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Descripiwe Prospectus on Application^ EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE EY PERCY GARDNER, LiTT.D., F.B.A. Our theology has been cast in a scholastic mould. We are in need of, and are being gradually forced into, a theology based on psychology. The transi- tion, I fear, will not be without much pain ; but nothing can prevent it. Archbishop Temple : Memoirs, ii. 517. WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 14 HENRIETTA ST., COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C.2 NEW YORK: G. P. ^ PUTNAM'S SONS 1918 PREFACE If any explanation of the reasons for publish- ing this little book is needed, it may be very briefly given. The writer may claim to be in a sensfe a connecting link between the old Broad Church and the new Modernism, since he was a personal follower of Maurice and Kingsley, and has lived into the times of Tyrrell and Loisy. Recently the broad party in the English (Church, which after the death of Maurice and Stanley seemed for a time to be quiescent, has shown signs of a revival of activity. It has many adherents among the more thoughtful of the clergy. It has an organisation, the Churchmen's Union^ which has already held some very successful conferences, and which has, in the Modern Churchman^ an able organ in the press. The party has no hostility to either High or Low Church, both of which, in fact, have of late made definite progress towards its point of view. But it does claim VI EVOLUTION IN, CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE to be represented, like those parties, on im- portant committees of the Church. But the broad party ''of the twentieth century bears but a moderate amount of re- semblance to the Broad Church of the nine- teenth. In the last generation the breadth was largely emotional and commonsense, mere generosity of spirit and a love of liberty. At present its foundations are far more deeply laid in philosophy and in psychology. It is based upon evolution in science and critical method in history ; and it demands, not that the great truths of the Christian religion shall be given up, but that they shall be considered afresh in the light of growing knowledge, and restated in a way suitable to the intellectual conditions of the age. Those who make such demands are often attacked as mere intel- lectuals, and they are told that they have no message for the people. In the first place, this is not true. No doubt an appeal to the better-educated and more thoughtful classes cannot take quite the same form as a popular appeal. But it is manifest, from the appearance and the success of the book called Faith or Fear, that a popular treatise parallel to some of those which have been published by more reflective writers appeals to the soldier in the trenches and to the man in the street. There PREFACE vii is a popular as well as a scientific demand for a closer hold upon the great realities of religion as distinguished from the external forms under which they are presented by the Churches, for a religion which will bear the light of day and the discussions of the lecture- room. But, in the second place, the whole history of Christianity shows that fresh developments of the faith must first appear in works ad- dressed to the thoughtful, and afterwards be made popular by great preachers. When one thinks of the great figures in the history of doctrine, one cannot set any of them down as only popular orators — Clement and Augustine, Abelard and Thomas Aquinas, Calvin and Erasmus, De Maistre and Newman all first addressed an inner circle ; though the results of their work were afterwards wide. That the English Church stands in need of a fresh impulse of enthusiasm and devotion, of a stronger sense of her mission and a closer touch with the people, is generally recognised, and was prx)claimed by the authorities who organised the recent Church Mission. But it is equally true, though less generally felt, that she needs a great raising of the intellec- ;^ual standard in her clergy. Those who are well acquainted with the theological colleges deplore the low standard of intelligence there viii EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE allowed. And unless religion satisfies the mind, as well as the heart, a painful clashing occurs, which destroys a clergyman's power for good. It is not easy to find a name for the modern broad school in the Church. The term liberal has predominantly a political meaning. The term broad may indicate mere laxity and[ indifference. I have decided boldly to adopt the term Modernist. It also is unsatisfactory, for what is modern is by no means always in the line of progress. And t;he Roman Curia has attached the term Modernist to a circle of beliefs which seldom if ever was found in the mind of a single thinker : it has created a sort of clothes-horse, on which to hang any views which it regards as dangerous. But we must reflect that nearly all party names were originally the invention of enemies, including even the name Christian ; and we may hope to rescue the term Modernist from ignoble use. This is not a mere personal apologia. If I thought I was merely expressing personal views, I should regard my utterance as of small importance to anyone except myself : but I believe, on the contrary, that I represent a general drift of opinion. I do not mean that my colleagues of the Churchmen's Union, or Broad Churchmen in general, would as a PREFACE ix body accept all the views which I advocate. But the whole school does tend in the same general direction. I further think that even those who most strongly differ, from me will not be sorry to have a manual in which the tendencies they deplore are set forth with clearness, as well as, I hope, with all modera- tion and charity. The war, which has shaken all things, has like a great wind swept away a great deal of convention in religion. By bringing us all into contact with facts, some terrible and some full of hope, it has brought many to a new sense of truth and reality. And this sense of reality in things spiritual is at the bottom of the modernist movement. I have here treated of the permanent and the changing in Christian doctrine only. The perhaps more important, and certainly more stirring, question of the permanent and the changing in Christian ethics I hope that I may be able to discuss in another small volume, if time and talent serve. PERCY GARDNER. Oxford, October 1917. CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE PERMANENT AND THE CHANGING IN CHRISTIANITY Necessity of combining the static and dynamic elements in Christianity, l. Its gradual embodiment in the world, 4. The spirit more than the manifestation, 6. Com- parison of sensuous experience to a pattern worked out on a canvas, 7. The flux and the permanent, 10. Historic criticism the result, not of pride, but of humility, 12. Christian doctrine, in tlie earliest documents, in embryo,. 15. The proclamatibn of the Kingdom, 17. Continuity of inspiration in the Church, 18. CHAPTER II EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY Cataclysmic and evolutional views of the Christian origins, 22. Gradual victory of the latter, 23. Need not lead to a necessarian view of history, 25. Law in the historic world, 27. The influence of personality, 2gr Statement of cataclysmic views, 31. Statement of evolu- tional views, 32. Successive phases of the early Church, 33. Miracle in the Gospels, 36. Thaumaturgic views in the Middle Ages, 43. -The Second Coming, 47. [The Fourth Gospel not primitive, 49. Need of rein- terpretation, 53. xii EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE CHAPTER III PROVIDENCE AND THE DIVINE KINGDOM Evolution in some notable Christian doctrines, 58. Providence and prayer, 59. These have to be trans- ferred to a fresh sphere, 60. The doctrine of the Kingdom, 65. The doctrine of the futm-e life, 71. CHAPTER IV THE EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST The divine immanence and transcendence, 79. Early speculation as to the nature of Christ, 82. A practical question, 84. Personal and scientific views, 86. Views in the Gospels and Acts, 88. Views of St Paul and the Fourth Evangelist, 91. Ebionite tendency, 93. Docetic tendency, 94. Philosophic views, 95. 'View of Dr A. V, G. Allen, 96. Impotence of logic in the matter, 99. Popular view, 100. Immense progress in the knowledge of God's ways, 103.. This fatal to old views, 104. The doctrine of Christ has to conform to belief in divine immanence, 106. The Christian body a continuance of the life of Christ on earth, 108. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 11 1. CHAPTER V LOYALTY TO TRUTH Complex nature of truth, 115. Scientific truth, 116. Historic truth, 117. Necessity of using words, 122. Ideal truth, 124. Symbolical truth, 126. Myth and history, 130. Attitude of the Fourth Evangelist towards truth, 134. Nature of loyalty to truth, 143. Three elements — scientific truth, essential religion, and the Churches, 145. The former two unchangeable ; only the last varies, 149. CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER VI THE HISTORIC CREED Various kinds of authority, 150. The idea of authority in the Prayer-book, 152. The Creeds as authoritative, 156. Analysis of the Nicene Creed, 15S. Belief and expectation, 159. Practical nature bi behef, 161. Opposition to heretical views, 163. The doctrine of the Trinity, 164. The doctrine of Christ, .171, The doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 177. The Church, 181. The future life, 183. The right to reinterpret the Creed, 185. CHAPTER Vn ? THE REFORMATION AND SCRIPTURE Omissions of the Creeds, 191. Partly supplied by the Articles, 192. These set forth the psychological grounds of Christianity, 193. Defective historic lights, 194. Salvation by faith, 196. Other tenets, 197. Attitude towards Scripture, 200. Scripture and the New Testament, 202. Scripture as a standard, 204. The divine Kingdom, 206. Historic criticism and devotional reading, 209. CHAPTER Vni LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH Effect of the progress of knowledge on the Churches, 211. No particular organisation necessary to Chris- tianity, 214.- The Spirit in the Church, 215. Claims of the Roman Church, 219. Views of evolution in it, 220. Comiiarison with the New Testament, 223. Advantages of the English Church, 225 ; which (i) is national, 227 ; (2) preserves continuity, 229 ; (3) is in contact with religious reality, 230 ; (4) preserves liberty^ 231. Churchmen and Free Churchmen, 235. The new crisis, and its effects on the English Church, 236. Paz'tk or Fear^ 238. Relations with the pro- letariate, 239. EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE THE PERMANENT AND THE CHANGING IN CHRISTIANITY I The main purpose of this book is to sketch the nature of the permanent and the evolu- tional in the historic course of Christian belief, not in the hope of giving anything like a complete view of that course — a purpose which would require nfany volumes — but in the hope of justifying what may be called modernist views, showing that the line of past progress may be carried further without giving up the main principles of Christianity or being unfaithful to the Christian spirit. Before I set about this business, I must try to indicate the point of view from which I approach it. I think it possible to combine 1 2 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE in a higher unity the two ways of looking at Christian history, the evolutional and the in- spirational. There are among us many whose view of Christianity is always turned towards the past. They think that it came into the world as a completed scheme, embodied in a person who came into the world in a miraculous way and established His Church on a basis of miracle. They hold that the death on the cross by the very fact changed the relations between God and man. And many go further, and consider the central fact of Christian belief to be the continual renewing of the sacrifice of Christ in the mass. In the same way they think that in the Bible, and especially in the Gospels, we have the first and last word in matters' of doctrine; that the Founder proclaimed His own divinity, and laid down views as to the spiritual world and man's conduct in the present state which must remain unchanged through all ages, and need no expansion, but^ only commentary. At the other end of the scale is the view of those who regard the history of Christianity as a mere nexus of cause and eiFect, to be fully accounted for by the state of the world when it arose and the human forces which have played upon it since. They think that when THE PERMANENT AND THE CHANGING 3 we have traced the progress of doctrine and of ethics in the Christian pale, we need search no further, but may rest in the conviction that it could not be otherwise, that we need postu- late no spiritual force working in and through the Christian Church. To reach a better and truer view than either of these we have to combine the experiences which lie at the roots of both. There is in Christianity both an eternal and a progressive element. ' It is a gradual revelation, a passing into the world of the high purposes of God, a striving through of the divine ideas. The full expression of those ideas we would place, not only at the beginning of Christianity, but as a purpose gradually revealed, as an end to be approached. In the same way the evolutional view of the origins of the human race is con- trasted with the view which preceded it. It was not long ago generally supposed that man was created pure, in the image of God, and that in the course of history this image had been defiled and obliterated. But now we know that man has by degrees been developed from lower organisms. This does not make us think worse of man ; but we see that he has to grow into the image of God, and that he did not start in it. It is an ideal placed before him, towards which a few in every age approach. 4 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE and to which, as we hope, in a remote future more will attain. So in the ease of Christianity. It is true that as an embodiment of the Christian idea none of the successors of the Founder has risen within a measurable distance of Himself. Yet in many ways the progress of knowledge and the formation of experience have enabled us, not only more fully to understand the first teaching, but in many ways to supplement it. The ideal lies for us in the past, but also it lies in the future, and to work towards its realisa- tion is the great task laid upon Christians. In the life and teaching of the historic Jesus there lay the greatest and purest revelation of God ever vouchsafed to the world. But that life and that teaching were very imperfectly under- stood by the first diseiples. In the subsequent ages the understanding and the misunderstand- ing of them went on developing,. On the one hand, a vast deal of superstition and material- ism invaded the infant Church. And, on the other hand, the higher life, which was never entirely wanting in the Society, brought out into life and action one after another of the great principles of Christianity. The life of Christ in a piecemeal and imperfect way was lived again in the Church, and there was a constant succession of teachers who drew in- THE PERMANENT AND THE CHANGING 5 spiration from Christ and of martyrs who died in Christ. At bottom the Christian ideas are of permanent value; they appear in many forms in successive ages, but they represent the same side of God : a side embodied primarily in the human life and doctrine of the Founder of Christianity, and after His death in the saints and doctors of the Christian Society, in whom the Founder lived on. But the light has shined in darkness. The mists of earth have obscured the pure light of heaven. As we can nowhere on earth find perfection, whether physical, intellectual, or moral, so in every age the life and the teaching of the Church has been stunted and imperfect. The best we can hope for is a historic progress, in which the true relations of man to God may come out more and more clearly ; and in which, through the constant striving of men, and their self-subordination^ to divine inspira- tion, the future kingdom of God may^adu- ally rise above the horizon. The light is "the Word of God, whether embodied in persons or in societies, in books or in institutions. And the kingdom of God comes nearer as men listen more obediently to that word, and frame their lives according to it. But its action is neither continuous nor uniform ; there are ages of progress, and ages 6 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE of stagnation or decline. The present age is a critical one ; we are moving fast, but with no fixed purpose ; and apart from belief in Divine working in the world, it would be easy to fall into pessimism. For pessimism and for fear, faith, in God is the only antidote. It must be observed that when I speak of the permanent in Christianity, I mean the permanent in the Christian religion, not in Christian organisation or custom ; I am speak- ing of the spirit of Christianity, not of its out- ward manifestations. Looking superficially at the history of Christianity, it might seem that many things are more permanent features in it than the ideas, episcopacy for instance, or the sacraments. But these are only the vessels which hold the wine, the clothes which the body wears. We can imagine a historian who wished to find the permanent in the English people, finding it in the institution of royalty, which has gone on for a thousand years, or in the Houses of Parliament. But he would be far from thus discerning the inward soul of the nation. Or we can imagine that to a mere acquaint- ance the permanent in a man may seem to be his height and colour, but to a real friend the permanent lies in the character. In the same way many Romans and many A nglicans THE PERMANENT AND THE CHANGING 7 cannot think of the perpetuity of the Church apart from episcopal organisation, the recital of creeds and the like. But however valuable these phenomena of Christianity may^ be, there is beyond them a life of Christianity. II All human sensuous experience, the course of history as disclosed to eye and ear, may be compared to a continuous design embroidered on a fixed frame of canvas. Time is the warp and space the woof of that canvas ; it is only- by establishing fixed relations with the limit- ing lines of the canvas and with the broidery of the past that events can take their place in the scheme of human experience. Every stitch of the pattern is related to the previous stitch and the following stitch. If an insect were crawling over the pattern, and had intelligence enough to try to under- stand it, he might easily think he had done so. He would follow the thread of the em- broidery from hole to hole ; each stitch would seem to be conditioned by the stitches which preceded and followed it. Of design or purpose in the whole he would have no notion ; but if he came to a flaw or a break, he would regard it as proving that whatever intelligence made the whole was imperfect and weak. 8 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE A human eye, if quite untrained, would gain from the design general notions of colour and pattern, but if it tried to judge whether the whole was good or bad, beautiful or ugly, would be altogether at a loss. But an experienced eye will not dwell on individual stitches, nor on mere colour effects, but at once pass to the question of the design of the worker, whether it was beautiful or ugly, and the question how far the worker had succeeded in realising his, ideal. In the same way the course of history may be regarded with various degrees of insight. It may seem a mere chain of physical cause and effect, or it may seem full of picturesque event and detail, but without higher meaning, or it may be seen in a higher light as full of purpose and idea. But everyone who looks at it must look at it in close dependence on the framework of space and time, of causal nexus and interrelation, or he will not be able to place it in any relation to the human intelligence. So the development of Christianity stands in strict relation to time and place. Its history is continuous. Its field was gradually enlarged by the spread of the disciples over Asia, Africa, and Europe, where in every region it met with a different moral and intel- THE PERMANENT AND THE CHANGING 9 Ifictual atmosphere, which necessarily reacted upon it. And its original ideas steadily grew and developed, according to the laws which are always seen in the spread of a new religion. If we would study early Christian history with any intelligence, we must follow it from land to land and from period to period, as a nexus of phenomena to be studied by the usual methods of historic investigation. And yet in proceeding thus we are taking a course much like that of our supposed insect. It is not a course which will show us the higher meaning, the inspiration, of Christianity. The Fourth Evangelist insists that "the Word was made flesh." In more modern phrase we should say that the Divine idea or purpose was manifested under the forms of space and time. And to learn and to realise what was the real inward and life-giving power of Christianity, we have to stand further from the canvas, and to regard it from a higher point of view, the view which realises not only that events happen, biit that they are spiritual or material, good or bad, light or darkness. Ever since the days of Plato, and indeed ever since man began to reflect on life and his own position in the universe, he has tried, and in fact been compelled, to hover between two points of view, that of necessary causation 10 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE and that of personal inspiration. Some great thinkers in every age have tried to explain the universe from one or the other of these. But their attempt, always renewed, has been partial ai^d incomplete. An ellipse in mathematics is a figure the circumference of which is drawn by reference to two central points. As these points recede one from the other the form grows wider and flatter ; if they coincide we have a circle. To produce a circle, to round off all our knowledge in reference to a single point has been the dream of philosophers ; but the mere fact of living draws the dominant points apart again. In the world in which we live, the world of sense and observation, the world inanimate, animate, and human, all things are seen to be in a flux. Nothing for a moment remains as it was ; everything is in process of development or of dissolution. And everything develops according to law ; every moment contains in itself the results of all the past, and the seeds of all the future. The chain of cause and effect extends from the unmeasured past into the unmeasured future. We ourselves, while we contemplate this cplossal flux, see that we are a part of it, that our bodies and our minds were being formed in the remotest ages ; and that we can no more liberate our minds from THE PERMANENT AND THE CHANGING 11 the bonds of historic influence than we can free our bodies from the force which acts in gravitation. In all the branches of science, those which deal with inanimate matter, those which deal with living things, those which deal with human history and psychology, recognition of la>v has prevailed more and more. And during the last century this recognition has taken the form of belief in some kind of evolu- tionary process, by which all visible things progress, not necessarily in the direction of what is better, but in the direction of what is more complex. Everything in the world, so to speak, is modernising, adapting itself to new conditions, taking on fresh aspects. The spectacle is overpowering, and we often feel as if we were grains of dust in the sunbeams, flies in a thunderstorm, and are tempted to give up the attempt to mount above the flux or to see principles underlying phenomena. Yet all nobler and more ambitious souls have felt that this is but one aspect of the universe, and that not the highest. If there is a flux of phenomena, there is a reality behind phenomena ; if there is an apparently endless series of changes, there is yet a per- manent which the mind of man can dimly grasp, and to which in spirit lie is more closely 12 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE akin than to what is material only. Phil- osophy and religion in those who think, vague spiritual impulses in those who feel, an un- quenchable idealism in those who act, furnish ways in which the human spirit may realise and approach the underlying realities, reject materialism and determinism, and win a sight of a higher spiritual world, partly concealed and partly revealed by the material universe. It is natural that there should, in the history of thought, be perpetual clashings and inter- actions between the views of those who start from the one dominant point of view and those who start from the other. No permanent or definite victory of either way of regarding ex- perience is possible ; but the contest fluctuates in successive ages now in this direction and now in that. The partisans of a materialist doctrine of evolution are constantly attempt- ing by it to explain all th'e phenomena of life and humanity, in systems like thoseof Haeckel and (in a less complete degree) of Herbert Spencer. And the partisans of religion and a spiritual philosophy can seldom resign them- selves to the admission of a complete domin- ance of process and law in the course of history. And since to the bulk of mankind science and history are somewhat remote and in- THE PERMANENT AND THE CHANGING 13 different things, while experience, emotion, conduct make up the substance of their lives, the historic criticism, which seems to be de- structive in tendency, and to introduce diffi- culties in the way of faith, is repulsive. The ordinary Christian heed not, it seems, greatly trouble himself about such matters. Only he goes wrong when he regards historic criticism as the outgrowth of intellectual pride, or as showing an unchristian disposition. And in the modern world science and history, history which takes its principles from science, are ever gaining more and more completely the control of education and of thought. It is futile to suppose that they can be simply warned off the field of religion. If the earnestly religious persist in regarding science and history as hostile, it is only natural that men of science and students of history should return the enmity, and regard religion as a mere force of obscurantism and falsehood. For they feel they have a ground of certainty. Unless reason be a merely delusive light, which we know by experience that it is not, a man must be right in following in all branches of knowledge the methods which have already in so many branches led us to stable and permanent results. No doubt history has often to deal with 14 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE very imperfect materials ; and historians are often tempted to supply the deficiencies in their materials by mere conjecture. The ablest of them, in dealing with the early annals of Christianity, differ widely, one from another, in their views. The conservative schools rejoice in these collisions, and cite them to prove that all the conclusions of the critical schools are worthless. Here they are certainly wrong. If anyone compares the way in which the early history of Christianity is now regarded in our universities and train- ing colleges with the way in which it was regarded half a century, or even a quarter of a century ago, he will see that the subject moves, if not as steadily as physical science, yet clearly and indubitably, and in definite directions. Whatever we may think of the views of individual advanced critics, the methods of advanced criticism gain a stronger position every decade, and they are pursued even by the conservative theologians. History has its rights, which it is useless to deny; but at the same time Christian faith and hope have their rights also. The problem is, so to adjust claims and so to separate provinces as to do away with unnecessary collisions. THE PERMANENT AND THE CHANGING 15 III In the present treatise it is mainly Christian belief or doctrine which is our subject. It is not the only side of Christianity ; it may not be the most important side. Action and con- duct are even more important than thought. And Christian institutions and discipline are as much the fruit of inly working ideas as are belief and creed. But I think that the same working of Divine ideas, the same pro- cess of incarnation, I may say, goes on in the world of thought and in the world of action ; and it is clear that to trace it in one field only is quite sufficient subject for a small book. Indeed, I can only hope to trace outlines. When we search the earliest documents of Christianity for doctrine, for formulated thought, we scarcely find it, even in embryo. The teaching of the Founder, besides dwelling on the coming of the kingdom of God, which is its main theme, is concerned with the great realities of religious experience, but makes no attempt to base on them a scheme of doctrine. That so many scholars and others should hold the opposite view is only to be explained by the fact that they take the speeches in the Fourth Gospel as coming directly from Jesus. 16 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE But it is the first step in any evolutional view of Christianity to realise that these speeches belong essentially to the time after the Cruci- fixion. Whether there may lie at the root of them any utterances of Jesus is a perplexing question. What is much clearer is that, if so, they are completely transformed, for the whole scheme of thought to which they belong is post-Pauline. To this subject I must revert in the next chapters. Setting aside the Fourth Gospel, we find among the sayings of Jesus, so far as we can recover them, no doctrinal statement. Our duty is set forth as consisting in love to God and man, and in furthering the will of God in , the world. God is represented as a loving Father, forgiving sinners who repent, ordering all things by a providential control, giving His Spirit to those who ask Him. But though He is represented as a loving Father, He is not represented as a weak and indulgent Father. He only forgives those who cpnfess their faults, and who forgive others. He can and often does punish with great ^ severity. We may ask of Him in prayer freely; but only on the condition that we desire nothing contrary to God's will. To live the life of children of God is the highest to which men can attain. To recognise the indications of THE PERMANENT AND THE CHANGING 17 the Divine will in the world is the noblest task of the human mind ; to work with it the supreme glory of human activity ; to love it the sure way of blessedness. Whatever be the outward circumstances of life, he who is inwardly in a right relation towards God is a child of the Kingdom. It is the proclamation of the Gospel of the Kingdom which constitutes the real stress of the teaching of the Founder. His great proclamation was that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. That had been already the burden of the great prophets of Israel; and as the advent of Christianity came near it was proclaimed with more and more of hope and fervour. The first followers of Jesus did not fully realise that He gave a new meaning to the aspiration. They did not even at first suppose that the Kingdom was to go beyond the bounds of Judaism. In Acts the disciples are represented as naively asking their Master after the resurrection, " Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?" But by degrees this hope of a rule in a renovated earth gave way to other expectations. The more materialist came to regard the Kingdom ^of God as equivalent to the visible Church, the organised body of believers. The more spiritual dreamed of a great union of spirits, 18 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE a heavenly realm of righteousness and peace, in which Christ was King-, and of which all united to Him in spirit were members. The unity and continuity of Christianity has been far less a continuity of belief or of thought than of life and inspiration. The Divine Spirit which dwelt in the Founder of Christianity and inspired His life has been bequeathed by Him to His disciples. It has been primarily a principle of life and of action, warring against cruelty and hatred and crime, and inspiring an enthusiasm of humanity, a devotion of self-sacrifice for others, a belief in the reality of the spiritual and its right to dominate the material. Not of course that this sacred enthusiasm has been manifested by all Christians or by all Churches. The life of Christ in the visible Church has been at an infinitely lower level than was the life of , Christ in the historic Jesus. Branches of the Church have fallen away, become corrupt and perished. In some ages the light of the Church has been almost eclipsed by material- ism and superstition. But after the flame has burned low, it has always been revived again by a fresh inspiration. And the inspiration, especially in modern times, has been by no means confined to those who considered them- selves Christians. In recent days the Christian THE PERMANENT AND THE CHANGING 19 spirit has often been more clearly displayed for a time outside the visible Church than within it. It is a light, as the Fourth Evangelist says, which lights every man who comes into the world, if he will but open the windows of the soul to admit it. The wind of the Spirit blows where it lists ; and no barriers of church organisation can either keep it in or shut it out. The Word is always becoming flesh and dwelling among men, though only those who have a certain divine illumination can recognise it. As a visible organisation has been necessary to the Churches, and means of grace have been essential for the preservation of the Christian spirit in the community, so in every age there have been fresh expressions of Christian thought in the language of contemporary philosophy and science. To suppose that this process came to an abrupt end with the Councils of the fourth century is a mistake. It is true that in the dark ages which followed there was not much intellectual activity in the Church or anywhere else. But as soon as learning revived, the search for truth in Christian doctrine revived also. The search- ings of Abelard and Aquinas, followed by those of WyclifFe and Huss, were succeeded by all the mighty streams flowing in the time ^0 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE of the Reformation and the counter-Reforma- tion, and still flowing. On us^ too, in the twentieth century, falls the duty of reconsideration and restatement of Christian belief. It is a duty which we cannot escape. Even less than our ancestors have we the right blindly to accept traditional formulEB or to take refuge in an agnostic conservatism. If in this great branch of thought there is to be no investigation and no progress, while in all the branches of science, of history, of psychology, the mind of man becomes more and more active, then Christian theology will be left high and dry, a wreck on the shore of the intellectual ocean» But of this there is little fear. It is generally acknow- ledged that the interest felt in the great questions of religious belief has not shrunk in recent times, but grown steadily. This interest is not confined to theologians : philosophers, journalists, novelists, all show an intense desire to understand these things. That they write about them, often utterly without the historic and psychologic study which is necessary as a preparation, is a misfortune ; but it seems to be the way of our age to write first and think afterwards. We must expect the shock of a terrible war and the rising waters of democracy to bring in other ways of speaking of divine THE PERMANENT AND THE CHANGING 21 things than the decorous and leisurely ways of past days. It is of no use to quit the field and leave it to irresponsible audacity. We must learn from our enemies, and must try tq re- state the main truths of the Christian revela- tion in such a way as to appeal, at all events, to the sober and serious part of our con- temporaries. Of all appeals in our days the appeal to mere authority seems the most hopeless. The only arguments to which men will listen are those drawn from fact, from experience, and from history, which is merely the. continuous experience of nations. II EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY For nearly a century cataclysmic and evolu- tional views have stood opposed in many of the departments of knowledge, and the history of them is uniform: it is a history of the gradual supersession of cataclysmic views by evolu- tional. Nearly a century ago the Principles of Geology by Sir Charles Lyell set forth the view that the crust of the earth had been gradually formed through vast ages of time by the action of forces which are still at work in the world, and that the fossils found in geologic beds are the remains of successive dynasties of living things which succeeded each other on the earth. For a long time Christian writers of eminence opposed such views, partly in the interests of the Mosaic cosmogony. Then there arose "reconciling" schools who tried to maintain that by a little EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 2S licence of interpretation the cosmogony of Genesis could be made to harmonise with the geologic record. The notion of a special creation of each species of living things and of sudden Divine interventions in the history of the world was in favour until the appear- ance in 1859 of Darwin's Origin of Species, which substituted gradual changes of forms and slow adaptations to surroundings for special creations. Again there was a great fluttering in clerical dovecotes, and many of us can remember how commonly in the pulpit preachers of the Christian denominations took advantage of their position to prove that the Darwinian ideas were anti-Christian and even atheistic. Yet the evolutional views, of which Darwinism was the most noted example, spread in all directions, and even into the domain of history, giving it a skeleton and a meaning which had before been wanting. It was not long before the ideas of evolution spread even into the domain of religious history. So long as they were applied only to Pagan religions, taking the place of the outworn idea of a primitive revelation by degrees corrupted, they might not seem very dangerous. But when they reached Jewish history, and the religion of Israel was seen to be a form of belief not revealed all at once by God to 24 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE Moses, but growing by slow degrees from primitive superstitions to a noble theism, the ecclesiastical drum was again beaten, and such views were declared to be contrary to the Christian faith. We have now outgrown even that phase, and a cleric's reputation for ortho- doxy is not forfeited even if he believes that we may trace in the writings of the Old Testament a progressive Divine revelation ; and of late years, the patient work of scholars on the Jewish Apocrypha has carried on the history of the evolution of Jewish religion down to the beginning of the Christian era. It has been shown that the break between later Judaism and the earliest Christianity is not so abrupt and deep as had been supposed. But at the point where we stand there is in most clerical quarters a great indisposition to allow that primitive Christianity also went through many phases, and that we may trace in the New as in the Old Testament a gradual