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 Library 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029238775 
 
NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
OTHER WORKS BY GOLDWIN SMITH 
 
 THE UNITED KINGDOM: A Political History. 
 In 2 volumes. The Macmillan Co. Price, $4.00 
 —15s. 
 
 THE UNITED STATES : An Outline of Political 
 History, 1492-1871. The Macmillan Co. Price, 
 $2.00— 8s. 6d. 
 
 ESSAYS ON QUESTIONS OF THE DAY, POLI- 
 TICAL AND SOCIAL. Seeond edition. The 
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 OXFORD AND HER COLLEGES. Illustrated. The 
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 GUESSES AT THE RIDDLE OP EXISTENCE. 
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 A TRIP TO ENGLAND. The Macmillan Co. Price, 
 75c. — 3s. 
 
 BAY LEAVES. Translations from the Latin Poets. 
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 SPECIMENS OF GREEK TRAGEDY. Translated. 
 The Macmillan Co. Vol. 1, iEscHYLUs and Sopho- 
 cles. Price, $1.25 — 5s. Vol. 2, Euripides. Price, 
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 LIFE OF COWPER. The Macmillan Co. Price, 40c. 
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 THE LIFE OF JANE AUSTEN. London: Walter 
 Scott. Price, 40e. — Is. 6d. 
 
 MY MEMORY OF GLADSTONE. 
 
 With Portrait. Toronto: William Tyrrell & Co. 
 Price, 75c. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE, THE MAN. Toronto: Morang & 
 Co. Price 75c— 2s. 6d. 
 
 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM. Toronto: 
 Morang & Co. Price, 40c. net. 
 
 IN THE COURT OF HISTORY : An Apology fob 
 Canadians who were opposed to the South 
 African War. Toronto: William Tyrrell & Co. 
 
 IRISH HISTORY AND THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 The Macmillan Co. of Canada. Price, $1.50— 5s. 
 
NO REFUGE 
 
 BUT IN 
 
 TRUTH 
 
 BY 
 GOLDWIN SMITH 
 
 TORONTO 
 
 WM. TYRRELL & COMPANY 
 
 1908 
 
A. ^-mz-v 
 
 Copyright, 1907-1908 
 
 BY THE 
 
 SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 Copyright, Canada, 1908 
 
 BY 
 
 GOIyDWIN SMITH 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface. 
 
 I. Man and His Destiny .... 1 
 
 II. New Faith Linked with Old . 15 
 
 III. The Scope of Evolution ... 21 
 
 IV. The Limit of Evolution ... 25 
 
 V. Explanations 29 
 
 VI. The Immortality of the Soul . 33 
 
 VII. Is there to be a Revolution in 
 
 Ethics? 37 
 
 The Religious Situation 43 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The letters collected in this volume 
 appeared, with others, in the New York 
 Sun, to the Editor of which the thanks of 
 the writer for his courtesy are due. 
 
 Appended is a paper on the same 
 subjects commenting on one by the late 
 Mr. Chamberlain, since published in the 
 North American Review. To the Editor 
 of the North American Revieiv also the 
 writer's acknowledgments are due. 
 
 There appeared to be sufficient interest 
 in the discussion to call for the publication 
 of a small edition. 
 
 The age calls for religious truth. Nine 
 thousand persons communicated their 
 cravings to the Editor of the London 
 Daily Telegraph. By their side the 
 present writer places himself, not a 
 teacher, but an inquirer, seeking for 
 truth and open to conviction. 
 
 The position of the clergy, especially 
 where tests are stringent, calls for our 
 
utmost consideration. But I submit that 
 it would not be improved by any attempt, 
 such as seems to be made in a work of 
 great ability before me, to merge the 
 theological in the social question. Bene- 
 volence may still be far below the Gospel 
 mark, and the Christian faith may suffer 
 from its default. But the increase of it 
 and the multiplication of its monuments 
 since the world has been comparatively at 
 peace cannot be denied; while of the 
 distress which still calls for an increase of 
 Christian effort, not the whole is due to 
 default on the part of the wealthier 
 classes. Idleness, vice, intemperance, im- 
 provident marriage, play their part. Let 
 us not be led away upon a false issue. 
 There is nothing for it but truth. 
 
I. 
 
 MAN, AND HIS DESTINY. 
 
 Time has passed since I first sought 
 access to the columns of The Sun, rang- 
 ing myself with the nine thousand who 
 in an English journal had craved for 
 religipus light. The movement which 
 caused that craving has gone on. The 
 Churches show their sense of it. Even in 
 that of Rome there is a growth of 
 "Modernism," as it is called by the Pope, 
 who, having lost his mediaeval preserva- 
 tives of unity, strives to quell Modernism 
 by denunciation. Anglicanism resorts to 
 a grand pageant of uniformity, beneath 
 which, however, lurk Anglo-Catholicism, 
 Evangelicism, and Liberalism, by no 
 means uniform in faith. The Protestant 
 Churches proper, their spirit being more 
 emotional, feel the doctrinal movement 
 
2 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 less. But they are not unmoved, as they 
 show by relaxation of tests and inclination 
 to informal if not formal union, as well 
 as by increasing the aesthetic and social 
 attractions of their cult. Wild theosophic 
 sects are born and die. But marked is the 
 increase of scepticism, avowed and 
 unavowed. It advances probably every- 
 where in the track of physical science. 
 We are confronted with the vital question 
 what the world would be without religion, 
 without trust in Providence, without hope 
 or fear of a hereafter. Social order is 
 threatened. Classes which have hitherto 
 acquiesced in their lot, believing that it 
 was a divine ordinance and that there 
 would be redress and recompense in a 
 future state, are now demanding that 
 conditions shall be levelled here. The 
 nations quake with fear of change. The 
 leaders of humanity, some think, may 
 even find it necessary to make up by an 
 increase of the powers of government for 
 the lost influence of religion. 
 
 Belief in the Bible as inspired and 
 God's revelation of himself to man seems 
 
MAN AND HIS DESTINY. 6 
 
 hardly to linger in well-informed and 
 open minds. Criticism, history, and sci- 
 ence have conspired to put an end to 
 it. The authorship of the greater part, 
 including the most important books, is 
 unknown. The morality of the Old 
 Testament differs from that of the New, 
 and though in advance of the world gener- 
 ally in those days, in more places than one, 
 as in the case of the slaughter of the 
 Canaanites, shocks us now. There are 
 errors, too, in the Old Testament of a 
 physical kind, such as those in the account 
 of creation and the belief in the revolution 
 of the sun. Of the New Testament the 
 most important books, the first three Gos- 
 pels, our main authorities for the life of 
 Christ, are manifestly grafts upon a stock 
 of unknown authorship and date. They 
 betray a belief in diabolical possession, a 
 local superstition from which the author 
 of the Fourth Gospel, who evidently was 
 not a Palestinian Jew, was free. There is 
 discrepancy between the first three Gos- 
 pels and the fourth, notably as to the day 
 .and consequent significance of Christ's 
 
4 NO KEFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 celebration of the Passover. It is incred- 
 ible that God in revealing himself to man 
 should have allowed any mark of human 
 error to appear in the revelation. 
 
 We have, moreover, to ask why that on 
 which the world's salvation depended 
 should have been withheld so long and 
 communicated to so few. 
 
