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Do not deface books by marks and writlnsf. l^orneil uinveiouy i->wici. y arV15447 The freedom of faith. 3 1924 031 220 639 olin.anx Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031220639 ON THE THRESHOLD. By T. T. MUNGER. i6mo, gilt top, |5i.oo. Talks to young people on Purpose, Friends and Companions, Manners, Thrift, Self- Reliance and Courage, Health, Reading and Intellectual Life, Amusements, and Faith. This book touches acts, habits, character, destiny ; it deals with the present and vital thought in literature, society, life ; it stimulates one with the idea that life is worth living. . . . The production of a book of this sort is not an every-day oc- currence : it is an event : it will work a revolution among young men who read it ; it has the manly ring from cover to cover. — New York Times. The spirit in which the book is written is neither narrow nor unduly critical, but sympathetic rather, and healthful and manly. The work is a plea, not for asceticism or rigidity of any kind, but for self-respect, open-mindedness, and right-liv- ing; for good faith and earnestness of life; for cheerful cour- age, honesty, and good health alike of body and mind. It is such a plea as all manly young men will listen to with interest and profit. — New York Evening Post. It is a book calculated to do a great deal of good wherever it is attentively read, as it can hardly help being by any one who dips into it at all. AVe wish especially that every young man on the threshold of life might have such a wholesome introduction to its struggles and prizes as this book furnishes. — Christian Register {^O^XQVi). There is a finished, not to say eloquent brightness in these chapters, which carries the reader on with kindling interest from page to page. ... At once wise and winning, and free from anything common. — The Independent (New York). It is sensible, earnest, candid, and discriminating, and, withal, thoroughly interesting. — The Congregationalist (Boston). *»* For sale by Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price by the Publishers, HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., BosTo.x, Mass. THE FREEDOM OF FAITH. THEODOKE T. HUNGER, AUTHOR OF " ON THE THEESHOLD." ■* Peace settles where the intellect is meek ; The faith HeaTen streDgtheus where He moulds the creed.*' WOBDSWOEIH BOSTON: HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street. 1883. liszq. Copyright, 1883, Br THEODORE T. MUN6EB. Ml rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge : Mecttotyped and Frintel by H. 0. Houghton & Co DEDICATED E. D. M. CONTENTS. — ♦—— PAGE. Peefatoet Essat : " The New Theology " 1 SERMONS. I. On Eeoeption of New Truth ,45 II. God oije Shield. I. 71 ni. God oue Eewaed. II 91 IV. Love to the Chkist as a Person 107 V. The Cheist's Pitt 129 VI. The Cheist as a Preacher 149 VII. Land Tenure 169 vni. Moral Environment 191 IX. Immortality and Science ............ 215 VI CONTENTS. PAGE Immoktautt and Nature 235 XI. Immoetalitt as taught bt the Christ 255 XII. The Christ's Treatment or Death 271 xin. The Eesurreotion from the Dead 293 XIV. The Method of Penalty 315 XV. The Judgment 337 XVI. Life a Gain 357 XVII. Things to be Awaited 377 "THE NEW THEOLOGY." "Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy Him forever." — WestmiTister Catechism. "I shall merely enumerate a few of the most common of these feel- ings that present obstacles to the pursuit or propagation of truth : Aver- sion to doubt ; desire of a supposed happy medium ; the love of system ; the dread of the character of inconsistency; the love of novelty; the dread of innovation ; undue deference to human authority ; the love of approbation, and the dread of censure; regard to seeming expediency." — Whately's Annotations on Bacon's Essay on Truth, page 10. "The principles on which I have taught : First. The establishment of positive truth, instead of the negative destruction of error. Secondly. That truth is made up of two opposite propositions, and not found in a via media between the two. Thirdly. That spiritual truth is discerned by the spirit, instead of intellectually in propositions ; and, therefore. Truth should be taught suggestively, not dogmatically. Fourthly. That belief in the Human character of Christ's Humanity must be antecedent to belief in His Divine origin. Fifthly. That Christianity, as its teach- ers should, works from the inward to the outward, and not vice versd. Sixthly. The soul of goodness in things evil." — Life of F. W. Robert- ion, Vol. ii. .p. 160. PEEFATORY ESSAY. "THE NEW THEOLOGY." The purpose of this Essay is to state, so far as is now possible, some of the main features of that phase of present thought popularly known as " The New Theology : " to indicate the lines on which it is moving, to express something of its spirit, and to give it so much of definite form that it shall no longer suffer from the charge of vagueness. I use, however, the phrase New Theology sim- ply as one of convenience, disclaiming for it any real propriety, and even denying its appropriate- ness. For the thing that it represents is not new nor yet old. It might better be described — as it has been — as a Renaissance : for the conceptions of Christian doctrine that are now floating in the minds of men, with promise of crystallizing into form, are not of recent origin ; they prevailed in the first centuries of the church, while the stream ran clear from the near fountain, and they have ap- peared all along in individual minds and schools, as the higher peaks of a mountain range catch the sunshine, while the base is enveloped in mist and shadow, — not many, and often far separate, but enough to show the trend, and to bear witness to the light. Neither is this phrase used to designate 4 THE NEW THEOLOGY. a class, nor to separate one set of men from another. The distinguishing line does not run between dif- ferent minds, but rather runs through aU minds. Every calm, reflecting person now interested in the- ology may detect in himself a line of demarkation between sympathies that cling to the old and that reach out after the new. With the noisy, thought- less shouters for the new because it seems to be new, and with the sullen, obstinate sticklers for the old because it is the old, these pages have little to do. There is, however, a large class of earnest, reflecting minds who recognize a certain develop- ment of doctrine, a transfer of emphasis, a change of temper, a widened habit of thought, a broader research, that justify the use of some term by which to designate it. This class need little teaching, save that of their own trained intelligence ; they know the age and its requirements ; they know the Scrip- tures, the spirit of their teachings and the law of their interpretation ; they know how to hold them- selves before the philosophies in whose court the main questions are decided ; they have open eyes before the growing knowledge of the world and the un- folding manifestations of God. But while this class have been quietly passing from one phase of thought to another, without shock to their minds or detri- ment to their characters, there is a far larger class who are thrown into confusion by the change it has observed in the other. Only the trained intellect passes easily through changes of thought and belief : others see in change only a loss ; they regard modifi- cation of view as abandonment; they cannot readily THE NEW THEOLOGY. 5 adjust their eyes to the increasing light. Hence there is at present a sad state of popular confusion as to religious belief. The people hear new state- ments in regard to inspiration, atonement, retribu- tion, and the war of words that follows in councils and from the press and pulpit and platform intensi- fies their confusion, — stormy assertion, passionate denial, retreats into the past on one side, and blind rushing into the jaws of a material philosophy on the other side, Calvin or Herbert Spencer, the old creed or no Bible, blind fear offset by blind au- dacity. Meanwhile, "the hungry sheep look up and are not fed ; " " the people perish for lack of knowledge ; " they know not what to believe. They cannot be fed or quieted by exhortations to believe what they have always believed, nor are they fed or content when assured that everj^-day morality is all they need to concern themselves about, or that all theology is to be reconstructed, in due time, on a basis of physical evolution. For, while there is, without doubt, a strong popular drift towards ma- terialism, there is also a counter, protesting drift that flows out of the inextinguishable spiritual in- stincts. When religion is presented to men envel- oped in a material philosophy, they scent danger, and turn from it "blindly wise," driven by an in- stinctive fear lest they be " canceled in the world of sense." But the people cannot themselves for- mulate these