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APOLOGETIC LECTURES
ON THE
FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY MURRAY AND GIBB
FOR
T. AND T. CLARK.
LONDON, Seems. ne HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.
DUBLIN, . - + JOHN ROBERTSON AND CO.
APOLOGETIC LECTURES
ON THE
FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
DELIVERED IN LEIPSIC IN THE WINTER OF 1864
BY
VA
CHR. ERNST LUTHARDT,
DOCTOR AND PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY.
Granslated from the Chis Goition by
SOPHIA TAYLOR.
EDINBURGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 38, GEORGE STREET.
1865.
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2022 with funding from
Princeton Theological Seminary Library
https://archive.org/details/apologeticlecturOOluth_1
PREFACH.
Ours is an apologetic age. Two views of the world
stand opposed one to the other, and contend together |
for the sway of the modern mind. It is, then, the
task of the advocates of the Christian view to show,
in the presence of modern thought, and by the re-
sources of modern intellectual culture, that it, and it
alone, is the satisfactory solution of the problem of
all existence, of human life and its enigmas, of the
human heart and its inquiries,—to prove that Chris-
tianity is truth, truth ever young and always fresh,
universal truth, and therefore equally adapted and
equally satisfying to all ages and all degrees of civili-
sation. ——
LECTURE I.
THE ANTAGONISTIC VIEWS OF THE WORLD IN THEIR
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT.
PAGE
The subject proposed—Christianity a new View of the World—
The Ancient Church—The Middle Ages—The Reformation—The
Development of the Negative Spirit —Socinianism — English
Deism—Naturalism in France—Illumination in Germany—Ration-
alism—Pantheism—Materialism — Prevailing Opinions—Theistic
and Cosmical Views contrasted, ; d é : Eis et
LECTURE II.
THE ANOMALIES OF EXISTENCE.
The problem—The Relation of Man to the World—The Anomalies of
Knowledge—Of the Sentiments—Of the Will—Of all Existence—
Death—Perception of Truth a Moral Act—The Answer of Chris-
tianity, . : ; ; : : : ‘ . 24
LECTURE IIL
THE PERSONAL GOD.
The importance of the question, Is there a God ?—Intuitive Convic-
tion of the Existence of God; its Universality—Atheism—Proofs
of the Existence of God: from Nature; from its existence; from
its adaptation to its purpose; from History; from our idea of
God; from Conscience—Result—The Nature of God—Pantheism
—Pantheism criticised; its practical consequences; it contradicts
Reason, Conscience, the demands of the heart, : : 38
Contents.
LECTURE IV.
THE CREATION OF THE WORLD.
PAGE
The Conflict between Natural Science and the Religious View of the
World—The Idea of Creation—Pantheism and Materialism—Ma-
terialism criticised—Astronomy and its supposed Opposition to
Christianity—The Position of the Harth—Geology and its Dis-
coveries—Geology and the Bible—The Uncertainties of Geological
Science—Point of view for forming a right judgment, and Har-
mony in Hssentials,
LECTURE V.
MAN.
The Scriptural View in general—The Transmutation Theory of Dar-
win—The Unity of the Human Race necessary both from religious
and human reasons—Varieties of Race—Man as a Union of Body
and Soul—The Body—The Soul—Psychological Materialism criti-
cised—Scriptural View of the Nature and Destiny of Man—Man
as a Recapitulation, in a more exalted sense, of the World—Per-
> sonality of Man—His conscious Thought—His free will—Man’s
Position in the World—The higher Destiny of Man,
LECTURE VI.
RELIGION.
Universality and Necessity of Religion ; it is rooted in the nature of
man—lIts abode, man’s inner spiritual life—Religion viewed as
Faith, and the Nature of Faith; its manifestation in prayer—The
Position of Religion—Connection of Mental Culture with Religion
—Religion the Foundation of National Life—Religion and Poli-
tical Life—Its importance with respect to the present highly
civilised age,
68
- 100
. 130
Contents. xl
LECTURE VII.
REVELATION.
PAGE
Necessity of Revelation considered with respect to our Reason, and our
Will—Sin—Testimony to its universality—Scriptural account of
its origin—Its consequences: moral schism in our whole existence,
and ourincapacity to obviate it by our own strength—Possibility
of Revelation—Miracles and the Laws of Nature—Certainty of
Miracles— Their relation to Revelation—The genuineness and
truth of Revelation ; testimony of the Apostles—F act of the Resur-
rection; testimony of the whole Church; testimony of our own
heart—The Self-witness of Truth—Its popular power—The rela-
tion of Revelation to Reason, inasmuch as it surpasses the limits
of Reason; is opposed to erring Reason; is in harmony with the
inner truth of Reason—Reason the organ for Revelation, . . 156
LECTURE VIII.
HISTORY OF REVELATION—HEATHENISM AND
JUDAISM.