 There remains of the Old Testament, 
 besides its vast historical interest, much 
 that morally still impresses and exalts us. 
 Of the New Testament there remains the 
 moral ideal of Christ, our faith in which 
 no uncertainty as to the authors of the 
 narratives, or mistrust of them on account 
 of the miraculous embellishment common 
 in biographies of saints, need materially 
 affect. The moral ideal of Christ con- 
 quered the ancient world when the Roman, 
 mighty in character as well as in arms, 
 was its master. It has lived through all 
 these centuries, all their revolutions and 
 convulsions, the usurpation, tyranny, and 
 scandals of the Papacy. The most doubt- 
 ful point of it, considered as a permanent 
 exemplar, is its tendency, not to asceti- 
 
MAN AND HIS DESTINY. 
 
 cism, for Christ came "eating and drink- 
 ing," but to an excessive preference for 
 poverty and antipathy to wealth which 
 would arrest human progress and kill 
 civilization. We have, however, a Nico- 
 demus and a Joseph of Arimathea, as well 
 as a Dives and a Lazarus. Nothing points 
 to a Simeon Stylites. Self-denial, though 
 not asceticism proper, is a necessary part 
 of the life of a wandering preacher, which 
 also precluded the exhibition of domestic 
 virtues. The relation of Jesus with his 
 family seems to have been hardly 
 domestic ; we have no record of any com- 
 munication between him and Joseph ; in 
 his last hour he provides a retreat for his 
 mother. 
 
 We cannot appeal from reason to faith. 
 Faith is confidence, and for confidence 
 there must be reason. The faith to which 
 appeal is made is in fact an emotion 
 rather than an intellectual conviction. 
 
 But apart from the Bible, have we any 
 revelation of the nature, the will, the 
 unity, the existence of deity? It must 
 apparently be owned that, though we 
 
6 NO EEFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 tremble at the thought, we have none. 
 We are left upon this shore of time gazing 
 into infinity and eternity without clue or 
 guidance except such as we can gain either 
 by inspection of our own nature with its 
 moral indications and promptings or by 
 studying the order of the universe. 
 
 We find in man, it is true, a natural 
 belief in deity, which we might think was 
 implanted by his creator; but it is not 
 found in all men, and in the lower races it 
 assumes forms often so low and grotesque 
 that we cannot imagine its origin to have 
 been divine. Between the Grod of the 
 Christian and the god of the red Indian 
 there is, saving mere force, no affinity 
 whatever. This we must frankly own to 
 ourselves. The god of the Mexican 
 demanded human sacrifice. 
 
 On earth the creative power seems to be, 
 as it were, contending against itself. 
 Good of every kind is in conflict with evil. 
 Slowly and fitfully, with many reverses, 
 good seems to prevail. Humanity as a 
 whole advances, and if we could believe 
 in its collective advance toward an ulti- 
 
MAN AND HIS DESTINY. 7 
 
 mate perfection which all who have con- 
 tributed to the advance should share, we 
 might have a solution of the great prob- 
 lem. But of this we have no certain 
 assurance. Multitudes come into being 
 who to progress can contribute nothing. 
 There is evil of all kinds that so far as 
 we can see can be followed by no good 
 effect. Plague and famine, with a great 
 part of the common misfortunes of human 
 life, seem merely evil. So, plainly, do the 
 sufferings of animals, sometimes on a 
 terrible scale and apparently quite use- 
 less. As long as effort, even painful, is 
 the price of perfection the price must be 
 paid and we acquiesce. But in innumer- 
 able cases there appears to be no room 
 for that explanation. The rocks display 
 the fossil remains of whole races of 
 primeval animals produced apparently 
 only to become extinct. Of the earth 
 itself, man's destined habitation, large 
 portions are utterly uninhabitable. The 
 legendary war between the powers of 
 good and evil, God and Satan, Ormuzd 
 and Ahriman, was a fable naturally 
 
8 NO EEFITGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 devised, though the birth of the two 
 powers and the division of existence 
 between them is inconceivable. Can any- . 
 thing like a clear line be drawn between 
 good and evil*? 
 
 Effort and resistance to temptation may 
 seem necessary ingredients in the forma- 
 tion of a virtuous character. So far we 
 may think we have the clue. But what is 
 to be said of the myriads of cases in which 
 virtuous effort seems to be morally impos- 
 sible ; in the case, for instance, of barbar- 
 ous or corrupt and depraved tribes or 
 nations in which general example is evil ? 
 What is to be said of deaths in infancy, 
 when there has been no time for character 
 to be formed? To suppose that the 
 Creator could not have helped it, that 
 this was his only way to the production of 
 virtuous beings, is to deny his omnipo- 
 tence. A Satan with horns and hoofs, 
 struggling against the power of good, used 
 to be the solution of the problem, but 
 belongs to the simple religion of the past. 
 
 A plan of which we are ignorant, but of 
 which the end will be good, is apparently 
 
MAN AND HIS DESTINY. 9 
 
 our only explanation of the mystery. 
 The earth is beautiful; we have human 
 society with all its interests; • we have 
 friendship, love, and marriage; we have 
 art and music. We must trust that the 
 power which will determine the future 
 reveals itself in these. 
 
 The belief that man has an immortal 
 soul inserted into a mortal body from 
 which, being, as Bishop Butler phrases it, 
 ' ' indiscerptible, " it is parted at death, has 
 become untenable. We know that man is 
 one ; that all grows and develops together. 
 Imagination cannot picture a disembodied 
 soul. The spiritualist apparitions are 
 always corporeal. 
 
 Free will surely we unquestionably 
 have. Necessarianism seems to assume 
 that in action there is only one element, 
 motive. But reflection seems to show that 
 there are two elements, motive and will; 
 and of this duality we seem to be sensible 
 when we waver in action or feel compunc- 
 tion for what we have done. Is it possible 
 to explain moral repentance or morality 
 at all without assuming the freedom of 
 
10 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 the will? Habit may enslave; but to be 
 enslaved is once to have been free. 
 
 What is conscience? When we repent 
 morally are we looking only to the imme- 
 diate consequences of the act, or are we 
 also looking to the injury done to our 
 moral nature? If the latter, does it not 
 appear that there is something in us not 
 material and pointing to a higher life? 
 Much of us, no doubt, is material. Mem- 
 ory and imagination often act unbidden 
 by the will; imagination often when we 
 are asleep. We may find a material 
 element even in the character as moulded 
 by plrysical or social circumstance or need. 
 But is there not also a conscious effort of 
 self -improvement not dependent on these? 
 That all is material, nothing spiritual, 
 does not seem yet to have been proved. 
 
 It is by close examination of our own 
 nature and its workings, perhaps, that we 
 are most likely to solve the enigma of our 
 being. The word spiritual surely has a 
 meaning ; it suggests self-culture not only 
 for the present but for a higher state. 
 
MAN AND HIS DESTINY. 11 
 
 Evolution is a great discovery. But 
 evolution cannot have evolved itself, nor 
 does there seem to have been an observed 
 case of it. Points of similarity between 
 the ape and man are not proofs of transi- 
 tion. Has any animal given, like man, the 
 slightest sign of self -improvement or con- 
 scious tendency to progress % 
 
 The putting on by the mortal of immor- 
 tality, it must however be owned, baffles 
 conception. In the apologue of Dives and 
 Lazarus the dead appear still in their 
 human forms and talk to each other across 
 the gulf, apparently narrow, which 
 divides the abode of the damned from that 
 of the blessed. This clearly is the work of 
 imagination. Nor, seeing the infinite 
 gradations of character and the frequent 
 mixture of good and evil in the same man, 
 can we understand how a clear line can be 
 drawn between those who are admitted to 
 heaven and those who are condemned to 
 hell. 
 