instincts and reduce them to their rational equivalents ; they cannot make the transi- tion from that which no longer feeds and satisfies to the fresher conceptions that can. Hence it is 6 THE NEW THEOLOGY. largely an age of arrested belief, dangerous to all, fatal to many. The blame is thickly and widely scattered about, — on pulpit and pew, on science and philosophy, on theologians and editors, on the orthodox and the heterodox ; let us each take our shave, for there is a certain deep homogeneity of the age that renders it accountable for its condition. There is, however, this sure ground of hope : that the great body of mankind will not long live with- out a faith. While what is called the New Theology is, in part, the cause of this condition, it also finds in it the reason of its being. It is not a disturber of the peace in the realm of belief, but comes forward to meet the unconscious thought and the conscious need of the people, and, if possible, do something towards quelling the anarchy of fear and doubt that now prevails. It is not a vague thing, " Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born," but a definite movement, that attempts to link the truth of the past with the truth of the present in the interest of the Christian faith. It justifies itself by the belief that it can minister to faith, and by a conviction that the total thought of an age ought to have the greatest possible unity, or, in plainer phrase, that its creed ought not to antago- nize its knowledge. In attempting to give some expression of the New Theology, I wish to state with the utmost emphasis that I do not speak for any party, but only describe things as I see them. And especially THE NEW THEOLOGY. 7 would I disclaim any ex-cathedra tone that may seem to issue from any form of words. I speak from the stand-point of the sharpest and even most isolated individuality, — for myself alone. I will first refer to certain negative features, in- dicating what it is not; and then more fully to its positive character. 1. It does not propose to do without a theology. It seeks no such transformation of method or form that it can no longer claim the name of a science. It does not resolve belief into sentiment, nor etherealize it into mysticism, nor lower it into mere altruism ; yet it does not deny an element of sentiment, it ac- knowledges an element of mysticism, and it insists on a firm basis in ethics. It is the determined foe of agnosticism, yet it recognizes a limitation of human knowledge. While it insists that theology is a sci- ence, and that therefore its parts should be coor- dinate and mutually supporting, and an induction from all the facts known to it, it realizes that it deals with eternal realities that cannot be wholly compassed, and also with the mysteries and contra- dictions of a world involved in mystery and beset by contradictory forces. If it finds itself driven into impenetrable mystery, as it inevitably must, it pre- fers to take counsel of the higher sentiments and better hopes of our nature, rather than project into it the frame-work of a formal logic, and insist on its conclusion. It does not abjure logic, but it refuses to be held by what is often deemed logic. While it believes in a harmony of doctrines, it regards with suspicion what have been known as systems of the- 8 THE NEW THEOLOGY. ology, on the ground that it rejects the methods by which they are constructed. It will not shape a doc- trine in order that it may fit another which has been shaped in the same fashion, — a merely mechanical interplay, and seeking a mechanical harmony. In- stead, it regards theology as an induction from the revelations of God — in the Bible, in history, in the nation, in the family, in the material creation, and in the whole length and breadth of human life. It will have, therefore, all the definiteness and har- mony it can find in these revelations, but it will have no more, since it regards these revelations as under a process still enacting, and not as under a finality. The modern authors whom it most con- sults must be regarded as holding a theology worthy of the name, — Erskine, Campbell, McLeod, Mau- rice, Stanley, Robertson, the Hare brothers, Bush- nell ; and if we enumerate its representatives among the living, we must recite the names of those who are eminent in every form of thought and in every work of holy charity. 2. The New Theology does not part with the his- toric faith of the church, but rather seeks to put itself in its line while recognizing a process of de- velopment. It does not propose to commit " retro- spective suicide " at every fresh stage of advance. It holds to progress by slow and cosmic growth rather than by cataclysmal leaps. It allies itself even with the older rather than the later theologies, and finds in the early Greek theology conceptions more harmonious with itself than those in the the- ology shaped by Augustine.^ 1 See the very able and suggestive article, by Prof. A. V. G- Allen, on THE NEW THEOLOGY. 9 3. It does not reject the specific doctrines of the church of the past. It holds to the Trinity, though indifferent to the use of the word, but not to a formal and psychologically impossible Trinity ; to the divine sovereignty, but it does not make it the corner-stone of its system, preferring for that place the divine righteousness, i. e., a moral rather than a dynamic basis ; to the Incarnation, not as a mere physical event, for that has entered into many religions, but as the entrance into the world through a person of a moulding and redeeming force in hu- manity, — the central and broadest fact of theology ; to the Atonement as a divine act and process of ethical and practical import — not as a mystei-y of the distant heavens and isolated from the strug- gle of the world, but a comprehensible force in the actual redemption of the world from its evil ; to the Resurrection as covering the whole essential nature of man ; to Judgment as involved in the develop- ment of a moral nature ; to the eternal awards of conduct considered as laws and principles of charac- ter, but not necessarily set in time-relations; to hu- man sinfulness under a conception of moral freedom; to Justification by faith in the sense of a faith that, by its law, induces an actual righteousness — a sim- ple, rational process realized in human experience; to Regeneration and Sanctification by the Spirit as most imperative operations based on the utmost need, and on the actual presence and power of the Spirit in the life of humanity. It does not explain "The Theological Eenaissance of the Nineteenth Century," in the Princeton iJeciew, November, 1882, and January, 1883. 10 THE NEW THEOLOGY. away from these doctrines their substance, nor min- imize them, nor aim to do else than present them as revealed in the Scriptures and as developed in history and in the life of the church and of the world. 4. It is not iconoclastic in its temper ; it is not pervaded by a spirit of denial, but is constructive — taking away nothing without supplying its place; it does not, indeed, find so much occasion to take away and replace as to uncover and bring to light. Believing that revelation is not so much from God as of God, its logical attitude is that of seeing and interpreting. 5. It is not disposed to find a field and organiza- tion outside of existing churches, conscious that it is building on that Eternal Foundation which alone has given strength to the church in every age. It claims only that liberty whereunto all are called in the church of Christ. It asserts that the real ground of membership in the church is fidelity to the faith, and that this ground is not forfeited be- cause it refuses to assent to human and formal con- ditions that the church has taken on, and which are not of the substance of the faith. Emphasizing as it does the headship of Christ in the visible as well as invisible church, it would retain its place in the church on the basis of its loyalty to Christ and as its all-sufficient warrant, paying small heed to a narrow, ecclesiastical logic that now confounds, and now distinguishes between, the bounds of the visi- ble body and the breadth and freedom of Christ's church. THE NEW THEOLOGY. 11 I pass now to the positive features of the New Theology. 