transformation. But it is beyond question that year by year^ even in the conservative camp, evolutionary views of the history of Christianity are spreading, and one need not be a prophet to foresee their triumph at no distant date. The recent careful and profound research into the early history of Christianity, while EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 25 it still leaves much in doubt, has been fatal to the established views of the Christian origins. The school of Newman regarded the Church of the second century as practically identical with that of the Apostles and their Master. The ordinary Protestant view mixes up the views of St Paul and his school with thdse of the Founder' of Christianity. Neither view perceives that we may trace, even in the writ- ings of the New Testament, a notable progress from one class of beliefs to another. It was the beginning of an evolution which has gone on through the ages and is still going on. The Spirit of Christ has guided the development of the Church in the past, and is still guiding it towards an unseen future. The merits of the two views of Christianity, the cataclysmic and the evolutional, belong to two different ways of regarding the relations of God to the world. If evolutional views in religion led directly to a necessarian and quasi materialist view of the universe, excluding from it all exercise of Divine providence and direction, then I for one would prefer at any intellectual sacrifice to adhere to the miracu- lous and cataclysmic outlook. Bacon, in a well-known essay on atheism, wrote : " I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend and the Talmud and the Alcoran than that this 26 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE universal frame is without a mind." I should prefer to say " is without a logos, reason, or purpose," since the word mind is somewhat too anthropomorphic. This view seems to me essentially a reasonable attitude of spirit in a man who has to lead a life among men. But fortunately no such hard alternative is set before us. Essentially spiritual views of God and the world are as possible to the evolutionist as to the believer in cataclysm. The question is whether God stands apart from the working of natural law in the worlds reserving to Himself a right of occasionally intervening, much as landlords reserve to them- selves a right of occasional entry into their lands and houses, or whether God works every- where and at all times, not in supersession of law, but by working through it. I unhesitat- ingly accept the second alternative. The Divine energy is always at work in the universe, at lowest in force and matter, in a more obvious way in the world of living things. And when we come to man, we find this energy working both beneath consciousness and in the field of consciousness. In this last realm we can perceive and appreciate the Divine working, and can discern to what it urges us ; we can even work with it for the good of mankind ; or we have the terrible EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY n power of hindering its working, of raising barriers against it. In every province the Divine power works by law, law which may be clearly traced when we have to deal with things material, but which can be but dimly adumbrated in the profound depths of the conscious life. And here I must guard against misunder- standing. The word law is, unfortunately, ambiguous. Sometimes it means commands laid down by authority, to be obeyed under penalties. I do not use the word in that sense at all, but in the sense in which it is used in science. When I speak of law in the human and moral world, I mean order ; — that there is in the human world, as in the physical world, a fixed rule and constitution of things, though, as we shall see later, there is not, of course, any hard or mechanical constitution. I mean that in the world of conduct no action stands isolated, that the nexus of cause and effect stretches backward into the remote past and forward into the dim future, that human conduct is an evolution, a gradual progression from age to age. But to speak of the Divine working by law in the physical world from the side of science would scarcely befit one who, like the present writer, has made no deep study of science. I 28 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE prefer to accept the view of a very competent authority, Sir Oliver Lodge. He writes : ^ " We accept an orderly and systematic universe, with no arbitrary cataclysms, and no breaks in its essential continuity. Cata- strophes occur, but they occur in the regular course of events ; they are not brought about by capricious and lawless agencies ; they are a part of the entire cosmos." And yet " we postulate a purposeful and directed universe, carrying on its evolutionary processes from an unalterable past into an anticipated future with, a definite aim ; not left to the random control of inorganic forces, like a motor-car which has lost its driver, but permeated throughout by mind and intention and fore- sight and will. Not mere energy, but con- stantly directed energy, the energy being controlled by something which is not energy, nor akin to energy, something which presum- ably is immanent in the universe, and is akin to life and mind." Evolutional theories take various forms. In explaining the origin of plants and animals it is possible to admit only the working of spontaneous variations amid material con- ditions. This is an atheistic explanation of the world. Or it is possible to see working 1 Man and the U7iiversey p. 62. EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY/ S9 through evolution a divine element of what may be called purpose, and to look on the realm of nature as in a sense the kingdom of God. And w^hen we come to human history the former of these views becomes far more difficult, and the latter infinitely more reason- able. For in the very depths of history lie character and human purposes and ideals, which may be observed in their working, but can never be wholly fathomed or explained. And beneath human character again lies the spiritual, a boundless ocean with which the land-bound gulf of humanity is in constant contact, and whence it derives all that is good and effective in it. Whether or not the materialist explanation of biological evolution in the case of animals be maintainable, in the case of the human world it fails utterly and beyond redemption. Thus, however strongly our history may be dominated by the ideas of evolution, we shall always come to a point beyond^which they cannot hold. No explanation of history can be other than superficial which does not admit of the pro- found influence of personality. There is a historic school which makes everjrthing of tendency and circumstance, which regards great leaders and lawgivers as merely the hands of the clock, driven by the general 80 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE impulse, and only marking the results to which that impulse leads. As this school almost eliminates from history the influence of personality, so another contrasted school makes history scarcely more than the* record of the doings of great men, who have im- pressed and swayed the communities in which they were born. This tendency leads to hero- worship, to the denial of a fixed scheme of human nature, and the dissolution of history into a series of dissolving views, unconnected one with the other. There can be no question which of these two kinds of view is most in harmony with modern tendency. It is the former school, the school of law, which since the days of the essentially picturesque historians Macaulay and Carlyle has been constantly gaining ground, while the school of personality has passed more and more into the background. Neither of the two kinds of view can ever be wholly and completely victorious, since law is a reality and personality is a reality, and the course of history results from the action of personalities in a realm of law. But it is safe to say that the old cataclysmic views of history can never again become dominant, that our belief in a fixed moral constitution of the world, even of human nature, is never likely to pass away. EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 31 And this great change in our mental outlook must necessarily condition our religion, and in particular our view of the Christian origins. It need not indispose us to see in those origins a divine interposition, an unprecedented influx of spiritual life and energy. But it will com- pel us to realise that this influence did not work wholly without law or order, but that there were clear parallelisms between the phenomena which it then produced and other phenomena belonging to the origins of other religions. We must contrast the two views which are usually taken of the CJhristian origins. One is materialist, miraculous, and cataclysmic, the other spiritual and evolutional. According to what we may best call the cataclysmic view, Christianity came into the world complete and final in a supernatural revelation. The Founder of the religion was a wholly miraculous being, coming into the world in a way quite diiFerent from that in which men are born. He taught a new religion, and, to prove His rights as a teacher, frequently wrought miracles. He taught His own divinity, and with it such doctrines as the Incarnation and the Atonement. He foretold His own death, which was to be a sacrifice on behalf of all mankind. After dying on the 32 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE cross. He rose from the dead in His human body, and in that body ascended to sit on the right hand of God in Heaven, until He should return in power and glory to judge mankind and to punish unbelievers. So far what we may call traditional Catholicism and traditional Protestantism agree. But Catholicism adds that in departing He bequeathed to His Apostles and the successors whom they might appoint His own divine power of forgiving sins, or conferring grace, and of performing for all time the miracle of the Mass, whereby the Christian partakes of the body and blood of the Founder, and so becomes a partaker in eternal life. Ordinary Protestantism, on the other hand, confines miracle to the human life of the Saviour and His Apostles, and substi- tutes an invisible for a visible Church as a continuation of His life on earth.- In contrast to this non-natural and cata- clysmic view of the history of Christianity stand a variety of views which are alike in being evolutional. In place of sudden and miraculous interventions of God in the world, they see a gradual penetration of history by slowly working Divine idea and purpose. Just as, in the origin of species, evolutionists recognise gradual transformation of types and formation of varieties by an inwardly working EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 53 power rather than a sudden creation of new species, so the broader school of Christian historians see that the Christian Church itself was not a sudden creation, but was evolved mainly from existing materials, which were penetrated and transformed by the fermenting power of a Divine revelation. What we have said of personality applies in an eminent degree to the personality of Jesus Christ. His consciousness is the well- ing source whence Christianity, the original spiritual" impulse of the Christian religion, takes its rise. And that consciousness is not accessible to us, is hidden in an inaccessible region to which we can approach only by slow and difficult labour. Unlike the founder of Islam, the Founder of Christianity has left us no writings. And the various accounts of His words and deeds which we possess are not uniform or consistent ; they are written with^various purposes, and from various points of view. The life of Jesus Christ must neces- sarily be, alike for individuals and the Church, to a great extent an imaginative construction. Very happy it is that this is the case ; for by it we are saved from slavery to the letter, and obliged to work in the spirit. Nevertheless we can study in detail the state of the world at the time of the rise of 3 34 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE Christianity, and place in it more exactly the records of the early Church, including all the books of the New Testament. We can work out the background against which the greatest of the world's tragedies, the life and death of the Saviour, was enacted, and can discern ever fresh lines of connection between the events of that life and the principles of that teaching and the surrounding medium. The historii* evidence is sufficient to show that in many ways Jesus was the child of His age. He carried on the teachings of prophets and seers, raising them to a new level. The wonder of His work did not lie in unaccountable events, but in a nearer relation to the Father in heaven, and a new revelation to men of the Divine will. His death, probably foreseen by Himself, was to be expected, but it came as a surprise to the Apostles, and for the moment it seemed as if the hope of a kingdom of God were shattered. But in a short time they were boldly coming forward to proclaim that their Master was alive, and had sent them on the mission which they took up as a continuation of His. They proclaimed Him to be the expected Messiah and waited for His speedy reappearance in the clouds of heaven to judge mankind and set up a divine kingdom on earth. In this confidence they were ready to EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 35 face all persecution and even death ; and in this confidence they founded a Society which has survived to the present day. Thus arose the Jewish Christian Church. But the Gentiles soon came in, mainly through the preaching of St Paul, who taught that the Church had nothing to do with race or nation or outward organisation, but was founded on a unity of spirit, a common divine life . shared by all the members with their Divine Head, whose Holy Spirit was the source of the Christian inspiration. The Christian Society grew constantly by an inner power which enabled it to conquer and absorb into itself Jewish ethics and eschat- ology, the mystic worships of Greece and Asia, Roman ideas of organisation, -all of which it assimilated by baptising them into the life of Christ.^ The history of that life on earth is a ^adual development. Not that the Church on earth has been perfect or infallible. It has .moved downwards as well as upwards. But in no age has its inspiration entirely dis- appeared ; it has always been fed from an unseen source, and every branch of it has some relation to the Divine Spirit. Both Catholics and Protestants have appealed 1 I have tried to set this view forth briefly in a little work called The Growth of Christianity, 36 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE to the Gospels for the justification of their views. They are both right and both wrong. Catholicism and Protestantism are both con- tained in embryo in the New Testament ; but both add a number of fresh developments and beliefs which were quite foreign ta the Chris- tianity of the first century. I do not propose, in the present chapter, to discuss the differences between the ordinary Catholic and Protestant views. As regards the history of Christian origins, they fall into the same class, as being cataclysmic rather than evolutional. For the present I will confine myself to a general survey of the contrasts of the two ways of looking at the Christian origins, and the objections which may be, and are, brought against-^ach. II The cataclysmic view of Christianity as ordinarily received maintains the historicity of the miraculous narratives of the Synoptic Gospels, and of the teaching in the Fourth Gospel, There are many marvels recorded by the Synoptists which are not inconsistent, apart from details, with our modern experience. EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 37 Such are the so-called miracles of healing. Of course, if the tales of these healings had to be taken as the precise testimony of actual witnesses, they go far beyond anything of which we are aware in the modern history of disease. It has been pointed out by Dr Ryle ^ that many of the cures attributed to Jesus were not of the kind which could be wrought by moral means and by exercises of faith. Dropsy and withered arms, he observes, are not amenable to this kind of treatment. But the traditions of the marvels of healing were handed down by men by no means trained to accuracy, and quite unaware of such distinc- tions as Dr Ryle insists on.. But that a great religious teacher should be credited with the power to heal disease, and that cures of a super- normal kind should attend his nainistry, is so far from being an unheard-of thing, that in our own day in most countries of the world cures by faith iri a religious leader are regarded as natural. And the records of faith-healing at Lourdes and elsewhere have certainly a basis of fact. No feature in the writings of the more con- ventional class of theologians is more remark- able than the way in which they set aside classes of facts which are inconvenient to them. 1 Hibhert Journal^ v. p. 572. 38 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE They write as if no one in history had exercised remarkable powers over disease except Jesus and His Apostles. And they proceed to assume that the exercise of such powers by the Founder of Christianity places Him at once in an altogether exceptional position. If they consulted some of the most easily accessible books they would find that faith- healing, or the expulsion of disease by those who exercised a paramount power over the diseased, has been an ordinary phenomenon at all periods of history. And whereas often those who have exercised such powers have been men of the highest character, saints and ascetics, this is by no means always the case. In America especially, faith-healing has been very successfully practised by persons of by no means high morality. How little success in this line has to do with profound religious knowledge or high religious character is shown by the history of the votaries of the so-called Christian Science. Their leaders have been very successful in faith-healing ; but the writ- ings of their founder, Mrs Eddy, are a most astounding farrago of absurdity. If one speaks to Christian Scientists, they will tell you of their personal experience in the healing of disease, and at once go on to maintain that this fact gives a sanction to the absurdities of EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 39 their sacred books. However, many of those practitioners who are successful as faith-healers make no pretence of any sanction in religion : they feel in themselves a certain potency, and exercise it for the good of humanity, without any theory in the matter. The experience of the earliest age of Christi- anity was not dissimilar. False teachers and the confederates of demons could perform marvels as often as Christian Apostles, though no doubt Christians believed, as we see from Acts, that the Christian missionaries could refute and overthrow the votaries of demons. Thus we may say that, although great religious personalities usually have unusual power over the bodies of men as well as over their souls, the possession of such powers would not by itself prove the divine mission of a prophet. But there are other kinds of miracles re- corded by the Synoptists, such as the miracu- lous multiplication of loaves and fishes, walking on water, and the blighting of a fig-tree by a word of power, which adherents of the cata- clysmic view of Christianity defend as historic. But a belief in their historicity is a view which is steadily failing, and growing more and more out of harmony with modern ways of thought. Those who are out of the stream of intellectual progress accept them, as did their ancestors ; 40 "EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE and in such acceptance there may be no great harm. But it is necessary to be prepared either to give them up, or at all events to regard them as quite an exceptional group of phenomena, which occurred once, but are not likely to occur again, and w^hich need not be taken into account in our view of the world. Surely, the conservative theologians say, if the world is dominated and interpenetrated by a great spiritual Power, that Power may well, on fitting and exceptional occasions, vary that fixed order of physical sequence which ordinarily obtains in the world. To this abstract proposition we can only reply that there is no need to deny such a possibility. But to everyone accustomed to historic method and procedure the real question is, not whether such transgression of natural law be possible, but what proof have we that it ever occurs ? And the evidence is insufficient. Nothing can be more certain than that the study of anthropology and of historic method so greatly indisposes men to accept miraculous narratives that they regularly reject them, not as dis- proved, but as so improbable that they need not be further considered. The history of the belief in the miraculous, that is, in the arbitrary and direct interference of spiritual powers in the domain of natural EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 41 ~ law, is long and interesting. Savage tribes in Africa believe in nothing but miracle ; they will not admit what we should call a natural death, that is, a death by disease. Every death is attributed to the violence either of man or of spirits : when a man dies they search at once for the wizard who has bewitched him. Storm and rain seem to them the immediate work of spirits ; and sun and moon only shine because they choose to shine. Among tribes a little more advanced, such as the Berbers of North Africa, miracles occur every day ; but they are the special function of saints on the one hand or notable wizards on the other. The general opinion in the early Church was not unlike this. There was, men thought, a constant conflict going on in the visible world between good and evil spirits ; both classes able to pro- duce abnormal effects in the material world ; and the bad spirits at least as active as the good. Lecky, in his History of Rationalism in Europe^ has sketched the stages by which the ^ belief in demons and witchcraft on one side, and in the miracles of the saints on the other, has slowly died away. But religious beliefs are very persistent, and when they are driven out of daily life they often survive in a diluted form. So right down to our own times the belief has held that there has been one period 42 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE in the history of the world, the age of the Saviour and His Apostles, when miracles were frequent. Searching for a theory to justify this view, some of the apologists of Christianity have lighted on the thesis that as the Jesus of history was a new and unique kind of being, therefore miracle was sure to accompany His career on earth. That, however, is altogether a modern view, not at aU that of the early Church, which regarded the miracles of the Saviour as a continuation of those wrought by Moses and Elijah, and which believed that miraculous powers belonged not only to the Saviour but to the Apostles, and in a some- what lesser degree to a number of false prophets and wizards of the period. Miracles were ex- pected of Jesus not because He was the unique Son of God, but because all who brought a divine message were expected to show their credentials by working miracles. Jesus Him- self set no store by miracles. He bitterly exclaimed, " An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign " (though in Mark the words " evil and adulterous " are omitted). All three of the Synoptists record the saying of Jesus that the longing for signs was the proof of a corrupt mind, and that no sign should be given. And St Paul, a generation later, writes that just as the Greeks were dissatisfied with the EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 43 Christian preaching because they regarded it as intellectually inadequate, so the Jews re- jected it because of the want of miracles to establisli its claim.^ It is true that in the Fourth Gospel, the value of the working of miracles is put on another footing ; but there is every reason to believe that this is a later development of the original teaching. To any historic inquirer it must appear that the evidence for the most notable Gospel miracles is unsatisfactory in character : so the apologists retreat to a new line of entrench- ments. At least, they say, we must accept the tales which tell that the entry of the Saviour into the world, and His departure from it, were miraculous. The virginal birth and the bodily resurrection and ascension remain articles to be believed by all Christians. This, however, is nothing but a confession of bank- riiptcy, a payment of a penny in the pound. All historic miracles are given up save one or two ; whereas traditional Christianity rests altogether on a basis of constant miracle. If we try to look at the matter in a broad way, we shall see that for the thaumaturgic and materialist view of Christianity which ruled Europe in the Middle Ages, there were four main doctrinal supports. These were 1 1 Cor, i. 22. 44 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE the miraculous birth, the physical resurrection, apostolic succession, and the doctrine of tran- substantiation. Though these four came into the Church in various periods, they all belong to one range of ideas, and fit into one another like the joints of a fishing rod. The Reformed Churches revolted against the two last-men- tioned doctrines. Our ancestors waded through a sea of blood in order to rescue us from their materialist tyranny. That the Reformers did not at the same time reject the first two doctrines was inevitable. They rated so highly the authority of Scripture that they could not set aside views based upon definite statements in the Gospels. Nevertheless, these tenets are not at all necessary to the spiritual Christianity preached by St Paul and the Fourth Evangelist. Being in these days obliged to re-survey the structure of the Christian faith, we see that these stones, which so long have formed part of the edifice, have fallen into decay, and are a danger to the stability of the building. Their removal may be an ungrateful, and even a dangerous task, but it is necessary. If they formed part of the foundation of the faith, the prospect would be sad indeed. Happily, they are but a part of the superstructure. The foundation is as it was in the time of St Paul, who built nothing on the virginal EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 45 birth : " Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." I wish to make it clear that I do not assert the impossibility of the virginal birth. But I do maintain, first, that the evidence for such birth is inadequate, and second, that it is no necessary part of Cln^istian belief. It is not necessary here to pursue the subject, as to whie^i everything which can be said, on both sides, has already been set forth. In the first age the physical resurrection of the Saviour >vas valued as a proof that the bodies of His followers also would- physically rise from the grave. This conception dominated the hopes and theJmagination of Christians all through the dark ages and down to modern days. Thus the compilers of the Articles insisted that Christ "took again His body with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature ; wherewith He ascended into Heaven, and there sitteth." But how many instructed Christians now believe that their actual bodies will rise from the grave ? Certainly it is far more consonant to modern thought to hold with St Paul that the resur- rection will be in a spiritual body, or to revert to the Greek doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul. But if either of these views be 46 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE held, the physical resurrection of the Saviour loses all force and value. Probably some modern Christians may take another view and dwell on the bodily resurrec- tion of their Lord as drawing a deep line of distinction between Him and other men, as emphasising His purely miraculous and non- natural being. But that way of regarding the matter is utterly opposed to the teaching of the great writers of the early Church, Christ, St Paul taught, was the first to rise from the dead ; but as He rose, so should all His followers. The view which I have mentioned is a modern aberration. The accounts of the appearances of the Lord to His disciples are very confused and fluctuating. But I would not for a moment maintain that they had no basis in historic fact. Events do not take place without a cause. One of the most remarkable phenomena in history is the sudden change in the attitude of the Apostles, from despair and panic to a splendid determination and confidence, in the days which followed the death of their Master. Our histories compel us to believe that the reason of that change was that they had seen and conversed with that Master, and that He had risen from the grave. A mere fancy or dream would not have had the eiFect of com- EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 47 pletely changing their attitude. But as to the exact nature of the communion of the Apostles with their Master's spirit the evidence scarcely enables us to judge; and in the present state of our knowledge we cannot penetrate the mystery. I say "the present state of our knowledge," because it seems to me not im- possible that more exact studies of the phenomena of spiritism may at some future time give us better opportunities of forming theories, if not conclusions. That the Apostles believed their Master to be with them in spirit is certain ; and without the working of that spirit the whole history of Christianity becomes unintelligible. But the revival of the slain body of the Saviour does not in the least help that history, but on the contrary introduces a number of difficulties very hard to meet. Belief in such revival may Jiave been a necessary stage through which Christian faith had to pass. And it may still be necessary to those who take a materialist view of the Christian Sacraments. But to force it upon those to whom it is a mere impediment, an outworn phase of belief, is incongruous. Thoroughly of a piece with the early Christian belief in the miraculous bfrth and the physical resurrection of their Lord was the expectation 48 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE that before long He would appear again in glory to establish on earth the reign of the Saints. This view, as everyone, knows, altogether domi- nated Christian thought and hope in the first century. It was not until Christianity had taken firna root in heathen soil that the belief in a near Second Coming was gradually super- seded by a vision of a future spiritual worlds and a judgment of souls. And the older belief still persisted ostensibly by the side of the l^ter; but it had lost the sap of vitality and by degrees became, as it is so obviously in modern times, a mere survival. The sub- stitution of a gradual process for a great world-cataclysm was the earliest triumph of evolutional over cataclysmic views in the history of Christianity. The modern Christian mind inevitably goes further in the same direction ; for a spectacular judgment of souls and a sudden removal to bliss or woe it sub- stitutes a future life which is not wholly out of relation to the past, and allows of progress after death. But it may fairly be said that if we preserve at all the cataclysmic view of the religious history of the world, no part of that view is more indispensable than that of the second coming of Christ, and a great world- judgment. In the chapter which treats of the evolutional EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 49 doctrine of Christ I shall consider the question whether a non-natural and strictly miraculous view of the person of the Founder is really necessary to genuine Christian faith. That it is consistent with such faith, I would not for a moment deny. But it will appear that the modification of it involves gain as well as loss, and need not be destructive of the Christian enthusiasm. The most serious objections to cataclysmic views of Christianity are to beJbund not on the intellectual but on the ethical side. The intellectual difficulties will be felt chiefly by _ professed historians and historical students, who are but a small minority. But the ethical objections belong to the practical life of all Christians, and are in our days driving multitudes either to accept unreal sentimental views of conduct, which break down fatally in contact with the facts of the world, or else entirely to abandon Christianity. Ill We tiifn next to the Fourth Gospel. The ordinary cataclysmic view regards it as an authentic record, compiled by St John, of the doings and sayings of the historic Jesus, But it is certain that this view is no longer maintainable, and is i^ fact not maintained by 50 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE any great modern critics. Some indeed do cling to the opinion that the Gospel is in the main a work of St John the Apostle. But even these have to allow that, whoever the author may have been, he transposes the early traditions of Christianity in accordance with certain definite views. No one supposes that he works only from memory or from note- books. In fact the startling contrast, felt by everyone who has any sense of literary style, between the sayings of Jesus as recorded by the Synoptic writers and those recorded by the Fourth Evangelist, compels every critic to allow that the -records cannot both be accurate. In days when men's minds were hazy, and sentffnent in a great degree directed thought, a non-natural and self-contradictory notion of the life of the Saviour might satisfy. In those days history was not fully realised as a long nexus of cause and effect, of gradual evolution, but rather as a series of dissolving views, un- related one to the other, and forming only a picturesque background to politics ortoreligion. Whether the view was photographically correct, or whether it was the mere creation of an imaginative artist, did not greatly concern men ; they accepted what interested and pleased them, without troubling much about EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 51 the evidence. But for good or evil, or rather for mixed good and evil, we are leaving that frame of mind behind us. We are becoming keen to see what really took place in the vistas of past history, rather than to dream over what we should wish to have taken place. Fact takes the place of myth, and strict bio- graphy the place of heroic legend. And so the modern mind insists on carrying bajCk the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of Ephesus, into its actual surroundings of time and place. It realises that the writer frequented the synagogue taken over from the Jews by the followers of St Paul, attending the preaching in the school of Tyrannus, witnessing the pro-: cessions and the rites of the Asiatic Artemis and Isis and Sabazius, with the quays of Ephesus and the polyglot groups of sailors in the background. It recognises that when elders of Jerusalem came, after the destruction of that city by the army of Titus, to find a refuge at Ephesus, the accounts which they brought of the doings and sayings of Jesus half a century before, and the Acts of the Apostles which followed the Crucifixion, would be there coloured, and receive a new meaning from the spiritual life of the Christian Society. Men would think, in the way natural to humanity, that the facts of present mental 52 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE and moral experience involved a history of a certain kind as a condition. They would eagerly adopt and amplify any accounts of the life of the Saviour which seemed akin to the working of the spirit of Christ in their own community. The Messianic hopes which filled the minds of the contemporaries and fellow-countrymen of Jesus had become anti- quated and would not impress them. But Christ as the source of their common life, as a revelation of God, as a stream of impulse urging them to do the will of God, would be the foundation of their faith, and they would be sure that this aspect of the Founder would be clearly manifested in all the works and words which belonged to His brief sojourn among men/ Whenever the Church is able to reach the point of view now held by scholars, the Fourth Gospel will come to it as a new revelation. If the life of Jesus upon earth, and the succeed- ing life of Christ in the Church can be regarded as an indissoluble unity, then the Gospel re- vealed to the second generation of Christians at Ephesus will be almost as sacred as the earlier revelation in Palestine r as sacred, and in some ways coming closer to us, since the 1 I have tried to summarise these views in my Epkesian Gospel, 1914. EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 53 circumstances conditioning the revelation are much nearer to those of the Church in modern days. In order to understand it, we are not obliged to fall back into the state of mind of the Jews of the early first century, but rather into the great stream of the world's thought half a century later : a stream which was indeed in the Middle Ages blocked with ruins and bars of sand, but which has since the Renaissance flowed full and clear in all the countries of the West. Thus the literature of the early Gentile Church has become indissolubly connected with the literature of Judaea. These two have from the first been blended to form the foundation of Christian belief. Subsequent lights of the Church, even in the second century, have been content to play the part of commentators. Against this decision of eighteen centuries there can scarcely be an appeal. It is now unthinkable that any Christian should either reject the New Testament as the norm of his faith, or should try to add to it. But for fresh interpretation of Scripture there is an unlimited field. This is the course which the great teachers of the Church have in all ages taken : they have not subtracted or added, but they have re-read in the light of the constantly renewed experience of the Society. Looking back, we see innumerable 54 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE developments springing from one or another of the sacred books : the Ascetic Orders and the Friars from the Gospel of Galilee ; and from the writings of St Paul a long succession of noble teachers — Augustine, Luther, Jansen, and many others. The Fourth Gospel has been the inspiring document of Christian mysticism in all ages. Even single texts have often had power, when planted in the soil of a passionate religiosity, to form starting-points for great religious movements. For such re-interpretation there is surely abundant scope in the present age. Historic criticism is one thing, and in its way very valuable. But the use of the records of the early Christian inspiration for the stimulus and direction of modern religious thought and aspiration is another thing. And the latter is apt to move very freely, and not to be closely limited by intellectual barriers. Life does not develop in logical sequences, but with biological impulses and variations. Wherever Christian life is strong, it will throw out fresh shoots, and not be content with a tame following in beaten ways. We may value the New Testament as highly as our ancestors, but it will be in a different way. We shall regard it not in a static, but in a dynamic way, not as the record of a EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 55 revelation made once for all, but as the