to them, rests on religion, and anything which 
 weakens or destroys the power of religion touches the 
 deepest spring of human life and progress. For is 
 not the question this : — Is man a child of a God, or a 
 child's soap-bubble, and an accidental result of the 
 fortuitous concourse of atoms ? All thinking, sooner 
 or later, runs up into this : — Are we the outcome of a 
 <' cosmic force," whose nature is essentially rational, 
 which corresponds to what we feel to be highest and 
 best in ourselves, or are we " such stuff as dreams are 
 made of," without the reality even of a dreaming 
 ffiind f 
 
 When you think calmly on life, is not this the 
 question — ^the religious question — which forces itself 
 upon us ? This is the great dividing range down one 
 side or the other of which man must go. On the 
 one side lies the valley of mud and dust primeval, in 
 which our destiny is, to be choked ; on the other the 
 fathomless ocean of God, inviting us to launch our 
 ships and sail for " the blessed isles." 
 
 The question of religion is not the question 
 merely of our acceptance or rejection of this belief 
 or that, but of what side of the dividing range 
 we will take. And need I point out what an 
 enormous difference it must make in the history 
 
Re-interpreted. 5 
 
 of man, whether he will decide for dust, or for 
 God? 
 
 " Whate'er thou lovest, man, one with it grow thou must ; 
 God, if thou lovest God ; dust, if thou lovest dust." 
 
 To touch religion, therefore, is, as we have already 
 said, to touch the deepest spring of human life and 
 progress, and sooner or later the effect must be felt in 
 the whole tone and character of society. For though 
 the multitude are not philosophers, or given to think- 
 ing deeply, they are unconsciously influenced and 
 governed by thoughts and ideas. We are all in the 
 power of forces greater than we know, and the most 
 thoughtless persons cannot escape the pressure of the 
 atmosphere in which they live and breathe. 
 
 Well, the atmosphere is admittedly disturbed and 
 sultry, and the very foundations of the earth seem 
 shaken. And as time goes on we may anticipate more 
 shaking of heaven and earth, for free thought will 
 become more widespread as people become educated, 
 read, and reflect. It will be found more and more 
 impossible, we believe, to reconcile what is generally 
 or popularly understood by " Christianity " with the 
 results of the study of history, the teachings of 
 science, and the growth of that moral-religious ideal 
 which Christianity has itself done so much to create. 
 But to the majority of people this popular Christi- 
 
6 Christianity 
 
 anity is their only conception of religion, and when 
 it goes, religion goes, and the moral fibre of their life 
 is weakened : the soul's strings are broken, and, like 
 the captive Hebrews by the rivers of Babylon, they 
 hang their harps upon the willows. 
 
 Now, there are different courses which may be 
 adopted by those who desire, in the face of such 
 difficulties, to retain, or regain, for Christianity its 
 power over the minds and hearts of men. 
 
 First there is the course adopted by some who bid 
 us shut our eyes. What they say is this : — " All those 
 doubts and difficulties which are arising in people's 
 minds to-day go to prove more and more conclusively 
 that rest can- be found only by renouncing your own 
 private judgment, and submitting yourself humbly to 
 a supematurally appointed authority." The Roman 
 dogmatist says that this authority is the Pope and 
 Priesthood ; the Protestant, a supernatural Book. 
 " There is no hope for the world," they both cry ; 
 " there can be nothing but scepticism and confusion, 
 and final ruin, unless there is an infallible guide 
 appointed by Heaven, to declare authoritatively to 
 man what he must believe and do." 
 
 A second course is that adopted by those who try 
 to " reconcile " the new with the old — putting a new 
 piece to the old garment, and new wine into old wine 
 skins. They explain away this and that, try to show 
 
Re-interpreted. 7 
 
 that there is no difficulty at all, and while perhaps 
 admitting that some outworks of the Christian 
 citadel may have to be given up, persist in declaring 
 that certain historical and dogmatic beliefs must be 
 retained, which they designate " essentials." You 
 may hold your own opinion about the story of Crea- 
 tion, you may accept the latest conclusions of critics 
 about the authorship of the Psalms or the Hexateuch, 
 you may even quietly put aside the good old dogma 
 of Eternal Punishment, and include pagans and non- 
 elect infants in your hope and charity ; but after you 
 have lopped ofi' an arm here and a leg there, and cut 
 away a lot of superfluous flesh, there is a point 
 beyond which you must not go, otherwise the man 
 will expire : your pruning process must stop short of 
 the heart, which is one or two of the old beliefs still 
 held to be " necessary to salvation," and " essential " to 
 the Church, and to the Religion of Jesus. 
 
 Neither of these courses commends itself to us. 
 For, as to the first, we can find no proof that there is 
 an infallible Pope and Priesthood ordained of God, 
 or that God has given us miraculously endowed 
 Council, or miraculous Book, to which He has com- 
 manded us to surrender our reason and our conscience, 
 and the whole guidance of our lives. 
 
 As to the second, these so-called " reconciliations " 
 seem to us sorry affairs. Often they are but special 
 
8 Christianity 
 
 pleadings, not quite ingenuous, ignoring the real 
 question at issue, and the logical consequences of 
 admissions made. Doubt the infallibility of the story 
 of Creation as given in Genesis, and what becomes of 
 the popular doctrine of the Fall of man, and the vast 
 superstructure raised on this story by theologians? 
 Milton's " Paradise Lost " — a very good representation 
 of the popular theology — has the bottom knocked out. 
 of it if you take away the literal accuracy of the 
 story of Adam and Eve, Satan, and the eternal Hell of 
 fire. And if " Paradise Lost " goes, must not " Paradise 
 Regained " follow ? For the one is built on the other. 
 So, as it seems to us at least, if you touch the popular 
 theology, and take away a few bricks, the old house 
 tumbles down about your ears. Take away the eter- 
 nal hell to which the whole human race is naturally 
 doomed, from Calvin and Augustine, and from what 
 is called, but falsely so, " evangelical theology," and 
 the whole system crumbles into dust. To try to 
 reconcile it with the modern study of history, the 
 teachings of science, or the new ideal, is like trying 
 to reconcile the Ptolemaic with the Copernican theory 
 of the solar system. For the centre of the religious 
 universe has been shifted, as the centre of the 
 physical universe has been shifted from this little 
 speck called earth to the great sun round which the 
 earth, with other planets, revolves. 
 
Re-interpreted. 9 
 
 A third course still remains — to re-interpret 
 Christianity in the light of modern knowledge, the 
 principle of development, and the spirit of religion 
 as distinguished from the letter; to re-interpret 
 Christianity just as Copernicus and Galileo re-inter- 
 preted astronomy. 
 
 Let me endeavour to put before you in outline, 
 as simply as I can, what is meant by this re-interpre- 
 tation of Christianity. 
 
 First, it means fully and freely accepting the 
 results of the modern study of History — history of 
 the earth, the heavens, and man — fully and freely 
 accepting the results also of the critical study of the 
 Bible and the Story of the Church. 
 
 Popular Christianity depends upon the belief that 
 the earth was made in six days, that man was 
 created miraculously and placed in a garden of Eden, 
 where he ate a forbidden fruit and fell, and became 
 subject to death; that there is a place of eternal 
 fire, to which, accordingly, all are naturally on their 
 way, vmless " saved " by believing that Jesus endured 
 for them the wrath of God, and bought literally with 
 His blood a place for them in heaven. The popular 
 theology depends, further, upon the hypothesis of an 
 absolutely infallible church or book, which, as far as 
 we can see, is swept clean away by a knowledge of 
 facts, and a reverent but scientific study of the Bible. 
 
lo Christianity 
 
 The first thing, therefore, is to acknowledge that we 
 have been mistaken, and frankly and fully to accept 
 facts regardless of what the consequences may be. 
 No special pleading, or "reconciliations of religion 
 and science," which are no reconciliations. "Let us 
 have facts," cry the advocates of this course, " and 
 carefully weigh all that sober criticism, whether of 
 the Church or of the Bible, has got to say. To tamper 
 with facts is dishonest, even when they upset our 
 theories and refuse to fit in with our cherished 
 systems of theology. Let us listen to all that geology, 
 and astronomy, and anthropology have got to tell us, 
 and boldly submit to the comparison of Christian 
 religion with other religions of the world. Does the 
 old theology rest on ignorance or misunderstanding of 
 facts ? Then it must be sacrificed. Theology, after 
 all, is a human science, and we no more destroy God 
 and Jesus, and the religion of Jesus, by pulling an 
 old theological house to pieces than we destroy the 
 stars by exploding old-world theories about the earth 
 being a plane, and stars rising above it, and setting 
 below it." 
 
 The re-interpretation of Christianity means, 
 secondly, the acceptance of the idea of Development. 
 The old theology is built upon the hypothesis of a 
 direct revelation from heaven, to which nothing can 
 be added, from which nothing can be taken. You 
 
Re-interpreted. 1 1 
 
 are a condemned sinner by nature and by actual 
 transgression, and God in His mercy has revealed to 
 you a way of escape. The Church has had intrusted 
 to her the keeping of the gate of heaven, and the 
 " means of grace " — that is, the means of escaping hell 
 and getting into heaven. So say the Romanists. 
 The Bible is the repository of " the means of grace." 
 So say the Protestants. From beginning to end it is 
 a " revelation " of " the scheme of salvation," without 
 knowledge of, and belief in which, no one can be 
 "saved." It is supernaturally penned, unique, inerrant. 
 
 Now, what says the study of Bible history and 
 Church history to all this ? It says, " Both Church 
 and Bible grew. The ancient religion of Israel de- 
 veloped, and the theology of the Church has developed 
 — all these dogmas have a history. When we are 
 children we speak the language of children, in religion 
 as in all things else. The Bible and the Church are a 
 revelation of God, but a revelation not given once for 
 all from outside, but slowly growing up from within, 
 in the minds and hearts of men — a revelation which 
 is still going on. God spake, God still speaks, and 
 each age must translate His word into its own 
 language. Each age must weave its own theology : 
 ' Slowly the Bible of the race is writ.' " 
 
 Theology thus ceases to be jinal ; like all other 
 sciences it is necessarily subject to change. We must 
 
1 2 Christianity 
 
 expect, therefore, to find, even in the Bible, representa- 
 tions and conceptions of the Eternal and His guidance 
 of the world, which we have outgrown. The Bible is 
 not so much a cut and dried theology, as a history of 
 the process by which man has been led to a knowledge 
 of the true God, of the steps by which he has risen to 
 a truer conception of the meaning of religion. And 
 the religion called Christianity, however noble and 
 beautiful may be its teaching, is one among many 
 religions. It may, on comparison, be found to be 
 the highest rung in the ladder, but it cannot cut 
 itself off from other religions, but must take its 
 place with them in God's "education of the human 
 race." You can never say that Christianity is 
 this dogma or that, this institution or that, for it 
 is still growing, and must die if it ceases to grow. 
 
 Here, you see, is an entirely new view of Christi- 
 anity, its doctrines and institutions. The doctrine 
 of development, with which our physical sciences 
 have made us so familiar, has been carried into the- 
 ology, and has changed it into a progressive science, 
 in which is no absolute finality so long as man 
 continues to grow in knowledge and experience, and 
 God opens the eyes of the soul. 
 
 Lastly, the re-interpretation of Christianity means 
 the interpretation of it in the light of the Spirit 
 of Christ. 
 
Re-interpreted. 1 3 
 
 The popular religion may recognize the Spirit 
 of ChrLst, but it recognizes it only as bound up 
 with the letter of Scripture, dogmas, church institu- 
 tions, not as in itself the Centre of the new heavens 
 and the new earth. 
 
 Popular Christianity builds itself up on belief 
 in miracles. These miracles are held to, be the 
 proofs of Christ's divinity, and of a divinely- 
 attested mission. The perfectly historical accuracy of 
 the New Testament is taken for granted, and every 
 word is regarded as a special revelation from God. 
 A system of doctrine or belief is drawn up, based 
 on sacred texts, and the acceptance of it is 
 regarded as an essential preliminary, at least, to 
 Christian " salvation." Even really pious and spirit- 
 ually-minded persons, with hearts larger than their 
 creeds, consider this as lying at the very centre of 
 Christianity, though their own religion is far more 
 than this, far richer and deeper, with roots in the 
 soul, of which they are not conscious. 
 
 Now, Christianity re-interpreted means simply 
 Christianity conceived of as being first and essentially 
 a breath of new moral and spiritual life. 
 
 Take the phrase, for example, " in Christ." That, 
 popularly interpreted, means sheltered by Him from 
 the wrath of God, as one is sheltered from a storm by 
 entering a house. The idea is legal. We escape hell 
 
1 4 Christianity 
 
 by getting as it were into Christ, so that the Law sees 
 not us but the Holy One. The re-interpretation is : 
 So wedded to the spirit of Jesus' life, and teaching, 
 and death, that His spirit becomes ours, and not legally 
 at all, but really, Christ is we, and we are Christ. 
 Beliefs, church -institutions, forms of theology may 
 have their uses, but the one thing needful is to be 
 born of the new spirit of trust, love, freedom, raised 
 as it were out of the plane of the merely animal on 
 to the plane of "the new man," who looks up to heaven 
 and forth upon the world, with the eye and heart of 
 a Jesus. Salvation is no longer accepting an oifer of 
 deliverance from hell, but a being saved from our- 
 selves, and lifted into Christ's life and God's life. 
 Popular Christianity puts this second. Christianity 
 re-interpreted puts it first. Be saved, says the 
 former, and love. Love, says the latter, and be 
 saved. Dost thou believe so and so ? asks popular 
 Christianity — ^first of all that God is a Trinity, that 
 justice wa.s satisfied by Christ's death, that the Bible 
 is infallibly inspired, that Jesus worked miracles, 
 that you deserve everlasting punishment in a lake 
 which bumeth with fire and brimstone ? Or, hast 
 thou been baptized ? Or, hast thou taken the 
 sacrament or received the last rites of the Church ? 
 Christianity re-interpreted asks first of all. Will 
 you admit Christ, the Spirit of the Son and 
 
Re-interpreted, 1 5 
 
 Brother, with His cross, into your heart, and 
 take Him to be your life ? Will you renounce all 
 legal notions of merit, all self-righteousness, hatred, 
 revenge, malice, uncharitableness — all distrust, pride, 
 fear, and open the door of your soul to let " the new 
 man" come in and abide with you — nay, be your 
 own true self ? Will you henceforth think of God as 
 Jesus taught you, as He was and is revealed in a life 
 of love ? Will you take perfect trust towards the 
 Supreme, and charity towards all men, as the breath 
 of your life ? " As many as receive Him, to them is 
 given power to be sons of God." To do this is to be 
 " saved," and without this all the beliefs in the world 
 are of no avail. Religion, in short, is a part of your- 
 self : it is character. To " believe on Jesus Christ " is 
 not necessarily to believe what theologians have said 
 about Him, but to become one with Him through 
 spiritual insight, and live a risen life. And the proof 
 of this Christianity is not in anything outside of it — 
 it is its own proof. No miracle or wonder can make 
 you see the beauty and truth of Christ and the 
 Christ-life, any more than they can make you un- 
 derstand a poem or a painting. These prove them- 
 selves only when you grow into them, and they 
 into you. 
 
 Thus Christianity re-interpreted escapes from 
 "carnal" theologies, traditions, questions about dogmas, 
 
1 6 Christianity 
 
 infallible books, infallible churches, and presents itself 
 to us as a Spiritual Life which is its own witness, 
 and to which perhaps such things are felt to be a 
 hindrance often rather than a help. 
 
 To many people such a Christianity must seem to 
 be no Christianity at all — as to Christ's contem- 
 poraries, His re-interpretation of the old Hebrew 
 religion seemed blasphemy and sacrilege, the 
 destruction of all that they deemed most sacred. 
 But to others it" appears as the real Christianity 
 which, long buried beneath the structures built 
 over it by men, is now reappearing in its beauty 
 and simplicity and Divine power, as when before the 
 breath of Spring the ice melts and the living stream 
 appears, and through the loosened earth the hidden 
 life peeps forth in plant and flower. To such it 
 seems that the letter of Christianity must die if 
 Christianity is to live, and become the power of God 
 to bear the world onward to a new and fuller day. 
 Never, it is felt, will Christianity escape from its 
 present difficulties, its provincialisms and tradi- 
 tionalism, and become the Universal Religion, the 
 " light to lighten the nations and the glory of God's 
 people, Israel," until — shaking itself free from the 
 letter of bibles and creeds and rubrics — it boldly 
 declares itself to be a new "Spirit of Life," and 
 appeals for its witness and proof to the heart and 
 
Re-interpreted. 1 7 
 
 conscience — to the light, the health, and the harmony 
 which it brings into the soul that receives it. How 
 can light prove itself save by shining? How can 
 life prove itself save by living ? 
 
 If this be so, instead of viewing with fear or despair 
 the doubts and perplexities of the Christian world, 
 and the drifting of men and women away from their 
 old theological moorings, may we not view them with 
 hope as the necessary prelude to a fuller development 
 of the religion of Jesus ? 
 
 It is hard for us to get over old associations, to 
 separate in thought and feeling the living plant 
 from the wall to which it clings, and it may take long 
 before we grow into the new : but is not this the 
 direction in which we must move ? And when this 
 interpretation of Christianity has fairly caught on, 
 may we not hope to see such a revival of religion as 
 the world has not yet witnessed ? Though clouds come 
 down and obscure our vision, and our eyes grow heavy 
 waiting for the day, have we not " glimpses," at 
 least, " which make us less forlorn" — ^glimpses of a 
 Church that really believes in the gospel that God 
 is Spirit, that God is Love, and that " God so loved 
 the world " as to send " his Son to draw us into 
 sonship and make us partakers in a divine life ; 
 glimpses of a world at length inspired with a 
 sublime " spirit of life in Christ Jesus ? " " My soul 
 
 3 
 
1 8 Christianity Re-interpreted. 
 
 waiteth for the Lord," sings the Psalmist, "more 
 than they that watch for the morning. " 
 
 In thus seeking to re-interpret Christianity, are not 
 we only bringing out more clearly its profound hidden 
 meaning, and justifying its claim to be absolute and 
 universal religion — the fufilment, not of Hebrew pro- 
 phecy merely, or Christian theology, but of all the 
 noblest struggles and hopes and aspirations of man 
 in his long ascent towards the Divine ? 
 
II 
 
 THE DIFFERENCES AND UNITY 
 
 GOSPELS AND EPISTLES 
 
One Lord, one faith, one baptism ; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and 
 through all, and in all.— Ephbsians iv. 5. 
 
 In one Spirit were we all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether 
 bond or free ; and were all made to drink of one Spirit. — 1 CORINTHIANS xii. 13. 
 
 The compatibility of great varieties in forms, characters, and views, with the 
 •closest unity of spirit, is a topic which has been of late times much insisted on, and 
 -which all history, no less than our own daily experience, concurs in teaching us. 
 But there is nothing, whether in the revelations of God or the wisdom of man;which 
 'brings this lesson home to us with such irresistible force as the simple fact, 
 thoroughly understood, that the most perfect of all truth was imparted to the 
 Tvorld, not in one uniform code, at one single moment of time, but by a gradual 
 process lasting through more than half a century, and by the agency of men in 
 natural character and deposition the most opposite that it is possible for the human 
 mind to conceive. 
 
 However difficult it may be in many cases to pass from the circumstances of the 
 ^apostolical age to those of our own, in this case, at least, there is not so much 
 insurmountable difference between them as need deprive us of the lesson which is 
 read to us by this divergence of the Apostles from each other. We must remember 
 that if we look upon their diversities of style, and thought, and action as trivial, 
 their contemporaries, as will appear more clearly afterwards, often looked upon them 
 .as matters of life and death — ^that if our difficulties are aggravated by the co-exist- 
 ence of all manner of schools and opinions, which in former ages existed separately, 
 this was more especiiQly the case in the first century than in any other age, except 
 our own — ^that if long familiarity has habituated us to the amalgamation of their 
 several writings and views, there was a time when the churches of St. James knew 
 nothing of the churches of St. Paul— that nearly a whole generation passed away 
 before either of them received the Gospel and Epistles of St. John— that the very 
 highest truths concerning God and man are expressed by each of the Three in terms 
 not merely dissimilar, but absolutely opposed to the other.— Sermom and Essays on 
 iTie Apostolic Age, Dean Stanley, 
 
THE DIFFERENCES AND UNITY OF THE 
 GOSPELS AND EPISTLES. 
 
 THE results of the modern science of Biblical 
 Criticism, it must be acknowledged, have very 
 much changed and modified our notions regarding the 
 Scriptures, not only of the Old Testament, but also of 
 the New. 
 