Historical nature of Revelation—Vocations of various Nations—The
Nation of Religion, and the Nations of Civilisation—Heathen Reli-
gion—Heathen Morality—The Philosophical Morality of Heathen-
ism—Its actual morality—The Voices of Prophecy among the
Nations—Heathenism searching after God—Judaism and the Reli-
gious Vocation of Israel—The great Fundamental Ideas of the
Jewish Religion—Prophecy and its History—Jesus in Israel—The
judgment of Israel—Christianity, . - 3 ; . 194
LECTURE IX.
CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY.
The Historical Situation at the entrance of Christianity into the
world—The Universal Empires: the Babylonian, Persian, Grecian,
Xl Contents.
and Roman—Mental Progress—Jesus Christ the End of Ancieniae
and the Beginning and Power of Modern Times—Victorious Pro-
gress of Christianity in the World’s History—The Power of the
Christian Spirit—The Universal Character of Christianity, and its
testimony to Jesus Christ, . : : , . 226
LECTURE X.
THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
The Question of the present— Oppositions in ancient times; in
modern times—Strauss and Renan—The Gospels; testimony of
the ancient Church—The portrait of J esus, the Self-witness of the
Gospels; the trustworthiness of their narrative—Attacks upon
the Gospels—The Gospel description of the Person of Jesus, of
His youth, of His public ministry—The Saviour’s Life a Revela-
tion of Divine Love even to Death—The miraculous Person of
Jesus; His holiness and harmony ; His consciousness of fellowship
with God; His miracles; His sayings; His self-witness—The
Son of Man; His universal position with respect to the world;
His testimony to His future—The Son of God, and His absolute
fellowship with God—The testimony of Christ’s two institutions,
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper—Recapitulation, . : . 249
NOTES.
Nores To Lecrours I., ; : : : ; ; 299
Notes to Lecrure Il, . : ; ; : , 304
Nores to Lecture IIL, . : : : : : 309
Norrs ro Lecrurr lV., . ; - ‘ ‘ : 318
Nores ro Lecture V.,_ . 2 : : 7 ' 324
Nores ro Lecrure VL, . : ‘ " 3 ; 331
Nores To Lecrure VIL, . : : ‘ : ; 334
Nores to Lecrurr VO : ‘ : : ‘ 343
Norrs To Lecture IX., . ; ; : : ; 347 |
Nores to LecrureX., . 4 , : ° ; 350
APOLOGETICAL LECTURES
ON THE
FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
LECTURE I.
THE ANTAGONISTIC VIEWS OF THE WORLD IN THEIR
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT.
aN. HE task which I propose to myself in the
lectures | am about to deliver before you,
my respected hearers, is to state to you
those general truths on which Christianity
is founded, and to justify them in the presence of
modern thought. The Christian view of the world
is in these days opposed by a non-Christian view;
and a separation in the whole current of opinion in
the modern world, leading to a rupture which could
not but have a fatal influence upon the future, is in-
creasingly imminent. Under such circumstances it is
the duty of every advocate of Christian truth to do his
utmost to maintain the connection of intellectual life.
Christian intellect has in our days undoubtedly
attained a degree of enlightenment and power rarely
before witnessed. We need only observe the earnest-
A
.
2 The Subject Proposed.
ness with which theological studies are prosecuted, or
compare the sermons of the present day with those
of the past, or the great activity manifested in the
various provinces of Christian usefulness with that of
former times, to be convinced that the Christian intel-
lect is indeed a power. But the non-Christian intellect
is also such a power as it never was before. We have
indeed already seen times in which Christianity met
with the most positive denial. Voltaire ruled the
educated minds of his age, and was able to indulge
the hope that in a few centuries Christianity would
be extinct. Such a hope in the present day could be
entertained by no reasonable man; and yet the non-
Christian mind is a mightier power now than then.
And this for two reasons. The force of church cus-
toms then still formed a barrier against the gainsayers,
and brought Christianity itself intact through the times
of scepticism. But this barrier of the form of sound
words is ever more and more yielding to the torrent of
modern times. Again, former attacks were desultory,
modern ones are systematic. The spirit of French
infidelity is more stormy and tumultuous, but not
so dangerous as the German. When a Renan writes
a Life of Jesus, it is clever, piquant, popular; but
it is a romance, an interesting novel. Works of
fiction are the favourite literary productions of the
day; and what could be imagined more interesting
than a novel, whose hero is Jesus Christ, an amiable
revolutionist, a model enthusiast and fanatic, sur-
rounded by women who love His person more than
The Subject Proposed. 3
His work, by disciples who force Him to play the
part of a worker of miracles, etc.? But what is the
result? A few years and the book will be forgotten,
while the heavy artillery directed thirty years ago
against the faith of the Church by David Strauss,
and since then by his intellectual successors, has
caused far greater confusion among the ranks of the
faithful than this French skirmisher can effect.