con- tempojary history of the gradual triumph of divine impulses over an unfriendly medium, a moving forward of the religion of the human race on to a fr^sh level. In all the history of civilisation such periods of rapid growth and change alternate with duller ages of stagnation or retrogression. All motion in the world is rhythmical, like the advance of the waves of the sea. There is a notion, whether founded or not, that the sea as it advances often sends up series of three successive great waves, with lesser waves between. In the early history of Christianity, the new religion broke on the world in three successive great waves : first, the life of the Founder ; second, the Apostolic Church at Jerusalem ; third, the Church of the Gentiles. The result of the three waves was that the religion of Christ overflowed the land, and. raised for all time the religious level of mapkind. It will be said by some critics that the view thus advocated is after all cataclysmic, though not so violently cataclysmic as the popular view. Certainly no thinking man would allow that we can find in history so slow and regular an evolution as may be traced in the geologic record. When we come to history, we find among men new and powerful elements in 56 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE evolution, the constant working of will and personality, and of the divine influence which works through these. Personality is a remark- able and an inestimable element in the course of events. And into every personality there come influences from spiritual- sources working for good and for evil. Of all this side of the matter, so far as it bears upon the Christian religion, I must treat more at length in future chapters. But meantime we are bound to allow that the idea of evolution in history has worked its way into all systematic thought in the present day, and that we are obliged to modify, in accordance with it, our notions of the origins and the present facts of the Christian religion. At present there is a widely spread suspicion of evolutional views in Christian history, be- cause they are associated especially with great German thinkers. The German theologians are credited with a great share in the strange and terrible deflection from the spirit of Christianity and the ways of humanity which has marked the course of the present war. It is not recognised that the great majority of the rulers and the people of Germany, so far as they are confessedly Christian, are either Roman Catholics or orthodox Lutherans. To attribute a profound influence on the mind EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 57 of the nation to a few advanced scholars is a delusion. It may further be observed that, although Germany has taken the lead in the translation of Christian history to a new plane, the same tendency is at work in all the uni- versities of the world, French, American, and the rest. We cannot give up thought and scientific method because Germany has put them to a bad use. We might as well pro- hibit aviation because Germany has bombed undefended cities, or give up chemistry because the German chemists have used poison-gas. Every scientific invention or discovery gives us an increase of power ; but that power may be used for bad purposes as well as for good. Aniline dyes were first produced from coal- tar in England, but Germany, by paying more attention to research, has carried the discovery further than we. Much the same thing has taken place in regard to theories of evolution. They started in England, but Germans have worked out their inevitable course with more completeness. We need not follow them with Haeckel in the direction of materialism, but either we must follow them on spiritual lines, or we must be content to remain. at a lower intellectual level than other nations. Ill PROVIDENCE AND THE DIVINE KINGDOM It cannot be a matter of surprise that the substitution, which is gradually everywhere taking place, of a more evolutional for a more cataclysmic view of religion, should cause much searching of heart among Christians. It may well seem to many a change which will be fatal to some of the deepest seated ways of thinking which have belonged to the Church in all ages. It is impossible, in a slight work like the present, to meet this fear at all points. What I propose to do is to take one or- two fundamental beliefs of Christianity to which the new ways of thinking seem to bring danger or destruction, and to show that what is really threatened is not the existence of these ways of belief, but only their outward form. Like animals transported from England to Aus- tralia, they are quite capable of acclimatisa- 58 PROVIDENCE AND THE DIVINE KINGDOM 59 tion to fresh surroundings, though the change may involve some change of structure, and some adaptation. The doctrines which I propose first to con- sider are those of Providence and Prayer. These two are intimately connected, as unless there be a good and sympathetic Power watch- ing over society and individuals, prayer be- comes a mockery. That these doctrines have been part and parcel of Christianity from the beginning needs no proof. The duty of prayer is en- forced at every turn not only by the teaching of the Master, but also by His example. We have mention of whole nights spent by Him in prayer* ; and the words of the prayer which He taught to His disciples, and the tale of the vehement prayers in Gethsemane, are familiar to all. In the Sermon on the Mount, and in many discourses in the Synoptists, the truth of a watchful and effective Providence also is inculcated. God is spoken of as registering even the death of a sparrow, and as numbering the hairs of the heads of all His human child- ren : " Your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things." If any change in our intellectual surroundings caused the doc- trines of prayer and providence to seem out- worn, reUgious belief might indeed survive, 60 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE but it would be so profoundly modified that we could scarcely call it Christianity. But in fact these doctrines are quite as well suited to an evolutional and dynamic as to a cataclysmic and static Christianity. But, like miracle, so prayer and providence have to be transferred from the outward and visible to the inward and spiritual sphere. They must become, in the language of Arch- bishop Temple, a part of a religion based on psychology. They must pass from the mechanical realm of necessity, which is bounded by space, into the realm of liberty, self-determination, and divine communion. With every generation of scieptific workers, it becomes clearer and clearer to all whose minds are open to conviction that God does not intervene in the orderly course of nature, or interfere with the working of physical cause and effect in the world. To pray Him to do so for our benefit, or even for the advantage of a cause of the goodness of which we are convinced, is like praying that iron may swim or a stone thrown move in a straight line instead of in a parabola. But in the realm of mind and spirit each of us is in constant con- tact with Divine urgings and impulses, whether they act beneath oi: above the threshold of conscious thought. Here is the field in which PROVIDENCE AND THE DIVINE KINGDOM ,61 the guiding of Providence is written large, and in which prayer is one of the chief forces. I do not mean that, as some maintain, the result of prayer is only reflex and subjective, disposing the votary to acquiesce more readily in his surroundings. It is a force, a ripple in the spiritual world which goes on widening and widening. As the soul of each of us is in contact with that world, so are the souls of others ; and a movement set up anywhere in that world may spread far beyond our know- . ledge or even our intention. This is not to say that spiritual influences move in the orderly and causational way in which matter moves. This might be the view of a pantheist. But by a theist, and especially by a Christian,- it is recognised, oh the basis of the constant experience of life, that there intervenes between the motion of the spirit in prayer and the results which follow, some power which we can only regard as conscious and even as personal. Prayers to God are no more necessarily answered as we should have wished than are petitions to any of our friends. Sometimes we receive the thing we ask for, though often in ways of which we should not have dreamed. Sometimes what we receive we see long afterwards to have been better than what we sought. Sometimes we do not 6^ EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE see any reply : . the heavens seem to be shut against us ; but this is far more often the case when we have made up our minds exactly as to what we want, without conscious deference to the Divine will. The opinions as to the Divine nature which people gain from this variety of experience are naturally diverse. Thousands in disap- pointment make up their minds that God is harsh and unjust. Thousands are unable to recognise any overruling Power. Probably none can reach the belief in a just and yet merciful Deity except through the exercise of a certain amount of faith, through which a conviction is slowly formed, sometimes to be afterwards shattered by the force of persistent misfortune or the stroke of a sudden calamity. Faith, as St Paul says, is the gift of God, and cannot be directly reached by an effort of will, though in its attainment the will of man must co-operate. If we once realise the permanent relations of all men to the spiritual world, we shall not find it hard to frame a view as to prayer and providence which is. reasonable and in accord- ance with facts. Every prayer is an effort of the spirit, and naturally tends to have a result on the will and the conduct not only of him who prays but also of other men. But that PROVIDENCE AND THE DIVINE KINGDOM 63 natural tendency does not work uncontrolled. It rests with the Divine power to further or to hinder it ; and it rests with the Divine will, which is essentially good, to grant or deny. The nearer a prayer comes to the Divine purposes the more sure it is of efficacy, just as a boat can move more easily and rapidly with the stream than against or even across it. But for men to learn the way of the Divine will is the hardest of problems, requir- ing the devotion of a lifetime, the concentra- tion of every faculty, intellectual and moral. Few indeed can rise to that height. All of us have ends and purposes and hopes of our own ; and for all of us the safest way of prayer is to express those purposes and hopes, at the same time submitting them with all the devotion of which we are capable to the Divine will for endorsement or rejection. And there can be no doubt that by the habit of prayfer, if it be an energy of tlie soul, and no mere repetition of a liturgy, men can grow nearer to the will of God, and learn by degrees to appreciate it. The same principles hold in regard to the belief in an overruling Providence. The man who expects the events of the world and the acts of his fellow-men to tend under Providence always to the promotion of his prosperity and happiness is not at a much higher rung 64 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE of the spiritual ladder than the savage who thinks that by incantation and ritual he can gain his purposes in the world, bring towards him the animal which he wishes to slay, or diminish the courage and determination of his enemies. But it arrives in the course of living to many who with modesty and self-control look for it to discover in the course of their lives the working of a Power of wisdom and kindness. When this has once been fully realised, it naturally encourages the discoverer to trust for future good the j^pwer which has in the past bestowed good. This is the higher doctrine of Providence, to which few of us fully attain, but which remains as an ideal before us. And of course what one finds in one's own life, one will expect also to find in the lives of friends and neighbours, and of the community in which one lives. But the good of a com- munity is a thing which it is not easy to grasp or to realise. And so the benefactors of the human race seldom get beyond trying in some ' moderate and definite province to improve the lot or raise the ethical standard of those about them, leaving the co-ordination of such efforts to the higher Power, who sees the community with a comprehensive view, and knows the nature of the higher good. PROVIDENCE AND THE DIVINE KINGDOM 65 II There is no Christian doctrine in regard to which we can more clearly trace the progress of evolution than we can in regard to the doctrine of a divine kingdom. About ten years ago a German theologian of the vigorous^ and rigorous sort, Dr A, Schweitzer, threw a bomb into the Christian world by maintaining that, when He pro- claimed that the Kingdom of God was at hand, the Founder of Christianity was think- ing only of a kingdom to be shortly established on the earth, a realm of ideal justice and virtue, of which the Prophets had dreamed, and the hope of which took more and more definite shape in the Jewish literature of the Apocrypha. Schweitzer was prepared to re- read the whole of the Synoptic Gospels in the light of this idea ; to see in them a preaching suitable and intended only for a brief period of waiting until the light of the ne_w age should dawn, and Jesus should be king of a renewed and purified realm, introduced by a series of catastrophes and a great cataclysm. It cannot be denied that many of the Sjmoptic sayings lend themselves readily to this interpretation. And few sober critics would now deny that there was this element 5 66 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE in the first preaching. But there are many other passages in which the Kingdom of God is spoken of not as future but as present, as underlying and working through the visible condition of things : " The Kingdom of God is within you." " The Kingdom\of God is come unto you." "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness." And the whole series of the parables of the Kingdom have generally a far more satisfactory interpretation if we regard them as referring to an ideal state gradually making its way in the visible world, than if we regard them as applying to a realm about to come by a sudden cataclysm into the world. All these passages Schweitzer is prepared to adapt to his theory, partly by altering their form, partly by denying their authenticity. The view of Schweitzer is not, of course, new ; previous writers in Germany had come near to it. But Schweitzer set it forth with so much masterfulness and trenchant criticism that he overwhelmed those not strongly grounded. He was a great exponent of the German either-or. Either Jesus was thinking of a future cataclysmic realm, or He was thinking of a present spiritual kingdom. He must, Schweitzer thought, have had in His mind a clear and consistent view. And since PROVIDENCE AND THE DIVINE KINGDOM 67 much of the Synoptic teaching cannot be fully explained on what we may call the spiritual hypothesis, the other must be the true one. But the either-or view, though dear to keen logicians, breaks down at once when we attempt to apply it to fact and to history. Let us try an example or two : — Either the Church of England is Catholic or she is Protectant : either Mohammed was divinely inspired or he was an impostor : either spiritual- ism is true or it is charlatanry. In practical matters there is always a middle course between extremes. Either-or. does very well for boys' debating societies ; but these hard and clear-cut assertions have scarcely any relation to actual things with their infinite complications. And if this rigorous logic does not suit modern times, it suits far worse the state of thought and feeling of ancient days. In particular, the confusion of the future with the ideal, of that which was likely to come with that which ought to come, was the usual state of mind of the Jewish prophets. For them the future lay implicit in the present and must work itself into actuality in the future. That Babylon should fall was but a corollary of the truth that Babylon had merited ^destruction. If the people of Israel had sinned, their punishment 68 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE was already on the road. The ancient mind, and more especially the Semitic mind, did not work by hard and logicaL antithesis. The mentality of a German advanced critic would be as unintelligible to a Hebrew seer as his state of mind would be to the critic. Fortunately, Dr Schweitzer carried his love of consistency so far as to ruin his case. He had frequently to put extreme and unreason- able interpretations on passages of the Synop- tists. But it was still more fatal when he attempted to apply the logical scheme, after which he had cut down arid adapted the teaching of Jesus, to the teaching of St Paul. Paul also must be thinking only of a future, not of a spiritual kingdom ! And here the critic falls into obvious absurdity, for we have abundant writings of Paul ; and even the moderately educated man can see at once that ^Schweitzer is advocating an absurd view. Everyone will remember the saying in Romans (xiv. 17) : " The Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." How far the Founder of Christianity was thinking of a future earthly kingdom and how far of a spiritual inner kingdom, which of the two conceptions was usually more donlinant in His mind, is a matter very hard to determine. PROVIDENCE AND THE DIVINE KINGDOM 69 And the same collocation of ideas went on in the early Church. St Paul speaks sometimes of a present ideal kingdom ; sometimes, especi- ally in the earlier part of his life, he expects a cataclysmic return of his Master ; sometimes, as in Colossians i. 13, "Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son," he seems to identify the Kingdom with the society of believers in Christ, ^Vith the Church, if we may use that term of a society which was as yet quite inorganised and formless. All three of the Pauline interpretations of the Kingdom have gone on in tl/e history of Christianity growing and changing with the times. The expectation of a sudden return of Christ, in supernatural power and glory, to reign on a renewed and purified earth was enshrined in the magnificent imagery of the Apocalypse. And there have been times in the history of Christianity when there was a widespread expectation of a sudden second coming. Yet on the whole, even before the end of the first century, that expectation was dying away, and giving place to a vision of the future judgment of souls, of a Heaven and a Hell. Besides, Christian mystics of all ages have clung to a belief in an ideal and invisible Kingdom of God, lying behind and 70 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE beneath the shows and vanities of the present world. And the great organised Churches, more especially that which centres in Rome, have hardened and materialised the doctrine that the Kingdom of Heaven must be identified with a visible society, organised under a hier- archy who have unlimited power over the souls of Christians: power to bind and to loose, to forgive sins^ and severely to punish the dis- obedient. In modern days a new interpretation of the divine Kingdom has arisen and spread, ^t has been regarded as at once ideal and future, but to be realised in the present world, by a diffu- sion among the nations of a spirit and practice of justice and mercy, kindliness and brotherly affection. It is the idea of an age secular in spirit, and believing greatly in the good things of the present life. It may be degraded until the Kingdom be thought of, in the Pauline words, as eating and drinking, having a six-hour day for work, and abundant opportunit;ies of enjoy- ment. Certainly this is a strange perversion of the Christian ideal. But on a somewhat higher plane, the hope of a world of better morals, better manners, greater kindliness, and wider happiness is not to be rejected. PROVIDENCE AND THE DIVINE KINGDOM 71 III Finally, I may say a few words as to evolution and the doctrine of the future life. As is generally known, the belief in a better life beyond the grave was no feature of early Jewish belief. In the earlier books of the Old Testament, and even in the Psalms, happiness in the present life, escape from one's enemies, a numerous offspring, are represented as the fruit of serving God and walking in the ways of righteousness. It seems to have been through contact with the -peoples of Egypt and the East that belief in the future life for individuals gradually made its way in Israel ; and for a long time the world of de- parted souls, Sheol, was thought of as a gloomy abode, a pale reflection of the life on earth. In Greece, at the time of the origin of Christi- anity, mainly owing to the teaching of the philosophers who followed Plato, a much more advanced and spiritual doctrine of the soul and its natural immortality had arisen. At the same time, the imagination of some of the peoples of Asia had develbped, on the basis of the doctrine of the survival of death, a great scheme of rewards and punishments in a future life, of realms of happiness and misery beyond the tomb. The mystic sects and societies 72 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE which flourished in Greece and nearer Asia after the days of Alexander the Great had absorbed much of this imaginative behef, and made the hope of a happy existence in the world of shades an object to be aimed at in the present life. The first teaching of Christianity was re- markably free, alike from the influence of Greek philosophic thought and the power of the mystery religions. Anyone can easily see how very small a part the doctrine of individual immortality occupies in the Synop- tists. It is indeed scarcely to be found. The passages which we commonly regard as teach- ing a judgment of souls and an assignment to happiness or misery, such as the magnifi- cent parable of Matthew xxv. as to the separa- tion of the sheep and the goats, may very well have originally been applied to the approaching reign of the Saints on earth. We have occasional mention of angels in heaven, or of the fires of Gehenna. But certainly the idea of a great realm of departed spirits, and of a strict retribution in a future world for the good and the evil done in the present life is notably absent. In this re- spect the Gospels differ notably from the Koran, in which the future life fills the horizon. The whole stress of the teaching lies in other PROVIDENCE AND THE DIVINE KINGDOM 73 directions : men are urged to be worthy of their Divine Fatherhood, to place implicit trust in Providence, to realise the worth of the spirit, and to devote themselves utterly to the promotion of the Kingdom. But the future life does not throw a deep shadow on the present life, as it did in Egypt and in Asia Minor. In the second period of Christianity, when Gentile churches were being formed in the great cities, the hope of a cataclysmic second coming of Christ was dying down, and its place was naturally taken by the growing intensity of belief in a future life. But if we take the writings of St Paul as the best ex- position of the beliefs of those churches, we shall see that the doctrine of the resurrection was in them closely restricted. It ran on lines parallel to those observable in the teach- ing of the Pagan mystery religions. Pagan mystics did not usually teach that future happiness or misery was a corollary and result of conduct in the present life, but that the attached votaries of their particular cult were safe of protection from the dangers of the world after death through the favour and help of their special guardian deity, and so sure of a blissful immortality. In the same way, it was only by close spiritual union with 74 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE the Christ who was the life of the Church that Christians could hope for a future of heavenly bliss. It was only the members of the sacred society who, in virtue of their close connection with the Founder, were assured of eternal life, while others, having not in them this principle of immortality, would perish and disappear. Then by degrees there arose the vast struc- ture of mediaeval doctrine of the future life: a system crystallised in the immortal poem of Dante. The windows and the walls of churches were covered with representations of the bliss and the torments awaiting depart- ing souls. And it was by seizing the keys of Heaven and Hell, and using them with immense effect, that the Catholic Church gained its astounding predominance in Europe — partly for good, and partly for evil. For good, inas- much as the Church was able by the threat of future punishment to curb the rude passions of the invading barbarians of the North, and to keep up some kind of moral discipline. For evil, when she used her power for unworthy purposes, to secure weaLth and domination for herself. When the abuses in the Church gave over half Europe to the Reformers, the doctrine of Heaven and Hell was little aifected, save that PROVIDENCE AND THE DIVINE KINGDOM 75 the gates were held no longer by the Church, but those of Heaven were opened by the golden key of faith, and those of Hell by the iron key of infidelity. In Protestant countries such beliefs still largely prevail in some strata of the community ; but for two centuries they have been in a state of slow decay. They have now little practical power over conduct ; even from the pulpit they are little spoken of. This at least is true of the fear of future punishment in Hell, which has become a sub- ject of general incredulity, and the belief in Heaven has become far more vague. The future life has little place in the literature which has real influence : novels, magazines, and newspapers. The vacant place is taken by an immense variety of beliefs and hopes and fears, ranging in intensity between pro- found conviction and mild expectation. Except the Spiritualists, who are a small minority, no one even professes to know for certain any- thing in regard to the future life ; at most there is hbpe and trust, at least there is agnos- ticism. Some writers, like Tennyson, think that a belief in personal immortality is the very foundation of religion ; others regard such a belief as not merely unfounded, but the very negation of high morality, as placing the personal element, which it is the very 76 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE essence of the higher ethics to mortify and diminish, in a quite false exaltation. All these changes Christianity has lived through ; and it is fair to say that a vivid and exalted Christian life is compatible with any of the forms of belief which I have men- tioned. But it is ^lear that the more modern forms of belief are far nearer to those of early Christian times than the picturesque views of the Middle Ages. But we can hardly as yet say that we see anything like a progressive or evolutional change of belief. What we see in the past is rather the gradual rise of a great structure of eschatological belief, and its gradual decay, so that we now stand on much the same level as 4id Christians before it was formed. That some doctrines of Christianity should steadily evolve in accordance with the pro- gress of knowledge, while others should sltef but little, or revolve within a circle, is exactly what we should expect if the principles set forth in the first chapter are well founded. We have considered three sections of doc- trine. Those of providence and prayer are most immediately affected by the progress of physical science, which necessarily conditions them, and they move steadily in one direction with the changing intellectual environment. PROVIDENCE AND THE DIvMe KINGDOM ? 77 The doctrine of the Kingdom of God is neces- sarily affected by changing social outlooks, but le^sl exposed than those before mentioned to the impact of scientific discovery. Here it is a question rather of changing ideals than pf expanding knowledge. The doctrine of the future life for individuals has no basis in kno^vledge, virhether knowledge of the physical world or of hum,an nature. For the definite proofs of its existence, while appeaUng to individuals, have little objective cogency, un- less> as 1 have already observed, we accept the views of the Spiritualists as based on fact. The future life is related not to knowledge, but to hope and faith ; ai^d as Christian, hope and faith are much the same in all ages, its basis does not change. We learn more about the history pf the belief among men; but that does not tell us whether the, belief itself is justified. It Was in the Middle Ages decorated with poetry and art ; but its aesthetic adorn- ment has nothing to do with its intrinsic reasonableness, any more than the carved capitals and the stained windows of a Gothic cathedral' guarantee that it has a $ound foundation. IV THE EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST I The great intellectual problem of the Christian Church is how we should think of the person of the Founder of Christianity. If the evolu- tional view of Christianity is inconsistent with a satisfactory or lofty view of the Spirit who is the inspiration of the Christian Society, then it is certain that, whatever be the dictates of reason or of logic, earnest Christians will con- -^inue to dread and to avoid -it. Hence a dis- cussion on Christology is necessary to the purpose of the present work. I hold that, even when we treat of this subject, an evolu- tional and inspirational has to be substituted for a cataclysmic view. No accusation is more commonly brought against Broad Churchmen than that they are in fact LJnitarians. In a sense every Christian must be a Unitarian, since the Unity of God is taught with utmost 78 EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 79 emphasis in the New Testament; and this tenet comes at the very beginning of all the Christian creeds. But it is easy to prove that the doctrine of Christ held by most Broad Churchmen is very different from that com- monly associated with the teaching of the Unitarians. This is an important point, and I must dwell on it for a little. The term Unitarian covers a great many different views of the Divine nature. But there is a form of Unitarianism which stands in marked contrast to any Broad Church views. This is the religion which draws a hard and deep line between God and man. On the one side it places a Being of ineffable sublimity, the author of the un- measured universe, the source of law and order, the great invisible, of whose ways we can but by slow degrees find out some traces. And on the other side of the line it places man, or rather men, feeble, ignorant, and short- lived, coming from the great deep, and pass- ing away into the great deep, mere transient phenomena in the vast scheme of things. This view makes everything of the Divine trans- cendence, and says nothing of the Divine immanence. How in this scheme of the world God and man can be brought into contact is an all but insoluble problem. 80 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE But such a view of the spiritual universe is not to be reconciled either with experience or with history. It is in contradiction with Christian and even Pagan experience, which bears witness in every age of Divine power and help flowing into human lives. Its vague agnosticism is not to be reconciled with the facts of faith and of prayer. The God known to religious experience is quite other than a mere centre of force and source of law, a God who can be approached and even loved. Tennyson has written, "Closer is He than breathipg, and nearer than hands and feet," And though, in the ordinary course of sensuous life, the surface of the mind becomes ihsensitive to the spiritual power, yet in times of anxiety or pain or passion it is vaguely conscious of a presence, which is not only mighty but sym- pathetic. J. R. Seeley, in Natural Religion^ speaks of the God recognised by the man of science as follows:^ "This man feels himself in the presence of a Power which is not him- self and is immeasurably above himself: a Power in the contemplation of which he is absorbed, in the knowledge of which he finds safety and happiness," And to the man of science in his laboratory or in his study such a view of the Divine may be sufficient ; but it ^ Natural Religion, "p. 19. EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 81 leaves outside the problems of conduct^ the mysteries of feeling, any satisfying repose of the spirit. And further, to suppose that man develops in a merely natural way, on ancestral and personal lines, without help from without, without constant contact with a spiritual universe in which there is "boundless bettet and boundless worse," is quite contrary to ex- perience. The attention paid in recent years to the unconscious element in thought and feeling has made us feel how little an indi- vidual is a rounded and completed atom. The personality is but one side revealed to con- sciousness of a larger being which floats in an ocean of unconsciousness, and which has con- stant contact with a wider world than that revealed to sense and thought. And when we turn from religious experience to the history of religions we find that none of them is purely Unitarian, All of them have been busy with attempts to bridge the chasm between a transcendent Deity and human beings/ This is eminently the case in the history of Christianity. Jewish thought had developed the behef in a Word or Spirit of God which was the expression or emanation of God in the world of experience. In the New Testament we not only find that conception * 6 82 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE of the Word of God carried further, and identified with the historic Christ, but we read on almost every page of good and evil spirits, of agents and messengers of the spiritual world, sent forth to help or to hinder man- kind. As the writer to the Hebrews expresses it : " Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation ? " That this inevitable tendency to seek for mediators between the inaccessible and transcendent Deity and man- kind has been carried to extreme and super- stitious lengths in the medigeval history of the Church we all know ; but this tendency to excess only shows how deeply seated in the human spirit is the longing for some way of approach to the infinite God. And indeed to provide such ways of approach is the great task of all schools of religion. The two ends of the chain, God and man, are fixed ; but the ways between the ends are many, and vary from age to age with the progress of thought and the change of intellectual outlook. But some are infinitely nobler and more satisfying than others. One naturally thinks, in connection with the Creeds, of the doctrine of the Trinity. But that doctrine is not primary ; it is really a scholastic and metaphysical construction. EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 83 There is no justification for it in the New Testament/ But it is built upon a basis which is permanent, on ideas which are Hving, and must be living as long as Christianity is a religion. The real question is as to the being of Christ. And here we come at once upon the Christian life and Christian experience. It is from its effect upon these that the doctrine of the Trinity, and its most important part, the doctrine of Christ, borrow all their profound and vital interest. It is not in any logic or abstract system of thought that we must seek the grounds of our criticism, but in history and psychology. The root question which has always exercised the intellect of the Church is as to the nature of her Founder. Whence came He ? Whither is He gone ? In what relation does He stand to God ? In what sense was He a man ? These questions the Church has discussed and rediscussed at every period of her history ; and these discussions were the essence of her in- tellectual life in the earlier ages. But I venture to think that in our time they must be dis- ^ The two passages. Matt, xxviii, 19 and 1 John v. 7^ are clearly not primitive : the latter is omitted in the R.V.J and the former cannot be reconciled with the early Christian custom of baptising into the name of Christ only. One may perhaps find the rudiments of the doctrine in 2 Cor. xiii. 14 ; but it is quite in an undeveloped form. 84 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE cussed afresh, without a too close regard to the solutions of antiquity. How is it possible that views adapted to the thought of the ancient world could be wholly satisfactory to the modern intellect ? We may if we please place them on the shelf, and refuse to discuss them : we may accept them, or say we accept them, in obedience to authority. But of what value is an assent of this kind, an assent Which we cannot put on terms with the life we are living ? If we repeat a creed as a mere matter of memory and discipline, there is no more religion in our attitude than if we were solemnly to repeat in church ^that X is Y. The moment we begin to consider what X and Y, the phrases of the Creed, really mean and stand for, we must needs try to place them amidst the rest of our mental furniture. And certainly Descartes and Kant, Butler and Darwin, would have lived in vain, if our mental attitude and outlook were exactly the same as those of the Fathers at Niceea. It is true that in a sense the question of belief is one of which we may say solvitur ambulando. And though thought has moved, faith and emotioi\ are very much what they were in the early Church. The great test of a belief is ever the conduct to which it leads, and the spirit which inspires those who accept EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 85 it. An obvious test for existing Christian faith in a community where infallibility in Church or in Pope is not accepted is to observe how it works in social and missionary labours. We turn to the great Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, where, in the opinion of those who were fortunate enough to be present, the Spirit of Christianity worked with vivid and overmastering power. Men were filled and flooded with the conviction of a great work to be done for Christ, of an unrivalled oppor- tunity for spreading His religion in the non- Christian world. Deputies from all parts of the mission-field were present, just as at the assembly of the primitive Church at Jerusalem, when "the multitude hearkened unto Barnabas and Paul, rehearsing what signs and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them." When in such an assembly they spoke of Jesus Christ, what was in their thoughts ? Did they think of " the Second Person in the Godhead " ? or did they think of one who at a certain point of history made a " full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world." Probably most of those present would have regarded these ways of speaking of their Master as justified. But this was not their working faith. Rather it was an intense realisation 86 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE of a spiritual power, working in and through believers, at issue everywhere with vice and ignorance and materialism, set against all that thwarted and hindered the will of God from working in the world. To them, as to Paul, Christ was that Spirit, "And where the Spirit of the Lord is,there is liberty." Formulae may have their value and their place, but action is greater than thought, and will is more than creed. It does not, of course, follow that a creed is a matter of indifference. A practical principle of faith of this kind does not solve metaphysical problems, or decide in any legitimate way the questions of a speculative theology. Most English Christians are disposed to take their creed direct from the New Testament. " Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation." But then we come at once to the question how scripture is to be interpreted. And a modern mind is obliged, as a preliminary to any attempt to interpret, first to consider a number of historical and literary questions.