Huh i diy a sd p98 ‘ reba ree wii casiane BELLE E. b PANT EAL AG A i PS ARE alk aur ne ik 437) Bans a eat tl Paes ee heey uve ; haben ai ah aie) f BEN Agite te joie: hot NSB eA Ubeatrit cde Vag tana i HAP AGS Ae SOAR IRR RUDE LAND i ae yas sia he Nes tdi) ra Pele Be ti Hie Jeeves! 3 3 ty ah Of fh iu etcteael TRO eat tet 2 sae e pati Wy ha Doe ia : ye “ if ( 15 Hb aN ne es xt =: : ee : - = : ESR ae = = [aa Save eters PRESS rare SiS Pipa eres Spt dren as RE : reer Ss Se Soeee Sees: See cereeerares, Pe Se Sir Soe oes Sess : Lees oe a 2S) ae eee fe = =x Ses Sa Ses = Salad i ve 43 yh, t Pett eal pub frites ret at 4 , hadi OH) e i res Hi ad 144 e12) ergs athe edie) ; bine aid Mates Ayan aiaaise nea) ne ¢ i ai i egatinwes i Aan Lit aa i t ‘i Sate 3 £ Hes ii dear Ht Vephadsiats aytiee bate id einn! 04 ay casi aay Hp * My eats ete 3 % = =i Seo Seng ate SS : es ee =. ate ees es, Sa sate a tee Se. a Te om ee > fi vi Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/evidenceofchrist0Ostea [REL EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE BEING THE ELY LECTURES FOR 1890 BY LEWIS FRENCH STEARNS PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY IN BANGOR THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1890 CopyriGcut, 1890, By CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS TROW'S PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK TO MY WIFE WITHOUT WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT THESE LECTURES WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN UNDERTAKEN WHOSE SYMPATHY AND COUNSEL HAVE BEEN MY CONSTANT RELIANCE IN THEIR PREPARATION AND WHOSE EFFICIENT HELP HAS LIGHTENED THE LABOR OF CARRYING THEM THROUGH THE PRESS THEY NOW IN THEIR COMPLETED FORM ARE DEDICATED PREF ACH. Turse lectures were delivered to the students of Union Theological Seminary, in the Adams Chapel, during the latter part of January and the earlier part of February, 1890, as one of the courses upon the foundation established in the Seminary by Mr. Zebu- lon Stiles Ely, in the following terms: ‘‘The undersigned gives the sum of ten thousand dollars to the Union Theological Seminary of the city of New York, to found a lectureship in the same, the title of which shall be ‘The Elias P. Ely Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity.’ “ The course of lectures given on this foundation is to com- prise any topies that serve to establish the proposition that Christianity is a religion from God, or that it is the perfect and final form of religion for man. ‘¢ Among the subjects discussed may be : ‘*The Nature and Need of a Revelation ; ‘‘The Character and Influence of Christ and his Apostles ; ‘‘The Authenticity and Credibility of the Scriptures, Mira- cles, and Prophecy ; ‘¢The Diffusion and Benefits of Christianity ; and ‘¢The Philosophy of Religion in its Relation to the Chris- tian System. “Upon one or more of such subjects a course of ten public lectures shall be given, at least once in two or three years. The appointment of the lecturer is to be by the concurrent vi PREFACE. action of the directors and faculty of said Seminary and the undersigned ; and it shall ordinarily be made two years in ad- vance.” The lectures are here given as originally prepared. It was thought best in delivering them to reduce their number to eight, a course which necessitated consider- able condensation and omission. An Appendix has been added, in which will be found references and acknowledgments to the authori- ties consulted in the preparation of the work, and some illustrative matter which could not well be incor- porated into the text. The lectures are now offered to the Christian public in the earnest hope that they may contribute in some degree to the advancement of the Saviour’s kingdom. Bangor, ME., October 1, 1890. a CONTENTS. LECTURE I. PAGE THE EVIDENCES OF TO-DAY, - - + + * + © © * + = 1 LECTURE II. PHILOSOPHICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS—THEISTIC, . . + = - 34 LECTURE ITI. PHILOSOPHICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS—ANTHROPOLOGICAL, . 69 LECTURE IV. THE GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE,. . - - * + * + + 5 110 LECTURE V. Toe GROWTH OF THE EVIDENCE,. . - - + + * * + ° 154 LECTURE VI. THe VERIFICATION OF THE EVIDENCE,. . - + + * ' . 195 Vill CONTENTS. LECTURE VII. PHILOSOPHICAL OBJECTIONS, LECTURE VIII. THEOLOGICAL OBJECTIONS, LECTURE IX. RELATION TO OTHER EVIDENCES, . LECTURE X. RELATION TO OTHER EVIDENCES : CONCLUSION, . APPENDIX, . 269 . 310 . 379 ° THE EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE THE EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. LECTURE L THE EVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. My choice of a subject has been determined by sev- eral considerations. In the first place, I am desirous of presenting to you young men, whom it is my privi- lege to address, some aspects of the great field of Christian Evidences likely to be particularly prominent during the generation in which you are called to labor, and therefore calculated to be of especial value in your practical work. Then, it is my wish to leave un- touched those topics that have been already so ably and successfully treated by my predecessors in this Lectureship. Finally, looking at the subject from the scientific point of view, I am convinced that this is an opportune time for the discussion of a most important department of apologetics, which hitherto, though not entirely neglected, has received, for the most part, scant recognition. For these reasons I have selected as our theme The Evidence of Christian Experience. I pray, that in our discussion of it we may have the aid of him with whom that experience brings us into personal in- 2 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. tellectual, as well as spiritual, contact, and who has so freely promised his Spirit to all who ask him. In the present introductory lecture, I shall aim to find a background for the high topics that are to be presented, in a brief survey of the changes which have taken place in the form and method of the Christian evidences during the century upon whose last decade we are soon to enter. Of the existence of such changes every thoughtful Christian scholar isaware. The theological sciences are no exception to the law of development which governs all the provinces of scientific investigation. The truth of the Christian revelation abides the same, though even this was given to mankind by a gradual process extending over many ages. But the church of Christ, notwithstanding the constant aid of the Holy Spirit, enters only by degrees into the possession of the truth given it in the redemptive revelation. The kingdom of God comes but slowly in the intellectual sphere, as well as in the moral and spiritual. The Christian world grows wiser in divine things, as it grows better, not all at once but little by little. Hence we must regard divinity as a progressive science. And hence we shall expect to find that science which has for its object the proof and defence of the truths set forth by divinity in systematic form, in like manner progressive. As the ages advance and the unending battle against unbelief and error, in which the militant church is ever engaged, goes forward, we learn to see more clearly through the smoke and confusion of the fight the in- vincible fortress of our faith and the methods by which the foe is to be dislodged from its approaches. At the beginning of the present century comparative THE EVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. 3 peace reigned in the Anglo-Saxon section of Protestant Christendom. The old deism, which made its appear- ance during the latter part of the seventeenth century, and flourished during the first half of the eighteenth, had received its death-blow. On the practical side it had been overcome by the great religious revival that began in the work of the Wesleys and Whitefield, and swept in a life-giving stream over Great Britain and America, giving rise to the great Methodist denomina- tion and to the Evangelical party in the Church of Eng- land, and bringing new spiritual power to the other bodies of orthodox Christians. On the intellectual side deism had been vanquished with its own weapons by a long series of eminent Christian scholars, among whom we naturally think first of Bishop Butler, the author of the famous Analogy, and Archdeacon Paley, the author of the no less famous Lvidences. Let us look at deism, for the purpose of better un- derstanding its attack upon Christianity, and then at the system of defence by which a foe so vigorous and formidable was at last completely routed and driven from the field. Deism had its origin in the decline of the religious life that followed the English Civil War and culminat- ed in the period subsequent to the Revolution. It was the manifestation in the religious sphere of the great revolt against authority which characterized the seven- teenth an eighteenth centuries and had its roots in the Renaissance ana the Reformation. The aim of deism was to bring religion into complete agreement with rea- son. By reason it meant, not the reason of the Christian, not the reason of the scholar or philosopher, but the rea- son of the common man. This was set up as the arbi- 4 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. ter in the sphere of religious truth. Whatever dogmas or assumed facts were repugnant to it must be dis- carded. The deists believed with undoubting assur- ance that the reason can furnish out of its own re- sources the great fundamental truths of religion. They claimed that the existence of one supreme personal Deity is clearly recognizable in the constitution of nat- ure and of the human soul. The tendency of deism, however, was to separate God altogether from the world, and to confine his efficiency to the creation of the universe and the establishment of its laws. Though personal, he was not so much a living God as a Pri- mum Movens, postulated by the reason to explain the origin of things. Great stress was laid upon man’s obli- gation to serve God as his will is revealed in the law of conscience. The doctrines of immortality and of a fut- ure state of rewards and punishments were also taught. Miracles were discarded as violations of the order of nature, and hence unworthy of God. The later deists availed themselves of Hume’s argument against mira- cles, derived from the fallibility of human testimony and its worthlessness when opposed to the universal ex- perience of men respecting the uniformity of natural law, though Hume’s sceptical philosophy was destruc- tive of all that was positive in their own beliefs. Su- pernatural revelation, like miracles, was denied. Basing themselves firmly upon the platform of natural religion, the deists rejected all those teachings of the Christian scriptures which go beyond it. The Bible was regard- ed as valuable only in so far as it is a ‘republication of the religion of nature.” The doctrines of the Trinity, of Christ’s divinely human person, of the atonement, of the new birth, and all the other distinctively Christian THE HVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. 5) truths, were rejected as irrational mysteries, If any especial significance was attached to the Saviour’s teach- ings, it was on the ground that he was a restorer of the true doctrine of natural religion. It is not needful for our purpose to give any but the most general statement of the tenets of deism. The movement was a singular mixture of strength and weakness. Its strength lay in the great truths which it maintained. We may be sure that no religious or philosophical system which has for any long period dominated the minds of considerable numbers of men can be wholly false. There is always some element of truth in it, and it is for this reason that men accept it. The religious truth asserted by deism is of the highest importance. God, duty, and immortality are the invincible pillars upon which the whole super- structure of religion rests. Moreover, deism was but the logical consequence of the rationalistic tendency of the prevalent orthodoxy, which was quite as earnest as the heterodoxy of the time in the demand that reason should be made the test and standard of truth. But deism had also its elements of weakness, which were certain in the end to open the way for its over- throw. It held a half-way and defenceless position between Christian theism and the vigorous philosophi- cal systems of scepticism, pantheism, and materialism. It was in constant danger of being caught in the open field with no place of refuge at hand. It is in- consistent to admit the existence of a personal God, the Author of nature and its laws, and yet to deny the possibility of miracles and special revelation. It argues an imperfect use of the reason to find fanlt with Christianity because of its mysteries and difficulties, 6 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. when mysteries and difficulties equally great exist in nature, which, according to the distinct admission of the ‘deist, is of divine constitution. If there be a personal God, and if there be a system of facts and truths purporting to be a revelation from him, accred- ited by miracles and other infallible evidences of di- vine origin, the question as to the reality of the rev- elation becomes a purely historical one. Consistency requires that deism should accept these conclusions, or else abandon its doctrine of a God altogether and go over into one of the non-theistic camps.’ The evidences of Christianity which brought about the downfall of deism, and which at the beginning of the present century had been wrought into a well-de- fined system, find typical expression in the famous works of Butler’ and Paley * already referred to. The former deals most fully with the philosophical ques- tions involved. It isan argument ex concesso. It does not enter into the general question as to the possibility of miracles and revelation or their antecedent proba- bility. Still less does it follow the orthodoxy of the earlier stages in the deistical controversy in the attempt to prove the truth of the Christian doctrines by showing their conformity with the tests and standards of reason. Its task is the more modest one of showing that, grant- ing the existence of a personal God (as the deist was quite willing to do), the presumption of nature is fa- vorable to the truth of Christianity and the validity of its evidences. The deist has no right to raise objec- tions against revelation which bear equally against the constitution and course of nature. He has no right to object to a line of argumentation, in proof of revelation, which he accepts with regard to all the common affairs SS - — THE EVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. zé of life. Itis not claimed that the evidences of Chris- tianity give absolute proof, but only that they afford such reasonable probability as lays every candid and right-minded man under obligation to act upon the as- sumption that the facts and doctrines with which they are concerned are true. The objections being thus removed, the way is opened for the positive evidence, which is presented in its typ- ical form by Paley. This is pre-eminently the proof from miracles, though the arguments derived from the fulfilment of prophecy, and from other facts confirma- tory to the truth of Christianity, find a place alongside of it. The chief stress is laid upon the historical evi- dence that the miracles actually occurred. This rests upon the testimony of the original witnesses contained in the Christian scriptures, the authenticity of which is proved by the commonly accepted methods of literary evidence. The credibility of the witnesses is shown by the fact, substantiated not only by the statements of the scriptures but also by contemporary history, that they “ passed their lives in labors, dangers, and suffer- ings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the ac- counts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of those accounts.” * Tere is historical evidence which carries with it such a high degree of probability as must satisfy every reasonable mind. But if the miracles actually occurred, the Christian system must be a revelation from God and is to be accepted upon divine authority. What are the contents of this revelation, is a matter of interpretation, about which Christians may differ. But whatever is clearly recog- nized as taught in the scriptures, whether fact or doc- trine, is to be implicitly received. 8 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. Here, then, is a definite system of evidence, admira- bly adapted for its purpose. There can be no question that it was successful. The deistical assaults upon re- vealed religion were driven back by the deist’s own methods. Reason was met by reason. The fight was upon ground of the unbeliever’s own choice, and his de- feat was utter. AJ] was done with consummate skill. The candid seeker after truth clearly perceives the balance turning to the Christian side. The world has never seen finer reasoning of its kind, more con- vincing, better sustained, characterized by more of the clearness and simplicity of superior truth, than that of Butler and Paley. The works of these two great writers became the text-books in English and American institutions of learn- ing. An extensive evidential literature now made its appearance, following the lines just indicated with more or less conformity in detail. This type of apologetics maintained itself till long past the middle of the pres- ent century. Most of the educated men now in middle life received their training in the evidences from text- books which are merely a reworking of Butler’s and Paley’s materials, if not from the treatises of those authors themselves. Even now the influence of this system is widely felt. | Meantime, however, changes have taken place in the philosophical and theological worlds which have quite revolutionized the problem of apologetics. The assault upon Christianity has changed its charac- ter. Deism yielded to other forms of unbelief. Dis. lodged in England, it passed over to the Continent,where, in the guise of ‘materialism and atheism, it led a wild and stormy life in France, and then found welcome and THH HVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. 9 house-room in Germany, sobering itself there to the staid and respectable ways of rationalism. But it car- ried its death-warrant with it. It was doomed to perish of its own inherent weakness. The great movement of philosophical thought which began with Kant and cul- minated in Hegel found the so-called “ vulgar ration- alism ” in such a state of decadence that stalwart blows were scarcely needed for its overthrow. The new pantheism, in the vigor of its youth and the enthusiasm of its hopes, made easy work with the old deism, and then turned—at first with friendly words and offers of alliance—to settle its account with Christianity. The Christian faith has probably never encountered a more dangerous adversary than this German panthe- ism. The insidiousness of its approach and the cunning of its attack gave it a tremendous advantage. Deism, in the days of its vigor, was a straightforward, honest, enemy, dealing hard blows and ready to receive them. Pantheism came with a Judas-kiss and a ‘ Hail, Mas- ter!” Its evil intent was hidden under pious phraseo- logy. As one listens to its teachings, one is tempted to say with Margaret in Goethe’s Laust: ‘Das ist alles recht schén und gut ; Ungefiihr sagt das der Pfarrer auch, Nur mit ein bischen andern Worten.” ° It had also its element of truth, which gave plausibil- ity to its claims, especially when set in opposition to the deistical rationalism. The immanence of God in the world and the human soul, which deism repudiated, it emphasized. Where deism denied miracles and revelation, pantheism made every common phenome- non of nature a miracle, and all history a continuous 10 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. revelation of God. It found an intelligible, though unorthodox, meaning for the Christian mysteries of the Trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, and the new birth. If it denied the personality of God and the conscious immortality of the soul, it did so in language not readily understood in its true meaning by the Masses. The pantheistic philosophy did not discard Chris- tianity, but it attempted to give it at every point a naturalistic explanation. This it did with a wealth of resource, a depth of insight, a sympathetic appreciation, a skill of delineation, which deserve the highest ad- miration. As has already been intimated, it repre- sented the whole history of mankind as a continuous revelation of God. The ethnic religions exhibit the lower stages in the process, giving under imperfect forms of symbolical representation the eternal truths of man’s spiritual relations. Christianity is the highest stage, the “absolute religion,” which gathers up into itself all the scattered fragments of truth in the other systems. Still, Christianity itself gives the truth in the form of symbols, and it is the part of philosophy to dis- engage the substance from the form and reveal the eter- nal idea which underlies the figurate representation. The strength of the pantheistic attack lay in its re- markable power of historical criticism. From what has just been said we can readily sée that it furnished a new and most effective historical method. Deism had at- tempted to explain historical Christianity in accordance with its philosophical principles, but it had gone little beyond the blunt denial of the supernatural element in the scriptures, and had not hesitated, when pressed to account for the presence of this element, to charge the THH EVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. id Bible writers with forgery and fraud. Its procedure was poor and awkward compared with that of panthe- ism. The latter, while equally strong in its denial of the supernatural and miraculous in the Bible, under- took to show that they are the result of a perfectly natural development, according to which the idea con- stantly tends to clothe itself in figurate and symbolical representations, and these to attach themselves to his- torical facts. In this way men unconsciously idealize history, covering it with a growth of poetical or legen- dary additions. Or, with more definite intent, they manipulate the history to make it the vehicle of some doctrine, itself a symbolical representation of the domi- nant idea, under the influence of which they are all the time unconsciously acting. It is the part of the historical critic to reverse the process, to separate the ideas from the symbols, and both from the facts, and to reconstruct the history in its true and original form. The publication of Strauss’s Leben Jesu,’ and of the writings of Baur’ and the Tiibingen school, marks the beginning of the overt attack upon Christianity. The former struck at the very citadel of Christian truth by its attempt to give a naturalistic explanation of the gospel story of Christ’s person and life through the theory of myths that grew up spontaneously in the generation after the Saviour’s death. The latter, with a much greater outlay of learning and profundity of thought, sought to account for the New-Testament books by the assumption that they were Zendenz- Schriften, writings with a theological purpose, designed to represent one or the other side of an alleged struggle for ascendency between the parties of Peter and Paul, or to bring about a reconciliation between them—ascribing 12 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. the larger number of these books, including the four Gospels, to the second century after the Christian era. In both cases the person of Christ, though recognized as historical, is represented as seen through a haze of later opinions, so that all that is divine in his essential nature, and miraculous in his life and works, is to be explained as the addition of a subsequent age. Jesus was a good man and true, divine as all men are divine, through the immanence of the universal Spirit, a man who perhaps more than others realized the divine idea in his life and expressed it in his teachings; but the Christ of the church doctrine had no historical exist- ence. The reign in Germany of the pantheistic philosophy, and of the theological schools to which it gave rise, was short. The great systems that attained such domin- ant influence during the first four decades of the present century fell in quick succession. Hegel’s philosophy, which for a time seemed likely to justify its own boast of having attained absolute and final truth, had lost its hold before the century was half over. There was but a short passage to the naturalism of Feuerbach and the materialism of Biichner and Vogt. Strauss ran quickly through all the stages in the downward prog- ress of pantheism, and died, to all intent and purposes, an atheist. The same powerful opponent of historical Christianity, in his second Life of Christ, went over to the position of the Tiibingen school, greatly modifying, if not throwing overboard, his hypothesis of myths. The Tiibingen school itself long ago lost its hold upon the best thought of Germany, even in unbelieving circles. To-day the men of influence in Germany who teach the old pantheism can be counted upon the fingers THE HVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. 13 of a single hand. Nevertheless, it would be untrue to say that pantheism has ceased to be dangerous to Christianity. As its first blows were dealt in the dark, its covert attacks have had power long after its public reputation has waned. The method it originated has become a formidable instrument in the hands of un- believers. It has continued to live in the cultivated thought of our age. Its historical criticism survives, now that the use made of it by Strauss and Baur has fallen into desuetude. The influence persists in litera- ture. It has passed over from the Continent to Eng- land and America. We can scarcely take up a news- paper or a book without meeting traces of it. The tendency has been popularized by the writings of Carlyle in England and Emerson in our own country. The pantheistic assault is not yet defeated. It is still powerful, and, if the signs of the times are to be trust- ed, it is likely to be pushed at no very distant period with renewed strength. But the pantheistic attack upon Christianity is not the only one which this century has witnessed. An- other, in some respects quite as formidable, influence is to be taken into account in our consideration of the changes which have brought about the present state of apologetics. I refer to the great‘scientific movement, which had been growing in importance from the be- ginning of the century, but attained its full power through the impetus received from the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, and the consequent general acceptance by scientific men of the theory of organic evolution. It is indeed true that there is no necessary conflict between any scientific discoveries and the doctrines of religion and Christianity, and that r 14. HVIDENOCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. the most instructed and candid scientific men have from the beginning recognized the fact. The first ef- fect, however, of the wonderful advances made in the physical sciences was to produce the impression that the foundations not only of revealed religion, but also of theism itself, were undermined. Unquestionably very many of the most prominent men of science be- lieve this to be the case, while popular unbelief was convinced that it had become possessed of new and in- vincible weapons. ‘To those who can look back over the whole of the last twenty-five or thirty years, the survey is one full of interest. The eager and trium- phant dogmatism of the men who thought they had now accomplished the downfall of Christianity, and the trembling and confused defence of those who ought to have been its unshaken and confident champions, were significant features of the time. The wonder is that Christianity passed through the shock with so little detriment. I spoke of the dogmatism of the scientific opponents of Christianity, but it would be wrong to leave the im- pression that I consider it all dogmatism. The scienti- fic assault has been very different from the pantheistic. The latter was bitter, arrogant, unscrupulous ; the for- mer has been characterized for the most part by a hum- bler and more earnest spirit. The genuine man of science is, first of all, a seeker of truth. He has not so much a point to make as a world to discover. On the whole, the scientific attack on Christianity has been honest and open. In fact, in many cases it has been not so much an attack as a desertion. The new dis- coveries seemed to make a God needless, and so to dis- pense with the first condition of revealed religion. THE EVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. 15 Darwin himself, as we learned from his Alemozrs, was at first friendly to the Christian system; but as his wonderful theory more and more took possession of his thought, his belief in God became evanescent and his religious faculty atrophied.” The devotees of physical science become so intent upon the one sphere of reality with which their investigations are concerned, that they first ignore, then forget, the exist- ence of the spiritual sphere, whence the distance is short to the denial of it altogether. Men thus become men- tally and spiritually myopic with respect to the highest range of truth and it disappears from their vision. Many of the scientific men whose utterances have done most to shake the confidence of the masses in Chris- tianity, have not been unkindly disposed toward relig- ion; rather they would have retained it, had they be- lieved they could honestly do so. But the very fact that there has been so much of earnestness in the scientific unbelief of our time, has given power to the assault upon Christianity. It has misled the masses and confused them as to the merits of the controversy. Moreover, the unwisdom which in many instances has marred the defence of Chris- tians, has produced an unfavorable impression. I doubt whether we who have lived in the noise and dust of the fight, realize how tremendous at times has been the onslaught of our adversaries. Thus far I have spoken only of the scientific opposi- tion. But, as is always the case, such an opposition formulates a philosophy for itself. One would natur- ally look for materialism as the philosophical accom- paniment of such a movement of scientific unbelief, and doubtless the thought of our times has had a de- 16 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. cidedly materialstic tendency. It is not materialism, however, but agnosticism which has been the prevalent \ philosophy among our unbelieving men of science. It is curious that those features of Kant’s idealism, which Dean Mansel,’ following in the footsteps of Sir William TIamilton,” wrought over into a system having for its avowed purpose the defence of revealed religion and theism, should have been turned against the very foun- dations of religion itself. But such is the fact. We cannot but admire the shrewdness and ingenuity with which Herbert Spencer” performed his task of fur- nishing scientific unbelief with a philosophical basis. He was shrewd enongh to perceive that thinking men will not permanently rest satisfied with the materialis- tic explanation of things, but must have some kind of a metaphysics; he was ingenious enough to borrow his system from orthodoxy, to put it into such a shape as to satisfy the demand for a metaphysics, and so to bound the field of thought as practically to give full sway to a scientific method which takes no account of things higher than matter, force, and motion. Spencer’s system, however, great as has been the influence which it has exerted, has been from the first inconsistent with itself. It combines incongruous ele- ments, and its advocates are in a state of unstable equilibrium, doomed sooner or later to gravitate toward materialism or to rise into some form of theism. Ney- ertheless, for the time being, agnosticism has proved a powerful auxiliary to unbelieving science in the con- flict with religion and Christianity. It has long pre- vented the reaction, which would have come much sooner if the scientific opposition had taken the form of bare materialism. It has been merged in many THE EVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. 