 In uncritical times, for instance, the Old Testament 
 was not unnaturally regarded as one book, virtually 
 written by one hand. The Holy Spirit, it was 
 supposed, made use of men in different ages as 
 mere media and vehicles of truth. The Bible was 
 thus a book penned by God Himself. Careful and 
 reverent examination and study of the Old Testament 
 have, however, quite exploded the possibility of any 
 such view. How, on such a supposition, could the 
 differing accounts of Creation and the Flood, or the 
 differing accounts of the same events in the books of 
 Kings and the books of Chronicles, be accounted for ? 
 or how could the marked difference between the book 
 
2 2 The Differences and Unity 
 
 o£ Deuteronomy and the other versions of the Law 
 of Moses be explained ? How came it that " the 
 Prophets " should be so diflferent from "the Law ?" 
 
 Students of the Old Testament, therefore, arrived 
 at the conclusion, on these and other grounds, that the 
 Old Testament contained not a ready-made religion 
 dropped out of heaven, a ready-made theology and 
 code of morality to be received as the very word of 
 the Divine Spirit, but a history of the religious 
 development of the Hebrew nation — a history of the 
 Ood-idea implanted in the human soul, as that idea 
 unfolded itself in the life of Israel. They saw that 
 the writers wrote from different standpoints, that each 
 book must be studied by itself, and further, that parts 
 of the same book must sometimes be studied by 
 themselves. Just as students of the earth came to see 
 that the world was not one day's work, but that it 
 had been laid down in different strata corresponding 
 to different geological periods, so students of the 
 Bible came to see that the Bible consists of many 
 strata, and that even in the same book are traces of 
 different writers. Thus in Genesis we have two 
 accounts of creation and the flood, in Isaiah two 
 prophets, at least, and one historian, while the Psalms 
 are simply a collection of Hebrew Poetry bound up 
 under the name of King David, " the sweet singer of 
 Israel." 
 
of the Gospels and Epistles, 23 
 
 The modern idea of the Old Testament is thus, as 
 I have said, that it is not a book dropped out of 
 heaven to earth, but the story of man's ascent from 
 earth to heaven — of the gradual revelation of the 
 true God in the hearts - and minds of a " peculiar 
 people." It is not one book, but many books, 
 written " at sundry times and in divers manners," 
 containing sermons, poetry, proverbs, dramas like 
 Job, literary fictions like Jonah, sceptical questionings 
 like Ecclesiastes, legends like Genesis, imperfect 
 histories like the books of Kings and Chronicles, 
 priestly books like Leviticus or Ezekiel, more 
 spiritual writings like those of the "second Isaiah" 
 and some of the later psalms. 
 
 Wherein then consists the unity of the Old Testa- 
 ment, if it is such a conglomeration of books ? The 
 unity, we would reply, is in the development towards 
 an Ethical Monotheism,, towards the worship of one 
 God, who gradually comes at length to be recognized 
 not only as the God of Israel, but as the Creator 
 and Governor of the Universe, and whose prevailing 
 characteristic is at length recognized as essentially 
 Righteousness. The unity of the Old Testament is 
 the unity of a plant at different stages, the unity of 
 the sunshine seen at dawn, in early morning, and 
 at noon. It is the history of the struggle of the 
 one-God-idea with the many -gods-idea ; of the God of 
 
24 The Differences and Unity 
 
 righteousness and justice, with the gods and goddesses 
 of licentiousness ; of nature worship and polytheism, 
 with that splendid conception of Deity and man, 
 which, like a rising sun, breaks on the heights 
 of Israel in such writers as the great "Unknown," 
 or he who indited the hundred-and-thirty-ninth 
 Psalm. It is the history, in short, of the upward 
 struggle of man in the evolution of his "God- 
 conciousness." A marvellous and unique book is 
 this Old Testament thus regarded — a marvellous and 
 unique history this history of Israel. 
 
 But criticism could not be confined to the Old 
 Testament. The New Testament had to be subjected, 
 to the same strict analysis and investigation. Book 
 after book on the Gospels and Epistles poured out 
 of the press — Dutch, French, German, English ; and 
 even yet we have not heard the last word in New 
 Testament criticism. The New Testament can thus 
 no longer be regarded, as once it was, as one Book 
 dropped out of heaven, but as a Literature, as a 
 Collection of Books, as a History, a further and 
 higher Development of the God-idea, and of that 
 Ethical Monotheism which was reached by pre- 
 Christian Israel. 
 
 Let me then, in the first place, put before you 
 briefly the differences between the New Testament 
 writings; and, in the second place, show wherein 
 
of the Gospels and Epistles. 25 
 
 lies the unity of the Gospels and Epistles — my object 
 being not to destroy the faith of any, but rather, if 
 possible, to put it on a wider and more spiritual 
 basis. 
 
 In the first place we have to consider the differ- 
 ences between the books of the New Testament. 
 
 The first difference we would notice is that between 
 the narratives of the synoptists or first three gospels. 
 
 If you compare the first chapters of Matthew and 
 Luke you will find how widely they differ in their 
 accounts of the birth of Jesus, and of the genealogy 
 of Jesus. You have only to read them carefully one 
 after the other, to see how different they are. Or 
 take Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount and 
 Matthew's, and see how, while they agree, they yet 
 differ. So with reports of other events and sayings 
 in these two gospels: place them side by side, and 
 you cannot fail to be struck with the similarity, 
 sometimes even verbal identity, while at the same 
 time there are marked differences. Was there some 
 older gospel, or some common tradition, from which 
 both writers borrowed? Did each write down in 
 his own way the oral tradition circulating in Christian 
 circles ? Did that tradition vary in different circles, 
 just as the tradition about the Buddha varies in 
 different parts of India ? Perhaps we shall never 
 get a perfect answer to the question how these gospels 
 
26 The Differences and Unity 
 
 arose — I mean how they came to take their present 
 form. But the fact remains that they are diiferent. 
 The gospel of Mark, which the consensus of learned 
 opinion seems now to regard as the earliest gospel, 
 differs also widely from Matthew and Luke. It 
 contains, as you must remember, no reference to the 
 miraculous birth of Jesus, it omits the Sermon on 
 the Mount, and it diverges as much in its account 
 of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus from 
 Matthew and Luke, as these diverge from each 
 other. I must refer you to your Bibles and ask 
 you to read the narratives for yourselves.* 
 
 However we may account for it, the fact of there 
 being wide diflferences between these three gospels 
 must be admitted. 
 
 When we turn to the Epistles of Paul we find our- 
 selves in a totally different theological atmosphere 
 from that of the first three gospels. Paul hardly 
 alludes to anything in the gospel story save the death 
 
 *"The Common Tradition," by Dr. Abbott and Mr. W. G. 
 Rushbrooke, presents the gospel narratives as given by Matthew, 
 Mark, and Luke arranged in parallel columns — what is common to 
 the three, or to two, peculiar to one, or different in each of the 
 three, different in two, or wanting in one or two, being discernible 
 at a glance. The general reader will find this little book, and also 
 Mr. Estlin Carpenter's excellent work on "The Synoptic Gospels: 
 their Origion and Relations," a good introduction to the critical 
 study of the gospels. 
 
of the Gospels and Epistles. 2 7 
 
 and resurrection of Jesus, and the Last Supper, and 
 his account of the resurrection is not that of the 
 gospels. The historical Jesus preaching " the gospel 
 of the Kingdom" among the hills and towns of Galilee, 
 speaking the parables and "the Sermon on the Mount," 
 falls into the background, and Jesus, "the Christ" 
 after the Spirit, " the second Adam," " the Heavenly 
 Man," the Deliverer from the dominion of the Hebrew 
 law, and the Founder of an universal Church em- 
 bracing Jew and Gentile, takes His place. To judge 
 from Paul's writings, you would almost think he 
 knew nothing of our gospels ; indeed, we have reason 
 to believe that, in their present form at least, these 
 gospels did not exist when Paul wrote his epistles. 
 They, apparently, know nothing of him, and he knows 
 nothing of them, although there is a tradition that 
 the gospel of Luke was written under the influence of 
 Paul. 
 
 In such epistles as those to the Ephesians and the 
 Hebrews we find the atmosphere again changing. The 
 tone is Pauline, but Paul's theology as expounded in 
 Romans is modified. In the Pastoral Epistles 'to 
 Timothy and Titus there is a still further change to a 
 later ecclesiastical atmosphere. In the epistle of James 
 we find the writer apparently writing to correct any 
 false impressions which the Pauline doctrine might have 
 produced, and insisting upon " good works " in opposi- 
 
28 The Differences and Unity 
 
 tion to the doctrine of barren "faith'' as held by some. 
 The Book of Revelation is very different from any other 
 book in the New Testament, and is full of oriental 
 imagery. Its conception of Jesus seems to be largely 
 that of a Hebrew Messiah, who is about to return 
 with all the pomp and splendour of an eastern 
 potentate. The Jesus of the gospels is forgotten in 
 the Messianic glory of the New Jerusalem, and the 
 second advent. Its counterpart in Jewish literature 
 is the Book of Daniel, or the Book of Enoch. 
 
 But we are not yet at the end of the differences in 
 the New Testament books. Different from the first 
 three gospels, from Paul and the Pauline epistles, from 
 James and the Apocalypse, are the gospel and first 
 epistle of John. Here we find ourselves breathing the 
 atmosphere neither of Galilee nor of Jerusalem, but of 
 Alexandria. The historical Jesus is still there, but He 
 is identified with the "Logos," or "Word," of Hebrew- 
 Greek philosophy. John does not content himself 
 with the simple narrative of the first three gospels. 
 His gospel contains entirely new matter, such as the 
 miracle in Oana of Galilee, and its account of the Last 
 Supper, while the trial, crucifixion, and resurrection 
 are strangely different from their record in Matthew, 
 Mark, and Luke. John knows nothing of Paul's 
 theology. Jesus is to him, not, as to Paul, the 
 Redeemer from the Law with its curse and condemna- 
 
of the Gospels and Epistles, 29 
 
 tion, but the manifestation of God in the flesh, the 
 Light shining in darkness, the Way, the Truth, the 
 Life, in fellowship with whom men live in God and 
 God lives in them. 
 
 Such, in bare outline, are the differences in the 
 books of the New Testament. 
 
 Now, in the second place, we ask, Is there no such 
 thing as Christianity, nothing but a mass of gospels 
 and epistles all differing more or less from each other ? 
 Is there any unity ? 
 
 We would reply that there is no such thing as 
 Christianity, if by Christianity we mean one history, 
 or one theology. The gospel histories vary, and it 
 must be acknowledged that no perfectly satisfactory 
 " Life of Jesus " ever has been, or perhaps ever will 
 be, written ; for the materials are very scanty. 
 
 The theologies of Paul and John diffei* from each 
 other. Both differ from that of James, and from the 
 first three gospels, which are characterized by the 
 absence of definite, dogmatic theology. There is no 
 such thing as unity, if by unity is meant uniformity 
 of presentation or of theological doctrine. 
 
 For a long time Christian scholars wearied them- 
 selves with making what they called " Harmonies " 
 of the gospels — trying to round off differences, and 
 to force one narrative to dovetail into another. Such 
 attempts were no doubt necessary, but only as 
 
30 The Differences and Unity 
 
 showing what could not be done. The result was 
 not satisfactory, and " Harmonies " are now pretty- 
 well out o£ date. 
 
 Then, to attempt to read Paul into the gospels, or 
 John into Paul, seems hopeless. 
 
 If we are to find unity in the New Testament we 
 must find it from a point of view higher than all these 
 differences. Just as the unity of the Old Testament 
 is to be found in the development from, and through, 
 lower forms, toward Ethical Monotheism, toward the 
 worship of one God, whose prevailing characteristic is 
 at length recognized as Righteousness — a righteous- 
 ness conceived of as " Law " — so the imity of the New 
 Testament is to be found in the still further develop- 
 ment of Israel's religion towards the worship of God 
 as the Father of all men, whose prevailing character- 
 istic is the Righteousness of " Love." 
 
 To this the first three gospels, with all their 
 differences and variations in narrative, unmistak- 
 ably point. It is possible that the writers do not 
 always understand Jesus, that now and then their 
 language is the language of ancient Judaism, and that 
 to Jesus they give an earthly Messianic colouring 
 borrowed from the ideas of the times : but through 
 their narratives shines " the Light of the world," the 
 light of a religion of love, the light of God " in the 
 face of Jesus." 
 
of the Gospels and Epistles. 3 1 
 
 To this also Pa^ul unmistakably points, with all his 
 often subtle and obscure theology. That theology 
 smacks o£ the rabbinical schools, but Paul had the 
 root of the matter in him. It is true he has long, dry 
 arguments about " the law," and " justification," but 
 we must not forget that he wrote his Letters not to 
 us, but to men and women in the first century, and 
 that he had a spiritual experience such as can never 
 exactly be ours. Paul's problem was how a crucified 
 man could be the Hebrew Messiah, how a Law which 
 he regarded - as Divine could possibly be abrogated, 
 and its " curse " escaped. And he found the answer 
 in his own way — the only way possible for him. His 
 arguments may have lost much of their force for us, 
 but the conclusion which he reached set Christianity 
 free. Ancient Judaism threatened to absorb the New 
 Movement, and to make " Christians " only a new Sect 
 of Hebrew religionists. It needed a Rabbi to argue 
 as Paul could do, and set forth Christianity as a new, 
 free Spirit. Paul bursts the bands of the old theology 
 with arguments drawn from its own armoury. And 
 having burst them, hear how beautifully he sets forth 
 the new religion : — " There is neither Jew nor Greek, 
 neither bond nor free, neither male nor female in 
 Christ Jesus, but one new man : " " Because ye are 
 sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our 
 hearts, crying, ' Abba,' Father : " " All things are 
 
32 The Differences and Unity 
 
 yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." And 
 when he drops his theology altogether, how near does 
 Paul come to the finest sayings of the gospels ! The 
 chapter which begins, "Though I speak with the 
 tongues of men and of angels and have not love," is 
 surely worthy to be placed alongside of the gospel 
 sayings, " Love your enemies ; do good to them that 
 hate you; pray for them that despitefully use you 
 and persecute you; that ye may be the children of 
 your Father." And so with a Pauline epistle, such as 
 that to the Ephesians, where will you find that love 
 which Jesus said was " the law and the prophets," 
 more earnestly set forth, or the love of God more 
 clearly taught ? " That ye being rooted and grounded 
 in love, niay be able to comprehend what is the 
 height and depth, and length and breadth, and to 
 know the love of God which passeth knowledge." 
 
 We must not allow the form of Paul's teaching to 
 obscure or blind us to the beauty of the substance. 
 It is sometimes said, 'Preach Jesus, not Paul.' But 
 in saying this it is forgotten how much Christianity 
 owes to Paul, and how he was really the first to 
 interpret the significance of " the gospel " as a universal 
 religion. It is forgotten how, with all his Hebrew 
 scholasticism, he really teaches the religion of the 
 spirit of liberty and world-wide love. It is because 
 Western theologians, such aS Calvin, have fixed on 
 
of the Gospels and Epistles, 33 
 
 the temporary form of Paul's teaching, the process by 
 which his mind burst the old shell, and have neglected 
 the substance, the new " life " which by that process 
 he reached, that we associate Paulinism with what is 
 hard and dry. But modern biblical study has at 
 length done justice to " the Apostle of the Gentiles." 
 
 The gospel according to John is deeply coloured 
 with Alexandrian philosophy, as I have on other 
 occasions pointed out to you. But through it, too, 
 shine the face of the Father, and the same Spirit 
 of Love, which meet us in the first three gospels. The 
 long argumentative discourses which in John occupy 
 the place of the parables, the Christ always so self- 
 conscious and always speaking as the "Logos," who 
 takes the place of the simpler " Jesus " of the first three 
 gospels, make this fourth gospel sometimes less charm- 
 ing and attractive than the others. It is evidently 
 the work of a Christian who had been brought up 
 among the philosophers of the East, and it is plainly 
 written with the design of representing Jesus as the 
 true " Logos," or " Word," spoken of by Greek phil- 
 osophy — the revelation of the very Heart and Soul, 
 and Creative Thought of the Universe. Yet how 
 essentially one is this gospel and the corresponding 
 epistle, with the most spiritual teaching of the other 
 gospels, and of Paul ! They belong to the same spiritual 
 family. Like the first three gospels, like the apostle 
 
34 The Differences and Unity 
 
 Paul, they proclaim the Fatherhood of God, and Love 
 as the fulfilling of the Law. Like them, too, they 
 proclaim a religion of "the spirit" a,s against "the 
 letter." " God is Love," says John. " The greatest 
 of these is Love," says Paul. " Thou shalt love," says 
 . the Jesus of the synoptists. 
 
 Thus, throughout the New Testament there is a 
 deep unity, but it is not a uniformity of narrative, 
 or uniformity of theology. The three first gospels, 
 Paul's epistles, the Pauline epistles, the epistles to 
 Ephesians, Oolossians, Hebrews, the epistles of James 
 and Peter, the gospel and epistles of John, are all 
 different from one another. The unity is not to be 
 discovered on the surface, but in the " one Spirit " 
 which breathes through all. All are pathways leading 
 up the mount to the vision of God as the Universal 
 Father, whose best name is "Light," "Love," and 
 " Spirit." They are all one in so far as the new 
 Spirit of Jesus breathes through them, and as they 
 introduce us to the religion of the sons and daughters 
 of God, the all-embracing. Absolute Religion for all 
 time and all races, of trust, hope, love towards God 
 as seen in the face of Jesus, a religion which is its 
 own evidence. 
 
 Some of you perhaps are perplexed by your Bible 
 studies. You cannot look at the Bible as you once 
 did, and your theory of Inspiration seems like some 
 
of the Gospels and Epistles. 35 
 
 old sail blown to rags and tatters by the winds. You 
 cannot go back. Let us try, then, to go forward, and 
 to find a theory of Inspiration which can admit and 
 embrace all the results of the most searching scholar- 
 ship and historical criticism. 
 
 The unity of the Old Testament is in a develop- 
 ment towards Ethical Monotheism. It is the history 
 of the rise and progress of the higher God-idea 
 dawning in the soul of Israel. The unity of the New 
 Testament is in a still further development of Israel's 
 religion and morality — and may we not say also, of 
 Greek religion and morality ? — the development, 
 through Jesus and his followers, of the God-idea into 
 the Absolute Eeligion of the sons and daughters of 
 " our Father," and the Absolute Morality whose only 
 "Law" is goodwill towards man as our brother in 
 God. 
 
 If you can thus look at the unity of the New 
 Testament, not as uniformity of theological belief, or 
 uniformity in the record of distant events, many at least 
 of which it is impossible at this date to verify, but as 
 the unity of Eeligion and the unity of Moral Feeling, 
 as the unity of an inspiring Spirit that abides with 
 us always, " even to the end of the world," you will 
 find yourselves relieved from much perplexity. You 
 may then see how, though the letter fails, and forms 
 grow old, the Religion of the New Testament is ever 
 
36 Differences and Unity of Gospels, &c. 
 
 young, ever waiting to be clothed in new forms of 
 thought and practice, and to be, as of old, a Star 
 guiding the Progress of the human Race. 
 
 Thus only, amid the differences of gospels and 
 epistles, can you hope to find the " one Lord, one faith, 
 ■one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is in all, 
 through all, and above all." 
 
Ill 
 PROGRESS AND THE CHURCH 
 
■ Till we all attain .... unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the 
 etature of the fulness of Christ.— Ephesians iv. 13. 
 
 For though you may believe that I am but a dreamer of dreams, I seem to see, 
 though it be on the far horizon — the horizon beyond the fields which we or our 
 children will tread — a Christianity which is not new but old, which is not old but 
 new, a Christianity in which the moral and spiritual elements will again hold their 
 place, in which men will be bound together by the bond of mutual service, which is 
 the bond of the sons of G-od, a Christianity which will actually realize the brother- 
 hood of men, the ideal of its first communities. — Hibberl Lectures, 1888, by Edwin 
 Satch, D.D. 
 
 Man, availing himself of tradition, is able, in every part of the intellectual 
 domain, to seize upon the acquirements of his ancestors at the point where they left 
 them, and to pursue them further, finally himself leaving the results of his own 
 experience and the knowledge acquired during his lifetime to his descendants, that 
 
 they may carry on the same process This, more than anything, is the 
 
 cause of the superiority of man over animals. .... And even if we were 
 compelled to believe that human faculty has reached its limits and can never be 
 increased again, even then we need not despair of the almost boundless progress of 
 mankind.— TTefomann, Essays upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems, 
 
 Suffice it now. In time to be 
 Shall holier altars rise to Thee,— 
 Thy Church our broad Humanity. 
 
 A sweeter song shall then be heard,— 
 The music of the world's accord 
 Confessing Christ, the Inward Word I 
 
 That song shall swell from shore to shore, 
 One hope, one faith, one love restore 
 The seamless robe that Jesus wore. 
 
 —WhUlier. 
 