Since the French attacks in the days of Voltaire,
the refutation of Christianity has passed through
a school, the philosophical school of the German
mind; it has been formed into a systematic view
of the world, and earnest attempts have been made
to set this up in the place of Christianity. And
this view, stripped of its philosophic garb, and uniting
itself with the other tendencies of the age, has passed
into the general opinions, not only of the educated,
but in a coarser and clumsier form into those of the
labouring classes also.
It is the duty of every one to be rightly informed
concerning these antagonistic views, that he may
take up a conscious position with respect to them.
Nothing is more unworthy than to prejudge a cause
of which we are ignorant, and yet there is nothing
more common in religious matters. In every other
case it is admitted that, in order to arrive at a judg-
ment in any suit at law, we must know thefacts upon
which such judgment must be based. Christianity is
put upon its trial, and judgment is passed ; but how
many among those who are so eager to pronounce it,
4 The Subject Proposed.
are acquainted with the Bible, and the doctrinal writ-
ings of the Church, which are its chief acts? Surely,
of all questions which can agitate an age, the reli-
gious question must be that which most deeply and
most nearly concerns us. In such a question it is
not just to decide upon mere authority, and to allow
the position we are to occupy to be pointed out to
us by others. Nor can it be right to remain indif-
ferent. In no question is indifference so inadmissible,
or so unworthy the dignity of man, as in the question
of the great religious antagonisms. Nor is it any-
where more impossible to keep clear of both sides, and
to choose the middle course. For these antagonisms
are exclusive. In other cases it may often be expe-
dient to seek truth in a middle course; in this, we
must choose one side or the other. The language
of one is, There is a God; of the other, There is
no God. Can it then be said, truth lies between the
two? There are no greater contrasts than the Chris-
tian and non-Christian views. Goethe says in his
Westéstlichen Divan, ‘The most special, the unparal-
leled, the deepest subject in the history of the world
and of mankind, and that to which all others are sub-
ordinate, is the conflict between faith and unbelief,’ (1)
Two utterly opposite principles determine these views,
and every individual is compelled to take up a positive
position with respect to one of them. The principle,
however, which he adopts will fashion his whole being
and colour his whole life. ‘ Everything depends upon
what principle a man embraces, for both his theory
Christianity a New View of the World. 5
and practice will be formed in accordance therewith.’ (2)
Let us then endeavour to bring before our minds the
great antagonism in its historical development, that
we may clearly understand what the question really
is, which is stirring up the vast mental contest now
going on around us, and in which every one of us is
playing his part.
When Christianity came into the world, it came into
it as a new view of the world. Its first object, indeed,
was the preaching of the cross, the word of reconcilia-
tion, the gospel of the grace of God in Christ Jesus,
the doctrine of repentance and faith as the way of
salvation and eternal life to man. Christianity is
primarily the doctrine of salvation. But this doctrine
of salvation includes, and is founded on, a certain view
of the world, and this view was an entirely new one.
Its way, indeed, was prepared, and points of contact
furnished by previous knowledge, by philosophy, and
still more by man’s conscience and his instinctive sense
of truth; but in its essence it was absolutely new.
Kiven its very first and fundamental principles, the
unity of God and the unity of the human species, could
not but produce an entire revolution in the world of
mind. For these were entirely new notions. How
differently, indeed, must the world be regarded, when
looked upon as the work of a Creator, as the free and
loving act of a Father, who orders and maintains all
things by the power of His wisdom and love, to whom
the most remote is not too remote, nor the least too
small; who has not merely His individual favourites
6 Christianity a New View of the World.
among mankind, but equally cherishes the whole race
in His heart; who cares not merely for the most
minute interests of their external life, but seeks above
all things the salvation of their souls, and desires above
all the affection of their hearts. These were utterly
new notions, notions of which the old world had known
nothing. Moreover, that God had made of one blood
all nations of the earth; that all were brethren, and
ought to be united by one common bond of love; that
the stranger was no stranger, but a neighbour; that
we should look not every man on his own things, but
every man also on the things of others; that our life
should be a life of service and of sacrifice for others;
that selfishness is the radical sin of human nature;
self-surrender, love, the radical virtue,—whose imagi-
nation had such ideas as yet entered? And finally,
that one single idea ruled the fate of nations and states
as well as of individuals; that there was a single his-
tory of the whole human race, commencing from one
beginning, proceeding to one end, and that end the
kingdom of God; that there was to be a kingdom of
God upon earth, into which all were to be gathered, in
which all were to be absorbed; and that this kingdom
of God was already established in Him who formed
the central point of history, the termination of the
old, the beginning of a new era; who was not merely
its herald, but its founder, the manifestation of God
himself, the manifestation of the life, the light, the
love of God in history, in and towards man—Jesus
Christ; in whom all the lines of former history meet,
Christianity a New View of the World. i
from whom all the lines of subsequent history proceed,
who is also the central point of attraction to individual
souls, in whom each individual, as well as the whole
agoregate of humanity, attains his destination, and
thus becomes a member of that great kingdom of God
which is founded upon justice and grace, upon the
deepest and firmest moral basis :—what a light has
all this cast upon history, upon God’s dealings with
nations, upon His dealings with individual souls; and
how has it gathered the greatest and the least, the
ageregate and the individual, into one marvellous
unity! (3) Not the very greatest of philosophers, not
the most comprehensive, not the most soaring mind,
had as yet formed even a conjecture of these truths,
far less had thought out, recognised, and expressed
them, and moreover succeeded in making them the
universal view, a popular matter, a power over heart
and life. Verily, Christianity brought into the world
a new view of the world.