1 i instances with the pantheistic influence, to which it stands in close relation. The scientific assault has been directed chiefly against the theistic foundations of Christianity. But Chris- tianity itself has been directly involved in the strug- gle. Christianity has stood for theism. It has not been arrayed against deism, as in the earlier conflicts, nor has it entered into an alliance with deism to defend the common theistic truth. Rather it has stood as the great type and exemplar of theistic religion. The idea of a natural religion, standing midway between Chris- tianity and unbelief, has ceased to satisfy men’s minds. The issue is, Christianity or a non-theistic explanation of the universe. In practical matters, touching human morals and spiritual needs, the issue is, Christianity or secularism. It is easy to see that the enormous changes which have taken place in the nature and method of the as- sault upon Christianity have rendered the old evidences insufficient, and, for present purposes, to a great extent worthless. They were directed against deism, not against pantheism and agnosticism. The apologetics of the school of Butler and Paley served its day and generation, but it fails, except in a very limited sense, to serve ours. Deism, it is true, continues to exist asa tendency of popular thought, especially among unedu- cated people. Butits practical influence to-day is very small, Few are so ignorant as not to know something of the later theories of unbelief and methods of at- tack upon Christianity. It is no longer possible to ac- credit the Christian revelation in bulk by the miracles, and to prove the miracles by a mere “trial of the wit- nesses.” Apologetics is confronted by a much more s 18 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. serious and difficult situation. The proof of the au- thenticity and credibility of the scriptural books has become a complicated, delicate, and arduous task, test- ing all the resources of literary criticism. The centre of the historical evidence is shifted from the miracles to the person of Christ. The contents of the Christian revelation, instead of being the thing to be proved, have become an element in the proof. The ethnic re- ligions can no longer be passed by with contempt, but their relation to Christianity and the distinguishing fea- tures of the latter as the religion of redemption throngh Christ must be made clear. It does not meet the de- mand of the time to prove the truth of Christianity as amere system of doctrine; what men need most to know is that it is the living, present, perennial power of God, by which he is redeeming the sinful world. The result has been that a new system of evidences has sprung up, supplanting the old, which did such good service in its day, and adapted to the needs of our own age. This system differs from its predecessor not only in the fact that it is directed against modern forms of unbelief, but also in being more scientific and com- prehensive. The theological thought of our times has come to realize that a distinction is to be made between apologies of Christianity, which consist in a mar- shalling of the proofs demanded by particular attacks, and have therefore only a temporary value ; and apolo- getics as ascience, which has for its object the complete exhibition of the proof of Christianity, as well as of its principles and methods, and thus its defence against all attacks, from whatsoever quarter they may come. The old evidences, in spite of all the learning and skill ex- pended upon them, were apologies and not scientific THE EVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. 19 systems of apologetics. From the nature of the case they could not possess a permanent value. It was in- evitable that they should fall into disuse as the assault changed its form, with the unfortunate result of throw- ing suspicion upon the worth of all defences of the Christian faith. What is needed is a positive system of proofs adapted to all times and circumstances, by which we may not only meet attacks but forestall them, and carry the warfare into the enemy’s country. Such a system our modern evangelical theology is en- deavoring, with a good degree of success, to furnish. I now ask your attention to a consideration of its more important details. In the first place, the starting-point of contemporane- ous apologetics is furnished by the truer, because more comprehensive and spiritual, conception which prevails of the nature of Christianity. The old evidences were based upon a narrow and inadequate notion of the fact they had to prove. There is often a deeper connection between the orthodox theology and the unbelief of an age than a superficial view would suggest. Not infre- - quently the defects which are exaggerated in the latter exist in a different form in the former, furnishing at least a partial justification for the heterodox protest. Deism did not have the monopoly of rationalism. There was a strong rationalistic element in the orthodoxy which it attacked. Christianity, according to the prey- alent conception of the old theology, is a system of ob- jective truth, a body of doctrines to be apprehended and accepted by the intellect. It is a doctrinal revela- tion, that is, a divinely communicated, and otherwise inaccessible, system of truth. The inadequacy of the conception was aggravated by the identification of rev- 90 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. elation with the Bible, the truth recorded with the ree- ord which preserves it. But our best modern theological thought has reached a more accurate understanding of Christianity. It does indeed include a doctrinal element, but it includes far more than that. Christianity is the whole redemp- tive activity of God in Christ. It is God in Christ rec- onciling the world unto himself. When, however, we come to scrutinize it more carefully, we discover that its unity is twofold. It may be considered from two quite different points of view—namely, as the redemptive revelation, made to mankind in the past, and complet- ed in the work of Christ and his apostles, and as the actual system of redemptive forces and agencies ever since in operation. Let us examine each. By the revelation we mean God’s self-communica- tion and self-manifestation to men that he might re- deem them from sin. This also subdivides itself, upon closer scrutiny, and we distinguish in it two elements, the facts and the doctrines of redemption, the saving grace and truth. Let us look first at the facts. We call Christianity a historical revelation, and most truly. It is based upon a series of outward events. In the progress of the revelation God interposed in human history in ex- traordinary ways, produced changes not to be account- ed for by the present order of nature, and introduced new forces into the sphere of human life. tevelation may be regarded as a supernatural evolution, by which a new system of spiritual agencies was brought into the world for the redemption of sinful men. It is thus largely concerned with historical facts, differing indeed - = THH EVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. 21 from other facts through the supernatural element everywhere present in them, but incorporated, along with natural events, in the ordinary history of the race. These facts find their presupposition and explanation in the creation of the world and of man, and in the fall of the latter. No sooner did sin begin to work than God’s redemptive grace also began to work and to manifest itself in outward events and changes, that is, historically. The foundations were laid in the dealings of God with the Patriarchs. The separation and education of the Chosen People further advanced the work. The sacrificial system, the theocratic king- ship, and especially the prophetical office, were potent agencies in God’s hands for carrying on the process of redemption and preparing the way for the great Prophet, Priest, and King, who was to come. The whole history of Israel is a disclosure of redemptive grace. Then came Jesus Christ, the great redemptive Fact, God manifest in the flesh and present to save. Now the events follow thick and fast, everyone of them vitally important in the Christian system—the incar- nation, the birth, the childhood, the early life of the Saviour. Next comes his ministry, with its actual man- ifestation of redemptive powers in the miracles, the teachings, the example of the God-man. Then follows the sacrificial death upon the cross, the great central fact of Christianity, which has given it the distinctive emblem by which it is known the universe over as the religion of the atonement. The resurrection and the ascension to the heavenly glory next come before us. The outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost 299 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. marks the beginning of the new epoch, the actual be- stowal upon the Redeemer’s church of the full posses- sion of the powers of grace. The revelation 1s com- pleted by the work of the inspired and miraculonsly endowed disciples of the Master, who by his help laid the foundations of the church. Here, from first to last, we have a series of histori- cal events, all essential elements in Christianity. They ean never be ignored without destroying Christianity itself and reducing it to a lifeless rationalism or a vague and powerless spiritualism. But there is a second element in Christianity con- sidered as revelation, namely, doctrine. 1 do not assert that facts and doctrines are actually separated, for since they are integral and connected parts of the same organism of revelation, no sharp line can be drawn between them; yet they are capable of clear logical distinction. The facts are the manifestation of the redemptive grace; the doctrines, of the redemptive truth. In order to redeem men, God had need not only to bestow upon them the power of his grace, but also to make clear the nature of his redemption to their intellects, and thus bring it home to their hearts. Ac- cordingly, the revelation consisted, to a large extent, in the communication of truth to inspired men, who, in their turn, became the teachers of their fellows. Christ, during his ministry, was not only a Saviour by work and example; he was also a teacher, and this element in his work is more prominent than any other. The inspired apostles and their companions were emphati- cally preachers and teachers. It is to be noted that the doctrine presupposes the facts. It is chiefly concerned with them. This is true THE EHVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. 23 of both the ethical and the theological elements in the redemptive revelation. The facts tell their own story in part, but only in part. They need a divinely au- thorized exposition. Their relation to each other and their bearing upon human duty and destiny must be explained. Men need to be taught the way of salva- tion and the life of holiness. Thus are furnished the materials of Christian ethics and of a part of Chris- tian theology. Then these facts have an invisible back- ground of relation to God and the other world, which can be made known to men only by divine teaching. It is thus that the larger part of the truths composing the- ology are revealed. The Christian mysteries, as they are called, such as the Trinity, the incarnation, and the atonement, have come first to human knowledge in this way. This, in like manner, is the only source of knowledge respecting the world beyond the grave and the future history of the church and the world. The doctrinal element in Christianity, like the his- torical, is essential. Yet we need to be on our guard lest we give it too exclusive prominence. Revelation is not merely the communication of truth. As we have seen, the doctrinal element is only secondary, and would be without significance if the historical element were absent. It has been the mistake of rationalism in all ages to ignore the facts and to reduce the Christian revelation to a mere system of abstract doctrines, Before I leave this branch of the subject let me say a word about the Bible. The facts and the doctrines together make up the matter of the revelation. The Bible is the record of them. Upon this subject there has been much confusion, which may be avoided by a little clear thinking. The redemptive revelation and 94. EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE, the Bible are not identical. It is true that the Bible may be considered, regarding it as the work of inspired men and prepared under direct divine guidance, as a part of the revelation. It is also true that by a simple and familiar figure of speech we may identify the rec- ord with the things recorded, and thus correctly say that the Bible is God’s revelation to men. But we have to do here not with popular modes of statement—legit- imate enough homiletically—but rather with the ques- tion of scientific accuracy. Now, the Bible is not, strictly speaking, the same as the revelation. The rev- elation, in part at least, existed before the Bible. Its facts and doctrines were communicated orally before God moved the wills of prophets and holy men to com- mit them to writing. The record is one thing, the facts and doctrines recorded are another and different thing. The title of Chillingworth’s famous book, “ The Bible the Religion of Protestants,” does not state the truth. The Bible is not the religion of Protestants or of any other Christians; it is not revelation; it is not Christianity. It is the inspired record of the facts and doctrines of the Christian revelation. As such it is of priceless value to the church and to mankind. It brings before us who live in the latter days the original reve- lation in all its primitive freshness, and thus is able, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to make us wise unto sal- vation. But the redemptive revelation is only one element in Christianity. There is another of equal, and, in some ways of looking at it, even of greater importance. Chris- tianity is not merely a revelation finished centuries ago and possessed by us through written records. It is a system of redemptive agencies now at work in the THH HVIDENCEHS OF TO-DAY. 25 world, in the church, and in the heart and life of every Christian. The redemptive revelation was God’s means of introducing into the world redemptive pow- ers, Which he brought in to stay, and which he has been administering during all the Christian ages through the agency of Christ and the Holy Spirit. The kingly office of Christ and the work of the Spirit make Christianity a living reality to-day. The Saviour, who liveth and was dead, and is alive forevermore, sits upon the throne of the universe and makes it his great work to save the world from sin. His ministry on earth, his atoning death, his rising from the dead and ascension into heaven, laid the founda- tion for the work he is doing to-day. His Spirit is every- where active, making known the truth of the Gospel, convincing of sin, converting, bearing witness to the I'a- ther’s forgiveness and grace, sanctifying, capacitating for service in the kingdom, bringing into the blessedness of heaven. He is ordering the events in national and personal life for the advancement of the kingdom and the building up of the church. The kingdom of God is inthe midst of us. This is Christianity by way of eminence, this system of spiritual agencies proceeding from Christ, and the effects they are producing in the world. Christianity belongs not only to the past, but also to the present. Its realities-—the reconciled Fa- ther, the glorified Christ, the omnipresent Spirit, the invisible kingdom of God, the new heart, the sanctified life, the consecrated activities of the individual and the church—are the essential facts of the spiritual world. Now these two elements of Christianity, the revela- tion and the present redemptive power, are organically united. Neither would be of use without the other. 26 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. The historical, the doctrinal or rational, and the redemp- tive factors are all parts of one system. Yet, as was intimated a moment ago, there is a true sense in which the last is the most important. The others are essen- tial as foundations of the life; this is the very life it- self. It is useless to pr each the Christianity of eighteen centuries ago, if we ignore the Christianity of to-day. Upon int broad and comprehensive conception of Christianity is based the system of apologetics. The evi- dences correspond to the elements of Christianity as they have just been stated. There is here, if I may use the expression, a “natural system” of proofs. We have seen that the different factors of Christianity are organ- ically connected. Inlike manner there is an organism of proof, with mutually related and subordinated members. Modern logic has shown that proof is not a matter of haphazard. Every present reality is proved through its manifestations. Every fact of past history is proved, partly by its relation to present facts, and partly by the effects it has left behind, which last may be, and gener- ally are, embalmed in human testimony, ‘Truths are proved by their relation to facts present and past, and by their connection with other truths. Every present real- ity, historical fact and truth, has its own system of proofs, which it is the business of the defender of it to discover and set forth in their completeness. He may do this satisfactorily or only partially, scientifically or quite at random; he may present only the evidence re- quired by some present emergency. But still the full proof is there, and the skilled reasoner will find it and use it, setting forth all its elements and marshalling them in their logical connection. The evidences of Christianity thus exist in their cor- THE EVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. 27 respondence with the different factors of Christianity, independently of the success or lack of success of the Christian apologist. To our modern apologetics be- longs the credit of having to a great extent discovered the system and of bringing it to scientific expression. It has transformed itself from a mere defensive art into a positive science. It proves the truth and reality of Christianity by a rational justification of all its ele- ments. The evidences fall into three groups, answering to the elements of Christianity already considered. At the head stand the historical evidences. These include all the proofs for the reality of the facts which constitute so large a part of the redemptive revelation. Inasmuch as the Bible is the chief, and in many cases the sole, record of these facts, the argument is largely concerned with questions respecting the authenticity, genuineness, credibility, and inspiration of the docu- ments through which we are made acquainted with the history of the redemptive revelation, both in its pre- liminary Old-Testament stage and in its culmination in Jesus Christ and the founding of the Christian church. Here belong the questions of biblical criticism. Under the same head are treated the evidences from proph- ecy and miracles. The historical evidence passes over, with no sharply drawn line of separation, into the rational, which has to do with Christianity as a system of truth. On the border stands the proof from the person of Christ, which is indeed a great historical fact, but derives its sionificance from the truth he reveals to men in his life and redemptive work. He is, as the apostle John declared, “full of grace and truth” (John 1. 14). The 28 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. evidence for the truth of Christianity derived from— his wondrous personality and life, an evidence which has had more power during the Christian ages than any other except that of personal experience, is at once historical and rational. Here also belong the proofs derived from the need of revelation, from the intrinsic excellence of the Christian system, from the relation of Christianity to philosophy, and from its superiority to other religions. Finally, we have the evidence of the reality of Christianity as a working-power in the world. This may be called the practical evidence. It may be viewed under two aspects. This redemptive power of Christ manifests itself outwardly in the world, the church, and the individual. First, we have a historical form of the practical evi- dence, derived from what Christianity has done during the Christian ages in lifting men out of sin into purity of life, in reforming the abuses of human society and government, in advancing morality and civilization. Here we find a place for the argument from the in- crease in numbers, influence, and spiritual power, of the Christian church. Next comes the argument from the present influence of Christianity. Lastly, the out- ward evidence of the power of Christ in the changed lives and holy conversation of believers to-day is the great practical proof which works upon men with con- vincing effect. But the practical proof has still another form, name- ly, that which is to be the especial subject of these lectures, the evidence of Christian experience. This is derived from the manifestation to the believer himself, in his own inward spiritual life, of the presence THH EVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. 29 and power of God and the Christian realities. It is the evidence that is based upon the Christian’s regen- eration and sanctification. , While the evidences of to-day are characterized by the larger and truer view of Christianity and the more scientific and comprehensive exhibition of the proofs of which I have spoken, there is one argument that is being brought into especial prominence, partly through the more general recognition that this place belongs to it of right, and partly because the exigencies of the non-Christian attack increasingly demand its employ- ment. The evidence upon which the Christian believer relies, in the ultimate resort, for the confirmation of his own faith, must be the chief argument for the truth of Christianity even for those who are not yet Christians. The assaults of pantheistic and agnostic, as well as of materialistic unbelief are directed chiefly against the claim of Christianity to be the redeeming power of God in the world to-day, and must be met by the proof which the individual believer and the church have in their own experience that the Gospel is indeed the power of Godinto salvation. The evidence of Christian experi- ence is thus being brought to the front. In accepting the situation and laying especial stress upon this central proof, evangelical theology is only re- turning to its own. The early’ and the medieval” church made little, if any, apologetical use of the ex- perimental evidence. But in the Protestant Reforma- tion it became, and for more than a century continued to be, in the form of the testimonium Spiritus Sancti internum, the chief proof for the truth of the Christian system." It is thus presented by Calvin in his Jnsti- tutes.° Its paramount importance is asserted in most of 30 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. the Protestant confessions of faith, and finds typical ex- pression in that of Westminster." During the seven- teenth century it occupies a well-recognized place in the Puritan theology of Great Britain and the Lutheran theology of the Continent. The somewhat narrow form in which the proof appears in the doctrine of the internal witness of the Spirit is enlarged to the full pro- portion of the experimental evidence in the writings of Richard Baxter, the great Puritan divine, who not with- out reason has the reputation of being the father of English apologetics.” During the prevalence of deism it does indeed fall into the background, but we still find it treated with great fulness by men like Owen” and Watts.” One of the first effects of the great revivals of evangelical religion by which the spiritual torpor of the deistic period was overcome, was the renewed recog- nition of the force of this argument by our great Ameri- can theologian Jonathan Edwards.” | In the traditional system of apologetics, however, as it was shaped by Butler and Paley, the evidence of Christian experience finds no place. Ido not mean that it was wholly ignored. Men like Chalmers, while not incorporating it into their system, have asserted its unique importance for the confirmation of Christian faith.” It has been urged with more or less of emphasis by such writers as Coleridge,” Bishop Wilson of Cal- cutta,” and in our own country President Hopkins™ and Dr. Charles Hodge.” Still, for the most part, it has been neglected, and it has been only comparatively recently that it has come once more into prominence. This lat- ter result has been due not only to the attacks upon Christianity of which I have spoken, and the positive growth of theological science among us, but also very a THE HVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. ol largely to influences proceeding from the evangelical theology of Germany. In that country the evidence of Christian experience has been more and more fully recognized since the efforts of Schleiermacher and his followers turned the tide of rationalism.” Among re- cent German theologians it has received especial atten- tion from Dorner” and Frank.” I do not think it would be too much to say that the recognition of this form of evidence is the essential and striking feature of the evidences of to-day. To make good this assertion, I shall not be able to refer you to the text-books of apologetics. With but few exceptions they still ignore it. But this need not surprise us. A reconstruction in the methods of theology, as in those of the other sciences, finds systematic expression only somewhat late, after the materials have long been gath- ered and tested. The makers of text-books are usually behind all other classes of scientific men. There is a literal, as well as a figurative, stereotyping which, in our country at least, interferes with the progress of thought in literature. But there are other regions to which we can look more confidently for the signs of the times. In the current periodical literature of our day, in the preaching of our ministers, and to a considerable extent in the lecture-rooms of our teachers of theology, the experimental proof is being estimated at its true value. My task in these lectures, which have for their object the exposition of this argument, will therefore be the grateful one of acting in a humble way as the interpre- ter of the best thought of our age in this department of theological investigation. In bringing the subject before you, let me remind 02 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. you of the distinction already made between the science of apologetics and the apology of Christianity. The former has to do with the methods and principles by which the truth of Christianity may be proved; the lat- ter with the actual proof of Christianity itself in oppo- sition to the attacks made upon it. The present course of lectures will be not so much an apology as an essay in apologetics. J shall indeed endeavor to present the proof, both in general and in its details, as well as to meet the objections that may be brought against it. But my chief object will be, so to bring it before you that you may be able to use it practically in your ministerial work. If the result shall also be to strengthen your own faith, I shall rejoice; and I cannot but hope that this will be the case. But this will be incidental. I take it for granted that you are already in practical posses- sion of this most important proof. My aim will be to point out its scientific value and to help you to avail yourselves of it in the great and good work to which you have devoted your lives. It remains only to point out briefly the ground we are to traverse in the remaining lectures. In dealing with our subject it is my purpose to show how the argument from Christian experience presupposes the great principles of that theistic philosophy which grows out of the common religious and moral experience of men. Next I shall try to describe the genesis and growth of the evidence of Christian experience. This will open the way for the scientific or philosophical verification of this. experience—in other words, its justification as truth. After that I propose to take up the objections to the proof, as urged by both the opponents and the friends of Christianity, and to endeavor to give them full and —S ee ie stems ee THE HVIDENCES OF TO-DAY. 3d candid treatment. Finally, I wish to show the relation of the experimental to the other kinds of evidence, and thus to make clear its leading place in the organized system of the Christian proofs. I believe profoundly, and with undoubting conviction, in the importance of the subject. I trust that the result of these lectures will be to confirm you in the same be- lief. 3 LECTURE II. PHILOSOPHICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS—THEISTIC. In order properly to develop the evidence of Chris- tian experience, it is needful that we should carefully define our philosophical position. Every science pre- supposes some theory of the universe and its Ground ; and the same may be said of every scientific proof. The first step in any scientific presentation of facts cannot be taken without the help of such a theory. Now there is a definite philosophy underlying the proof of Christian experience and forming its necessary presupposition. It is best designated as the theistic phi- losophy. It stands opposed to those other philosophi- cal systems which bear the names of deism, pantheism, agnosticism, and materialism. Except upon the basis of it, it is hopeless for us to attempt to advance a single step. This theistic philosophy is, in a true sense, Christian. That is, it has been wrought out by Christian men on Christian ground under the light of the Christian revy- elation. But this fact does not impair its value when employed as an auxiliary in the evidence of Christian- ity, or lay us fairly open to the charge of reasoning in a circle. Like all philosophy, it has to do with mat- ters of universal validity, which can be verified by all _ men. It is not confined to the facts of Christian experi- ence, but deals with the universal religious experience, THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS. 35 A man does not have to be a Christian, in order to understand and confirm it. It is simply the philosophy of religion as developed under the clarifying influence of Christianity. The importance of a clear statement of this philoso- phy is perceived when we consider the fact that the experience of the Christian is not an isolated phenom- enon, but directly and intimately connected with the general religious experience of mankind. It is be- cause men have the latter that they are able, when they enter into the distinctively Christian experience, to know it as divine. The evidence of the reality and divinity of Christianity is therefore dependent upon the reality and divinity of the common religious ex- perience. Unless there isa natural revelation, and a natural consciousness of God based upon it, it is useless for us to attempt a scientific proof of the truth of the Christian consciousness. But the proof of the reality of the universal religious experience is furnished by the theistic philosophy of religion. I know there are those who take a different view, and insist that the evidences of Christianity are in- dependent of the evidences of natural religion. And this much I would without hesitation concede to them —that the Christian, in his personal experience of God’s redeeming grace through Christ, as manifested in the new birth and the Christian life, possesses the certainty of all the facts and truths involved in the general religious experience. I would also grant that his knowledge of these facts and truths is much higher and more adequate than would be possible apart from Christianity.’ Nevertheless, in spite of these conces- sions, I do not believe that the higher knowledge and 36 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. fuller experience of the Christian would have been possible, had he not passed through the lower stage. The skilled man of science, with his microscope and other instruments of investigation, and his technical knowledge, sees in the objects with which he is en- gaged not only all that the common man sees, but vastly more, and sees it far more adequately and truly. But his technical knowledge would never have been attained, and could not now be maintained, if he did not possess the common knowledge of ordinary men, which is at once the presupposition and necessary condition of his particular scientific accomplishments. So here —the distinctively Christian knowledge would be im- possible without the general religious knowledge. Just as in theology the first and second creations are vitally correlated, so in apologetics. Christianity does not discard nature but corrects it. It is, as Baxter says, ‘medicinal to nature.”* It does not give men new powers, but enables them rightly to use their old ones. The importance, therefore, of the subject now before us cannot be too highly estimated. Here is the great battle-field upon which we must fight through the con- flict with the unbelief of onr times. Jf we permit an unbelieving philosophy to dictate to us the interpreta- tion to be put upon the facts of religion, we shall be left helpless in our defence of Christianity. We have reason to be thankful that the theistic philosophy has already won so many victories and compelled unbelief to so many concessions. In the present lecture we shall examine the philo- sophical presuppositions of the evidence of Christian experience, so far as they relate to the nature of relig- ion, the true conception of God and the proofs for his THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS. St existence.’ In the next we shall consider the anthro- pological presuppositions which the theistic philosophy furnishes. I. We start with the subject of religion. The old definition, which we inherited from the ra- tionalism of the last century, corresponds to the ration- alistic conception of Christianity described in the pre- vious lecture. Religion was defined as the mode of knowing and worshipping God.’ At first the full mean- ing of the definition is not evident. It is disclosed when we discover, what is abundantly evinced by the writings of both unbelievers and Christians of the rationalistic school, that the knowledge intended is not the practical or experimental spiritual knowledge of God, but an in- | tellectual apprehension of the true doctrine concerning \* God, while the worship is that of outward forms and | rites rather than the personal spiritual relation of com- munion essential to the true conception of religion. The doctrinal tenets, the moral codes, the particular cudtus connected with the various religious systems, are re- garded as constituting religion itself. But the theistic philosophy of religion discards this definition as wholly inadequate. The constituents of re- ligion which are here made central and essential belong in reality merely to the circumference of the fact itself. We must look deeper if we will grasp the real essence of religion. What is the common element in all the religions of mankind, from the most degraded to the highest, from animism to Christianity, which differ- ences the religious sphere from every other department of human experience? What is the essential fact that gives religious faith its distinctive character? Not the system of dogmas, not the moral code, not the peculiar 38 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN HXPERIENCE. cult ; but the personal relation of God to the religions |* man and of the religious man to God.* Jeligion has been truly defined as “ the union of man with God, of the finite with the Infinite.” ° It involves, on the one side, a reaching-down and self-manifestation of God to inen—the presence, power, and grace of the living God, who is not far from every one of his children, the God in whom we live and move and have our being. On the other side, it involves some vague recognition, at the very least, on the part of man, some presentiment of the Supernatural, some sense of dependence upon him, and some trust in him. On the human side the knowl- edge may be of the most imperfect and even perverted kind, but there is always the certainty of a Power high- er than ourselves, on whom we are dependent, and to whom we owe obedience. Taith is the recognition of this fact and the correspondent action of the will. Christianity discloses to us the true nature of the di- vine side in this relation, but it does not for the first time reveal the relation itself ; this is universal, and in some sense universally known. Various theories have been advanced as to the origin of religion. The rationalistic orthodoxy has explained it through the hypothesis of a primitive revelation, which in the case of the heathen has become corrupt ; or has joined with deism in accepting the theory of in- nate religious ideas. Unbelief has had its other theories besides the one just mentioned. The old explanation, that religion was a human invention, originating in priestcraft and the policy of kings, has yielded to finer, if not more satisfactory, views. The same may be said of the theory—as old as the days of classic heathenism, but revived in the last century by Hume, and in our THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS. Bg own by D. F. Strauss—that fear is the cause of religion, primus inorbe deos fecit timor. The hypothesis which has received most favor in the present generation, on account of its ready combination with the scientific doc- trine of evolution, is animism. According to Tylor,’ who has developed this view in his Primitive Cul- ture, men are led to the belief in a soul that is inde- pendent of the body by the phenomena of dreams, of death, and of certain morbid states. The idea thus originated they transfer to other forms of existence— plants, animals, and even lifeless things. Thus they are led to infer the existence of higher spirits, which be- come objects of worship. According to Herbert Spen- cer,° who closely agrees with Tylor as to the origin of the idea of the soul, religion has its source in the wor- ship of ancestral spirits. But all these theories are inadequate and artificial. The simple, and only satisfactory, explanation of the origin of religion is identical with the explanation of its maintenance and present existence. The actual pres- ence of God, and his influence upon a spirit made for _ communion with himself account for religion in all its _ stages. God reveals himself to men and communicates | himself to them in all ages, in all nations, and under all conditions. The defect and perversion of the human soul may dull the vision of God and make it possible for men to fall into the grossest errors respecting him. But all have some knowledge of God and find their souls going out to the Divine in some response to his revelation. God himself is the cause of the beginning, the progress, and the present power of religion. In what has been said the universality of religion has been implied. The modern science of religion has 40 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. disproved, one after another, the alleged facts formerly adduced to prove that there are tribes of men without religion, until scarcely any are left, and the majority even of unbelieving scholars, in this department of in- vestigation, now concede that all men in their natural state are conscious of some relation to a supernatural Being or Beings.” But the Christian theist has no especial zeal upon this point. All that he insists is that men actually stand in the relation to God which constitutes religion. He fully admits the power of sin to blind men to the fact of this relation, as he ad- mits the power of a false philosophy to make them put a false interpretation upon the facts. The exceptions rather prove than disprove the rule. They show that in some cases men ignore the facts; but in no sense do they throw suspicion upon the facts themselves. The systematic study of the religions of mankind, in their history and present condition, has thrown a vast amount of light upon the relation to each other of the different faiths of mankind, and also upon their rela- tion to Christianity. This department of investigation is the child of our own century, and it has transformed the earlier conceptions of the subject. During thie days of rationalism deists and orthodox Christians had at the bottom the same principle and differed only in their application of it. The deists maintained that both the ethnic religions and Christianity, so far as they go beyond the precepts of natural religion, were the fraudulent invention of priests and rulers. The or- thodox denied that this is the true explanation of Christianity, but agreed in substance with the deists in their judgment of the heathen systems, differing only in explaining the truth in them as the remnant of THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS., 41 an original instruction given to mankind through a primitive revelation. The heathen systems were usually ranged under the common and indiscriminate designa- tion of the “ false religions.” Little allowance was made for the direct influence of God upon the vast masses of mankind lying outside of Christendom. At most a merely general providence over them was conceded. But we have come to a better and truer view. We find that the religions of the world form part of one great system, with common characteristics and well- marked relations to each other. Great as are the errors and abuses which inhere in the ethnic faiths, the care- ful study of them shows that they contain an immense amount of moral and spiritual truth. Even Christian- ity—though radically differenced from them by its provision for redemption through Christ, which is its essential characteristic—is vitally correlated with them. The thoughtful Christian sees in these ‘ religions grow- ing wild,” as Schelling called them, not mere human constructions, but the human perversion of an essential and indefeasible relation between God and man; while he recognizes in their history the presence of God’s providence educating the human race—to use the help- ful conception with which Lessing’s famous work” has supplied us—for its high destiny in the kingdom of God. Christianity is at once the remedy of all that is false in the ethnic religions and the fulfilment of all that is true in them. Through all the discords produced by human sin and error runs a divine harmony, which is the prophecy of the final song of redemption through Christ.” In coming to this truer view of the nature of reli- gion, the theistic philosophy has learned some lessons 42 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. from the pantheistic and agnostic, and even from the materialistic, philosophies. They have helped it to correct some of the errors of the earlier rationalism. But though they have taught it much, there is far more in them that it repudiates. It denies that the religious relation can exist between an unconscious, impersonal Ground of the universe and the human spirit. It utters its uncompromising protest against the natural- istic explanations of religion. It insists upon its own doctrine of the personal presence of God in the world and the human soul as the true and only way of ac- counting for the facts. II. This brings us to the teachings of the theistic philosophy respecting God and the proof it gives of his existence. The inadequacy of the old natural theology has been implied in what has been said upon the subject of reli- gion in general. As the rationalistic age bequeathed to our century an imperfect definition of religion, so it bequeathed a defective view of the nature of God. It is the view which nowadays is popularly ascribed to the deists alone, but which was, as a matter of fact, common to them and their orthodox opponents. The philosophy of religion was the common ground upon which the deistical and the Christian theologians met, and it is not strange that the lower view prevailed, and the foundations of orthodoxy were the concessions of deism. Reason demands that a God should be pos- tulated to account for the existence of the world. But the efficiency and the activity of this Creator were con- fined to the beginning of things. The finished world was thought competent to operate by the intrinsic power of its laws and forces. A formal rather than a full and THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS. 43 hearty recognition was all that was accorded to thie divine providence. Berkeley” and Edwards ™ stand al- most alone among English-speaking philosophers and theologians in the first half of the last century in the assertion of the continual presence of a living God through whose unintermitting energy the world is maintained in existence. It is characteristic of this rationalistic tendency that it practically reduces God to a mere notion of the intel- lect ; indeed, this is the peculiarity of rationalism gen- erally, that it substitutes intellectual abstractions for realities. According to one view, the idea of God is innate, the result of a constitutional instinct or pre- formation of man’s being, through the power of which the idea in due time emerges into conscionsness. Of course it cannot thus be conceived as the result of the immediate influence of God upon the soul; on the contrary, it is purely a product of the intellect, stand- ing in no direct relation to the reality of things. When Descartes * taught that the innate idea of God has God for its cause, he did not mean that God creates it in man by his momently energizing, but that it is caused by his original shaping of the human con- stitution. According to another view, of which Locke,” the great opponent of innate ideas, is the most prom1- nent representative, the idea of God is a necessary in- ference from the existence of the world and of man. But this view agrees with that just mentioned, though in other respects so opposed to it, in regarding God as a notion of the intellect rather than as a living Fact. The traditional evidences for the divine existence manifest the same deistical tendency. The @ proore 44. EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. argument starts from the idea of God and endeavors to make good its objective validity. But where the idea is regarded as a mere idea, an abstraction, the pas- sage from its subjective existence to the objective real- ity, from idea to fact, cannot but be questionable. Kant’s polemic may here be urged with unanswerable force. The existence of the idea cannot guarantee the existence of the thing, so long as we find in the mind itself the sufficient cause and explanation of the idea. Moreover, since the idea has been commonly rep- resented as having for its contents the full theistic conception of God, and yet as universal and neces- sary, the argument is contradicted by the palpable fact that the great majority of the race have no such conception of God. The @ posterior arguments are presented with more success, but labor under similar defects. The cosmological proof is urged to show that the universe must have had a First Cause. But this First Cause is represented as first in point of time, not as the ever-active Ground and present Gov- ernor of all things. It is the Primuwm ovens, postu- lated to account for the winding up of the clock that ever since has been going through the energy of its own mainspring. The same may be said of the psycho- logical argument, so strikingly set forth by Locke,” based upon the necessity of assuming an intelligent Cause for intelligent beings; it is the cause of their first existence rather than of their present existence. The teleological argument at first seems to promise more, especially where—inconsistently with the ordi- nary form of the cosmological proof—it is combined with the doctrine of special creations. This is the most thoroughly popular evidence and in its typical THEISTIC PRHSUPPOSITIONS. 45 traditional form, as shown in Paley’s Watural Theo- logy and the Bridgewater Treatises,” it attained the highest perfection. But this argument, in the old form, is at the bottom as deistical as the others, and we have lived to see it fall into general disrepute under the influence of the scientific theory of evolution, with its all-comprehensive explanation of the special forms of the universe. There remains the moral proof, com- monly presented in the form of an argument from conscience. But inasmuch as conscience has been regarded at the highest as a constitutional instinct, pointing, like the other instincts, to the agency of God in the original creation of man, rather than as a witness to the continual presence of the holy God, this argument has not sufficed to deliver us from the vicious circle of deism. Thus the old theistic argument succeeded only in making good the deistical position. The favorite names of God employed by the old theologians betray the point of view from which they prevailingly regarded him. They called him the “great First Cause,” the “Creator,” the “Supreme Being,” the “ Deity.” In their thought he was a God afar off, and not near at hand ; a God who did a mighty work ages ago, and is now resting from his labors. It is now time to look at the higher and truer view of God to which our age has come. In attempting to delineate it, let me not seem to assert that this view is in every sense new. It has always been held implicitly by thinking Christians, and has been the spring and motive of their religious life. But itis one thing to maintain a view tacitly and implicitly, and quite an- other to hold it as an avowed philosophical and theo- 46 HEVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. logical opinion. Progress in philosophy and theology largely consists in making the implicit explicit, in bringing out into the sunshine of clear thought the ideas which hitherto have been comparatively in the shade, even though they may always have influenced our actions. The influences which have been instrumental in effecting this salutary change in the philosophy of religion are, in the main, the same as those that brought about the revolution in apologetics mentioned in the last lecture. It was inevitable that the poverty of Locke’s sensationalism should manifest itself and lead to a reaction, as, indeed, was the case even in the last century, when the Scotch philosophy raised its pro- test against the prevailing doctrines. There can be no question also that the revival of evangelical religion had a most important effect by turning men’s thoughts to the revelation of God’s presence and living power in the experience of the religious life. Scarcely less powerful has been the influence of pantheism and ag- nosticism, which have made the deistic position unten- able, and, while utterly antagonistic to the theistie phi- losophy in their essential features, have taught it many of those useful lessons lawfully to be learned even from an enemy.” Nor is it to be forgotten that physical science has furnished philosophy with better methods and truer tests.”° Under the guidance of these influences the philos- ophy of religion has reached, in our age, a far truer and more satisfactory conception of God than that of the old orthodoxy or the deistic view with which it is so closely allied. It rejects the narrowness and error of the old view, and it is also guarded against the no less THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS. 47 narrow and erroneous views of the modern pantheistic, agnostic, and materialistic systems, each of which em- phasizes a single aspect of truth so exclusively as to run it into radical error. What the true conception is, has been already in part implied. The God of theism is—to use the noble and never-to-be-forgotten definition of the Assembly’s Catechism—“ a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchange- able in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, good- ness, and truth.’ But he is this, not as a mere notion of the understanding, but as the Reality of realities, the Fact of facts. He is the personal God, self-conscious, self-determining, like ourselves in all the elements which constitute personality, wholly distinct from his creatures, and independent of them, whether those creatures be personal, merely sentient, or material. Te is the self-moved Deviser and Creator of all things. He alone is eternal, and the universe, his workmanship, has its origin with and in time. His preserving activ- ity and providential government are those of a personal Ruler who stands above and separate from the world. The transcendence and personality of God, which constitute the elements of truth in deism, we jealously maintain in the face of all pantheistic and agnostic denials. But God, according to the theistic conception, is not only transcendent; he is also immanent. Nature and man have their own substantial being, but they have it only through their dependence upon God. They are realities, but only through their subordination to him who, in the supreme and unique sense, is the Reality. The machine of nature does its work through the constant influx and activity of the divine energy. The 48 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. physical forces are only second causes, through which the First Cause—alone cause in the full sense of the term—operates. God is the hidden but ever-active Ground of vegetable and animal life. The world is but the veil through which may be seen, shaded, but un- concealed, the lineaments of God. It is the hiero- glyphic in which his character may be read. God is the source of physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual life in man. He is the constant, clear-shining Light of the human reason. The enormous superiority of the human to the brute intellect is due to this par- ticipation in the activity of the supreme Reason.” The human will in its freedom, which is a true cause as the forces of nature are not, is this only in virtue of its abiding dependence upon the divine Will. Through conscience this holy Will, moment by moment, pro- claims the eternal law of right, and lays’ obligation upon the soul of man. In his frown is punishment; in his favor is life. He makes the soul the temple of his indwelling. In the experience of the religious life the personal God meets us as persons, and the human spirit enjoys communion with the infinite Spirit in whose image it was created. In all this relation of God to men there is a constant self-manifestation and self-communication on his part. We call it truly revelation. The distinction between the natural and the supernatural, or Christian, revela- tions is an old one. The theistic philosophy of religion in its best modern form has wisely revived this distinc- tion, and clearing the term natural revelation of its deistical associations, applies it to the relation in which God stands to all his children. It expresses, as no other term can do, the abiding presence, self-disclosure, THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS. 49 and self-bestowing love of the Infinite. It brings the philosophy of religion into line with the teachings of the apostle Paul in his epistle to the Romans (i. 19, 20), when he says, speaking of the heathen: ‘ Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity.” ” But what of the proofs of this conception of God ? How shall we know that the facts which religion pos- tulates have reality and objective validity ? It is here that the advance in the views and methods of the philosophy of religion is most marked. Theold notion of an innate idea of God no longer holds water. The deistic proof of a Primum Movens has become in- adequate. The modern scientific spirit calls for a proof which shall satisfy the requirements of the scientific method, and the modern philosophy of religion does not fear to give it. It boldly takes its stand upon the facts of a universal religious experience, and under- takes the task of proving that this experience can be explained only upon the assumption that it is what it purports to be, namely, a reality, involving the actual existence and present power of God. The process of verification carries us back to the ele- ments of all experience, and to the problem of knowl- edge. What are the constants in the ever-varying cur- rent of iuman consciousness? How are these constants to be interpreted ? What are the elements which the mind itself furnishes to knowledge? What elements have an objective origin ? | The most fruitful modern discussions of the subject 4 50 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. date from the time of Kant.” Let us take our starting- point from him. It is well to do so, for he gives the best and fullest refut«cion of the old deism, while we find in him the essential elements of both idealistic pantheism and agnosticism, so that the analysis and correction of his doctrine afford the best refutation of these philosophies. The aim of the great philosopher of Kénigsberg was to analyze experience and distin- guish its @ priort factors from the d@ posteriort. The raw material of experience consists of sensations which come to the mind from without. But the mind is not passive in the process of knowledge; it not only re- ceives but gives, and the knowledge is the result of the synthesis of both factors, the subjective and the objec- tive. Of the subjective Kant distinguishes the intui- tions of time and space; the categories of the under- standing, quantity, quality, relation, modality, with their subdivisions; and the three ideas of reason—the soul, the world, and God. Within the framework of these @ priore forms the raw material of sensation appears in the guise of ration- al and ordered experience or knowledge. But the forms themselves are purely subjective; they have no objec- tive validity. There is a “thing in itself” (Ding an sich), which is the objective cause of sensation, but we do not and cannot know what it is. By our mental constitution we are obliged to think of it under the @ priori forms, but we have no right to assume that the reality exists under these forms. They are a necessity of thought, but this fact does not vouch for their ob- jective existence. As the mirrored sides of the kaleido- scope determine the ordered and beautiful figures as- sumed by the colored bits of glass, the mind determines THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS. dL the forms assumed in experience by the thing in itself ; with the exception that in the latter case we must as- sume no knowledge of the bits of glass except as the unknown substratum of the images which appear. Thus we are shut close within the limits of experience, knowing that there is a region beyond, but doomed to be forever ignorant of its nature. Kant himself de- scribes in striking language the narrow sphere of knowledge. After completing his investigation of the understanding, he says: “We have now not only traversed the country of the pure understanding and carefully examined every part thereof, but we have also surveyed it and assigned to everything its place upon it. But this country is an island, and shut up by nature itself within unchangeable barriers. It is the country of truth (a charming name!), surrounded by a broad and stormy ocean, the proper place of illusion, where many a fog-bank and many a deliquescent ice- berg give the false promise of new countries, and while they ceaselessly deceive the mariners ambitious of dis- coveries with empty hopes, they involve them in ad- ventures which can never be abandoned and yet never concluded.” * The three ideas of reason stand at an even further remove from reality than the categories of the wn- derstanding and the intuitions of sense. Their ne- cessity of thought is no guarantee for their objective truth. Their place in thought is only regulative and not constitutive. Their value lies in the fact that they enable us to unify our knowledge and reduce it to or- der and system. We cannot indeed refrain from at- tributing to them in our thought a substantial and ob- jective existence. But this is—to use Kant’s own illus- 52 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. tration—a “natural illusion” like that which makes us see the objects reflected in a mirror as though they were in the space behind it. The affirmers and the deniers of the existence of the soul, the world, and God, are alike mistaken. They are like combatants who fence with their own shadows. Their sharpest thrusts are in vain, for there is nothing to wound. They may fight ever so bravely, but the shadows which they cut to pieces in- stantly come together again, like the heroes in Walhal- Ja, and the bloodless battle goes on indefinitely.** With caustic wit the great agnostic characterizes his own philosophy and the attempts of his fellow-philosophers to soar into the transcendent region of metaphysics: “We have found that, although we had purposed to build for ourselves a tower which should reach to heav- en, the supply of materials sufficed merely for a habita- tion which was spacious enough for all terrestrial pur- poses, and high enough to enable us to survey the level plain of experience, but that the bold undertaking de- signed necessarily failed for want of materials—not to mention the confusion of tongues, which gave rise to endless disputes among the laborers on the plan of the edifice, and at last scattered them over all the world, each to erect a separate building for himself, according to his own plans and his own inclinations.” *° In consistency with his theory, Kant repudiates the traditional arguments for the existence of God. The ontological, with its inference from the idea of the most perfect Being to his reality, is based upon the delusion that the ideas of reason represent the objective truth of things. The cosmological and teleological arguments presuppose the ontological, and of themselves do not carry us beyond the charmed circle of finite experience. THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS. Dd Only at one point does Kant endeavor to break through to an objective Reality which can afford the basis for religious truth. It is in the sphere of man’s moral nat- ure. The truth which the pure reason cannot attain, is to be accepted as the postulate of the practical reason. The latter bases its procedure upon the assumption of the reality of three great facts—God, freedom, and im- mortality. That Kant by the acceptance of these facts as postulates of the practical reason, meant to vouch for their absolute reality and thus to retract the asser- tions he makes in dealing with the pure reason, cannot be truthfully affirmed. {lis aim was to find a working basis for morals and religion rather than to give them a speculative grounding. Let men live and act as if God, freedom, and immortality were realities ; for the rest, let them recognize their limitations. A modern philoso- pher has said, ‘“ You cannot find a verification of the idea of God or duty ; you can only make it.” *" A far greater than he declared,“ If any man willeth to do the will of God, he shall know of the doctrine” (John vii. 17). Probably Kant would not have agreed altogether with either; his view was that these ideas must always remain unverified. If he was inconsistent, it was a no- ble inconsistency, which raises his agnosticism far above the modern imitations of it. But in truth Kant was not altogether inconsistent. Ile was one of those great thinkers who stand between two ages, summing up the one and inaugurating the other. His philosophy was two-sided and capable of two interpretations. It is like the drawing of a gem which we may see at will in relief or depressed, as a cameo or an intaglio. Looking at it in one way, we find in it only the old rationalism stated in its logical 54 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. consequences. For years philosophers and theologians had been teaching, to all intents and purposes, that God is a mere notion of the intellect, and yet insisting that in the sphere of morals and religion men should act as if this notion were a reality. Kant said it out distinctly and explicitly. But there is another way of looking at his philosophy. Plainly to state the logical implications of the old rationalism was to furnish its reductio ad absurdum. The circle had been traversed to the opposite pole. The consequences of the old ra- tionalism were the foundations of the new idealism. If the mind is the author of the idea of God, as well as of the ideas of the world and of self, and if the thing in itself is but the unknown substratum of experience, why not take one step more, and turning the thing in itself into a notion, make all subjective? Or if such a subjective idealism prove unsatisfactory, why not deify the notion and find in an absolute Idea the Ground and Reality of all things ? Kant’s position was, as the name he gave his philo- sophy implies, critical. But criticism does not give us truth ; it only prepares the way for it. The ery of the philosophers in our age is “ Back to Kant!” But the reason for returning to him is, not that we may adopt his system, framing some kind of “ Neo-Kantianism,” but that we may correct the defects and extravagances of the earlier and later systems by his criticism. The value of his philosophy does not lie in the solution he gave—or attempted to give—to the problem of knowl- edge, but in his clear statement of the problem, which makes it possible to secure its solution by the applica- tion of a better method. From the first there has been one fatal defect in Kant’s philosophy ; it cut the bond THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS. D5 between subjective and objective knowledge. By its assertion that the forms and ideas of the mind, though necessary to thought, have no corresponding external reality, it opened the way on the one hand for the return to the scepticism of Hume, which reappears, though in a somewhat different dress, in our modern agnosticism ; and on the other, for the advance to idealistic panthe- ism. It is not my purpose at this time to show how the critical philosophy of Kant developed into the systems of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, each representing a phase of truth, but all essentially pantheistic. I wish only to call attention to the fact that Kant, when his fundamental error is corrected, gives us the key to the true solution of the problem of knowledge. The prin- ciple which, consistently applied, remedies the defect of the Kantian philosophy is, that what is necessary to thought has objective, as well as subjective, validity. Or, to state the same principle in familiar words, that the forms of thought are the