PROGRESS AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 THE watchword of the day is "Progress." Lookmg 
 back on the past, straining our eyes into the 
 twilight deepening into darkness which shrouds 
 the early history of man, we eagerly trace the 
 steps by which races and nations have, as we say, 
 "progressed" from a lower to a higher level. Can 
 anything be more striking than the avidity with 
 which the beginnings of human history have in 
 this century been studied ? Students of language, 
 biologists, physiologists, geologists — students of 
 anthropology, palaeontology, and the science of 
 religion, with what untiring eagerness have they 
 tracked the path of man — with what skill and 
 ingenuity, and scholarship, and well-trained historical 
 imagination, and scientific minuteness and accuracy ! 
 The same fascination which has led our great 
 explorers to devote their lives to the discovery of the 
 source of the Nile, or the exploration of the Polar 
 
40 Progress and the Church. 
 
 regions, has held how many of our best minds spell- 
 bound in their devotion to the study of human 
 origins ! " Man, know thyself," has been their motto, 
 and on through dreary wastes and baffling jungles of 
 facts, and fierce opposition from the wild beasts of 
 prejudice and bigotry and superstition, they have 
 pressed, seeking the fountain-head of the stream of 
 Progress, on whose broad wave the modern world 
 now floats, like some proud ship full-sailed. We 
 complain of our age, and there is only too much 
 truth in the complaint, as a grossly materialistic one, 
 given up to all-absorbing material pursuits. But 
 there is a brighter side to the picture. What age has 
 been so distinguished by the passion of research ? 
 What books we have produced ! What an army of 
 enthusiastic students, consumed not by desire of gain, 
 but by love of knowledge, and utter devotion to the 
 pursuit of the objects of philosophy and science! 
 We often say that an individual is a mass of contra- 
 dictions, so much so that we picture him as made up 
 of two distinct personalities — a Dr. Hyde and a Dr. 
 Jekyll. The same is true of our age — its spirit is 
 double. On the one hand gross materialism ; on the 
 other, unheard-of devotion to non-materialistic study. 
 We are less disposed to despair of the race when we 
 look at the tomes on tomes of great books piled up 
 in our libraries, representing what mental energy. 
 
Progress and the Church. \i 
 
 what self-sacrificing enthusiasm, what exercise of 
 grand imagination ! What deep significance lies in a 
 great library ! 
 
 Nor is it with the Progress of the race in the 
 past only that we occupy ourselves. The discovery 
 of Progress in the history of the past has quite 
 naturally inspired us with the hope of Progress also 
 in the future. Has man slowly risen to the stage 
 which he now occupies ? Then why should he not 
 advance beyond the present stage ? Should not the 
 momentum of Progress increase like that of a rolling 
 stone hurled down a mountain's side ? Have all the 
 ages wrought and travailed to bring forth the man 
 of to-day, and is there no more that they can do, 
 but let their wondrous offspring be cast as rubbish 
 to the void ? 
 
 So in the hearts of many to-day great hopes have 
 arisen of an as yet undiscovered land, hopes some- 
 times mingled no doubt with fantasy, yet resting on 
 the solid ground of fact and experience. With all 
 our real and affected pessimism, and dismal fore- 
 bodings of Niagara Falls and Chaos come again, our 
 age has given birth to songs of hope and triumphant 
 marches worthy of Micah or Isaiah, or the writer of 
 the Apocalypse. 
 
 " Give me, O God ! to sing that thought, 
 Give me — give him or her I love — this quenchless faith 
 
42 Progress and the Church. 
 
 In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld, withhold not from us, 
 Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space, 
 Health, peace, salvation universal. 
 
 Is it a dream ? 
 Nay, but the lack of it a dream, 
 And failing it, life's love and wealth a dream. 
 And all the world a dream. " 
 
 The only rational view of life is that it is a 
 Progress. This is not an altogether new view. But 
 it has received a wider meaning and fuller content 
 to-day than in any previous age ; and the idea of 
 Progress has taken possession of men's minds to a far 
 greater extent than heretofore. 
 
 The question, therefore, which I now bring before 
 you is — :In what relation does this idea of Progress 
 stand to the Christian Church ? How does it affect 
 the Church? 
 
 There are those who look on Progress with suspicion, 
 as the enemy of the Church. There are those who 
 tell us that if we accept modern ideas of Progress we 
 must inevitably renounce the Church. Some tell us 
 this in fear and sorrow, and others shout for joy over 
 what they believe to be the inevitable destruction of 
 all churches. The former bid us close our eyes and 
 ears and take refuge in ancient temples ; the latter 
 bid us come out from temples altogether, and join 
 them in demolishing these obstacles in the way of 
 Progress, which only serve to hide the sunlight and 
 
Progress and the Church. 43 
 
 cast cold shadows on man's pathway. Churches like 
 ours thus find themselves between two fires. On 
 the one hand they are assailed by the old churches ; 
 on the other they are attacked by the radical 
 Philistine, who looks on all churches as only throw- 
 ing dust in people's eyes, and delaying the good 
 time when churches shall be turned into music halls 
 or people's palaces, and the office of the minister 
 shall take its place with that of the soothsayer, 
 and sorcerer, and medicine-man of uncivilized tribes. 
 
 Let me suggest a view of this question somewhat 
 different from that either of old church or no-church. 
 
 In order to do so it will be necessary, in the first 
 place, to make clear what we mean by Progress, and 
 in the second place what we mean by the Church. 
 
 What do we mean by Progress ? 
 
 It is quite plain that it does not mean going round 
 in a circle. A gin-horse driving a mill does not 
 progress, and neither does a mill-wheel. Progress means 
 advance from one point towards another, the latter 
 being considered a higher point than the former. A 
 prisoner on the wheel of a treadmill cannot be said to 
 make progress. A plant progresses when it gradually, 
 step by step, unfolds its hidden nature, and, under 
 the influence of sunshine and rain, bursts forth in 
 all the beauty and marvel of flower and fruit. An 
 
44 Progress and the Church. 
 
 animal progresses when from a life-germ it slowly 
 passes through each stage of embryonic life, and 
 at length reaches the fully developed form of its 
 species. Progress is from the undeveloped to the 
 fully developed, from the imperfect to the perfect. 
 
 By human Progress, then, we mean, the advance of 
 man towards fuller manhood and womanhood, from 
 the undeveloped to the developed human being. 
 
 But what is human being ? We answer. Mind, 
 conscience, heart. The man is the rational and 
 the spiritual. The Progress of man, therefore, is 
 progress in the rational and the spiritual. This is 
 his distinctive life. Otherwise, he is not distinguish- 
 able from a brute. Of course you may say, Man 
 is just a brute, and his progress consists in century 
 by century becoming a clever and cleverer brute. 
 But this is not a view likely to commend itself to 
 us. Even such a progress however, would still be 
 progress in mind. Mind would become more and 
 more the distinguishing mark, instead of unreflecting, 
 unideal instinct. 
 
 For a human being to progress is to become more 
 a human being — a being that is governed not by 
 passion, or impulse, or the desires of the moment, or 
 individual appetite, but by Ideals of truth, rational 
 order, beauty, social" sympathy, harmony and love. 
 Progress implies that outside of us is an Ocean of 
 
Progress and th& Church. 45 
 
 Mind, and that we are all, as it were, streams, whose 
 waters, originally drawn from it, are seeking their 
 way to rejoin the parent Source. If we start from 
 nothing and move towards nothing, it is very hard 
 to see what progress there can be. A thermometer 
 that had no zero and no boiling point, could hardly 
 be called a thermometer. 
 
 Well, I suppose we all admit that man has made 
 sovne progress, however little and slow, in this 
 direction — from the animal towards the human. No 
 fact is better established than this. We may have 
 brutes among us, and we may often be hypocrites, 
 but our Ideals are there, however far short we come 
 of them in practice. 
 
 Now I ask, How have these Ideals been reached ? 
 How has man became more man ? The answer is. 
 By growth — a growth in which the lower has been 
 made use of by' the higher, just as a flower makes use 
 of a dunghill, or an animal of what we call protoplasm. 
 The mysterious force called " vegetable life " reveals 
 itself under certain conditions, when the crust of 
 the earth becomes cool enough. So under certain 
 conditions human life reveals itself — the mysterious 
 force called self-conscious, rational, spiritual man. 
 Out of the animal soil emerges this marvellous being, 
 out of the fibre of the animal are woven Heraclitus 
 and Plato, Homer and Shakespeare, Beethoven and 
 
46 Progress and the Church. 
 
 Hegel, Galileo and Newton, Bacon and Tennyson, 
 Euclid and Kaphael, Socrates and Buddha, Darwin 
 and Spencer, and the Lord Christ ! 
 
 These Ideals have been reached, man has become 
 man, by the inner, hidden force which has wrought 
 him, just as an inner, hidden force produces a flower 
 when certain conditions are fulfilled. 
 
 But to produce the finast flowers we all know 
 that artificial selection is necessary, and you must 
 conserve results. What you gain this year must be 
 carried on to next year. Your finest blooms and 
 fruits could not be reached without the husbanded 
 experience and skill of many gardeners, it may be of 
 many generations of gardeners. So to produce the 
 finest manhood and womanhood also, you must con- 
 serve results. And how are these results conserved ? 
 Partly by heredity. The child of parents, for instance, 
 who have subdued their animal nature, may find it 
 easier to subdue his, and may thus start with a 
 certain advantage on the upward path. But here- 
 dity will not account for all. What has been 
 practised by generations does not necessarily become 
 the inheritance of the Race. Many generations of 
 carpenters will not necessarily produce a finished 
 carpenter, though it may perhaps make it easier 
 for one of us to leam the art. If, however, you 
 establish a Guild of carpenters — then the art and 
 
Progress and the Church. 47 
 
 skill of one generation may be handed on to another, 
 and the genius, the unaccountable genius of in- 
 dividuals may be conserved for all. 
 
 This, then, is the great rdle which old institutions 
 and organized societies play in the promotion of 
 human progress. They conserve Ideals, and pass them 
 on from generation to generation. Progress is due to 
 that strange inner force in man corresponding to the 
 force called vegetable-life in the plant. But it is 
 dependent on environment, and it is dependent also 
 on the great conservative agencies which pass on 
 the Ideal reached by one age, the thoughts of one 
 century, the nloral achievements of one generation 
 and of one individual, to another. Poets, prophets, 
 philosophers, scientists, great moral and religious 
 geniuses arise. How is their influence preserved ? 
 Not by heredity. How often is the son of a 
 musician destitute of musical genius, and the son 
 of a teacher destitute of teaching power, while the 
 son of a saint may turn out to be a sinner ! But 
 for Society and its institutions, these pearls of great 
 price would be lost. 
 
 Human Progress thus very largely depends on 
 tradition handed down from father and mother to 
 sons and daughters, from generation to generation, 
 by social institutions. Human Progress is the 
 advance of man towards the rational and the 
 
48 Progress and the Church. 
 
 spiritual, the growth of the rational and spiritual 
 out of the animal, through the mysterious force of 
 the inner humanizing principle, through the influence 
 of environments and natural conditions favourable to 
 growth, and lastly through such institutions as the 
 Family, the Nation, the State, with their traditions. 
 We progress as the great rational and spiritual 
 achievements of individuals are conserved in such 
 institutions, and pass into the mental and moral at- 
 mosphere which we breathe. Take away these iasti- 
 tutions, take away tradition, take away the social 
 atmosphere, and where would the individual be ? 
 These are not without the individual — individual 
 genius, the inner force welling up in the human 
 mind and conscience ; but neither is the individual 
 without these. The socialism which ignores the in- 
 dividual genius is folly; so also is the individualism 
 which ignores the influence of the social environment, 
 and of the social conservation of energy. 
 
 So much for the first question, What do we mean 
 by Progress ? 
 
 Now for the second question. What do we mean 
 by the Church ? 
 
 We mean by it simply what by reading history we 
 see it to have been, and what we think we see that 
 it is, and might be. 
 
Progress and the Church. 49 
 
 Apart from all dogmas about the Church, the 
 Church we regard as a grand conserving institution 
 for handing on from generation to generation the 
 great Spiritual Ideals of the Race — the hotbed in 
 which such Ideals are nursed and fostered, and spring- 
 up into larger, fuller growth. The Church, as we 
 understand it, at least, is the reservoir wherein the 
 spiritual achievements of man, handed down from the 
 past, are stored up. It is, in any case, one of the great 
 social institutions in which what might otherwise 
 be lost is preserved, as the growth of years is preserved 
 in the tree. In the Church the spirit of Hebrew 
 prophets and poets, Greek philosophers, Roman law, 
 British and European piety and morality, back for 
 thousands of years, has been embodied. The great 
 Ideals of individual souls such as Moses, Isaiah, 
 Plato, Socrates, Paul, the Master Jesus, and the great 
 teachers of the Christian centuries, have found a 
 home, without which they would have been strangers 
 and foreigners in the earth. Every simple Christian 
 breathes unconsciously in the Church the atmosphere 
 of Hebrew prophets, Alexandrian philosophers, and 
 Christian saints. The Church we are told is "the 
 Body of Christ," Christ being the animating Spirit 
 of it. And its work is to perpetuate, to give 
 form or body to all those great spiritual influences 
 summed up in the word " Christ" which found their 
 
 5 
 
50 Progress and the Church. 
 
 culminating point in the New Movement of which 
 the Son of Man was the centre. '' Where two or 
 three are gathered together in my name," we read, 
 " there am I in the midst of them." " I am the 
 vine," John writes, '"'ye are the branches." 
 
 The real test of the genuineness of a Church is its 
 bringing, or not bringing, us into fellowship with all 
 the best and holiest, the most inspired thought and 
 feeling of the ages, the present age included. The 
 Church is the great Spiritual Society in which we are 
 made to feel our affinity with apostles and prophets, 
 and with Jesus as the Christ of humanity. You 
 step out of the street of a modern city into a real 
 church, and at once you pass out of your petty 
 cell into an infinite world, and your little individual 
 soul partakes in the larger life which has come 
 down in many a stream from all the ages. You are 
 no longer an individual merely : you are a member 
 of a great spiritual family whose roots strike deep 
 into the whole upward history of man. You are a 
 member of a world-wide organization whose avowed 
 purpose is to conserve all that is best and noblest 
 in the past, and to pass it on, with what new 
 spiritual insight and religious inspiration the pre- 
 sent may contribute, to generations yet unborn. 
 You are a soldier in an army which has sworn 
 to spiritualize all human thought and life, and 
 
Progress and the Church. 5 i 
 
 subdue all things by the power of a divine light 
 and love. 
 
 That the Church has too often been " the world " 
 under another name, and has come shamefully far 
 short of this splendid Ideal, is true. But you 
 cannot argue from the perversion and abuse of 
 an institution against its real nature. The Family 
 and the State have also been perverted and abused ; 
 and if we are told that therefore the State and 
 Family should be abolished, we can reply that the 
 Individual too has been often perverted and abused, 
 and should by the same logic be likewise annihilated. 
 
 If such be Progress, and if such be the true idea of 
 the Church, then I think it is easy to see the relation 
 in which the one stands to the other. 
 
 Progress for a human being, we have said, means 
 progress out of the animal — the gradual opening, as 
 it were, of the eye of the soul of man. It is to cease 
 to be a creature of mere impulse and appetite, and to 
 be guided by Ideals of truth, rational order, beauty, 
 social sympathy, harmony, and love. Science is 
 Progress, not becaase it heaps up a lot of facts, but 
 because it has taught us to believe in Order, and has 
 taken us out of the chaotic region of superstition 
 and ignorance. Art is Progress, because it lifts us 
 into the region of the Beautiful, and reveals to us a 
 
52 Progress and the Church. 
 
 mystic harmony. Philosophy is Progress, because it 
 raises us out of the narrow limits o£ sense, and 
 reveals to us the Truth which no brute can see. 
 Poetry is Progress, because it shows us the Ideal in 
 the Actual. Religion is Progress, because it is man 
 seeking Intelligence, Thought, Reason, Love, beneath 
 and above all ; because it is man seeking and finding 
 God as his Home. And the Church, we have said, 
 is a conserving institution for handing on from 
 generation to generation the great religious Ideals 
 of the Race, an ever-increasing storehouse of 
 spiritual life. 
 
 If this be so, then, to be men of Progress is not 
 necessarily to renounce the Church. On the con- 
 trary, unless Progress means movement away from 
 the loftiest and best Ideals towards the material 
 and animal plane. Progress will more and more 
 demand a Church — a Spiritual Society, in which 
 its most precious fruits will be garnered, and passed 
 on from generation to generation. 
 
 If the world is to be elevated, how are you going 
 to do it without this vast Society ? Think what the 
 Church, with all its defects, has been to us ; and how 
 much our characters have been moulded by the Ideals 
 of truth and goodness which have been kept before 
 us in sacred art, sacred song, the preaching, and 
 teaching, and symbols of the Church ! Man left alorle 
 
Progress and the Church. 53 
 
 sinks into barbarism. The ideal state which some 
 picture to us is anarchy — each man left to follow his 
 instincts and look after himself. We are too much 
 governed, say they ; leave us alone. It may be true 
 that we are often misgoverned and enslaved by our 
 social customs and traditions — but were we without 
 them, we would become much more slaves, and sink 
 back into primitive barbarism. We do not wish to 
 abolish Society, but to find a Society less artificial, 
 less animal, held together not by violence and force 
 but by love of justice, truth, beauty, order, and 
 harmony — a more fully developed huinan Society, in 
 which each man will be more and more a law unto 
 himself;, because he has come to recognize " himself " 
 as a child of God, and member of a human family. 
 Only in and through Society can the individual find 
 his highest personal and individual life. And the 
 highest form of that Society is the Church. 
 
 But how, it may be asked, can the Church remain 
 in the face of Progress ? Does not Progress mean a 
 Science which sweeps away its beliefs and its very 
 foundation ? 
 
 I would ask. What is the Church's foundation ? 
 You may say, " Miracle." I would say, and say, I 
 think, more truly, " The Spiritual Nature of Man." If 
 it is not founded in that, it has no real foundation 
 at all. 
 
54 Progress and the Church. 
 
 What has Science to object to this foundation? 
 Only if Science can be shown to lead of necessity to 
 materialism, and the animal, can it be opposed to 
 the Church. And not even the foremost scientists, I 
 think, will venture to assert this. More and more 
 idealism, and the spiritual view of man, seem to 
 prevail, and materialism finds no support in deeper 
 thought. And even though the idea of " the miracu- 
 lous" should have to change, this would not undermine 
 the foundation of the Church. Indeed, may w^e not 
 say that notwithstanding the change of view which 
 has already taken place with regard to miracle even 
 in '■ orthodox " circles, a higher and more spiritual 
 Ideal has been taking possession of men's minds and 
 hearts — in other words, that the Church has been 
 progressing, growing, instead of decaying ? 
 
 And only a Church which does thus progress, a 
 Church which can welcome the higher Ideals of each 
 age, and pass these on to the rising generation, is "the 
 light of the world and the salt of the earth." Only a 
 Church which can grow — grow out of the past, taking 
 up into itself the truth in ancient myths, legends, 
 traditions, institutions, symbols, assimilating that 
 truth as a plant does the chemicals of the soil, and in 
 every age breaking forth in new flower and fruit — 
 can fulfil the Church's splendid mission to mankind. 
 
 Fellow-Christians, let us seek to be children of 
 
Progress and the Church. 55 
 
 Progress, advancing ever into a larger Huipan Life, 
 And in order that we may so advance to " a full- 
 grown man," let us seek to preserve and hand on to 
 our children that precious spiritual heritage the 
 Church, as the Home and Nursery of our noblest 
 thoughts and deepest feelings, the symbol of the 
 spiritual brotherhood and unity of man. If only we 
 would set to work in earnest to reform the Church ; 
 if only we would lay aside our shop-and-market 
 Ideals of a Church, our anti-religious ecclesiasticism, 
 narrow dogmatism, and selfish other- worldliness, and 
 uniting in " the one Spirit " of Jesus, and in the 
 prayer " Thy Kingdom come," seek first for our- 
 selves, and for our nation, "the Kingdom of God 
 and His righteousness," how much might we do 
 for human Progress ! 
 
 Many of you hold aloof from churches. I do not 
 wonder at it. But is not a Church the need of our 
 times and of our country, a Religious Society bound 
 together not by formal creeds but by religious trust, 
 hope, and love, whose noble aim would be to educate, 
 organize, and direct the moral and spiritual forces of 
 our nature ? By such a genuinely Christian Church, 
 a Church such as the Master, were He to come again, 
 would own as His, what might not be done to elevate 
 and reform the world ! Believe me, true Progress 
 and the true Church are one. 
 
IV 
 
 CHRIST'S NARROW WAY TO LIFE 
 
" Enter ye in by the strait gate : for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that 
 leadeth to destraction, and many be they that enter in thereby. For narrow is the 
 gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few be they that find 
 it."— Matthew vol. 12. 
 