With us these are now current notions: the things
which were then new, surprising, and unheard of, now
form the elementary propositions of Christian opinion.
Yet these thoughts have lost nothing of their great-
ness; they are the same now that they ever were, as
true, as sublime, as enlightening, and as enkindling.
It is we who have lost the lively impression of their
greatness, sublimity, and beauty; we have become
accustomed to them, and they have thus become too
customary to us. Such is the fate of all great truths.
It was but natural that this new view of the world
8 The Ancient Church.
should not immediately prevail. It had to overcome
an obstinate resistance before it obtained the victory.
It is true that this resistance was not offered by any
united system of opinions. The world of ancient
thought was dissolved. ‘The process of decomposition
had begun with the rise of philosophy in the sixth
century before Christ. For philosophy had set itself
to work upon traditionary religious notions, and had
shattered the power of the objective spirit by the
motive force of the subjective. Ancient philosophy,
indeed, had sought to fill the place of religion itself.
It was no merely speculative theory, but was practical
both in nature and tendency. Great statesmen passed
through its school as a preparation for their practical
labours. It dealt in moral and political, as well as in
scientific problems. But its power was never a popu-
lar one. Always somewhat aristocratic, and confined
to a small circle, it was incapable of taking the place
of religion, and soon resolved itself into the most
opposite tendencies. Hence its chief result was the
establishment of a doubt in all truth, the overthrow of
all conviction and certainty.
And yet man could not dispense with certainty.
Hence philosophy was accompanied by all sorts of
secret doctrines; and the more mysterious these were,
the more desirable. The old religion and its myths
were allegorically explained, and transformed into
symbols of ethics and wisdom. A whole world of
views and notions had accumulated as the result of
the previous development. But it was a world of
The Middle Ages. 9
ruins. Leading minds collected these fragments of
former times, and sought to form them into a new
structure. Laborious intellectual efforts were de-
voted to this restoration of heathen opinions. The
Neo-Platonism of Alexandria was an experiment in
which imagination and profundity united to construct
an edifice, which, in fulness of thought, should far
surpass the Christian, and by its profound philo-
sophy should conquer the meagre doctrines of these
‘barbarians. It was indeed a wondrous compound.
All religions and all nations had been forced to
contribute to it. But it remained only a splendid
experiment. It was advocated by men of conspi-
cuous and noble minds. General education, with
which heathen opinions were most closely interwoven,
lent it its support, and yet the experiment failed ;
the Christian view prevailed over the heathen, and
has since ruled the civilised world.
The intellectual powers of Judaism and heathenism,
thus conquered by Christianity, took their revenge,
indeed, by seeking to make their influence felt within
the Church, and upon the very soil of Christianity, in
the form of heterodoxy. The special object of their
attack was the doctrine of Christ’s person, which they
sought to misinterpret in either a J ewish or a heathen
sense. But even this antagonism within the Church
to the full truth of the Christian view was overcome,
and the exclusive supremacy of the latter established.
The Middle Ages were the period of this exclusive
supremacy. As the outer world of Christendom was
10 The Middle Ages.
gathered to the Vicar of Christ and the German
emperor, the two supreme powers of the whole earth,
the sun and moon which shed their light upon all
earthly life, so also did the world of mind form itself
into a strict unity. The heathen mind did indeed
practically make its influence felt, but it was obliged
to bow to the authority of the Church, and to the
ecclesiastical mode of receiving and treating all sub-
jects. ‘The Middle Ages are the eras when a single
view of the world prevailed. It is this which forms
their charm, and their greatness. In the great poems,
and in the great works of art of this period, we
encounter this single view. This never happened
again in any subsequent age. Reason was the hand-
maid of faith, and philosophy of theology. In the
Summa, the great theological work of Thomas Aquinas,
the greatest doctor of the Middle Ages, the heathens
Aristotle and Plato appear as witnesses to Christian
truth; so also in the great cathedrals, those most
characteristic representatives of the times, every thing,
even the most heterogeneous, the very world of goblins
and demons, contributed to the great yet simple edifice.