forms of things. The contributions which thought makes to knowledge cor- respond to the reality of things. To suppose that there is a yawning and impassable gulf between the mind and the objective world is suicidal. Nothing can possess a higher validity than that which is a necessity of thought. If this fails us, then all fails us, and thought itself crumbles into ruins. It is indeed true that we know things in their relation to ourselves, and do not know them apart from this relation; but this fact, in- stead of invalidating our knowledge, is the sole condi- tion of it. We must know things under the limitations of our faculties, and therefore we know them only partially; but there is no reason to believe that we 56 HEVIDENCH OF CHRISTIAN HXPERIENCE. know them otherwise than truly. There is everything to confirm the conviction of the unsophisticated mind, that the subjective and the objective are parts of the same system, organically related and mutually corre- spondent. We must perceive-things in time and space, and this is evidence to us that time and space are real relations existing in and between things. We must know our sensations in the framework sh the catego- ries, and this is proof that the categories are the law of the things which give rise to the sensations. So with regard to the ideas of reason, with which we are here particularly concerned; they are necessary to thought, and therefore we conclude that they are true, that is, that they correspond to the objective real- ity. Self, the world, and God, are not mere subjective forms, but objective facts; and we know that this is the case, because the ideas are universal and necessary to thought. If such necessities of thought deceive us, we have no criterion of truth, but fall a prey to uni- versal scepticism. Instead of supposing, with IXant, a vague spectral “thing in itself”’ which the mind is obliged to think of as existing, though ignorant of its nature, while the ideas of reason, God, the world and self, are merely mental forms with no corresponding objective reality—ainstead of such an unsatisfactory as- sumption, we find in God, the world, and self, the real nature of the “thing in itself,” the grounds and causes of our mental Sie But let us look more carefully at these mM guaranteed to us by the reason. How are the existence and necessary force of these ideas to be explained ? When we analyze consciousness, we find that God, the world, and self, are necessary data of it. The larger THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS. aire portion of the contents of consciousness, if we pass by the mere forms of thought and look at its materials, is accidental or contingent; we can conceive it as non- existent; it comes and goes. But the three facts of which I have been speaking remain constant, immu- table, and irremovable, defying all attempts to dislodge them or think them away. They are the fixed stars in our firmament of thought. How shall we explain the fact? How shall we verify our certainty of the cor- responding objective reality? The answer is simple: these factors of consciousness are necessary to thought, because in all our conscious experience we come into contact with the realities to which they correspond and which are the cause of the ideas. We have constant experimental knowledge of self, the world, and God. It is the constant shining light of their manifestation which gives to the ideas their necessity. The self reveals itself through all the conscious activ- ities of the mind, in its thinking, willing, and feeling. Descartes founded his philosophy upon the inexpugna- ble certainty of our own existence— “ Cogito, ergo sum.” ** Locke declared that we have the knowledge of our own existence by “intuition.” The highest test of knowledge in the common mind is to be as sure of a thing as we are of our own existence. Consciousness becomes self-consciousness when we clearly distinguish the subject from the object, the self from the not-self, and realize in all our mental ongoings the presence and manifestation of the single, indivisible ego, the person- ality, of which we predicate all the mind’s acts. Our knowledge is an experimental knowledge. Indeed, just in this consists the self-consciousness of man, which differences him from the brute, which has mere con- 58 HVIDENCE OF OHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. sciousness withont self-consciousness. At first the infant does not distinguish itself from the not-self. To it subject and object are mingled in one undifferentiated complex. Then, as the process of development goes on, the two begin to be distinguished and the ego rises above the horizon of consciousness. ‘*The baby, new to earth and sky, What time his tender palm is pressed Against the circle of the breast, Has never thought that ‘this is I:° ** But as he grows he gathers much, And learns the use of ‘I’ and ‘me,’ And finds ‘I am not what I see, And other than the things I touch :’ “‘So rounds he to a separate mind From whence clear memory may begin, As through the frame that binds him in His isolation grows defined.” * Self-consciousness dawns when he has experience of himself and stands forth a person, when as subject he knows himself as object, and brings together subject and object into unity. I know myself, and know that I am myself; and this means that I know myself as revealed in my thoughts, and feelings, and volitions, and know that I am the subject thus revealed. In a similar way we know the world—not indeed with the same immediateness with which we know our- selves, but none the less truly—through the effects it produces in our consciousness. The thing in itself is known through the phenomena, which do not hide it, but, on the contrary, reveal it. We do not, it is true, ever get behind the phenomena and behold the naked THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS, Do cause in its independence. The thought of doing so involves the absurdity of supposing we could know things apart from our faculty of knowledge; for the phenomenon is the thing in itself as we know it. The faculty of knowledge would commit suicide if it at- tempted to violate its own law. But there is not the slightest reason for calling in question the accuracy of its results. The several classes of sensations are each a revelation of the nature of the world in its material and physical attributes. The laws, relations, order, and beauty which we discover in them are a revelation of the ideal side of the world to our reason. Our belief in the accuracy of our knowledge of the world is not invalidated by the facts brought to light by physical science touching the difference between the causes af- fecting the end-organs of sense and the result in con- sciousness. It is true that sight is totally different from the cause of sight, namely, the vibrations of the ether, and sound from the movements of the atmos- phere which give rise to it. But these differences have to do, not with the passage from phenomena to their cause, but with the interpretation of one class of phe- nomena in terms of another. The man of science does not get behind knowledge when he discovers that the cause of the sensation of heat is the motion of the particles of a material substance ; this motion and these particles are just as much sensations as the heat itself, and the knowledge of the one is just as certain (and just as uncertain) as the knowledge of the other. The no- tion that the subjectivity of knowledge is proved in this way is so preposterous that one wonders it could be en- tertained for a moment by any thoughtful mind. In this connection we may speak of our knowledge 60 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. of our fellow-men, which stands midway between our knowledge of ourselves and our knowledge of the world, and is dependent upon both. Certain sensations belonging to the spheres of sight, hearing, and touch, are hieroglyphics from which we read off, in the light of our self-knowledge, the manifestation to ourselves of other self-conscious spirits. We are thus prepared to understand our knowledge of God. We know him through his self-revelations. It is an experimental knowledge. That which may be known of God is manifest in us; for God manifests it to us. This brings us to the arguments for the divine exist- ence. If they have been discredited in the old de- istic form, it has been only that they might be urged with new power and clearness in the new and better form. We know God through his manifestations of himself. Accordingly, each form of his self-revelation furnishes us with a proof of his existence. If I would prove the existence of the world to one whose mind has been disturbed by the philosophy of the subjective ideal- ist, my best method will beto bring before him each of the ways in which the world manifests itself to our sense and reason, and to show him that the facts can be explained only upon one assumption, namely, that there isa world. Through each of these channels the world enters my experience and reveals itself to me. So, to prove the divine existence, I must present the different methods of God’s manifestation and show that they can be explained only upon the assumption that God exists. Let it be borne in mind that the proof is not of the kind that proceeds from step to step of a train of THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS. 61 reasoning. Such argumentation belongs to notions rather than to facts. Tere lay the error of the old rationalism, signalized by the declaration of Locke, that we know the existence of God by demonstration. As Rickert says, ‘¢ Wer Gott nicht fiihlt in sich und allen Lebenskreisen, Dem werdet ihr Ihn nicht beweisen mit Beweisen.” God is from the first present in my experience, and my - proof is simply an analysis of my experience and a verification of it. Let us look at the arguments. The first is the ontological. It has had its full share of abuse, but it has persisted in spite of it. Let it be rightly stated, and every true theologian and philoso- pher must accept it. The idea of the Absolute is a ne- cessity of thought, and therefore a revelation of the ex- istence of the Absolute—that is the simple argument ; not the idea of God with its full theistic contents, but the idea of the Absolute—the formal idea, which tells us that there is an infinite Being, but does not tell us what that Being is. We are so constituted that we must think of something as eternal, unchangeable, su- perior to all limitations of space, capable of existing out of relation to all other beings and though no other be- ings should exist ; in a word, some self-existent Being. This much even the agnostic admits, as he admits also the force of the cosmological argument. Herbert Spen- cer says: “ Though the Absolute cannot in any man- ner or degree be known in the strict sense of knowing, yet we find that its positive existence is a necessary datum of consciousness; that so long as consciousness continues we cannot for an instant rid it of this da- 62 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. tum ; and that thus the belief which this datum consti- tutes has a higher warrant than any other whatever.” ” To doubt the force and objective validity of this idea would be to doubt everything. This “intellectual point of which we cannot get rid, but which we continue to think in the very attempt to think away,” * cannot be without a corresponding reality. Professor Flint does not overstate the truth when he declares, “ If, although I am constrained to conclude that there is an infinite and eternal Being, I may reject the conclusion on the supposition that reason is untrustworthy, I am clear- ly bound in self-consistency to set aside the testimony of my senses also by the assumption that they are habit- ually delusive.” ** The only explanation of the neces- ; sary idea of the Absolute is the actual existence of “| the Absolute. It is God himself who has set eternity in our heart (Eccles. 111.11). Reason falls into ruins if this fundamental idea is discredited. This form of thought, which “has a higher warrant than any other whatever,” must reveal to us the basal form of Reality. Next comes the cosmological argument. God re- veals himself through the material and physical world, as its First Cause, Ground, Life, and Governor. In presenting this proof, we do not leave the ontological behind us, but presuppose its presence and force. None of the arguments for the divine existence are to be taken separately ; together they form an organism of evi- dence. But undoubtedly the cosmological argument furnishes its own independent quota of proof. There is no evading the principle of causality ; it is necessary to thought and must be alaw to things. And yet there are no true causes in the world ; it is the region of ef- fects ; its apparent causes, when closely scrutinized, all THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS. 63 become effects. We must look deeper for our cause ; and in our search we come to God. Only the Absolute can be the cause we seek. In every second cause the First Cause makes its presence known to us. Kant asserts that causality is a category of the understanding and applies only to phenomena. Is not the fact just the converse? Is it not rather, in the truest and strictest sense, a category of the reason and applicable in the completeness of the idea only to the noumenon, the thing in itself, that is, to the Absolute ? Kant re- peatedly repudiates his own principles and attributes causation to the thing in itself. The English agnostics speak without hesitation of the “ Absolute Cause.” Perhaps we may even go further in our use of the cosmological argument, and infer something as to the nature of God besides mere causation. Our primitive knowledge of cause comes from ourselves. In our con- scious and free activities we set ourselves to change and new-mould ourselves and the non-ego. We do this through our wills. We think of the changes in the ma- terial world as due to causes because we know ourselves as causes. But, as we have seen, material causes are only effects. The natural sequences reveal no true cause when we look at them in themselves. The world cannot be its own cause. If, then, will is the only true cause of which we have knowledge, is it too much to infer that the true cause of all things is an infinite Will ? The teleological argument is based upon the divine self-revelation in the ideal side of the world. The uni- verse is not mere brute matter and energy ; it is in- stinct with reason. As we find in it a transcript of our own reason, so we are brought into contact with an ab- solute Reason. The order, harmony, and beauty of the 64 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. world, the laws which govern the activities of matter and energy, the mathematical relations existing between things, are all manifestations, not only of a creative Reason which presided at the beginning of things, but also of a Wisdom constantly energizing in the world. It is an ordered unity, a universe, a cosmos, and not a chaos. As we look upon it, material things and physi- cal forces seem almost to shrivel and disappear in the presence of omnipresent and universally active thought. The material is but the diaphanous veil that reveals rather than hides the divine Reason. Just as we know the thought of our fellow-men, whose spirits are per- ceived by no direct intuition, through the forms and motions of material things, which are signs to us of the movement of the invisible intellect, and convey its mes- sage to us ; so we know the thought of God through the material things which he has made and is constantly disposing according to his will. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his han- diwork. The argument from evidences of design is but a sub- ordinate form of this great argument from manifested Reason. The natural history of the world is the un- folding of adivine plan. If the theory of evolution be true—as it seems likely that it is, at least in its great outlines—then in the long procession of inorganic and living forms, from the primitive atoms to the begin- nings of life, and from the protozoon to man, we have an evidence of a superintending Wisdom so amazing that human thought reels when it contemplates it, and the old design argument, which confined itself to the presentation of isolated instances of adaptation in nat- ure, becomes a tallow candle in the presence of the THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS. 65 sun. Then when we look at human history, seeing its long, steady progress, the unceasing march upward, the direction to a far-off moral goal, the wonder heightens and we hide our faces before the glory of the all-wise God. God’s self-revelation in the constitution and opera- tions of the human soul gives us the psychological argu- ment. What isman? What is this self-conscious, self- determining personality, this thinking, feeling, willing essence? Can it be the creation of nature? No, for it is the lord of nature. Yet itis not eternal and self-ex- istent; it has had a beginning, though it has a present- iment that it will have no end. If Reason alone will account for reason in nature, @ fortior? Reason alone will account for human reason, the soul of man. Per- sonality, freedom, conscience, love, intellect—these are themselves almost divine, and they are the pledge that there isa Being truly divine, from whom they spring. Natural religion teaches the doctrine of the divine im- age in man, and the redemptive revelation does no more in this respect than confirm its truth. Nor must we stop short with the inference from the constitution of the human soul to its divine Creator ; there is in us a present revelation of the living God. Our reason is not an independent power; there is a true sense—though not the pantheistic—in which we must declare it to be a function of a higher Reason. God is the Light of all our intellectual, moral, and spirit- ual seeing. Our rational intuitions, upon the condition of which alone rational thought is possible, are depen- dent upon the constant presence and energizing of the divine Reason. Our moral nature and the operations of conscience are 5 66 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. a still higher revelation of God, and furnish us with what is called the moral argument. We are free, able to choose our ends, yet under obligation, owing alle- giance to law, which bids us choose not as we please but asis right. This is to be moral beings, and this is the proof that our Creator is a moral being, free yet under obligation, not to some power outside of himself but to his own holy nature. Moreover, conscience is the ever- present and ever-active witness to the sanctity of the moral law; not itself the voice of God, but the channel through which the voice of God comes to us. Con- science is the revelation of a holy Will, a righteous Person laying his claims upon us and demanding our obedience. The utilitarian theory of morals, alike in its old form which explains our moral nature as the re- sult of education and its later evolutionary form which accounts for it through inherited habit, utterly fails to furnish a satisfactory explanation of the sanctity of duty and the authority it carries with it. The moral argument is commonly stated in another form also, in which the teleological proof is combined with the moral. The active presence of the moral law in the world is evidenced by the constitution of society, its institutions and customs, the course of human his- tory, and the progress of the race. The ‘‘ Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness” is the holy God. And so the moral argument merges into the re- ligious, which is really not a different proof but an- other aspect of the same. In the religious life God re- veals himself as a Person, holding fellowship with us as persons. In the recesses of a quiet spirit the Divine and the human meet in blessed communion. Here is THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS. 67 the sanctuary where the experience of God is consum- mated and the proof of his existence attains its strong. est and most convincing form. Of the reality of such communion every soul knows something. I should not except even the avowed atheist, for I doubt not that God enters even into his soul, though he may put a false construction upon the facts. When I see the atheist himself trying to find some substitute for the theist’s God, that he may worship it—some ideal, some ab- straction of humanity, some personification of nature or reason, I know the meaning; the God he will not rec- ognize is there, and in his inmost heart he knows it.™ We are thus brought back to the point from which we started, the higher view of God’s nature and relation to the world and man which has been brought to light by the modern philosophy of religion. In a word, it is the view of a God personal and transcendent, yet al- ways and everywhere present and active, a God who is constantly revealing himself through his works and to his intelligent creatures, a God with whom we are in constant contact in our experience. It is the true the- istic conception of God, guarded on both sides, against the errors of deism and the errors of pantheism, agnos- ticism, and materialism. In this experience of God every soul of man has a part. He is not far from every one of us; in him we live and move and have our being. It is possible for every soul, however degraded, however ignorant and humble, to feel after him and find him (Acts xvii. 27, 28). I do not claim that all men have an adequate knowledge of him. The account that has been given of him in this lecture is that which is attained by the philosophy of religion in its highest exercise under 68 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. the full light and influence of Christianity. Under the power of sin the souls of men have been darkened. All have access to the facts that have been presented here, but the vast majority of men are quite incapable of putting our interpretation upon them. From the height which we are privileged to reach the scale stretches down through every grade-of knowledge to the lowest forms of heathenism. Yet the knowledge of God is common knowledge. However imperfectly and per- vertedly men may hold it and express it, all have it, so that when the higher Christian truth comes to a soul, it does not come to one ignorant of God, but to one that from its earliest days has felt his presence and power. LECTURE III. PHILOSOPHICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS—ANTHROPOLOGICAL. THERE is a philosophy of man which is essentially connected with the theistic philosophy of God. Like the latter, it forms a necessary presupposition of the evidence of Christian experience. Here also we have reason to rejoice that the best thought of our age has reached such true and satisfactory results. The rationalistic movement of the last century be- gan with the exaltation of man. Its watchword was human reason. Man was made the measure of all things. It was claimed that the human intellect is capable of solving, through its own resources, all the problems of the universe, and of sitting in judgment upon all professed revelations. The age never tired of singing the praises of man, of his nobility, his god- likeness, his high destination. As the dignity of the human intellect was exalted, so that of the human will. The tendency was to make light of sin and to magnify the power of man to work out his own salvation. Dut this view of man contained the seeds of its own de- struction. As the deistic rationalism, when it worked itself out to its logical consequences, retired God from the universe, so it lowered man to the level of nature. This is the tendency we see in the philosophy of Locke, which was pre-eminently the philosophy of rationalism—a tendency, it is true, that is still strng- 70 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. gling with the higher view, but not without suggestive intimations of an principles that were to find full ex- pression, on the one hand, in the materialism of the Frenchmen Condillac, Helvetius, Diderot, and D’Hol- bach, and, on the other hand, in the scepticism of Hume. In all probability Locke, in spite of his polemic against innate ideas, was not a sensationalist pure and simple, but the whole drift of his system was in the direction of a thorough-going application of the maxim: ‘ Wihal est in intellectu, quod non prius fuerit in sensu.” The introduction to his famous Essay concerning Human Understanding begins with the words: “ Since it is the understanding that sets man above the rest of sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over them, it is certainly a subject even for its nobleness, worth our labor to en- quire into.”* Yet it cannot be denied that at most of the points where the great philosopher had the opportu- nity to show the superiority of man, not only in de- gree but in kind, to the lower orders i being, he failed to do so. It is phate cernne of the whole trend of his thought that he suggests the Pose ay of the ma- teriality of the soul mad denies man’s natural immor- tality.’ The seeds, whose sowing is so evident in the days of the deistic rationalism, have attained abundant fruitage in our modern materialism and agnosticism. In our own ‘day we have seen these systems directing their power- ful enginery of philosophical tani against every view of man which would make him different in kind from the brute. Moreover, even Christian thought has been largely leavened by the rationalistic view of man. This was especially the case during the earlier ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. él part of the present century, when the influence of Locke was still predominant in philosophy. The reaction in favor of the truer and higher view of man, which has come at length, has been due in part to the influences mentioned in the previous lectures as contributing to the better method in apologetics and the truer conception of God’s nature and relation to the world and men. But only in part. Though pantheism has done something to counteract the materialistic view of man, it has failed to furnish us with any satisfactory substitute for it. Physical science has, to far too great an extent, given aid and comfort to those who would obliterate the distinction between man and _ nature. - Agnosticism is in no essential respect different in its doctrine of man from the old materialistic sensational- ism. Infidelity in its later forms joins hands with the old deism in uncompromising opposition to the theistic doctrine of man—a doctrine rightly called theistic, since we meet it nowhere except in connection with the theistic conception of God. In the present lecture let us look somewhat closely at the elements of this doctrine of man which form the anthropological postulates of the evidence of Chris- tian experience. I. The theistic philosophy of man asserts that he is a being allied in his nature and capacities to God. In order to classify him aright, we must place him in the same category with the great Being revealed to us through nature as the Creator, Ruler, and End of nature. Man is spirit. He bears in his being the im- age of God. He is in finiteness what God is in infini- tude. As it is true that we can. know God only through man, it is equally true that we can know man only 72 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. through God. The ideas of God and man are correla- tive. As every true conception of God must be in a sense anthropomorphic, so every true conception of man must be in a sense theomorphic. And as man is a being made like God, so he is a being made for God. His final cause is found not in nature or in himself, but in his Maker. He is capable of communion with God. He is bound to God by the moral law and con- science. Thus, though he is finite, yet through his con- nection with God he has an infinite value; and even philosophy, apart from special revelation, gives us in- timations that though he has his origin and earthly existence in time, he may participate in the divine eternity. The philosophy of theism, therefore, asserts the intrinsic and absolute superiority of man to nature. Man is, indeed, in a true sense, a part of nature, if in nature we include all created and finite beings. The poverty and partial ambiguity of our language embarrass us here. Jn common usage the term nature has not the same breadth when used in antithesis to man as when opposed to the Supernatural. I doubt whether anything is gained by the attempt to establish a single consistent use of the word. Man is in nature, so far as he is a created and finite being, and forms a part of the sensible order of things; he is above nature, so far as he possesses qualities denied to all other created beings connected with the sensible order of things. Yet he is not supernatural in the common meaning of that word—that is, he is neither divine nor disconnected from the sensible order of things.* Man is also a part of nature in the sense that he is implicated with nature through his bodily organism, ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 73 and that the world of nature is the theatre of his activities. | But the distinctive part of man, that which gives him his peculiar quality as human, is wholly different from anything which nature in the lower meaning of the term can show. The difference is not merely one of degree, it is one of kind. The human spirit, with its godlike nature and. powers, is a form of existence absolutely diverse from anything else in the world. When it appears in the history of our globe, it is as something entirely new and unique. The chasm be- tween the highest animal and the lowest man is to-day, as it always has been, impassable. The non-theistie philosophies of our times take their stand in determined and violent resistance to every such view of man. From the nature of the case they cannot do otherwise. Denying, as they do, the exist- ence of a personal God, they are compelled to deny the existence of aman made in his image, and for com- munion with him. This is especially the case with materialism and agnosticism. The one asserts that the ultimate cause of all things is matter and energy ; the other, that it is the unknown Power behind phenomena, with which philosophy has nothing to do beyond the assertion of its existence. Both are compelled to ex- plain man in terms of matter, force, and motion. In other words, he is a purely natural product, and a purely natural being, whose superiority to the animal consists only in degree. The strength of the present attack upon what I have called the theistic conception of man, is largely due to the scientific basis which materialism and agnosticism claim to derive from the theory of evolution, a claim 74 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. which is, unfortunately, widely conceded to them by the unthinking. Of the value of the conception of evolution in science and philosophy, as well as in the- ology, it is needless for me to speak ; it is the posses- sion of the theist quite as much as of his opponents. Nor is it needful at this late day for the theologian to turn aside to concede with cheerful alacrity the great importance and probable truth—within such limits as science itself prescribes to all its working hypotheses— of that scientific theory which now commonly bears the name of evolution, the Darwinian doctrine of the derivation of species by descent through the operation of natural selection and its kindred laws. This doc- trine has proved its value by the immense impulse it has given to science and the light it has thrown upon extensive ranges of facts not previously understood. But the evolution taught by the materialistic and ag- nostic philosophies—as in the so-called evolutionary philosophy of Herbert Spencer—is in no sense scienti- fic, and cannot be too sharply distinguished from the scientific theory in its legitimate use. It is a mere philosophical speculation, which starts from the assump- tion of the actual or practical exclusion of God as the First Cause of the universe, and attempts to explain all things through natural causes. This is true of the subject immediately before us. The attempt to give a purely natural explanation of man rests upon philosophical rather than scientific as- sumptions. It is indeed true that Darwin gave the im- pulse to this view in his work on the Descent of Man,‘ and that such eminent men of science as Huxley ° and Romanes* have followed in his path. It is also true that they have brought forward a vast nuinber of ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 15D facts which go to show, what the theist is not in the slightest degree interested to deny, that man on his ma- terial or animal side is correlated with the orders be- low him, and may in this way be connected with them by descent. That our material organisms to-day are de- rived directly from the vegetable and animal worlds, through the food we eat, goes without saying. We are not concerned to deny that they may, for aught we know, ages ago have been derived less directly from the vegetable and animal worlds through descent. But that is not the point. We object only to the ille- gitimate use of the theory of evolution, and we claim that it is so used when it is asserted to be a sufficient explanation of the higher nature of man. If the ver- dict of the scientific man is needed, we confront the one discoverer of the principle of natural selection with the other, Darwin with Wallace.” But it is not a matter of science. Not a particle of scientific proof has been adduced to show that man in his distinctive characteristics is derived from the animal. It is nota matter that can be settled by an appeal to the compara- tive sizes of hnman and brute craniums, or the compara- tive weight of their contents. It cannot be settled by showing in the brute instincts and intelligence the rudi- ments of the mental powers of man. To exhibit in the calls and cries of animals the beginnings of language does not help the matter. All these facts he in the sphere common to the animal and man. But when it comes to his distinctive qualities, his self-conscious per- sonality, his reason, with its intuition of universal prin- ciples and its power of unifying knowledge, and trans- forming the dead mechanical world into a living thought- world, his freedom of will, his moral nature, his relig- 76 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. ious nature, with its capacity of knowing and loving God —when it comes to these, the scientific theory of evolu- tion by descent has no light at all to throw upon the subject.