 It is only by giving to the historical testimonieB regarding the preaching of 
 Jesus altogether their full due, without prejudice or stint, that we can eQso under- 
 stand its consequences. If Jesus bad only taught an ideal morality, he would at 
 most have founded a School of pure Jewish righteousness, not a new religion ; but 
 in that case he would hardly have evoked the j)assionate hostility of the worldly 
 rulers, which brought destruction to himself but victory for his work. On the 
 other hand, if he had only proclaimed the Apocalyptic dream of the near world-end 
 and the dawn of the new world, he would have founded a sect of fanatics which 
 would have perished in one of the numerous Messianic risings, without leaving a 
 trace behind. But the combination of ethical idealism with Apocalyptical super- 
 naturalism gave the possibility of a work which was as powerful as it was thorough 
 and lasting. It awakened in the contemporaries of the time and people of Jesus 
 the enthusiasm for a comprehensible Ideal that attracted their fancy, and banded 
 them around the person of Jesus as the surety of its realization ; and thus they 
 became receptive for the niorally educative work of Jesus, and learned from him the 
 significant new truth that the way to the heights of the kingdom of heaven passes 
 through the depths of serving and suffering love. Jesus did not directly deny the 
 Apocalyptic ideal of the future ; but in showing in word and example a new way to 
 its realization, he indirectly put the abiding Christian truth in the place of the 
 transient Jewish dream— the truth, namely, of a community of children of God 
 united by the spirit of serving love, and of world-overcoming trust in God. "We 
 may also perceive an advance in the education of the disciples, corresponding to 
 the march of the experience of Jesus which undoubtedly brought about a ripening 
 of his own knowledge. — Pfleiderer^ Philosophy and Development of Religion. 
 
 He came. The soul the most full of love, the most sacredly virtuous, the most 
 deeply inspired by God and the future, that men have yet seen on earth ; Jesus. 
 He bent over the corpse of the dead world, and whisi>ered a word of faith. Over 
 the clay that had lost all of man but the movement and the form, he uttered words 
 until then unknown, Love^ Sacrifice^ a heavenly origin. And the dead arose. A new 
 life circulated through the clay, which philosophy had tried in vain to reanimate. 
 From that corpse arose the Chrktian world, the world of liberty and equality. 
 From that clay arose the true Man, the image of God, the precursor of Humanity,— 
 MazzinVs Essays. 
 
CHRIST'S NARROW WAY TO LIFE. 
 
 THE craving of man is for life — " more life and 
 fuller." There are those who would tell us that 
 this is vain delusion, and that what man should crave 
 for rather is death. Desire, according to the great 
 Indian Sage, is the root of all evil : stamp it out, and 
 at length you will reach eternal rest — the Nirvana 
 of the Enlightened One who has escaped from the 
 illusion of this worst possible of worlds. Stamp it 
 out, not by ascetic practices, but by renouncing it all 
 as a vain show, a delusion, a nightmare born of a 
 disordered brain. Poor struggling brothers and 
 sisters in delusion and sorrow, with infinite pity I 
 look upon you. Come, let me show you the way 
 of escape. Quench the fires of desire, and be at 
 peace. 
 
 In such a gospel there are elements of truth and 
 beauty, rays of the Light that lighteth every man ; 
 but it does not appeal to us ; it can never be the gospel 
 
6o Christ's Narrow Way to Life. 
 
 to the man and the woman of the future. There 
 are many, I know, at present, who, in a natural I'e- 
 bound from the perversions and absurdities of much 
 so-called Christianity, have fled for refuge to a 
 doctrine such as this, but it will be impossible to rest 
 long in such a half-way house. The inner logic of 
 the mind, and of the heart, will eventually drive us 
 on to " seek a better country." And some who fancy 
 they have here found rest, are perhaps unconsciously 
 building on a better and deeper foundation than they 
 know. 
 
 If we understand Jesus Of Nazareth aright, He is 
 no ascetic, and no pessimist. He loves life, and would 
 breathe more of it into the world if He could. In 
 John's Gospel we have, if not His own words, at 
 least what seems to us to be the spirit of Jesus' 
 Gospel— "I am come that ye may have life, and 
 that ye may have it more abundantly." Jesus spoke 
 some hard sayings, no doubt. But if a captain is 
 leading a troop engaged in some great enterprise, it 
 is not to be wondered at if he tells those who would 
 follow him to divest themselves of all but bare 
 necessaries, and prepare to endure hardness as " good 
 soldiers." Jesus aimed at establishing "the King- 
 dom of God," and that was assuredly no Kingdom of 
 ascetics, but, as Paul says, " righteousness, peace, joy 
 in a holy spirit," and where " all these things shall be 
 
Christ's Narrow Way to Li/e^ 6i 
 
 added unto you." " Can the children of the bride- 
 chamber fast while the bridegroom is with them ? 
 But days will come when the bridegroom shall be 
 taken away from them, and then shall they fast in 
 those days." To Jesus this world was a good world, 
 a heavenly Father's world. It might be, indeed, a 
 Kingdom worthy of God. He sees that Kingdom 
 coming, and it makes him glad, though it comes 
 through his wounds and blood. " This is my blood of 
 the New Covenant." 
 
 It is fashionable to compare the gospel of Sakya- 
 Muni with the gospel of Jesus. And no doubt there 
 are striking parallels in the stories of their lives, in 
 the ritual of their followers, and in the language of 
 the two teachers. But close study will, I believe, 
 disclose a deep and radical difference — the difference 
 between a life rooted in despair and pity, and a life 
 rooted in infinite hope, and in a love bom of such 
 hope in a living God. The genius, the spirit of Christ, 
 and the genius or spirit of Buddha, are different. 
 And it is by its genius that a religion, like a man, or 
 a nation, or any great movement, must be judged. 
 There seems to us to be a humanness, so to speak, 
 about the former, that is lacking in the latter. The 
 on6 seems to look on the world with his sad tender 
 eye.s, and bid us fly with him from it as from a 
 falling house. The other, with bright hope in his 
 
62 Christ's Narrow Way to Life. 
 
 countenance, bids us come to him, and, taking on us 
 his " yoke," which is " easy," and his " burden," which 
 is " light," help to reform the world, and turn it into 
 the very temple of the Eternal. 
 
 But my aim is not to discuss the difference between 
 Buddhism and Christianity. I wish only to empha- 
 size the conception of the Christian gospel as the 
 Oospel essentially of Life. 
 
 Man, as I have said, craves for life. In this he is 
 a child of nature. What is nature but the impulse 
 towards life ? And what is life but idea struggling for 
 expression more or less consciously ? In a beautiful 
 morning in the spring-time, when the vernal breath 
 breathes all around you, and you feel as though you 
 were yourself a part of the woods and flowers and 
 sprouting herbs, what is it that intoxicates you but 
 the sense of nature struggling to express itself in the 
 manifold forms of being ? You are enchanted with 
 the embryo forms of life. The world you feel is 
 living, because it is struggling to bring a million 
 forms to birth. Your delight is not a mere sensation, 
 a vibration as of a piano-wire, but delight in the 
 suggestion of a living world of which you are a part, 
 which lives in you, and you in it. Man shares this 
 impulse of unconscious nature. He has a physical 
 nature in whose development is great delight. Look 
 at a child in perfect health, how it revels in existence ! 
 
Christ's Narrow Way to Life. 63 
 
 Look at a young man or woman in the fulness of 
 health and strength : 
 
 " Ot, our manhood's prime vigour ! No spirit feels waste, 
 Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced. 
 Oh, the wild joys of living ! the leaping from rock up to rook, 
 The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool 
 
 silver shock 
 Of the plunge in a pool's living water ; the hunt of the bear, 
 And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair ; 
 And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust 
 
 divine. 
 And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught 
 
 of wine, 
 And the sleep in the dried river-channel, where bulrushes tell 
 That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well. 
 How good is man's life, the mere living ! how fit to employ 
 All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy I " 
 
 But man is more than a physical being. Growth is 
 his law, as it is that of the flowers in spring, or the 
 young lambs gambolling in the meadows. But his 
 growth is that of a man, not of a flower or a lamb 
 merely. He is a Mind. And Mind craves for life. 
 And life for a mind means thought — higher, deeper, 
 wider thought. As I have just pointed out, even our 
 delight in life felt on a spring morning is not a mere 
 sensation : it is delight in the beautiful forms, colours, 
 ideas expressing themselves in nature. An ox cannot 
 feel a man's delight. Man finds thought in nature 
 
64 Christ's Narrow Way to Life. 
 
 answering to his own thought. This is the delight 
 of Science — to find thought everywhere. At first the 
 universe seems but a heap of unassorted phenomena. 
 The mind of man awakens. With longing eyes he looks 
 on the bright heavens and outspread earth. There is 
 no speech nor sound audible to the ear of sense ; but 
 in the silent depths the mind hears the first notes of 
 the music of the spheres, deep calls to deep across the 
 void, and the light breaks, blending in one the mind 
 within and the mind without. Man finds that nature 
 and he are one, not through the senses only, but in 
 thought. He and the universe are not two but one. 
 What joy in this discovery ! What fulness of life ! 
 Man is now man, entering on a field of knowledge that 
 stretches into the infinite. Here, to the full-grown 
 mind, " rejoicing as a strong man to run a race," seems 
 " eternal life.'' The order, law, beauty of the world 
 reveal themselves, and man is intoxicated with the 
 draught of mental life. Science, art, music, poetry, 
 philosophic speculation — what fulness of life now 
 seems to surge around him, and fill his nature as the 
 ocean fills the pools among the rocks ! As the sea- 
 birds and the dolphins live revelling in the waves, so 
 does man now live revelling in the ocean of thoughts 
 and ideas. 
 
 Higher still the human being ascends. What we 
 call a " moral order " begins to reveal itself. The sense 
 
Christ's Narrow Way to Life. 65 
 
 of duty is born, I do not know liow, any more than 
 I know how thought is born, and how ideas begin 
 to rule instead of mere sensations, or what we call 
 " instinctive impulse." Man recognizes that he has 
 relations to his fellow beings, to the family, to the 
 tribe, to the nation, and at length to every living- 
 creature. He finds that he is not an individual 
 merely, but a part of others, a part of a mighty whole, 
 and that life is to be found only in fellowship with 
 others. Moral ideals, like solemn mountains, rise 
 before him. He no longer, as on the purely intel- 
 lectual or scientific plane, talks merely of what is, but 
 also of that which " oucjlit " to be. And now, like 
 some great architect, he becomes a creator, and seeks 
 to build up a house, the Family-house, the State- 
 house, the Church-house, the Universal-Brotherhood- 
 house. Henceforth this is man's life. He has come 
 out of the life of sense which marks the animal and 
 the babe, out of the purely intellectual, into a new 
 stage which we call " the moral," and to which he 
 henceforth seeks to make the purely sensuous, and 
 the purely intellectual, subservient. 
 
 There is yet another stage of life. Man recognizes 
 that he is related to Powers above him, and dimly 
 sees that appearances, or phenomena, imply something 
 that does not appear. Thought henceforth cannot rest. 
 Man has begun the search for God which we name 
 
66 Christ's Narrow Way to Life. 
 
 " Keligion." With what unflagging energy, all through 
 the ages, has he pursued this search ! With what 
 boldness has he sought to scale the divine heights ! 
 Stumbling, falling, bruised and bleeding, he has for 
 thousands of years pursued his upward march from 
 height to height. With not greater heroism and 
 invincible determination have our brave explorers 
 sought new worlds, than has man sought " Qod." 
 And in this search for God, in the glimpses of the 
 Divine that have from time to time glinted as sun- 
 beams into the soul, in the light that from time to 
 time has broken in upon the universe, filling the 
 heart with thoughts too deep for utterance, and 
 hopes which lift out of the little " seen and temporal," 
 man has found religious life. 
 
 Life physical, life mental, life moral, life religious, 
 each stage woven and interwoven with the others — 
 this is the life for which man craves, in and through 
 which he seeks to express his mysterious being, and' 
 give form to the great life-force throbbing within. 
 
 Now, what I want to point out is that it was 
 the fulness of this life to which Jesus sought to 
 point out the way. He cared evidently for men's 
 bodies, and possessing apparently some healing power 
 over certain forms of disease, He used it beneficently. 
 Although not in the strict sense "philosopher," He 
 gave a profound impulse, not yet exhausted, to 
 
Christ's Narrow Way to Life. 67 
 
 deepest thought, and bade men think for themselves, 
 as He himself did. He cared for men's moral nature, 
 and quickened it as with the breath of springtime. 
 He cared for men's religious nature, and at His touch 
 the old wintry faith was transformed into a " new 
 and living" thing. He does not proclaim the destruc- 
 tion of the sense-life, or the annihilation of intellect, 
 or propose to dispense with the moral life, or to 
 sweep away religion as an antiquated superstition, 
 but He proclaims a Kingdom of healthy manhood 
 and womanhood — a Kingdom which, no doubt, by 
 its very nature, necessarily stretches into the in- 
 visible, like some magnificent painting suggesting 
 far more than the artist can put into a few feet or 
 inches of canvas — but yet a Kingdom which is hei'e 
 and now — a God's will done on earth. "Seek first 
 the Kingdom, and all these things," food, clothes, 
 beauty as of the lilies, glory as of Solomon, " shall be 
 added." " Your Father knowefch that ye have need 
 of all these things." What Jesus seems to preach is 
 a larger, fuller life of man now — a life in God, a life 
 in man. He calls us to a marriage feast, and when 
 those first called refuse, servants are sent out to 
 gather in all and sundry from the streets and lanes, 
 the highways and hedges, so that the banquet may- 
 be furnished with guests. "Ye will not come unto 
 me that ye ruay have life." 
 
68 Chrisi's Narrow Way to Life. 
 
 Christianity is no mere promise of happiness 
 after death. It is an invitation to more life and 
 fuller now. 
 
 Then, does Jesus promise no life after death ? To 
 which we would answer, " Does spring bear in it no 
 promise of summer ? Can you put the whole gospel 
 of Jesus into our threescore years and ten ?" 
 
 And what was Jesus' way to life ? Some said that 
 the way to life was to keep strictly the Law of 
 Moses — the law, that is to say, of traditional morality 
 and ritual. Some said that the way was to hate the 
 Gentile " dog," and drive the hated pagan out of the 
 Holy Land. Jesus said, " That is the broad way ; 
 that way will lead to the destruction of your religion 
 and your nation. It is a popular way, for it calls for 
 little self-denial, it appeals to popular prejudice and 
 passion, but it ends in a Gvl de Sac." 
 
 " Straitened is the gate, and narrow is the way 
 that leadeth unto life, and few be they that are 
 finding it." Here Jesus and the great teachers of his 
 day parted company. 
 
 Here, too, it is that genuine Christianity parts 
 company to-day, with many who profess to show the 
 way to life. 
 
 The way to all true life is narrow. If you would 
 have physical life, you must straitly observe the laws 
 of physical health. You cannot escape. Build grand 
 
Chrisi' s Narrow Way to Life, 69 
 
 houses and cities, and neglect the ventilation, the 
 drainage of your dwellings — ^neglect light and air, 
 and sleep, and exercise — pamper the body, refuse to 
 tend the babes, slight the grim law of heredity — 
 allow slums and alleys to be in your city — ^join house 
 to house and land to land till there be no place for 
 the poor, and your hardest working people are driven 
 into London East Ends, and New York tenements, 
 and CoUingwood Flats, and Little Bourke-street 
 lanes — sacrifice health, comfort, everything to com- 
 merce and gain, till even fresh air and a garden for 
 the children are put up to the highest bidder, and 
 rest assured that destruction awaits you. " Straitened 
 is the gate and narrow is the way." 
 
 If you would have mental life, it is not to be 
 found in fashionable schools arid by royal roads 
 to learning. No, you must demand thorough educa- 
 tion, which is not to be reached by our cramming, 
 hasty methods, or by a niggardly teaching of " the 
 three R's," or by cutting down education expenses 
 to the lowest, and adopting a cheese-paring policy 
 in connection with our State schools. " Straitened 
 is the gate and narrow is the way." There is 
 a "broad way"-^an easy way of educational sham 
 and shoddy — but it leads to the destruction of 
 real intellectual life. Your young people are turned 
 out without a literary interest — mere bookworms, or 
 
70 Christ's Narrow Way to Life. 
 
 machines, their taste and rational nature undeveloped, 
 incapable of thinking for themselves. 
 
 So, in like manner, Jesus seems to say, "If you 
 would have moral and spiritual life, it is not to be 
 found by easygoing, cut-and-dried methods." " Except 
 your righteousness shall' exceed the righteousness of 
 the Scribes and Pharisees" — the respectable people, 
 the clergy and professors and schoolmasters of that 
 day- — " ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom 
 of heaven." According to Jesus the whole method of 
 seeking life must be altered. He practically said: — 
 "Your moral teachers and religious teachers are 
 leading you all wrong. That sort of morality, that 
 sort of religion will never bring life to the nation. It 
 is no doubt popular to preach strict adherence to the 
 Law, and to seek to revive the patriotism and the 
 traditions of your fathers. It sounds pious and noble, 
 but it is a way which leads to destruction of moral 
 and religious life — to destruction, through fanaticism, 
 of our nation. Look to your foundations. Eebuild 
 your house. You must have a deeper morality, 
 grounded in a love which can embrace even the 
 Gentile ' dog.' You must have a deeper religion, 
 whose moving spring is not the Law, however 
 hallowed and holy, but love of God, and love of man 
 which puts mercy to your suffering fellow-beings, and 
 forgiveness of enemies, and reparation of injuries. 
 
Christ's Narrow Way to Life. 71 
 
 before even the Sabbath law, or the offering of a 
 gift at the altar, or washing of hands, or the work 
 of priest or Levite in the temple. This is the Law 
 and the Prophets. You must break the hard crust of 
 tradition, and become as little children, with their 
 unsophisticated, open-minded, open-hearted ways. 
 You can attain your destiny as the Light of the 
 World only by stooping low as man's servant, by 
 being pure in heart, by practising broth erliness. This 
 is the strait gate, and the narrow way which leadeth 
 unto life ; and few be they that are finding it. If 
 you would enter by it, how much happier and more 
 blessed would the world become ! All these things, 
 even food, raiment, comfort, happiness, would be 
 added unto you." The cure, according to Jesus, for 
 his nation's woes was thus a moral and spiritual one. 
 
 The same seems to be the message of the Gospel to- 
 day : — " Your conventional morality and your church- 
 religion are all wrong. Except your righteousness 
 shall exceed the righteousness of your commercial 
 world, your laws and customs, and ideas of the 
 relation between class and class, rich and poor, 
 employer and employed, ye shall not enter into the 
 Kingdom." 
 
 And is not Jesus right now, as then ? The more 
 one sees of life and comes in contact with capitalist 
 and labourer, leisured classes and working classes, the 
 
72 Christ's Narrow Way to Life. 
 
 more evident does it appear that a thorough moral 
 revolution can alone bring life. No political nos- 
 trums will save us. We are corrupt. Our moral 
 ideas are warped, and we have lost the deep sense o£ 
 right and wrong. We have to " repent " and " believe 
 the gospel" — the gospel of Jesus: — "Do good and 
 lend, hoping for nothing again : He is kind to the 
 unthankful and the evil : to give is blessed rather 
 than to receive: the Sabbath was made for man." 
 What horrifies one and fills one almost with despair 
 is the immoral ideas of all classes, the heartless 
 selfishness, the anti-social spirit, the purely com- 
 mercial notion of the relations between man and 
 man, and the lowness of the commercial ideal of 
 human life. " And my people," cries the ancient 
 prophet, "love to have it so." — All this will have 
 to be changed if we are to live. 
 
 "Your church-religion, too," Jesus seems to-day 
 to tell us, "is all wrong. It is to a large extent a 
 whited sepulchre full of dead men's bones. Your 
 ' schemes of salvation,' and pretty ' prayer-booke,' and 
 fine ' services,' and hymn singing, and attitudinizing 
 — your orthodoxy and heterodoxy, will never save 
 you. There is only one thing that can save the 
 Church — genuine religion, which is trust in a living 
 God expressing itself in a Christ-type of life, indi- 
 vidual and collective." 
 
Chrisfs Narrow Way to Life. 73 
 
 A deeper morality — a deeper religion — that was 
 Jesus' remedy long ago. That is Jesus' remedy 
 still. 
 
 And if we listened to His voice, would not new 
 health and life be ours ? If into the children we 
 .sought to instil this religious morality in home and 
 school, as the groundwork of all human education, 
 if in earnest we began to practise this in our re- 
 lations to one another, and to give it form in our 
 political and social economy, if from the pulpit this 
 were faithfully and convincingly proclaimed, would 
 not Society live, and each soul live, a richer, fuller 
 life? 
 
 If we took seriously the great principles of human 
 life enunciated by Jesus, ■and sought " first " steadily 
 to reconstruct Society, not on texts, but on His 
 broad ethical lines, would we not, as He said, 
 found our " house " upon the " rock " above the angry 
 floods of social unrest, strife, and discontent, which 
 are now threatening and shaking the " civilized " 
 world, and which, until we build higher up, must 
 continue to wash away our " houses on the sand ? " 
 
 If instead of our outworn " schemes of salvation," 
 our traditional " gospel," and our church-masquer- 
 ading, we believed in, and preached, and tried to 
 put into practice the gospel of Jesus — the gospel 
 of implicit trust in God as Light and Love, and of 
 
74 Christ's Narrow Way to Life. 
 
 man's " high calling " to be God's son— would not the 
 old world be made new ? 
 