And all this for the glorification of the Church, that
supreme power on earth which held in one compacted
unity the whole fabric of human society.
Such were the Middle Ages, the era of the supreme
sway of Christianity over the world and its opinions.
Yet the heathen mind was but repressed, not anni-
hilated, and soon reappeared the more openly and the
more strongly.
Italian Humanism. 11
The revival of the ancient world in the Classical
Studies pursued with such passionate ardour in Italy
at the close of the Middle Ages, revived also the spirit
of heathenism, harboured it in Rome itself, and upon
the throne of the Romish bishop, and threatened the
world with a new heathenism, unless the Reformation
had averted this danger. This was one of the greatest,
though one of the least known and least acknowledged,
of the services rendered by the German Reformation
to western Christendom in general.
We are apt, in contemplating the revival of learn-
ing in Italy, to be dazzled by the splendour of the
enlightenment which it introduced. It assumes, how-
ever, a different appearance upon closer observation.
Assuredly the arts and sciences flourished in Italy,
in the Medicean era, as they had never done before,
as they have never done since, and adorned life with
an unwonted refinement of manners and education.
But the foundation of true morality was wanting.
Classical studies resulted in a hitherto unheard of
licentiousness of life and motive. Count Picus of
Mirandola, indeed, was a brilliant exception. His
saying, ‘Philosophy seeks truth, theology finds it,
religion possesses it,’ is almost the history of his life.
But his was an isolated case. The most distinguished
advocates of classical learning reproach each other
with sins which cannot be spoken of. Poggius wrote
jests (facetie) which can scarcely be equalled for
vulgarity and immorality, and which yet went through
twenty editions in thirty years. The heathen spirit,
12 The German Reformation.
under the form of refinement and scientific interest,
ruled at the Medicean court. The Platonic academy
at Florence put the Platonic philosophy in the place
of Christianity, and Savonarola strove with ardent
zeal against heathen immorality and heathen belief,
as defended by the highest prelates. He introduces ~
one man as saying to another, ‘What do you think
of our Christian ‘belief? What do you take it to
be?’ And the other replies, ‘ Well, you seem to me
a thorough dunce; faith is only a dream, a matter
for sentimental women and monks. At the Court
of Rome there was great taste for the fine arts, but
very little theology or Christianity, when such
words as these could be put into the mouth of the
supreme head of Christendom: ‘ How much the fable
about Christ has profited us, is sufficiently known
to all;’ and also that other saying, that a man would
be better off in disbelieving the immortality of the
soul. Matters had indeed gone so far that it was
thought necessary at the Lateran Council of the
year 1513, to inculcate afresh the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul. (4)
It was a blessing for the whole Church that, in
contrast with the refined heathenism of Italy, the
German Reformation exhibited in Luther, a moral
seriousness of conscience and faith, and in Melancthon
a union of classical cultivation and Christianity. This
had its effect even in Italy, and infused into the
opposition to the Church a moral and religious spirit.
The Reformation cast far behind it the negative spirit,
Socinianism. 13
and forced it back into a more positive position ; and it
has needed more than three centuries to arrive again
where it then stood,—enriched, indeed, by the fruits
of the development of which it was meantime the
subject.
Let us now consider this movement of the negative
spirit from the more positive position into which it was
thrown, towards the decided negativism of modern
heathenism.
The phenomenon which first presents itself, and
that with which this movement begins, is Socinianism.
A series of uneasy spirits appeared about the time
of the Reformation, who opposed the orthodox view
of the Trinity. This anti-Trinitarian movement re-
ceived its clearest, most comprehensive, and influential
expression from the Italian, Faustus Socinus. In
1574, he gave up a respectable and comfortable
position in the Medicean court, and betook himself
to Germany and Poland, where he became the cen-
tral point of the so-called Unitarians, who formed a
Socinian Society in Poland and Transylvania, and
thence extended their influence over western Europe.
Socinianism does not deny either revelation or the
supernatural ; it abides by the authority of the Scrip-
tures, but makes its own subjective notions the stan-
dard of all religious truth. In its view the essence
of Christianity consists in the doctrine of immortality,
and it was for the sake of this that Christ both lived
and died. But it denies the deity of Christ, affirming
that this doctrine is not found in the Scriptures. ‘It
14 FEinglish Deism.
is more credible, says Wollgazen the Socinian, ‘that
a man should be an ass, than that God should be
aman. It admits, however, that Christ was no ordi-
nary man, that He was the son of the Virgin, perfectly
holy, just, and godlike, and therefore exalted to be
the ruler of the world, and to receive divine honour.
It regards His prophetic and kingly offices as essential,
expunges His priestly office, and views His death as
undergone for the confirmation of His doctrine, and
not as an atonement for sin.
Socinianism is a union of the supernatural element
with rationalistic opinions.