° Here is a sphere entirely different from those below. Here is a new spiritual cause and agent who demands a new and altogether different explanation. The claim, then, made by the philosophies of which we have been speaking, to possess a scientific basis in the theory of evolution is without justification. The real ground of their doctrine of man is to be found, as has been already intimated, in their peta a respect- ing the ultimate cause of the universe.” The pantheistic doctrine of man is undoubtedly su- perior in important respects to that of the agnostics and the materialists. At first sight it seems even to go beyond theism in its assertion of man’s worth. It not only makes him godlike, but actually declares him to be divine. He is the finite revelation of the Infinite. In him the Absolute realizes its true being. But when we come to examine this view more closely we are dis- appointed. The error in the conception of God utterly vitiates the doctrine of man. It is all very well to de- clare that man is divine, but such declarations lose their value when we his ds: what is meant by divinity. Here is not a personal God who creates man in his own image and enters into spiritual communion with him, but an impersonal and unconscious Being that attains consciousness and personality only in man. Man is made divine, but it is by reducing the divine to an im- personal Substance or Thought. And even this poor dignity is not left to man. Ho 3 is not the only expres- sion of the divine, but merely the highest stage in that process of evolution by which the Absolute realizes it- ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. rig self in finiteness, differing from the brute only in degree and not in kind. God is levelled down to nature, and man is but a part of nature. It seems, indeed, a great gain when we pass from the brute matter and energy of the materialist, and the dreary Unknown of the ag- nostic, to the universal Reason of the idealistic panthe- ist. But sooner or later we discover that we have been deceived. The reason is not what we supposed. It turns out to be a mere abstraction, a phantom without reality, and man is left a part of nature, distinguished from the lower orders by no essential characteristics.” The theistic philosophy of man repudiates these false views of false philosophies and asserts the unique position of its subject as a child of God, raised by his distinctive qualities far above nature. Let us look now at some of the details of this doctrine. II. The philosophy for which I am pleading main- tains the true personality of man. We have touched upon this subject in the previous lecture, where it was shown that the idea of self is one of the three funda- mental ideas of the human mind which have the high- est validity, and where the rise and nature of self-con- sciousness are briefly described. A person is a self- conscious, self-determining being. Personality is the simple but ineffable quality in which the human ego or subject consists. It is the postulate of all thought, in the true sense of the term, and of all moral and religi- ous exercises. It gives to man that unity in virtue of which he is an individual being. Indeed, it is not too much to say that it is the type and pledge of all unity as realized by human thought; it is because we know ourselves to be one that we can bring the scattered phe- nomena of sense and spirit into unity. Personal iden- 78 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. tity is the precondition of memory. The absolute unity of the ego furnishes the metaphysical argument for the immortality of the soul, which natural theology in all ages has loved to develop. That unconquerable difference between man and the brute, which the theistic philosophy so strongly asserts, appears nowhere more evidently than here, The ani- mal, like the man, is an individual, but his individual- ity isnot personal. It is conscious, but not self-conscious. It has memory, but not that kind of memory which is woven into such wonderful unity by the personal iden- tity of man. The state of the animal is like that of the child before self-consciousness has developed—with the difference that in the former self-consciousness does not exist even germinally.. If we look at the history of the globe, the point where self-consciousness first appears is marked off by a sharp line from all that precedes and is followed by an entirely new class of facts, of which previously there is but the dim prophecy. And now man stands alone in nature in the possession of this wonderful selfhood, utterly distinguished from all the creatures about him. How much is involved in that little pronoun I by which we designate our self-conscious personality! “A very short word,” says Charles Kingsley, “for in our language there is but one letter in it. A very common word; for we are using it all day long when we are awake, and even at night in our dreams; and yet a very wonderful word, for though we know well whom it means, yet what it means we do not know, and cannot understand, no, nor can the wisest philosopher who ever lived; and a most important word too; for we cannot get rid of it, we cannot help thinking it, cannot ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 79 help saying it all our life long from childhood to the grave. After death, too, we shall probably be saying that word to ourselves, each of us, for ever and ever. If the whole universe—sun, moon, and stars—and all that we ever thought of, or can think of, were destroyed and became nothing, that word would probably be left ; and we should be left alone with it; and on what we meant by that little word would depend our everlasting happiness or misery.” " The language is not too strong to express the fact. The denial of personality is involved in the position of the non-theistic philosophies. We have seen that they obliterate the difference between man and the animal. In order to do so—or as a consequence of doing so—they would prove man impersonal. This is the case, without hesitation or equivocation, in all materialistic philosophizing. The boundaries between the physical and the psychical are broken down, and mental phenomena are explained entirely through the reactions of the brain upon the impressions received through the nerves and the end-organs of sense. The only unity allowed is that of the bodily organism. The belief in the existence of an ego or mind is scouted asa delusion. Agnosticism goes through the forms of burn- ing incense on the altar of the Unknowable by the ad- mission that what is called the ego has an inscrutable reality ; but, this pious duty performed, it hurries on to overtake the materialists in the practical denial of per- sonality. The sceptic Hume had said, “ What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations, and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity and identity.” In similar language his 80 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. modern follower, the agnostic Spencer, declares that the mind is “ composed of feelings and the relation be- tween feelings, and the aptitudes of feelings for enter- ing into relations,” and in his discussions of the subject of free-will speaks of “the illusion” which ‘consists in supposing that at each moment the ego is something more than the aggregate of feelings and ideas, actual and nascent, which then exists.” “ The pantheist also, while admitting in words the personality of man, so defines it as practically to aban- don what is essential to the fact. Nor can he in con- sistency do otherwise. The personality of God and that of man are inseparably connected. He who denies the one must deny the other. If God is impersonal, or possesses only a guasz personality, it is vain to look in man for any true selfhood. So the pantheist has no choice in the matter. His system lays compulsion upon him. This is true alike of the thorough-going panthe- ism of Spinoza and the panlogism of Hegel.” III. Closely connected with the assertion of man’s personality, which is fundamental in the theistic phi- losophy, is the affirmation of his freedom. Our reason- ing in the previous lecture assumed this. It is only when we know ourselves as free, and because we know ourselves as such, that we are able to transcend the region of necessity, to which nature, inanimate and animate, belongs, and attain to the knowledge of an infinite spirit, free like ourselves. What is the true meaning of human freedom ? Simply this, that men have the power, which animals do not possess, of rational choice. By rational choice I mean the selection of one out of two or more ends of action, in full view of these ends, understanding them ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 51 and their relations to each other and other possible ends, and with full ability to have chosen otherwise. We distinguish this chozce, wherein the freedom of the will is expressed, from volition or the executive power, through which the choice is carried into accomplish- ment, and which is not free. If we compare man with the animals, we declare that the latter have volitions but no choices in the true sense of the word. The animal is zmpelled by impulses and instincts, acting from behind and not in the light of reason. Man is attracted by motives, which are not compulsory but only furnish him with the grounds of action. These motives are before him, alluring him onward. The man indeed feels the pressure of impulses and instincts like the animal, for he too possesses an animal nature; but he is able to bring them into the light of reason, to examine and weigh them, and to set them into rela- tion with higher considerations. It lies in his option whether he will yield to one set of motives or another. There is a true sense in which he makes the motive by throwing his choice into the scale and giving this motive or that the predominance. A man knows what he is about and acts accordingly ; abrute only partially knows what it is about and does not choose in any true mean- ing of the word. What seems a choice in the case of the animal is ‘‘ Hobson’s choice,” a choice without al- ternative, that is, no choice at all. Man’s freedom is expressed in different kinds of choices, varying according to the ends which they adopt. Some are momentary in their efficacy ; some are per- manent. ‘To the latter class belong the choices of the great ends of life, including the supreme end. These permanent choices constitute character. A permanent 6 82 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN HXPERIENCE. choice from the nature of the case determines a multi- tude of subordinate choices, and the choice of a su- preme end affects all subordinate choices. Freedom persists and is immanent in such choices; they are its highest exercise. They entrench themselves in habit and give the fixed element to human life. It is a mis- take to suppose that freedom and certainty are incon- sistent with each other in either God or man. The proof of freedom consists ultimately in the ap- peal to consciousness. The unsophisticated mind knows itself to befree. This certainty of freedom is involved in all moral judgments and exercises, in the sense of re- sponsibility, in the recognition of law. It finds a war- rant in the institutions of human society and the actions of men throughout the ages. If the determinist denies the appeal to consciousness, we do not impugn his hon- esty, but we show him that he, like every other man, must think and act upon the assumption of freedom, and that he inevitably judges other men by the same rule. We therefore assert that he misinterprets his consciousness. If he attempts to prove his point by the assertion that man is a part of the universe and that the universe is under necessary law, we appeal once more to consciousness to show that man is the great exception, correlated with nature yet different from all other nat- ural beings. If he has recourse to statistics to show that man himself is under necessary law, even in the sphere of conduct—so many murders committed every year, so many suicides, so many thefts, — we show that character, the fixed element in freedom, and the nature-side of man, in which he is not free, are suffi- cient to account for the facts, while the statistics them- selves yary so much as to prove their inadequacy for ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITI ONS. 83 the task assigned them. But we always come back to the ultimate proof, the assurance of consciousness that we are free—an assurance that vindicates itself in prac- tical thought and action when men deny it in specula- tion. The non-theistic philosophies of our day are deter- ministic. It could not be otherwise; the logic of their denial of the theistic conception of God requires also the denial of this distinctive elementin man. There never has been, and never can be, any cordial recognition of freedom outside of theism. And conversely, the de- nial of freedom in man means, if it is consistently car- ried out, the denial of God and religion. It goes with- out saying that materialism is deterministic. But this is equally true of agnosticism and pantheism. Spencer, in his chapter on the will, in the Principles of Psychol- ogy, declares that the belief in free-will is an illusion. He says: “To reduce the general question to its sim- plest form: Psychical changes either conform to law or they do not. If they do not conform to law, this work ” (the Principles of Psychology), “in common with all works on the subject, is sheer nonsense ; no science of Psychology is possible. If they do conform to law, there cannot be any such thing as free-will.” Spino- za, in the same way, denies human freedom. The later pantheism does the same; the only freedom it concedes is that which consists in rising out of the life of nature into that of the spirit; it finds no place for freedom in the sense of the power of choice. The present tendencies of scientific and theological thought render the subject before us peculiarly impor- tant. Undoubtedly the cultivated minds of our times gravitate strongly in the direction of determinism, while 84 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERI ENCE. they are to a considerable degree supported in this ten- dency by our traditional theology. Before the time of Jonathan Edwards Christian orthodoxy did not deny hu- man freedom. It did indeed insist with the strongest emphasis that man in his natural unconverted state has no power to attain to salvation ; he cannot convert him- self, he cannot in any true sense obey the divine law, he cannot attain the chief end for which he was created. In this sense it was declared that man is unfree. But there was no intention of denying that men possess that power of rational choice which differences them from the brutes. All that was claimed was that through sin this power has become inoperative in one department of man’s nature, the spiritual. The distinction was carefully made between the “ spiritual things ” in which the sinner is disabled, and the sphere of ‘civil right- cousness,” including all the departments of his active life in which he is not directly occupied with religion, where he is still free. Thus the principle of human freedom is fully vindicated, though its sphere of action in sinful man is limited. Indeed the old Calvinistic theology did not greatly concern itself with the philo- sophical question respecting the freedom of the will, but taking freedom for granted, as every unsophisti- cated mind must do, it was only careful in the practi- eal interests of Christian truth, which demands the ab- solute supremacy of the divine grace, to repudiate all power on the part of lost sinners to work out their own salvation.” It was an evil day for Christian theology when Jon- athan Edwards called to the aid of the doctrines of grace, imperiled, as he thought, by Arminianism, the doctrine of philosophical determinism.” I say this, ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 85 realizing fully the greatness of the man and the impor- tance of the work he did for theology and practical religion. But I say it deliberately. What Edwards accomplished i in staying the flood of rationalistic indif- ference which was sweeping over America as well as Great Britain cannot be too highly prized. The great revivals which he initiated put a new face on the Christian cause. The renewed currency he gave to the old truths of spiritual religion, and the importance he attached to Christian experience as a real contact of the soul with God and Christ are least of all in a course of lectures like this to be underestimated. The impulse he gave to theological thought, and the miti- gation of some of the asperities of the older Calvinism, which we owe to him, have made all succeeding gener- ations his debtors. Nevertheless, in spite of all this, the alliance which he established between theology and a false philosophy was fraught with evil. The dam- age would have been even greater, had not the real nature of the doctrine in point been partially hidden by the continued use of the old term freedom, though in a new sense. Indeed, there was an unintended and largely unconscious insincerity in the language em- ployed, which appeared most notably in the prevalent distinction between natural and moral ability. It was possible to tell men that they were free, when all the freedom conceded to them was the ability to do as they pleased, a freedom amounting to no more than the spontaneity of the brute. It seems strange that an alliance so dangerous should have commended itself so extensively to the most de- voted and intelligent men in our evangelical churches for more than a century. It is useless to try to mini- 86 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. mize the doctrine; it is necessarianism pure and sim- ple. Man is governed by motives, and these are not of his own making. His will is simply a machine which registers the action of the strongest motive. The fact that motives are not material or physical, but spiritual causes, that they are from within and not from without, does not change the matter. The freedom that consists only in doing as we please, not in rational choice between alternatives, both lying in our power, is no freedom. I freely admit that the fact that the ulti- mate Cause, to which the complicated lines of motives and influences may all be traced back, is the Christian God, prevents Edwards’s doctrine from being imme- diately irreligious in its tendency. But the true out- come of this philosophy is Dr. Emmons’s doctrine of the divine efficiency,” according to which the good and the bad in man are alike the results of God’s direct oper- ation—or, to state the fact more truly, the logical re- sult is some form of materialistic or agnostic atheism. Only the interests of evangelical Christianity, to which this philosophical help was supposed necessary, could have made men, so consecrated and so wise in other matters, hold a view from which the common-sense of man revolts. This denial of freedom, which is so marked a feature of our age, falling in as it does with the scientific spir- it, and imposing upon multitudes who have not suffi- cient philosophical training to detect its fallacy and its logical consequences, is a fact full of danger. The best thought, philosophical and theological, of our time recognizes this danger, and is endeavoring to guard against it by the maintenance and vindication of a truer philosophy. It would be scarcely true to say ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 87 that the majority are at present upon this side. But fortunately such questions are not settled by majori- ties, but by reason and conscience. It is significant to note how the more thoughtful minds among the theo- logians who still accept the system of Jonathan Ed- wards are awakening to the peril which threatens the- istic and Christian truth, and are trying to avert it. Thus, the younger Dr. Hodge, of precious memory among evangelical Christians, declares: “‘ This matter of free-will underlies everything. Ifyou bring it to question, it is infinitely more than Calvinism. Everything i is gone if free-will is gone; the moral sys- tem is gone if free-will is gone; you cannot escape, except by materialism on the one hand or pantheism on the other.” Well may he use language like this when an agnostic determinist like Huxley” asserts his entire agreement with Jonathan Edwards and the or- thodox theologians respecting the doctrine of necessity. It is to be regretted that Dr. Hodge is so. involved in the necessarian doctrine that he goes on to affirm the only difference between the spontaneity of a mouse and the free-will of a man to be that the latter acts “ with the illumination of reason and conscience.” The truth is, in the struggle between Christianity and un- belief, the Christian is placed in a position of inevita- ble disadvantage, unless he is able to affirm clearly and unequivocally the freedom of the will.” IV. Again, the theistic philosophy of man declares that he is under law. I have touched upon this truth in presenting the moral argument for the divine exist- ence, in which the fact of a law laying obligation upon our wills is shown to be a reason for assuming the ex- istence of an absolute Will, holy, just, and good. It is 88 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. of the utmost importance for our present task that we make good the position involved in the assertion that man is under a moral law. Morality and religion are essentially correlated ; they are different aspects of the same fact. The attitude of man toward law which we call moral becomes religious when it is considered as his attitude toward the Lawgiver. Morals and religion meet in the Jaw of love: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength and mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.” Upon this subject likewise we part company with the non-theistic philosophies. Pantheism lays great stress upon the law of right. At first it seems to maintain it with all the reverence of the theist. It repudiates the hedonistic ethics and insists upon the eternal and nec- essary sanctity of the right as something belonging to the very constitution of things, as inherent iin God him- self. But a closer examination compels us to tell a very different story. The denial of the divine personality and of human personality and freedom characteristic of pantheism vitiates its ethics, much as it contains that is valuable. Man is only a part of the great process, at once divine and natural. The law of right is a natural law, not a moral law in the true meaning of the term. It designates an ideal but does not set up an authority. It points out the course of man’s development if he is to realize the germinal moral life in him, but it does not speak to his conscience in the thunder tones of a divine command laying obligation upon a being free to accept or reject. It is no personal Power, but an un- conscious “ Eternal not ourselves that makes for right- eousness,” In a movement of nature in which it and we alike are by necessity implicated. Such a system gives ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 89 no trne basis for morality or religion. It is, in fact, no permanent resting-place for human thought. The his- tory of philosophy shows that it always sooner or later gives place to some form of hedonistic or utilitarian ethics, if not to the denial of all ethics. Equally unsatisfactory are the materialistic and ag- nostic systems of ethics. It is sufficient for our present purpose to confine ourselves to the latter. If the abso- Inte Cause is unknown, it is evident that ethics can de- rive no sanction from that source; such a sanction would imply that the Absolute is holy, which is con- trary to the fundamental maxim of agnosticism, that the Absolute is wholly unknown. Dean Mansel, the Christian agnostic, declared that morality might mean something different in God from what it does in man ; but he supplemented agnosticism by divine revelation and thus secured a basis for ethics. Unbelieving agnos- tics, like Herbert Spencer, who will not avail them- selves of any such Deus ex machina, are obliged to turn elsewhere to find a foundation for morals. Accordingly, _ they have recourse to the old hedonistic utilitarianism, modified by the application of the principle of evolu- tion. “ Conduct is good or bad,” says Spencer, ‘ accord- ing as its total effects are pleasurable or painful.” * The pleasure which renders an act good is not necessarily that of the individual, for Spencer recognizes the fact that we are members of society, and makes a place in his theory, like Bentham and Mill, for “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” and so for “ altru- istic”? as well as “egoistic” or “self-regarding” mo- tives. But he says that the “ general happiness is to be achieved mainly through the adequate pursuit of their own happiness by individuals; while, reciprocally, the 90 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. happinesses of individuals are to be achieved in part by their pursuit of the general happiness,” ** Mill had ex- plained the moral sense by association and education. Spencer explains it by evolution and heredity. It is a constitutional instinct resulting from the accumulated experience of men as to the tendency of conduct to pro- duce pleasure or pain, or, what is the same thing, to pro- mote life or diminish it. But this theory, ingeniously though it has been wrought out by the agnostic evolutionists, fails to ex- plain the facts and affords no adequate basis for morals and religion. The distinctive feature of the moral law is the authority with which it comes. It has for its mark neither the must of a law of nature, nor the should of a law of expediency, but the ougAé of a high- er Will laying obligation upon our wills. Grant that the tendency of that course of conduct which we call right is to secure the highest happiness of the individ- ual and society, or of the individual in society, still why are we bound to strive for the attainment of that hap- piness? It is indeed expedient, desirable, important ; but why should it be obligatory ? These are questions the agnostic ethics cannot answer. Nor does it help the matter by the appeal to evolution; for granting that the moral sense is inherited, still how did it first acquire this element of obligation? No accumulation of infinitesimal increments of expediency will ever pro- duce obligation. The two things belong to different spheres. Evolution, as we have seen already, breaks down when it comes to man’s higher nature. Moreover, this theory of ethics gives no sufficient foundation for man’s ethico-religious exercises. Law should turn us to a personal Lawgiver, a Being whom ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 91 we can worship, a Master whom we can serve. But here we have merely an unconscious and impersonal law of nature, utterly powerless to command our rev- erence, our obedience, or our trust. In the presence of these widely held and utterly er- roneous systems of ethics, which reduce the moral law to a name, we need to uphold with unflinching constancy the true doctrine of right, essential to both religion and Christianity. “Right is right, since God is God.” The moral law proclaims alike in conscience and in the world about us that we are under the government of a personal God who would have us holy because he is holy. Conscience is his Sinai in our souls, which flash- es out denunciation of wrong, and his Calvary, from which the message of peace and good-will comes to us when we are in the way of his commandments.” We have not been put into this world to be happy, but to do right.” We may believe—and ought, since God is good, to do so—that righteousness and happiness will ultimately prove coincident. But that is an issue which we must trust to God himself; it is not the founda- tion of conduct, and can never be made its prime motive. V. So we are brought to another closely related fact which our theistic philosophy asserts and vindicates, namely, that man is a responsible being. He must an- swer for the use of his freedom in its relation to the moral law; and the answer must be not to an imper- sonal law, not to his fellow-men or himself, but to God. The immense cleft between the brute and man, which has manifested itself all through our present discussion, here comes fully to light. You can neither reward nor punish a brute in any real meaning of the words re- ward and punish ; it is nota responsible being. The 92 HVIDENOCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. child has only a dawning responsibility. The mature man, standing out in the clear light of his moral re- sponsibility, with the divine law arching like a firma- ment above him, is an accountable being, since he is free, rational, personal. Our prevalent legislative and legal ethics, so far as it assumes that human law and punishment have for their exclusive object the pre- vention of crime and the reformation of the criminal, mistakes the truth. Thus capital punishment has been abolished in some quarters, and the whole theory of punishment in many respects changed. But this utili- tarian doctrine of responsibility degrades man to the brute’s level. Why should criminals be punished 4 Because they are guilty—that is, because they are re- sponsible beings and have to answer for the abuse of their freedom. What is human law? It is an ex- pression of the divine law; otherwise it has no mean- ing. The magistrate is God’s deputy. There is no authority but of God; and the authorities that be are ordained of God (Rom. xiii. 1). We are responsible beings and accountable to our Maker. VI. This opens the way for the consideration of another fact asserted by the theistic philosophy, and either openly, or by implication, denied by its rivals: I refer to the fact of human sin. The doctrine of sin belongs to the sphere of natural theology and the phi- losophy of religion. Christianity throws a new light upon sin and reveals its true character, but it does not first disclose its existence. Sin, as has been truly said, is not a doctrine but a fact. Christianity may be true or false, but still sin is here. It is @ prvori to Christian experience, a fact without which that experience would not be possible. | ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 93 What is sin? Has it a reality, as the vast majority of mankind have declared in all ages and declare to- day? or is it a mere figment of the imagination? It is of the utmost importance that we should be per- suaded in our own minds as to the truth. The theistic thought which I have been expounding gives no uncer- tain answer to the question. As it declares that man is personal, free, under law, and responsible, so it declares that he is a sinner, and that sin is a breach of the moral law, and disobedience to God. Sin, and the con- sequent guilt, 1t recognizes as realities in the moral uni- verse, as certain as the great realities of the physical world. Sin, it declares, is an abuse of freedom by using it in disobedience to the moral law and its divine Author. Guilt is the reaction of the divine wrath upon us when we sin, witnessed in conscience, which pro- claims our responsibility as the authors of our sin. The antagonistic philosophies I have had occasion so many times to mention, all, in some form or other, deny sin. The denial of pantheism is the most plausible and difficult to detect in its true meaning. We have seen with what fervor the pantheist insists upon the sanctity of the right in distinction from the wrong. But his theory, with the denial of the divine personality, and of human personality, freedom, and accountability, neces- sarily excludes sin in the meaning attached to it by the theist. If God is the source of all things, the ground of all development; if the development of nature and man is an unfolding of what from the first has been implicit in God; if nature is manifested God, and God the natura naturans, then what we call sin has its origin in God and is itself in a true sense divine. There is no evading this logic. Accordingly, when we come 04 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. to look more closely at pantheism, we find that it re- duces sin to an element in the divine process equally necessary with goodness, though not equally good. It is finiteness, it is the outcome of the sensuous nature of man, it is a stage in development necessary for the attainment of a higher stage, it is the necessary converse of goodness—its antithesis, its opposite pole. It is a discord which is needful to the attainment of a higher harmony. In a word, it is divine as well as human, necessary rather than free, only relatively evil instead of altogether evil. And if the evil of sin is relative, so is its guilt relative. Guilt is not the responsible authorship of sin, witnessing to a broken law and a displeased God; it is an illusion, as, indeed, sin itself is an illusion. Let a man get his bearings in the universe, and sin and guilt disappear. The result is the conclusion that sin, ‘‘in itself considered,” is in- deed evil; but that, “all things considered,” it is good.” Let the sinner once discover the secret and he is no lon- ger a sinner; he is a discord necessary to the harmony, and therefore himself harmonious. This is character- _istic of all pantheism ; it makes light of sin.” Agnosticism does no better. It has only this advan- tage, that it does not hide its meaning under religious phraseology, but says right out what it means. Of course it can only say one thing. If right is the con- duct which promotes pleasure, and wrong that which promotes pain; if pleasure is conformity with environ- ment, and pain indicates non-conformity, then sin is physical rather than ethical, it is a misfortune rather than a wrong, it carries with it defect and loss rather than guilt. The same thing follows from the deter- minism, which is essential to the agnostic view. If ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 95 men are not free, then sin does not involve responsibil- ity and guilt. The conclusion cannot be evaded if we admit the premises. Moreover, if the Absolute is un- known, yet the Cause of all phenomena, there is no room for responsibility. In fact, since sin is a phenomenon, the agnostic, like the pantheist, makes the Absolute responsible for sin—if such a shadowy being as the agnostic Absolute can be conceived of as responsible for anything. The application of evolution caps the climax of the agnostic doctrine of sin; it explains the whole history of the world as a process by which things are attain- ing greater and greater conformity with their environ- ment. Accordingly, sin is not, as the Catechism has it, “want of conformity to the law of God,’ but want of conformity to environment; in other words, partially evolved conduct,” which in due time, if left to itself, will attain complete development; so that, as a witty English minister said a few years ago, the evolutionary man does not exclaim with Paul, ‘“O wretched man that [ am! who shall deliver me?” but, “ O progressive creature that [ am! who shall help me to evolve my- self ?” * All this is perfectly natural and consistent. The ag- nostic has no choice but to argue as he does. By and by, when he has thought his philosophy through, he must— unless he rejects it altogether—remodel society, religion, and individual life in accordance with this theory, that is, with sin left out. The chief effort of government and individual activity must then be to accelerate evo- Intion, and who shall say what answer can be given to those who do not care to have it accelerated? For why should evolution be completed? What obligation 96 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE, are men under to acquiesce in this method of nature ? Evolution means the “survival of the fittest.’ That means, in the beginnings of evolution, the survival of the physically strongest. Then, as intelligence gets the upper hand in the struggle for existence, it comes to mean the survival of the cunningest. Finally, it comes to mean the survival of the best, that is, of those who most advance individual and social welfare in the high- est spheres. But granting that evolution tends to ad- vance along such lines of beneficent progress, suppose that the physically strong and the intellectually cunning decline to be elbowed out of existence by the morally good? What right have you to insist that men should be good? as not sin its rights as truly as virtue? or rather, is it sin at all? Why all this pains to get above animality, when animality is, after all, the goal as well as the starting-point? So the evolutionary ethies destroys itself. Only the theistic view of man, insisting as it does upon the divine personality and relation to the soul, and upon human freedom and responsibility under the divine law, can satisfy the requirements of the prob- Jem. Sin is not a phantom, but a reality, an awful fact in God’s moral universe ; and man, the sinner, is guilty and condemned, the object of God’s displeasure, obnoxious to his punishments. Sin is the one absolute evil in the universe, not relative in any sense, except that God permits it and controls it. It is utterly hate- ful to God, utterly antagonistic to the good, utterly opposed to man’s true nature and destination. Every attempt to explain it away or to diminish its evil is based upon error. It is bad, and only bad. VIL. The theistic philosophy of man also affirms the ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. o¢ relation of individual sin to the sin of the race. This likewise is a truth of natural theology or of the phi- losophy of religion. As regards this fact, recent philosophical and scien- tific thought, even in forms in other respects antagon- istic to Christian theism, has contributed to a truer view than that which at one time prevailed. Deism viewed mankind as an aggregate of separated and disconnected persons. Its whole thought was concerned with the individual. In opposition to the realistic philosophies and theologies it was atomistic. The traditional ortho- doxy, starting as it did from the positions of Augustin and Calvin, was theoretically opposed to this view. But, as we have seen, at the beginning of the present century there was a strong rationalistic or deistic ten- dency manifest in orthodox theology. It showed itself in that prevailing individualism of thought which at- tained its extreme expression in the so-called New- England theology. But the theistic philosophy and the orthodox theology of the present time have returned to the older and truer view, or rather, let me say, have advanced to a truer construction of the old view. We distinguish between the race and the individual, be- tween mankind and men. Werecognize the fact that the individual does not live by himself, independently of his fellows, but lives only in virtue of his connec- tion with mankind, The race is an organism, a whole composed of parts which are mutually means and ends, and which together contribute to common ends. Mod- ern science has called renewed attention to the principle of heredity, according to which the child comes into the world with traits and dispositions derived from its ancestors, destined to exert an untold influence upon 7 98 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. the later life. In infancy the child is but a shoot of the parent stem ; it has no individual life ; left to itself it would die in a day; itis wrapped up and included in the parental life." Yet this is the time of strongest impressions, when the mind is moulded and receives the shape it is to have in after years. The child grows and is educated in the family and the school, with play- mates and friends, in the church, in society. The most of its knowledge is, if not second-hand, at least shaped by the beliefs and opinions of others. Then, all through life the man or woman is among men and women, in- fluenced by the common culture, the prevalent opinions —moral, religious, professional, business, political. In this intricate net- work of extraneous influences freedom, indeed, has its place and does its work. The character is, in a true sense, a man’s own. The great decisions of life he makes for himself. But freedom does its work within limits. The shuttle is shot through threads already prepared for it; the pattern is, to a considerable extent, predetermined. We have some power over our environment, but it has a great power over us. We can never wholiy cut ourselves off from the tree of humanity. Like the coral polyps, we are members of a community. Now sin, the great human curse, has entrenched it- self in this complicated and mysterious region of con- nection between the individual and the race. There is a corporate sin as there is an individual sin, and the individual sin is implicated in the corporate sin. It is not my intention to enter here into any of the contro- versial questions mooted by the theologians respecting what is called ‘“ original sin,” nor is it needful for our present discussion to do so, It will be sufficient to ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 99 speak of the facts concerning which almost all agree. Sin has obtained such a foothold in the race relations of men that every individual of the race who comes to the period of responsible action, abuses his freedom and becomes a personal sinner. We may not be able to draw the line between the general and the personal. We certainly need, in order that there may be room for personal responsibility, to maintain at all hazards the freedom of the individual in his sin. But we know that, as a matter of fact, all sin and come short of the glory of God. The individual thus appropriates the common evil, and what before was not his is thereupon truly predicated of him. His personal guilt grows out of, and in turn strikes down deep roots into, a race guilt. All men, when they reach the period of reflec- tion, find themselves members of a guilty race, involved in it not only by a process of nature but also by their own fault. Let it be understood that I am not speaking now of the teachings of the Bible. Our concern at present is with that philosophy of religion which is a presuppo- sition of Christianity, not with Christianity itself. My conviction is that all I have claimed as true can be proved by philosophy, and would be just as true, though certainly not as evident, if the apostle Paul had never written the fifth chapter of Romans or the fifteenth of First Corinthians. I have said nothing of the Fall. This isa doctrine of revelation, at least so far as its historical form is concerned. Speculation is not competent to inform us what the actual beginnings of sin were. The most we can say, looking at the sub- ject from the philosophical point of view, is that man, as nade by God, must have been sinless and free, and 100 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. sinless that he might use his freedom for God; to which may be added that the first man who sinned must have done so by the abuse of his freedom. Here we have what is essential to the doctrine of the Fall, and the most that we can expect from natural theol- ogy. One point, however, in this connection. We have seen how inadequate the theory of evolution is to ex- plain the nature of sin; it is equally unable to account for the beginnings of sin. Evolution involves a steady progress. The Fall, if it actually occurred, was a break in the chain of evolution which cannot be explained by that law. Ilere, as elsewhere, the doctrine, so valuable as a scientific hypothesis, so luminous in its explanation of large tracts of natural history, breaks down when it comes to humanity. In man a higher principle appears, which is subject to a different law. Man’s animal nature may be the result of evolution ; that is a small matter, and few who understand what organic evolution means care much one way or the other. Even man’s higher nature may be under the law of evolution, so far as it is subject to necessity. But there are elements there which belong toa higher and different order, and, even in their perversion, must be explained in a differ- ent way. Evolution, if it attempts an explanation of the beginnings of sin, must make the Fall a “ fall upward,” as it has been called. But that is no explanation ; rather it is the darkening of knowledge and the con- fusion of thought. This natural law does not run on continuously into the spiritual world but becomes sub- ordinate to a higher principle. VIII. Still further, the theistic philosophy asserts that man was made for God, and finds his highest ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 101 good in him. It has already been intimated that man’s moral endowments merge in his religious nature, and that morals and religion are only different aspects of the same reality. Theistic philosophy cannot re- frain from putting the question concerning the swm- mum bonum and offering its answer to it. For what was man placed here in the world? what is his true destination? What is the goal of the individual and the race? In opposition to all pessimistic theories of man, and to those forms of agnosticism which refuse to answer the question of man’s destination, theism is persistently optimistic. It declares that man is stead- ily moving forward to a high moral goal. Agnostic evolution, it is true, rather inconsistently, is also optim- istic in a certain sense, since it declares that the race is advancing in the process of evolution. But its op- timism concerns the race rather than the individual, and does not point to the highest spiritual ends.” But the theistic philosophy bases its optimism upon what is highest in man, his relation to God. He isa personal being, made in the image of God, and he is able to know, serve, and love God. God reveals him- self to men; they are able, in the use of their faculties, to come to the knowledge of God. They are formed for communion with him. He is their life. To have his favor is their highest blessedness. His law is the rule of their conduct; to him they are answerable. In him they live and move and have their being, physi- cally, intellectually, morally, spiritually. As Augustin said, “‘O Lord, we were made for thee, and our souls are restless till they find their rest in thee.” * This is the declaration of all religions, and not of Christianity alone. In spite of their innumerable er- 102 HVIDENOCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. rors and abuses and immoralities, they testify to man’s need for God. The goal of the individual and the race is communion with God and likeness to him. We cannot doubt the assertion of our reason upon this subject. The mora] and spiritual ideals combine with the moral and spiritual relations to God to assure us that we are his children, and that we were made to re- alize his image in us and to live in his presence and favor. This is the reason why the theistic philosophy of re- ligion insists so strongly, in opposition to pantheism and agnosticism, upon the immortality of the soul, and will not admit that we are thrown back exclusively upon the Christian revelation for the proof that death does not end all. It declares that the soul which is capable of communion with God here and now, and which bears upon it the marks of its destination to be like God, cannot be “cast as rubbish to the void” when death destroys the body. Here is something too high, too precious, for that. “The personality of man is, as we have seen, altogether different from the individ- uality of the animal. Its relation to God gives it a kind of divine value. The non-theistic philosophers say that the belief in immortality is merely the ex- pression of man’s desire to live; stat pro ratione volun- tas. He does not want to perish, and so is convinced that he will not. In his vanity he thinks himself better than the brute, and is too proud to accept the common doom. So men in all ages think they will survive the shock of death, and all religions try to give reasons for the belief. It is the part of philosophy, however, to get behind the error, and to show that men are mortal, soul as well as body. Pantheism, which has the art to ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 103 utter the most obnoxious doctrines in the gentlest and least offensive way, does not discard the word immor- tality. It admits that thought can never perish, but for that which makes man man, his individual self-con- scious personality, it holds out no hope of permanence.” Agnosticism, in the person of its most accomplished authoress, sings of an immortality in the “ choir invis- ible”—in the posthumous influence of earthly deeds and words; but it knows no other.” Theism alone teaches the true worth, and so the true destination, of man. IX. This brings us to the last point—the theistic philosophy asserts man’s need of redemption. This much it is sufficient to prove, though insufficient to answer the question, what the nature of the redemp- tion shall be, and in what way it shall be bestowed upon man. Man as a sinner is far from his goal. Neither the individual nor the race has reached it. It is not merely that man lags in the process of development ; he has turned aside and back. All have gone astray, and the race are following devious ways. So, in spite of the theistic optimism, there is a pessimistic side to the truth. The philosophy of theism maintains the truth of two apparently contradictory facts: the ideal of human perfection and the perversion of man through sin. It recognizes the fact that sin is the great hinder- ing cause in the progress of the world, as in that of the individual. No man is what he might be or what heought to be. The institutions of society are corrupt. Sin has rooted itself deeply in the soil of humanity. Great wrongs which no man, or body of men, seem strong enough to right, have fastened themselves, vam- pire-like, upon the race. Men tyrannize over their fel- 104 HVIDENCH OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. low-men. Civilization and science are made to minister to sin. Even the physical world is scarred and seamed with the marks of man’s sinfulness, Hence the need of redemption. Somehow the indi- vidual and the race must be brought out of their sin and evil and disease, and carried forward to their goal. Theistic philosophy goes thus far. It is sufficient to prove man’s need of redemption. Indeed, the fact is thrust upon it whenever it contemplates the world and men as they are. It needs no deep insight into moral truth to teach the thoughtful man who lives in a great city like London or New York, and views the awful sin and misery which prevail, the festering evil which hides in the darkness, and the brazen-faced wickedness which flaunts itself in the daylight, that there is an imminent and imperative need of raising men from their degra- dation. It requires but little knowledge of the world to beimpressed with the crying need for reform in the institutions and customs of society. He who believes that there is a God active here and now, at work in human history and individual life, and who realizes that man was made for God, and can find his true blessedness in him alone, must recognize the absolute necessity of redemption. It must be understood that the redemption, the need of which is witnessed to by the theistic philosophy, means something more than mere reform or betterment, such as may be brought about by natural or human means. Sin has reduced men to a condition from which deliverance can come only through supernatural and superhuman help. Sin involves inability. The sinner is helpless to deliver himself. His will is bound, not in the sense that he does not possess the power of choice, ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 105 but because he has lost the power of action. Ilis intel- lect is blinded, so that he could not see clearly how to deliver himself, if he had the ability. Ilis sensibility is disordered. His conscience is loaded down with guilt. And if he cannot help himself, still less ean he help his fellow-man, who like himself is bound fast in the chains of sin; and what is true of the individual is equally true of the race. The deliverance must come from above, if it is to come at all, from the one being in all the universe who is capable of furnishing it, that is, from God. The philosophies which deny the personality of God and teach the lower view of man, also deny the need of redemption. Because they make light of sin, the need of a moral transformation does not appear great to them; and such reformation as they see to be needful —for the denial of redemption is made rather with the lips than with the heart, and the awful fact of sin presses itself in some form or other upon every thinking mind with a persistent intrusion that cannot be evaded—they endeavor to bring about by natural and human means. So they offer such remedies as they have, insufficient enough, but a testimony to the crying need. The fa- vorite remedy is culture. Education is the panacea ; knowledge of literature, of the arts, of science, of this and that; but knowledge and the taste that is cultivated by knowledge, and nothing more. But the remedies do not cure the disease ; in fact, in many cases they rather aggravate it. Culture, intellectual power, the gratifica- tion of the tastes, may all be made to minister to sin, and this is too often the result where they are unac- companied by higher influences. Pantheism has shown itself thus far utterly unable to cope with human sin or 106 HVIDENCH OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. to offer any adequate means of redemption from it. This is true whether we look at the philosophical pan- theism of Germany or at the literary pantheism of Car- lyle and Emerson with its high-sounding words and fine contempt of all that is mean and low. Agnosticism has not run a career so long, but it has fallen heir to the re- sources of the earlier materialism and utilitarianism, and we can form some judgment of its probable success, I should be slow to refuse it the praise that is its due. It has set itself to correct the abuses and wrongs which prevail in human society. It has done much to promote the well-being of the individual and the masses. We cannot speak in too strong terms of commendation re- specting what has been done by men professing this philosophy for the material improvement of the lower classes, in the way of better sanitary arrangements for the poor, the promotion of association in labor by which the workman may share in the profits of his skill, the extension of the electoral franchise, and the like. But such attempts at the amelioration of the outward con- dition of men seem scarcely to touch the deep need of the sinful race. The old deism, and the rationalistie philosophy and religion connected with it, sought to do the same work by moral means. ‘This was a higher method. At first it seemed as if men could save themselves if they only would. If the will is free, and many of the deists ad- mitted that this is the case, there seems to be no ob- stacle in the way of moral reformation and self-improve- ment. ‘The German rationalists of the last century, and the early Unitarians of England and this country, employed this method. Within certain narrow limits they succeeded. Undoubtedly in the case of individuals ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 107 who still stood in the old orthodox traditions, and were, though aberrant in doctrine, actually leading lives of communion with God, a high type of character was attained. specially in the sphere of what the old theologians, as we have seen, called “civil righteous- ness,” where human freedom has been least affected by sin, they set an example of noble morality for which the world cannot be too thankful. In the work of social reform their achievements were also high. They gave the impulse to many of the most beneficent moral move- ments of modern times. It was largely owing to their influence that slavery was overthrown in this country. But this deistic form of religion and philosophy has always had one result. After a time the movement has lost its power and come to a standstill, leaving the actual achievement but small in comparison with the world’s great need. Those who have accepted the tenets of this school have either gone back into ortho- doxy, where alone they could find a philosophy and re- ligion which could satisfy their needs, or have gone off into pantheism and agnosticism. All the religions of mankind recognize the need of redemption. Ido not doubt that the craving of men for communion with God, and the knowledge of him they have through the natural revelation, would be suf- ficient to give rise to religion apart from the fact of sin. But sin is the moving cause of religion in the world as it is. Men feel their misery, they long for release, they ery to God for help, they seek redemption. The means the ethnic religions offer are inadequate and perverted. The very sin which has obscured the knowl- edge of God devises methods of redemption which are not only wholly ineffectual for the purpose, but wholly 108 HVIDENOCH OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. unworthy of God. It seems as if the sinful human heart had exhausted its ingenuity in devising bad and immoral instrumentalities for the effecting of redemp- tion. Cars of Juggernaut, human sacrifices, self-in- flicted tortures, immoral rites, pious frauds—who does not know the long catalogue? How sad it all is! and yet what a testimony to the universal recognition of human need. In all the error and vice of the heathen religions there is this appeal to God for redemption. The theistic philosophy of religion takes account of all these facts. They are part of the data upon which it bases its conviction that men must be redeemed if they are to attain the goal for which they were mani- festly created. Taking its stand upon its own true and satisfying doctrines of God and man, it is able to dis- cover the defects in the methods of the heathen reli- gions, and to separate the testimony to the universal need and cry for salvation from the perverted notions of how it is to be attained. Here is a race blindly seeking after God, if haply it may find him, raising up its hands to him in eager appeal for help. If that were all, it were pitiful. That there should be a God in heaven, nay, a God on earth, and yet no light and no help for men lost and perishing, that were indeed ter- rible. The theistic philosophy of religion is competent to disclose the need of redemption. Its conception of God as the holy, just, and wise Ruler of mankind, the per- sonal God who is not far from every one of us, affords good hope that God will bestow the means of redemp- tion. Theism gives such a knowledge of God that all methods of self-redemption—redemption by culture or reform or morality—must be discarded as manifestly in- ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 109 adequate, and the fact must be recognized that only God himself can furnish the help that is needed. With this last fact we are brought to the line that sep- arates the philosophy of religion from the Christian theology. The universal religious experience must give way to Christian experience. Reason dealing with the universal facts of religion can go no farther. _LECTURE IV. THE GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. WE have seen that the evidence of Christian experi- ence is based upon that element of Christianity which consists in the immediate and present redeeming activ- ity of God in Christ."| Christian experience itself be- gins when a man comes fairly under the influence of this activity, when the redemption is at work in his soul, and the divine power from which it proceeds is thus revealed. It is my purpose in the present lecture to trace the process by which the evidence we are con- sidering is first established through the initial expert- ence of the Christian life. In the next lecture we shall examine the growth of the proof in extent and cogency as the Christian becomes more and more fully possessed by the divine redemption. I enter upon this branch of our discussion with some trepidation. If I can succeed in so presenting the sub- ject as to make you realize that we are in the midst of a reali of spiritual facts, full of dignity and impor- tance, all will be well. But if, on the other hand, I seem to give you merely an edifying presentation of pious feelings and experiences, or a statement of doctrinal truths, what I have to say will be ineffably common- place. I beg you, therefore, to understand that our aim is not edification or doctrinal instruction. The work upon which we are engaged is one of the highest scientific im- THE GHNESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. EEL portance. Let us not unwittingly copy the unbeliever’s attitude toward Christian experience and treat it as though it were a matter of sentiment rather than a sub- ject of rational thought. We believe this experience to be real; our certainty of its reality is not less strong than our certainty respecting the other great facts of human experience in the outward and the inward worlds. We regard our faith as the most reasonable exer- cise of our rational activity. Let us have the courage of our convictions. If we are right, here is a field for scientific research of the utmost importance. If it is a noble thing for men, in their search for truth, to de- vote themselves to the investigation of the phenomena of the material and physical world, or of those of the in- ner world of thought, why is it not a nobler and higher thing to devote themselves to the investigation of this lofty sphere of spiritual reality, where God in his su- preme revelation enters our souls and moulds them by his grace? If we are not ashamed to make the Chris- tian consciousness a source of theology, why should we be ashamed to make it a ground of evidence? The world has a right to demand of us that we should give reason for the faith that isin us. Besides, even if our Christian explanation should prove inadequate, here is a realm of facts which demand investigation. Even unbelief no longer treats the experience of the Chris- tian as a mere delusion, but regards it as a series of phenomena possessing the highest and most striking psychological interest, to which it strives to give a rational, though, of course, naturalistic, explanation. We begin with the natural or unconverted man, with his natural experience of God, his sinfulness and need of redemption—the facts that have been established in 112 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. the philosophical presuppositions as stated in the two previous lectures. Our object is to trace the workings of such a soul, as God’s redemptive grace in Christ en- ters it, takes possession of it, and transforms it; and to show how this redemptive transformation is the ground of the highest and_most cogent proof for the truth of Christianity. I shall try to describe a normal Chris- tian experience, such as the Bible delineates, such as is narrated in innumerable books of Christian biography, and such as the ordinary believer recognizes as in the main his own. ‘That this is possible, in spite of the di- versity arising from different types of Christianity, and from the varying temperaments and circumstances of individuals, [ do not doubt.’ I. Let us look first at the preliminary experience by which the entrance into the Christian life is made. And here the first and essential fact which meets us is that the initiative 1s known as coming from God. The prelude to the distinctively Christian experience is God’s redemptive seeking of the soul. He comes with the arraignment, the demand, the offer, and the promise of the Gospel. is gracious working begins in what is known in Scripture and theology as the divine call. This fact of the divine initiative is all-important. The sinner who is redeemed by the grace of God in Christ does not first seek God; rather God seeks him, and only then does he become a seeker. Later Chris- tian experience reveals the fact that from the begin- ning of life there has been a divine seeking, and even that it goes back of life into the eternal purpose of God. This is the truth of the Christian doctrine of predestination or election, which, liable though it is to be misunderstood and abused, often as it has been hard- THE GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 113 ened into a lifeless dogma, has a mighty significance. But we have now to do not so much with the eternal purpose, which only a mature faith can discern when it has advanced somewhat far into the knowledge of God in Christ, and of the Scriptures, as with the initiative of God through his Spirit at the outset of the Christian life. The divine initiative bears two aspects, an-external | and an, internal, clearly distinguishable, yet inseparably connected in reality, the former being the means or, medium of the latter. | 1. We look first at the external aspect. This also is twofold, being effected through two instrumentalities, the objective Gospel or Word, and the witnessing church.’ (1.) The outward Word is an essential means. We saw in the first lecture that Christianity involves three elements, all of which are essential to its completeness. These are the divine revelation in its two forms of history and doctrine, or of facts and truths, and the present redemptive power and agency of God. The latter does its work only by the aid of the two former —that is to say, only thus does it do its work normally and fully. In order that men may enter into the sphere of Christian experience, they must have some knowledge of the divine revelation. The knowledge supplied by the general religious experience of men is not sufficient for this purpose. And when Christian experience has begun, it is needful to its right inter- - pretation, as well as to progress in it, that the divine revelation in both its aspects should be known and understood. We can conceive of the case of a heathen to whom the grace of God comes without the mediation 8 114 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. of the objective Gospel, who has never heard of Christ, but who, accepting God with such light as he has, is made partaker of the divine redemption, brought to the Father by Christ through the Holy Spirit, forgiven on the ground of the Saviour’s atonement, entering, at least measurably, into the life of holiness through the Spirit’s efficiency, and all the time ignorant of the great Christian facts. I say, we can conceive of such a case. To what extent such cases actually exist I do not undertake to affirm; but believing as I do, with undoubting conviction, that God condemns no man for ignorance or lack of opportunity, it seems to me not unreasonable to suppose not only that in some instances the germ of the divine life may exist in heathen hearts (that, I hope, is often the case), but also that it may arrive at a certain degree of maturity in this life, though of course the growth could never be what it might have been under consciously recognized Chris- tian influences. Now such a heathen would know, if he investigated his experience by the methods of re- flective thought, that he was a changed man, standing in a new relation to God, under the influence of divine mercy. But no examination and analysis of his ex- perience, without the knowledge of the objective Gos- pel, would enable him to discover the trinitarian char- acter of the divine grace, its basis in the atonement, and the truth of God’s redemptive kingdom. These realities would be implicit in his consciousness, because they would be the real cause of it; but there is no rea- son to believe that, left to himself, he would ever be able to distinguish them and bring them clearly before his thought. Nor should we expect to see such a per- son make any high attainments in the religious life as THH GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 115 judged by the Christian standard. Ina word, his ex- perience would not be, in any adequate sense of the term, a Christian experience. What, then, is this Gospel or Word which is an es- sential means in God’s hands for bringing men into the sphere of Christian experience ? Though, broadly considered, it comprises all the facts and truths of the redemptive revelation, it is capable of brief and simple statement. It reaffirms with the strongest emphasis, what men already know from the natural revelation, the sinfulness, lost condition, and need of redemption of the human soul. Then it proclaims the divine love which would not leave mankind in their lost estate but provided redemption for them; and the historical facts of the redemptive revelation, God’s long series of redemptive dealings with the human race through the Chosen People, and the consummation of his grace in Jesus Christ. It tells of the incarnation and earthly life of the Christ; of his divinely human person, full of grace and truth; of his atoning death upon the cross ; of his resurrection and ascension to the throne of majesty on high ; of the mission of the Holy Spirit, through whom the Christ is laboring for the salvation of the human race. It makes the divine offer of for- giveness and new life to all who will accept it, an offer which looks forward to the complete deliverance of the sinner from his sin and his rehabilitation as a son of God in the perfection of the heavenly blessed- ness. It promises that those who accept shall have that personal knowledge of God and Christ which is life eternal. It gives the assurance of the future triumph of the Saviour’s kingdom in the redemption of mankind and the final subjection of Satan and his kingdom, 116 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. . Such, in substance, is the Gospel or Word, as it has been preached in all ages since the days of Christ. ‘The inspired repository of this Gospel and the record of all the facts and truths which constitute the re- demptive revelation is the Bible. The old theology, with its rationalistic tendency, failed clearly to distin- _ guish between the Scripture and the revelation and Gospel of which it is the inspired document. The re- sult in the spheres of apologetics and theology was dis- astrous. Not a few of the difficulties and hindrances against which the Christian church is contending to-day _ are traceable to this cause. Nevertheless, we must not ignore the fact that there is the closest and most vital connection between the facts and truths recorded and = ° the inspired record, between the Gospel and the Bible. — It is true that the Gospel has existed without the Bible, and it is perfectly conceivable that it might do so again. Many souls are brought to Christ to-day, with compar- atively small personal acquaintance with the Scripture, by the preacher’s message, by the instructions of par- ents and teachers, by the reading of Christian books, and other similar agencies. Yet the fact remains that the Gospel depends for its purity and adequacy upon the Bible. The latter, as the divinely inspired record of the redemptive revelation, is the rule and guide of the church and the individual in all matters pertaining to the redemptive revelation. There is no reason to believe that the Gospel could be maintained for any length of time in its purity, if it were not continually drawn afresh from this perennial spring. Here we find not only the “ marrow of the Gospel,” but all that is essential to its understanding, and all that pertains to its application. It is enforced by precept and illus- THE GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 117 trated by example. Not only does the Bible teach the way into the kingdom, but it is also the guide of the Christian to holiness, Christian service, and the heav- enly blessedness. There never was any Christian ex- perience, after the Bible had become the possession of the church, that could not be traced back to the Bible as its source; there never was any mature and com- plete Christian experience that did not grow out of the diligent personal use of the Bible.® Therefore, while for the sake of theological accuracy we insist upon the distinction between the Gospel and the Bible, yet for practical purposes we may say that the first great outward means employed by God to bring men into his kingdom is the Bible. I desire to lay the strongest emphasis upon this point. In presenting the evidence of Christian experience, I shall run the risk- of being understvod to teach that the Christian has an access to God and the Christian realities which renders him independent of the objective Word and the Bible which is its inspired source. I have no such heresy to advance. The only Christian experience to which I shall appeal is one that finds its origin and norm in the Bible, an experience shaped and interpreted by the Bible. To take any other position would be to desert the fundamental principles of Christianity and Prot- estantism, and to run into an unchristian mysticism. (2.) But there is another instrumentality employed by God in his work of redemption as it relates to the in-_ dividual; I refer to the witnessing church. The Gos- \ pel call comes to the soul through the agency of those | who stand in the midst of the Christian experience, / knowing it not only through the outward Word, but also by an inward spiritual acquaintance with its truth. 118 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. God has seen fit to save men by means of men, and these the men who have already tasted and seen that the Lord is good. In this he has shown his divine wisdom. We are so constituted that we do not stand alone in our experiences. We drink at the overflowing cup of our fellow-men. All human progress depends upon this relation of man to man. It is, as we have seen, the ground of that diffusion of sin through the race as the result of which each individual, though not without his own personal fault, becomes himself a sin- ner. It accords with the fitness of things that redemp- tion should avail itself of the same relation to accom- plish its beneficent ends. It is thus that God reaches the sinful soul, preparing it for his inward call, and bringing that call home to it. In childhood, when we are so largely dependent upon others for our knowledge and beliefs, when the devel- oping personality is not yet wholly detached from the common life, the Christian experience of parents and friends exerts a powerful influence, the effects of which may endure through a lifetime. The child looks through its mother’s eyes into the sanctuary of Christian expe- rience, and in the godly walk and conversation of a Christian father has before it the indubitable evidence of the reality of the Gospel. In like manner the im- pulse to the Christian life comes through the instrue- tions of pious teachers, the persuasions of companions who have already entered the kingdom, the counsels and example of elder Christians. Especially is the in- fluence of the church as a corporate institution to be emphasized. The church stands for the reality of Christianity. It is the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. iii. 15), because it unites and upholds the per- THE GENESIS OF THE EVIDENOE. 119 sonal experience of its members. This appears in the most important of its functions, the preaching of the Gospel. Preaching has no meaning unless it comes directly out of the living experience of the church and of him who in the name of the church presents the Gospel. One who knows, standing up in the midst of those who know, holds forth to those who as yet do not know, the message of salvation from the living God and the exalted Christ. The sacraments of the church are also a witness to the reality of Christian experience, an outward and visible sign of a gracious spiritual transaction between Christ and believers, intended not only for their immediate recipients, but also for the instruction of those outside, who are thus, as it were, taken into the circle of the inner Christian life.’ 2. But the divine call bears an internal as well as an _ external aspect. The Gospel and the church are only | the media through which God speaks to the soul. He comes with a direct summons to the sinner. It is not merely that the latter finds in the Gospel a call to such as he and appropriates it, or that he discovers the voice of God in the persuasions of Christians. Te is conscious of an immediate and personal communication of God to his soul. Me has known before, as every man does, something of God in the common exercises of his religious nature, as the Absolute, the Creator, the Infinite Reason, the Holy One, the object of all rev- erence and worship; but now God reveals himself in a new aspect, as the God of redemption, bringing the saving grace near to him personally and individually, and pressing it upon his acceptance. This personal call is the great crisis in the soul’s life. When it comes, the sinner stands face to face with God, with the issues 120 HVIDENCH OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. of eternity depending upon his answer. We may be- lieve that such a call is sooner or later given to every soul, though in some cases it is ae and does not prove eae to be an “ effectual call.” Making due al- lowance for the impossibility of knowing the objective Gospel, it seems reasonable to believe that even the heathen receives such a call, in which God comes into his consciousness with his gracious offer, and Christ is within his grasp, though he knows only that the su- preme good is being offered to him from above. 3. The contents of the-internal divine call are not different from those of the objective Gospel. It is the Gospel made personal, applied by God himself immedi- _ ately to the soul. Wemay distinguish an arraignment, an offer, a demand, and a promise. First, the arraignment. God speaks to the man as a sinner, one who has rebelled against him, broken his law, contracted his just displeasure. Ie measures the character and life by the standard of the perfect divine law and shows how utterly they come short. He ad- dresses the conscience and brings home to it its guilt. The soul stands before him, lost, naked, helpless. The wrath of God is revealed against its unrighteousness. But the wrath does not stand alone; it is merely an element in the divine love. With the arraignment is coupled the offer of God’s grace. The God against whom the sinner has sinned comes to him in ‘fie compassion with the free gift of redemption through his Son. It is a personal offer. God does not make it in a merely general way through the Gospel, but im- mediately and directly to the individual soul: “ Here, O guilty sinner, are forgiveness and new life for thee! Jesus has died upon the cross for thy salvation ; he, the THE GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 121 exalted Lord and Saviour, holds out these gifts to thee.” In the offer is included all that the sinner needs, resto- ration to God’s favor, the renewal of God’s image in him, the overcoming of sin, and the attainment of holiness, power for service, and the heavenly blessed- ness, The offer is accompanied by the demand. God does not bestow his redemptive grace upon unwilling souls. He conditions its bestowal upon the sinner’s 8 appropria- tion of it and lays uber him the duty of acceptance. “The will is the man.” In moral and religious matters the will is always the chiefthing. A divine gift is of- fered that may be accepted or rejected, a divine demand is made that the gift be accepted. Here again it is a personal demand. There is a direct inward call to the individual soul, and it is at the same time an impera- tive call that brooks no delay or compromise. Of all the demands that are made upon the human conscience there is none that will match this in its intense direct- ness and urgency. So we are brought to the promise. It is this: That the soul, if it AE the divine command and accepts the ie offer, shall have through its own experience the certainty a the truth of the esorl and the reality of all that God has offered through his grace. If it will but taste, it shall see that the Lord is good. It it will but put itself in the way of doing the divine will, it shall know of the doctrine. It is a promise to the soul that puts its trust in Christ that it shall not be confounded, but shall find in his grace the satisfaction of all its longings, its permanent rest and peace. 4. What now is the effect of the divine call upon the soul to which it comes? In the first place, there is, 122 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. on the part of the sinner, a realization of his lost con- dition. The sinful soul sees itself in its true relation to God—guilty, undone, helpless .It has no goodness to plead, it can make no atonement for its sin, it has no excuse to offer, it cannot hide itself from his displeas- ure, it cannot deny the righteousness of his punish- ments. I do not assert that this sense of sin is equally prominent in all cases where God’s call comes to the soul, or that it has the same meaning in those instances where the divine grace is rejected that it has where it is accepted. Nor do I assert that the knowledge of sin before conversion is comparable in completeness with that which follows this great crisis. All that I insist is, that in every normal experience there is some- thing that can be truly called a conviction of sin. Con- nected with this is a response to the divine offer and demand, a sense of the divine mercy of the former, and the reasonableness and urgency of the latter. But it is especially important for our purpose to no- tice that even in this preliminary experience there is a certain degree of knowledge respecting the reality and divinity of the facts which constitute the Christian ex- perience, a certain evidence of their truth, though not the evidence we are seeking to investigate. This is implied in what precedes, It seems at first to be at variance with the divine promise which postpones the knowledge of the reality and divinity of Christianity till after the divine demand has been complied with. The truth is this; there is a partial and preliminary knowledge based upon the pre-Christian experience; but this is altogether uncertain and inadequate as compared with the knowledge which comes through the actual Chris- tian experience itself. THH GENESIS OF THH HVIDENCE. 123 Let us look for a moment at this preliminary knowl]- edge and the evidence that accompaniesit. The cail of the Gospel, as it comes inwardly and directly to the soul, is a divine call. We know it as such by the same criteria which evidence the divine to us in the other manifestations of God to man. It is because men have already known God in that religious experience which is common to all men, that they recognize his presence and power in this experience that is preliminary to the Christian. God does not come to the sinner whom he calls into his kingdom as a Being hitherto unknown ; rather he is recognized as the same God manifesting himself in a new form and for new ends. It is as a man who has already come in contact with the divine that the awakened sinner enters upon the new experi- ence. In the fact that the contents of the Gospel are thus brought with divine authority to him, the Chris- tian has a reason for believing that the Christian ex- perience which the Gospel describes, is real. Closely connected with this proof from the divine character of the Gospel call, is that from the adaptation to the sinner’s need of the divine grace offered. We know ourselves at once as members of a sinful race and as personally sinful, guilty before God, and resting under his displeasure. We are free, and because free, responsible. We know onr sin and guilt through our natural experience. Conscience condemns us, and de- clares us guilty before God. We know, too, through our natural experience what is our duty and what are our possibilities. We know that we were made to know, love, and obey God, and to love our fellow-men. The fact that we have lost our birthright and turned aside from our true career, does not make our duty different. 124. EVIDENCEH OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. We know that we ought to be the perfect men we are not, and to obey the perfect law of God. So, as was stated in the last lecture, the final word which natural re- ligion utters, is of man’s need of redemption. Now, the Gospel in its outward and inward call to the soul offers to us just what we most need, namely, redemption, a divine salvation, every step of which is so ordered as to make the consummation practicable and certain. It is a redemption through One who is at once God and Man, thus being God’s representative and ours; One who has, we are told, made complete atonement for our sins, so that God is ready to forgive all who will accept his grace, and be their Father. This Saviour, it is said, is upon the throne ; it is he who is speaking to us and working upon us through his Spirit; and if we accept him by faith, our sins will be forgiven, the Holy Spirit will enter our lives, our wills will be brought back to their allegiance, and through sanctification and service in communion with him we shall be carried forward to our goal and eternal life be perfected in us. This offer is congruous to our nature and our state as sinners whose great need is redemption. Here is a redemption which offers to accomplish the work. It gives us in promise all that we need ; first, forgiveness, the new heart, sonship; then, as the result, the new life and the progress to perfection. It offersa Saviour able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him (Heb. vii. 25). This congruousness of the offer of redemption to our need is itself an evidence of the truth of Christianity of no small value.° Nevertheless, this knowledge and the evidence based upon it, though genuine as far as they go, are not to be compared with the knowledge and evidence accompany- THE GENESIS OF THH EVIDENCE. 125 ing even the lowest stages of the Christian experience. They afford a presumption rather than an adequate proof. They give the inquirer a reasonable basis for action, but not the reality itself. At this stage it is impossible to have a full proof of Christianity. Its re- demptive power is as yet untried, and the great dis- tinctive Christian facts are as yet unknown through experience.” Though the knowledge of this stage is based upon the divine authority, it is not personal knowledge; if accepted, it must be outwardly only. Moreover, and this is in some respects the most im- portant consideration, at this point the knowledge and evidence may be resisted ; and, so long as the soul hesi- tates to comply with the divine demand, they are prac- tically resisted. There is, then, only one way in which we can come to the real and adequate knowledge of the divinity and reality of the facts and truths of Christianity, and that is by trial. Here is a sphere from which we must re- main forever debarred, unless we enter it by the one door which the Gospel opens, namely, the door of a personal acceptance. The beginning of Christian ex- perience depends upon the will; it is a moral expe- rience. So the two stand confronting each other, God and the soul—God with Christ’s redemption, offering it to the soul. And here let me stop and once more beg you not to think that I am presenting doctrine or talk- ing sentiment; I am trying to describe facts, in com- parison with which all other facts are insignificant. This is an experience through which you all have gone, and through which every man must go. The world pauses to contemplate Cvesar on the brink of the Itubi- 126 HVIDENCH OF CHRISTIAN HXPERIENOE. con, and history finds no theme more high and worthy. But what was Rome compared with Christ! what sight is more worthy of the highest thought than the soul standing on the brink of its spiritual Rubicon, with the eternal issues depending upon its choice! The choice must be made. The soul knows itself to be free. It can accept or reject. It must do one of the two. It cannot turn from God’s method and devise a method of its own. The redemption in Christ comes as the only resource. This is the supreme use of freedom, the one use of all others for which it was made. It in- volves the supreme choice, to which all other choices must be subordinate. God in Christ, or self in sin ? It is an awful question. But we still stand on the threshold of the Christian experience. Though the experience of which I have been speaking transcends the ordinary religious expe- rience, yet it may fairly be said to be universal; we must believe that God draws near to every soul, and gives it at least the opportunity to accept his grace. But it is time to hasten on. We will not stop to examine the case where the grace of God through Christ is re- jected; we have to do here not with the pathology of religion, but with its normal conditions, where the gift of God is appropriated. So we are brought to II. The genesis of the distinctively Christian expe- rience and the evidence derived from it. 1. The first point to be noted is the fact that this experience is attained only by the free act of the hn- man will. It is true, the fact is afterward revealed that the act itself is made possible only by divine grace, and that the free-will is but a subordinate factor in a process of which God is the efficient Cause. Neverthe- THE GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 127 less, it is the essential condition of the consummation of that process, and we shall do well tolook at the human side before considering the divine agency upon which it is based. This necessity of the action of the will gives to the Christian experience and the evidence derived from it their distinctive character. In another lecture I shall speak of the will in its philosophical aspects as a source of knowledge. Here we have to do with the practical fact. In this consists the ethical character of the whole process. It is not possible to enter into this sphere except as God has opened it, and he has sus- pended all upon human acceptance. There is but this one way of salvation. Moreover, it is to be noted that the motive which leads to the Christian experience cannot be primarily the desire for knowledge and proof. These come as a result when the soul seeks first of all to be redeemed and to submit itself to the divine method of redemp- tion. Mere curiosity, intellectual interest, will never storm the citadel of the new life or secure its evidence of Christian truth. The poor in spirit who will sub- mit themselves to the Saviour’s conditions alone have the promise given to them. 2. The act of the human will by which entrance into the reali of Christian experience is secured bears a two- fold name in the Bible and systematic divinity. But it is in truth one complex act. It is called repentance or conversion, and faith. These two exercises stand re- lated to each other, I am inclined to think, as choice and volition. According to the Catechism, “Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin and apprehension of the mercy of 128 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. God in Christ, doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeay- or after, new obedience.” The same admirable symbol defines faith in Jesus Christ as “a saving grace where- by we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the Gospel.” The great and su- preme choice by which the new life is initiated on the human side is the turning from self to God, from sin to holiness. The first volition or executive act of the will which issues from this choice is the receiving and rest- ing upon Christ for salvation.“ But whether this ac- count of the nature and relation of the two be philo- sophically correct or not, the two are inseparable—the act of repentance and the act of faith; both make up one complex act of the will. 3. This act of repentance and faith is often misunder- stood, to the great confusion of clear thought in Chris- tian theology and apologetics. Repentance is confound- ed with penitence, that sorrow for sin which accom- panies the change of heart but is altogether distinct fromit. In truth, the two, though so closely associated, are connected with different faculties of the soul. Re- pentance, as we have just seen, is primarily a matter of the will; penitence, on the contrary, is a matter of the sensibility. Still greater is the confusion with regard to faith. A very common definition makes it intellectual assent to the truth of certain doctrines. But while faith may involve such assent, this is secondary and subordinate. The rationalistic tendency so manifest in the theology of the last century nowhere comes more prominently to light than in this definition, inherited as it is from the Roman Catholic Church. It reduces the most sa- THE GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 129 cred and spiritual act of the religious life to a matter of intellectual acceptance.’ Neither is faith a convic- tion of the reality of what is unseen, though such a con- viction is doubtless always present in true faith. The belief of the man of science in the existence of atoms and energy and zther, which he cannot see, may be a kind of faith; but it is not the kind with which we have to do in our analysis of the Christian experience. It resembles the religious faith in so far as both are concerned with a region beyond the discoveries of sense, but that is all; in their essence the two kinds of faith are radically different, in correspondence with the dif- ference of the two spheres to which they belong. Nei- ther is faith the spontaneous and necessary assent of the mind to the first principles of thought or the ac- ceptance of axiomatic truth. Such belief has no place in Christian experience, which is, as the terms imply, a region of empirical, and not of axiomatic, knowl- edge.” No, Christian faith is a much simpler matter. It is 7 an act of trust in God by which—to recur to the words of the Catechism—* we receive and rest upon” Jesus Christ “alone for salvation.” It is primarily a matter of the will, though, like every moral act, it involves the whole man, intellect and sensibility as well as will. What is essential in it is the trust, the yielding of our will to God’s will, the acceptance of Christ as he is offered to us, the free surrender of ourselves to the drawing of the Father to the Son. Faith appropriates God’s grace. It has no worth or ) merit of its own, but is simply instrumental. Not that it is passive; that is excluded by the fact that it is an act of the will. But it is receptive rather than produc- 9 180 HFVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. tive. It gives nothing of its own; it can claim nothing in its own behalf; it is utterly dependent upon God. The object of this faith is God in Christ offering his redemptive grace.” Before the awakened sinner is a region of which he has no first-hand knowledge, a sphere of experience into which he has never entered. Yet he knows of it through the objective Gospel and the tes- timony of Christians, and he has reason to believe that Christ is there, waiting to bestow pardon and eternal . life. He hears the divine call and the demand that accompanies it. He feels the strivings of the Spirit in his soul. There is but one way to test the reality of the proffered redemption, and that is by an exercise of the will, by repentance and faith. So the sinful soul obeys the divine summons, and takes the risk. It stretches out into the darkness, and lays hold upon the unseen Christ. It gives itself to him for time and eternity, that he may forgive its sins, and make it holy, and use it in the service of the kingdom, and bring it at last to the heavenly blessedness. 