 "Then," said Evangelist, pointing with his fingei- 
 over a very wide field, " Do you see yonder wicket- 
 gate ? " 
 
 "Straitened is the gate, and narrow is the way 
 that leadeth unto life," cried Jesus, "and few be 
 they that are finding it." 
 
V 
 
 INDIVIDUALISM, SOCIALISM 
 
 AND 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
For ye, brethren, were called for freedom ; only use not your freedom for an 
 occasion to the flesh, but through L>ve he servants one to another.— Oalati AN S v. 13. 
 
 The Spirit of Independence is " Lord of the lion heart and eagle eye " only when it 
 means the throwing away of helps that do not help and the grasping of those that 
 do. It is the spirit of mere weakness when it comes to mean that there is no help 
 anywhere but in ourselTCS. Now the war of independence in the former sense is 
 already fought and won. It cannot be said now, even with rhetorical truth, that 
 the banner of Freedom 
 
 "Streams like the thunderstorm against the wind." 
 It has prejudice on its side, and is everywhere victorious in posse if not in esse. 
 Accordingly, Individualism is now rather an element of despair than of hope. Such 
 new independence as we are winning is independence in the bad sense— mere 
 isolation. The real battle of our time -the advance which is still "against the 
 wind " — is rather in the direction of union and of organization, and it is in this 
 direction that hope now lies. The new G-ospel is not that of leaving everyone to 
 help himself, any more than it is that of helping everyone ; it is that of helping 
 everyone to help himself. —An Introditction to Social Philosophy^ J. S. Mackenzie. 
 
 Thus except as between persons, each recognizing the other as an end in himself, 
 and having the will to treat him as such, there can be no Society. But the converse 
 is equally true, that only through society, in the sense explained, is personality 
 actualized. Only through society is anyone enabled to give that effect to the idea 
 of himself as the object of his actions, to the idea of a possible better state of himself, 
 without which the idea would remain like that of space to a man who had not the 
 senses either of sight or touch.— Prolegomena to Ethics, T. II. Green. 
 
 The fanatical individualism of our time attempts to apply the analogy of cosmic 
 nature to society. . . . Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress 
 of society depends, not on Imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away 
 from it, but in combating it. It may seem an audacious proposal thus to pit the 
 microcosm against the macrocosm, and to set man to subdue nature to its highest 
 ends ; taut I venture to think that the great intellectual difference between the 
 ancient times with which we have been occupied and our day, lies in the solid 
 foundation we have acquired for the hope that such an enterprise may meet with a 
 certain measure of zuccb^^.— Evolution and Ethics fRomanes Lecture), Huxley. 
 
 Then will be resurrected the intense feeling of corporate responsibility which 
 pervaded all life of ancient society, and the individual no longer depreciated but 
 ennobled beyond all previous conception. Then in a glow of enthusiasm a generation 
 of sustained and rightly guided effort may be inaugurated, and will convert this 
 world into a paradise of brothers, drawing the bands of society as closely together as 
 those o£ a family. ... It was a glorious vision of Jesus to discern the organic 
 unity of man.— Om?' Destiny, Gronlund. 
 
INDIVIDUALISM, SOCIALISM, AND 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 THERE are two great forces which are to-day 
 arrayed against each other: that of Individualism 
 on the one hand, and of Socialism on the otlier. The 
 struggle is carried on in books, in parliaments, in 
 county councils, in trades unions, between employer 
 and employed. We have champions of philosophical 
 individualism on the one hand, like Herbert Spencer, 
 and of socialism on the other, like Karl Marx. In 
 Germany we have a strong socialist party in the 
 Reichstag waging war against the old orthodox 
 politics of that country. In the British Parliament a 
 party is forming whose aims are socialistic ; while in 
 the London County Council some of the leading 
 spirits are socialists: In our own Australian political 
 life, Marx and Spencer have alike their represen- 
 tatives, and the two forces begin to join issue. Books 
 pour out of the British press taking the one side or 
 the other. On the platform the combatants are 
 
yS Individualism, Socialism 
 
 ranged on these two sides; while, I need hardly 
 point out to you, the great trade and labour dis- 
 putes of the last few years are really a dispute 
 between an individualist and a socialist view of life. 
 
 The real root of the struggle which is thus going 
 on all the world over, a struggle in which the com- 
 batants seem often blind to the real nature of that 
 for which they are fighting, are these two principles, 
 Individualism and Socialism. 
 
 If we would understand our own times, we must 
 try to understand these two great opposing forces. 
 We must try also to look at them dispassionately, 
 and apart from mere personal feelings. Some people 
 seem to lose their heads when they approach such 
 subjects, and suffer themselves to be carried away by 
 prejudice and passion. But prejudice and passion 
 will not help us to understand the great question of 
 to-day, and what our Christian religion has got to 
 say upon it. And, assuredly. Christian religion has 
 something to say upon all the great questions of life ; 
 and this question, like all other questions, we shall 
 find, if we think long enough and deep enough, nms 
 back into religion. The time is fast coming — nay, 
 it is already at hand — when Christian men and 
 women will have to make up their minds upon 
 Individualism and Socialism, looked at from a 
 Christian and religious point of view. And it is 
 
and Christianity. 79 
 
 possible that, for a time at least, there may be 
 serious division in the religious camp, and that the 
 great theological disputes of the past about such 
 doctrines as inspiration, atonement, free-will, will 
 be overshadowed and eclipsed by the great socio- 
 logical question. Prediction is dangerous, but so at 
 times it seems - to us. " Forewarned is forearmed ; " 
 and, therefore, all who "profess and call them- 
 selves Christians" should set themselves to study 
 this problem in the light which we hold to be 
 the Light of the "World, the Light of Life — the light 
 in which men may walk without stumbling, and 
 without knocking up rudely against one another. 
 
 First, then, let us try to understand what 
 Individualism is. 
 
 I would define Individualism as that view of man 
 which regards each as an independent atom, and 
 Society as a heap of such atoms, held together by 
 individual interests. The end and aim of Society is, 
 according to this view, to give to each individual 
 atom the most perfect freedom in looking after its 
 own interests. We are independent atoms essentially, 
 and the rationale of Society and Government should 
 be to protect, as far as practicable, this independ- 
 ence, and prevent one atom interfering with another. 
 Beyond this, leave the atoms alone to settle their 
 own affairs. Just see that the rules of the game are 
 
8o Individualism, Socialism, 
 
 observed, and the issue shall be what it shall be : it 
 is no business of yours, though you may indulge the 
 benevolent hope that out of the struggle of one atom 
 with another peace may some far-off day emerge, 
 and the weak having gone to the wall, and the less 
 fit to struggle and survive having been, by the action 
 of natural laws, eliminated, only the clever, the 
 healthy, " the fit " shall remain, forming a well- 
 balanced Society, in which each member shall be 
 able to look after himself, and to render futile any 
 attempts on the part of another to meddle with him. 
 
 Nothing but evil, from the individualist's point of 
 view, can come of interference with what he deems 
 " laws of nature." You ought rather, if you do any- 
 thing at all, to help nature — that is to say, to leave 
 such laws as " survival of the fittest," and " natural 
 selection," to work themselves out to the utmost in 
 all departments. Leave the poor and the weak alone 
 — nature will clear them out in time. Of course you 
 may gratify your benevolent feelings. You may do 
 as nurses do on the field of battle, but you must not 
 attempt to stop the combat. And in the long run, 
 some will perhaps tell you, even such benevolence 
 may do more harm than good. You coddle the sick 
 man only to perpetuate disease. You give your 
 goods to feed the poor, and so demoralize men, 
 unman them, and unfit them for the struggle. 
 
and Chrislianity. 8i 
 
 The logical outcome of this individualistic doctrine 
 is what is known as " Anarchy." This does not 
 mean, as the word is generally taken to indicate, 
 " confusion worse confounded," but the ideal order 
 in which what we now understand by government 
 is dispensed with, and nature's order of free, in- 
 dependent individual atoms is at length realized. 
 No kings, or lawyers, or judges, or parliaments, but 
 simply this man, that man, and the other man. All 
 individualists, however, do not press their principles 
 to the anarchist conclusion. 
 
 Such a view of human life has been nurtured 
 and strengthened by modern Law, by -the Protestant 
 Reformation, by the advent of what is known as 
 the Modern Commercial and Industrial System, and 
 last but not least by the spread of the Darwinian 
 theory of evolution through the struggle for ex- 
 istence, natural selection, and the survival of the 
 ■fittest. 
 
 What modern Law seems to aim at is the protection 
 of what is called " the rights '' of each, so long as 
 these do not clash with the rights of others. You 
 go to law as an individual possessing " rights " which 
 you look to the law to maintain. 
 
 The Commercial and Industrial System which 
 arose on the ruins of the feudal system was purely 
 individualistic. Instead of the old relation between 
 
 7 
 
82 Individualism, Socialism 
 
 the landlord and the people, and the quiet life of old 
 England, there came the rush into cities consequent 
 on the invention of machinery. Our great industrial 
 centres arose, and the poor people, forsaking the land, 
 fought and scrambled with one another for wages 
 in the factory or the mine, and for the liberty to live 
 in the high-rented houses of the city. The motto 
 came to be, " Every man for himself." All the old 
 feudal bonds were dissolved, and the one bond 
 between man and man came to be what Carlyle calls 
 " the nexus '' of wages. Men and women became 
 indeed "independent," but at what a price ! 
 
 The Protestant Reformation also tended to foster 
 individualism. The old Catholic solidarity was broken 
 up, in which men thought as one, felt as one, wor- 
 shipped as one. Every man began to think and 
 feel for himself, and instead of the Church, the great 
 object of interest became the individual soul, and its 
 relation to God. Religion became a more personal 
 affair, and no priest or church might intervene 
 between the soul and God. The great thought was. 
 Save thy soul. Alone each must appear before God ; 
 and the ruling idea of theology came to be the 
 salvation of each soul from hell, and the attainment 
 of heaven by- each. 
 
 Lastly came the Darwinian theory of Evolution. 
 All nature, this theory taught, is a great battlefield. 
 
and Christianity. 8,3 
 
 Plant and animal have reached their present stage, 
 largely at least, through a fierce struggle for existence, 
 the stronger supplanting the weaker, the less fitted to 
 survive melting away before the more fit. So, it was 
 argued, must it be with man. The law of plants and 
 animals applies to him also. The stronger, the more 
 cunning, the man who can fight best, he is the fittest 
 to survive. Leave nature alone then. When people 
 multiply too quickly, leave her to right herself by 
 war and death. As ferrets prey on rabbits, and 
 hawks on other birds, and the strong plant kills ovit 
 the weak one, so let one man prey on another. Do 
 not interfere. " Laissez faire." 
 
 Let us try now to understand what Socialism is. 
 There are, of course, different shades of Socialism. 
 There is no one defined scheme of things which can 
 be labelled "Socialism." Carl Marx is a socialist. 
 Charles Kingsley was a socialist. Robert Owen was 
 a socialist. Uronlund is a socialist. Prince Kropot- 
 kin is a socialist. Some of the best socialist writers 
 would perhaps tell you that they cannot commit 
 themselves to any definite scheme, and that all they 
 contend for is the application of a principle. 
 
 According to socialists men are not mere individual 
 atoms, and Society is not an assemblage of atoms. 
 They would tell you that a conglomerate stone held 
 together by pressure from without, is not the truest 
 
84 Individualism^ Socialism 
 
 type of human society, but rather a tree and its 
 branches. Every branch has its own life and in- 
 dividuality, but every branch is united in a common 
 life with its neighbours, and draws its sap through 
 one stem. Or they will point you to the analogy of 
 the human body, in which, as St. Paul says, no one 
 member can say to another, " I have no need of thee," 
 and all the members go to form " one body." The 
 higher you go the more complex and interfused 
 does everything become. The plant is far more 
 complex than the stone, the animal is far more 
 complex than the plant, the man is far more 
 complex than the animal. Human Society does 
 not belong to the mechanical or chemical order 
 of things, but to the order of organic life which 
 includes, but is not identical wdth, mechanism or 
 chemistry. It is perfect, not as each human being 
 becomes more and more loosened from, the whole, 
 but rather as each recognizes himself to be the 
 Tnemher of a family. Human development consists, 
 indeed, in what has been called " Involution " — 
 that is to say, the further we get away from the 
 stone and the plant and the animal, the more^^r- 
 sonal does life become. Man, unlike stone, plant, 
 or boast, is a person — a self-concious person. But 
 the evolution of man does not end here. He recog- 
 nizes himself to be an individual, but an individual 
 
and Christianity. 85 
 
 member of a great living whole. His individuality 
 would have no meaning were it not for its relation to 
 the whole. The arm would be meaningless if it were 
 not the member of a body. The eye would be mean- 
 ingless by itself. A foot would not be a foot if it 
 were not part of a man. A head would be nothing 
 different from a stone, if it were not the head of a 
 human beingf with lungs and heart, and all that con- 
 
 no ' 
 
 stitutes a living man. A brother implies a father 
 and mother, a sister and brother. A father implies a 
 son. A man out of all relation to man would be 
 nothing. We are thus persons, but more than per- 
 sons, and only through Society do we become persons. 
 History and science and experience all teach us that 
 we are members one of another, and that no one can 
 live just to himself even if he tries. We are all 
 linked and interlinked with one another ; therefore 
 the true moral progress is the fuller and fuller recog- 
 nition of the '' solidarity," the essential oneness of the 
 Race. The real immorality is individualism. The 
 more closely you can organize Society on the analogy 
 of the human body, which is one, with many members, 
 the nearer do you come to the true and perfect state. 
 The remedy, therefore, for the ills of life is not to 
 leave every man to himself — to form a ring and see 
 that the rules of the fight are observed— but to 
 ■organize Society on the analogy of a family-life. 
 
86 Individualism, Socialism 
 
 The involution o£ a self-centred personality marks 
 but a stage on the way to the evolution of an organic 
 humanity, every limb and member of which is a. 
 rational man. More than half the evils under which 
 we groan, says the socialist, are quite unnecessary, 
 and quite remediable, and could easily be obviated if 
 only our social arrangements were more rational and 
 just. Our misery springs out of our brutal anti- 
 social system, and laissez faire individualism. What- 
 ever may be the law of plants and brutes, the law of 
 human development is altruism and collectivism. 
 Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer may have dis- 
 covered the law of brute development, but not of 
 humanity. 
 
 There are different ways, as I have said, in which 
 socialists propose to carry out their principles, but 
 these are the broad general principles on which they 
 are all united. 
 
 The two forces of Individualism and Socialism are 
 thus, you see, diametrically opposed, like two thunder- 
 clouds charged with positive and negative electricity. 
 The one sees in the Individual the destiny of man : 
 the other sees in thoroughly organized Society — in a 
 human family, in short — the ideal human life. And 
 these are the two forces which are now contending 
 for the mastery, the struggle between which is every 
 day becoming more pronounced. 
 
and Christianity. 87 
 
 Has our Christian Religion, we would now ask, 
 anything to say upon the matter ? We think it 
 has. 
 
 In the first place, Christian Religion tells us we 
 are all persons, and seeks to develop the individual 
 soul, whose worth it declares to be infinite. Each 
 of us, it says, must give account of himself to God ; 
 each is called to be a child of God. Religion, it 
 declares, is the conscious fellowship of spirit with 
 Spirit, and there is none too poor, or humble, or 
 obscure to be a " king and priest " to God. Love 
 your neighbour, it says, as yourself, thus implying 
 that the foundation of morality is the self — the 
 conscious, responsible, self-respecting self — and. that 
 the root of all morality is the treatment of every- 
 one else as a self. The piety of Jesus is essentially 
 inner and personal. It is the declaration of the 
 soul's independence of conventional morality and 
 personality-crushing tradition. " Thou, when thou 
 prayest, enter into thine inner chamber." Jesus lifts 
 up even the " fallen " woman, and restores her to 
 self-respect. " Thou art no longer a bond-servant, but 
 a son," cries Paul : " Ye were called to freedom." " Ye 
 shall know the truth," we read in John's gospel, " and 
 the truth shall make you free." 
 
 Christianity thus sets infinite store by the indivi- 
 dual. Even the little ones it takes under its care. 
 
88 Individualism, Socialism 
 
 whose angels " always behold the face of my Father 
 who is in heaven." To be yourself a son of the 
 Highest, and to treat others as sons, or possible sons, 
 is to be Christian. ' Christianity thus teaches, in a 
 profound sense, Individualism, if by the word is 
 meant moral freedom, self-respect, personal responsi- 
 bility, independence as of freeborn sons. 
 
 But this is not the whole of Christianity. Jesus 
 bids His followers regard each other as brothers 
 and sisters. "He that loveth not his brother," we 
 read, "abideth in death." "By this we know that 
 we have passed from death to life, because we love 
 the brethren." Christianity does not necessarily 
 identify itself with any one form of Socialism, but 
 it does undoubtedly teach, as Socialism does, that 
 men and women are brothers and sisters, and that 
 we should strive to carry out the idea of Human 
 Society as a family of self-respecting sons and 
 daughters. It preaches not merely, " Every one of 
 us must give account of himself to God," but also, 
 " Seek first the Kingdom of God, and His righteous- 
 ness : " and we know what that righteousness was, 
 as interpreted by the Preacher of the Sermon on 
 the Mount, and the Author of the parables of the 
 Good Samaritan, the Two Debtors, the Pharisee 
 and Publican. Jesus and His Apostles did not 
 teach Socialism in the modem sense of the word, 
 
and Christianity. 89 
 
 but they laid down great broad principles which 
 we cannot accept without seeking to apply them 
 to our corporate as well as our private life. " No 
 man can serve two masters." There cannot be one 
 principle for private, and another for public life. 
 
 The whole spirit of Jesus, as it seems to us, is 
 against the bald individualism which bases itself 
 on the observation of plant and animal life. There 
 is no use attempting to reconcile this basis with 
 the Christian basis. The attempt is hopeless. Your 
 purely material and animalistic Science knows 
 nothing of the spirit of sons and daughters and 
 brothers. It must treat that as moonshine. This 
 even Professor Huxley, in his Romanes Lecture, has 
 candidly and significantly acknowledged. The 
 breach between the brute and the ethical being, 
 governed by ideals of love and tenderness and 
 universal sympathies, is impassable, he tells us, and 
 Evolution, therefore, seems to break down as a 
 perfect theory. But other physicists have, perhaps 
 more profoundly, sought to show that the altruistic 
 virtues are really as much a part of Evolution's 
 plan as the animal instincts of self-protection and 
 nutrition. Thus Professor Drummond, in his inter- 
 estina: work on the " Ascent of Man," has contended 
 that from the first there has been a preparation, at 
 least, for Human Altruism in the reproductive in- 
 
90 Individualism, Socialism 
 
 stinct, and even in the attraction of atoms. In remote 
 pre-human ages, he maintains, the "physical basis" 
 was laid for the development of the human Fainily, 
 and all those social affections which spring out of 
 this great moral centre of the Race. Both Huxley 
 and Drummond, however, agree that the distinguish- 
 ing mark of man is ethics — i.e., highly developed 
 altruism or love — and that the future evolution of 
 the Race must consist in the steadily increasing 
 predominance of the social ideal. 
 
 And if even Science thus recoils from an evolution 
 which levels man to brute, your Christian Religion 
 certainly never can accept as its ideal a number of 
 struggling atoms in a " cosmic " vortex, or one 
 species of beast by cunning, strength, or favourable 
 environment supplanting another. This would not 
 be Evolution, but only change of form — brutes on 
 two legs instead of on four. 
 
 Some Socialism, we know, has been anti-religious 
 and anti-Christian. The reason is partly this, that 
 much Christianity has been pure, undiluted selfish- 
 ness, and therefore the socialist has turned away 
 from it, because he was an unconscious Christian. 
 Much Socialism, too, has been materialistic, seek- 
 ing nothing higher than a redistribution of the 
 loaves and fishes, and therefore Christianity has 
 naturally turned away from it as a spirit quite 
 
and Christianity. 91 
 
 alien from its own. It has been associated in our 
 minds with the horrors of bloodthirsty revolution, 
 and a fierce, bitter spirit of class hatred. Therefore 
 Christians have not unnaturally fought shy of it. 
 But some of the foremost socialists have now 
 recognized that only in religion, in duty, and love, 
 as presented in the gospel of Divine Goodwill to 
 man, can a foundation for Society be found. 
 
 Whether we call ourselves socialists or not^and 
 it is safer, when possible, to avoid names, for they 
 often hamper by tying us down, and expressing 
 more, or less, than we mean — there can be no 
 doubt whatever that our religion means the bi'otherly 
 and sisterly Ideal more and more fully carried out 
 — the foundation of our private and public life, 
 our national and international relations, on "these 
 sayings of mine" which Jesus uttered. 
 
 Whatever we call ourselves, we are all called to 
 be self-respecting persons, sons and daughters of 
 God. This is the truth of Individualism, as inter- 
 preted by Christianity. 
 