The English Deism of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries made a still further advance on the path of
negation. It was an attempt to set up so-called
natural religion in the place of positive Christianity.
Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1648), the first of a series
of deistical writers, was followed by many others, as
Toland, Tindal, Woolston, Bolingbroke, etc. It was
not a frivolous, but an earnest and moral spirit which
originated this movement, whose object was to reduce
Christianity to general moral and religious principles.
The existence of God, the duty of worshipping Him,
virtue and piety as His true service, the duty of
repenting and forsaking sin, and faith in a divine
retribution, partly in this life, partly in the next:
these five principles are, according to Lord Herbert,
‘the chief pillars of pure religion. ‘ Whatsoever is
more than these cometh of evil.’
When Lord Herbert had completed his work On
Naturalism in France. 15
Truth as distinguished from Revelation,* he was
filled with doubt whether its publication would con-
tribute to the glory of God, and threw himself upon
his knees to entreat His guidance. ‘Give me a sion
from heaven, or if not I will suppress my book!’ ‘I
had scarcely uttered these words,’ says he, ‘when a
distinct, yet gentle sound, unlike any earthly one,
came from heaven. This so supported me, and
gaye me such peace, that I considered my prayer
as heard.’ Marvellous indeed! That God should
be said to have given a direct sign, in attestation of
a work which denies all direct revelation! So we
are not to believe that God manifested himself in
Christ, because we are to believe that God manifested
himself to Lord Herbert of Cherbury !
But a further advance was soon made: all that is
matter of revelation in the Scriptures was attributed
to the self-seeking invention of the priesthood, and
the moral character of scriptural personages attacked.
The great excitement produced by these attacks is
evident from the multitude of replies they called °
forth. To Tindal’s work alone, Christianity as Old
as the Creation, more than one hundred answers
appeared. But other religious movements in Eng-
land, and especially the rise of Methodism, soon cast
this tendency into the background.
We find, then, here a denial of revelation; but God,
virtue, and immortality, are permitted to remain.
* The full title of this book is De Veritate prout distinguitur a Revela-
tione a verisimili, a possibili et a falso.
16 Naturalism in France.
The naturalistic tendency assumed an entirely dif-
ferent form in /rance. ‘There it was frivolous,
immoral, and denied the existence of God. Upon
the soil of an Epicureanism, which made sensual
prosperity the supreme law of existence, sceptical
opinions were formed, which, advocated by a number
of influential writers, helped to prepare for the Revolu-
tion. Rousseau, indeed, had religious feeling, ad-
vocated faith in God, and repeatedly acknowledged
the sublimity of Christianity, of the Holy Scriptures,
and of Jesus Christ; but he destroyed all sense for
what actually existed, by his dream of a state of
nature, in which alone he could see a remedy for
all the evils of human society, and which, never-
theless, has never been realized, nor can ever be
possible. Voltaire, whose wit ruled his age, and to
whom Frederick the Great wrote, ‘There is but
one God, and there is but one Voltaire, satirized
and abused both Christianity and the Church, and
hated Christ,—his frequently repeated saying was,
ecrasez Tinfame,—and he ventured to predict His fall
from the throne of His dominion over mind, within
the next ten years. The French Encyclopzedia of
Diderot and D’Alembert, whose influence was a very
extensive one, was founded upon an ordinary and
sensualistic theory, and advocated a corresponding
disposition. A circle of gowrmands collected around
the German Baron Halbach, and produced among
other materialistic works the noted Systeme de la
Nature (1770), which affirmed the exclusiveness ot
Illumination in Germany. 17
matter: ‘Man is but matter; thought and will are
affections of the brain; faith in God, as well as the
admission of the existence of the soul, rest upon a
dualization of nature, upon a false distinction between
matter and spirit; the freedom of man can as little
be asserted as his immortality; self-love and interest
are the only principles of action, and human society
depends upon a system of mutual interest.’
The negative tendency could recede no farther.
It had started with the denial of Christ’s divinity ;
it had arrived at the denial of spirit in general! The
motive power, in its later manifestations, was not
reason but inclination. Inclination was the founda-
tion of opinion.
In Germany this movement came more slowly, but
more thoroughly, to maturity, and was therefore the
more dangerous.
Far more moral earnestness existed here than in
France, hence the positive spirit offered a far more
energetic resistance. Hermann Reimarus, a native of
Hamburg, indeed, transplanted English Deism, in all
its keenness and bitterness, into German soil in the
so-called Wolfenbuttel Fragments published by Lessing.