1. It claims for itself a somewhat larger and broader use of the reason than has been accorded to theology. And by reason we do not mean mere speculation nor a formal logic, but that full exercise of our nar- ture which embraces the intuitions, the conscience, the susceptibilities, and the judgment, i. e., man's whole inner being. Especially it makes much of the intuitions — the universal and spontaneous ver- dicts of the soul ; and in this it deems that it allies itself with the Mind through which the Christian revelation is made. The fault of the theology now passing is that it insists on a presentation of doctrines in such a way as perpetually to challenge the reason. By a logic of its own — a logic created for its own ends, and not a logic drawn from the depth and breadth of human life — it frets and antagonizes the funda- mental action of human nature. If Christianity has any human basis it is its entire reasonableness. It must not only sit easily on the mind, but it must ally itself with it in all its normal action. If it chafes it, if it is a burden, if it antagonizes, it de- tracts from itself ; the human mind cannot be de- tracted from. Man is a knower; the reason never ceases to be less than itself without losing all right to use itself as reason. Consequently a full adjust- ment between reason and Christianity is steadily to be sought. If there is conflict, uneasiness, burden- someness, the cause is to be looked for in interpreta- 12 THE NEW THEOLOGY. tion rather than in the human reason. For, in the last analysis, revelation — so far as its acceptance is con- cerned — rests on reason, and not reason on revela- tion. The logical order is, first reason, and then revelation — the eye before sight. It is just here that a narrow and formal theology inserts its hurtful fallacy ; it says. Use your reason for ascertaining that a revelation is probable, and has been made, after which the only office of the mind is to accept the contents of the revelation without question, i. e., without other use of the reason than some small office of collating texts and drawing inferences. But this is formal and arbitrary. The mind accepts revelation because it accepts the substance of revela- tion. It does not stand outside upon some structure of logical inference that a revelation has been made, and therefore is to be accepted, but instead it enters into the material of the revelation, and plants its feet there. The reason believes the revelation be- cause in itself it is reasonable. Human nature — so far as it acts by itself — accepts Christianity because it establishes a thorough consensus with human nature ; it is agreeable in its nature to hu- man nature in its normal action. It wins its way on the man-ward side by winning the assent of the whole reasonable nature of man. The largest play must be allowed to this principle. It is thus that the light of thought enters into and guides all spir- itual processes, and discloses their reality. It is thus, and thus only, that the reason of man meets and recognizes the reason of God that is wrought into the revelation. Otherwise, belief is a mechan- THE NEW THEOLOGY. 13 ical thing, and spiritual processes become blind acts of the will. It is arbitrary and unscientific to use the reason up to a certain point, and then hood it with blinding restrictions ; to think and weigh and feel up to the point of the discovery of a reyelation, and then remand thought and feeling to the back- ground, and so reduce the whole action of the mind to an acceptance of texts. Thought and feeling are as necessary for interpretation as for acceptance, and it is as legitimate for the reason to pass judg- ment upon the contents of revelation as upon the grounds of receiving it ; they are, in fact, identical. In brief, we accept the Christian faith because of the reasonableness of its entire substance, and not because we have somehow become persuaded that a revelation has been made. It is impossible to con- ceive of it as gaining foothold in the mind and heart in any other way, nor can faith in it be other- wise secured. And the revelation will be forever appealing to the reason ; playing into it as flame mingles with flame, and dravying from it that which is kindred with itself. The inmost principle of rev- elation is that the mind of God reveals itself to the mind of man ; and the basis of this principle is that one mind is made in the image of the other, and therefore capable of similar processes of thought and feeling. Revelation is not a disclosure of things to be done, or of bare facts pertaining to eter- nity, but is rather an unveiling of the thought and feeling of God to men, in response to which they become sons of the Most High. This is the hold that it has on humanity, and this is the method of 14 THE NEW THEOLOGY. its acting. Hence, in simple phrase, it must be on friendly terms with, the human reason and heart. It is on such terms ; it is only through misinterpre- tation that it antagonizes the sober conclusions of universal reason and evokes the protest of the uni- versal human heart. If it be said that human nature is weakened and perverted by evil, and therefore cannot be relied on for just estimates of the contents of revelation, we answer that it is then equally unfit to form a judg- ment on the question of having or not having a rev- elation. If reason can determine the universal point, it can determine the particular points ; if it can cover the whole, it can cover the parts. But, what is of greater moment, to attribute inability to the reason is to pave the way to Pyrrhonism. If I cannot know in such a way as to satisfy my rea- son, I must forever doubt. Here is where Pascal fails as a defender of the faith, holding that be- cause the reason is corrupted it can be sure of noth- ing, yet asserting the duty of belief, — a very mon- strosity of inconsistency ; yet he bravely accepts it, and has, at last, but one word for the questioner : " Do as I do : go to mass and use holy water." The impotence of his conclusion is the condemna- tion of his premise. There are indeed limits to reason, and it has in it an element of faith, but so far as it goes, it goes surely and firmly ; it is not a rotten foundation, it is not a broken reed, it is not a false light. It may be so sure that it can justly protest in the face of Heaven, " Shall not the Judge of all the earth THE NEW THEOLOGY. 15 do right ? " It will be humble and docile and trust- ful, but these qualities are not abrogations of itself. It does not claim for itself the ability to measure the whole breadth and reach of truth ; it does not say, I will not believe what I cannot understand, for it knows full well that human reason is not commensurate with eternal truth. But this is quite different from silencing reason before questions that have been cast upon human nature, yet are so inter- preted as to violate every principle of human na- ture ; e. ff., it is not called to hold its belief in God as a reasonable belief, and to accept a conception of God that throws it into a chaos of moral confusion and contradiction. To trust is a great duty; but as reason has an element of faith, so faith has an ele- ment of reason, and that element requires that the fundamental verdicts of human nature shall not be set aside. The lines on which trusting reason, or reasoning trust, proceed do not run straight into impenetrable mystery, and come back from that mystery to sjay reason and well-nigh slay faith. The familiar illustration, drawn from the duty of the child to obey the parent without understand- ing why, is a partial fallacy. The highest relation between child and parent is that in which there is sympathetic obedience because the child under- stands why. "No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth : but I have called you friends ; for all things that I heard from my Father I have made known unto you." " Mine own know me, even as the Father knoweth me : " when the Revised Version thus tells 16 THE NEW THEOLOGY. US that believers know Christ even as the Father knows him, there is not much room for mystery in the revelations of the Christ. This blind acceptance of revelation as something with which the reason has little to do, in respect to which the New Theology parts company with the Old, is based on the conception that revelation is grounded on miracle, i. e., on sense, — a principle that Christ condemned over and over: "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." 2. The New Theology seeks to interpret the Scriptures in what may be called a more natural way, and in opposition to a hard, formal, unsympa- thetic, and unimaginative way. Its strongest denial and its widest divergence from the Old Theology lie here. It holds pro- foundly to inspiration, but it also holds that the Scriptures were written by living men, vrhose life entered into their writings ; it finds the color and temper of the writer's mind in his work ; it finds also the temper and habit of the age ; it penetrates the forms of Oriental speech ; it seeks to read out of the mind and conception and custom of the wri- ter instead of reading present conceptions into his words. In brief, it reads the Scriptures as litera- ture, yet with no derogation from their inspiration. It refuses to regard the writers as automatic organs of the Spirit, — " moved," indeed, but not carried outside of themselves nor separated from their own ways and conceptions. It is thus that it regards the Bible as a living book; it is warm and vital with the life of a divine humanity, and thus it THE NEW THEOLOGY. 