 Mere difficulties of sense or intellect on 
 mundane questions might be met by 
 appeal to the mysteries of a universe 
 
12 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 which may conceivably be other in reality 
 than to us it appears. But it is to be sup- 
 posed that divine beneficence would give 
 its creatures all powers of intelligence 
 necessary to their moral welfare, above all 
 those entailing reward or punishment in 
 a future life. 
 
 What is to be said in this connection of 
 man's aesthetic nature, of his sense of 
 beauty and melody? Can they be. the 
 offspring of material evolution % As they 
 meet no material need, we might almost 
 take them for the smile of a beneficent and 
 sympathizing spirit. The basis of the 
 gifts no doubt is physical, but we cannot 
 easily understand how they can have been 
 developed by a purely physical process. 
 
 To ghosts and apparitions of all kinds, 
 spiritualism included, we bid a long fare- 
 well. 
 
 We turn to the universe, of which 
 while we believed in the Incarnation our 
 earth was the central and all-important 
 scene, but in which it now holds the place 
 only of a minor planet. We see order and 
 grandeur inexpressible, but with some 
 
MAN AND HIS DESTINY. 13 
 
 apparent signs of an opposite kind — the 
 conflagration of a star, a moon bereft of 
 atmosphere, errant comets and aerolites. 
 In our own abode we have variations of 
 weather, apparently accidental and some- 
 times noxious, atmospheric influences 
 which beget plagues, ministers of destruc- 
 tion such as earthquakes and volcanoes. 
 The plan, if plan there is, transcends our 
 sense and comprehension. 
 
 Still, be it ever borne in mind, of the 
 human race, progress, moral and mental, 
 is the unique characteristic, and the one 
 which suggests a divine plan to be fulfilled 
 in the sum of things. It distinguishes man 
 vitally and immeasurably from all other 
 creatures. Fitful, often arrested, some- 
 times reversed, it does not cease. It may 
 point to an ultimate solution of the enigma 
 of our chequered being such as shall 
 "justify the ways of God to man." This 
 may be still the world's childhood, and the 
 faith which seems to be collapsing may be 
 only that of the child. 
 
 Whatever trouble, moral, social, or 
 political, a great change of belief may 
 
14 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 bring, there is surely nothing for it but to 
 seek and embrace the truth. Whatever 
 may become of our creeds and of the 
 dogma, so plainly human in its origin, of 
 some of them, we have still the Christian 
 ideal of character, which has not yet been 
 seriously challenged, does not depend on 
 miracle or dogma for its claim to accept- 
 ance, and may continue to unite Christen- 
 dom. 
 
 Superstition can be of no use morally; 
 even politically it can be of little use, and 
 not for long. In the Christian ideal we 
 still have a rule of life. Robinson, the 
 good Puritan pastor, taking leave of the 
 members of his flock who were embarking 
 for America, bade them not confine them- 
 selves to what they had learned from his 
 teaching, but to "be ready to receive what- 
 ever truth might be made known to them 
 from the written word of God." If there 
 is a God, are not all truths, scientific, his- 
 toric, or critical, as much as anything 
 written in the Bible, the word of Cod ? 
 
 September 20th, 1908. 
 
II. 
 
 NEW FAITH LINKED WITH OLD. 
 
 A preacher cites a lecture of mine, 
 delivered nearly half a century ago, a part 
 of which has had the honour of being 
 embalmed in the work of that most emi- 
 nent theologian, the late Dean Westcott, 
 on ' ' The Historic Faith. ' ' I turned rather 
 nervously to the lecture to see what it was 
 that I had said. Not that I should have 
 been much shocked had I found that 
 my opinions had even been completely 
 changed. Since that lecture was delivered 
 science and criticism have wrought a revo- 
 lution in theological belief, likely, as it 
 appears to me, to be regarded hereafter as 
 the most momentous revolution in his- 
 tory. With the whole passage cited by 
 Dean Westcott I will not burden the 
 
 15 
 
16 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 columns of The Sun, but part of it is 
 this : — 
 
 "The type of character set forth in the 
 Gospel history is an absolute embodiment 
 of love, both in the way of action and 
 affection, crowned by the highest possible 
 exhibition of it in an act of the most trans- 
 cendent self-devotion to the interest of the 
 human race. This being the case, it is 
 difficult to see how the Christian morality 
 can ever be brought into antagonism with 
 the moral progress of mankind; or how 
 the Christian type of character can eveu 
 be left behind by the course of human 
 development, lose the allegiance of the 
 moral world, or give place to newly 
 emerging and higher ideals. This type, it 
 would appear, being perfect, will be final. 
 ' It will be final not as precluding future 
 ! history, but as comprehending it. The 
 moral efforts of all ages, to the consum- 
 mation of the world, will be efforts to 
 realize this character and to make it actu- 
 ally, as it is potentially, universal. While 
 these efforts are being carried on under 
 all the various circumstances of life and 
 
NEW FAITH LINKED WITH OLD. 17 
 
 society, and under all the various moral 
 and intellectual conditions attaching to 
 particular men, an infinite variety of char- 
 acters, personal and national, will be pro- 
 duced ; a variety ranging from the highest 
 human grandeur down to the very verge 
 of the grotesque. But these characters, 
 with all their variations, will go beyond 
 their sources and their ideal only as the 
 rays of light go beyond the sun. Human- 
 ity, as it passes through phase after phase 
 of the historical movement, may advance 
 indefinitely in excellence ; but its advance 
 will be an indefinite approximation to the 
 Christian type. A divergence from that 
 type, to whatever extent it may take place, 
 will not be progress, but debasement and 
 corruption. In a moral point of view, in 
 short, the world may abandon Christian- 
 ity, but it can never advance beyond it. 
 This is not a matter of authority, or even 
 of revelation. If it is true, it is a matter 
 of reason as much as anything in the 
 world. ' ' 
 
 I went on to dwell on the freedom of the 
 Christian type of character as embodied in 
 
18 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 the Founder of Christianity from peculi- 
 arities of nation, race, or sex which might 
 have derogated from its perfection as a 
 type of pure humanity. In those_ days J 
 believed in revelation. Butmy argument 
 was' not from revelation, but from ethics 
 and history. The undertaking of Chris- 
 tianity to convert mankind to a fraternal 
 and purely beneficent type of character 
 and enfold men in a universal brother- 
 hood, baffled and perverted although the 
 effort has been in various ways, appears 
 to have no parallel in ethical history. 
 There is none in the Creek philosophers or 
 the Roman Stoics, high as some of them 
 may soar in their way. Aristotle's ideal 
 man is perfect in its statuesque fashion, 
 but it is not fraternal; it is not even 
 philanthropic. Nor does the Christian, 
 character or the effort to create it depart 
 with belief in dogma. Do not men who 
 have totally renounced the dogma still 
 cultivate a character in its gentleness and 
 benevolence essentially Christian? 
 