His polemics were directed not only against the Scrip-
tures, and the morality of Scripture characters, but
even against the person of Jesus himself. The plan of
Jesus was only a political one; His cry on the cross,
‘My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me 2’
did but express His despairing lamentation over its
failure. But His disciples, even at the twelfth hour,
B
18 Illumination in Germany.
transformed His political plan into a religious one, and
Jesus into a religious Messiah. (5) This was, however,
too strong meat for the times, and these attacks called
forth a general protest. French infidelity had indeed
taken root at the court of Frederick the Second, and
communicated itself to the higher classes. But it was
limited to these, and too much of their old honourable
stedfastness still existed in the mass of the people to
allow it to penetrate to them. The spirit of the age
was more in accordance with the illumination move-
ment than with the direct denial of Christianity.
The heavy form of mathematical demonstration with
which the school of Wolf had sought at first to
support, but afterwards to supplant Christian faith,
was exchanged for the lighter drapery of popular
philosophical reasoning, while the teaching of the
Church was prudently confined to generalities. Re-
ligion and morality were wanted, but not mystery.
Only what was clear was considered true, and that
only was clear which was upon the surface, not that
which must be brought from the depths. Such were
the ruling principles of the age. Mendelssohn proved
the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul;
and on these doctrines men built for themselves the
edifice of their religious faith. Theology allied itself
to the spirit of the age, and proclaimed the agreement
of revelation and reason.
Kant, indeed, overthrew this dogmatic edifice by
proving, in his Criticism of Pure Reason, that all
thought is but subjective, that consequently we know
Rationalism. 19
nothing of God, and of the supersensuous in general,
with objective certainty, and hence cannot philosophi-
cally prove the existence of God, etc. He showed, in
his Criticism of Practical Reason, that there is only a
moral certainty in conscience and its claims. God,
immortality, retribution, are claims of conscience, and
on this foundation he builds his moral world. It is
the absolute duty of every one to obey the moral law.
The categorical imperative, thou shalt, must sway the
sceptre. This is the morality of man. ‘A morality,
truly,’ as Schiller answers him, ‘for slaves, but not for
the freeborn children of the family.’ (6) Religion is
only so far valuable as it subserves this morality of law.
Religion is but a handle for morality,—the Christian
religion is certainly the best ; and Christ, as the Church
describes Him, the ideal of morality. How far the
Jesus of history realized this ideal, we are unable to
determine. He could scarcely have been identical
with it. But we need not keep to the historical, but
to the ideal Christ, 2.e. to the ideal of moral perfection ;
and this we should seek to realize in our own lives.
Rationalism, which reduces Christianity to the stan-
dard of sound human reason, grew out of these ele-
ments. In some respects morally admirable, it is in
the highest degree bigoted, and, if we might be allowed
the expression, somewhat Philistine (Philisterhaftes*).
It teaches that there is a God, but a God who leaves
the world to itself, with the exception of seeing that it
* A cant term applied by students to tradesmen and others not belong-
ing to the University.
20 Pantheism.
goes on according to the laws He has imposed upon it.
There is not, nor can there be, either miracle, prophecy,
or direct revelation : God cannot act directly. Chris-
tianity is not a revelation, properly so called; Jesus
Christ no miracle, but only the wisest and most virtu-
ous man that ever lived, and by means of His teaching,
which He sealed with His blood, the benefactor of
mankind. If Socinianism left somewhat of the super-
natural in the person of Jesus, Rationalism entirely
strikes it out, and reduces all to morality. It leaves,
however, a personal God, moral freedom, and the im-
mortality of the soul.
Pantheism, however, abolishes these three funda-
mental truths of religion and morality. Pantheism 1s
the necessary successor of Rationalism. It was impos-
sible to remain stationary at a God who has but an
external influence upon the world.
‘ What God were He who acts but from without,
Just making all in circles twirl about ?
A God, creation’s hidden springs should move
Himself in all, all in himself should love ;
That they who in Him live, and move, and are,
Should never miss His power, His aid, His care.’ (7)
God is cosmical life itself, or the universal reason in
things, not essentially separate from the world. God
and the world are only two different expressions for the
same thing, two sides of the same world, the inner and
outer side of the same object. Thus all religion is
abolished ; for there can be no personal relation to
such a God, because He is himself impersonal, and has
Materialism. 91
no personal relation to us. There may be a certain
religious disposition, in which the individual may rise
to generalities; but no faith, no love, no hope, no
prayer to such a God. And thus morality also is vir-
tually abolished. For there is no such thing as free-
will. Everything happens from pure necessity. No
man can free himself from its power. He only thinks
himself free,—‘he thinks he pushes; he himself is
pushed.’ The more acute any one is, the more will he
perceive how all actions are caused by circumstances.
Hence neither is there moral responsibility, retribution,
or life after death, but an absorption of individual into
general life.
Such notions were connectively expressed by Spinoza,
and they have been reagitated by philosophy in our days.