™ But if any Christian prefers to interpret for himself, by the light of conduct and of faith, he has a right to do so. From the personal point of view there may be no more satisfactory way of reading the Gospels than that recommended by Tolstoi : ^ 1 Life of Tolstoi, by A. Maude, p. 31. EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 87 " Let each man in reading the Gospels select all that seems to him quite plain, clear, and comprehensible, and let him score it down the margin — say with a blue pencil — and then, tak- ing the marked passages first, let him separate Christ's words from those of the Evangelists' by marking Christ's words a second time with, say, a red pencil. Then let him read over these doubly scored passages several times." This method is in its way admirable. But, alas I every man will even then interpret the doubly scored passages according to his bent of mind and his education. He may probably be most attracted by those which have the least historic claim to authenticity. It is an axiom in modern education that for the interpretation of ancient documents a special training is necessary. But what do those tell us who have had this training, the great scholars of Europe? Of course among themselves they differ very widely. But it is quite possible to discern in their writings a general drift. On the one hand, sound and scientific history affirms that Jesus was fully man, with human needs, emotions, and thought, who spent nights in prayer to God, and sometimes felt profound depression, as at Gethsemane. On the other hand, it is certain that a mere humanist view of the Master is not compatible with the 88 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE highest hfe of the Church. The Church and the Christian feel within them the spring of a hfe which is bound up with the Ufe, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus. II Beginning with the history of the early- Christian views of the Founder, we will take our start from a passage in Acts. The speech of St Peter on the day of Pentecost, which is set forth by St Luke as the first message of the Christian Church to the world, runs as follows: — " Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders, and signs ... ye by wicked hands have crucified and slain, whom God hath raised up. , . . There- fore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye hath crucified both Lord and Christ/' Of course we cannot be sure that St Peter used these words. But we may be sure that the words represent a very early and apostolic view. There is something almost harsh in the contrast between " Jesus, a man approved among you," with which the passage begins, and " God hath made that same Jesus both Lord and Christ," with which it ends. As I have elsewhere observed,^ in this speech ^ Modernity and the Churches^ p. 232. EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 89 " the earthly and the heavenly life are placed side by side, like the leaves of a diptych. On one tablet we see a human figure, gracious and beautiful, a wandering prophet at the head of a band of disciples ; on the other, a radiant spiritual being, crowned with glory, seated high on a celestial throne. Yet the two tablets are inseparably joined." The history of the manner of the joining, an account of the various views as to the nature of the unity between the historic Jesus and the exalted Christ would be a history of early Christian doctrine. The problem exercised the best faculties of the Church from the days of St Paul to those of Athanasius. The Synoptic Gospels, invaluable as they are, the sources of our knowledge of the life and teachings of our Founder, do not greatly help us in dealing with the Christ problem. It is true that here and there in these narratives we catch a glimpse of something more than human, a broken light of the eternal shining in a mundane setting. But so long as their Master was with them in the flesh, the problems of Christology could scarcely arise for the Apostles. It was after His departure, in the middle of the first century, that they began to press. In the Acts of the Apostles we have 90 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE a wonderful record^not always accurate to fact, but above value as the picture of an age of Christian belief and development — of the manifestation in the world of an inwardly working power. We trace the ways in which a Divine inspiration accompanied the first preaching of Peter and John in Jerusalem, and led Paul from city to city in the Roman world, overcoming opposition, defeating all opposing spiritual forces ; imparting to the first missionaries of Christianity speech and wisdom which none could gainsay or resist. It is impossible for a student of history to resist the evidence thai; a mighty spiritual power was then working in the world. Of course the phenomena may be interpreted in various ways, according to one's belief or non- belief in Christianity as a Divine revelation. But to a Christian the consensus of Paul and Luke will naturally seem sufficient proof of a new working in the world of Divine power, as a new chapter in the history of the Divine immanence. The first writer to formulate definite views as to the nature of the Christian inspiration was St Paul. He must not indeed be held responsible for the systems which subsequent theologians have founded on his words. But he was a deep thinker ; and he lived in the EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 91 full stress of the religious awakening to which he tried to furnish ways of thought. If his mental training was in a measure narrowed by rabbinic subtleties and logomachies, he yet lived in places where the light of Greek culture was shed abroad, and he had a great sensitiveness to what was best in his religious surroundings. To the twelve their Master must have appeared at first as a Jewish prophet ; later, they came to think of Him as the Messiah ; and after the crucifixion they began to realise that what they had witnessed was really the crowning revelation of God to man. But they still clung to the belief in their Master's speedy return in the clouds of heaven ; they thought at first that He had come for the sake of the Jewish race only ; and it was only by degrees that they realised that salvation was come to the whole world. The horizon of St Paul and the Fourth Evangelist was quite different. It was gradu- ally enlarged by baptising into Christ all that was best in the religions of the world at the time. Greek philosophic monotheism, the Alexandrian doctrine of the Word, the mysticism of Egypt and the East, were all absorbed into the expanding life of the society, and were all transmuted by the ever- working 92 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN T)OeTRINE Spirit of Christ into forms suited for His own dwelling-place. Christ as the heavenly life of the Church, and the Church as the earthly ^body of Christ, grew together and expanded until they became the supreme religious phenomenon of the age, and after the last rival of Christianity, Mithraism, had been overthrown, they absorbed all the springs of religion into one great river of God. If we turn to the writings of St Paul and St Luke we shall at once see how unconscious those writers were of any formal doctrinal views on the subject of the Trinity. In Acts the striking religious phenomena which marked the first age of Christianity, and the spiritual powers exercised by the Apostles, of course divine in origin, are repeatedly spoken of as gifts of the Holy Spirit. St Paul sometimes speaks of them in the same phraseology. But when he is writing of the peace and joy, the salvation which belongs to believers, he often regards them as the result of the working of the Spirit of Christ, or of the exalted Christ in the Church. And in one passage, at least, he identifies the Holy Spirit with the Spirit of Christ and also with the Spirit of God.^ It is abundantly clear that he does not try to make any metaphysical ^ Bom. viii. 9-1 !• EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 93 distinctions in regard to the Trinity. He is speaking of the facts of Christian experi- ence, and the words which he uses are not the expression of any developed theological system, but come fresh from the heart. I do not say that such merely approximate ways of speaking should or could have been kept up in the Church. But at least we have a warning not to regard exact theology as necessary to Christianity. It is impossible here to give any adequate account of the Christologic views which met and contended for the mastery in the early Church. But I may sketch three tendencies which became manifest and throve in various Christian circles. The first was the conservative or Ebionite tendency. It is natural that, especially in Jerusalem, and among those who had wit- nessed the actual life of Jesus on earth, there were many who could not follow the Pauline views. To them the great fact of Christianity was the teaching and example of their Master, who appeared to them the last and the greatest of the Prophets, who fulfilled the prophecies of Isaiah, and offered to Jsrael a new and a nobler future. They awaited, obedient to His command, His second coming in the clouds of heaven to establish on earth the reign of 94 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE the Saints, having its centre in a new and heavenly Jerusalem. We may regard the Epistle, attributed rightly or wrongly to St James, as a document belonging to this school. In this Epistle the emphasis is mainly ethical ; its tendency is akin to that of the community of the Essenes. But the narrow and racial Church of Jerusalem had no future. It sur- vived for a time in Palestine, but was soon almost lost in the sweep of new spiritual currents. > In modern days, tJie greater stress laid on history has caused a not dissimilar tendency to become popular in some branches of the Church. But to these revivals the two main ideas of the Ebionite Church, the notions of a higher Judaism and of the speedy return of the Saviour in glory, have usually been strange; hence such modern movements have had little vital force. Christianity has been regarded as a sort of ethical society. When the modern ethical societies were founded, a great thinker, Sir J. R. Seeley, pointed out that they were attempting to do the work of a Church, but without the inwardly working spirit which is the source of the energy of the Church. The second is the anti-historical or Docetic tendency, to reduce the human life of the Founder to a mere mirage, to exaggerate the EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 95 element of the marvellous in it, to represent Him as a non-natural being walking in our world like a visitor from another sphere. Within a short time of the death of Jesus His whole life had been overlaid with tasteless marvels, such as those narrated in the apoc- ryphal gospels ; and His very existence on earth was regarded as a spectral and unreal presence. This view also has had many modern coun- terparts. In early Christianity it constantly revived and put forth fresh shoots. And among ourselves it is the belief of a great part or the majority of Christians who suppose themselves to be orthodox. And it comes quite naturally to those who regard the Fourth Gospel as a historic document, for the Jesus of that Gospel, though at times He shows human traits, is really a non-natural super- human apparition, who is consciously on quite a different level from those around Him, and only submits to suiFering and death because He chooses to do so. The third tendency was to graft a shoot of Christology into the ancient tree of Greek speculative philosophy. As we see the begin- ning of the Docetic tendency in the Fourth Gospel, so we may see there the beginnings of an intellectualist philosophy. The idea of 96 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE the Logos comes from the later developments of the Platonic philosophy, which was until the end of the ancient world dominant in the schools. This doctrine found its most complete and philosophical embodiment in the writings of the great divines of Alexandria — Clement and Origen. To them Christ is indeed the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, not only the members of the Christian Society, but all who in pre-Christian times had been gifted with wisdom and good- ness. It is wonderful teaching, which in fact reaches the highest point of intellec- tual achievement among the early Fathers, Through Augustine, even the Western Church is largely indebted to the Alexandrian fusion of Platonic philosophy aild Christian theology. Dr A. V. G. Allen of the American Cam- bridge has written a very interesting little book,^ in which he has traced the outlines of Christian history, taking as a clue- the interactions and clashings in that history of the two ideas of immanence and transcendence. According to Dr Allen, the great Christian teachers of Alex- andria — Clement, Origen, and Athanasius — fully realised that the doctrine of the indwell- ing Christ was the kernel of the whole Christian ^ The Continuity of Christian Thought EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 97 faith, and incorporated it in their writings and the Creeds. He thinks it a great disaster to later Christianity, and especially to the Church of the West, that this guiding idea was largely lost sight of, and a cloud allowed to form, hiding God from man, which grew thicker and darker until the days of the Reformation, He thinks the doctrine of the Divine immanence all-important, while that of the Divine trans- cendence may be neglected. Here I cannot agree with- him : it seems to me that any sane Christian theology must revolve about the two ideas, as a mathematical ellipse is formed with reference to two fixed points, neither of which must be neglected. We must, I think, consider not only the theoretical but also -the practical aspects of the matter. The Eastern Church — Alexandria and Ephesus and Antioch — did the thinking of early Christianity ; yet the Churches of Asia fell before long into a state of corruption, and were unable to oppose a manly resistance to the conquering power of Islam. The Church of the West was altogether inferior to that of the Greeks in intellect and speculative thought ; but it grappled with and wrested to its own use the organising power of the C^sars ; it converted the fierce tribes of the North, and made possible the development of the modern 7 98 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE civilisation of Teutonic and Latin countries. Churches, like men, must be judged not only by the degree of satisfaction which they give tb the intelligence, bi^J: also by the way in which they fight the battle of life. Dr Allen writes as if the doctrine of the indwelling Christ were quite lost sight of in the Church which centred in Rome ; as if the Creator were removed to an infinite distance from the Society, and the place of God on earth taken by a strongly organised hierarchy with rigid rules of life, and a severe ecclesi- astical discipline. But this was far from being the case. God did not cease to speak in the hearts of men. There were always mystics in the Western Church, men and women who had an intense consciousness of the presence of a Divine Power within them, leading ^and enlightening. And even in times when the Church seemed most fully steeped in supersti- tion, or most tightly bound with' ecclesiastical discipline, history shows numberless examples of Christians who lived the life in Christ: channels through which the original inspira- tion of the Church passed on to succeeding generations. As human nature falls below the level of an exalted and spiritual creed, so it will tend to rise above the level of a debased and materialised scheme of belief. EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 99 It is impossible for the modern mind to accept the Creeds as formulated by the Greek theologians as final statements. Scientific truth belongs only to the world of sense and observation ; in regard to the Divine, truth is only ideal and symbolical.^ And in modern times the belief in evolution has so changed our habits of thought, even in regard to what is beyond sense, that Platonic and Aristotelian solutions of the problems of theology stand on much the same basis as the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. The whole theology has to change its centre, and be formed afresh. Indeed, by the introduction of logic into realms where logic is inapplicable, by regard- ing words rather than things, and system rather than experience, the theology of the Church has reached results which sometimes contradict the main truths of Christianity. Yet, as 1 shall have in several places to maintain, a modern version of the doctrine of the Logos is not only possible, but is by far the most reason- able explanation of the universe. In modern England there is a different tendency, among many who fondly imagine that they are orthodox, and despise others. It is in reality anything but orthodox. It is a tendency to project into the throne of the uni- 1 See Ch. v. 100 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE verse a merely human Jesus, to think that the course of nature and the evolution of humanity is still directed by one who retains human limitations, and looks at the world from a human point of view. But everyone who reads the New Testament with any intelligence must see that such a view is not that of the Saviour Himself, nor of St Paul, nor of any of the writers. Nor has it been the view of the grieat doctors and thinkers of the Church. The Creed begins: "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and in one Lord, Jesus Christ." Popular religion is apt to cut the knot of theological thought with a simple phrase, "Jesus is God." In the mouth of an un- instructed person, this phrase may well be an expression of one side of the truth. But it is less pardonable when people who should know better dwell on the phrase and stretch it until it reaches absurdity. Dr Hort said that there were few heresies which did not make their appearance somewhere in Hymns Ancient and Modern. Indeed, one may find in them senti- ments which are not Christian at all, but Pagan or Mohammedan. If the hymns go to a good tune, few people think much of the words. One of those hymns begins, "Jesus is God ; the solid earth, the ocean broad and EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 101 bright, the countless stars," and so forth, " His own creations were." Another begins : " He who once in righteous vengeance Whelm'd the world beneath the flood, Once again in mercy cleansed it With His own most precious blood." How is one to characterise such nonsense ? To begin with, the flood is not historical ; and then to describe it as the work of Jesus of Nazareth is amazing. Was there ever such a confusion of persons ? Probably harm has been done by the mistranslation in the first verses of the Fourth Gospel, " All things were made by Him," where the Greek means, " All things came into being through Him," (the Logos). This phrase is in fact anticipated in Proverbs {viih 27): "When Jehovah established the heavens, I (Wisdom) was there : when He set a circle on the face of the deep , . . Then I was by Him as a master workman : and I was daily His delight." The author of the Fourth Gospel accepted the doctrine that the world was a scheme of order and reason, that God had made it for the use of man,, and that He gave to every man born into the world some of the light of the Divine reason, that he might understand the scheme of the world and dis- cover his. own part in that scheme. And he goes on to say — and this is his great originality 102 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE — that this Divine wisdom tabernacled or dwelt in the person of Jesus, and shone through His life, thus making it possible for all His followers to come near to the Divine source of wisdom of light and of life. In one place, it is true, he puts in the mouth of Jesus the phrase, " I and My Father are one." But here again the English translation is ambiguous and mislead- ing. It is not the masculine, " I and My Father are one person," but the neuter, " I and My Father are one entity," that is, indis- solubly united. The Saviour* has indeed revealed to us the human side of God. But this truth, like most truths, may be exaggerated until it is truth no longer. It does not do to think that we can in our knowledge comprise the whole being of God. There is profound truth in the saying of Isaiah, " As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." And there is deep meaning in the lines of the most Christian of our poets, " God moves in a mysterious way. His wonders to perform." The man who thinks that the world is governed in the way in which a merely good and kindly man would govern it will soon be disillusioned : as indeed many thousands of our soldiers must have been disillusioned when they were thrown EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 108 \ out of a quiet and optimistic view of life, and had to face a hell upon earth in the trenches. ^ " Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfec- tion? It is high as heaven; what canst thou do? Deeper than hell ; what canst thou know ? " ^ The vast progress made in our knowledge of the visible world, the knowledge of the infinitely great which we gain from the tele- scope, and the knowledge of the infinitely small which we gain from the microscope, has forced upon us an intense conviction of law and order in the world. Thus science does not do away with belief in God, but it does so exalt and refine our conception of God that it makes many forms of belief into which our ancestors naturally fell impossible for us. We have learned that we cannot measure the universe by merely human s|;andards ; but we have to conform ourselves to far greater standards imposed on us. It is not by dogma- tising about nature, but by sitting humbly at the feet of nature that we can work out our lives to some purpose. The old crude anthropomorphic idea of God as a sovereign sitting on a throne in the heaven, and ordering all things on earth by the decree of His will, with Jesus sitting on His right hand, has faded and must fade. We may still 1 Job xi. 8. 104. EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE retain such an image as a poetical or symbolic representation of the Divine. But we realise that it is only a symbol. And when we speak of the distinction within the Godhead of Father and Son, this language also is symbolical. It may represent truth ; but it is not a statement of fact which we can use for the logical con- struction of a scheme of doctrine. It is words and images thrown out at something that infinitely surpasses all thought,, and transcends all images. The ordinary semi-Ariah view of the Divinity of Christ does justice to the doctrine of the Divine immanence ; but it does not do justice to the doctrine of the Divine trans- cendence. It carries on the line of the ancient mystery-religions, in which every votary was anxious to attain to a personal contact with a spiritual Saviour, but had no care to discern how that Saviour was related to the scheme of the great universe,- or to the ethical world of right and wrong. Curiously enough, we have the most extreme development of this view, not in the writings of any Christian author, but in those of a man who at least supposes himself to be hostile to all Christianity, Mr Wells. This novelist, developing what he conceives to be the most modern expression of religion, from a purely EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 105 personal and subjective standpoint, comes back to a view parallel to the early Christian heresy of Marcion. He sets aside the Creator and Governor of the world as an unapproachable and unmoral Demiurge, with whom we can have no sympathy ; and he thinks that the only Deity whom man can approach, and who can inspire faith and enthusiasm, is a limited and imperfect Saviour, who is indeed full of love and sympathy for man, and whom to approach and adore is man's greatest happiness, but who is always, so to speak, striving against odds, constantly frustrated by the unmoral tendencies of the world, always suffering and failing. This, no doubt, is an exaggeration, almost a travesty, of a side of Christianity on which many modern writers have been dis- posed to dwell. But it is a strangely one- sided and painfully incomplete view of religion. It seems to me that Mr Wells confesses its futility when he declares that the God whom he acknowledges has nothing to do with questions of sex : precisely the questions which for ordinary men and women lie at the very foundations of conduct and of personality. Ill It seems that three points must ever be retained in the Doctrine of Christ. First, it 106 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE must give due weight and prominence to the experience of the Divine immanence. Second, it must fully recognise the Divine transcend- ence. Third, it must do justice to the historic element in Christianity; and the history so recognised must be not only the life of the Saviour on earth, but also the history of the Church, which sprang out of and continued that life. These three points are all recognised in the Creeds and Articles of the English Church. But, of course, the degree of stress laid upon each of them may well vary from age to age, or indeed from individual to individual. All religion worthy of the name must recognise an eternal inward conflict between good and evil, and must teach that the only chance of overcoming the evil must come from the inner action of some divine power, since the evil is so bound up with what seems to be the pleasure of life that, apart from such help, it would naturally carry us all away. The view held by Christianity connects this immanent divine power with the life and death of Jesus Christ. It holds that in His teaching the relations between God and man are set forth with a truth and nobility attained in no other teaching ; that His life and death exhibit a union with the Divine will and a EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 107 fulness of supernatural life quite beyond the attainment of all other human beings, even of His most devoted followers. And it holds that from the life of Jesus a certain contagious influence passed into the world, so that from the beginning of the Christian era the life of religion has moved on a new and higher plane. It also teaches that the life of Christ has been ever since continued and constantly renewed in the life of the Church, so that in a sense not easily to be defined the Church may be regarded as an expansion of the personality of Jesus, an extension of the Incarnation, a relation kept up by a constant flow of power from an unseen source. This view is, in fact, only a somewhat modernised edition of the doctrine of St Paul, and his follower who wrote the Fourth Gospel. St Paul teaches that the life of the Christian is merged in that of his Head ; that he lives no longer, so far as he is really a Christian, but Christ lives in him. And the Fourth Evangelist, while he holds that heavenly light illuminates in a measure all who are born into the world, yet regards the Church as in a special degree representative of the Logos, the purpose and inspiration of God. As the Logos was made flesh in the person of Jesus, so it continues to inspire the Christian society, 108 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE which, is united to Christ as the limbs of a human body are united to the head, or as the branches of a vine are united to the stem. The idea of a collective personality is not now new to psychology. The personality of the mystical society of which Christ is the Head^ in constant union with the members, stands in a close and unique relation to God, because God is revealed in Jesus Christ. It embodies upon earth the Divine ideas and will as thus revealed. The mystic or ideal personality of Christ combines the sum of the true followers of the incarnate Son of God. It is a con- ception which it is difficult to express clearly, which indeed may be better expressed in poetry or in mystic aspiration than in theo- logical formula. The practical effect of accepting it would be to bring home to every Christian that it rests with him to take a part in the life of Christ on earth, that it depends upon him whether some side of the character and being of Christ is better or worse embodied in society and history. He is able to thwart and grieve the Spirit of Christ," or to work with it in joyful harmony. Such a thought gives infinite value and dignity to every human personality. It makes one feel that life really matters, that it is worth while to live, in EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 109 however humble a sphere, so long as by so doing one can really help on the Divine purposes in that sphere, and take a part in the Incarnation. Some Christians may fear that this view has dangers. And in fact every attempt to form- ulate the root principles of Christianity must have dangers ; but nevertheless such attempts must be made. Let us consider some of the objections which may be brought against the present suggestion. In the first place, it may be regarded as unreal, mere mystic phrase. But the experi- ence which it attempts to formulate is very real. History shows that there is a Spirit working in the Church, a Spirit of whose working believers are acutely conscious. Nor are individuals, as we used to think, rigidly shut off one from another by the inexpugnable walls of personality ; impulses and beliefs pass from one to another sometimes by a sort of contagion, sometimes so far beneath the sur- face of consciousness that we know not how they pass. Our growth and development is not from without, but from within ; and our innermost being is not like a physical mole- cule, but like an eddy in an infinite tether. And the little eddy is part of a great stream. In the second place, it may be said that this 110 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE view nrakes everything of the Church, that it may be used to buttress an unjustifiable spiritual tyranny. But on all sides of us this belief in the Church is spreading and growing. It attracts thousands even to the fossilised obedience of Rome. Everywhere we see sects amalgamating, the individual merging in the society.^ A certain liberty of private belief and action there must needs be. But the experience of England and America has abun- dantly shown the extreme danger arising in our time from the excess of individualism. Curiously enough, the most notable example of these dangers is to be found not in England or America but in*Russia. No one can doubt that Tolstoi had a great share in the Spirit of Christ, that the Christian inspiration flowed in upon him in a mighty stream. Yet the excess of his individualism, and his determined opposition, however it may be excused, to all authority and common life in Church and State, doomed all his practical endeavours to sterility, so that his whole life was like a storm at sea, violent motion without movement in any direction. Full of contradictions and of vacillation, he never attained to inner peace nor to outward effectiveness. But we need not accept any materialist or narrow view of what the Christian Church EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 111 really is. It is the whole body of the faithful scattered through all lands which fully em- bodies the Spirit of Christ, one Church repre- senting one side and one another side of the Christian inspiration. Nor is it possible, in view of history, to deny that to some great saints and teachers in the Church there has been granted a special and closer relation to the spirit of the Founder. I know not how else we can account for the fact that all through Christian history there have been revivals and awakenings, and a certain reversion to the original inspiration. Nor can we, I think, venture to deny or to limit the extent of such fresh inspiration. The manner of working of spirit on spirit is but little known to us, and denials in regard to . it are more dangerous than affirmations. There is another feature in the teaching of Justin and the great Alexandrians which it is well to keep alive in our belief. The Creeds say that the^ Holy Spirit spoke by the prophets of the Jewish Church, They thus recognise that in a sense Christianity is earlier in the world than the historic Jesus, And this view is con- firmed by history. In some of the prophets of Israel, notably Isaiah, we find the same flow of inspiration which we observe in some of the early Christian literature, such as the 112 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE Epistle to the Hebrews. The Psalms of later Israel were taken over bodily by the Christian Church, and are still used as a noble expres- sion of the religious experience of Christianity. There is a continuity of history which runs - through the writings of the Old Testament, and through the Jewish Apocrypha, the close relation of which to the earliest Christian teaching has come out more and more clearly in the reqent more careful studies of the Apocrypha. Jesus Himself, in the Synoptic writings, dwells on His mission as a fulfilling, not an abolition, of the law and the prophets. The new revelation was infinitely higher than the old, and has had a very different history in the world, yet there are lines connecting the two. The result of the life of the Founder and of the working of His Spirit in the Christian Church has been not so much the discovery of a new morality as the raising of morality to a higher spiritual level. Principles of conduct have been revealed through Christianity, which without it the world would not have discovered, yet which the experience of life fully confirms. And in one respect, at lea^t, love to God and love to man, the teaching of the historic Jesus rises far above the level of any other voice ever heard on this earth, and is exemplified in a life EVOLUTIONAL DOCTRINE OF CHRIST US more utterly devoted to the service of God and man than any other. Through Christianity it has become possible to reach a point from which morality appears as a continual pro- gress, varied indeed by retrogressions, and still struggling through danger and difficulty. This belief substitutes for a cataclysmic doctrine of Christ one which is in every sense evolutional. The life of Christ began when a sense of the Higher Power, and of man's dependence upon it, dawned upon our savage ancestors. And it will never be completed, even if its later stages are lived out in an established Kingdom of God on earth. And the religion of Christ, instead of being a system of belief revealed once for all to mankind, be- comes a growing and dynamic thing. Its chief mission, as the Fourth Evangelist says, is to take the things of God, and to reveal them to men. And Christian doctrine, instead of being a logical construction, put together out of texts taken from the Bible, is a reflection in the in- tellectual world of the continued life of the Church, often changing its outward form, but showing a continuance of inward meaning. V LOYALTY TO TRUTH It is not only the great teachings of Chris- tianity which have to be interpreted in a dynamic and evolutional way, but also the great intellectual conceptions amid which Christianity has to move, notably the idea of truth, and the idea of a Church. This change of view has origins deep in the whole intel- lectual outlook, which has completely changed in the lasjt century. In the days of Aquinas and his followers truth was confused with consistency, and nothing was regarded as established which could not be logically derived from some admitted premisses. But truth is a greater matter than consistency, greater even than agreement with the testimony of the senses, • and experience. Truth, like Christianity, has ideal elements, and may be regarded, like it, as ultimately a matter of revelation. 114 LOYALTY TO TRUTH 115 There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that it is easy to discern the truth and to speak it. Truth-speaking is not a mere negative virtue, the refraining from falsehood ; it is a positive virtue which aims at the ideal, and can approach the ideal by infinite grada- tions. To speak the truth it is necessary to be straightforward and honest in intent. That is indisputable ; but that is only the beginning. We must all of us have frequently met with cases in which the cause of falsehood was not treachery or a lying spirit, but sheer want of intellectual capacity. Those also in whom the imagination is highly developed have more difficulty in discerning between truth and falsehood than those of more commonplace character. We all know how clever children are apt to romance, to tell us that this or that has happened, when we know quite well that what they say is the reflection not of outward observation, but of inward musing. And a great deal of the inaccuracy or radical incor- rectness in the testimony given by quite uneducated people is due to inner preposses- sions which interpret and distort the testimony of sense. The telling of truth must be pr^oduced by education : it is a habit gradually acquired and slowly fortified by training. I must clear the ground by showing that 116 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE the term truth is not after all a simple one. There are various forms and kinds of truth, which ^e must distinguish if we would think to any purpose in the subject. The simplest kind of truth is that of science, or the accurate account of correct observations. In the domain of natural science there is little room for fantasy and sentiment. There things are what they are ; and the methods of observation and expef iment are so effective that they leave little margin for what is called the personal equation. Indolence and the desire to reach results quickly are here the chief stumbling blocks. But a chemist or a biologist who should allow himself to be swayed by passion or sentiment would only waste his time and be disregarded. At every turn one comes into contact with facts of a nature which refuse to be bent or distorted. One pursues a path fenced in on both sides ; and if one climbs over the fence one only falls into an abyss beyond. The methods of physical science and biology have made their way in a great measure into the field of human studies, of psychology, sociology, and history. And they have been an immense help. Analogies from the observed facts of biology in particular have greatly helped us to find our way through the history of the LOYALTY TO TRUTH 117 past, and have enabled us, in a small degree, to forecast the future. The spirit of natural science induces in the mind of researchers a certain fanaticism of veracity, a determination to see things as far as may be in a white Hght, a horror of allowing personal predilections and sentimental antipathies to lead astray the searching intelligence. It is a most healthy tendency, and it is to be welcomed unless it be carried beyond reasonable boundk. It may be carried too far, of course. For, after all, the human world does not move in the rigid and changeless ways in which the physical universe goes. There are such powers to be seen "in history as personality, free-will, and the Divine inspiration which works through will and personality. It is easy to fall into a kind of materialism in the study of history, and to overlook that side of it in which unseen powers and influences work. Yet the course of events in the world is visible and audible ; and truth in history, if not so objectively to be ascertained as truth in those physicaF sciences where observation can be supple- mented by experiment, is yet in a great degree ascertainable. It is generally recognised that there is such a thing as historic science ; and loyalty to truth in the study of history, though less easy to practise than in the study of nature. 