4. The act of will involved in repentance and faith > consummated, what is the result? It is one and invariable, as all Christians will testify. He that seek- eth, findeth ; he that asketh, receiveth; to him that knocketh it is opened (Matt. vii. 7, 8). The unknown country is entered, and its reality is revealed by a per- sonal experience. The teachings of the Gospel and the testimony of the believing Church are verified by the facts. The divine call, with its offer and promise, is vindicated. It will be my task in the remainder of the present lecture to endeavor to describe the new world of expe- rience into which the soul enters by repentance and THH GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 131 faith, and the evidence it furnishes of the truth of Ginietintity: (1.) The first effect of the great act of will involved in repentance and faith is the revelation of a new life in the soul. I say the revelation, rather than the begin- ning, of a new life; for I fait maintain the position commonly taken by theologians, and, I believe, taught in the Scripture, that repentance aa faith, aiid in the truest sense free, are the manifestation of a eng process of regeneration already begun. But while the origin of the new life thus goes back to the efficiency of ‘the Holy Spirit, its disclosure is conditioned upon the human act of will. This new life involves a radical transformation of the whole man. The strong language employed in the Bible to describe it is not too strong to truly charac- terize the fact. The change is a “new creation,” a “passing from death unto life,” a “resurrection,” a “new birth.” The subject of it has become a “new man ;” he possesses a “new heart.” It is, in truth, a complete moral and spiritual revolution. Some of our most thoughtful modern theologians do not hesi- tate to translate the biblical terms into the technical lan- guage of philosophy, and to declare that the result of the change is a “ new personality,” a “new ego,” with a new self-consciousness.”” We need, it is true, to be on our guard lest we take these expressions, biblical and theological, with absolute literalness. The bond of per- sonal identity between the old man and the new is not severed. The self is essentially the same, and this is true also of the man’s faculties and powers. The sub- sequent struggle with remaining sin proves to the Chris- tian’s sorrow that the “old man” is not by any means 132 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. wholly overcome, but exists alongside of the new man, though dethroned from its dominion over the soul and excluded from the centre of the regenerate life. Ney- ertheless, these strong terms are more than figures of speech. They strive to express the exceeding greatness of a change that, to him who experiences it, is maryel- lous. Even the outsider sees something of it, and is compelled to confess that it is passing strange. This inward transformation is the beginning of re- demption. It is the breaking of that power of sin which has held the soul captive ; the restoration of the soul to its true relation to God, from whom it has been separated and alienated, and under whose displeasure it has rested; the return of the man from false ends to his one true chief end; the rehabilitation of the divine image in him; the opening of the fountain of eternal life. The man has “come to himself” (Luke xv. 17). He is in the way of realizing the “end immanent in his personality.” ™ Let us look at the details of this transformation as they manifest themselves in the principal departments of the human soul. ; (a.) A radical transformation has been wrought in the will. Here we include the repentance and faith by which the change was effected on the human side; for they, as has already been shown, are not only the condi- tion of the change, but also the expression of it. What is most prominent here isthe fact realized in repentance, the new choice of a supreme end. In the old sinful state the supreme end is self, or the world invits relation to self. The soul makes itself the centre around which it revolves. It serves and loves the creature rather than the Creator (Rom. i. 25). Moreover, inasmuch THH GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 133 as all a man’s subordinate choices and volitions are affected by his supreme choice, all his voluntary acts and states are tainted by this perversion of the will in its highest exercise. Though the man may perform many true and right acts in the sphere of “civil right- eousness,” yet even these are to a certain extent vitiated by the central disease. But the first experience of the Christian reveals a complete revolution in his moral and spiritual being, and the shaping of his life to entirely new ends and activities. The supreme choice is fixed on God as he manifests himself in Christ. The centre of the soul’s movement is no longer the sinful self, but the Being who is the true life of the soul. The king- dom of God, which is the chief end of God and Christ in their redemptive working, has become the chief end of the newborn child of God, and this not only is his relation to God changed, but also his relation to his — fellow-men, who now, in subordination to God, are the objects of his love. Moreover, this new choice involves a resolute turning from sin and purpose of holiness. The new choice finds expression in repentance. The _hew volition is expressed in faith. In the sinful state the trust is in self, in the achievements of the sinner’s own moral life. In the new life the trust is in Christ. There is a complete submission of the will to him, a taking of him for the Master, a reliance upon his work for justification, 2 making of his service the business of life. The believer has his all in another, even his Saviour. But this is not all that is revealed in the transfor- mation of the sinner’s will. He discovers, through the repentance and faith which he has freely exer- cised, that the old sinful inability is gone, and that the i “tines { 134: EVIDENCE OF OHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. chains which once bound him fast are broken. By the entrance of God’s grace into his life the conditions have been supplied which have rendered the free action of the will possible. He is no longer under bondage to sin, but free for the performance of God’s will. Not that the sinful nature itself is gone; that is not the case, nor will it be during the remaining earthly life of the Christian. But its power is broken. Sin, whether personal or corporate, is no longer the power “that dominates the life. It has been thrust from the centre to the circumference. It is doomed to defeat. It has the sentence of death in itself. The man him- self is freed, at least in potency and promise. The power that is working in him has given him. back his true self. He is able to fulfil his true purpose. (b.) The éntellect, too, has experienced a change. In the unconverted man all the intellectual powers and ex- ercises are affected by sin. Sin is necessarily the source of error; he who does not will rightly cannot think rightly. Even in the region of purely scientific and philosophical thought the disturbing influence of sin inanifests itself; prejudices and biases interfere with the processes of intellection. In the practical interests of life the influence is still greater. In moral and religious things the blinding influence of sin is simply incalculable. It is sin that shuts man out from that complete and adequate knowledge of God which he might have through the natural revelation, while it makes the contents of the Gospel to a great extent un- intelligible to him before God’s Spirit comes to his assistance. The things of the Spirit of God are fool- ishness to the natural man (1 Cor. ii. 14), not merely because he has not entered the realm of Christian THK GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 135 experience, but also because his spiritual organ is dis- eased. The light that is in him is darkness. His eye is evil (Matt. vi. 23). He is blind, and his ears are dull of hearing. Consequently, as Paul says, he can- not know the things of the Spirit, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Cor. ii. 14). But the regenerated soul has experienced a mighty intellectual transformation. The scales have fallen from the spiritual eyes. There has been an inpouring of new spiritual and moral light. The eye has become single and the whole body is full of light (Matt. vi. 22). A new sphere of knowledge and truth has been opened.” Self, God, man, the world, appear in new aspects. The truths of revelation, which before seemed dark and mysterious, now shine in their own light, and appear supremely reasonable. It is true that this change is in part objective, due to the new sphere into which the believer has entered, with its revelation of the Chris- tian realities of which I am to speak later. But this is not the whole. Without the intellectual illumination which is a part of regeneration, this new sphere would be invisible, even supposing it to be entered. It is because the eyes have been opened that the marvelous things are seen. So great is the change in this respect that it seems at first as if a new sense had been ac- quired, and a certain justification is given to those who speak of a faith-faculty distinct from the other intellectual powers. And yet a calmer and more care- ful investigation shows that it is only the old powers which have been relieved of their obstructions and quickened and enlarged in their scope.” (c.) Once more, the change is experienced in the fee- engs. The sensibility is that department of the human 136 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. mind which is most easily affected by influences from without, and which seems to derive its whole character from the condition of the other parts of man’s nature. The feelings are the index of the voluntary and intellec- tual states, as well as of the instinctive and purely physi- cal. It is not surprising, then, that here the influence of sin is very great. In the unconverted man the im- pulses and feelings are perverted : selfishness, pride, ha- tred, fear—all the brood of evil emotions—find a place in the soul. But the change of which we are speaking is nowhere more marked, under ordinary circumstances, than in the sensibility. This most mobile and easily affected part of man, which takes its color and charac- ter from the state of his other powers, responds to the new influences. Before it was like “sweet bells jan- eled, out of tune and harsh ;” in the first hours of con- version it is like an exquisite instrument of music upon which a master plays heavenly harmonies. The soul enters a new world of joy and peace, whose light trans- figures even the old material world. In the striking words of Jonathan Edwards, “the appearance of every- thing is altered; there seems to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast of appearance of divine glory in almost every- thing. God’s excellency, his wisdom, his purity, and love, seem to appear in everything; in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water and all nature.” The soul goes forth in love to God and Christ. Especially does it eling to the latter with the warmest personal | affection. ‘My beloved is mine, and I am his” (Cant. ii. 16), it declares. There is joy, rest, peace. (d.) Finally, we mark the change in conscience. This is no less wonderful than that which we have THE GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 137 noted elsewhere. The disorder of the unconverted sinner appears in its most concentrated form in his conscience. This witness to the divine law, whose purpose is to keep man in the path of duty and in right relation to God, fails to attain its end, and so is at variance with the other powers. It judges and con- demns the sinful soul, declaring its guilt, and testifying to the divine displeastre. There are, it is true, times when its voice is silenced, for sin has the power tem- porarily to produce this result. But again there are times when conscience awakes to the most urgent ac- tivity and turns the inner world into a hell. In that arousing of the sense of sin already mentioned, which is the common antecedent of conversion, when the Spirit of God is working in the soul with the arraign- ment, the offer, the demand, and the promise of the Gospel, conscience speaks in trumpet tones of condem- nation. But in the great transformation which is revealed when repentance and faith have done their work, con- science also plays its part. Instead of the unrest, the condemnation, the intimations of God’s displeasure, and the threatenings of punishment; instead of that expe- rience that is in some respects even worse, the silenc- ing of conscience, there is now satisfaction and peace. Conscience no longer testifies to an angry God, but to a forgiving God, One who has removed our transgres- sions from us as far as the east is from the west (Ps. cili, 12). It is no longer arrayed against the other elements of our nature, but points in harmony with them to God and duty. Here, then, is the beginning of redemption in the soul. I say advisedly, the beginning, for all is indeed 138 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN HXPERIENCE. as yet inchoate. The transformation of the supreme choice has not yet brought the subordinate choices and volitions under the control of the new and holy pur- pose. The saving faith has not yet grown into the mature faith of later Christian life. The renewed in- tellect is not yet the perfect organ of the regenerate will. The realm of feeling, in which there is such a stir- ring of new life, is not yet brought into complete sub- jection to God and Christ. The appeased conscience has still a long struggle with sin before it. But the power of the old life is broken and the new is estab- lished. All looks forward to the complete renovation of the man. Eternal life has begun to work in him. The outlines of the divine image, which before were blurred, now appear distinct and sharp-cut in the very centre of his being. It is the beginning of redemp- tion, and contains in it the potency and promise of the complete salvation.” This is the first step in the evidence of Christian experience. The Gospel that was brought home to the soul by the divine call has proved itself true. It has stood the first test. It promised redemption, and here is redemption already initiated; eternal life, and here is eternal life begun; the restoration of the divine image, and that image has already emerged from its obscuration. This is not a matter of inference, not an opinion, but a fact. The change is far too great and radical to be called in question. It impresses it- self upon those who view it merely from the outside. The subject of it is filled and thrilled with the certainty of the transformation. To all objectors he says, like the man the Saviour healed, “ This one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see” (John ix. 25). THH GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 139 He may not be able to give any scientific justifica- tion of his conviction, but he knows that it is well- grounded.” We cannot too strongly emphasize the importance of this first element in the evidence. It is the solid foundation upon which all the superstructure of the experimental proof rests.“ The divine agencies and personalities whose reality our argument aims to prove enter our experience from without; they belong to a transcendent sphere. Our certainty concerning them, like much of our knowledge, must be in part a matter of inference. But the transformation of the spiritual nature of which I have been speaking lies wholly within the sphere of our direct knowledge, in a region with regard to the contents of which there is no possi- bility of doubt. (2.) But this is only the first step. The proof is larg- er and more far-reaching. The Christian cannot stop short with the evidence thus attained ; he must proceed to use it in the attainment of new evidence. The fact which presses most strongly upon his attention is that this great change is not natural, that is, that it is not the result of his own agency or of any of the forces, spiritual or physical, operating in the world about him. To explain it by these causes is palpable folly. The persuasions of other Christians cannot have wrought such a transformation. Neither can the truth have done it by its natural influence upon the intellect. It seems at first more to the purpose to say that the man has done it himself, for there is a true sense in which this is actually the case. The repentance and faith, the new choice and volition, upon which the whole hinges, are human acts. They are also free acts; in- 140 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. deed, the subject is conscious of never having been more truly free than in this supreme exercise of the will by which he has been transformed from a child of sin into a child of God. Nevertheless, he cannot ex- plain the great experience thus. He has not himself removed the inability which before his conversion pre- vented him from exercising his freedom. This has been done by a Power exter a to him, though work- ing within him, which has thus caused this great up- heaval in his nature and brought about this wonderful revolution. A great flood of spiritual influence has come down upon the human will and borne it up and carried it along in its powerful current, compared with which it is but a little eddy, though still free—so free that it might have held back the flood. The distine- tion the theologian makes between regeneration and conversion, the two aspects of the change cf heart, is verified by the Christian as he investigates his inner life, and he knows that the determining factor in the work is regeneration. The soul has been taken posses- sion of by a power greater than itself, and its freedom has been “ persuaded and enabled ”—once more to use a phrase of the Catechism—to make the supreme choice. And if the change in the will has evidently not been brought about by natural causes, the same is true of the transformation in the other departments of his spiritual being. The enlightened intellect, the reno- vated sensibility, the quieted conscience, are facts which point to the activity of a Power above nature. The new life is manifestly supernatural. Not without rea- son do sober-minded theologians like Isaac Watts speak of the ‘‘ constant miracle of regeneration and convert- ees THE GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 141 ing grace;”” for if a miracle is an event in nature for the accomplishment of which natural agencies are insufficient, this wonderful experience may well be thus denominated. The beginning of redemption in the soul is thus evidently supernatural.** The Christian recognizes in it the manifestation of divine grace. Through this ex- perience he is brought directly into contact with God. Of this fact he can stand in no doubt. Here his pre- Christian knowledge of God comes into play, and that connected with the preliminary experience of which mention has been made at an earlier stage in the pres- ent lecture. He has known God before in nature and the ordinary religious exercises of his soul; he has known him still more impressively in the experience that immediately preceded conversion. Now he recog- nizes in the Power working in regeneration and the new life the same God. The facts can be ascribed to no other source.” (8.) Moreover, this divine Power revealed through the experience of regeneration is not far off but near at hand, not external to the soul but immanent in it. The new consciousness of the converted man reveals to him the fact that the Divine has taken up its abode in his inmost self. In a true sense the regenerate consciousness involves a consciousness of God. That the newly converted Christian would be able rightly to interpret this element in his experience without the help of the external Word, I do not for a moment claim. But with the assistance of that Word he has no difficulty in doing so. He recognizes in this in- dwelling God that divine personality whom the Bible ealls the Holy Spirit. He who is himself by way 142 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. of eminence the //oly One has turned the soul from sin to the life of holiness. He is the cause of the whole inward transformation ; he is the present foun- tain from which the new life flows. According to the teachings of the Bible, wherever God comes into contact with his creatures, it is through the Spirit. It is thus that he is immanent in the material world and that he is the life of the sentient creation. It is through the Spirit that he dwells in man in his intellectual, moral, and religious exercises outside of the realm of redemp- tive grace. But in this closest contact of all which is established by regeneration, he comes into the most in- timate union. Through the Spirit God is married to the soul, and the Christian life is no longer a natural life but a life in and of the Spirit. Here, then, is still another element in the genesis of our evidence, the recognized presence of the Holy Spirit. This is the great and chief evidence of the truth of Christianity, the demonstration of the Spirit, the seal and earnest of the Spirit, of which the New Testament speaks (1 Cor. ii.4; Eph. i.18; 2 Cor. i. 22). (4.) But still more is involved in this experience. The Spirit bears witness to the reality and power of the glorified Christ. By him the Christian is united to his Lord, and has in himself the witness to his reality and living power. To understand this fact, let us recall the Gospel teachings respecting the Saviour. Before his death and resurrection he gave notice to his disciples that he should leave them, so faras his bodily presence was con- cerned; but at the same time he assured them that he would return to them through the Spirit, by whom he would establish his church, and throngh whom he and THE GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 1438 the Father would abide in the individual Christian and the body of believers (John xiv. 16). By his ascension he withdrew himself from his disciples, in order that he might sit down upon the throne of majesty above, and as the Lord and Ruler of mankind carry on his work of redemption. The first evidence that he was what he claimed to be was the promised outpouring of the Spirit (Acts ii.). This was manifested by the mira- cles on the day of Pentecost and in the later ministry of his disciples (Acts ii. 33; iv. 10). Every such miracle was at once an evidence of tle presence of the Spirit and of the reality and power of Christ’s Messiahship. But this demonstration of the Spirit was not confined to these outward evidences. The presence of the Spirit as manifested in the new birth and the new life is the evidence to each believer of the fact that Christ is really upon the throne, working through the Spirit as his agent. This is what the apostle John meant when he said, ‘ He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself” (1 John v.10). As Baxter says, “none but the sacred Redeemer of the world, approved by the Father, and working by his Spirit, could do such works as are done on the souls of all that are truly sanctified.” *° With the aid of the objective Gospel the Christian has no difficulty in recognizing the living author of re- generation as Jesus the Christ. This is the work the Saviour did when on earth. All his preaching and- working had for their object the conversion of souls. This his miracles symbolized and pledged; this his persuasions and influence accomplished. This is the work he promised to do after his ascension: “ And J, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto 144 HVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. me” (John xii. 32). This was the great object for which his Spirit was to be sent. Forgiveness must be the result of his sacrificial death upon the cross. Eternal life, which is his especial gift, is the life that was manifest in him (1 John i. 2). The bestowal of it upon men is the proof of his Messiahship. The work that has been wrought in the regenerate soul bears upon it the marks of Christ, and by them we recognize him as its present and ever-living Author. We see in the enlightened intellect, with its new world of spiritual truth, the work of Christ the Prophet, a work that could come from none but him, and which we know as identical with the work he performed on earth. In the quieted conscience we see the efficiency of the great High-Priest, the Lamb of God, who died on Calvary, and taketh away the sins of the world. In the renewed will, turned from sin to God, and made subject to the divine law, we recognize the work of the exalted Messianic King, who evidences his kingship in ‘subduing us to himself.” In the new realin of feel- ing there are intimations of the work and presence of Christ in all his offices. Moreover, we know him in regeneration as the God-man. In the power he dis- plays we recognize his deity. In the nature of his work we see his perfect manhood. So far as the image of God is restored in the new heart, the presence of the perfect Image, even Jesus the Christ, is manifested. No Christian can for a moment stand in doubt as to Christ’s authorship of his new life. It bears upon it all the marks of Christ. And it is not Christ’s doctrine or example; it is not the posthumous in- fluence of Christ. It is the power of the ever-living Christ. The presence of the Christ, thus verified, is THE GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 145 a spiritual presence. That goes without saying. It is not a visible or bodily presence, but a presence through the Spirit. But it is none the less a real. presence. The Christian knows himself to be brought thus into union with Christ. This is an essential fact in the ex- perience of the new life. The undo mystica is not a figure of speech but a reality. Through the Spirit Christ is united to the soul, and the soul to Christ. And this is not merely a matter of what might be called physical union, that is, of a bond lying out of con- sciousness, but a personal, consciously recognized, spir- itual union, a relation of person to person, spirit to spirit. There is, indeed, a clear recognition of the fact to which reference has just been made, that the hu- manity of Christ abides in heaven, and that the God- man comes near to us only through the ILoly Spirit. But the Christian does not understand this to make the union less, but rather more, real. The Saviour said that it was expedient for him to go away from his disciples (John xvi. 7). He implied that when he should come through the Paraclete, it would be to abide with them in a truer sense than was possible during his earthly life. And this is what the believer realizes in his experience, the presence of Christ in the closest personal union. In this union with Christ the Christian recognizes the establishment of a new corporate relation, which takes the place of, and is destined entirely to abolish, the old corporate relation to the fallen race. As Adam was his natural head, Christ has become his spiritual head (1 Cor. xv. 45-49). He is bound to Christ by the closest of all ties, and made a member of his body, 19 146 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. an integral part of the new race which he has founded through his redemptive work. The revelation of the Spirit in the new life of the believer is thus the evidence of the reality and power of the glorified Saviour.” (5.) Moreover, the Spirit testifies to God as the Father; or, to put the same truth into another form, through the Spirit and Christ we are brought_to the Father. The Saviour’s promise to his disciples was, “Tf a man love me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him” (John xiv. 23). The new- born Christian finds this promise also fulfilled in his experience; through the Spirit he realizes the indwell- ing of the Father, and the Father is known through the Son. The drawing of the Father to the Son through the Holy Spirit is thus consummated. The believer knows God as he is, not merely as the God whose love broke through clouds of just displeasure in the pre-Christian experience, but also as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I have empha- sized in our preceding lectures the natural or uni- versal knowledge of God. He reveals himself in the material world as Creator and Governor, and in our spiritual natures as the Father of spirits and the Source of intellectual and moral life. We know him as the personal God, the moral Tuler who speaks in our con- sciences and governs mankind by his providence. This natural knowledge of God is of the highest importance, if we are to make good the evidence of Christian ex- perience. But how imperfect is this knowledge of God compared with that which comes to us through Chris- tian experience, as we recognize in the Creator the God THE GENESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 147 and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies (2 Cor. i. 3). We take the Word here again as our guide, but only that we may identify in its por- traiture the reality of the Father’s character. The Son revealed the-Father when he came into the world and lived that wondrous life, at once divine and human. He could say with truth, “ He that hath seen me hath seen the Father also” (John xiv. 9). But this revela- tion is external and second-hand until the believer, in his own experience, learns to know the Father through the Son. Thus knowing God, he recognizes in the Father the Source and Author of redemption, the eter- nal Ground of his being, the great End toward which his redeemed life tends.” (6.) The Spirit also bears witness to the forgiveness of sins. This great fact is involved in the quieted conscience, which forms an essential element in the changed heart. But in the initial experience of the Christian life it comes to light not merely as an effect but also as a cause. I wish to dwell upon it somewhat fully, because it involves in it all that is distinctive in the manifestation of the Saviour and the Father through the Spirit. We saw in the last lecture what sin is and what is meant by guilt. As the responsible authors of our own sin we stand defenceless before God’s law and God himself. Our relation is a per- verted one; we are out of harmony with our spiritual surroundings. Even our material environment is dis- turbed by sin and has become the source of misery to us. But what is worst in sin and guilt is the dis- turbance of our relations to God our Father, our soul’s true life. We rest under his displeasure. We realize it in the punishment that comes upon us through the 148 EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. operation of his law. But still more we realize it in our personal relations to him. It separates us from him and shuts us up to an isolated and selfish life. Moreover, it makes reformation impossible. The new life which is essential to salvation is a life in God’s favor. It cannot be begun or carried on apart from him, or while we are under his frown. The only hope “for our redemption is conditioned upon the possibility that somehow the guilt of sin may be removed. Apart from the Gospel no such hope is vouchsafed us. Natu- ral religion gives no solid ground for belief in the for- giveness of sin; on the contrary, reason alone, dealing with this subject of guilt, seems to declare forgiveness impossible. The justice of God appears to exclude it ; for, in spite of all that is said to the contrary, natural theology tells us far more of God’s justice than of his merey. Its dictum is, “ The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezek. xviii. 4); and more than that it cannot tell us. But in the experience of the new life the believer receives the forgiveness of sin, and knows by the wit- ness of the Spirit that he receives it. He is justified by faith (Rom. v. 1). This boon comes to him through Christ, as a part of his union with Christ. Because he has become Christ’s and Christ has become his, the benefit of Christ’s aton- ing death has become his also. Of this atoning death he knows through the objective Gospel, which declares that by his sacrifice upon the cross the God-man made propitiation for the sins of the world (1 John ii. 2), that is—for it is not my purpose to advance here any theory of the atonement—made it possible and just for God to forgive the sins of men. In the first experi- THH GHNESIS OF THE EVIDENCE. 149 ence of the Christian he knows himself to be forgiven, and that not because he deserves it, but wholly on the ground of another’s work, even Christ’s; not because God is an indulgent Being who passes by sin with easy good-nature, but because Christ has made full atone- ment. He knows that he is not forgiven that he may sin again and go on in the old life, but because his faith and his conversion involve a new life, and because Christ stands ready to carry him forward in the path of that new life. The blessing of forgiveness is also known as coming from the Father through an act of justifying grace. Indeed, in this Christ and the Father are one. The consciousness of the Christian involves the full recog- nition of God’s mercy and holiness. It is not the mercy of the Christ as opposed to the justice of the Father, but the mercy and holiness of the Father re- vealed through the Christ and witnessed in the for- giveness of sin. In this experience of which I am speaking, the great, precious, soul-stirring fact emerges that God is reconciled and has made proclamation of amnesty to his rebellious subjects. The sinner’s guilt is gone. Not that he is no longer the responsible an- thor of his sin; that he must always be, and even di- vine omnipotence could not alter the fact; even in the glories of heaven he will still be the sinner, the unworthy soul that voluntarily set itself in opposition to God and law. In this sense he remains what he was, and must so remain; what has been done cannot be undone. Dut the forgiveness consists in the fact that God’s displeasure, which-gave to his guilt its sting, is removed. Te has peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. v. 1). God is reconciled with him 150 KVIDENCEH OF CHRISTIAN HXPERIENCE. and he with God. The Father’s smile is upon him. He knows himself to be in reality, what he has al- ways been by birthright, the Father’s son, the heir of God, the joint-heir with Christ of the eternal inheri- tance (Rom. viii. 16, 17). This sonship, recognized as a present reality, isan essential element in the forgive- ness of sins. It is this that gives forgiveness its won- derful sweetness and significance. Theologians have been wont to describe justification in forensic terms, as a declarative act of God by which a new legal status is effected; and unquestionably their meaning is correct. But if we derive our theology not from scholastic treatises but from the experience of the Christian, read in the light of the Bible, we see that this mode of statement fails to do justice to the fact. The believer does not find himself merely in the presence of a Judge who has withdrawn the charges of the law against him; he stands before a Father who has given back his favor and confidence.