 Theory, I have none. I plead, on a foot- 
 ing with the nine thousand correspondents 
 
NEW FAITH LINKED WITH OLD. 19 
 
 of the Daily Telegraph of London, for 
 thoroughgoing allegiance to the truth, 
 emancipation of the clerical intellect from 
 tests, and comprehension in the inquiry 
 not only of the material, but of the higher 
 or spiritual nature of man, including his 
 aspiration to progress, of which there 
 cannot be said to be any visible sign in 
 brutes, whatever rudiments of human 
 faculties and affections they may other- 
 wise display. But /though I have no 
 theory, I cannot help having a conception, 
 and my present conception of the histori- 
 cal relation of Christianity and its 
 Founder to humanity and human progress 
 does not seem to me to be so different from 
 what it was half a century ago as when I 
 came to compare the two I expected to find 
 it. It seems to me still that historv is a 
 vast struggle, with varying success, 
 toward the attainment of moral perfec- 
 tion, of which, if the advent of Christian- 
 ity furnished the true ideal, it may be 
 deemed in a certain sense a revelation. 
 Assuredly it may if in this most mysteri- 
 ous world there is, beneath all the conflict 
 
20 NO KEFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 of good with evil, a spirit striving toward 
 good and destined in the end to prevaiL/"' 
 If there is not such a spirit, if all is matter 
 and chance, we can only say, What a spec- 
 tacle is History ! 
 
 January 20th, 1907. 
 
III. 
 
 THE SCOPE OF EVOLUTION. 
 
 In discussing the ground of ethical 
 science some writers appear to hold that 
 evolution explains all; but surely the 
 illustrious discoverer of evolution never 
 carried his theory beyond the material 
 part of man. He never professed to trace 
 the birth of ethics, idealization, science, 
 poetry, art, religion, or anything spiritual 
 in the anthropoid ape. There is here, 
 apparently, not only a step in development 
 but a saltus mortalis, a dividing and 
 impassable gulf. 
 
 Our bodily senses we share with the 
 brutes. Some brutes excel us in quickness 
 of sense. They have the rudiments, but 
 the rudiments only, of our emotions and 
 affections. The mother bird loves her off- 
 
 21 
 
22 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 spring, but only until they are fledged. 
 The dog is attached to the master who 
 feeds him, commands him, and if he 
 offends whips him ; but without respect to 
 that master's personal character or 
 deserts. He is as much attached to Bill 
 Sykes as he would be to the best of men. 
 The workings of what we call instinct in 
 beavers, bees, and ants are marvellous and 
 seem in some ways almost to outstrip 
 humanity, but they are not, like human- 
 ity, progressive. The ant and the bee of 
 thousands of years ago are the ant and the 
 bee of the present day. The bee is not 
 even taught by experience that her honey 
 will be taken again next year. Still less 
 is it possible to detect anything like moral 
 aspiration or effort at improving the com- 
 munity in a moral way. Beavers are won- 
 derfully co-operative, but they have shown 
 no tendency to establish a church. 
 
 Of the science of ethics the foundation 
 surely is our sense of the difference 
 between right and wrong, and of our 
 obligation to choose the right and avoid 
 the wrong for our own sake and for the 
 
THE SCOPE OF EVOLUTION. 23 
 
 sake of the society of which we are mem- 
 bers and the character of which reacts 
 upon ourselves. This sense seems to me to 
 be authoritative, whatever its origin may 
 be. Different conceptions of right and 
 wrong may to some extent prevail under 
 different circumstances, national or of 
 other kinds, giving room for different 
 ethical systems, as a comparison of the 
 ethics of the Gospel with those of Aristotle 
 shows. Still, there is always the sense of 
 the difference between right and wrong 
 and of the necessity, individual and 
 social, of embracing the first and eschew- 
 ing the second. If the Christian system is 
 found by experience to show itself essen- 
 tially superior to all other systems and to 
 satisfy individually and socially, it is 
 supreme, and is presumably the dictate of 
 the author of our being, if an author of 
 our being there is. 
 
 The necessarian theory, which in this 
 connection is still advanced or implied, 
 largely accepted as it has been, I cannot 
 help thinking is really traceable to an 
 oversight. If in action there were only 
 
24 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 one factor, that is to say, the motive, the 
 action would seem to be necessary and to 
 be traceable in its origin apparently back 
 to the nebula. But surely there are two 
 factors, the motive and the volition. Of 
 the second factor in actions which are 
 matters of course we are not conscious; 
 where there is a conflict of motives or hesi- 
 tation of any kind, we are. Huxley at one 
 time held that man was an automaton. I 
 believe my illustrious friend afterward 
 receded from that position. Yet on the 
 necessarian theory automatons we must 
 apparently be. 
 
 February 10th, 1907. 
 
IV. 
 THE LIMIT OF EVOLUTION. 
 
 Your last correspondent on the subject 
 of my letters treats the question lightly. 
 Perhaps he is young, enjoying the morn- 
 ing of life and thinking little of its close. 
 On the mind of a student of history is 
 deeply impressed the sadness of its page ; 
 the record of infinite misery and suffering 
 as well as depravity, all apparently to no 
 purpose if the end is to be a physical 
 catastrophe. Comtism, while it bids us 
 devote and sacrifice ourselves to the future 
 of humanity, can apparently hold out 
 nothing more. 
 
 I accept evolution, if it is the verdict of 
 science as to the origin of physical species, 
 the human species included; though it 
 certainly seems strange that, the chances 
 
 25 
 
26 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 being so numerous as they are, no distinct 
 case of evolution should have taken place 
 within our ken. But the theory appar- 
 ently does not pretend to account for the 
 development of man's higher nature. 
 That there is a gap in the continuity of 
 development or any supernatural inter- 
 vention has never been suggested by me; 
 but it does appear that there is an ascent 
 such as constitutes an essential difference 
 and calls for other than physical explana- 
 tion. 
 
 In matter, said Tyndall, is the potential- 
 ity of all life. Matter is what we discern 
 by our bodily senses. What assurance 
 have we that the account of the universe 
 and of our relations to it given us by our 
 bodily senses is exhaustive, or that the 
 moral conscience may not have another 
 source ? 
 
 Apart from anything more distinctly 
 spiritual, where do we get the faculty of 
 idealization? Is it traceable to physical 
 sense ? 
 
 Unless the moral conscience has a source 
 higher than mere physical evolution, what. 
 
THE LIMIT OF EVOLUTION. 27 
 
 is to deter a man in whom criminal pro- 
 pensities are strong from indulging them 
 so long as he can do so with impunity? 
 Eccelino had a lust of cruelty. Was he 
 wrong in indulging it, so long as he had 
 the power, which he might have had, with 
 common prudence, to the end of his life? 
 I speak, as I have always said, from the 
 ranks ; and I am not presuming to criticise 
 Darwin's theory as an explanation of the 
 origin and nature of the physical man. 
 But if the theory is to be carried farther, 
 and we are to be told that man's higher 
 attributes and his moral conscience have 
 no source or authority other than physical 
 evolution, we may fairly ask to see our 
 way. 
 
 March 17th, 1907. 
 
V. 
 EXPLANATIONS. 
 
 Interest is evidently felt in questions 
 which I have been permitted to treat in 
 The Sun, and after the notices and the 
 queries which I have received there are 
 points on which I should like, if you will 
 allow me, to set myself right. 
 