118 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE is recognised as a high diity on the part of those who make research. There is one forn^ of the enthusiasm for veracity which the popular mind finds it very hard to understand. That is the objection, which becomes in the case of the scientific worker stronger and stronger all through his life, to saying that he knows what in fact he does not know. The reason for the domin- ance of this feeling in those who have given their lives to research is that, apart from it, their whole mental attitude is vitiated. Scientific training in history (for it is of history that I am specially writing) largely consists in training the mind to discern the degree of probability of the accounts given by historians. We have to arrange a scale — certainty, moral certainty, high probability, low probability, possibility, and so on, down to impossibility — and to fit to the scale every part of past history which has come down to us. Those who have not had the training do not readily understand why the modern historian scrutinises evidence with such keenness, and is so determined to exclude from his narrative what rests on insufficient evidence. But to the historian himself this has become a matter of conscience ; and if his conscience became blunted on this point, he would have to LOYALTY TO TRUTH 119 give up the pretence of being a historian at all. * It is possible, no doubt, to carry this scruple to a morbid length. History, as we have it, is so tangled a skein, and often built up of such fragile materials, that if we try to grip it too tightly it becomes in our hands a mere handful of dust. If we are determined to exclude from history everything for which we have not clear and complete proof, our history will be very scanty. Yet the historian must ever have, in the background of his mind, the determination not to set forth as certain what is quite doubtful, or as probable what is barely possible. Turning from history to those branches of knowledge in which we cannot use the evidence of our senses or make experiments, turning to the moral and spiritual side of life,, the case is still more difficult and complicated. Those whose training has been altogether in the field of physical science are very apt to reject or undervalue evidence of a less decided and definite character than that to which they are accustomed ; and thus they introduce into moral research an agnosticism which is excessive. The very clear-cut, though splendidly honest, mind of Huxley erred in this direction. He regarded it as an immoral 120 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE thing to say that we knew anything which we were unable to demonstrate to the intelligence. He writes : " It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition, unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty."^ It is a pity that, by such exaggeration, he should have injured a good cause. For, as every philosopher knows, it is impossible to prove logically not only the existence of God, but the objective existence of any other human being besides oneself. The man who was determined to spend a single day on the plan of regarding nothing as certain which could not be proved would spend the evening of that day in a lunatic, asylum. But, cutting away the exaggeration, we may say that no man who really loves and ensues truth will be willing to place among things certain those which his intelligent conscience acknowledges to be uncertain. To be willing to stop at the bounds of knowledge ; to say resolutely, " I do not know," in regard to things which lie outside the human faculties of knowledge, is a part of the ethics of truth. A courageous spirit will say with Descartes, "I am not certain, but I intend to act as if I were " ; but he will riot try to drug himself into security ^ Essays upon Some Controvefied Questions, p. 450. LOYALTY TO TRUTH 121 by confusing certainty with probability and possibility. The most fundamental characteristic of Modernists is that they feel an intense loyalty to truth, and to science, which, as I have observed, is merely an ordered way of setting forth the results of experience and reasoning. We feel that to give up, at any dictation what- ever, our belief in our faculties of observation and reasoning is to set our whole nature at odds with itself, to rebel against the constitu- tion of the world, to be disloyal to God, who' has given us certain faculties, and intends us to use them as best we may. May I for a moment sink to personalities ? I am an official of a great and honourable University ; and my duty to the University compels me to form the best and truest views I can in all matters relating fo the branch of science which I teach. If I neglected or mis- used this duty, 1 should be most culpable. It is not a question of choice, but of necessity. I must use my faculties, and I must encourage students to use their faculties, according to methods which experience has shown to be effective. In the field of archeology the established methods of research are shown to be fruitful by constant experiment. Fresh discovery on new sites confirms them day by 122 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE day. We stand on as solid ground as the biologist or the physiologist, though of course the theories built up on our researches may vary greatly. And it is quite impossible for one thus trained to accept on mere authority traditional views as to what took place in Judaea at the beginning of our era. We can no more take without scrutiny the views on the subject held by the Bishops at Nicasa than we can accept on similar authority views as to the antiquity of the earth or the historicity of the plagues of Egypt. It is not from intellectual pride that we reject some part of what has in past times been considered as the historical basis of Christianity, but rather from intellectual humbleness. We dare not regard as historic fact what our methods compel us to regard as not historic fact. We dare not say that we are so certain of some events which are conventionally regarded as part of the early history of Christianity that we can re- gard them as a safe basis for a structure of belief. We may regard them as probable or as improbable ; but we know that they are not definitely established on objective evidence. Another obvious fact which hems within narrow limits what we may call the field of scientific truth is the necessity of using words LOYALTY TO TRUTH 123 to express it. For words are the result not of a systematic arrangement of sounds to express certain meanings, but of an age-long develop- ment in a medium where emotion has been far more powerful than thought ; and every kind of human fancy and prejudice has been constantly intervening. Some sciences, like mathematics and chemistry, have invented a technical language, by the use of which they attain to great exactness. But even bidlogy has ordinarily to be content to use the language of the farm and the market-place. And the human sciences are far worse off, since they have to use words less objective in meaning, and more saturated with notions arising out of the past history of the race. Kant and his followers did indeed endeavour to invent a new technical language for philosophy, and by so doing greatly promoted precision of thought. But this technical language can never come into everyday use, or greatly help the in- vestigators of psychologic or historic facts. This historic element in language is especi- ally obvious in English, since we have in a great many cases words derived from the Saxon and words derived from French or Latin which mean nearly the same thing, but with subtle differences in usage. One need but cite a few obvious examples. Feeling 124. EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE and sentiment mean to us different things, though in origin they are parallel ; femininity is not the same thing to us as womanliness, nor virility as manliness. Valour and worth are quite different notions, as are courage and heartiness. One might increase the list to any length. Besides, ?l11 the words for mental pro- cesses and spiritual experiences have been so fully materialised and drawn to earth by their earlier usage in a ruder state of society that it is very hard to clear them of such debasement. " Words," says an English proverb, " are' the money of fools, but the counters of wise men," But words can never be used as mere counters; they are too full of associations. Truer is the saying of Renan, " Truth is in a nuance.^' The slight turn of a phrase makes the difference between truth and falsehood. And the art of the nuance is an art slowly acquired by long training and practice, so that one may fairly say that to learn to speak the truth requires a very long and severe apprenticeship. II But scientific truth is by no means the only kind of truth. In the second place there is ideal truth, truth to idea rather than to fact. The main field of this is the realm of art. A novel, to take the most obvious instance, may LOYALTY TO TRUTH 125 not report correctly a single fact which has ever taken place, and yet it may be true, because every event which it portrays and every character which it depicts may be in strict correspondence with the facts of the world and of human nature. Shakespeare's Othello is a marvellously true representation of the pangs of jealousy, and its ideal truth is not affected by the question whether Othello and Desdemona were historic characters or not;- Many of our novels narrate merely the experiences of the writer slightly transposed ; but an unskilled novelist will in the transposi- tion of experience introduce so much falseness to human nature and human probability that the novel may become ideally false, and worth- less as a work of art. Some of Turner's pictures are good examples of ideal truth in painting. As Ruskin has taught us, Turner learned the structure of certain rock formations as no one before him had learned them, and in that way his paint- ings bring before us new aspects of literal physical truth. But Turner worked largely from memory, and had a way of inserting in scenes which he painted from memory features which did not belong to them, but to other places which he had lately visited. So we are often perplexed to make out what particular 126 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE spot he intended to portray ; yet he reached a high level of ideal truth. Spiritual truth may be considered as a variety of ideal truth. In a narrative which is independent of historic fact we may have high truths of our spiritual surroundings set forth, as Bunyan sets them forth in the Pilgrim's Progress, where the narrative in which they are set is purely imaginary and even impossible — a dream, as Bunyan himself calls it. Perhaps the most difficult kind of truth to grasp is a kind of which we have heard much in recent years — symbolical truth. It arises as follows : — Some ethical or spiritual idea, some reality of the supersensual world, appears as it were clad in flesh, finds expression in some tale or narrative. Sometimes we should call that narrative mythological, a tale invented for the sake of the moral ; sometimes we should regard it as an idealised fragment of history. In the ancient world there was no rigid barrier between mythology and history ; the two passed one into the other by imperceptible gradations. The question which our children now put to us— Did it really happen? — was not a question which much disturbed the minds of Greeks or Jews. A tale with a good moral was accepted for the sake of the LOYALTY TO TRUTH 127 moral ; and no very serious attempt was made to fit it into a framework of geography and chronology. But we, coming later with our more orderly and scientific ideas, want to distinguish between myth and history. We want to find out what really happened. So we submit the ancient tales to tests. And very often what has hitherto passed as history will not stand the test. Then we fall back on saying that though the narrative is not true literally, it is true symbolically. That is to say the idea which inspired the narrative i^ a good and noble idea, but the form which it took is not one which can be defended from the scientific point of view. Of course the idea may also be symbolically false, as when in the book of Genesis labour, the noblest of man's functions, is represented in the story of the Garden of Eden as a punishment for a definite offence. But a hundred times more often there is a kernel of symbolic truth in the tales of the Bible. Some of them may be true historically ; some may be fanciful ; whether a third set are historic or not it may be impossible to ascertain. But in any case they are only the setting of the jewel, the rind of the seed ; and they are by no means sacrosanct. Looking at the matter from a somewhat 1S8 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE different point of view, we see ap important distinction between literal or scientific and ideal or symbolical truth. Scientific truth is for all time. When once we have discovered certain phenomena or sequences in the world of sense, and their law or explanation, the matter is finished. Future investigation and experiment may widen and enlarge our know- ledge, but they will not change it. And looking back from the vantage-ground of knowledge, we say boldly that the older views and explanations were incorrect. They may have been the best that previous investigators could reach, but they are erroneous. Thus the priestly account in Genesis of the creation of the world may have been an advance upon the accounts current at the time, but from the scientific point of view it was incorrect. The world was not made in six days, but came gradually into its present state of being through vast ages of change and development. To science the views of the matter current in remote times are indifferent. We no longer, in science, take them into account. But when we come to truth of the symbolical or spiritual character, we can no longer proceed in this cavalier style. For this kind of truth is not absolute but relative. It is not directly discovered by investigators through experi- LOYALTY TO TRUTH 129 menl and observation, but dawns upon the human race by degrees. Truth of this sort is not a clear and concrete thing, which can be once for all enclosed in formulae, but a many- sided thing, some aspects of which are revealed at one time, and other aspects at another time. It admits of almost infinite degrees of approach and grasp. Touches of it may be found in the writings of all who have with mind and soul striven after it, often mixed in with a great deal which is scientifically worthless. And whereas scientific truth is objective, or as nearly objective as any mental product can be, and may be expressed in any language, or brought home to any student, symbolical truth is essentially relative. It stands in close relation to the thought of a particular age, and must be formulated according to the philo- sophy which is dominant. Hence symbolical truth has to be re-stated and re-interpreted in every Successive period of history in the new light which is pouring in. When any statement of such truth comes down to us we have to consider it not merely in relation to our own experience and knowledge, but in relation to the thought and feeling of the age in which it originated. Another notable point about symbolic truth .9 ISO EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE is its formation into complexes, and its domin- ance by association. Very often what we ' should regard as untrue, taken by itself, may be so joined with a series of other views that the whole together must be taken or left ; and in the whole there may be more truth than falsehood. For example, the assertion of Genesis that God rested on the seventh day from the labour of creation may seem at first a statement unworthy of the Divine nature, and in that sense it is contradicted in the Gospel: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." "It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath-day." Yet the keeping of a day of rest may be so fundamental a feature of Christianity in some countries, as in Scotland a century ago, that the Divine sanction of a Sabbath-rest may be a valuable symbolic truth. Those who hastily condemn a received symbolic truth may often condemn with it something of great value, may root up the wheat with the tares. Another example may be found in another school of religion. A materialist interpretation of the passage in the Fourth Evangelist as to eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of Man is to many Christians extremely repulsive ; and no doubt to them the doctrine is false and degrading. B ut to many, pious Roman. LOYALTY TO TRUTH 131 Catholics the doctrine of transubstantiation is so intertwined with the heartstrings of their religion that it cannot be removed without great danger of fatal injury. The process of disentangling elements of Scientific or historic and symbolic truth in any narrative or any theory which comes down to us by tradition is one of extreme delicacy and difficulty. For until quite modern days any such discrimination was not made, or was made in the roughest way. In the ancient world nothing was more usual than to wrap up higher truth in a myth or an idealised passage of history. And the untrained modern mind, finding the myth to be fanciful, or the history inconsistent with ascertained facts, is apt to throw the whole aside as worthless. It has not the patience to search for the gold amid the dross, although the dross merely came into existence for the sake of the gold. To use a homelier comparison, it is apt to empty out the baby with the water of the bath. Even in the Mosaic account of creation, in spite of its scientific valuelessness, there are spiritual grains of gold. If we compare the Jewish myth with parallel myths among other peoples, such as the Ojibways or the Maoris, or especially the great Oriental empires of Babylon and Assyria, we see at once how great is its 132 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE spiritual superiority. The rigid monotheism of the Mosaic tale, its insistence on Divine purpose in the world, and the duty of man to work with the Divine purpose, place it in a class by itself. Even the Greek myths of the making of mankind from stones of the earth stand at an infinitely lower level. And what applies to the first chapter of Genesis applies all through the Bible. As a storehouse of spiritual truth it is unrivalled ; and though it be full of scientific error and of survivals from batbaric days, it yet contains most of the revelations of spiritual value which have as yet been vouchsafed to the world. But in order to appreciate the Bible, from the scientific or historic point of view, it is necessary to throw it into perspective, to realise that it is not a book but a literature, a number of treatises of very unequal value, written in very various ages. Until historic criticism has thus thrown it into order and sequence, it is liable to astounding misinter- pretation; it niay be held to justify indis- criminate massacre, treachery, polygamy, and all the kinds of morality suitable to some past time or some national crisis, but contrary to the principles of morality of the modern world. The more conservative and conventional schools both in the Roman and the Reformed LOYALTY TO TRUTH Churches boggle a good deal over the notions of ideal and symbolical truth. It is not wholly to their discredit. They feel very strongly the essential truth of the great teachings of Chris- tianity: there they are right. And at the same time they think that truth involves literal or scientific truth : there they are wrong. They treat the truth and its envelope much as our ancestors of the seventeenth century treated our cathedrals, when they covered up with layers of whitewash the bright colours and religious paintings in their interiors, reducing all to a dead level of conventional propriety. The man in the street in our times often thinks truth a simple matter, and holds that every statement is either literally true or literally false. It is a very imperfect view, and one which will doubtless be superseded. But meantime it causes great difficulties. Up to a certain point, the attitude of the Conservatives is defensible. Though truth may have many facets, and be regarded from a variety of standpoints, yet the attitude of the lover of truth is after all uniform. There is a certain simplicity and straightforwardness of spirit to which every form and every side of truth has a natural kinship. Though truth be manifold, a truthful spirit is a simple thing. To love the truth, to pursue the truth even to 134 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE one's own hurt, to be, if necessary, ready to die for the truth, is a noble attitude of the spirit. And at bottom the writer of the Apocalypse is right when he excludes from the New Jerusalem all liars ; and the Fourth Evangelist is right when he says that Satan is the father of lies. Ill This brings us at once to an antinomy or contradiction, which, if we can solve, I think we shall be in a fair way to diminish the diffi- culties of our subject. Of all the' writers in the New Testament by far the most indifferent to truth of fact is the Fourth Evangelist. I need not give instances to prove this, for it is a matter as to which the critics are in fair agreement. He does not hesitate to transpose events, and to arrange their details in accord- ance with his definite purposes. He does not hesitate — even conservative writers like Westcott and Hort are agreed about this — to put in the mouth of his Master words which are really the fruit of Christian religious ex- perience, and which bear the hall-mark of his own very distinctive style. And yet, at the same time, there is no writer of the New Testament who insists with so much iteration and so deep conviction on the value of truth. LOYALTY TO TRUTH 135 Of the enemy of mankind he can say nothing worse than that he is a liar and the father of lying. Those who are of the truth, he says, will Jbe always willing to hear the teaching of the Master. And the truth is the fruit of obedience to the will of God. As he con- trasts the children of the light with the powers of darkness, so he divides mankind into those who love the truth, and those who hate or despise it. It is the truth which makes men free, saves them from the dominion ^of evil, and puts them in the way of salvation. Surely there is here a subject for careful consideration. How can a writer who regards truth as the supreme test of character, and as the door of eternal life, habitually neglect truth in his narrative, and give an account of the life of his Master which is from beginning to end tinged with notions, which are derived indeed from experience, and are held with intense conviction, but which prevent him from seeing events in a white or neutral light ? It is obvious that the word truth must be used by the Evangelist in quite a different sense from that in which it is used in our everyday talk. Saving truth cannot be for him merely truth to the facts of observation in the visible world and to the events of history. The fact is that the Evangelist is a great 136 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE Mystic. He lives almost entirely not in the world of sense, but in the realm of spirit. He looks beyond the mere setting of space and time to the eternal verities which are revealed through space and time. The higher world, which to him is the world of realities, alone gives meaning and importance to the life which is lived in our human world. The Word of God is made flesh, and through such revelation is made accessible to men ; but His true abode is not earth but heaven. It is the business and the delight of those who are spiritually minded to rise through the observation of the working of the Word in the world to the con- templation of the Word as it exists eternally in heaven. And this mental habit of his entirely controls his use of the word truth. To him truth is the vision of the eternal, the permanent. And faith consists in the keen realisation of this vision, in the determination to be true to it, and to live for it upon earth. How little this writer, when he speaks of truth, is thinking of truth of fact is shown by the instance of lying which he himself selects : " Who is the liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ ? " ^ That is to say, the test of lying is the reception of false doctrine. ^ 1 John ii. 22. I assume that this Epistle is by the author of the Fourth Gospel. LOYALTY TO TRUTH 137 He puts just the same view in other words when he Writes: " Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in him, and he in God." ^ Being truthful and abiding in God are to this writer the same thing. But in speaking thus of the Evangelist we do not sufficiently discriminate. We do not define his character, but only his species. We might say the same of Plato, of Plotinus, of all the great mystics. All of them have tried to rise from sense to spirit ; all of them have clung to the eternal reality as opposed to the temporary setting. And in the very age of the Evangelist the same tendencies marked schools to which he was bitterly opposed — the Docetse, the Gnostics, the later Platonists. St Augustine was quite right when he said that in the teaching of the more spiritual of the Pagan schools of his time there could be found teaching resembling that of spiritual Christianity. What Christianity, in the person of the Evangelist, added to the Pagan teach- ing was just the person of Jesus Christ. He dwelt on the truth that the eternal Word had taken human form in a historic person, had dwelt among men, and displayed upon the earth a reflection of the Divine glory. When we consider the Fourth Gospel, we ^ 1 John iv. 15. 138 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE must never forget that in itself it is not com- plete. If the Gospel had stood by itself, it would never have sufficed for the Christian Church, or made the Founder real and historic to the disciples. But it presupposes the other Gospels. With these the writer is familiar ; and he takes them for granted. It was not his business to describe accurately the life and teaching of his Master, because that had already been done. His business was only to fill certain lacunee, to emphasise certain points. Their success had been imperfect, because they were on so far lower a spiritual level than their Lord. But they had made clear the character of His life and death. And the Fourth Evangelist assumes that his readers will be acquainted with his predecessors. Herein he differs from St Paul, in whose days our Gospels did not exist, and who can have had but a very slight knowledge of the events of his Master's biography. In fact, he bridges over the gulf which was beginning to open between the original teaching of Christianity and the lofty Pauline version of it. The Evangelist is devoted to the invisible and spiritual, and often speaks even con- temptuously of the things of sense. Yet he emphasises the value of the Christian Sacra- ments, speaking of them in language which LOYALTY TO TRUTH 1S9 has become a precious possession of the Church. In the same way, while it is the eternal life of Christ in heaven which is his inspiration, yep he is by no means indifferent to the main outlines of His life on earth. In describing the sufferings and death of his Master, he seems to take pains to be accurate in some details, though of course a mind so little historic in tendency as his could not have a trained eye for historic fact. But he does, with all his powers, try to combine the spiritual with the actual, real event with spiritual mean- ing. His biography presents a marked and instructive contrast to such merely imagina- tive lives as that of Cyrus by Xenophon, or that of ApoUonius by Philostratus. He does not use his biography as a mere basis for embroidery of personal views or ingenious speculations, but really tries to bring into a focus the traditions which reached him from the Apostles and the spiritual experience which was the life of the Church. Thus the Evangelist, while intensely loyal to the higher truth, which was to him the same thing as life and salvation, was yet, according to his light, loyal to the lower truth, the truth of sense and experience. And X^ think that in dealing with our sacred books and the origins of the Church we cannot do 140 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE better than try to follow his example. But we see at once that whereas the higher truth is the same for all ages, and does not change with intellectual development and the growth of science, the lower truth is quite another thing for us from what it was in the apostolic age. Since the Renaissance an. enormous change has gradually come over our ways of regarding the world and experience. In this matter the greatest of the writers of the ancient world necessarily seem to us like children. Our notions of scientific and his- toric truth are entirely different from theirs. And this fact lies at the root of a vast deal of difficulty for modern Christianity. It is use- less to deny the difficulty. And it is useless to take refuge in such platitudes as the saying that science and faith cannot in the end con- tradict one another. For such sayings are interpreted by every school of Christianity in its own way. A great many of our preachers and teachers first make up their minds as to what is necessary to Christian faith, and then try to find some school in science or history which will allow their data. They have a scheme of faith, and try to fit scientific and historic results into the corners of it. If a modern man is enough of a mystic to think that it is only the higher truth that LOYALTY TO TRUTH 141 matters, that the facts of the world and history are in themselves of small importance, and need not be brought into contact with the life of the spirit, then such an orienfation of mind may be possible. But the natures to which this is a possible attitude must be few, and they run great risks of sudden and painful disillusionment. The modern mind, if it has imbibed the tendencies of the time, cannot thus rest. It must realise that a loyalty is imposed upon us, a loyalty to the facts of the world and experience. It must feel that to disregard the intellectual atmosphere is to run risks of dying of suffocation, that to be careless as to the progress of knowledge is to neglect one of the greatest gifts which God has bestowed on the world, and to cut oneself off from all opportunity of being useful to one's fellow-men* On such terms one may retire into isolation, and let the world go by ; but one cannot take one's place as a fellow- worker with God for the help and salvation' of mankind. I must briefly sketch the directions in which loyalty to the truth makes us move in all the operations of mind, those connected with religion as well as others. Of the progress in physical and biological science I need not speak, since all instructed people have made 142 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE up their minds that in these subjects light must come from study and method and not from revelation. No doubt there are still mafiy who feel the overthrow of the Mosaic account of the origin of the world to be troublesome to faith. But with them I need not concern myself.^ In two fields thevclash- ing between knowledge and religious belief is certainly still living. The first is the field of history. There can be no doubt that historic criticism is to many a stumbling-block. They do not like to apply to the New Testament and to early Church history the accepted canons by which what is called profane history is judged. The second is the field of psychology. The great prineiple of relativity in knowledge, which lies at the foundation of the modern study of the mind of man, is often regarded as fatal to belief, as it certainly is fatal to the dogmatic systems of theology based upon metaphysical reasoning. There can be no question but that loyalty to the truth compels us, in deference to fundamental principles of modern history and psychology, to reject much that has in the past been built into the scheme of Christian ^ Yet, as late as 1 890, we find Canon Liddon supporting, or trying to support, against the representatives of science, the literal truth of the first chapters of Genesis ! LOYALTY TO TRUTH 143 belief. This scheme came into being in days when the intellectual outlook was quite different from what it is to-day. It requires great alterations and transpositions to fit it to a new age. Loyalty to truth involves a profound love of it and reverence for it in all its branches, scientific, ideal, and spiritual. It is a habit of the mind and an attitude of the will which, when once adopted, one cannot give up, because it is in close relation with the very nature of things, and a part of the loyalty of the soul to God, Perhaps some of our theologians may think that so long as spiritual truth is held in respect, truth to fact and history is of comparative unimportance. That is an attitude of mind which was possible, alike in the ancient and the mediaeval world. When the Fourth Evangelist adopts — or I should rather say approaches — that attitude, we feel that it does not spoil the nobility of his religion or the transparency of his intelligence. But we in the twentieth century, however we may sympathise with such a view, cannot adopt it. It would introduce into our intelligence and our thought a principle of radical inconsistency, which would paralyse our mental processes. It would weigh like a nightmare on our attempts at a consistent 144 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE belief. Whatever be the cost, we must be loyal to every kind of truth. We have no wish to drive into this way of thinking anyone who does not feel the necessities which drive us. We want no unwilling disciples. But we must in return claim a like toleration. We must protest against the assumption, sometimes openly and more often tacitly made, that it is only from want of spirituality or from intellectual pride that we find diffi- culties in the literal acceptance of the Creeds of the Church, or rather of some clauses in those Creeds literally interpreted. It seems to me so self-evident that it only needs to be stated, that the best way for the translation or re-affirmation of the beliefs and principles which lie at the roots of the Christian faith is, not to abandon the love and even the fanaticism of veracity, but to transfer our loyalty in part from scientific to symbolic or ethical truth, to transplant the fundamental assumptions of Christianity from the field of history, the realm of outward and {sensuous fact, to the higher realm of ideas. This is a process which has always taken place in a measure in the Christian Church, from the time of the Ephesian Gospel onwards, which is taking place at this moment in many branches of the Society, and which must take LOYALTY TO TRUTH 145 place still more in the near future, unless knowledge and faith are for ever to be at grips. And here we find the very essence of the Modernist Movement. IV I wish i:o suggest a way of regarding the whole question of the relations of science to faith. There are three factors to be considered : science, essential religion, and the Churches. Let us see which of these factors is most capable of modification. The word science is somewhat misleading. When science is spoken of, most people think of something remote and highly organised, the property of specialists, who deign from time to time to make known to ordinary people the results at which they have arrived. But the word science is only the Latin for knowledge ; and science itself is simply ordered knowledge. Every time we make an observation and record a fact we grow in science. And science has grown to its present stature simply by the accumulation of the accurate results of the working of the senses and the intelligence. The word is, it is true, used abusively in - other ways. On the Holburn Viaduct there is a statue of Science holding the governor-balls, as if engineering were the main branch of 10 146 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE science. We do talk of practical science ; but what we mean is acting in accordance with the data of science. Properly, science is only knowledge, ordered and developed. It has many branches — knowledge X)f the visible world, knowledge of the history of mankind, knowledge of the faculties of men, and of their doings in the field of politics, or art, and so forth. Now it is quite clear that science is perfectly intractable. We may have false developments of science based on incorrect observation and false reasoning. But as long as it is based on valid observation and sound reasoning, science cannot be altered, and cannot be questioned, without calling in question the fundamental facts of human nature. If we had other senses than those we have, or if our minds worked in a difTerent way, we might have another kind of science. It is to some conceivable that there might be a world in which twice two might be five. But we being men, the best we can possibly attain to is human science. This is obvious enough. But we often overlook corollaries which follow from obvious truths. The clearest consequence deriving from the very nature of knowledge is that it is useless and even impossible to deny what is established in a methodical way by the action LOYALTY TO TRUTH 147 of sense and intellect. Science cannot be set aside, and it cannot be warped and squeezed ; it is the most stubborn thing in the world. But then we must further observe that science properly speaking has no immediate relation to action. We make a short cut in language, and talk of engineering science or military science. What we really mean is engineering or tactics based upon a methodical observation of facts. Strictly speaking, science can never be said directly to prescribe any course of action. It only commands con- ditionally, with an if. If you want to make a ship that will float, you must observe such and such rules. If you want to defeat your enemy, you must attack him on. the lines which past experience has shown to be effec- tive. If you want your country to be pros- perous, you must make laws not against the grain of human nature, but in accord with it. And so on. Science, then, must lie at the foundations of all wise and considered action, though it does not directly prescribe one course of action rather than another. It is a solid and immovable concrete foundation, on which all constructions of action must rest. We will next turn to the second factor, essential religion. This consists in a relation between God and man, a relation of help 148 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE granted on the one part and loyalty felt on the other. It involves an approach between the will of men and the will of God. It is essentially, as Sehleiermaeher maintained, a feeling of dependence on a Higher Power. Only the feeling by itself