17 speaks to humanity. But as it was written by men in other ages and of other habits of speech, it needs to be interpreted ; it is necessary to get back into the mind of the writer in order to get at the inspi- ration of his utterance ; for before there is an in- spired writing there is an inspired man, through whom only its meaning can be reached. This is a very different process from picking out texts here and there, and putting them together to form a doc- trine ; yet it is by such a process that systems of theology have been formed, and cast on society for acceptance. The New Theology does not proceed in such a way. The Old Theology reads the Scrip- tures with a lexicon, and weighs words as men weigh iron ; it sees no medium between the form of words and their first or preconceived meaning. It looks into the Bible as one looks through space, beyond the atmosphere, upon the sun, — seeing one point of glowing light, but darkness on every side ; one text of burning sense, but no atmosphere of con- text, or age, or custom, or temper of mind, or end in view. The New Theology does not tolerate the inconsistency of the Old, as it slowly gives up the theory of verbal inspiration, but retains views based on verbal inspiration. It will not remove foundations and prop up the superstructure with assertions. Again, it does not regard the Bible as a magical book ; it is not a diviner's rod ; it is not a charmed thing of intrinsic power, representing a far-off God. The New Theology remembers that the mass, the confessional, the priestly office, the intercession of saints, were the product of a theology that held to 18 THE NEW THEOLOGY. a mechanical, outside God, and that these supersti- tions sprang from the demand of the human heart for a God near at hand. It remembers that when these superstitions were cast ofE and the theology retained the Bible was put in their place, and with something of the same superstitious regard. Hence, it was not read naturally and in a free, off-hand way, as it was inspired and written, but in hard and artificial ways, and was used much as men use charms. The New Theology does not reduce to something less the inspiration of the Bible, nor does it yield to any theology in its sense of its supreme value in the redemption of the world; but it holds it as purely instrumental, and not as magical in its power or method. It is a history of the highest form in which God is manifesting himself in the world, but it is not the manifestation itself; it is not a revelation, but is a history of a revelation ; it is a chosen and indispensable means of the redemp- tion of the world, but it is not the absolute means, — that is in the Spirit. It is necessary to make this distinction in order to read it, otherwise it cannot be interpreted ; it lies outside the sphere of our rational nature,, — a charmed mystery, before which we may sit in awe, but not a voice speaking to our thinking minds. Again: the New Theology is not disposed to limit its interpretation of the Scriptures by the prin- ciple contained in the phrase " the plain meaning of the words." This is a true principle, but it may be used in a narrow and untrue way. It is one of those phrases that wins immediate assent be- THE NEW THEOLOGY. 19 cause it flatters the popular mind, like the ap- peals to " common sense," — a trick under which a Yast amount of error and slipshod belief has crept into the world. It is by an undue and exclusive use of this principle that a theology has been cre- ated intolerable to human nature. Now a theology cannot be forced on the human mind. Men may be required to believe what they do not like to be- lieve, but they cannot be forced to believe what they cannot believe, i. e., to believe against the universal voice of reason and heart and knowledge. There will first be silence, then denial and rejection, and all along inefiiciency or abnormal results. To escape from a theology so created, there must be a broader principle of interpretation than this of " the plain meaning of the words ; " or, rather, this principle must be enlarged, until it becomes some- thing quite different. There must be recognized the principle of moral evolution or development, — a principle that removes whatever difficulties some may feel as to Hebrew anthropomorphism ; it must be allowed that every writer of the Bible wrote un- der human limitations, and that it is within the province of the reason to discover the limitations and so get at the meaning, as it does with any other book, with only this difference, that when it thus reaches the meaning it is wholly trustworthy. Another principle is that the Bible, like the order of history, is a continually unfolding revelation of God ; it is a book of eternal laws and facts that are evolving their truth and reality in the process of history. Its full meaning is not yet disclosed; it is 20 THE NEW THEOLOGY. an ever-opening book. It is always leading man in the right direction, but it does not show him at once, in clear light, the whole domain of truth. It is therefore a book to be constantly and freshly in- terpreted; it may mean to-morrow more than it means to-day. This principle of " the plain mean- ing of the words " is to be used under other princi- ples and in connection with all possible knowledge. The point has recently been made by a critic of the Unitarian school that " the Bible is an ortho- dox book." With profound respect for the honesty and ability of the critic, the New Theology re- gards with indifference a criticism that encourages the Old Theology to foster theories that the critic plainly sees can lead only to its final and utter collapse, proToking the instant and necessarily ex- pected inference that "we must revise our Bible or keep our creed." The New Theology agrees neither with the critic nor with the comment; it holds principles of interpretation that bind it nei- ther to the school represented by the one nor by the other. To assert an identity between the Bible and the theology of New England as it was sixty years ago is to ignore previous ages of church history, and scores of years since; it is to ignore aU other theology, — the early Greek, the Arminian, the Mystical, and the Romish. Yet upon such a sum- mons, some are induced either to " revise the Bible or keep the creed." The New Theology will do nei- ther ; it refuses to be deceived by an " undistributed middle " of a syllogism ; it chooses instead to re- interpret the Bible, i. e., find out what it actually means, and revise the creed if it is necessary. THE NEW THEOLOGY. 21 By what rule, under what impulse, for what rea- son, shall it do the former ? The answer is brief ; When it must ; i. e., when there is such an accumu- lation of knowledge and of evidence against the ap- parent meaning that the mind cannot tolerate the inconsistency, it must search the text to see if it will not bear a meaning, or rather does not contain a meaning, — indeed, was intended to convey a meaning that we have failed to catch, — consistent with ascertained facts. It is already a familiar pro- cess, as illustrated in the treatment of the first chapters of Genesis. The Bible receives no detri- ment from being interpreted under such a principle ; how much larger, in their truth, are these chapters than they were a century ago ! This is not a cha- meleon process ; it does not reduce the Bible to a pliant mass, to be shaped anew by every restless critic; it does not deprive it of positive meaning and character. It regards it rather as a revelation of God, the full meaning of which is to be evolved in the history of the world, — a light that simply burns brighter as time goes on. It is this very characteristic that makes it a miraculous book, if we care so to name it. It is to be remembered, also, that the Bible generates the light in which it is to be interpreted, — " the master light of all our seeing ; " it were well if that light were more used ! There is no denial of the fact that doctrines now regarded as parts of orthodoxy are the reflections of the social condition in which they were formu- lated. The doctrines of divine sovereignty, of total depravity, and of the atonement are shot through 22 THE NEW THEOLOGY. with colors drawn from the corruption of Roman society, from the Roman sense of authority and the Roman forms of justice. The Bible furnished iso- lated texts for holding these conceptions, but the Bible, as a whole, did not furnish the conceptions ; had it been used to furnish conceptions of doc- trines, we would not now have what goes for ortho- doxy. But Rome passes, and the Bible endures ; the leaven of heathen society is eliminated, and the leaven of the Gospel works its slow transforma- tion in the world. It generates a sense of free- dom and humanity that renders impossible a belief in divine sovereignty, and human depravity, and legal atonement, and future retribution, as they were first formulated, and are still retained, in the Old Theology. The present universal protest against the old conception of retribution is due simply to the fact that the Gospel itself has trained the mind to such a point of tender, humane, and just feeling that it necessarily repudiates it. The defenders of the old view hurl the Bible, as though it were a missile, at doubters and deniers ; the New Theology says. Let us open it again, and read it in the light that it has kindled in our minds and in society, not despising the tenderness and human- ity which are its offspring. Whatever the Bible may be, it is not a Saturn, devouring its own chil- dren. 3. The New Theology seeks to replace an exces- sive individuality by a truer view of the solidarity of the race. It does not deny a real individuality, it does not THE NEW THEOLOGY. 