 I. The leaning to orthodoxy with which 
 I am gently reproached goes not beyond 
 a conviction, drawn from the study not of 
 theology but of history, that of all the 
 types of character hitherto produced the 
 Christian type, founded on a belief in the 
 fatherhood of God and the brotherhood 
 of man, appears to be the happiest and the 
 best. At its birth it encountered alien and 
 hostile influences ; Alexandrian theosophy, 
 Oriental asceticism, Byzantine imperial- 
 
 29 
 
30 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 ism. Later it encountered the worst influ- 
 ence of all, that of theocracy engendered 
 by the ambition of' the monk Hildebrand. 
 Theocracy, not Catholicism or anything 
 spiritual, has been the source of the crimes 
 of the Papacy ; of the Norman raids upon 
 England and Ireland; the civil wars 
 kindled by Papal intrigue in Germany; 
 the extermination of the Albigenses; the 
 Inquisition; Alva's tribunal of blood in 
 the Netherlands ; the massacre of St. Bar- 
 tholomew ; the persecution of the Hugue- 
 nots; Jesuitism and the evils, moral and 
 political, as well as religious, which Jesu- 
 itism has wrought. Through all this, and 
 in spite of it all, Christian character has 
 preserved itself, and it is still the basis of 
 the world's best civilization. Much that 
 is far outside the Christian creed is still 
 Christian in character and traceable to a 
 Christian source. 
 
 II. I fully admit that society can be 
 regulated by a law framed for mutual pro- 
 tection and general well-being without the 
 religious conscience or other support than 
 temporal interest. But if individual in- 
 
EXPLANATIONS. 31 
 
 terest or passion can break this law with 
 impunity, as often they can, what is there 
 to withhold them from doing it ? What is 
 the value of a clean breast ? 
 
 III. The fatherhood of God seems to be 
 implied in the Christian belief in the 
 brotherhood of man. By that phrase I 
 meant to characterise Christianity, not to 
 embark upon the question of Theism. It 
 does not seem possible that we should ever 
 have direct proof through human observa- 
 tion and reasoning of the existence of 
 Deity or of the divine aim and will. To 
 some power, and apparently to some 
 moral power, we must owe our being. "We 
 can hardly believe that creation planned 
 itself or that the germ endowed itself with 
 life and provision for development. But 
 what can have been the aim of creation? 
 What can have led to the production of 
 humanity, with all the evil and suffering 
 which Omniscience must have foreseen? 
 What was there which without such a pro- 
 cess mere fiat, so far as we can see, could 
 not produce? The only thing that pre- 
 sents itself is character, which apparently 
 
32 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 must be self -formed and developed by re- 
 sistance to evil. We have had plenty of 
 "evidences" in the manner of Paley or 
 the Bridgewater Treatises, met by scepti- 
 cal argument on the other side; but has 
 inquiry yet tried to fathom the mystery of 
 human existence % 
 
 IV. One thing for which I have earn- 
 estly pleaded is the abolition of clerical 
 tests, which are in fact renunciations of 
 absolute loyalty to truth. Would this in- 
 volve the dissolution of the Churches? 
 Nothing surely can put an end to the need 
 of spiritual association or to the useful- 
 ness of the pastorate so long as we believe 
 in spiritual life. I think I have seen the 
 jmost gifted minds, such as might have 
 j done us the highest service in the quest of 
 ] truth, condemned to silence by the tests. 
 
 May 5th, 1907. 
 
VI. 
 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 There appeared the other day in the 
 Washington Herald a notable letter by 
 Mr. Paul Chamberlain on Immortality. 
 It took the same line as an essay on the 
 same question by Mr. Chamberlain's late 
 father, which I had read in manuscript. 
 Both the letter and the essay are on 
 the negative side of the question, which, in 
 the essay at least, is pronounced the hap- 
 pier and better view, as conducive to un- 
 selfishness. Unselfishness, it must surely 
 be, of a supreme kind. Annihilation is not 
 a cheerful word. Bacon has a highly rhe- 
 torical passage flouting the fear of death. 
 His was probably not a very loving 
 nature, nor does he seem to have thought 
 of the parting from those we love. 
 
 33 
 
34 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 The life of the late Mr. Chamberlain 
 was evidently happy as well as good. That 
 of his son, I have no doubt, is the same. 
 But of the lot of the myriads whose lives, 
 through no fault of their own, are, or -in 
 the course of history have been, unhappy, 
 often most miserable, what is to be said? 
 If for them there is no compensation, can 
 we believe that benevolence and justice 
 rule the world ? If the world is not ruled 
 by benevolence and justice, what is our 
 ground of hope? 
 
 The negative conclusion rids us, it is 
 true, of the Dantean Hell, which paints 
 the Deity as incomparably worse than the 
 worst Italian tyrant, and, as it is to be 
 everlasting, concedes the final victory to 
 evil. 
 
 We discard all ghost stories and spirit- 
 ualist apparitions as at most signs of a 
 general craving. We resign all reasoning 
 like that of Butler, who describes the soul 
 as indiscerptible, assuming that it exists 
 separately from the body. Nor can we be 
 said to have anything that bears the char- 
 acter of Revelation. That the Founder of 
 
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 35 
 
 Christianity looked for a future life, with 
 its rewards and punishments, is evident. 
 But he brought no special message, lifted 
 not the curtain of mystery, did nothing to 
 clear our minds upon the subject. His 
 apologue of Dives and Lazarus shows that 
 to Him as to us the other world was a 
 realm of the imagination. 
 
 Is there anything in man not physical, 
 or apparently explained and limited by 
 the transient conditions and necessities of 
 his present state, anything which gives an 
 inkling of immortality 1 ? Our utilitarian 
 morality is the offspring and adjunct of 
 our condition here. But is there not an 
 aspiration to character which points to 
 something more spiritual and higher than 
 conformity to the utilitarian code 1 Hero- 
 ism and self-sacrifice are not utilitarian. 
 
 We can hardly allow the investigation 
 to be closed by the mere mention of the 
 talismanic formulary Evolution. There 
 may be something still to be said on that 
 subject. Evolution cannot have evolved 
 itself, nor does it seem capable of infalli- 
 ble demonstration. It no doubt postulates 
 
36 NO BEFUGE BUT IN TBUTH 
 
 vast spaces of time for its action. But 
 within the space of time of which we in 
 any way have knowledge, apparently no 
 case of spontaneous evolution has taken 
 place. Rudimentary likeness between the 
 frame of the ape and that of man seems 
 hardly in itself a proof of the generation 
 of man from the ape. 
 
 On no subject, however, does one who 
 is not a man of science or a philosopher 
 feel more intensely his deficiency, and his 
 need of having his paths lighted by the 
 perfectly free while reverent inquiry, to 
 pray for which has been the object of 
 these letters. 
 
 August 11th, 1907. 
 
VII. 
 
 IS THERE TO BE A REVOLUTION 
 IN ETHICS? 
 
 A revolution in theology and in our con- 
 ception of the government of the universe 
 such as we are undergoing is sure to draw 
 with it a revolutionary movement in 
 ethics. There lies before me a review 
 article giving an account of a number of 
 books on ethics which are widely at vari- 
 ance, it appears, with the ethics of Chris- 
 tianity. The general tendency of the 
 authors seems to be to reject altogether 
 the Christian type of character as arti- 
 ficial and weak, and to aim at substituting 
 for it something more robust and, it is as- 
 sumed, more in accordance with nature. 
 One theorist is represented as regarding 
 humanity in its present form only as tran- 
 
 37 
 
38 NO BEFUGE BUT IN TEUTH 
 
 sient material out of which is to be 
 wrought the "Superman." In what re- 
 spect, so far as our conceptions extend, 
 has Christian ethic failed? It has given 
 birth to the patriot as well as to the 
 martyr, to the virtues of the softer as 
 well as to those of the stronger sex. Com- 
 munities which have kept its rules, as well 
 as individuals, have been happy. 
 