is not enough : there must be a bending of the will of man, result- ing in particular kinds of action. As science is purely theoretic and only com- mands with an if^ so religion is in essence purely practical, and speaks with a direct and unmodified imperative. It says, " Thou shalt not," and " Thou shalt"; "Do this and thou shalt live " ; " Sin and thou shalt suffer " ; " Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to thee." And as science tells one how to reach any ends which one has adopted as desirable, so religion, at the opposite pole, tells us how the life must be orientated, what is healthful and what fatal ; but does not tell us how that condition may be attained. For the state of harmony between the Divine will and the human will has been attained by men of all ages and all countries. It is quite independent of any intellectual views, any opinions as to the world or as to history. It may be found in the least, as well as in the most, intellectual. It has nothing to do with age or sex, with riches or poverty, with educa- LOYALTY TO TRUTH 149 tion or ignorance. It is a definite condition. Of course it has infinite gradations ; it may be slowly evolved through a lifetime, or it may be ruined at the outset. But it is a definite attitude or relation of human nature to the Divine Nature, and it does not change with the ages. Some of the Hebrew Psalms, in which it is so wonderfully expressed, are almost as fresh to-day as in the hour when they were written. Thus, of the three factors which we are con- sidering, two seem to be fixed and unchiange- able, and they can never be really in collision, belonging to separate fields of human activity. The possibility of change, of adaptation, must lie in the third factor, which we have yet to con- sider — the Church, or the Churches. These we shall treat of later, in the concluding chapter. VI THE HISTORIC CREED We come next to the question of authority. In this matter, as in others, the English Church follows a middle course. In the Roman Church all authority is concentrated and organised, and the business of clergy and pieople alike is simply to obey. We speak quite accur- ately when we call the Roman society a Roman obedience. Among Nonconformists the question of authority is quite subordinate. Ministers have sometimes to accept formulae embodied in the trust-deeds of their particular place of worship. Some clergymen, as among the Wesleyans, have to make a general pro- fession of belief. But, generally speaking, the clergy have only to avoid too distinct a break with the views current among/ their people ; and the laity are probably, in most places, now scarcely submittled to any doctrinal text before they are accepted as members. The principle 150 THE HISTORIC CREED 151 of the private conscience is carried to its logical conclusion. But the Church of England has definite tests, mild though they be, for the clergy, and in a lesser degree for the laity. Every person who is confirmed has not only to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, but also to express acceptance of the Apostles' Creed. This, however, is usually done at a time of life when few have begun seriously to think about religious belief. The clergy have also, at their ordination, to express a general belief in Scripture, and to promise to obey their ordinary and other chief ministers of the Church, and to oppose doctrines contrary to God's word. There are two kinds of authority. One kind demands obedience without explanation or reason given. Such authority is claimed over every citizen by the laws and constitution of the country. In a less degree it is claimed by parents over children, and employers over employed. The other kind only claims rule in virtue of wider experience and greater knowledge, and wins consent by reason and persuasion, not by force. Such is the authority of a physician over his patients and a lawyer over his clients. The first kind of authority imposes penalties on disobedience ; the second 152 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE merely threatens that, if it is not obeyed, evil consequences will follow to him who disobeys through the working of cause and effect. Though these two kinds of authority are logically easily to be distinguished, yet they often pass one into the other. For example, a century ago parents commonly controlled their children by the threat of punishment ; now very commonly they try to persuade them to obedience by reasoning. In the English Church authority seldom resorts to punish- ment, and then only in extreme cases ; usually it appeals to the sense of discipline and to reason. The authority of Bishops, which the clergy promise to obey, is administrative rather than doctrinal, it bears upon action and ritual rather than upon belief. The point at which it becomes active and powerful is when Bishops refuse to ordain men of whose beliefs they disapprove. And it is obvious that such a claim to authority may become very tyrannical, as by it the Bishop determines on his own responsibility what beliefs are compatible and what incompatible with holy orders : and this is clearly a matter to be decided, not by a single Bishop, but by the Church as a whole. The divergencies in belief between one Bishop and another make it unlikely that all would THE HISTORIC CREED 153 refuse a candidate unless his views were extreme ; but still there is an opening for abuse. In the Articles the question of authority for belief is dealt with in a clear and decided way. The authority of the Pope in matters of religion is vigorously repudiated. The authority of Bishops is set forth in the gentlest way, alike in the Articles and the service for the ordina- tion of Bishops. It is stated that General Councils may err, and have erred, even in things pertaining unto God, and that their decisions only have weight when they are in agreement with the Bible. It is the Bible which, at every turn, is set forth as the test of truth and the touchstone of doctrine. This is the one recognised authority of the English Church, "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation : so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith." These words take us back to the condition of things after the Reformation, when Protestant Chris- tendom had got back its Bible, and was in- toxicated with the wealth of spiritual truth thence to be gained. It was evident how much of the doctrine and the practice of the Roman Church had no scriptural support ; 154 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE and men fondly deemed that if they could only hark back to the beliefs of the Apostolic Church, they would be entirely blessed, and at death attain everlasting life. As regards other kinds of authority, the English Church is vague. It speaks of the authority of the early Church ; but here defini- tion and interpretation has to come in. Where draw the line between the early and the later Church ? How eliminate from early Church teaching that which obviously was only part and parcel of defective science and an imperfect knowledge of history? M. Loisy at one time thought that he could recognise the Church as supreme authority in matters of doctrine, but as an insufficient authority in matters of science and history. But it has appeared that often when the framework of science and history is withdrawn the doctrine hopelessly collapses. In any case it is perfectly clear that though the Church of England treats the writings of the Early Fathers and the decisions of Councils with respect, she does not feel in any way bound by them. She distinctly states (Art. XX.) that, when the Church and Scripture do not agree, it is the latter which is to be followed. And she states that General Councils may err, and have erred, even in matters of religion. Beyond the general authority of Bishops, THE HISTORIC CREED 156 and a necessity of conforming to the Book of Common Prayer, there is at present no definite - external authority in the English Church ; and even this conformity has to be tried before a court of law.' But when we come to the other kind of authority, an authority based on morals and experience, and claiming a reasonable and loyal obedience, the case is different. No doubt at all times the English Church has tried to raise barriers of this gentler kind against the extreme aberrations which have deformed so many of the Protestant sects. She has tried to produce a common feeling which might prevent any straying far from the main current of Christian belief. And certainly any loyal son of the English Church will sympathise with this endeavour, and try to regard with all respect and consideration all that she venej:'ates. In a general way the doctrinal teaching of the Enghsh Church is that set forth in the Creeds and the Articles of Religion, ^ If the scheme for a reformed Convocation of the Church recently put forth ever becomes a working plan, the external authority of the Church will be greatly increased. In many ways this is desirable : but in the scheme as drafted there is no sufficient security that authority will be in the hands of the moderate and reason- able majority. 156 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE We come first to the Creeds ; and have to consider their assertions and the grounds of their authority. Many Churchmen seem to think that they fell direct from heaven. But, as a matter of fact, they were hammered out over a long period of time, and embody the results of long controversies, not only theo- logical, but political and national.^ The Roman Emperors, as well as the Bishops, had a finger in the pie ; and however highly we may value the Creeds, there can be no possibility of their escaping the human errors which mingle with all things, even the New Testament. But though it is difficult to maintain the infallibility of conciliar decisions, yet strong views as to their general guidance or control by the working of the Divine Spirit may be held. In all religious utterances, from the Bible downwards, we find an element of imperfection. But it is quite possible to maintain that, alike in regard to the writers of the New Testament and the directors of early Christian thought, there was an over- ruling Providence which raised them, not to the attainment of complete and eternal truth, but to a level which enabled them to discern the beliefs most suited to the growth of the ^ In Hahn's Bihliothek der Symholcf. etc, are some 250 Christian creeds. THE HISTORIC CREED 157 Christian Church at the time, and to the denial of views which would have made for its destruction. And in a measure this tend- ency, being suited to the inner life of Christi- anity, is authoritative in after times. The acceptance of an infallible authority implies that one beqomes a religious parasite ; and parasites in the human as in the animal world tend rapidly to degenerate. But the modest and manly respect for an authority recognised as imperfect is an attitude to which we are driven every day, and by which alone we can shape a worthy life. But if the Creeds are accepted, not on mere external authority, but as embodiments of the life of the Church, then surely it is impossible to avoid the corollary that the Church has in the present day also a right, either to modify them, or at least to reinterpret them in a spirit of religious courage. Scripture we ^cannot alter : but the Creeds are only human attempts at a statement of the belief of the Church. That this right exists must be strenuously maintained. But that it would be wise at the present time to attempt to draft another creed, is quite another matter. Until the English Church is more unanimous, and has clearer light in regard to her beliefs, reinterpretation is the only safe course. 168 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE II I propose to take for brief analysis one of our Creeds. And for this purpose, the creed which is not quite accurately called the Nicene is by far the best adapted. It has high conciliar authority, and is used by both Eastern and Western Churches, And it combines the simple and historic elements which make up the Apostles' Creed, with a certain amount of doctrinal statement. Though it may seem more learned than the Apostles' Creed, it is really less at variance than that briefer form with the results of modern science and research. The Nicene Creed,^ in the later form in which it stands in the Prayer Book, carefully distinguishes three attitudes of mind or spirit — belief, acknowledgment, and expectation. He who repeats it expresses his belief in one God, in Jesus Christ His only Son, in the Holy Ghost the Giver of life, and in the Catholic or Universal Church. He adds that he acknow- ledges Christian baptism, and that he looks for, or expects, the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. The language here is very exact. Like the English believe^ its Greek equivalent is used in more than one sense. .A man may be said to believe this or 1 The following exposition is repeated, with alterations, from papers in the Modem Churchman, 191 1. THE HISTORIC CREED 159 that to be a fact, when he merely means that he regards it as very probable. But when he says he believes in a person, the word has quite another meaning. He certainly does not mean merely that he believes A or B to exist. He gives expression not merely to a mental but to a moral conviction. He declares that he stands in an ethical relation to A or B, that he trusts him, and would risk his happiness or his fortune on the faithfulness and honour of A or B. In the same way a man may say of God, as the Athanasian Creed affirms, that He is uncreate, incomprehensible, and eternal ; but this is only a conviction of the intellect, it has no direct relation to action ; at least before being so taken it needs translation. But when a man affirms that he believes in God, he declares a loyalty and an obligation. He acknowledges a relation between his spirit and God, and declares that he recognises a duty to do the will of God in the world. And when a man declares that he believes in Jesus Christ and accepts him for Lord, he does not merely say that he recognises the fact that Jesus lived upon earth and worked there for the good of mankind, but he takes up a relation of obedi- ence and love to Christ as a Power still work- ing in the world of spirit, with whom the believer has communion, the head of a spiritual 160 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE kingdom into which the Christian enters. BeUef in the Holy Ghost implies a conviction of the -.possibility and actuality of Divine in- spiration, a recognition of the fact that there is a door between man and God, which may be opened so that the lesser being may be flooded by the inflow of the greater. Belief in the Church implies that a man regards its history as a divinely ordained and divinely controlled course, and is willing to take up a loyalty to it even at the cost of self-sacrifice. In the Apostles' Creed the phrase is, " I believe in the forgiveness of sins." This might well be an object of belief, for it is a part of spiritual experience ; and belief in it would have a practical bearing upon life. But when baptism is spoken of, as it is in the Nicene Creed, in connection with the remission of sins, we have to do with an ordinance of the Church, which is accepted on its authority, and so must be acknowledged and not believed in. As the Creed was taught to the convert before baptism, he could not have personal knowledge that it was accompanied by the remission of sins. He had to submit in faith to the rite prescribed by the community. Thus the dis- tinction in phrase between the belief in God and the mere acknowledgment of baptism has a reasonable^ basis. THE HISTORIC CREED 161 As regards the resurrection, the phrase of the Nieene Creed, "I expect," is again well chosen. For, in the strictest sense of the word believe, one cannot believe in anything but a person, or a community of persons. One can believe that an event is about to take place, using the word believe in a looser sense : but it is certainly better to say that we expect an event to take place. Thus the phrases of the Creed in regard to baptism and the rising of the dead cannot be put on the same plane of faith as those in regard to God and the Church. But there are in the Creed other clauses which stand on a still less lofty basis. These we shall reach later on. Since the very origin of Christianity it has been the chief business of the prophets and missionaries of the faith to persuade men that a mere conviction of the intellect is idle and worthless unless it gives birth to action. St Paul is never weary of the theme that faith, if it be true faith, must bring forth fruit in the life. And at the opposite pole of early Christianity, St James dwells on the worth- lessness of a mere creed which does not move men to good works. "Thou believest that God is one, thou doest well. The devils also believe this and tremble." But St James 11 162 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE does not say that the devils believe in God ; this would imply that they ceased to be devils. Yet, though from that day to this the great teachers of the Church have dwelt on the practical nature of faith, though the "pulpit^ have ever rung with the proclamation that faith is proved by deeds, yet the community has never been able to escape wholly from the view that the Creeds are expressions of opinion, a series of intellectual affirmations. And it must be confessed that, as the Creeds stand, a part of them, not the backbone, but the filling up, does consist of statements which have no direct reference to action, but are only intellectual affirmations. These phrases are, in fact, explanatory. When God the Father is mentioned, a sentence is added to explain the Christian or the Church's view of God as Maker of all things. When Jesus Christ is spoken of, a longer commentary is needed, to show how the Church thinks of her Head. The commentary is partly doctrinal, explaining the nature of the Divine in Christ from the point of view of theological specula- tion, partly historic, narrating the main events of the life of Jesus on eai:th. But, of course, at the time the distinction between the historic, or that which occurred under the forms of time and space, was not distinguished from THE HISTORIC CREED 163 doctrinal or symbolical statements as to the spiritual nature of things. For example, " crucified under Pontius Pilate " is a mere historic statement, and its acceptance involves no faith whatever. But when the words " for us " are added, the statement at once becomes doctrinal. It has been shown by many theologians that in the Creeds the purpose of each clause is partly to deny some heretical view, to warn off believers from a course full of danger. This phrase was directed against the Docetae, that against the Gnostics, that against the Arians. They are like sign-posts marking the roads which lead aright from those which lead to danger. It would seem that in a modern rendering this purpose should not be over- looked. Indeed, from the historical or learned point of view it is most important. It helps us enormously to discover how sentences in the Creed originated. But from a modern and practical point of view it is less essential. To the present work it is more germane to inquire, first, what is the attitude of the modern mind, versed in science and history, towards the various clauses of the Creed ; and second, what relation have they to life, to our attitude towards the spiritual power and to the practical working of Christianity in the world ? 164 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE III Let us, from this point of view, consider, first, the great positive assertions of belief made by those who repeat the Creed ; next, the acceptance and expectation which it expresses ; thirdly, what is historic in its explanatory statements; fourthly, what is doctrinal or metaphysical in those statements. By far the greatest stress is laid in the Creed on the belief in the Divine Trinity. Alike in the history of the Creed and in its statement, this fact stands conspicuous. The best intellects of the Church were for ages occupied in working out the doctrine. The real problem was the bringing together of the historic Jesus, whose words and deeds are set forth in the Gospels, and the Christ who remained the life of the Church, and the Source of her divine obedience to God. But no simple or practical solution of the problem could satisfy men who had been accustomed to the logomachies of the later Greek philo- sophers. Something systematic and meta- physical was desired. This element is not nearly so conspicuous in the l^icene Creed as in the later confession which goes by the name of Athanasius ; but it is present in some phrases. But the belief should not be a mere THE HISTORIC CREED 165 metaphysical proposition ; it must represent an attitude or condition of the spirit in the presence of spiritual realities. And, in spite of the enormous progress of physical and human science, in spite of changed intellectual conditions, in spite of vast movements in social surroundings, yet at the deep level of Christian faith matters are not fundamentally changed. The Christian still has to recognise a relation of trust and dependence towards ^ God presented to the believer in different aspects. The so-called Athanasian Creed speaks of one God in three Persons. It is fortunate that the Nicene Creed does not use the word person, a word which has been the unfortunate cause, not only of much intellectual confusion, but, it is to be feared, of religious corruption. In our days there is a possible perversion of the faith which leads to accepting a triad of deities, ruling nature, the world, and the Church. And as it is given to no man to serve two masters without preferring one to the other, Christians have very commonly attached themselves to one or other of the triad of divine beings, and neglected the others. To multitudes of devout Christians in our country "Jesus" quite eclipses the Creator, just as in the southern countries of Europe does the Virgin Mary, or even some local saint. In many circles Christianity has 166 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE really become, what it seems to Jews and Moslems, a polytheist system. Of course, all who are instructed in theology know that this tendency is' neither scriptural nor orthodox. Many of the great teachers of the Church have struggled against it. It is a popular corrup- tion, which may, indeed, be combined with real Christian faith, but not with the highest kind of religion. The Unity of God is quite as much an essential point of Christian faith as is the doctrine of the Trinity. It is difficult to find terms in English which convey the same meaning as the Greek and Latin words, persona^ hypostasis^ prosopon^ and the like. Impersonation is a closer rendering oi persona than is person. Indeed, many terms may be found which are less misleading than the word person. To the modern mind, in its extreme individualism, a person is a conscious isolated unit. The word aspect is not satisfactory in this connection, perhaps presentation is better ; for the essential point to keep is that the doctrine of the Trinity should be regarded strictly in relation to re- ligious fact and experience : in what forms God is revealed to consciousness. In repeating the Nicene Creed the Christian declares that he accepts a relation to God as the Father Almighty, the all-powerful source THE HISTORIC CREED 167 of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. He implies that he hopes to act upon that relation, and to be loyal to his Father and Maker, that he is wiUing to be judged in life and in death by his conduct in that regard, T have said that the Creeds have been from the beginning constantly reinterpreted. But no article has been so constantly and boldly reinterpreted as this first one. The theologians who maintain that we ought to receive the clauses of the Creed in the sense in which they were written will here, on the very threshold of the Creed, meet a fatal check. For there can be no doubt as to what was the belief of those who set down the Almighty Father as maker of heaven and earth. They accepted the history of creation as set forth in Genesis, how in six days God made light, set up a firmament to divide the waters, divided land from sea, set great lights in the firmament, and filled sea, earth, and air with living creatures, last of all making man. In the last century many learned men put their intellects to the extraordinary use of trying to reconcile this story with the facts of geologic research. In obscure places such work may still be going on, but it is to be hoped that even in elemen- tary schools this stage is usually left behind. 168 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE We have other notions of creation than the primitive Jewish. One of the most recent is set forth in the Evolution Cr^atrice of M. Bergson, which may, as Mr A. J, Balfour has shown in the Hibbert Journal,^ well be modi- fied into a Christian view. And whereas some phrases of the Creed have lost some of their force with time and changed circumstances, this thesis must mean to us a thousandfold more than it meant to our ancestors. It is, indeed, almost prophetic. For in stating that the God in whom we live and move and have our being is the ruler of the worlds visible and invisible, it seems to foreshadow the great modern discovery of the reign of law in the physical world and in the invisible, moral, and spiritual world, law which in both great realms tells of one active Power. To science, whether the old world know- ledge gained by sense and experience, or the new knowledge gained through method and research, by means of the telescope, the micro- scope, and other instruments, the Creed adds an element of divinity. It affirms that the world is moving with a purpose towards an end foreordained, that there is reason and goodness behind evolution. It affirms that the history of man is no blind career through 1 Vol. X. p, 1. THE HISTORIC CREED 169 time,, driven by unconscious forces from nothingness to nothingness, but a course of ethical education, destined to lead to ends which are but imperfectly known to us, but which we accept as good. And since the individual, as well as the race, is made by God, he must be made for a good and noble purpose, he must have in him potentialities of a Divine kind. Thus to the holder of the Creed life is worth living, a God-sent gift to be treasured and loved. And he who repeats it, believing in God, is bound to accept as his law all that can be discovered of the ways of God in the world and in history. Every such discovery becomes a part of theology ; and the discoverer, what- ever may be his motives, makes the' service of God more possible. And as the man of science and the historian are theologians, so all who do anything to promote the Kingdom of God ^n earth are prophets or priests. No doubt the wording of the Creed is imperfectly adapted to this interpretation. God was once thought of as the artificer who made the heaven and earth in the fashion narrated in Genesis. To our thinking the Author of nature is the Power who works through evolution, and has by degrees brought into being the visible world and the human 170 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE race with all its powers and possibilities ; the Power which in the universe is on the side of order, and in the spirits of men is on the side of wisdom and righteousness. We are com- pelled to interpret the old phrase symbohcally and not literally. It is not difficult to discern against what views of the Divine this thesis of the Creed is directed. Polytheism, when it was formulated, was powerful though decadent. And much that was in origin heathen had survived into Christianity in the form of Gnosticism. We have here a denial of what may be called the Ormuzd and Ahriman view of the world, the theory that the world is a scene of perpetual conflict between the powers of good and evil, in which the successes of the power of evil are most frequent and conspicuous. In early Christian writings, it must be confessed, this view is common enough, And it must be confessed that in all ages there is a strong tendency towards it. Probably every man living, who thinks at all, at some time inclines to think that evil in the world is stronger than good. The high doctrine, of the Creed is one which seems contrary to experierlce and common sense, and it is only by faith that one can climb up to it. But one may believe it, and accept it, even when one has but a THE HISTORIC CREED 171 very halting feeling of its truth. Unless faith required some effort, some self-determination, it would not be faith. Of course, the Christian element in the statement of the Creed lies mainly in the introduction of the word Father. Apart from that word it would equally well embody the view of the Stoics, to whom submission to, and harmony with, the visible order of the Universe was the very essence of morality. The Stoics speak of the Fatherhood of God, as indeed does Homer, but not in a Christian sense. The Christian view includes that of the Stoics ; but it goes beyond it in introduc- ing the idea of Fatherhood, that is, of the love of God for men and His care alike for their moral progress and their happiness, primarily as manifested in the teaching and personality of Jesus, His Son. Remove this idea and you take away the basis on which Christianity is built. Next comes the clause in regard to Jesus Christ, the one Lord. It is even clearer in regard to this clause than in regard to the first, that what the Creed asserts is not an intellectual proposition, but a deliberately asserted loyalty. It means, " I take Jesus Christ for my Lord and guide, in life and in death." This it certainly meant in the m EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE baptismal confession, and this it means now, when a congregation repeats it. Crusaders repeated the Creed with hand on sword, and this is a hint at the miUtant attitude which becomes every Christian, even when we do not beUeve in the propagation of Christianity by the sword. As Uegemen we take a vow of fidelity. The explanatory statements added in regard to the belief in Christ are, as I have already observed, of two kinds. Statements of a historic character are made in regard to the life of the Founder, and statements of a meta- physical character in regard to His nature. That so large a part of the Creed is taken up by these assertions is but natural. For the formula srecited at baptism into the name of Christ would naturally dwell fully on what was implied by the name. And, as we know, Christological doctrine and speculation played a great part in the intellectual exercises of the Church for the first five centuries of its existence. The historic statements are not by any means colourless history. They are history permeated by idea and doctrine. Like St Paul, those who formulated the Creed did not draw any clear line between the earthly life of Jesus and the heavenly existence which THE HISTORIC CREED 173 preceded and which followed it. In fact, they did not regard history, as we do, as an orderly sequence of events in space and time. That is the modern scientific view, and it was the view of a few trained historians in the ancient world. But such intellectualism was far from the minds of ordinary folk, or of the ethical and religious leaders who worked on their level. With the people of the ancient world, and more especi- ally with Jews and Orientals, fact and idea were inseparably blended. Some modern writers have so keenly felt this that they have denied altogether the historic origin of Christianity, have thought that even the Jesus of the Synoptists never actually lived, but was the ideal of a race and school. This is a caricature of the truth ; but the truth lies midway between this absurd extreme and the notion of those who think the Gospels to be records by plain men of what they had actually seen and heard. What is actually historic assertion in the Creed few would care to deny. That Jesus was born of a mother Mary, lived as a man, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, was buried, and was afterwards regarded as living by the disciples — all this is doubtless sober fact. But in the Creed it is all transposed into another key. The fact is quite swallowed up in the 174 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE idea. With the facts is mixed a set of asser- tions which are hot historic at all, but theories or interpretations added to the history by the early disciples. It is stated that Jesus Christ came down from heaven, was incarnate by an exercise of Divine power, after His death ascended into heaven, and is seated on the right hand of the Father. It is clear that these events could not possibly be testified to by any experience of the senses. And, look- ing at them closely, one sees that they are altogether expressed in language of the time, and conditioned by the opinions of the ordin- ary people of the time. In them heaven is thought of as a place, and a place above our heads, while the world is a surface with a firmament stretched above it and dark regions hidden beneath, which was created in the fashion set forth in Genesis, To those who do not share that geocentric view of the universe, the phrases of the Creed, the coming down, the going up, the sitting on high, liter- ally taken, are absurd. As no modern reader does share that view, he must necessarily take the phrases not in a literal, but in a symbolic sense, as the expression not of fact but of idea. And modern men do, in fact, so take them, with the exception of two phrases, which THE HISTORIC CREED 175 many of them choose still to accept literally. They still think the Virginal Birth and the physical resurrection facts of objective history ; and, indeed, they are very angry with all who decline to do so. Yet criticism shows that the documentary evidence for these facts, as factSj^is of a most unsatisfying description, and we may show in a satisfactory way that we can account for these beliefs of the early dis- ciples without assuming any physical miracle, by applying principles everywhere recognised in the discussion of ancient history. The two theses I have mentioned were just as much conditioned by the mental atmo- sphere of the time as the belief that Jesus was actually sitting at the right hand of God, the anthropomorphism of which notion is obvious. In the dying vision of Stephen, as recorded in Acts^ the martyr saw the heavens opened and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. Comparing this account with other passages in Liuhe^ we may be sure that to the Evan- gelist this was no mere spiritual vision, but the beholding of material realities, just as much as was the ascent of the risen Jesus, when the cloud received Him out of the sight of the Apostles, or the appearance in the upper chamber at Jerusalem. Most of us easily take the appearance to Stephen as a waking 176 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE' vision, but the earlier appearance as fact. St Luke thought that risen bodies could not only take a seat in heaven, but also feel hunger, eat food, and be touched by the . hand, and were made of flesh and bones/ We may vary greatly in our notions as to the Resurrection ; but none of us would inter- pret it in the literal fashion in which the writings of the Evangelists prove it to have been accepted by the first disciples. The Creed adds that Jesus Christ " rose on the third day, according to the Scriptures." No competent critic now holds that the prophetic books of the Old Testament — to which, of course, the phrase " Scriptures " refers — fore- told a resurrection on the third day. The fact that the compilers of the Creed, follow- ing St Paul, referred to the supposed prophecy rather than to the narratives of the Evangelists, is illuminating, and shows how diflFerent their notions of historic evidence were from ours, and how impossible it is to attach great value to their mere phrases, as contrasted with their permanent message. Of the other tenet, that of the miraculous birth, it is not easy to speak. I will not dwell upon the absence of any evidence which can be called historic ; nor on the well-known fact 1 Lake xxiv. 39. THE HISTORIC CREED 177 that such stories were told in regard to many great personahties in the ancient world — Plato, Lysander, Alexander, Seleucus, Augustus, and many more. I prefer to pass by these diffi- culties, and merely to say that I am con- vinced, as I have tried to show elsewhere, that the tale of the miraculous birtb belongs rather to the worship of the Virgin Mother than to that of the Divine Son. Of the doctrinal Christology of the Creed I need not here treat; as I have already de- voted a chapter to that subject. The doctrine of the Creed in regard to the Holy Ghost is of great importance, and especially of importance to the Reformed^ Churches, to which the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is of the greatest value. Three things are asserted in the Creed : — (1) That the Spirit is the Giver of life. (2) That He proceeds from the Father and the Son, and with them is glorified. (3) That He spake by the Prophets. On the second of these theses we need not dwell. It is of great importance historically ; and, as everyone knows, the insertion of the words " and the Son " to this day differentiates the Creed of the West of Europe from that of 12 178 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE the East. But I think that the distinction is not one of great importance to an ordinary modern Churchman. But the other phrases may well be meditated upon. In the New Testament the Holy Spirit is spoken of mainly in two connections. First, we have the immortal saying of Jesus that the Heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. And second, we have a record in Acts and in the Pauline Epistles of a vast spiritual Power which accompanied the first preaching of the Gospel, and fell upon all who believed, giving them great psychical force, and — what was in St Paul's judgment much better — giving them power to lead the Divine life, the life in Christ. The Creed recognises both these views. The Holy Spirit is the Giver of life, and of the power to lead the heavenly life. And He comes as an in- spiration both to the community in their common life, and to individuals in secret. No man can by himself walk in the way of God ; the power which enables him to do so must come from God Himself, not from the Spirit as a subordinate, or even co-equal deity, but from God as the holy and inspiring Power. There is, however, in the Creed a further notable assertion. It is declared that the action of the Holy Spirit is not confined to THE HISTORIC CREED 179 the Christian Church, though it is there of course most notable and conspicuous. But the Holy Spirit also spoke by the Jewish prophets. The primary meaning probably is that the prophets were thus enabled to foresee and foretell the coming and the sufferings of Christ, But criticism has played havoc with the notion that the prophetic writings are to be regarded in this somewhat crude light. The writers were inspired, but it was rather to guide the present than fo reveal the future. If sometimes, as in some of the wonderful passages of Isaiah, the future does seem to be revealed, it is because the prophet has come so near to the moral centre of life that he discerns the Divine ideas before they begin to work in the world. Such insight can come only by Divine inspiration. It is, however, impossible for a modern mind to stop at that point. If Divine inspiration is claimed for such writers as Ezekiel and Jeremiah, it cannot possibly be denied to some of the prophets of Greece and Rome, who are far more nearly our spiritual kinsmen. Plato and Aristotle and Seneca have been as important in the history of the thought of the Christian Church as have the prophets of Israel. And it is a great mistake to suppose that the philosophy of Greece made its appeal only to the intellect. 