23 predicate an absolute solidarity, but simply removes the emphasis from one to the other. It holds that every man must live a life of his own, build himself up into a full personality, and give an account of himself Ao God : but it also recognizes the blurred truth that man's life lies in its relations; that it is a derived and shared life ; thab it is carried on and perfected under laws of heredity and of the family and the nation; that while he is "himself alone " he is also a son, a parent, a citizen, and an insepa- rable part of the human race; that in origin and character and destiny he cannot be regarded as standing in a sharp and utter individuality. It differs from the Old Theology in a more thorough and consistent application of this distinction. That holds to an absolute solidarity in evil, relieved by a doctrine of election of individuals ; this holds to a solidarity running throughout the whole life of humanity in the world, — not an absolute solidarity, but one modified by human freedom. It is not dis- posed wholly to part company with the Old in re- spect to the "fall in Adam " (when the Scriptures, on this point, are properly interpreted), and hered- itary evil, and the like; it sees in these conceptions substantial truths, when freed from their excessive- ness and their formal and categorical shapes, but it carries this solidarity into the whole life of man. If it is a fallen world, it is also a redeemed world ; if it is a lost world, it is a saved world ; the Christ is no less to it than Adam ; the divine humanity is no smaller than the Adamic humanity ; the Spirit is as powerful and as universal as sin ; the links 24 THE NEW THEOLOGY. that bind the race to evil are correlated by links equally strong binding it to righteousness. It goes, in a certain manner, with the Old Theology in its views of corainpn evil, but it diverges from it in its conceptions of the redemptive and delivering forces by ascribing to them corresponding sweep. To re- peat : it does not admit that Christ is less to the race than Adam, that the Gospel is smaller than evil ; it does not consign mankind as a mass to a pit of common depravity, and leave it to emerge as individuals under some notion of election, or by solitary choice, each one escaping as he can and according to his " chance," but the greater part not escaping at all. It does not so read revelation and history and life, finding in them all a corporate element, "a moving altogether when it moves at all," — an interweaving of life with life that renders it impossible wholly to extricate the individual. It allies itself with the thought of the present age and the best thought of all ages, that mankind is moved by common forces, and follows common ten- dencies falling and rising together, partakei-s to- gether in all good and ill desert, verifying the phrase, " the life of humanity." It believes that the Spirit broods over the " evil world " as it brooded upon the chaos of old ; that humanity is charged with redemptive forces, wrought into the soul and into the divine institutions of the family and the nation, and whatever other relation binds man to man ; and it believes that these forces are not in vain. Still, it does not submerge the individual in the THE NEW THEOLOGY. 25 common life, nor free him from personal ill desert, nor take from him the crown of personal achieve- ment and victory. It simply strives to recognize the duality of truth, and hold it well poised. It turns our attention to the corporate life of man here in the world, — an individual life, indeed, but springing from common roots, fed by a common life, watched over by one Father, inspired by one Spirit, and growing to one end ; no man, no gener- ation, being " made perfect " by itself. Hence its ethical emphasis ; hence its recognition of the na- tion, and of the family, and of social and commer- cial life, as fields of the manifestation of God and of the operation of the Spirit ; hence its readiness to ally itself with all movements for bettering the condition of mankind, — holding that human soci- ety itself is to be redeemed, and that the world itself, in its corporate capacity, is being reconciled to God ; hence also an apparently secular tone, which is, however, but a widening of the field of the divine and spiritual. 4. This theology recognizes a new relation to nat- ural science ; but only in the respect that it ignores the long apparent antagonism between the kingdoms of faith and of natural law, — an antagonism that cannot, from the nature of things, have a basis in reality. But while it looks on the external world as a revelation of God and values the truth it may reveal ; while even it recognizes in it analogies to the spiritual world and a typical similarity of method, it does not merge itself in natural science. It is not yet ready, and it shows no signs that it 26 THE NEW THEOLOGY. ever will be ready, to gather up its beliefs, and go over, into the camp of natural science, and sit down under the manipulations of a doctrine of evolution, with its one category of matter and one invariable force. It is not ready to commit itself to a finite system, a merely phenomenal section of the uni- verse and of time, with no whence, or whither, or why, — a system that simply supplies man with a certain kind of knowledge, but solves no problem that weighs on his heart, answers no question that he much cares to ask, and throws not one glimmer of additional light on his origin, his nature, or his destiny. It accepts gratefully the knowledge it dis- closes of the material universe, its laws and its pro- cesses ; it admits that science has anticipated theol- ogy in formulating the method of creation known as evolution, that it has corrected modern theology by suggesting a closer and more vital relation be- tween God and creation, and so has helped it throw off a mechanical theory and regain its foi-gotten the- ory of the divine immanence in creation. But far- ther than this it does not propose to go, for the sim- ple reason that it is the end of its journey in that direction. The New Theology, like the old, re- fuses to merge itself in a system that is both mate- rial and finite, and therefore incapable of a moral and spiritual conception. It denies that the uni- verse can be put into one category, that matter is inclusive of the spiritual, or what is deemed spirit- ual ; it denies that the material world is tlie only field of knowledge, and that its force is the only force acting in the world. It asserts the reality of THE NEW THEOLOGY. 27 the spiritual as above the material, of force that is other than that lodged in matter, of truth realized in another way than by induction from material facts, however fine their gradation, of an eternal existence and a human self-consciousness correlated in mutual knowledge and freedom and power. It makes these assertions on scientific grounds and as inductions from phenomena, and tlierefore claims for itselE the possession of knowledge that is such in reality. It is the more careful to make these assertions that involve an infinite and eternal Will and a hu- man consciousness of God in free and eternal rela- tions to God, because it has witnessed the experi- ment of those who have attempted to preserve faith without a theosophy. " Step by step, the theolog- ical is supplanted by the scientific, the divine by the human view," — a process that finally brings " eter- nal things " within a finite system, or retains them as mere sentiments that will surely fade awaj', and so leave man at the mercy of a system of necessity under which all nobility and freedom will die out, or linger but as contradictory instincts. The New Theology accepts the phrase " a religion of humanity," but it holds that it is more than an adjustment of the facts of humanity, and more than a reduction of the forces of humanity to harmony. It accepts the theory of physical evolution as the probable method of physical creation, and as hav- ing an analogy in morals ; but it accepts it under the fact of a personal God who is revealing him- self, and of human freedom, — facts not to be ascer- 28 THE NEW THEOLOGY. tained within the limits of a material philosophy. It holds that the main relations of humanity are to God, and that these relations constitute a theology, a science of God ; for in Him we live, and move, and have our being. 