 Whatever we call ourselves, we are called to 
 develop the altruistic side of our nature as the 
 noblest, and to seek a Society of Kwman beings 
 — that is, of brothers and sisters in God. This is 
 the truth of Socialism, as interpreted by Christi- 
 anity. 
 
92 Individualism, Socialism and Christianity. 
 
 We shall find that the true Society can be a 
 Society only of free persons, and that the true 
 personality can be developed only in and through 
 a true Society. Thus do Individualism, Socialism, 
 and Christianity blend in the Ideal of fully-evolved 
 humanity, what the Scriptures call " the fulness of 
 the stature of the perfect man in Christ." 
 
 Towards such a lofty and inspiring end, as Chris- 
 tians, you are called to strive. Take up into 
 your religion, then, the truth that lies in Individu- 
 alism. Take up also the truth that is struggling 
 for expression in Socialism. Weave them both 
 into your personal character and into social life, 
 nursing in your hearts the warm fire of hope in 
 the " good time coming," our " Day of the Lord " — 
 
 when Knowledge wide extended, 
 Sinks each man's pleasure in the general health, 
 
 And all shall hold irrevocably blended 
 The individual and the commonwealth. 
 ***** 
 When the bars of creed and speech and race, which sever, 
 Shall be fused in one humanity for ever. 
 
VI 
 
 FAITH AND REASON 
 
The just shall live by his faith.— Habakkuk ii. 4. 
 
 Be thon faithful nnto death, and I -will give thee the crown of life.— Rev. ii 10. 
 
 Well done, good and fidthful servant.— Matthew xxv. 21, 
 
 The enemy which religion, i.e., a God-seeking Morality, has now to fear, is not a 
 passionate atheism. Such atheism is often a religion which misunderstands itself. 
 It is seeking after God, but in the hurry of irritation against the ignorance and fear 
 which call themselves religious, it cannot recognize ite object under the old name. 
 It may limit and distort the spiritual life, and yet leave the spring of its nobility 
 untouched. Not from it is our danger, but from the slow' sap of an undermining 
 indifference which does not deny God and duty, but ignores them ; which does not 
 care to trouble itself about tbem, and finds in our acknowledged inability to know 
 them, as we know matters of ftict, a new excuse for putting them aside. It is this 
 which takes off the native beauty from the fair forehead of a child-like faith, and 
 leaves not the scars of a much-questioning and of ten -failing but still believing 
 search after God, whom so to seek is to find, but the vacancy of contented worldli. 
 ness, pr the sneer of the baffled pleasure-seeker. — Faith, T. H. Green. 
 
 One thing only is necessary — the committal of the soul to God. Look that thou 
 thyself art in order, and leave to God the task of unravelling the skein of the world 
 and of destiny. . . e Faith in good — perhaps the individual wants nothing 
 more for his passage through life. — -4mi'eZ'j Jmirnal. 
 
 He who knoweth and understandeth Christ's life, knoweth and understandeth 
 Christ himself; and in like manner, he who understandeth not His life, doth not 
 understand Christ himself. . . , And in so far as a man's life is according to 
 Christ, Christ himself dwelleth in him, and if he hath not the one neither hath he 
 the other. For where there is the life of Christ, there is Christ himself, and where 
 his life is not, Christ is not, and where a man hath His life, he may say with 
 St. Paul, " I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." And this is the noblest and 
 best life ; for in him who hath it, God Himself dwelleth, with all goodness. So how 
 could there be a better life ?—Theologia Germanica. 
 
 "Faith and Love alone solve the riddle of our earthly existence. "—^flw^ra/A, 
 ReligiSse Reden und Betrachtungen. 
 
FAITH AND REASON. 
 
 THE watchword of our religion may be said to be 
 Faith; but the watchword of modem culture 
 and enlightenment may be said to be Reasov. 
 
 Is there, then, it may be asked, an unbridgeable 
 gulf fixed between religion and culture ? Must we 
 live two lives — one as religious men and women 
 another as citizens of the republic of science and 
 letters ? Must we of necessity breathe one atmo- 
 sphere in the Church, and quite a different 
 atmosphere when we enter the temple of learjning, or 
 walk the streets of practical life ? Must we descend 
 into a dark crypt of the past on Sunday, emerging on 
 Monday into the light of day ? 
 
 To many people there is thus a dualism in human 
 life : they lead two lives, drawing a hard and fast line 
 of distinction between faith and reason. But the 
 human mind cannot rest in dualism. We naturally 
 expect our two eyes to see one object, our two ears to 
 
96 Faith and Reason. 
 
 hear one sound, and our two feet to carry us at one 
 and the same time. Nature may be said to abhor 
 schism. So we are not astonished to find some 
 handing over reason to faith, and others insisting on 
 surrendering faith to reason. The one thus exalts 
 faith at the expense of reason — the other exalts reason 
 at the expense of faith ; while the many, as already 
 said, halt between two opinions, and go now on the 
 one foot, now on the other. To get rid of this dualism 
 is the great problem of to-day — to reconcile our re- 
 ligion and our science. But it must be confessed that 
 the method of reconciliation so often adopted is far 
 from satisfactory. The lamb and lion are reconciled 
 when the former lies down in the stomach of the 
 latter; but it cannot be said that the reconciliation 
 is altogether satisfactory, at least from the lamb's 
 point of view. 
 
 Let me try to show how this dualism may be 
 overcome. 
 
 In the first place I would remark that if you 
 wish to reconcile two opposing parties, you can only 
 do so by rising above them, and ceasing to be a 
 partisan. It must be truth we seek, and not merely 
 the triumph of a party. ' 
 
 . The characteristic of too much of our modern life 
 is party spirit. We take this side or that, shout our 
 shibboleth, and brandish our swords, thinking our- 
 
Faith and Reason. 97 
 
 selves good soldiers of the truth, while we are only 
 hirelings fighting for ourselves. Thus men cry " The 
 Church," " Religion," " Christ," on the one side, and 
 " Science," " Reason," " Culture," on the other. 
 
 What we want now is minds that love truth more 
 than any party-triumph. You must get out of the 
 strife and hurly-burly, and cultivate the philosophic 
 mind. This does not mean becoming indifferent, 
 listless, sitting on a rail, or blowing hot and cold. 
 It means simply that you should shake off prejudice, 
 and the fetters of passion, and the slavery of words 
 and phrases, and let your rational human nature 
 have free course. 
 
 There are people who blaze up like gunpowder 
 when a spark falls, whenever you mention " faith " 
 or " religion." To them it is superstition, priestcraft, 
 antiquated nonsense. Have they not swept the 
 heavens and found no God there visible by the 
 strongest telescope ? Have they not analyzed every 
 substance in the laboratory, and found no such 
 phantom as the human spirit ? " Science ! Science ! " 
 they cry, "and nothing but Science!" 
 
 There are' people who blaze up also if a word is 
 spoken which seems inconsistent with their theology. 
 " Your reason and your science," they cry, " are 
 false idols. Will you contradict the Word of God ? " 
 Or, "Will you be wiser than the God-inspired 
 
gS Faith and Reason. 
 
 Church 1 The Bible, the Bible, and nothing but 
 the Bible;" or, "The Church, the Church, and 
 nothing but the Church ! " 
 
 Now we shall never reach truth in this way. 
 The reconciliation between religion and culture will 
 never be effected until we rise above this sort of 
 thing. We must climb the hill till we reach a point 
 from which we can look down and see upland and 
 lowland blended in one. There is nothing from 
 which we need to cleanse our hearts more than 
 from the spirit of partizanship so prevalent among 
 the cultured classes on the one hand, and the religious 
 people on the other — cant answering cant across the 
 gulf. The Bible is God's gift, the Church is God's 
 gift, and Science and Culture are God's gifts. What 
 comes from the One must itself be one. We need 
 to get out of the analytical, critical stage, where so 
 many halt, and learn to look on things with the eye 
 of an artist, who seeks not the differences between 
 objects, but the beauty and unity of all. It was th.ys 
 that the Apostle Paul sought to reconcile opposing 
 parties in the Church of Corinth. " All things," 
 cries he, " are yours ; and ye are Christ's'; and Christ 
 is God's." 
 
 In the second place I would remark that if you 
 wish to reconcile opposing parties you must go deeper 
 than their party cries. 
 
Faith and Reason. 99 
 
 What slaves we all are to words, and how few 
 ask themselves the meaning of the words they use ! 
 Most people live upon the surface of life. We float 
 over the ocean, but seldom reflect upon the mystery 
 of its hidden depths, and what a tale of wonder is 
 written on every shell that lies far down in the silent 
 ocean bed. We walk this earth, but how seldom do 
 we -reflect on the marvellous history that underlies 
 our every step ! Only a shell, we say ; only a stone, 
 only a sea-weed, only a flower. And yet had the 
 shell and the stone, the sea-weed and the flower 
 but tongues to speak, what a tale could they 
 unfold ! To understand them root and stem and 
 ■' all in all " would be to have our minds flooded 
 with what an ocean of boundless thoughts that 
 wander through eternity ! In the tiniest shell 
 picked by a child on the sea-shore lies written, 
 if only we had eyes to read it, the history of the 
 universe. 
 
 "If any man," writes the Apostle Paul, "thinketh 
 that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet 
 as he ought to know." That is true. We are all 
 like children wading on the seashore. How the 
 little ones splash and sport in the waves that come 
 like weary travellers and throw themselves down 
 upon the soft sandy beach ! Little do they think 
 of the great sea from which these travellers come, 
 
lOO Faith and Reason. 
 
 or of the great cosmic forces that drove them to 
 the shore. 
 
 One of the great discoveries of to-day is the 
 unity of things. We used to conceive of the various 
 objects in the world as distinct creations — vegetable 
 and animal were distinct, and all the species of 
 these were distinct, and the sun and moon and stars- 
 were also distinct creations. Then thought began 
 to go deeper and dug down to the roots of things, 
 and these distinctions were lost, and all were seen 
 to be branches of a great tree whose root was one. 
 So with human life and history, how manifold they 
 seem — castes, classes, moralities, religious literature, 
 art ! — and yet when we go deeper than the surface, 
 get do^wn to the roots, do these not seem one ? 
 Will not the great discovery of the future be 
 that man is one ? You enter the Public Library 
 — all around you see divisions, thousands of books, 
 each bound up separately, having a niche of its own. 
 What seeming chaos ! How bewildering ! But look 
 closer. The librarian has gone deeper than these 
 divisions. See how he has classified and arranged ' 
 the mass. Here is Architecture, here Geology, here 
 Chemistry, here History, and so on all round the 
 library. Yes, and even here thought will not stop. 
 The philosopher comes in, and not content with 
 these divisions and classifications, he begins to dig 
 
Faith and Reason. lOi 
 
 deeper to see whether there is not a unity beneath 
 art, religion, politics, history, and all the other titles 
 under which the books are arranged. Down he 
 goes to see if there is not one root out o£ which 
 these branches spring, till he stands face to face 
 with that wonder of wonders, the Human Mind, 
 and underlying Thought out of which all things 
 spring. Down he goes like some brave diver, till 
 even the distinction between mind and matter seems 
 to fade away, and nothing seems real but all- 
 creative Thought, of which matter is but the 
 transient form. 
 
 I look at the black coal burning in the grate, 
 and then at the sunshine falling on the world 
 without, making of ti-ees and fields, and skies and 
 sea, a fairy scene. Ho'yv different this picture from 
 that ! And yet go deeper, and will you not find 
 that the dark coal is bottled sunshine, and that the 
 fairy scene and the prosaic fire are one ? Go 
 deeper still. Take up the dark coal and let it tell 
 its tale. Will it not say, " I too was once a tree 
 radiant in the sunshine, and flora green and beauti- 
 ful as the grass on which the light and shadows 
 sport to-day ? " 
 
 And so all nature tells us of the " one law, one 
 element," one force that rolls through all things. 
 When we get down into this region differences 
 vanish, and all things are reconciled. 
 
I02 Faith and Reason. 
 
 Apply what we have been saying in general, to 
 Faith and Reason in particular. People say, " What 
 have Reason and Faith got to do with one another ? 
 They belong to quite distinct departments." So 
 say religionists, and so say scientists. But dig 
 deeper down, and you will find unity where before, 
 perhaps, you thought there was irreconcilable 
 difference. 
 
 Ask what is Faith, and then ask what is Reason. 
 Go down to the roots of both and see whether their 
 root is not in reality one, whether both do not spring 
 out of the one source — the super-animal, super- 
 sensuous, spiritual nature of man. 
 
 "By Faith," perhaps you say, "I understand belief 
 in the occurrence of miracles two or three thousand 
 years ago. By Faith I understand belief in every- 
 thing that is written in the Bible. By Faith I 
 understand belief iq the creeds of the Church. By 
 Faith I understand belief in the theological dogma 
 of atonement." 
 
 But have you any right to say this, any more than 
 a painter would have to say, pointing to a picture 
 gallery, " That and that only is Art ? " 
 
 If you say that Faith is identical w ith this or that 
 belief, then of course we all know that many beliefs 
 cannot be reconciled with our knowledge and thought. 
 If Faith is identical with belief that everything in the 
 
Faith and Reason. 103 
 
 Bible is literally true, we need not go any further. 
 I£ Faith is identical with belief in all that Councils of 
 Divines have taught, with belief in Thirty-Nine 
 Articles, or Prayer-book, or Westminster Confession, 
 then of course we need say no more about reconcilia- 
 tion. But what grounds have we for saying that 
 these and these only are Faith ? May they not be 
 forms more or less true that Faith has taken ? If 
 belief is the same as Faith, then would it not be all 
 the same if you had faith that the world took 
 millions of years to make, that Plato wrote "the 
 Republic," and that Napoleon and Wellington fought 
 the battle of Waterloo ? If belief is all, then one 
 belief is surely as good as another. When the 
 woman that was a sinner came and wept at the 
 feet of Jesus, and went away " saved," was she 
 " saved " by a belief ? Would it have been all the 
 same if she had knelt at the feet of Simon the 
 Pharisee ? Many persons believe whom we cannot 
 think of as "' saved." Some who believe every word 
 in the Bible, and every line of the creeds, cannot be 
 said to have a "saving faith," or to be really disciples 
 of Jesus. Does this not show that religious Faith is 
 not the same thing as belief ? And if there can be 
 belief without Faith, may there not be Faith without 
 belief — Faith that saves, heals, purifies, redeems the 
 man or woman ? 
 
I04 Faith and Reason. 
 
 We are driven, then, to go deeper down for a truer 
 conception of Faith. 
 
 Suppose that Jesus were to appear among us to- 
 day, what would Faith in Him mean ? Reciting 
 creeds about Him, or believing some story about 
 Him ? No : it would mean the springing of our souls 
 towards His soul, as flowers spring towards the sun, 
 a.s steel springs to the magnet : it would mean spirit 
 recognizing its own best life, and cleaving to His 
 spirit as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. There 
 would be many in the churches who would not be 
 attracted to Him — many " good people " who would 
 have no faith in him — and some very " superior 
 persons '' who would be inclined as of old to lead Him 
 to the brow of a hill and throw Him down headlong, 
 as an agitator, or an enemy of " law and order." To 
 have, faith in Him would be to recognize His order, 
 His law. His love. His ideal of human life, as Divine 
 order. Divine law, the very health, and life, and light 
 of man. To have faith in Him would be, supposing 
 opposition and persecution arose, to stick to Him 
 through thick and thin, even though one had to give 
 up father and mother and brothers and sisters and 
 " lands " for His sake, or, if you like, for the sake of 
 " the truth as it is in Jesus." 
 
 But this, you say perhaps, would not be saving 
 Faith. It would be saving Faith. For, would not 
 
Faith and Reason. 105 
 
 such Faith heal -the soul, and draw it out of the pit 
 of the animal, out of selfishness, out of despair, and 
 fill it with the very life of a God ? To have 
 such Faith would be to have God in us, and become 
 one with His will and with His order. And surely 
 this is " salvation !" 
 
 Now, if this is Faith — saving Faith — I would ask 
 you whether it is not most rational, and whether 
 Reason and Faith do not at their highest point 
 melt into one. 
 
 Let me try to illustrate. When an artist paints a 
 beautiful picture, is he not most rational ? And yet 
 he is not rationalistic. He could never conceive that 
 work of art, or carry it out, if he were a mere logic- 
 chopping machine. There is a beautiful ideal in his 
 soul which logic did not create, and which he runs 
 to embrace and make his own, and express in line 
 and colour. This artist-genius we regard as" one of 
 the highest stages of human development — develop- 
 ment, that is, of rational being. 
 
 Well, is not Faith — religious Faith — something 
 that corresponds to this artist-reason ? 
 
 The late Professor Tyndall, you may recollect, 
 spoke of the power of imagination in science. Every 
 great discovery is a sort of revelation. The scientist 
 plods on accumulating facts, and then, like a flash of 
 lio-ht, his mind is illuminated with an idea far larger 
 
io6 Faith and Reason. 
 
 than any or all of his gathered facts, and with a 
 bound of the spirit he leaps to embrace the Eeason 
 that is in the universe. " God," cried Kepler, 
 '' I think Thy thoughts after Thee." Was Kepler 
 irrational when his mind became flooded with the 
 great idea of an orderly universe, with perfect trust 
 that law and order guided the circling planets ? Was 
 he not, then, in the highest sense a philosopher — a 
 child of Reason ? 
 
 But man cannot rest contented with finding law and 
 order in the heavenly bodies. He is driven by inner 
 necessity to find law and order in his own life also. 
 And when to him, long pondering, there comes, like a 
 flash, the ideal of goodness and love, is he irrational 
 if he leaps to embrace it, and cries " To this I will 
 cling as my guide — this angel of light I will follow 
 to the shining heights ?" 
 
 Nor can man rest here. He will ask what is at 
 the root of all this universe — what is the source 
 out of which he and all things flow, and into which 
 they return, and what that is in which all live and 
 move and have their being. Well, is he irrational 
 when he receives with joy the message that came 
 flashing into the world through Jesus, " God is Light, 
 God is the "universal all-animating Spirit, God is Love 
 — man is the child of Spirit?" Is he irrational 
 when, yielding to this greatest thought, he lays down 
 
Faith and- Reason. 107 
 
 his head in trust as a child upon the bosom of God, 
 and, spite of wind and wave can rest peacefully like 
 the Christ in the storm-tossed boat on the Lake of 
 Galilee ? When you come with logical axes and 
 crowbars, and want to smash up everything that you 
 cannot define and prove, as you can define a triangle, 
 or prove that a thief stole your purse, are you 
 rational ? Logical you may be, but not rational. 
 Destroy this Faith — this trust in the Heart and Soul 
 of all, this trust in God — do you not cut away the 
 very foundation of man's superiority, and does not 
 the world sink back into chaos ? 
 
 The trust or Faith of the Christ is thus seen to be 
 not opposed to Reason, but rather Reason at its best. 
 The calmest, most ordered, most human life is that 
 which is inspired with secret trust. This is Religion. 
 And is not the noblest trust, the trust with which 
 Jesus inspired the world ? This, then, is Christian 
 Faith, Christian Religion. And the more you cherish 
 it, the stronger, deeper, and more rational does your 
 life become. Bereft of this anchor of the soul cast 
 into the unseen, are we not " children tossed to and 
 fro and carried about" like rudderless ships upon a 
 waste of waters ? 
 
 Nor is this merely a pretty sentiment. It is the 
 most practical of principles. Religious Faith — trust, 
 that is, in the order of the universe as rational and as 
 
io8 Faith and Reason. 
 
 loving — must inevitably, like our life-blood, flow into 
 evexy nook and cranny of our intellectual and moral 
 being, and influence the whole climate and current of 
 our lives. 
 
 Cannot one be " a good man" without religious 
 Faith ? I think .we must answer — " No." But, then, 
 how many have religious Faith without knowing it ! 
 " Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered and fed Thee, 
 or thirsty and gave Thee drink ? In as much as ye 
 did it unto one of these My brethren, even these 
 least, ye did it unto Me." Does anyone walk in 
 righteousness and goodness ?^is he self-sacrificing ? 
 — is he inspired with high motives and disinterested 
 love of truth? Call himself by what name he pleases, 
 he walks by " Faith " — Faith in a rational and loving 
 Order to which it is his life to conform — Faith in the. 
 Divine Life as revealed in the Gospel of Jesus — and 
 is a good and faithful servant who shall enter into the 
 joy of his Lord. " Know ye not," asks Paul, " that 
 Christ is in you, except ye be reprobate ? " 
 
 Thus, between Faith and Reason does the seeming 
 opposition melt away in the unity of the Christian 
 Life. 
 
VII 
 
 REVELATION 
 
I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these 
 things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes.— 
 Matthew xi. 25. 
 
 Unto us God revealed them through, the Spirit : for the Spirit searcheth all things, 
 yea, the deep things of God.— 1 COBIKTHIASS ii. 10. 
 
 And the Word was maiie flesh and tabernacled among u?, and we beheld his glory. 
 —John i. 14. 
 