180 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE It was also a great ethical power in the world. The Stoics in particular taught the unity of mankind in a most impressive way, and had great influence on Roman polity and Roman law. Even scholars in England seldom realise how important was the ethical function of the Greek schools of philosophy in Hellenistic times. A careful historian, speaking of the second century B.C., writes of the heads of the schools at Athens: "These were the living exponents of systems of thought which^ obtained the adhesion and actuated the conduct of men of culture all the world over. From Cappadocia to Carthage, from Damascus to Massilia, people in all classes of society looked to the heads of the Stoa, Academy, or Lyceum for inspiration and guidance. They took the place in later antiquity which the prelates *of the Church sometimes occupied in the Middle Ages of Europe."^ But for Plato there would have been no doctrine of the Logos, and indeed no Pauline theology. It is thus necessary to widen out our doctrine of the action of the Holy Spirit, a doctrine which must needs have far deeper meaning and greater value to a modern than to an early Christian. We have to think of an inspira- tion, and as a result, of a revelation, which is ^ Feyguson, Hellenistic Athens, p. 326. THE HISTORIC CREED 181 as much a gradual evolution as is the life of plants and animals in our world. The next thesis, that in regard to the Catholic or Universal Church, admits of more differences of interpretation th^n any other. For there is the Church Visible and the Church Invisible ; and Churchmen may differ very widely as to what is included in both of these expressions. Article XIX of the English Church defines the Visible Church to be "a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure word of God is preached and the Sacraments (of Baptism and the Lord's Supper) be duly ministered." Unless the word duly be taken in some extreme sense, this definition would include members of almost all the greater Protestant commun- ions, as well as the Eastern and Western Churches ; in that case the unity of the Church can be only ideal, and must exist in virtue of connection with the Head of the Church. The most noteworthy point is that here, especially, the words / believe have an ethical and practical, not a mere theoretic, meaning. The Christian who accepts the Creed ought to accept a relation of Christian charity towards every member of the body of Christ, departed or living. He expresses a desire to do good so far as he can to each, to try to believe the best of him, to act towards him, if living, in 182 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE the spirit of Christ ; and if departed, to think of him as still a member of the sacred jsoeiety, of which Christ is the Head. The believer thus takes up a sort of ideal or spiritual nation- ality, similar to that which binds together the members of a class or a nation, but not neces- sarily with the narrowness and injustice which are apt to disfigure national feelings. Many people, no doubt, would read the thesis very differently. They would accept it as referring only to what they regard as the visible Church, and- then as obliging them to accept any doctrine set forth by that Church. In fact, they would ""regard it rather as an expression of submission to an external ecclesiastical authority than as a statement of Christian sympathy. Whether they are right or wrong, there is nothing in the words of the Creed to make this interpretation necessary, nor is it the interpretation adopted in the formulee of the English Church. Since the Creeds were originally baptismal confessions, it is natural that baptism should be mentioned in them. And historically, at first it was baptism which marked the limits of the Church. It was the door of admission to the society. And being usually administered to adults, it was the turning-point of the life, the gate which led from the worldly life to the life THE HISTORIC CREED 183 in Christ. The person to be baptized usually renounced his sins and received absolution from the clergy. It is obvious that the com- plete change in the character of baptism, which took place when it was transferred from maturity to infancy, altered its relation to any spiritual scheme of Christian faith. In the Nicene Creed, as I have already pointed out, baptism is set forth not as an object of belief, but as a thing to be acknowledged. In the Anglican Church of our day Confirmation occupies nearly the place held by baptism in the early Church. A modern Churchman may well accept baptism, or confirmation in the way in which such rites are taken in the First Epistle of Peter, and regard their saving power as residing not in the mere ceremony, but in the answer of a good conscience towards God. And he may acknowledge baptism, whether adult or infant, as a valuable rite of the Christian Society, The last phrases of the Creed record not a belief but an expectation or hope, a looking for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Primarily these words; in their original acceptation, had reference to apocalyptic beliefs, to an expectation of the return of Christ to reign, and a rising of dead and living Christians to meet their 184 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE Master, in the manner so graphically described by St Paul in his Thessalonian Epistle.^ But in the Creed the phrases are softened and generalised. Already the strong drift of the Christian conscience away from millennial hopes towards an abode in the presence of God had made much progress. In our days it has gone further ; so that we may fairly say that few expect or look for a cataclysmic return of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven, or the raising of human bodies from land and sea on that occasion. But the great mass of modern Christians do expect a life beyond the grave. However, the life beyond the grave admits of many interpretations. At one extreme many worthy Christians think that all the family relations will continue unchanged beyond the grave, overlooking a memorable warning in the Gospels about marriage in relation to the future world. A few adhere to the grim and terrible doctrine of an eternity of complete happiness or of utter misery in store for every man, though it is obviously impossible thus to divide men at death into the righteous and the wicked ; in fact, that notion will not square with any ethical scheme. Other good Christians do not venture beyond the feeling " I shall not really die." 1 1 ThessAv. 17. THE HISTORIC CREED 185 The vague phrasing of the Nicene Creed is well suited to a great diversity of belief. It omits the materialist Jewish doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and leaves the future life of the spirit as a thing to be ex- pected and hoped for but not defined. And we may observe how this vagueness exactly corresponds to the phrases used in regard to the future life, both in the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles, which stand in marked con- trast to the definite and detailed views as to that life which are vividly embodied in the writings, the sculpture, and the painting of the Middle Ages, especially in the magnificent poem of Dante. ' We now know that this concrete imagery came into the Church from Pagan sources, originally from the Far East, and is parallel to that now recognised by the Buddhists, who also have exchanged the vague primitive teachings of their founder for some- thing with more colour and detail. IV I may give in brief form the result of this slight analysis. The Nicene Creed belongs to a very different intellectual atmosphere from ours. Taking its clauses literally, no one would accept them all. Most Churchmen take some clauses literally and some symbolically. 186 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE ^ But if the principle of symbolic interpretation be once granted, it is impossible to draw a line, and to insist that this or that clause shall be more literally taken. Certainly in the English Church there is no power which has the right to say, " Because you do not accept certain clauses in the Creed in the way in which I take them, but interpret them in a manner which in the case of other clauses I admit to be allow- able, therefore I adjudge you to be a heretic and a false son of the Church." And in the same way those in authority who would allow candidates for the ministry to throw scorn on the Articles, but will not allow a modern interpretation of the Creeds, are act-' ing in a way which is not only unreasonable, but inconsistent with the constitution of our Church. The Anglican Church is not only Christian but Reformed. The clergymen who want to go back to the thirteenth century in all points except submission to the Pope, want to build on an arch in which the keystone is wanting. But, setting aside polemics, and the un- charitable use of the Creeds as a barrier to ex- clude from the Church those who differ from us in methods of interpretation, let us for a moment reflect how wonderful it is that a document drawn up under such conditions and THE HISTORIC CREED 187 in such an intellectual atmosphere can yet, after so many centuries, in a measure express the beliefs and hopes of the Church. We interpret differently ; but we have, to place beside each of the fundamental beliefs of the early Church, a belief similar in character and working. Surely this shows in how wonderful a degree the Christian Church is a developing organism, adapting itself constantly to fresh surround- ings, but in essence not changed ; having the same root and the same stem, but putting forth fresh branches and leaves year by year. When one thinks of the many and'great dangers which the Church has escaped, one must feel con- fidence that only by the watchful providence of God she has avoided them. She has escaped the Docetic attempt to refine the human life of Jesus to a mere mirage. She has escaped the danger, which at a very early time was imminent, of importing into Christianity the oriental belief in an all-powerful maternal deity. When the Church of the West divided, and the Teutonic peoples appealed from Rome to the New Testament, each of the main stems preserved, in varied degrees, the essential principles of Christian belief. And to-day the great structure stands, in a world invaded by materialism, as an important spiritual asset. I must repeat the statement with which I 188 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE began, that the present reading is written in anything but a dogmatic mood. It is to be regarded, not as a personal confession, but as an attempt to judge of the direction in which modern thought is moving in regard to the Creed. Perhaps few readers will in every point agree with me ; and I am most ready to admit that wider study and fuller knowledge might cause me to modify some of the views ex- pressed. My reading is in every way tenta- tive, and it is tentative in the direction of the Aristotelian mean, the course which lies between an unreasoning veneration for the Creed, and a hasty rejection of it as antiquated and valueless. Those who pursue the mean are sure to be set upon by the votaries of both extremes ; but it often happens that after swaying this way and that the line of progress settles down in a middle course. There are a good many Churchmen who think that such a rendering of the Creed as 1 have suggested etiolates it, makes it anaemic and inefficient as a document of religion and a light of conduct. In a sense this is true. The bulk of mankind are materialist, and ^ good full-bodied materialist Creed suits them. Well and good. By all means let those who are able to do so accept the belief that Jesus Christ is seated in a human body on a throne THE HISTORIC CREED 189 above the clouds, and will at some time come again to the earth to judge mankind, and to punish with eternal fire such as have rejected the faith. Such a belief might have an immense power if anyone could accept it. We make no complaint against those who take the Creed literally. We only protest against the spirit of those who, s6 doing, would exclude from Christian fellowship those who follow not with them. Modern thought and science have brought us immense advan- tage, but they have also brought the dis- advantage that we cannot receive the naive beliefs of our predecessors. Most advantages in the world have to be paid for in one way or another. And there is also this to be said, that religious reform and progress usually take the form of the etiolation of crude beliefs. Socrates spent most of his life in turning inside out thie robust beliefs of the youths of Athens. The Sermon on the Mount, and other parts of the Synoptic Gospels, consist in great part of the spiritualisation, or etiola- tion, of popular Jewish beliefs iand morality. The newer law was a higher and more spiritual form of the old law. The enemies of St Paul attacked him chiefly because he held that the people of God were not a race but a society. 190 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE thereby weakening the sanctions which kept ordinary men in the paths of religion. It is commonly held by pious Mohammedans that the weak point of the New Testament is the absence from it of a definite code of rules for conduct. The legislation of Jesus was not, like that of the author of the Koran, adapted to the ordinary sensuous man. And there is this to be said in favour of a more spiritual way of legislation, that it allows for progress in thought and feeling. The definite code of Mohammedans makes ethical progress among them almost impossible. The rigidity of the system of Rome has estranged from Christi- anity almost all the liberals of France and Italy. Compared with Rome, the Church of England is comprehensive and elastic; and since she suffers from the disadvantages which arise from want of definiteness and homogeneity, it is surely well that she should also reap the advantages which these bring with them. VII THE REFORMATION AND SCRIPTURE I The most serious objection to the Creeds is not that they contain certain statements which we can scarcely accept literally, nor that they represent as matters of faith theses which are really matters of history, but that their scope is so partial, and their outlook so restricted. They certainly do not conta-in, in the phrase of the Prayer Book, all things necessary to salvation. Regarded from the Roman Catho- lic point of view, they are seen to omit the doctrine of the Apostolic Succession, the doctrine of the Mass, teaching as to the authority of the Church, the tenet of Purga- tory and many others of the fundamental beliefs of that branch of the Church, Looked at from the point of view of the Reformed Churches they are at least equally defective, since the great doctrines of the atonement and 191 19S EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE of justification by faith are expressed in them in the most inadequate way. That Jesus Christ was an incarnation of God they do proclaim, but not that every Christian may in a measure become such an incarnation. The faith of which they speak is originally rather an acceptance of certain historic and doctrinal statements, than a direct relation to the Spirit of Christ in the Church. The Creeds in their literal sense are almost foreign to the spirit- ual life of the believer. They have to_ be thoroughly transformed before they can be regarded as kindred to the Imitatio Christi and the writings of the great Mystics. This fact was in a measure recognised by those who dr^w up the formularies of the English Church. They saw that there was needed, in addition to the Creeds, a statement of the beliefs of developed Christianity. These they added, in the form of Articles of Religion; The Articles have played a great part in the history of the English Church. Until recent years their acceptance was regarded as incum- bent upon clergymen and many laymen ; and before being appointed to positions of trust a common condition was that the candidate should sign the Articles. In our day, of course, this subscription is greatly relaxed.. The Anglo-Catholic reaction has naturally THE KEFORMATION ^^ND SCRIPTURE 193 tended to relegate the Articles to the back- ground, as they savour strongly of the Refor- mation. And besides this, some of them are certainly out of harmony witlx the tendencies of modern religious thought. Yet without some such declaration of religious belief as is contained in the Articles, the English Church has fio means of protecting the principles of the Reformation against insidious attempts to undermine them. As the -Creeds set forth the objective or historic grounds of the Christian religion, so the Articles set forth the subjective or psycho- logic grounds of the> Christian religion. As the theses of tjie Creeds are at bottom valuable for the defence and maintenance of the historic Church, so the theses set forth in the Articles are beyond value for the maintenance of personal and social religion. But, like the Creeds, the Articles contain a certain amount of erroneous history and doubtful psychology, and require to be reinterpreted in the light of progressive knowledge of the constitution of the world and of the nature of man. The fundamental statements of belief con- tained in Articles IX. to XII. are of the very essence of Christianity as working in England ; and though we may object to some phrases in them, we must retain their main teaching if 13 194 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE Christianity is to hold its ground in the life of the nation. They set forth a consistent scheme. A tendency to sin, they say, is a real and fundamental fact of human nature, consisting in a clashing between the natural inclinations of man and the higher law of God. Man has in himself no power to overcome this tendency ; it can only be overcome by an inward influence of the Divine Will, whereby the human will may be purified and converted to good. This inwardly working life is the life which Jesus lived on the earth, and which His followers, by the help of the Divine Spirit or Word, continue through the. ages. But unless this inward working bears in practice the fruit of a good life, it is ineffective. And another article expresses more exactly what a Christian means by a good life: "That Will of God is to be followed which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God." Here indeed are all things necessary to salvation, as is proved by the lives of. Christian men at all periods of the history of the Church. We have seen how in the Creeds the tendency is to represent as facts of history what is really a summary of Christian experi- : ence. In the Articles we have exactly the same tendency. The indwelling evil Will is THE REFORMATION AND SCRIPTURE 195 related to the fall of Adam ; the redemption by grace is declared to be the direct result of the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Here also the tendency of the modern mind is to in- terpret religious facts in the light not of dubious and unverifiable history, but in the light of spiritual experience. The Fall as a fact of history is no longer accepted by any instructed person. And with the Fall as historic fact goes necessarily its correlative, the taking away of original sin by the actual death of the Saviour on the cross. That great sacrifice may be regarded in many ways ; but it is now impossible to regard it, as did St Paul, as a doing away with the conse- quences of the transgression of Adam, since the transgression of Adam did not in fact take place. Adam as a person in the Garden of Eden is known to be mythical. Only Adam as a symbol to represent the rebellious tendency of the human will, the old Adam, remains. In the same way the death on the cross ceases to be a transaction, but becomes a victory through suffering and self-surrender of the human will when sustained and cleansed by an inpouring of the Divine Will. Cataclysmic views of the Fall and of Redemption are set aside, and in their place we accept evolutional views, according to which in every human 196 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE life thef Fall or the redemption is in actual progress. It is an instance of the confused and in- consistent views which satisfy most people in regard to religion, that many a Christian will smile when the fall of Adam is spoken of, but thinks that the instantaneous reconcilia- tion through the death of Christ is historic fact. He retains the result but sets aside the cause : he does not believe that the breach between God and man was a historic fact, but he does believe that the healing of that breach was a historic fact. The Articles of which I have spoken lead up to, and culminate in, the great doctrine of Salvation by Faith, the main tenet of St Paul and of Luther, which is in fact the backbone of the Reformed religion. No doubt this doctrine may be held, and by Protestant theo- logians often has been held, in a merely magical or cataclysmic sense. But the essence of it is really the same as the essential teaching of the Saviour Himself, when by precept and parable He reiterates that religion is an aiFair of the heart and the spirit, that ^ man is not brought into a state of salvation by mere deeds, however excellent, but by a disposition of the will in relation to the will of God. Not that which goes into a man, He maintained, THE REFORMATION AND SCRIPTURE 197 defiles a man, but that which comes out of the heart. The mere correctness of the life, the following of liturgic and ethical rules, do not make a man a member of the Divine kingdom, but an inward disposition. Life works, not from without inwards, but from within out- wards. The inwardness of Jesus has set Him on a different level from all other religious teachers. And, by sharing that inwardness, men may become members of the body of Christ, and4ieirs of eternal life. This is the fundamental proposition of Christianity; and by insistence upon it the Articles show that their compilers really understood the character of the religion of the Divine Spirit. Others of the Articles, while they go less to the root of things, show a most excellent spirit of good sense and practical moderation. The doctrine wiiich they set forth as to the Sacra- ments avoids alike magic and superstition on the one hand, and a false and exaggerated attempt at spirituality on the other. They recognise the value of the Sacraments as accompaniments and helps of the religious life, but they do not put them in the place of the religion of the heart. They speak with not unmerited scorn of those who treat them as if they had external and miraculous potency ; but they give no countenance to 198 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE those who would look upon them as indiffer- ent. The Articles also as to the organisation and discipline of the Church are full of practi- cal sense, and worthy of a people who, when they were drawn up, were about to give to the whole world lessons good for all time in the matter of political organisation, the reconcile- ment of liberty for the individual with respect for constituted authority. There are in the Articles some theses which it is not easy to preserve by the process of translating from the historic to the symbolic tense. In Article XVII., for example, the compilers take over from Calvin, though not in extreme form, that tenet of predestination which Calvin took over from St Paul and exaggerated. But the compilers had the good sense to perceive that this tenet may either help or hinder the Christian life, according to the way in which it is taken. This is very true. No doctrine perhaps has ever caused more agouy of spirit in earnest men who were struggling towards eternal life, and fancied themselves shut off from it by the barrier of an eternal decree, which ordained that they should be vessels of wrath. But, on the other hand, no doctrine has contributed more to the happiness of souls naturally doubting, who have felt their eternal bliss secured by Divine THE REFORMATION AND SCRIPTURE 199 arrangement. If we turn for a moment from religious life to the life of st^esmen and social leaders, we shall find that of such those who were most remarkable for efficiency and suc- cess have usually held some belief either in changeless decrees of fate, or in a Providence which governed and directed them almost apart from their own wills. In fact, a belief in predestination is only an extreme form of that belief in an overruling and controlling Providence which has been in all ages accepted by the good and the great. In the same way, the statement of Article XIIL, that works done before the grace of Christ are not pleasing to God, but partake of the nature of sin, at first shocks one, and stands in harsh contrast to the noble saying of St Peter in Acts: "In every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is /accep^ble to him." Yet it is only an ex- aggeration into extreme narrowness of the feeling so often expressed by men who have been to their contemporaries models of saint- liness, that of themselves and in their own strength they are incapable of doing what is pleasing to God, that every good thing, whether thought, word, or deed, is inspired by the spirit of Christ, a fruit or continuation of the Incarnation. 200 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 11 It remains to speak of the attitude taken up in the Articles in regard to Scripture, which is with constant iteration held up as the only test of truth in religion, the one foundation for all Christian belief. This atti- tude was forced upon the Reformers by the state of the religious world. Their only hope of escape from the slavery of Rome lay in setting up some authority which could hold its own even against the power of the Papacy. The Church as it then existed acknowledged the high authority, the infallibility, of Scrip- ture. And the Reformers saw clearly that many of the doctrines and practices of the Church were not merely not in accordance with Scripture, but were in direct opposition to it. Hence they fled to it as the only safe refuge ; and if they had not done so, ^oman-, ism would have conquered and destroyed them. It is easy for us, looking back on these events from the vantage-ground of centuries, to see the weakness of the position of the Reformers. We see that, if Scripture was not to be reconciled with mediaeval Cathol- icism, neither was it to be reconciled with the teachings of Luther and Calvin, We know THE REFORMATION AND SCRIPTURE 201 that Scripture, and even New Testament Scripture, is no unity, but a number of treatises written over a considerable period of time by authors who belonged to various schools, and took various views of the Christian inspiration. A document like the Koran, written by one man, and carefully preserved from alteration, might be adapted to be a court of appeal to all who accepted the religion of Mohammed. But the Gospels come at the end of a long process of forma- tion, during which oral and written traditions struggled among themselves for survival, and they embody the history of the early Church, mingled in with the words and deeds of the Saviour. And the Epistles of St Paul belong to the second school of Christianity, when the new faith had been detached from its earliest soil of Judaea, and was beginning to strike roots in the^ great and civilised cities of the pagan world. These writings cannot be regarded as a treatise embodying the Christian faith, but are a literary companion to the gradual formation of the early Christian Church. And yet, even from the most modern point of view, the value of the New Testament can scarcely be overrated. It is interesting to observe in the writings of that Modernist, 202 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE G. Tyrrell, how with time the importance of the primitive revelation of Christianity impressed itself upon him more and more. The fact is that, apart from Scripture, there is no way of setting bounds to the possible aberrations of Christian churches, nations professedly Christian, and individual believers. Greatly as the books of the New Testament do vary in teaching, they yet set before us a scheme of the higher life, a view of the spiritual realities underlying the things of time and sense, which everyone can in a measure grasp. Apart from Scripture, we should combat with less confidence as anti-Christian developments such astounding views as Papal Infallibility, or the tenets of the Mormons, or the professed inspiration of the religious quacks constantly appearing in the English-speaking countries. If we had no Scripture, could we be so certain that the highly developed and ruthless patriot- ism of the Germans, leading to every kind of horror and outrage, is in opposition to the spirit of Christianity? The Pope does not ' openly protest, nor is there a common consent of the Churches against it. But if the New Testament reveals the true spirit of God, then it stands hopelessly condemned. It may seem to readers that in the last pages there has been some confusion between THE REFORMATION AND SCRIPTURE 203 Scripture and New Testament Scripture. In speaking of the Articles, it is not easy to avoid something of this ambiguity of language. In the sixteenth century Scripture was regarded as a whole, and the distinction between the re- ligion of Israel andT the religion of Christ was not clearly perceived. The writings of prophets and psalmists were read, as they were read by the early Church, in a Christian sense ; and their relation to the actual history of the Jewish people was little regarded. In our own day the gap between the Old and the New Testaments has been largely filled up by the rediscovery of books of the Jewish Apocrypha, which lead up, much more com- pletely than the Apocrypha before recognised, to such early Christian conceptions, dominant in the Church, as the coming of the Messiah and the establishment of a Divine Kingdom. There is for us no such great gap between Old an'd New Testament as existed for the Re- formers, especially when they had rejected, or at least placed on a lower level, the Apocrypha recognised as Scripture by the Western Church. And we now realise that it is not historically justifiable to make the religion of Christ in an extreme sense a new departure This tendency has been in some modern schools of theology much overdone. The religion of Israel was 204 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE a gradual revelation to Israel. And in the books of the Old Testament there is a great deal of survival. Much primitive magic and superstition appears there in a scarcely con- cealed form. Yet the essential religion of the Prophets and the Psalms is an anticipation in many respects of primitive Christianity. And it was by a good instinct that the Church has refused to follow the course recommended by Marcion and other extreme followers of St Paul, and to reject the Old Testament from among the oracles of the Christian faith. When once we have assimilated the notion that the history of religion is a development with continual fresh inspirations, not a thing revealed once for all, and not a thing revealed in a series of cataclysms unconnected with one another, we shall have no difficulty in doing justice to the religion of Israel, as well as to the fuller revelation which followed and super- seded it. Our present difficulty in dealing with the Old Testament comes mainly from the confused and transitional state of our minds in regard to successive phases of revelation. Thus the appeal to Scripture, as set forth in the Articles, is after all an essential part of Christianity, modern as well as ancient. The dogma of the infallibility of Scripture is, of course, not maintainable ; and could it be THE REFORMATION AND SCRIPTURE 205 maintained, would land us only in a quagmire of contradictions, of primitive superstitions which have become outworn, mixed with the highest religious teaching which the world has ever known. But the appeal to what is best and essential in the Scriptures, what is gradually evolved by the Divine Spirit working through human weakness and blindness, is the pledge and guarantee of human salvation. Materialism and indolence are ever urging us to find some external authority and to lean upon it, that we may be free from inward struggle. This, as Mr Henry Drummond showed, is exactly parallel in religion to the tendency seen in many classes of animals and plants to become parasitic and depend for nourishment on the life of more energetic organisms. And Drummond has luminously shown how every kind of creature which falls back on a parasitic existence begins at once to degenerate, loses one faculty after another, and becomes a mere drag upon the wheels of life, a nuisance to be thrown off as soon as possible. So the religious parasite ceases to have any springs of activity or power of development, and falls fast and steadily to a lower plane of the life of the Spirit. But it is quite another thing intelligently to accept a standard which may restrain aberra- 206 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE tion and keep us within the bounds of wisdom and good sense. That the Bible has this power is amply proved by the history of those sects in England which have had hardly any controlling authority or external organisa- tion, yet have kept the essential principles of the Christian faith, because the members remained in contact with Scripture, and with the Spirit which works through Scripture to the moulding of the life and the shaping of conduct. On the other hand the great and highly organised Church of Rome, since it accepted Papal Infallibility as a dogma, has been drifting ever faster in the direction of opposition to the growth of knowledge and to evolutionary tendencies in society. It turns more and more from a living present to the past, III The dominant principle of the Old Testa- ment is that of a Divine Kingdom ; that the spiritual element in the ^orld is by nature superior to the merely sensuous element ; that the ruler of the spiritual world loves righteous- ness, that He calls all men to help Him in the spread of righteousness, and that if men place their wills on the side of the good it will be well with them. And this is also in essence the principle of THE REFORMATION AND SCRIPTURE 207 the New Testament and of the Christian Church.