5. The New Theology offers a contrast to the Old in claiming for itself a- wider study of man. It chooses for its field the actual life of men in the world in all their varying conditions, rather than as massed in a few ideal conditions. It finds its methods in the every-day processes of humanity, rather than in a formal logic. It deals with human life as do the poets and dramatists : it views human- ity by a direct light, looks straight at it, and into it, and across its whole breadth. A recognition of human nature and life, — this is a first principle with the New Theology. To illustrate : take a ser- mon of Robertson's, that on " The Principle of the Spiritual Harvest ; " see how every sentence rests squarely on human life, touching it at every point, the sermon and human experience meeting as if cast in a mould. Compare with this some of the recent utterances on everlasting punishment, — able, and wrought out with great exactitude of thought, yet touching human Kfe at not a single point; eliciting no response from consciousness or experience, from moral sense or common sense ; deftly constructed things, built outside of the world, and as if shaped by another order and for other beings than those we know ; resting on nothing but a formal logic, built out of definitions that antici- pate the conclusions, through which they antago- nize every natural operation of the human mind. THE NEW THEOLOGY. 29 The Old Theology took for itself small foothold on humanity. Theology is, indeed, the science of God, but it is not that alone ■; it is also the science of the relations between God and man, which, though not the main, is as real a factor as God. The Old Theology stands on a structure of logic out- side of humanity ; it selects a fact like the divine sovereignty or sin, and inflates it till it fills the vchole space about man, seeing in him only the sub- ject of a government against which he is a sinner; it has nothing to say of him as he plays with his babe, or freely marches in battle to sure death for his country, or transacts, in honest ways, the honest business of the world. It lifts him out of his man- ifold and real relations, out of the wide and rich complexity of actual life,»and carries him over into a mechanically constructed and ideal world, — a world made up of five propositions, like Calvinism or some other such system, — and views him only in the light of that world ; requires him to think and feel and act only in the light of that world ; teaches him that there is no other world for him to consider, and that his life and destiny are bounded by it, that there is no truth, no reality, no duty, no proper field for the play of his powers, no operation of the Spirit of God, no revelation of God, outside of this sharply-defined theological world. We have but to name the matter in this way to understand the subtle isolation that invests the clergy of this theology, men apart from the world, out of practical sympathy with it, having no place for it in their theory, thinking on different lines, 80 THE NEW THEOLOGY. and making small use of its wisdom or its material. It explains the subtle antagonism that runs through all literature. There is no poet, nor novelist, nor dramatist, no profound student of human nature, no mind with the gift of genius and insight and broad, free sympathy with humanity, no great in- terpreter of human life, but in one way or another indicates his dissent from this theology. Nowhere has it had greater sway than in Scotland. It is not denied that it develops certain sides of charac- ter into almost ideal perfection ; but why is it that nearly every great mind in Scotland, for more than a hundred years, has rejected its theology wholly or in part? Hume, Burns, Scott, Carlyle, Irving, Erskine, Campbell, McLeod, McDonald, — the defection of such minds from a faith so thoroughly inwrought into the texture of the national mind is a problem not to be explained by the vagaries of genius. It is to be explained rather by the fact that these great minds either felt or saw — some one and some the other — that the bounds of the theology were not commensurate with the bounds of human life. Hume was repelled into infidelity ; Burns satirized it, Scott turned his back on it, Car- lyle kept silence, McDonald pi-otests against it, Erskine and Campbell and McLeod sought to modify it. The present restlessness in the world of theological thought is due largely to the fact that the teachings of literature have prevailed over the teachings of the systems of theology. One covers the breadth of human life, the others travel a dull, round in a small world of their own creation ; they no longer interest men. THE NEW THEOLOGY. 31 The protest is hardly stronger in literature than in the pulpit, where it shows itself in two forms : first, in an unthinking sensationalism, that throws all theology aside and preaches from the news- paper, retaining only a few theological catch-words for a seeming foothold, while it discourses of duty and conduct with more or less wisdom, as happens, but without a philosophy or any other basis for meeting the questions that invariably rise in the mind when summoned to think on eternal truths ; again, it shows itself in quiet and persistent efforts to modify and enlarge the definitions of the Faith, to widen the field from which truth is drawn, to broaden the domain of theology till it shall em- brace the breadth of human nature and the knowl- edge of the world, — recognizing the fact that God is revealing himself in the whole life of the world, in the processes of history, in the course of nations, in all the ordained relations of life, in the play of every man's mind. It thus multiplies the relations in which man stands to God ; it brings God and man face to face, the full nature of One covering the whole nature and life of the other. It is the characteristic fault of the Old Theology that it touches human life as a sphere touches a plane, — at one point only ; as in the doctrine of divine sovereignty, the whole being of God resting on man in that one truth. The New Theology would present them rather as plane resting on plane, — the whole of God in contact with the whole of man. It thus allies itself not only with the Scriptures, and with philosophy and science and human con- 32 THE NEW THEOLOGY. sciousness, but it awakens a sense of reality, the securing of which lies at the basis of the Incarnar tion, — the divine hfe made a human life, the Son of man eating and drinking, a living way, that is, a way lived out in very fact in all the processes of human life, and so leading to eternal life. The pulpit of the New Theology, in its efforts to broaden its field, encounters the criticism that it secularizes itself. It may be its temptation and its danger, but only because it is not true to itself. It was the criticism brought against the Son of man, but the fact that He was the Son of man was its refutation. The New Theology does indeed regard with question the line often drawn between the sa- cred and the secular, — a line not to be found in Jewish or Christian Scriptures, nor in man's nature, a line that, by its distinction, ignores the very process by which the kingdoms of this world are becoming the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is one thing for the pulpit to go over into the un- redeemed world and use its spirit and methods and morality, to fail to distinguish between good and evil ; it is quite another thing to recognize in the composition and on-going of human society a divine revelation and process. Hence, it draws its theol- ogy from the Bible, indeed, but because it finds in the Bible the whole body of truth pertaining to humanity. And if there is any truth, any fact of science, any law of society, outside of the Bible, it " thinks on these things." This full and direct look at humanity induces what may be called the ethical habit of thought. THE NEW THEOLOGY, 33 The New Theology seeks to recover spiritual pro- cesses from a magical to a moral conception. It insists that these processes and facts are governed and shaped by the eternal laws of morality. It would have a moral God, a divine government truly moral, a moral atonement, and not one involving essential injustice, nor clouded with mysteries that put it outside of human use ; an atonement resting on God's heart, and calling into play the known laws and sentiments of human nature, and not one constructed out of a mechanical legality ; an atone- ment that saves men by a traceable process, and not one that is contrived to explain problems that may safely be left with God ; an atonement that secures oneness with the Christ, and