 The Christian ideal of character and 
 life went essentially unchanged through 
 the violence of the Middle Ages and the 
 vices of the Papacy. It was somewhat 
 perverted by asceticism; but it was radi- 
 cally the same character in Anselm or 
 in St. Louis, as it is in their counter- 
 parts now. Nor does it seem to lose by 
 renunciation of theological dogma. The 
 moral principles and aspirations of good 
 free thinkers or Positivists remain still 
 essentially Christian. 
 
 The ethical ideal which is now being set 
 up against the Christian apparently is 
 that of the Greeks. In literature and art 
 Greece, or rather Athens, or, to speak still 
 more correctly, a limited number of free 
 
IS THERE TO BE A REVOLUTION IN ETHICS % 39 
 
 citizens in Athens, was pre-eminent: but 
 its pre-eminence, if we may trust its own 
 moralists, hardly extended to morals. 
 
 May 3rd, 1908. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 
 
Copyright, igo8 
 
 BY THE 
 
 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW PUBLISHING 
 COMPANY 
 
 Copyright, Canada, 1908 
 
 BY 
 
 GOLDWIN SMITH 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION. 
 
 (Prom the North, American Review.) 
 
 "I express myself," says Bishop But- 
 ler, "with caution, lest I should be mis- 
 taken to vilify reason, which is, indeed, 
 the only faculty which we have to judge 
 concerning anything, even revelation it- 
 self ; or be misunderstood to assert that a 
 supposed revelation cannot be proved 
 false from internal characters." "The 
 faculty of reason," he says, "is the candle 
 of the Lord within us against vilifying 
 which we must be very cautious." 
 
 What would the world be without re- 
 ligion % That is the dread question which 
 seems now to be everywhere presenting 
 itself. Would even the social fabric re- 
 main unshaken? Has not its stability 
 partly depended on the general belief that 
 
 43 
 
44 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 the dispensation, with all its inequalities, 
 was the ordinance of the Creator, and that 
 for inequalities here there would be com- 
 pensation hereafter ? The belief may not 
 in common minds have been very present ; 
 but it would seem to have had its influ- 
 ence. Apparently, it is now departing. 
 In some places it seems to have fled. 
 Scepticism, with social unrest, comes in its 
 room. 
 
 What is now the position of the clergy ? 
 Keepers and ministers of truth, as they 
 are understood to be, they alone are de- 
 barred by ordination vows and tests from 
 the free quest of truth. They are ec- 
 clesiastically bound not only to hold, but 
 to teach and preach, as divinely revealed, 
 what many of them must feel to have been 
 .disproved or to have become doubtful. 
 Their uneasiness is shown by writings, 
 such as "Lux Mundi," struggling to re- 
 concile orthodoxy with free thought. It 
 is shown by a growing tendency on the 
 part of pastors to slide from the office of 
 spiritual guide into that of leader of phil- 
 anthropic effort and social reform. It is 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION. 45 
 
 seen, perhaps, even in the tendency to 
 give increased prominence to musical at- 
 traction in the service. Sermons grow 
 more secular. 
 
 Clerical biographies, such as that of 
 Jowett, sometimes- reveal private misgiv- 
 ings. The writer has even seen the pas- 
 torate of a large parish assumed by one 
 who in private society was an evident 
 rationalist and must have satisfied his 
 conscience by promising to himself that 
 he would do a great deal of social good. 
 There is, no doubt, practically, more lati- 
 tude than there was; heresy trials seem 
 to have ceased, and one of the writers of 
 "Essays and Reviews" became, without 
 serious outcry, Primate of the Church of 
 England. But ordination vows remain; 
 so does the performance of a religious ser- 
 vice which includes the repetition of 
 creeds and forms a practical confession of 
 faith. Hollow profession cannot fail to 
 impair mental integrity, or, if generally 
 suspected, to kill confidence in our guides. 
 Read Canon Parrar's "Life of Christ" 
 and you will see to what shifts orthodoxy 
 
46 NO EEFUGE BUT IJs T TRUTH 
 
 puts a clerical writer who was, no doubt, 
 a sincere lover of truth. 
 
 The religious disturbance shows itself 
 at the same time in the prevalence of wild 
 superstitions, such as Spiritualism, rising 
 out of the grave of religious faith, and at- 
 testing the lingering craving for the 
 supernatural, somewhat like the mysteries 
 of Isis after the fall of national religion at 
 Rome. 
 
 The crisis has come on us rather sud- 
 denly, in consequence partly of great 
 physical discoveries. The writer as a 
 young student heard Buckland struggling 
 to reconcile geology with Genesis. Now 
 the struggle is to reconcile- Genesis with 
 geology. Before this wonderful advance 
 of science and criticism combined, there 
 had been comparatively little of avowed, 
 still less of popular, scepticism. Rous- 
 seau was a sentimental theist; Voltaire 
 erected a church to God. This vast ' ' Mod- 
 ernism, ' ' as the poor, quaking Pope rather 
 happily calls the ascendancy of science 
 and criticism, has changed all. It is con- 
 ceivable that, now as on some former 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION. 47 
 
 occasions, the range of discovery may 
 have been overrated and the pendulum of 
 opinion may consequently have swung too 
 far. Evolution, apparently, has still a 
 wide space to traverse, even in what may 
 be assumed to be the material sphere. 
 What can it make of the marvellous stores 
 of memory or of the apparently boundless 
 play of the imagination, which by its 
 working in sleep, sometimes with no 
 assignable materials for the fancy, seems 
 almost to show creative power % 
 
 Has Deity directly revealed itself to 
 man? It has if the Bible is inspired. 
 Otherwise, apparently, it has not. About 
 the Koran or the Zendavesta it is hardly 
 necessary to speak. "The Bible" we call 
 the Old Testament and the New bound up 
 together, as though they contained the two 
 halves of the same dispensation and the 
 moral ideal of both were the same. The 
 historical importance of the Old Testa- 
 ment can hardly be overrated; nor can 
 the literary grandeur of parts of it, or the 
 advance made in social character and in 
 law. When in connection with the ques- 
 
48 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 tion of American slavery attention was 
 specially directed to the social law of 
 Moses, no careful reader could fail to be 
 greatly struck by its advanced humanity 
 and civilization. Nevertheless, the moral- 
 ity of the Old Testament is tribal, while 
 that of the New Testament is universal. 
 The tribal character of the Old Testament 
 morality is seen in the destruction of the 
 first-born in Egypt in order to force 
 Pharaoh to let the Chosen People go ; in 
 the invasion of Canaan and the slaughter 
 of the Canaanites; in the murder of 
 Sisera; in the approval of the treason of 
 Rahab; in David's putting to torture the 
 inhabitants of a captured city. The at- 
 tempt to reconcile all this with universal 
 morality by styling it the course of ; ' Evo- 
 lution" can hardly avail, since the spirit 
 of tribal separatism dominates in the lat- 
 est books of the Old Testament, Ezra and 
 Nehemiah, where Israelites are not only 
 forbidden for the future to marry with 
 Gentiles, but bidden to put away Gentile 
 wives. It is true there are glimpses of a 
 universal dominion of the God of Israel, 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION. 49 
 
 and of the happiness to be enjoyed by all 
 nations under it. Still, Jehovah is 
 Israel's God. 
 