- The original preaching started with the Jewish idea of a Kingdona of God ; and the attempt to reahse such a kingdom in the visible world has ever been the life-blood of Chris- tianity. The Jews at first confined the hope of the Kingdom to their own race : early- Christianity confined it to the congregations of believers. But in the teaching of the Founder, and still rtlore in His example, there lay the principle of universality, of the relation of every individual spirit to the inspiring deity, and the possibility lying before every indi- vidual of rising by union with the Divine Will into eternal life. However debased at various times by false conceptions, the placing of an organised hierarchy between God and man, degrading notions of eternal torments for those outside the Church, materialist views of the Sacraments, and many another corruption, yet the life of the Founder has always Uved on in the Church, and fresh inspiration has in every generation come upon chosen Christian souls, as the lightning strikes those constructions which are most prominent, and best fitted to convey electricity from heaven to earth. . There is in the New Testament a primary inspiration, the revelation of a new spiritual awakening of mankind, which is one of the 208 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE greatest realities of religion. The knife of criticism may dissect the words and books in which that revelation is embodied, but there is in them a principle of life which the knife cannot reach. The New Testament belongs not only to the time of its origin. It has ever since accom- panied, and been in close relations with, the life of the Christian Church. If many of the sayings attributed to the Founder by the Evangelists were not actually so uttered by Him, yet they are an embodiment of the work- ing of the Christian inspiration in that Church which was the reflection on earth of the Divine Spirit of Christianity. During the first century the records of the life 'of the Saviour were modified by the sacred experiences of the Church, and each Evangelist, as we know, felt himself quite at liberty to modify traditional words and deeds to fit them to those experi- ences. After the first. century, when the text of the Gospels was fixed, there still remained a great liberty of interpretation, and the actual narratives of the Evangelists became, as it were, a canvas which serves as a frame to limit the hand of the embroiderer. The New Testament and the Living Church went on side by side ; and though the Church could no longer enlarge or alter the Gospels and the THE REFORMATION AND SCRIPTURE 209 Epistles, she could ever find in them fresh treasures of spiritual wisdom, and fresh im- pulses towards a higher life by dwelhng on and reinterpreting the received text. For us there is a deep distinction. When we want to learn what was the original text of the New Testament, and what are the historic facts of its origin and the primary meaning of its sayings, we must needs go to the historic critic. But when we want to use the Scriptures as basis of doctrine, or stimulus to the spiritual life, we must also consider Scripture in relation to the life of the Church. The Scripture plus the Church, rather than Scripture alone, must be the authority on which we rely. This will not be a difficult frame of mind for those who believe in the working of Divine Providence and inspiration in the world, and in a special degree in the Church, It is easy to understand that when an Apostle or an Evangelist wrote, there was working in and through him a Spirit who saw the future in the present, and adapted the writing to needs of the Church which had not yet become obvious to the community. In the evolution of living things, and especially in human evolu- tion, there is present, in the view of some of its ablest exponents, an adaptation to future needs not yet felt, a subconscious working in a 14 210 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE direction not yet explored by the actual state of existence. This perception of the future in the present, with occasional sacrifice of the present to the future, seems to be of the very essence of Divine control of mundane affairs. Thus a conscious sacrificing of an immediate good for the sake of the greater good of others in the future has often been regarded as the highest form of human goodness. And in such action man but follows the ways of Divine working in the world. Thus the appeal to Scripture, which is the basis of authority in the English Church, is still in a measure valid, though the ground of that appeal has changed. We cannot refer to Scripture as a mere theological text-book. - And we must pass beyond the mere critical point of view, which gives us warnings, but does not suffice for the construction of belief. The Universal Church is an abiding com- mentary and accompaniment of Scripture. The same principles which we have applied to the Creeds apply also to Scripture. The English Church lays it down that the Creeds are only to be accepted so far as they can be established by Scripture ; but we must regard Scripture in a broader light, as interpreted by the continued inspiration of the Church through all ages, and. not least in our own age. VIII loValty to the church 'I haVe spoken sufficiently of loyalty to truth, and I have shown that loyalty to God and the essential principles of reUgion is not at all hard ±o^ reconcile with loyalty to truth: at bottom, indeed, they are two sides of the' same loyalty. Difficulty comes in when there appears to be a coUisfion between loyalty to truth and loyalty to the Church, the religious bbdy to which we belong. Undoubtedly we have here a per- plexed and intricate subject. Modernists are usually as determined in their adherence to the English Church as they are in their love of truth. But the difficulty here, as in other cases, arises almost entirely from tjie acceptance of a static Or cataclysmic view of what the Church is, instead of a view which regards the whole Church as a living thing, gradually growing to maturity. [ If an individual stands outside the Churches 211 212 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE he will be little troubled by the need of recon- ^ciling faith and knowledge. He will find that scieace and religion move in such different planes that they need never collide. I do not, of course, mean that such individuals may not in their private experience find that a conflict arises between their religious and moral beliefs and their growing and expanding knowledge. That is a frequent and a painful experience among all Christia;hs. But the reason is that men take their beliefs ready-made from this^ or that Church, and do not strip the essential being-of religion of the accretions which the Churches have added. But if that difficult process were completed, then the conflict and the collision would come to an end. Then there would be no more battle-ground than could be found for a contest between an elephant and a whale. And so the religious bodies which regard religion as an affair of the individual are com- paratively little disturbed by the progress of science and history. The contest between knowledge and faith has little pui'chase on the Society of the Quakers or on the Salvation Army. A body like that of the Christian Students is at present little vexed by the progress of science. It is niainly when we come to the great organised and historic LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH 213 Churches of Christendom, the Roman Church, the Greek Church, the English Church, that we find real difficulties arising from the shift- ing of the intellectual horizon. For these Churches have, rightly or wrongly, accepted creeds. They have laid down certain historic facts and authoritative interpretations of those facts as necessarily to be accepted by all their officers on pain of expulsion, or at least of dis- loyalty. And when a creed is once formulated and made obligatory it is like a bastion erected on the seashore, upon which every storm hurls the waves ; while the advance or recession of the land may either leave it high and dry, or overwhelm it in the advancing waters. The Churches exist in order to make it possible for men to attain the state of salva- tion or unity with the Divine Will. This purpose they have pursued for centuries with varying success and failure. And their history, their experience of life, has gradually made for all of them a hard shell, has developed in them organisation and ritual and creeds. At most periods of the world's history this fixity has been their strength ; but in periods of rapid change and development it must needs contain elements of danger. The Churches at such times are compelled either, to restate their formulae, or tp retain and reinterpret them, or S14 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE to become fossilised. All three of these courses — and there is no fourth— are fraught with danger : but surely the former two are vastly preferable to the third, inasmuch as life is better than death, and motion than petrifaction. Broad Churchmen find it impossible to hold views implying infallibility in the visible Church ; nor can they hold the belief in apostolic succession, or consider that govern- ment by Bishops dates from the Founder. They recognise the historic fact that the Society as it existed after the death of the Saviour was in a wholly unformed condition, and that only by degrees did the episcopal system prevail. After Bishops had become usual, in the second century, they were for a time merely presiding presbyters: and the monarchian organisation of the Episcopate, first to be traced in the writings of Ignatius; was a slow growth. No particular kind of organisation is of the essence of Christianity ; and the looser it is, the more nearly will it resemble the condition of the Churches in the time of St Paul. To say this is, of course, not to condemn Episcopacy, To take such a view is a part of the cataclysmic view of religion which is fast becoming outworn. That the episcopal system LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH 215 spread rapidly and prevailed widely is a strong indication that it was suited tb the conditions of the early Church. And most students of early Church history will be ready to recognise that, a-part from the episcopal organisation, the Church would have grown more slowly and wielded less power ; in fact, one can scarcely see how it would have survived without an organisation fitted to keep order and enforce discipline. It was successful because it was necessary^, but its success was due to its efficiency, it was a matter of expediency, not of a direct Divine ordinance. Whether in our days an episcopal system is necessary to the efficiency of the Church is a matter which musCbe decided by history and experience. But what is quite clear is that from the first there was a Christian Society, bound together not by a mere agreement of beliefs, but by the power of an inwardly working spirit. Within a few days of the Crucifixion the Apostles and all believers were convinced that the Spirit of Christ was working among them, giving them inward joy and courage, and producing a marvellous result in the outer world in the convincing of thousands of unbelievers, in the power of a spiritual contagion which enemies could not gainsay or resist, in the develop- ment in the members of the Society of a 216 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOGTRINE new ethic, a new view of the world and t)ie future. And historically there has been no complete break between the times of the Apostles and our own in the inspiration of the Christian Society. In some ages and countries that inspiration has been more apparent than in others. Some branches of the Church have been atrophied, and died away or become degenerate. Even the main stem or stems have in some periods seemed to be strangely unchristian. But if the inspiration of the Church has been unequal in various times, there have come from time to time great revivals, when from the ranks of the Church ' great leaders and teachers have arisen in whom the primal inspiration has shone out with a fresh lustre, and illuminated places which had become dark. The Church has ever renewed her youth, like the eagle of fable. Could anything more completely prove the reality and objectivity of the Spirit which works in the Church than this constant re- newal of life and energy ? It may be compared, with the Power which works in the visible world in the evolution of new types of plants and animals ; or with the power of the sun in spring upon the surface of the world. And it has ever been connected with the life of the LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH 217 Founder of Christianity, the historic life in Judsea, the death on the cross, the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the infant society. It has not been confined to any branch of the visible Church, though some of the branches seem to have been more in the direct course of Divine influence than others. A religion which is a secret between God and the soul, which is purely individual and unseen, is or may be a very sacred thing. By it many have attained to a high degree of goodness and wisdom. But those who limit their religion by their personal experiences cut themselves off from the mighty flow of Christian inspiration. It is by belonging to a visible Church, attending its services, par- taking in its sacraments, that men are able to secure from the common life the help which all of us greatly need. The' Church may be regarded as a reservoir, filled with the results of the spiritual strivings and triumphs of two thousand years. In the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament, and even in the Hebrew Psalms, one may find and read for oneself inimitable statements of the high truths of religion. They are inexhaustible wells of spiritual wisdom and aspiratioUr But it is the organised Churches which draw from the wells and fill the cups of Christians. The 218 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE individual interpretation of Scripture is too personal and subjective a thing to be a. satis- factory basis for a Christian life. It is now well known that all motion is rhythmical. It does not proceed along straight lines, but takes the form of efflux and reflux, of rising and faUing. The undulations in ether, the progress of waves at sea, the growth of plants, the motions of fishes and birds and animals, all are rhythmical. And so it has been in the history of the Christian Church. It" has never been perfect or infallible ; but it has had times of progress and times of regression, times of expansion and times of retraction. Like a growing tree it has put out shoots, first in one direction and then in another, shoots of doctrine, of custom, of organisation. Some of these shoots have, withered, some have prospered, and become in their turn branches to put forth fresh twigs. Only if we look at the whole history from a distance can we gain any notion of it as a whole, or realise that it is really a growth of the original impulse of Christianity, until it becam.e, first the religion of a sect, then of a great state, then of the Western world. It has passed through many severe crises, none more severe than that which it is passing through now ; but every Christian must hope and believe that it will come forth LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH 219 from the crisis with youth renewed and power renovated. II When we are considering evolutionary views of history and ethics, and their bearing on the principle of loyalty to the Church, it is necessary to speak first of that branch of the Church which claims exclusive right to the title of Catholic. The Church which has its centre in Rome certainly is successful in in- spiring among its adherents an eager loyalty, and as it claims to be the main and direct stem of the tree which has lived and flourished for nineteen centuries, it can demand from the historic point of view careful consideration. It is natural to think that, if evolution is to be found anywhere in the Christian Society, it is here. We must give reasons for our belief that in the Roman Church in the immediate past and the present there is indeed evolution, but not evolution in the direction of perfection, or suited to modern conditions. In the last century the doctrine of the development of Christianity was set forth by J. H. Newman. It was a grand conception, and one destined, as I think, to transform Christian thought. But Newman wrote before Darwin, when the idea of evolution was yet in 220 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE swaddling clothes ; and he had no clear notion wherein evolution really consists. Evolution is a biological process, through which, by an inner force, living things gradually progress in the direction of complexity, adaptation to surroundings, and higher function. Newman regarded it, in the case of Christianity, as a logical development of the principles already inherent in it from the beginning, and merely written larger with time in the history and constitution of the Church. The recently published work called Roads to Rome, in which many recent converts to the Roman Church explain the way in which they were led to their present position, shows how the views of Newman have attracted many earnest spirits towards the Roman fold. One cannot but think that if the Roman Church , had had sufficient freshness and vitality to accept and transpose the views of Newman, so as to exhibit the history of the main stem of the Christian Church as a continuous and divinely guided evolution, Rome would have regained in Europe, and especially in England and Germany, much of the ground which she lost at the time of the Reformation. She might have claimed an apostolic succession, not merely of bishops, but of usages and ideasi and her position in face of the usual orthodox LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH 221 Protestant view, which expressly excludes the idea of evolution, might have become very- strong indeed. But the intellect of the Roman Church lacked elasticity ; she was too closely wedded to decisions and formulas of the pastil and she has chosen to consider the new de- ^parture of Newman as the mere freak of a thinker who had never been wholly Romanised. A really satisfactory spiritual view of evolution Rome could scarcely have evolved ; but she has so supreme a knowledge of, and command of, the tendencies in the field of religion of the homme sensuel moyen^ the ordinary sensuous man, that she might for a time have satisfied the masses of mankind. But she let the opportunity pass, and it is not likely to recur. More recent writers from the Roman camp, such as Loisy and Ehrhardt, have understood much better than Newman the true nature of evolution. They- have seen that its character is biological, and not logical. They have shown that the Roman Church has exhibited in the past a faculty for self-adaptation to changing surroundings ; that it has moved in a measure with the times. But what they have not been able to show is that this movement has been regularly in the direction of a nobler and higher ideal. In fact, very often the move- ment has been in the direction of conformity EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE to what is by no means on the upward line, while Rome has persecuted to the death those of her followers who had noble aspirations. Ordinary thinking often eonfilses evolution with progress. It is imagined that when an organisation changes in reference to its sur- roundings, it necessarily grows in the direction of perfection. But this is very often not the case. For example, all creatures in the animal world which become parasites of others change in reference to their surroundings, but instead of improving they rapidly degenerate, lose the power of motion and of free life, and become mere useless bloodsuckers. Instead of adding to the life of nature, they detract from it. The tame sheep, though superior in the matter of bulk and wool to the wild sheep, is at a far lower level of intelligence and activity. Whole races of men can be pointed out — for example, the Greeks of the third century B.C., or the people of Egypt in the fourth century A.D. — who have steadily deteriorated, and lost the high place ampng the nations which they once held. The advocates of the Roman Church have to prove, not only that she has changed from age to age to adapt herself to fresh circum- stances, but that she has changed in the direction of the good. The test in her case, LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH as in all other cases, must be the test of fruits. We know that some churches, as those of Syria, have fallen to a low estate from a higher. Has the Church of Rome risen higher or sunk lower? No doubt it would be unpleasant, and it would savour of self-righteousness, if I were to endeavour to point out the weaknesses in thought and action of the Roman Church. It will be sufficient if I give reasons why- Englishmen who believe in spiritual religion and are intellectually active cannot regard her as their natural harbour. On the intellectual side the Roman Church has long been on the side of obscurantism. If she does not now teach that the sun revolves round the earth, the only reason probably is that no one would believe her. For a geocentric system of astronomy would suit all her teaching, which remains geocentric, better than the scheme of Copernicus. She is constantly taking up a position in regard to science which is hopeless. Quite recently she has gravely proclaimed that the Penta- teuch is the actual work of Moses. She has ordered us back from the Kantian philosophy to that of Thomas Aquinas. She accepts as historic the miracles of the Old Testament. But clearly the best and most objective tesi ^M EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE of the Roman version of Christianity lies in a comparison of its teachings with those of the New Testament. The end of the Christian evolution in doctrine must stand in some re- lation to the beginning. If Christianity is an evolution, it will be dominated first and last by the great ideas which Christianity either originated, or at all events made living in the world. Undoubtedly pany of the Christian virtues flourish under the segis of the Roman Church. But it is rather the virtues of mediseval Europe that those which are adapted to modern con- ditions. In many countries that Church stands as a barrier against the laxity and incontin- ence which are too apt to accompany a re- vision of the principles of conduct. But it does not point out a better way for the future. The hatred and contempt which it has suc- ceeded in inspiring in France, Italy, and Spain, not only among those inclined to evil ways, but among many of the best and in fact most Christ-like, shows that she no longer stands for the highest line in conduct. But it is needless to say more, since the highest authorities in the Roman communion have repeatedly in the most formal way declared their hostility to all modern ideals, and to the search for historic truth. LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH 225 III Whatever faults or weaknesses may be found in the English Church, at least there is a large liberty of speech and action which allows to new ideals space to grow and strive. There is among us no despotic power to forbid thought, and to cut away all branches which do not grow in an authorised direction. If, like St Paul, we pay a great price for our liberty, it is worth paying a high price for. No reply is more often given to Broad Churchmen, when they advocate movement and reform, than the advice that if they are not satisfied with the English Church, they can quit its communion. Nonconformists do not readily understand why there should be a difficulty in doing this. And Broad Church- men cannot say, as a Romanist might say under the circumstances, that he cannot leave his communion, because it is the one body which has Divine sanction, and salvation out- side its pale is at least precarious. They have to fall back on reasons of expediency and wisdom. To most of them dissent, however painful, would be preferable to giving way to the dominance in the English Church of ideas and methods for which they have an extreme repugnance. 15 226 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE Nevertheless, when the question comes to be reasonably considered, Broad Churchmen can produce excellent reasons for their love of their Church, and their determination not to quit her. Their love for their Church has a parallel in their love for their country. If England became either a despotism or the prey of anarchy, many a loyal Englishman might be disposed to migrate to America or Australia. But before doing so he would probably do all he possibly could to keep public affairs in a healthy condition. Only as a last resource, when all opposition to tyranny was crushed, would he be willing to give up his birthright and depart. In fact, the English Church is an intensely national institution, deeply marked both with the excellences and the failings of the nation. Beyond all churches it is notable for modera- tion and good sense. Logical it is not ; and it oiFers but an indifferent field for religious enthusiasm. But it has held its own since the Reformation for three centuries, holding middle ground between the tyranny and obscurantism of the Roman Church, and the gradually encroaching anarchy and material- ism of the extreme Protestant sects. , Is it strange t^at, in an age when every kind of principle leads a precarious life, when LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH 227 anarchy in literature, in art, in morals is becoming more and more dominant, when no man can foresee the future of society, we should cling to the English Church, as on the whole a God-given and worthy means for the preservation of the ideals we keenly cherish ? I have tried to show elsewhere^ what are the great qualities of the English Church which endear it to us: (1) it is national; (2) it is in close contact with history ; (3) it is closely related to spiritual experience; (4) it is in essential points free. Of each of these quahties I must briefly speak. Each of them is in itself admirable, but each of them by itself is apt to drift into an unhealthy extreme; and it is the balance of one against another which gives the Church its spiritual symmetry and charm. (1) The English Church in character strongly resembles the English people, with their virtues and their shortcomings. We are a people slow-witted compared with the races of South Europe, and having_little care for logic and consistency. But there are compensating qualities — energy, persistency, kindliness. The t5^ical Englishman is one who will obey his conscience, even to his own hurt, who keeps his word, who loves truth and ensues it. We ^ Modernity and the Churches^ chaps, viii., ix. ns EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE have no cause to be ashamed when our typical heroes are set beside those of other nations ; , for while they may be less picturesque and attractive, they have a solid base of wisdom and goodness. So our Church is not notable, for the splendour of its ceremonies, the utter devotion of its missionaries, the fervour of its literature, but it keeps up a practical standard of morality and religion in all classes. It encourages men to do their duty and to trust in God. The feeling of nationality in religion may be exaggerated into an Erastianism which is unlovely, and which is fatal to the finest of our religious feelings. A Church wholly sub- ordinated to the State would become worldly and materialist. But a limited degree of State regulation keeps a Church sound and healthy, saves it from excesses and unreality, secures in it the dominance of common sense. As we recognise and appreciate the magnifir cent history of our race, such a history as has scarcely fallen to any other people, so we see that this history is at every period intertwined with the history of the English Church, which has stood for the relations of our race to God, as our statesmen and soldiers have stood for our worldly power and influence. In saying this we must not overlook the fact that the Puritan and nonconforming element has also LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH 229 been of great value in our religious history; but to that element also the National Church has been of use as a regulative and restrain- ing force, preserving it from the extremes to which in other countries it has tended. (2) As the Church has helped to main tain continuity in the national spirit, so it has strongly preserved continuity with early Christian history. At the stormy time of the Reformation, the English Church threw away less of the fruits of Christian history than any other of the Reformed Churches. She pre- served so much of the old ritual and ways of , thought that she has always remained a possible home for those who were full of the spirit of Christian Catholicism. Avoiding alike the despotism of Rome and the ignorance and superstition of the Eastern Churches, she has yet held fast to the great stream of tradi- tion, has recognised the appeal not only to Scripture but to the Fathers, and has been free to introduce into her communion the results of the religious life of all periods. She has not thrown aside the teaching of Augustine and Athanasius, nor even the wisdom of Plato and Aristotle, which was baptized into Christ by Christian philosophy. In dealing with the Catholic organisation of the Middle Ages she has not been indiscriminately hostile, but EVOLUTION IN CHRISTrAN DOCTRINE eclectic and appreciative. Some of the new tendencies in the Church run no doubf^too strongly in the direction of the medieeval organisation, and head towards obscurantism ; but as yet, at all events, this is a tendency ^ among the few and not among the many. It has caught only a minority, though an active and devoted minority, among the clergy ; but it is by no means worked into the life of any great number of the laity, nor does it tinge the national thought. As the Catholic revival of the last century has certainly brought more life and self-devotion among the clergy, we may well be grateful for it, and confidently hope that its excess may be but temporary. (3) Direct contact with the great facts of the life of religion, a sense of sin and desire' v for redemption, an earnest endeavour to be in touch with the spiritual forces of Christianity, have always been present among the more earnest spirits in the English Church. And since the time of Wesley and the evangelical ^ revival they have spread more and more widely. This is indeed in every Church the only source of life and energy. Unless the sap rises every year into a tree the tree dies. And unless the - inspiration of the Spirit flows into a Church," ' no outward organisation, no splendour of ceremonial, no intellectual correctness of creed LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH 231 can keep it alive. This is the life-blood of Christianity, common to the members on earth and to the unseen Head. The great weakness of the evangelical party is a tendency to dis- trust knowledge and intelligence, to think that if the heart is right in, the sight of God, nothing else matters. Hence the old formulae are uncritically accepted : the Evangelicals often allow their thinking to be done by religious teachers of long agOj who had not the inestimable advantage of learning by scientific reseajrch the ways of God in the world of nature and in human history. Hence they are apt to dwell in the shade-, to be afraid to spread out their beliefs in the sun. They think that the growing discredit in which miracles are held is a movement against Christianity ; they cannot bear to hear that the Scriptures partake of human weakness and fallibility. (4) In an age when new ideas are every- where ferhienting, and new views of religion coming to the front, it is obvious that it is a necessity that these developments should not be rigidly suppressed, but have a free field in which to display themselves. In a time of transition from one phase of belief to another, no organisation can be so appropriate and beneficent as an established national church EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE with fixed formulge, so long as a certain amount ofreinterpretation of those formulce is allowed. Of course if the Prayer Book is treated as a bed of Procrustes by which all the beliefs of clergy and people are to be tested and regulated, a national church may become an intolerable tyranny. But if a reasonable latitude of belief and practice is allowed, the fixed lines of an established church merely prevent excess in any direction, they preserve a reasonable amount of visible conformity, while not disallowing private opinion. The minister of a dissenting chapel, unless he be a > man of great ability and strong character, is closely limited by the views of the influential people among his flock. He must not be shocking them, or teach doctrine or morality to which they are strongly opposed. But an Anglican clergyman, though he must keep to the Liturgy, is very free in his teaching : he is responsible only, in the long run, to secular courts, which are very tolerant in their inter- pretation of Church formulse. The control of Bishops is very discreet ; and Bishops, being nominated by the Prime Minister, are nearly always men of moderation and tact. There is in the Church no attempt to control the beliefs of the laity : excommunication for erroneous belief is practically unknown. I am not in all LOYALTY TO THE CHLTICH matters a believer in liberty ; in our day liberty is very apt to degenerate into license. But in a time of interregnum, when religious beliefs are passing from one phase to another, it is far the, best to have a system in which external regularity and decency are enforced, but views are not investigated. Auguste Comte, one of the greatest of thinkers, held that in unsettled political conditions such as those of modern Europe, the best kind of government was that which merely preserved external order, and allowed ideas freely to circulate beneath the surface. The same thing is true of the moral and spiritual organisation of nations. There is, however, one kind of liberty in the Church which is a mere abuse. There are many of the clergy who, while they resent interference by the Bishops, and are deter- mined to resist any control by the Church as an organisation, are yet ready to act as tyrants in their own parishes, to alter the character of the services and the aspect of the Church so as to make them more nearly accord with their own views, even when such changes are contrary to the wishes of the people, and indeed often contrary to the whole character of the national Church. They feel so con- vinced of the consonance of their views with those of the Catholic Church that they are 234 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE determined to dodge or to disregard all opposi- tion* How they arrive at the decisions of the Catholic Church is a question which it is not easy to answer, or rather a question which each of them answers in his own way, often with a very insufficient knowledge of history and theology. A little more knowledge would often, in such cases, produce a modification of opinion. But however that be, for a ci^ergy- man to suppose that his private conscience is to regulate and determine the character of the public worship of his parish is a monstrous abuse. It is not really liberty, but a peculiarly narrow and objectionable form of tyranny. It is much to be hoped that some^ind of con- stitution of the English Church may be devised which will make such a procedure impossible. In spite of such weakness of control, th6 English Church is w^ell worthy, not nierely of preservation, but of affection and respect. It has the four great virtues of nationality, adherence to the historic, society, faithfulness to religious experience, and liberty. Lightly to giye it up or to consent to any change which would alter its essential character would be for Broad Churchmen a dereliction of duty and a desertion of the post which we are set to maintain in face of numerous enemies. LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH 235 Modernist Churchmen have thus, besides their loyalty to truth, a second loyalty to preserve, loyalty to the Church. Though they realise that the first and greatest of their duties is to conscience and the Spirit of Christ, yet they are also members of a visible organisation, a mother to whom their love and reverence are due. And the charge of dis- loyalty often brought against them is one which they cannot but feel keenly. There are good Churchmen and good Christian non-Churchmen, or free Churchmen as they would prefer to be called. The differ- ence between the Church view and the non- Church view lies in this : that Churchmen regard the life of the visible Church, the con- tinued life on earth of the Founder, as a God- guided development. Though the Church has often fallen into sin, and in many places be- come exceedingly corrupt, yet on the whole she has witnessed for Christ, and there come to her from time to time fresh revelations and new enthusiasms. The non-Churchmen com- monly regard the whole history of the Church between the Apostolic Age and the sixteenth centuipy as- one of decadence and corruption, and they try to hark back to the earliest days of Christianity, thence to derive principles of belief, and even of organisation. 236 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE Modernist Churchmen, though they wish to maintain very friendly relations with the free churches and with Protestants on the Con- tinent, are yet in some ways most funda- mentally opposed to their views, for they value historic continuity. Their view of religion is one of evolution, not of cataclysms. They do not think that the Divine light shone on earth but once and for a short time. They think that a Divine light lights every man who comes into the world, and that the energies and re- velations whiph came into history with the Founder of Christianity have been since con- tinued, though in very various degrees, in all branches of the Church of Christ. And though this light may be bestowed on individuals, it comes far more freely and generously to societies. IV The preceding section sketched a defence of the English Church from a peaceful and con- servative point of view. A few years ago it would have satisfied many ; and it may still satisfy those who dwell in quiet places, " the parson and the parson's wife, and mostly married people." But in the last three years there has been a terrific upheaval. The soul of the nation has been greatly stirred, and millions of men, dragged from a quiet and LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH S37 uneventful course, have seen all the foundations of their life shattered, all their beliefs exposed to new and terrible tests. They have been forced out of habit and convention ; their roots are dragged out of the old soil, and have as yet not found a fresh place v^^here they may penetrate and grow. Those who have mingled with the armies abroad bring us various accounts of the effect; on religion of the experiences of the battle- field. Some witnesses say that there has been a recrudescence of materialist religion and superstition among our soldiers. Some say that those who before were religious have become more so ; but that those whose religion was merely conventional have drifted away. Some say that a profound but hardly articulate feel- ing of an overruling God has been formed in many minds. . Some say that religion, save in the case of a small minority, is scarcely tp be found, while a kind of fatalism or a belief in fortune is widespread. It is clear that a battlefield is not a place for thinking out any views as to God and man, and that any belief in higher purpose in the world there gained must be the result of fieeling and not of intel- lectual conviction. It is clearly not for one who is much too old for military or active service to try to form any opinions on these EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE subjects until the mists of battle roll away and men breathe again. But it is clear that no view of Christianity can remain unchanged amid the new surround- ings, and that any view which is quite un- suited to them must perish. My belief that such views as have been set forth in this book are suited for weathering' the storm is greatly: confirmed by the appearance of a series of Christian books which are the direct fruit of the experience of war. I mean Faith or Fear^ and the writings of Donald Hankey, the " Student in Arms." The wide circulation of these books, and the eagerness with which they have been greeted, shows that they meet a felt need and are well fitted to the terrible con- ditions of the time. And they are in tendency and outlook closely parallel to the present sketch. Written from a very different point of view, and by authors whose experience of life is strongly contrasted with that of an academic teacher, these books yet confirm the argument of the present writer, though he merely restates a view of Christianity which he has consistently put forth for the last twenty years. Out of the mists of war is slowly emerging another figure which to many seems more to be dreaded than war itself, which certainly is LOYALTY" TO THE CHURCH 239 destined to have deeper and longer working in the future — the figure of social democracy. Whichever way the war goes, the future will be largely dominated in all Europe and America, and even in other continents, by the proletariate, rapidly realising its own power, very imperfectly instructed, and seeing but a little way ahead, but determined to secure for itself a very different position from that which it has held in the past. It is possible that for the world the choice may now lie between a never-ending succession of wars, bringing to an end the existing civiUsation if not the peoples of Europe, and some kind of new democratic organisation, subordinating the few to the many, and throwing the frame of society into new moulds. Matthew Arnold, with Goethe-like insight and Goethe-like insolence, has divided the English people into three classes of barbarians, philistines, and populace. The reign of the upper classes, the barbarians, is over. The reign of the philistines, the middle classes, is rapidly passing away. The populace is with rapid strides advancing to take over the govern- ment : and already there is no statesman who dares to carry out any measure displeasing to it. Such a revolution must be a terrible ordeal 240 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE for the English Church, for her hold is on the well-to-do classes, and in a less degree on the peasantry in the country. The proletariate of the great cities is precisely the element which hats least sympathy with her. She has looked on while the working people have drifted away from her. That she can ever recall them to her communion is doubtful. But what is quite certain is that her only chance of again attracting them lies in a cdrriplete change in her ways, her organisation, and her teaching. Hitherto Christianity has survived the most terrible stornis which the world has known — the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire, the Pagan Renaissance, the French Revolution and all its results. That in some form it will survive the storm now threatening, everyone who believes in the working of the spirit of Christ in the world must believe. But what will be the aspect of the English Church a century hence no prophet save a very rash one would dare to predict. The future is God's ; the present is ours. And it is incumbent on anyone who thinks he can see clearly any way in which the Church can be made stronger and more enlightened, boldly to express his views and submit them to the society. - That the highest authorities in the Church are at present well in touch with the general LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH S41 feeling of Churchmen is proved by the appropriateness of the services put forth for use in connection v^rith the war. It is proved that a common feeling and a common spirit prevail through the* Anglican body. As a bourgeois Church it is on th^ whole a success. But have these authorities the power to guide the Church towards a great revival, and a great expansion, so that it may once more become the Church of the English people? That is a question which the future must answer. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BV NEILL AND CO., LTD., KDINBURGH.