 Since, therefore, truth is one (for falsehood has ten thousand by-paths) ; just as 
 the Bacchantes tore asunder the limbs of Penthens, so the sects both of barbarian 
 and Hellenic philosophy have done with truth, and each vaunts as the whole truth 
 the portion which has fallen to its lot. But all, in my opinion, are illuminated by 
 the dawu of Light. Let all, therefore, both Greeks and Barbarians, who have aspired 
 after the truth — both those who possess not a little, and those who have any portion 
 —produce whatever they have of the word of truth.— Clement of Alexandria. (Ante- 
 Nicene Library Translation,) 
 
 Nature explains by gradually expanding. If we hearken to nature, and not to the 
 voice of illusory preconceptions, we shall have her proclaim at the last stage, " Here 
 is the meaning of the seedling. Kow it is clear what it really wa$ ; for the power 
 which lay dormant has pushed itself into sight, through bud and flower, and leaf 
 and fruit." The reality of a growing thing is its highest form of being. . 
 Li&tead of degrading man, it (evolution) lifts nature into a manifestation of spirit. 
 If it were established, if every link of the endless chain were discovered, and the 
 continuity of existence were irrefragably proved, science would not overthrow 
 idealism, but it would rather vindicate it. It would justify in detail the attempt 
 of poetry and religion and philosophy to interpret all b>*ing as the " transparent 
 vesture " of reason, or love, or whatever power in the world is regarded as highest. 
 —Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher^ Hen/y Jones, M,A. 
 
 There is no higher creation of God than a spirit that is made in His own image, 
 and in that spirit there is nothing higher than the knowledge and love of God.— 
 Introduction to the Philosophy of jReligivn, Principal Caird. 
 
 Bevelation is the disclosure of the soul. The popular notion of a revelation is, 
 that it is a telling of fortunes.— fme/'^on. 
 
REVELATION. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY claims to be a revelation. There 
 are those who deny that any revelation is 
 possible, and there are those who say that though a 
 revelation is conceivable, Christianity's claim to be 
 such has become discredited. 
 
 We think that those who thus affirm are mistaken — 
 that revelation is possible, that Christianity is a 
 revelation, and that it is the highest revelation. 
 
 Is it not possible that in the denial of the 
 possibility of revelation, and of Christianity as a 
 revelation, there is confusion somewhere, which 
 may be cleared up by more exact thought and 
 definition of terms ? 
 
 First let us consider the denial that any revelation 
 is possible. 
 
 There are many persons at present who take up 
 this position, some calling themselves Positivists, and 
 some Agnostics. 
 
 The Positivist draws a circle round what he con- 
 
112 Revelation. 
 
 siders to be the region of actual facts, of knowledge 
 and experience. Within this circle lie art, science, 
 morality, great men, and the worship of Humanity 
 in great men — outside, darkness, and shadows cast 
 on it from the lighted windows of Man. 
 
 The Agnostic, when he really understands the 
 meaning of his own name and does not use it in a 
 loose and inaccurate waj^ looking out for a moment 
 from the windows of the lit-up house of Man, into 
 the impenetrable darkness, exclaims, "Behind that 
 darkness there may • be something, but it is utterly 
 inconceivable. It is unknown and unknowable." 
 But, unlike the Positivist, the Agnostic — the philosophic 
 Agnostic, I mean — keeps gazing into the impenetrable 
 gloom with wonder, awe, and even reverence. He 
 has " a vague consciousness " that ihsre lies something 
 which he would give all he has to know. He cannot 
 with the Positivist turn back and worship at the 
 shrine of Great Men, drawing down the blinds and 
 tightly fastening the shutters. His temple has no 
 altar, and no ritual, and no creed, but its dome is 
 thrown open to the impenetrable night, and with 
 bowed head he stands bent beneath the burden of 
 his own Ignorance, awed by the sense of the un- 
 bridgeable gulf which yawns between the Known 
 and the Unknowable. 
 
 To Positivist and Agnostic alike, it is plain that 
 
Revelation. 1 1 3 
 
 revelation in the sense of an unveiling of God, the 
 Unseen Source and End of all, is inconceivable. For 
 the one looks out for a moment into the blackness 
 only to retreat into his warm room filled with art 
 and scientific appliances, and busts of the great 
 departed reminding him he can make his life sublime 
 — to him there is no God — while the other is con- 
 vinced that although there may be something, yet 
 from the very nature of the case he cannot know 
 what that something is, or say anything whatever 
 about it, not even logically that it is. 
 
 To discuss the whole question thus raised by 
 Positivist and Agnostic would take us beyond the 
 limits of this discourse. The bases on which both 
 rest seem to us philosophically untenable, and further 
 reflection will, we believe, lead thoughtful minds to 
 abandon these positions. The reason and the heart 
 will not finally rest satisfied with such conclusions. 
 We can regard them only as a stage in the evolution 
 of thought. The whole foundation of intellectual and 
 moral life seems to be thus cut away, and we float 
 like a painted ship upon a painted ocean. Intel- 
 lectual and moral enthusiasm mean nothing. They 
 are but froth shimmering on the curling wave, to 
 be dissolved immediately in the dark abyss of which 
 we cannot even say that it is water, for it is 
 
 unknowable. 
 
 9 
 
1 1 4 Revelation. 
 
 For a time enthusiasm borrowed from older sources 
 may survive, and hide from the heart its cooling 
 process, but sooner or later the glacial period will 
 arrive. It is the prevalence of the Positivist and 
 Agnostic type of thought which da,mps our ardour and 
 weakens our moral fibre. Intellectually great and 
 morally good some representatives of such systems 
 may be in spite of their systems, but it seems to us 
 that such systems are like Jonah's gourd : a worm is 
 at the root, and when the sun is up they must wither 
 away. They seem logically to lead to materialism, 
 which is really atheism, or at least to laissez faire. 
 They do not stir the soul, or rouse the conscience, or 
 draw us with secret cords towards new heights of 
 being. We wander on like Lazarus in his grave 
 clothes, and the napkin bound over his eyes. 
 
 But while formally denying the possibility of any 
 revelation, do not Positivist and Agnostic implicitly 
 admit its possibility, and even reality? Both in a 
 sense worship. Both recognize religion. Comte 
 claimed to have shown the real nature of religion, 
 and spent hours meditating in church on Humanity. 
 He organized a regular system of worship, with a 
 calendar of saints and saints' days. And Herbert 
 Spencer in like manner claims to have reconciled 
 science and religion by the singular device of con- 
 fining science to what is known and knowable, and 
 
Revelation. 115 
 
 relegating religion to the region of the unknown 
 and unknowable. But however unsatisfactory their 
 solutions and explanations, the fact remains that 
 both have recognized religion as an element in 
 human nature, which must be satisfied, which even 
 Positivism and Agnosticism cannot ignore, but for 
 which they must find a place. Comte, in short, had a 
 God, though he disliked the word, and substituted for 
 it " Humanity," meaning by Humanity the best and 
 truest Manhood and Womanhood as illustrated in 
 the lives of the wise men and saints who had served 
 the Race most truly. And Comte had a revelation. 
 He professed to have discovered the meaning of 
 human life ; and that life was not on the plane of 
 the natural but of the spiritual — that is, the super- 
 natural — man. Comte's 1-eligion was a religion which 
 did not fully understand itself. He, in his own way, 
 worshipped the Son of Man, who was really to him 
 Son of God — though he shrank from using the phrase. 
 What bafiled him was the dark universe all round 
 his little lighthouse. He had not grasped that 
 wonderful evolution theory with which we are now 
 so familiar. To him there were two worlds — the 
 Human and the Natural. He did not see apparently 
 that these two are linked together, that the same Power 
 which works in the plant works also in the human 
 mind, and that all the woi'ld is one. He could not 
 
I 1 6 Revelation. 
 
 see God in nature. He could only see God in man. 
 But he did see God, and he recognized that, through 
 his own gospel, light was streaming from a super- 
 physical, super-animal plane into the minds of men. 
 The Positivist is religious, and to him there is a 
 revelation of the destiny and dignity of man, in the 
 lives of the servants of Humanity. , Is he so far from 
 the Christian idea of Revelation as we find it in the 
 Gospel of John, or the writings of the early Fathers ? 
 Is not the central idea of Christianity, God unveiled 
 in man ? " The Word," writes John, " was made 
 flesh, and dwelt among us.'' "The Word of God," 
 says Clement of Alexandria, " became man, that thou 
 mayest learn from man how man may become God." 
 The essential idea of Christianity in such writers as 
 Justin, Clement, and Athen^goras, is the revelation of 
 God in man, that man may be drawn into God 
 through the Logos or Word. God in man, and man 
 in God, is indeed the very key-note of spiritual 
 Christianity in the early Church, the Middle Age, 
 and modern times. 
 
 However inconsistently, then, with the logic of 
 Positivist metaphysics, or no-metaphysics, there is in 
 Positivism a back door leading into Christianity, 
 and the Christian conception of Divine Revelation. 
 And of this we are glad. 
 
 So, too, with the Agnostic. Are not awe and 
 
Revelation. 1 1 7 
 
 wonder, and sense o£ mystery, elements in religion ? 
 When the Agnostic, standing before the curtain with 
 eager, wistful gaze, says, " There must be something 
 behind the screen," and with awe names "the Infinite," 
 is he not saying virtually "God V And when he says, 
 " Something," surely, if his words have any meaning, 
 he means Something intelligible : not something unin- 
 telligible, which would be nonsense. Agnosticism, 
 in spite of its metaphysics, which seem to lead us 
 down logically into inanity, thus also leads to re- 
 ligion ; and devout souls, in spite of their agnosticism, 
 jump over the gulf between the Known and the 
 Unknowable, and through feeling, if not through 
 logical thought, rise to embrace their Lord and 
 their God. 
 
 Christianity does not contradict the Positivist and 
 Agnostic. It simply says : — " Whom ye ignorantly 
 worship, Him declare I unto you. That very 
 Supernatural, which you recognize, is what I too 
 acknowledge. You worship God in man, so do I. 
 You bend the head in awe, so do I. You say the 
 Infinite transcends all our thinking, so do I. You 
 say there is a great gulf between the Infinite and 
 finite. But, surely the gulf is in the Infinite, other- 
 wise there are three infinities — the infinite finite, the 
 infinite gulf, and the infinite Infinite, which seems 
 absurd." 
 
1 1 8 Revelation. 
 
 Positivism and Agnosticism have thus something in 
 common with Christianity. Logically they deny 
 Revelation or an unveiling of God. But in reality 
 they seem to imply it. Positivist and Agnostic are 
 greater than their creeds. 
 
 In the second place, there are those who say that 
 Christianity's claim to be a revelation is utterly 
 discredited. 
 On what ground is this alErmed ? 
 
 " Well," it is replied, " study of history has exploded 
 your myths and overturned your Bible, and analyzed 
 the composition of your dogmas. Science has upset 
 your hypothesis of an earth-plane with a heaven 
 above it ; and your theories about miracles and 
 inspiration are no longer tenable by sensible persons." 
 What shall we answer to these things ? 
 
 We would answer that Revelation is not incon- 
 sistent with myths or dogmas, or physical science, and 
 that it does not depend on miracles, or inspiration 
 theories. 
 
 What is a myth ? Truth expressed in language 
 of fancy and imagination. In a childish stage of 
 human thought men naturally thiak in myth. Every 
 nation has its mythology- — its wonderful picture 
 language to which we seem often to have lost the 
 key. How often does a child puzzle us by speaking 
 language of this kind ! Has man as a Race had a 
 
Revelation. 1 1 9 
 
 childhood ? Was there a time when, so to speak, he 
 was waking up, and like the blind man in Scripture 
 story, saw men and gods "like trees walking?" 
 Thought struggled to express itself, but could only 
 find pictures. Metaphysics, logic, science, which are 
 the mind more fully awake, had not come, were 
 not yet possible. Had Judaism no mythology ? 
 When in Genesis we read that God came down and 
 walked in the garden in the cool of the day, or that 
 a serpent spoke to Eve — is this not the language of 
 myth ? Was it wonderful if even into Christianity, 
 then, the old picture language should obtrude ? 
 Suppose it has done so, has mythology had no part 
 in the education of the Race? What is truth? Facts? 
 Logic ? Or the great Ideas and Ideals which dawn 
 like a risinjr sun shining; more and more unto a 
 perfect day, until the world is filled with their light, 
 and all men walk in the sunshine ? May not 
 Revelation come through myth ? Many things open 
 up to a child through childish avenues. "When I 
 became a man I put away childish things." But 
 through childish things I became a man. When I 
 reached the summit I dispensed with the ladder. 
 But by the ladder I reached the summit. 
 
 You say the Bible is overturned. Do you mean 
 that some of our views of it are overturned ? Then 
 we are agreed. But when did the Bible say that our 
 
1 20 . Revelation. 
 
 views were infallible, or unchanging ? Because you 
 cannot believe that this marvellous world came into 
 being exactly according to the description in the book 
 of Genesis, or that the eating of the fruit of a certain 
 tree in the Garden of Eden, was the root of all sin and 
 suffering, is there no Word of God, no God unveiled 
 to man ? 
 
 Analysis and history, you say, have exploded 
 dogma. Very likely. But is Christianity a dogma ? 
 Was the life of Jesus a dogma ? Did men think 
 they had seen God because in the fourth century the 
 Council of Nicasa formulated the church-dogma of 
 Father and Son ? Did they not- rather believe they 
 had" seen God, because Jesus had lived and loved ? 
 And did they not formulate the church-dogma, 
 because for ages they had been coming to think of 
 Reason as the creative " Word " of the Most High 
 and the Light of God in the soul of man, which 
 had at length shone forth most brilliantly in a life 
 of self-sacrificing Love ? The dogma was founded 
 on Christianity, not Christianity on the dogma. 
 
 Science, you say, has upset our notions of an earth- 
 plane with a dome over it. No doubt. Has it there- 
 fore upset God and Man ? Was this what Jesus 
 revealed ? Or, did not Jesus find this childish 
 science in the age He lived in ? Did Jesus mean an 
 earth-plane with a dome over it and a heaven above 
 
Revelation. 
 
 121 
 
 the dome when he said, " Thou hast hid these things 
 from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them 
 to babes ? " Was not the other world just what the 
 wise and prudent thought they knew about ? 
 
 Science has destroyed miracle, you say. Was 
 God's revelation a miracle ? There were many 
 marvellous miracles recorded before the time of 
 Christ. And did not Jesus say, "An evil and 
 adulterous generation seeketh after a sign ? " What 
 is a miracle ? Something contrary to nature — un- 
 natural ? How does this unveil God ? Somethina; 
 which by ordinary laws I cannot explain ? Does this 
 make God plainer ? An herd of swine two thousand 
 years ago ran down a steep place, possessed of devils 
 cast out of a demoniac, and perished in the sea : 
 what does this reveal ? But has Science banished all 
 idea of miracle ? Wonderful things may still be done, 
 revealing man's power, the power of the spirit, over 
 what we call nature and matter. This is not miracle 
 in the old orthodox sense, but it is miracle in the 
 sense of a revelation of the nature of man. It may be 
 there are latent powers in man as yet undiscovered. 
 If so, their discovery will be a further evolution of 
 man. " Thou hast made man," sings the Psalmist, 
 " a little lower than God." 
 
 The old dogma of Inspiration is dead, but may 
 there not be a new idea of Inspiration ? Old 
 
122 Revelation. 
 
 theories of the stars are dead, but the stars still 
 shine. 
 
 We are thus driven finally to ask what Kevela- 
 tion is. 
 
 It is not, we may say, a dogma ; it is not science, 
 it is not stories about creation or miracles, it is not 
 an infallible book. 
 
 There remains another view. It is the gradual 
 unveiling of truth in the reason and heart of man. 
 We have learned to speak of " The Ascent of Man." 
 In what h8;S that ascent consisted ? In the gradual 
 evolution of all that we deem most human, the slow 
 education of the Race in ideas of the true, the 
 beautiful, and the good — in the involution of a self- 
 conscious, personal, independent life, the involution 
 of the social, loving, being called " Man." 
 
 When the first human being became conscious of 
 himself, was not that Revelation ? 
 
 When the family life was evolved, was not that 
 Revelation ? When man began to feel, " I am related 
 to something higher and wider than myself," was 
 not that Revelation ? 
 
 When for pure instinct the life of self-conscious 
 and self-directing reason was substituted, was not 
 that Revelation ? 
 
 And when at length out of Hebrew and Greek 
 thought there burst a new conception of the Most 
 
Revelation. 1 2 3 
 
 High, and a voice was heard in the soul of man, 
 " Thou art my beloved Son," was that no Revelation ? 
 When in the minds and hearts even of " babes " there 
 was born the conviction, "We are spirits, and our 
 life is the life of God," was not that Revelation ? 
 
 Christianity is Revelation — the unveiling of God's 
 ^^ Nature, and the unveiling of Man's high calling. 
 " The Word was made flesh and tabernacled among us. 
 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." 
 It is not a dogma, it is not a miracle, it is the unveil- 
 ing of the true God in the human mind and heart 
 and conscience. " God," we read, " is Spirit," and only 
 because we too are spirit can there be Revelation ? 
 " No man knoweth the things of God save the Spirit 
 of God." And it was the Spirit of God with which 
 Christ baptized the world, and of which we read that 
 except we are born of it we " cannot see the Kingdom 
 of God." 
 
 The Revelation of God in Christ is the highest 
 Revelation, because in it God seems to shine so 
 brightly into the heart and reason and conscience of 
 man. It is |;he highest stage in the evolution of 
 man. And the evolution of man, regarded from the 
 religious point of view, is the unveiling of God. 
 
 Then, has Revelation ceased ? By no means. 
 Evolution has not ceased. Man must become more 
 man. But to become more man, is it not to 
 
1 24 . Revelation. 
 
 assimilate more and more the Christ after the 
 Spirit — the obedient, trustful Son, the Brother and 
 Friend of man ? Is it not to assimilate the prin- 
 ciples of Christian love — to. become free men and 
 women, trustful, independent, self-controlled, social 
 beings ? We have not yet assimilated Christianity. 
 Christianity, say some, is played out. Christianity 
 in Christ's sense, we would reply, has not yet been 
 tried. The sun has only risen. What a world it will 
 be when it rises to the meridian ! Then we shall 
 "see God" more' fully than ever: for the Revelation 
 of God is not confined to one life, or one century. 
 The Scriptures say Jesus was " the Light of the 
 world." But Jesus says also, " Ya are the light of 
 the world." The Scriptures say " the Word was 
 made flesh." They also say that Christ dwells in us, 
 and that we are an " habitation of God in the Spirit." 
 Through true and loving lives of men and women, 
 through a Church fired with the- spirit of Jesus, the 
 Divinest is still revealed. God and man, says 
 Christianity, are distinct, but God and man says 
 Christianity also, are one ; and the whole life of man 
 is an unfolding in humanity of the life of God. 
 
 Incarnation is the root idea of Christian Religion. 
 Revelation, therefore, is not simply a message sent 
 from a foreign Power, to be believed on token of 
 certain credentials. It is the voice of God in the 
 
Revelation. 125 
 
 spirit recognized as our Father's voice — the voice of 
 God calling us " sons of God." 
 
 Tlien, you perhaps say: — Was all that old-world 
 conception of a hereafter a dream ? It does not 
 follow. Jesus, we read, " brought life and incorrup- 
 tion to light." How ? By speaking of the after- 
 life ? No. He is very silent ; and so also are Paul 
 and John. But did not Jesus reveal the ground of 
 all our faith in immortality ? We are children of 
 Spirit, and therefore partakers in God's undying 
 nature. " Beloved, now are we children of God, and 
 it doth not appear what we shall be." But, if 
 we are the children of God, we cannot he dust 
 and ashes. 
 
 It is possible — or, at least, we cannot say it is 
 impossible — that a future state of being may be 
 some day scientifically demonstrated. But can we 
 not conceive of a world scientifically convinced of a 
 hereafter, in which no vision of God would reach the 
 spirit ? To believe in another life, or in many other 
 lives, is not necessarily to "see the Father," or to 
 have God abiding in us : it is not necessarily to 
 breathe the spirit of "trust, hope, and love." The 
 Revelation of Reason and Love as the Soul of the 
 Universe, and of ourselves as His children, begets 
 in us " a hope full of immortality," of which we 
 might not be persuaded though one rose from the 
 
1 26 Revelation. 
 
 dead. " Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet 
 have believed " — so anchored their minds and hearts 
 in God, that they can with calmness await the 
 opening of the door into the unseen. Religion, may 
 we not say ? does not rest on our belief in a hereafter, 
 but rather belief in a hereafter on that religion which 
 is the Revelation of God in the soul. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE 
 
" I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life : no man cometh unto the Father but 
 by me."— Jons siv. 6. 
 