 Were the Old Testament a Divine 
 revelation it would certainly be free from 
 error concerning the works of Deity, 
 which plainly it is not. The narrative in 
 Genesis of creation, compared with other 
 primitive cosmogonies, is rational as well 
 as sublime. But if Professor Buckland 
 could persuade his hearers he could not 
 persuade himself. 
 
 Largely good the influence of the Old 
 Testament has no doubt been ; largely also 
 it prepared the way for the New. That 
 its influence has been wholly good cannot 
 be said. It has furnished fanaticism with 
 aliment and excuse. It has found mottoes 
 for the black flag of religious war. 
 
 Is it possible to believe, in face of doubt- 
 ful authenticity, contradictions as to fact. 
 and traces of local superstition, that the 
 New Testament any more than the Old 
 was dictated by Deity? Inspired by the 
 creative power, in common with the other 
 works of creative beneficence, as a part 
 
 i<>Mif t -IWIWiPtfttaW 
 
50 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 of the general plan, the New Testament 
 may have been. Its morality is not tribal., 
 but universal. ' ' God is a Spirit ; and they 
 that worship him must worship him in 
 spirit and in truth," this beside the well 
 of Samaria by the Pounder himslf was 
 proclaimed. If there is any privilege it is 
 in favour not of race, but of class, the 
 class being the poor, whose poverty seems 
 counted to them as virtue, perhaps rather 
 to the disparagement of active goodness. 
 
 Had the New Testament been divinely 
 inspired, would not its authority have 
 been clearly attested? Would not the 
 authorship of its books have been made 
 known? Would the slightest error or 
 self-contradiction have been allowed to 
 appear in it? What is the fact? The 
 authenticity of a large portion of the 
 Epistles of St. Paul seems admitted by 
 critics; of other books of the New 
 Testament the authorship is regarded as 
 doubtful. The three Synoptic Gospels 
 have a large element common to them all, 
 and are evidently grafts upon a single 
 document which is lost, and which the 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION. 51 
 
 critics generally seem inclined to place not 
 earlier than the latter part of the first cen- 
 tury. The Synoptics all tell us that when 
 Jesus expired the veil of the Temple was 
 rent. One adds that there was preter- 
 natural darkness; a third that the earth 
 quaked, that the rocks were rent, that the 
 graves opened, and many bodies of the 
 saints which slept arose, came out of the 
 graves after the resurrection of Jesus, 
 went into the holy city, and appeared to 
 many. Such apparitions plainly must 
 have produced an immense sensation; 
 such a sensation, it may be assumed, as 
 would have brought scepticism to its 
 knees. This surely must be legendary, 
 and the legend must have had time to 
 grow. 
 
 Though grafts on the same original 
 stock, the Gospels are often at variance 
 with each other; as in the case of the 
 genealogy of Jesus, upon which the har- 
 monists labor in vain ; in that of the mar- 
 vels attending his birth; in that of his 
 Last Supper; in that of the resurrection, 
 which again baffles the skill of the har- 
 
52 NO REFUGE BUT IN TKUTH 
 
 monists. Here, surely, is proof that the 
 pens of the narrators were not guided by 
 Omniscience. 
 
 Concerning the miracles of the casting 
 out of devils generally, and in particular 
 of the casting out of a legion of devils into 
 a herd of two thousand swine at G-adara, 
 what is to be said f Are these not clearly 
 cases of human imagination set at work 
 by a Jewish superstition? Is it possible 
 that they should have had a place in a 
 divine narrative of the life of the Saviour 
 of the world? The Fourth Gospel omits 
 them. Orthodoxy would fain persuade 
 itself that this was to avoid unnecessary 
 repetition. 
 
 Satan from the top of a mountain shows 
 Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth. This 
 seems to imply belief that the earth is a 
 plane. The movement of the star of the 
 Nativity seems to imply belief in the rota- 
 tion of the heavens. 
 
 About the authorship of the Fourth 
 Gospel, and, consequently, about its title 
 to belief, there has been endless contro- 
 versy among the learned. But there are 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION. 53 
 
 pretty plain indications, in the shape of 
 the omission of demoniac miracles and 
 some lack of local knowledge, that it is 
 not the work of a Palestinian Jew. Open- 
 ing with a reference to the Logos, it 
 strikes the key of Alexandrian philosophy. 
 It is, indeed, rather theological than his- 
 torical, so that it has been not inaptly 
 compared to the Platonic, in contrast to 
 the Xenophontic, account of Socrates, 
 the theology seems like that of a post- 
 evangelical era. Martineau's conclusion 
 is that "the only Gospel which is com- 
 posed and not merely compiled and edited, 
 and for which, therefore, a single writer 
 is responsible, has its birthdaj T in the mid- 
 dle of the second century, and is not the 
 work of a witness at all." Historically, 
 this Gospel is at variance with the others 
 in its narrative of the Last Supper. ' ' The 
 incidents," says the highly orthodox 
 Speaker's Commentary, "are parallel 
 with sections of the Synoptic Gospels; 
 but there are very few points of actual 
 correspondence in detail between the nar- 
 ratives .of the Synoptists and of St. 
 
54 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 John. ' ' There appears to have been much 
 disputation among critics and commenta- 
 tors, but no room for disputation surely 
 would have been left concerning narra- 
 tives, equally authentic and inspired, of 
 a momentous crisis in the life of the 
 Saviour. 
 
 "At this point, that is to say the be- 
 ginning of the Galilean ministry, we are 
 again met by difficulties in the chronology, 
 which are not only various, but to the cer- 
 tain solution of which there appears to 
 be no clue. If we follow exclusively the 
 order given by one Evangelist we appear 
 to run counter to the scattered indications 
 which may be found in another. That it 
 should be so will cause no difficulty to the 
 candid mind. The Evangelists do not 
 profess to be giiided by chronological 
 sequences." So writes Dean Farrar in 
 despair. Is it likely that such confusion 
 would be found in a Divine revelation? 
 "Would not the narratives have been as 
 well arranged and clear as, by the admis- 
 sion of orthodoxy, they are the reverse 1 ? 
 Would the names of the authors of the 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION. 55 
 
 Gospels, their warrants and the sources 
 of their information, have been withheld % 
 Providence surely was not there. 
 
 If there was a miraculous revelation on 
 which salvation depended, why was it not 
 universal 1 Why has it all this time been 
 withheld from nations even more in need 
 of it than those to whom it was given? 
 Are we to suppose that the salvation of 
 these myriads was a matter of indiffer- 
 ence to their Creator, or that Heaven pre- 
 ferred the slow and precarious working 
 of the missionary to the instantaneous 
 action of its own fiat % This is the question 
 which scepticism asks, and which the 
 great author of the "Analogy of Re- 
 ligion" fails to answer. 
 