not one framed to buttress some scheme of divine government con- structed out of human elements. It regards faith as a moral act, a direct acceptance and laying hold of God in trusting obedience, a simple and rational process ; and it opposes the view which regards it as simply a belief that an atonement has been made, a holy life being merely its proper adjunct. It would make faith an actual entering into and fel- lowship with the life of the Christ, and the indi- vidual's justification by faith the actual realization and consequent of this oneness. It does not differ essentially from the Old Theology in its treatment of regeneration, but it broadens the ground of it, finding its necessity not only in sin, but in the un- developed nature of man, or in the flesh. It is dis- posed also to regard it as a process, involving known laws and analogies, and to divest it of that air of 3 34 THE NEW THEOLOGY. magical mystery in which it has been held ; a plain and simple matter, by which one gets out of the lower world into the higher by the Spirit of God. It is said of this Theology that, leaning so heavily on human life in all its complexity and contradic- tion, it necessarily lacks logical precision and coher- ence, and that its parts are not mutually self-sup- porting. It accepts the criticism, and confesses that it does not first and mainly aim at these features ; it does not strive to compass itself with definitions, nor to bring the whole truth of the Faith within the bounds of a system. It does not, for example, make it a prime object to shape one doctrine in or- der that it may fit in with another, or so shape all that they shall present a harmonious structure. It is not its first object to build a system, and it does not proceed in that fashion because it does not re- gard it as a living way, that is, a real way. To illustrate : it does not make future retribution an inference from some governmental scheme, or the complement of a doctrine of decrees and election. It is thus aside from the ordinary thought of men ; nor can they ever be brought to believe that their destiny is contained in the conclusion of a formal logic. Whatever the destiny of men may be, the New Theology will not assert it in either direc- tion in order to perfect a system. Indeed, it does not greatly care for systems as they have been hith- erto constructed. It seeks rather to observe the logic of life, the premises and sequences, the syllo- gisms and conclusions, that are involved in daily existence, in the struggles and conflicts and contra- THE NEW THEOLOGY. 35 dictions of this struggling and contradictory world. It takes for its own that logic which is found in Macbeth, and Hamlet, and the Scarlet Letter, in the Prometheus and Job, in the parables of the Sheep and the Goats, and the Prodigal Son, and the Lost Sheep, — a logic not easily wrought into a system, but as systematic as human life. It aims simply at a larger logic, the logic wrought into the order of the world as it is daily evolved under the inspiration of Eternal Wisdom and Love. 6. The New Theology recognizes the necessity of a restatement of belief in Eschatology, or the doctrine of Last Things. It is not alone in this respect ; it is the position of nearly every school and organ of theological thought. The New Version compels it, the thought of the age demands it. But while there are enough who urge the necessity, whenever a champion ap- pears in the lists he receives but a cold welcome from those who summoned him. The New The- ology recognizes the necessity, but its work is not summed up in meeting this need. In the popular conception it is identified with mere criticism of existing views of everlasting punishment. No mis- take could be greater ; still, seeing the necessity in common with others, it does not withhold itself from the subject, and if its essays, though largely nega- tive and tentative, are met by contradiction and ecclesiastical censure, it does not stay its hand nor heed the clamor. " Truth hath a quiet breast." First, and broadly, the New Theology does not propound any new doctrine relative to future eter- 36 THE NEW THEOLOGY. nal salvation or eternal punishment. It is popu- larly supposed to concern itself chiefly with, the fu- ture condition of men, but it rather draws away from such a field. It is less assertive here than in any other region of theological thought. It is, how- ever, critical of the Old Theology, deeming it to be wise above what is written and out of line with the logic of the Faith ; but it does not follow it into the future existence, with denials that imply a state- ment of the contrary, nor with positive assertions of its own. And the reason is that it transfers, to a large extent, the scene of the action of the truths pertaining to the subject from the future world con- ceived as a world of time and space to a world above time and not set in dimensions of space. In briefer phrase, it does not regard the future world as identical with the eternal world. Hence, its constructions on the subject turn largely on the word " eternal," which it does not regard wholly as a time-word, but as a word of moral and spiritual significance ; it has little to do with time, but rather has to do with things that are above time ; there is no more and no other relation between time and eternity in the future world than there is in the present world. This conception of the word does not necessarily imply that eternal punishment wiU not be everlasting; only, if that belief is entertained, it does not rest on this word, but is to be based on other grounds. And the battle waged over it is due simply to the mistaken anxiety of one side lest it shall be robbed of a text. But this rendering of the word does not antagonize the doctrine it has THE NEW THEOLOGY. 87 been held to teach ; it simply separates it from the doctrine. The New Theology emphasizes this use of " eter- nal " as a word of moral and spiritual import, be- cause it puts in their right place and relation the action of all the great processes of the Faith. The Faitli is not a finite thing, but an infinite ; its truths are not conditional, but absolute ; the play of its laws is not within time, but above time ; its processes are not hedged about by temporal limits, — in time it may be, but not bounded by it ; its facts have an eternal significance, which is other than that meas- ured by "the cycles of the sun." Thus the Christ is the eternally begotten Son of God, and He is the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world. This conception carries the interpreta- tion of the Faith into the region of God, and allies it in its processes to his existence and his thought, which are above time. It proceeds on the specific belief that the Christ spoke and acted as in the eternal world. He would not otherwise have been a manifestation of God, nor would He have spoken eternal truth. It holds this logic with stern co- gency, for it sees that only thus the historic life of the Christ becomes an ever-present and ever-endur- ing reality ; only thus can it regard the Faith as free from the chance and mischance of time, as larger than the confines of Judea, as broader than the stretch of centuries, as independent of the inci- dents and accidents of a changing world. Only thus can a correlation be established between the life and words of the Christ and the action of the Spirit. 38 THE NEW THEOLOGY. They do not mean the same, the One is not a carry- ing out of the Other, the One does not take the things of the Other and show them unto us, ex- cept as there is accorded to One the same absolute and eternal method that confessedly belongs to the Other. But the New Theology does not plant its entire conception of the subject upon, one word. It seeks rather to enlighten itself by the general light of the entire revelation of God; and thus it finds itself driven to such conclusions as these : namely, that every human being will have the fullest opportu- nity for attaining to the end of his creation as a child of God ; that every human being will receive from the Spirit of God all the influence impelling to salvation that his nature can endure and retain its moral integrity ; that no human being will be given over to perish while there is a possibility of his salvation. These are the very truisms of the faith, its trend, its drift, its logic, its spirit, and its letter, when the letter is interpreted under the spir- it; and they are equally the demand of the human reason. It might also be added as a truism that if the Gospel is intended for the world it is a Gospel for the world in very fact ; if there is " a true light which lighteth every man coming into the world," it will surely lighten every man. If, in its present ac- tion, the faith is conditioned by time and proceeds under a law of development, we need not conclude that its application to the world of mankind is lim- ited to time, or is bounded by periods or stages of development; this may involve essential injustice THE NEW THEOLOGY. 