 Tbas the fourth Gospel need not be a fabrication, even though it made an artistic 
 use of the Apostle's namel Its beauty, its edification, and its sanctity, even the 
 exalted, s^eet and TTinning impreseion of passages snch as John iii, 16, iv, 23, xiv. 2, 
 which are so worthy of the mouth of Jesus, and which John might have heard Him 
 speak, does not depend merely on the name, as those suppose who can allow no 
 sanctity to that which is holy when the name is wanting. The God of the spirits 
 of all men, and the Lord of the Church, has, out of His fulness, not merely spoken 
 through John, nor yet even throiigh the lips of the Son of Man, but rather through 
 all those who have loved Him in Jesus. Our author has also written- with the just 
 conviction that the Apostles and that John would have thus written if they had 
 lived at that time: he has written in fulfilment of his calling and supported by the 
 prophetic spirit of truth, in which he believed, and which he zealotaly proclaimed. 
 He has written in frank and holy inspiration, young in love and probably in age, 
 and no doubt among the most excellent of those who flourished in the age suc- 
 ceeding to the Apostles. — Jesus of Nazara^ Keim, 
 
 Now when the Lord God and His Son Jesus Christ sent me forth into the world 
 to preach his everlasting Gospel and Kingdom, I was glad that I was commanded 
 to turn people to that inward Light, Spirit, and Grace, by which all might know 
 their salvation, and their way to God ; even that Divine Spirit which would 
 lead them into all truth, and which I infallibly knew would never deceive any. 
 But with and by this divine Power and Spirit of God, and the Light of Jesus, I was 
 to bring people ofE from all their own ways, to Christ the new and living "Way ; 
 and from their churches, which men had made and gathered, to the Church in Grod, 
 the General Assembly written in heaven, which Christ is the Head of ; and oflE from the 
 world's teachers, made by men, to learn of Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and 
 the Life, of whom the Father said, " This is My beloved Son, hear ye Him ;" and off 
 from the world's worships, to know the Spirit of truth in the inward pmts, and to 
 be led thereby ; that in it they might worship the Father of spirits, who seeks such 
 to worship Him : which spirit they that worshipped not in, knew not what they 
 worshipped.— ffeorgfeFoa:'* Journal. 
 
 What we are trying to arrive at is the eternal Gospel. But before we can reach 
 it, the comparative history and philosophy of religions must assign to Christianity 
 its true place, and must judge it. The religion too which Jesus professed must be 
 disentangled from the religion which has taken Jesus for its object. And when at 
 last we are able to point out the state of consciousness which is the primitive cell, 
 the principle of the eternal Gospel, we shall have reached our goal, for in it is 
 the punctum saliens of pore religion. — Amiel's Journal. 
 
 Beauty, old yet ever new ! 
 
 Eternal Voice ami Inward Word, 
 The Logos of the Greek and Jew, 
 
 The old sphere-music which the Samian heard. 
 Truth which sage and prophet saw, 
 
 Long sought without, but found within, 
 The Law of Love beyond all law, 
 
 The Life o'erflooding mortal death and sin.— H7;(7/(e/-. 
 
THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE. 
 
 I AM the Way, and the Truth, and the Life," says 
 the Christ of John's gospel. How shall we 
 interpret these familiar words in the light of to-day ? 
 Have they any longer a meaning for the Bible-critic, 
 and the student of history, the non-believer in dogma, 
 the cultured and scientific ? 
 
 That, rightly interpreted, they have a meaning, and 
 a most profound meaning, for all time — that, rightly 
 interpreted, they express the very essence of the 
 gospel " which shall be to all the people," the essence 
 of the deepest and highest religion — it will be my 
 endeavour now to show. 
 
 An orthodox Protestant clergyman of fifty years 
 ago, would probably thus have paraphrased this 
 well-known text: — "All we like sheep have gone 
 astray, we have wandered far off from God. By 
 reason of our first parents' sin, and our own actual 
 transgressions, we are utterly and for ever lost. But 
 
 10 
 
130 The Way, the Truth, 
 
 a little while, and, like some rudderless ship upon an 
 angry waste of waters, we shall be dashed against the 
 rocks of perdition, or like a benighted traveller on 
 the mountains, wandering on the brink of dreadful 
 precipices and yawning abysses, we shall be hurled 
 into everlasting destruction, and have our portion 
 with devils in the lake that burneth with fire and 
 brimstone. There to all eternity, tormented by insuf- 
 ferable heat, our tongues parched with unquenchable 
 thirst, our souls gnawed with the undying worm of 
 remorse, mocked at by devils, and cursed by fellow- 
 men, we shall writhe, and groan, and shriek. Such is 
 the awful fate of the human Race. And in a few years 
 a,t longest — it may be in a day, an hour, a minute — 
 each of us shall be swept into eternity, with its untold 
 torments and horrors, and that eternal living death. 
 How shall you find a way out of this dreadful fate, 
 this ruin and damnation ? 
 
 " You think perhaps that by repentance, by good 
 deeds, by prayer and penance, and the observance of 
 sacred rites, you can escape. But that is a way which 
 only leads more surely to the brink of the precipice. 
 No repentance of yours, no righteousness of your own, 
 can save you, a miserable sinner. To attempt thus 
 to escape, is only to make your guilt greater, and to 
 sink deeper into the mire ; it is to insult high Heaven 
 with an offering of filthy rags ; for ' all our righteous- 
 
and the Life. 131 
 
 ness is as filthy rags, and our iniquities, like the wind, 
 have carried us away.' 
 
 "No, there is only one way of escape — a way pro- 
 vided by God Himself for those whom He has chosen 
 from all eternity. Christ's sufferings and death are 
 the way. Only by believing that He bore all your 
 penalty, and suffered what you deserve to suffer, can 
 you hope to escape. There is the way — the way from 
 hell to heaven. Theife is the ladder let down to poor 
 shipwrecked, drowning humanity ; lay hold of it 
 quickly. 
 
 ' Life is tte season God liatli given 
 To flee from hell and rise to heaven ; 
 That day of grace fleets fast away, 
 And none its rapid course can stay.' 
 
 " This is the only true way of escape. All else is 
 lies and deception. Those who would persuade you 
 otherwise are antichrists, lying spirits, that seek to 
 deceive even the elect, and lure souls to destruction. 
 Here alone is the trwth. And only by unconditionally 
 accepting it can you reach the life of heaven. All 
 they that reject the proffered Saviour are doomed to 
 eternal death. Listen, therefore, to the voice of Christ, 
 'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.' " 
 
 An orthodox Eoman Catholic would go further, and 
 say, "You must come into the true way through the 
 gates of baptism and the Host. Christ is the Church, 
 
132 The Way, the Truth, 
 
 the Church is Christ, and only by baptism and the 
 eating of bread which has been miraculously changed 
 into Christ, can you truly live : only thus can the Life 
 flow into you, and reconstruct your corrupt and dying 
 nature." 
 
 To most of us, I suppose, such an interpretation of 
 the text must appear repulsive. We regard it as 
 implying conceptions of God and His government 
 from which we shrink as blasphemous, and we feel 
 sure that but for the real Christianity which lies in 
 the hearts and lives of many whose formal creed seems 
 so unchristian, such representations of the Supreme 
 would more speedily be cast out, like salt which has 
 lost its savour. We cannot any longer entertain such 
 a conception of the destiny of the human Race. Our 
 science and history — nay, the very man, or Christ, in 
 us — cry out against it. And what can we think of a 
 Christ who endorses such a view of the universe, and 
 professes to be the Son of a God who has created 
 millions only to be tormented for ever and ever ? 
 How can we think of Him as the Brother and Friend 
 of man, who can be content to let even one of His 
 poor brothers sink into eternal flames ? What shall we 
 think of an Omnipotent and Omniscient Brother who 
 two thousand years ago allows Himself to be immo- 
 lated, and then retires to heavenly bliss, leaving us to 
 sink or swim, and knowing that the majority will 
 
and the Life. 133 
 
 not — by God's eternal decree, the true Calvinist adds, 
 cannot — accept, and perhaps will never hear of, the 
 Way, the Truth, and the Life? How shall we love a 
 Christ like this ? What sort of a religion is this that 
 silences my reason and my heart, and bids me blindly 
 accept a text of Scripture written I don't know by 
 whom, and I don't know when, and the teachijig of 
 fallible theologians, or else be damned ? 
 
 But there it is, some one whispers — there it is in 
 Scripture. To which we reply, " So much the worse 
 for Scripture if it is." Though an angel from heaven 
 told me this, I would not believe him, and would 
 regard him as an angel from the other place, trans- 
 formed into an angel of light. 
 
 But is this the only meaning we can find in the 
 text ? I think not. If we will let the gospel of 
 John speak for itself, and not put our own ideas 
 into it, we shall perhaps find that it says something 
 very different from all this. 
 
 First I must tell you how I regard the gospel of 
 John. I do not think it is strictly speaking a 
 purely historical book. It is the latest gospel that 
 has come down to us, and it is tinged with modes 
 of thought to which probably Jesus himself was a 
 stranger. It suggests to us quite naturally the 
 atmosphere of Alexandria, or of later Palestinian 
 theology. There may be real historical elements in 
 
134 T^f^^ Way, the Truth, 
 
 it, but its purpose is not to tell us a story' or' 
 narrative, but rather to exhibit to us Jesus as the 
 embodiment of the Divine Keason, the revelation 
 of the real Life both of God and of man. 
 
 I think of John as a deeply religious, and at the 
 same time philosophical soul, pondering the meaning 
 of that strange life which was beginning to revolu- 
 tionize the world. I can fancy him a man who had 
 reflected much on the problems of his times, and 
 who used the language of the schools in Asia Minor 
 or Alexandria. Meditating on the life of Jesus, the 
 idea flashed into his mind that the Light which shone 
 through the Son of Man was nothing less than the, 
 very secret of the universe of which as a philosopher- 
 he was in search. Had not he and his whole school 
 been puzzling themselves to flnd a link between the 
 Inflnite One, the Eternal " Abyss " of Being, and the 
 finite world, and as to how " the Infinite " of philo- 
 sophy could produce a "finite," or anything but 
 " the Infinite ? " Had not philosophy been eagerly 
 knocking at every door and asking. What is the 
 ultimate truth — " the good" — for man? In a moment 
 . of inspiration it all becomes clear to him : — " There 
 is the Way to the Infinite Father — God's Reason 
 embodied in a human life of goodness and love. Not 
 by philosophic speculation but along the new and 
 living way of love we know God, and God dwells in 
 
and the Life. 135 
 
 us, and we finite creatures share in God, and God 
 comes forth to share His life witli His own children. 
 There is the truth of God. There is the hidden Life 
 of the universe, the all-inspiring, all-informing Life. 
 God is Spirit; and the Spirit that gives shape and 
 meaning to all we see, the Spirit that is the Life 
 of the universe, and the real Life of man, is manifested 
 in Jesus. No man hath seen the absolute- God, the 
 Root and Basis of all things, but here is the glory of 
 the Invisible shining in the face of Jesus — the " Only- 
 Begotten," " the Son," " the Word," the Creati\e 
 Reason of the Eternal, of which philosophy has 
 spoken, made manifest in a human life. Through 
 this Jesus, full of grace and truth, I seem to see into 
 the very heart of God, and the door into the Infinite 
 Spirit, which no philosophic or scientific key has 
 hitherto unlocked, flies open at His touch." 
 
 In such deeply spiritual mood we seem to see the 
 author of this gospel, and of the first epistle which 
 bears the same name, writing, and putting into the 
 mouth of Jesus, words which expressed his own deep 
 feeling of all that Jesus had been to him, of the 
 vision of God which like a sunbeam had broken 
 into his own soul through reflection on the life of 
 Jesus. 
 
 " I am the Life. I am come that they might have 
 life. This is eternal life, to know Thee and Jesus 
 
136 The Way, the Truth, 
 
 Christ whom Thou hast sent. I and my Father are 
 one. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. 
 I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Except ye 
 eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, 
 ye have no life in you." Such sayings are not, 
 I think, the actual words of Jesus taken down by 
 a reporter ; they are the words of the Divine 
 Reason, that according to such thinkers as Philo, 
 had always been in the world, and in human souls, 
 linking together the Infinite and the finite, but now 
 made flesh and tabernacling among us. They are 
 the voice of the Divine Light calling us to come into 
 the sunshine and take the Light into ourselves, and 
 so become one with God. Jesus is the Life and the 
 Light. By uniting ourselves with Him we take 
 God's life into us, therefore eternal Life, for God 
 can never die. By uniting ourselves with Him, we 
 take God's light into us — ^nay, we become Light, 
 Sons of God. For " God is Light," cries John, " and 
 in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we 
 have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, 
 we lie, and do not the truth." 
 
 This, I think, is the gospel according to John. His 
 aim is to exhibit God's Light, so that, forsaking all 
 works of darkness, we may be drawn into it. This, to 
 him, is salvation and redemption. His aim is to ex- 
 hibit to us God's Life, so that receiving it into our- 
 
and the Life. 137 
 
 selves as bread and wine, we may live as God lives, 
 as spirits over whom neither devil nor death can 
 have any power. " These things are written that 
 ye may believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and 
 that believing ye may have life." The birth, death, 
 life, resurrection, are manifestations of the Life 
 and Light of God, in which we are all called to 
 share, and outside of which is, of necessity, death 
 and darkness, as for a branch is death when cut off 
 from the tree, as for the earth is darkness when 
 hidden from the sun. "He that followeth Me shall 
 not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." 
 
 When we thus regard the gospel of John, it loses 
 that harshness and self-assertiveness which some- 
 times jar upon us in the long discourses. We can 
 then reconcile the " gentle Jesus " of the Sermon on 
 the Mount, with the Jesus who demands absolute 
 submission to Himself, and seems ever to speak of 
 Himself. We understand why it is that the Christ of 
 John and the Christ of Mark should be so different, 
 and yet so one. 
 
 When we thus regard the writings of John, we 
 seem to see in them an expression of the gospel which 
 fits in with all the highest thinking of to-day. 
 A mysterious, supernatural Being such as we find 
 in dogmatic theology, who bids us bend to Him and 
 receive Him as God, cannot sway the minds and 
 
138 The Way, the Truth, 
 
 hearts of men and women to-day. We shrink from 
 .the fourth gospel as it is usually interpreted, because 
 it seems to bafl9.e our reason, and demand of us more 
 than we can give. But a religion which is the 
 opening of mind and heart to Love as the very 
 Light and Life of God Himself, appeals to all 
 that is best and most rational in us. We cannot 
 understand why, because of our belief in a dogma, 
 we should be lifted into heaVen, or because of 
 our disbelief be plunged into hell. But we can 
 understand how, if Jesus was the revelation of the 
 Soul of the Universe, how, if Love is the God-life 
 and the Divine Radiance, to trust in Him and receive 
 Him is Life, and Truth, and the Way of Light and 
 Peace, and that to reject Him is to abide in darkness 
 and death. It is not, then, because we do not hold this 
 belief or that, that we are " condemned," but because' 
 Light has come into the world and men loved dark- 
 ness rather than Light ; because we cut oturselves off 
 from God, the Spirit of Love and Life, and follow 
 the paths of death. 
 
 The great question for us, Fellow-Christians, is not 
 as to the constitution of the nature of Jesus, but as to 
 the Soul of the Universe. " Show us the Father," we 
 still cry — often an exceeding great and bitter cry — 
 " show us the Father, and it suflBceth us." The long- 
 ing of religion does not grow less as time rolls on and 
 
and the Life. 139 
 
 knowledge is increased — the longing to find a rest for 
 mind and heart, and a meaning in the strange history 
 of the Universe. After we have exhausted all that 
 Science has to tell us of the development of man, and 
 the fairy-tale-like story of Evolution, do we not ask- 
 with even redoubled earnestness, " Show us the Father, 
 and it sufficeth us?" Show us the Root out of which 
 the tree springs, the Fountain out of which the river 
 flows, and the Ocean where it finds its rest. Science 
 alone can never answer that question. Darwin, and 
 Haeckel, and Von Baer, and Wallace have much to 
 teach us — much that was hidden from prophets and 
 righteous men of old time. But it is to Jesus, and 
 Paul, and John we still turn for the inspiration of 
 lAje. All our Science, valuable though it be, still 
 leaves a blank in the heart, and a dreary sense of 
 incompleteness in the mind. Our Science and Culture 
 can do much for us, but they cannot make us strong 
 and peaceful, or supply the foundation for a noble 
 human life. Be your speculative beliefs what they 
 may, it is only when in trust, and hope, and love, men 
 receive the loving Christ, the Son, the Brother, as the 
 revelation in Humanity of the Unseen God, that they 
 become most truly human, most rational, most moral. 
 And is not this -the deepest evidence to the truth 
 of religion — the witness of the Spirit? If the fact 
 that food nourishes us is the best proof that it 
 
140 The Way, the Truth, 
 
 is food and not poison, is not the same sort of 
 proof afforded by the religion of trust, and hope, and 
 love ? It is something to be able to say that it, and 
 it alone, can make the spirit strong, and bring the 
 glow of life and health into the cheek. 
 
 " I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." Belief 
 in the dogmas which are supposed to rest on such 
 texts may decay, but trust in the religion of which 
 they are the expression is ever young. Do not fear 
 that Jesus will damn you because you have not 
 thought thus or thus of His place in the Godhead, or 
 His death on the cross. No. He is no petty King, 
 jealous of His own honour, or baffling you with per- 
 plexing theology. If you take trust and love as 
 your guides, and accept Him as the revelation of the 
 Supreme Spirit, He will lead you to the Father, to 
 the deepest truth, to the richest life. If you refuse 
 to walk in this way, then must you stand without, as 
 many of us are standing, in the dark chill night — our 
 hands numb, our hearts beating slowly, our minds a 
 troubled sea, our life without a compass on the 
 shoreless waste. 
 
 The old worn-out forms of religion, I know, we 
 must all sooner or later discard. It is only a 
 matter of time. But does not John suggest to us 
 a religion which shall be the crown and glory of 
 our human thought, and progress, and moral 
 
and the Life. 141 
 
 achievement? There. is no need for us to interpret 
 him in the light of later theology, or to read into 
 him those revolting conceptions of God and human 
 destiny, which have too long usurped the title of 
 " orthodox " or " evangelical." A recent writer has, in 
 an eloquent book, described what he calls " the Ascent 
 of Man."* At the end of his book he says that the 
 story of Human Evolution culminates in Christianity; 
 by Christianity evidently meaning the gospel of 
 divine and human Love. Evolution henceforth, he 
 maintains, will be the unfolding and growth in 
 Society, of this highest element which all the ages 
 have been travailing to bring forth. What is 
 this highest element through which humanity is 
 uplifted, and borne onwards as by a swelling tide, 
 but John's " Only Begotten of the Father," whom 
 he represents as " the Way, the Truth, and the 
 Life ! " 
 
 Christ in this sense, as God's uttered Reason, God's 
 revelation — the revelation of the most human and 
 the most divine — is indeed " the Way " at once to God 
 and to our own higher destiny as men and women. 
 Christ in this sense is " the Truth " hid from the wise 
 and prudent, but revealed to babes. Christ in this 
 sense is "the Life" — the Life of God that has been 
 
 * " The Ascent of Man," by Professor Drummond. 
 
142 The Way, the Truth, and the Life. 
 
 living in all the ages, and working towards a divine- 
 human goal. 
 
 To receive Christ is, therefore, to receive God. He 
 is "Immanuel" — God with us. To receive Christ is 
 to receive the Truth. To receive Christ is to receive 
 into us the Divine Reason or Spirit, which is the 
 only reality, the Life and Light in which and through 
 which all things are, and without which the story 
 of earth and man is but a castle of illusions and 
 fantastic dreams. For what rational meaning has 
 all this marvellous universe, and our own history, 
 save as they are the evolution of the Divine Reason, 
 or '' Word," of which John and the early Christian 
 Fathers so constantly speak, faith in which is the 
 strength of a man's heart, and gives power, as John 
 says, to become the sons of God ? To receive Christ 
 is not to believe a miracle or accept a dogma, but so 
 to yield our hearts and minds to Love and Light that 
 we are drawn onwards and upwards along "a new 
 and living Way," " the narrow Way " of which Jesus 
 speaks, that can alone lead nations, and churches, and 
 each individual soul, not into safety merely, and a 
 selfish heaven, but into the fulness of human life. 
 
 George Eobertson and Compnny, Melbourne. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 A Book of Eeligion for Families asti Schools - Is 
 
 Church Worship (Hymns, Psalms, and Praters) 
 
 2s 6d and 3s 6d 
 
 Songs of Hope .vnd Progress (for Workers' Meetings) 6d 
 
 The Ideal Church 3d 
 
 The Broad Church 3d 
 
 The Thirst for God 3d 
 
 The Old Theology and the New - 3d 
 
 Church-Going 3d 
 
 The Christ after the Flesh, and the Christ 
 
 after the Spirit 3d 
 
 The Boots of Sweating (Land and CompetitionJ id 
 
 The Westminster Assembly of Divines Id 
 
 And other Sermons and Lectures. 
 
 May be had on application to the Secretary of the Australian 
 Church, Melbourne. 
 
4<^?V^- 
 
 1