 What did Jesus think of himself and 
 his mission, and of his relation to Deity? 
 This it seems impossible without more 
 authentic records clearly to decide. The 
 Gospel of St. John, which is the most 
 theological, would appear to be the least 
 trustworthy of the four. Its author, ap- 
 parently, sees its subject through a theo- 
 sophic medium of his own. The idea of 
 
56 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 the teacher in the mind of the disciples 
 would naturally rise with his ascendancy ; 
 so, perhaps, would his own idea. If 
 Jesus is rightly reported he believed him- 
 self to be the Son of God, exalted to union 
 and participation in spiritual dominion 
 with the Father, and destined together 
 with the Father to judge the world. But, 
 in his mortal hour of anguish in Grethse- 
 mane, he prays to the Father to let the cup 
 pass from him; an act hardly consistent 
 with the doctrines of the Athanasian 
 Creed. In the immortality of the soul and 
 judgment after death he plainly believes. 
 But he does not substantiate the belief by 
 any explanation of the mode of survival; 
 nor, in separating the two flocks of sheep 
 and goats, does he say how mixed char- 
 acters are to be treated. Tribalism seems 
 slightly to cling to his conception of the 
 just gathered in Abraham's bosom. Of 
 his apologue of Dives and Lazarus, the 
 last part appears to show that the world 
 beyond the grave was to him a realm of 
 the imagination. 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount would ap- 
 
THE EELIGIOUS SITUATION. 57 
 
 pear, by the strong impress of character 
 it bears, to have special claims to authen- 
 ticity. So may the Parables habitually 
 employed as instruments of teaching and 
 wearing apparently the stamp of a single 
 imagination. 
 
 That with Jesus of Nazareth there 
 came into the world, and by his example 
 and teaching was introduced and pro- 
 pagated a moral ideal which, embodied in 
 Christendom, and surviving through all 
 these centuries the action of hostile forces f 
 the most powerful, not only from without, 
 but from within, has uplifted, purified, 
 and blessed humanity is a historical fact. 
 With the civilization of Christendom no 
 other civilization can compare. But we 
 have been accustomed to believe that 
 there was a miraculous revelation of the 
 Deity. A revelation of the Deity, though 
 not miraculous, Christianity may be be- 
 lieved to have been. 
 
 Revelation, direct and assured, of the 
 nature, will, designs, or relation to us of 
 the Deity through the Bible or in any 
 other way we cannot be truly said to have. 
 
58 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 All that we apparently can be said to have, 
 besides the religious instinct in ourselves, 
 is the evidence of beneficent design in the 
 universe; balanced, we must sadly admit, 
 by much that with our present imperfect 
 knowledge appears to us at variance with 
 beneficence; by plagues, earthquakes, 
 famines, torturing diseases, infant 
 deaths; by the sufferings of animals 
 preyed on by other animals or breeding 
 beyond the means of subsistence; by in- 
 evitable accidents of all kinds; by the 
 Tower of Siloam everywhere falling on 
 the just as well as on the sinner. There 
 may be a key, there may be a plan, dis- 
 ciplinary or of some other kind, and in 
 the end the mystery may be solved. At 
 present there seems to be no key other 
 than that which may be suggested by the 
 connection of effort with virtue and the 
 progress of a collective humanity. 
 
 At the same time, we may apparently 
 dismiss belief in a great personal power 
 of evil and in his realm of everlasting tor- 
 ture. The independent origin of such a 
 power of evil is unthinkable; so is the 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION. 59 
 
 struggle between the two powers and its 
 end. There is no absolutely distinct line 
 between good and evil. The shades of 
 character are numberless. 
 
 Another great change, rather of impres- 
 sion than of conviction, has been creeping 
 over the religious scene. We have hither- 
 to, largely, perhaps, under the influence 
 of the Bible, been fancying rather than 
 thinking that this little earth of ours was 
 the centre of all things, the special object 
 of interest to the Creator; and that the 
 grand drama of existence was that en- 
 acted on this terrestrial stage and cul- 
 minating in Redemption. Astronomical 
 science is now making us distinctly feel 
 that this world is only one, and, if magni- 
 tude is to be the measure, very far from 
 the most important, of myriads of worlds 
 governed by the same physical laws as 
 ours, forming a system of which ours is a 
 member, while the destiny of the whole 
 system is to us utterly inscrutable ; proofs 
 of the most sublime and glorious order 
 presenting themselves on the one hand, 
 while on the other we see signs of disorder 
 
60 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 and destruction, errant bodies such as 
 comets and aerolites, a moon without an 
 atmosphere, the conflagration of a star. 
 Whether the whole is moving towards any 
 end and, if it is, what that end is to be, we 
 cannot hope to divine. When with In- 
 finity we take into our thought Eternity, 
 past and future, if in Eternity there can 
 be said to be past or future, our minds are 
 completely overwhelmed. 
 
 Is belief in a future life generally hold- 
 ing its ground? My friend, the late Mr. 
 Chamberlain, was by no means alone in 
 resigning it. But if this life is all, how 
 can we continue to hold our faith in divine 
 justice? Mr. Chamberlain, as I said be- 
 fore, was evidently happy as well as good 
 His life, though short and regarded by 
 him as ending in the grave, was to him so 
 much gain, and proved beneficence on the 
 part of the Author of his being. But if 
 Mr. Chamberlain's theory is true, what is 
 to be said in the case of the myriads to 
 whom life has been wretchedness, ending 
 perhaps in agony, often without the 
 slightest responsibility on their part? 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION. 61 
 
 For these unhappy ones would it be well, 
 as Mr. Chamberlain holds it was for him, 
 that there should be no hereafter? Is 
 their being brought into existence only to 
 suffer compatible with our faith in 
 supreme benevolence? Is confidence in 
 supreme justice compatible with the con- 
 viction that the tyrant and the tortured 
 victims of his tyranny, alike, repose for- 
 ever in the grave? Such, it is true, was 
 the belief of the Hebrew; indication of 
 any other belief, at all events, he has left 
 us none, unless it be a faint glimpse of 
 Sheol. The philosophy of Job halts ac- 
 cordingly. The Hebrew believed that he 
 would be rewarded or punished in his pos- 
 terity. 
 
 Bishop Butler's grand argument for 
 belief in the possibility of a future life 
 goes upon the supposition that our con- 
 scious personality is distinct and separa- 
 ble from our perishable frame, and is in 
 itself "indiscerptible," so that there is no 
 reason why it should not survive the death 
 of the body. To prove that it ever has sur- 
 vived the death of the body, or to show the 
 
62 NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH 
 
 mode of its survival, the Bishop does not 
 attempt. But Butler lived long before 
 Evolution and the general advance of 
 physiology in these later days. Johnson, 
 who was no sceptic, owned that he yearned 
 for more light on the "spiritual world," 
 by which he apparently meant immortal- 
 ity. . 
 
 Positivism tenders us endless existence 
 as particles in a collective humanity, the 
 "colossal man." But would there be 
 much satisfaction in existence when in- 
 dividuality and personal consciousness 
 had been lost ? Would the prospect lead 
 the ordinary man to work and suffer for 
 generations to come, at all events, for 
 any beyond the circle of the immediate 
 objects of his love? What the end of the 
 colossal man is to be seems undetermined. 
 The Positivist Church has produced very 
 good and beautiful lives, but its power as 
 a religion to go alone would be more 
 clearly seen were not Christianity at its 
 side. 
 
 Is there or is there not after all some- 
 thing in human nature apparently unsus- 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION. 63 
 
 ceptible of physical explanation and 
 seeming to point to the possibility of a 
 higher state of being ? Evolution may ulti- 
 mately explain our general frame, emo- 
 tional and intellectual, as well as physical. 
 It may in time explain the marvels of 
 imagination and memory. It may explain 
 our aesthetic nature with our music and 
 art. It may explain even our social and 
 political frame and our habit of conform- 
 ity to law. But beyond conformity to 
 law, social or political, is there not, in the 
 highest specimens of our race at least, a 
 conception of an ideal of character and an 
 effort to rise to it which seem to point to 
 a more spiritual sphere %