39 and other equally improbable elements. And so we are told that the Old Testament worthies are lifted by their faith out of their age and stage of devel- opment, and, by waiting, are " made perfect " with those of a later age, and under " some better thing " that God had provided ; that is, the final condition of character for these ancient believers was not gained in their own age. But in what sphere did they await a perfection not to be gained except in connection with future generations ? The specific truth involves the general one, namely, that char- acter is not necessarily determined in any given stage of development. There is reason in this : man is an eternal being, and the great processes that affect his destiny take eternity for their field. It is thus that the seeming injustice and inequality that are incidental to his life under time are met by a transfer to the eternal world. The first fact pertaining to man is that he is eternal by virtue of the image in which he is created ; the second fact is that he is temporal : his destiny takes its rise in one and is greatly affected by it, but its completion and adjustment must be through the other. Only thus is he properly coordinated ; only thus can he be justljr treated. If it be said that these truisms conflict with cer- tain texts, we waive yet do not grant the point, and answer that it is on the basis of these truisms there is such a consensus between Reason and Revelation that we accept it and hail it as a Gos- pel. If it be said that this makes Reason the judge of Revelation, we dissent, and yet assert that Rev- 40 THE NEW THEOLOGY. elation is not loaded with characteristics that shut it o£E from appeals to reasonable belief. It is not denied by any that the Gospel, in its inmost spirit and in its largest expression and purpose, means salvation. As such, it invests and presides over all other truths that may be connected with it. The key-note of the Old Testament is deliverance, and the Christ is the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. It is not in accord with nature in the limited field in which we observe and feel it. The Gospel is not within the category of sensible nature ; if it were we would not need it. Nor is it in accord with a legal system ; it is the antagonist of such a system. We may find in nature, and in human law and custom, analogies to processes in the Gospel, but we do not find in them the measure and total method and scope of the Gospel. The immediate form under which the subject is now engaging attention is that of "probation," — with the question whether there is one or more. An immense advance has been made in rational thought and scriptural interpretation in regard to it ; concessions are made on every side which, if not new, are unfamiliar. Still, the feeling cannot be avoided that the process of clearing is attended by a certain hardness of treatment not properly be- longing to it, and under terms that are foreign to its meaning, and with limitations that are not justi- fied by generous thought. It is largely associated with the phrase "a chance," — a poor word in it- self, an unscientific, a chaotic word. To interpret THE NEW THEOLOGY. 41 probation as the equivalent of " a chance," and only insisting that it shall be fair, puts human life in a false relation to God, who has revealed himself as the Father of men. Probation may be involved in the idea of a family, but it is not the spirit or end of it ; it is simply incidental. The father, indeed, educates his children for future use and responsibil- ity ; but only in some indirect sense are they under probation ; they are not reared in an atmosphere of "chance," even though fair, or of an overhang- ing doom to be averted, but are children in the father's house, reared in hope and love and free- dom. We are not here in the world to be tested, but to be trained under God's lessons. Tested we are, but what father puts his household under a test? The question of probation comes to the front only when the proper elements of household life have been eclipsed. And what, then, is proba- tion ? A " chance," and one at that? Not in such terms is the history of a lost child of God's family described, but as a sheep that the shepherd seeks till he finds. This is paternal, this is God-like, and it is far removed in spirit from the conception in- volved in such a phrase as " chance," whether fair or not, whether one or many. That man is under probation is, indeed, true ; it is involved in the pos- session of a moral nature, and it is to be regarded as such rather than as a condition springing out of sin. Man is under probation, not because he is a sinner, but because he is a moral being, under- going a formative process. It should, therefore, not be treated in a harsh, doom-like way, but as a 42 THE NEW THEOLOGY. gracious feature of a gracious system. No father says to his children, " You have a chance ; it shall be fair ; I will not be hard with you ; it will last just so long ; if you do not meet the test you may go your own way." It is, indeed, possible that in a desperate exigency of family-life a father might be forced to say this, but it is not in such guise that a wise and tender parent presents himself to his chil- dren. As little is it the aspect of the Heavenly Father before men. Probation is a fact, but it is not a fact to be treated as though it were already a semi-doom. As to whether there is one probation or more, there is an immense gain to theological thought in getting the subject out of physical and temporal bounds in the region of morals. But is it not plain that when this is done the question whether there is one or more vanishes ? Probation is a continu- ous state or process till it ends by its own nature. It is one or many, as we choose to regard it, just as education may be regarded as a single or sub-di- vided process. All discussion of this sort is a mere logomachy. Probation may be divided into as many days, or hours, or distinct moral experiences as one undergoes. It is simpler and more scientific to say that man has but one probation, but, by its nature, it cannot have any bounds of time, whether of earthly life or world-age. It may, indeed, syn- chronize with the world-age, but only because that goal of time is postponed till the problem of exist- ence has been solved by every human being. But probation will not be determined by the world-age. THE NEW THEOLOGY. 43 but by its own laws. It ends when character is fixed, — if indeed we have any right to use a word so out of keeping with moral freedom, — and it is not possible to attach any other bound or limit to it. And character is fixed in evil when all the pos- sibilities of the universe are exhausted that would alter the character. The shepherd in the parable seeks the lost sheep till he finds it ; shall we add to the parable, and say, " or till he cannot find it " ? If we do so, it is in view of the fact that the will of man, made in the image of God, is a mystery deep as the mystery of God himself. Such are some of the features of this fresh move- ment in the realm of theology, for it can scarcely be called more than a movement, an advance to meet the unfolding revelation of God. It is not an or- ganization, it is little aggressive, it does not herald itself with any Lo here or Lo there, it does not crowd itself upon the thought of the age, it is not keyed to such methods. It has no word of con- tempt for those who linger in ways it has ceased to walk in ; it has no sympathy with those who have forsaken the one way. It does not destroy foun- dations, nor sap faith, nor weaken motives ; it does not reduce the proportions of evil nor dim the glory of righteousness ; it does not chill the enthusiasm of faith, nor hold it back from its mightiest effort of sacrifice. It seeks no conquest represented in outward form, but is content to add its thought to the growing thought of the world, and, if it speaks, content to speak to those who have ears to hear. It makes no haste, it seeks no revolution, but simply 44 THE NEW THEOLOGY. holds itself open and receptive under the breath- ing of the Spirit that has come, and is ever coming, into the world ; passive, yet quick to respond to the heavenly visions that do not cease to break upon the darkened eyes of humanity. ON THE RECEPTION OP NEW TRUTH. " Never forget to tcU the young people frankly that they are to expect more light and larger developments of the truth which j-ou give them. Oh, the souls which have been made skeptical by the mere clamoring of new truth to add itself to that which they have been taught to think fin- ished and final! " — Key. Phillips Bkooks, Tale Lectures. " Infidelity is the ultimate result of checking the desire for expanded knowledge." — Edwards A. Pakk, D. D. " In the Bible there is more that J?n