They received some modification at the hands of Hegel,
but are fundamentally what they ever were. They
have been followed out to their results in religion and
theology by David Strauss. The denial of the super-
natural runs consistently throughout his so-called Doc-
trine of Faith, which concludes thus: ‘ Another world
is indeed, in all its forms, the only enemy, and in its
form of a future life the last enemy, which speculative
criticism has to attack, and if possible to overcome.’
He has since spoken with even greater asperity.
Materialism took the place of Rationalism. Feuer-
bach points out the transition: ‘God was my first,
reason my second, man my third and last notion.’ In
these words he shortly and graphically describes the
downward progress of his philosophic reasoning. He
oz Prevailing Opinions.
means, however, man in his empirical, sensuous reality.
His philosophy, the knowledge of this sensuous man,
‘< converted into anthropology. All religion is self-
delusion. The idea of God is only that idea of man
which man makes objective to himself. He thinks of
himself when he thinks of God. ‘Man created God
after his own image.’ In man, however, the senses are
everything ; they are all reality, all truth. Upon these
philosophical maxims Materialism is founded, and be-
lieves it can establish them by its facts. There is no
spirit, no soul; the agency of matter is everything.
Such is its wisdom.
The development here attained is complete, and
further progress impossible. We have reached the
mud of Materialism.
The opinions, then, which now prevail are a com-
pound of all these various elements, which, appearing
in succession, have successively occupied and vacated
the mind of the present generation, and left behind
them traces of their existence. First one, then
another element will be the more prominent. Multi-
fold, however, as are the opinions now prevailing,
they have nevertheless one general tendency, one
general principle. Wherein, then, does this consist ?
Guizot describes it as the denial of the supernatural.
And certainly the question of the supernatural is the
question of the day. We might say that the general
feature of present opinions is the making the Cosmos
into a principle. The world, however, has two sides,—
matter and spirit. Hence at one time greater emphasis
Prevailing Opinions. 23
is laid upon spirit, and at another upon matter; the
tendency is now more idealistic, now more realistic ;
sometimes more sublime, sometimes more ordinary.
But the Cosmos is still the principle. It is this
which becomes progressively prominent during the
joint development. Deism suffered a God to exist, but
plunged Him into a state of quiescence; Pantheism
confounded Him with the world; Materialism entirely
denied Him ; while, on the other hand, the world, the
spirit of the world, the life of the world, the matter of
the world, were in succession exalted.
It is herein that its antagonism to the Christian view
consists. With this, God is the principle of all things,
—the principle of the world, of man, of his spirit, and
of his matter. The Christian view is decidedly theistic.
The question then is, whether God or the world is to
be the principle and centre of all things, and conse-
quently of our reasoning. . It is this which constitutes
the eminently practical importance of this contrast.
It is decisive of the whole tendency of our thoughts.
The prerequisite, however, and determining motive of
different opinions is not so much a different philosophy,
a different set of notions, as a different state of feeling.
It is the inclination and tendency of the heart which
finally determines the opinions of the mind. For an
opposite course of life must result according as a man
finds his satisfying portion in the world, or in the per-
sonal and living God.
LECTURE IL.
THE ANOMALIES OF EXISTENCE.
meme ITH RE are two great views of the world
$4 diametrically opposed to each other. Each
is an attempt to solve the great problem
of existence, and to give an answer to the
question of questions. The problem is the world, is
man himself. The existence which surrounds us, and
which we share, is the question. We see a realm of
spirit, and a realm of nature. Whence is the world
of spirit and of nature? What laws prevail in it?
And why and for what purpose does this world exist ?
This universal existence is a question which comes
before us, and from which we cannot escape.
If it be answered, The world which surrounds us
is a series of gradations terminating in man, man
is made the answer to the question, What is the
world? But is not man himself the greatest of all
questions? Is he not the most anomalous of beings ?
His relation to the world is an anomaly, his relation
to himself anomalous, he is a born anomaly. And
not only his natural existence, but still more his
moral being is full of anomalies. This question will
The Enigma of Existence. Des
not let us rest. We cannot cease from seeking its
answer. In all time it has been sought. All philo-
sophy, all religions are attempts at an answer. ‘The
interest is not merely an intellectual but an ethical
one,—an interest not merely of the mind, but of the
conscience. It is the heart’s deepest necessity to obtain
light on this matter.
Let us then consider the problem with a view to
discovering where the answer lies. We are placed
in the world. The ewistence of the world is a ques-
tion which presses upon the mind. Where is it?
No thinking man can escape this question. Pan-
theism answers: It is from itself; matter is eternal,
it has formed itself into the world; being is the
foundation of existence. But whence this beng?
Pantheism answers: From itself. In other words,
Pantheism can give no answer. Must we then leave
off inquiring because Pantheism is obliged to leave
off answering ? | ?
But not only is the origin of the world a problem,
its actual existenee and the course of its history are full
of enigmas. Does the law of necessity govern it? or
does freedom prevail therein? Is it governed accord-
ing to laws, moral laws, or arbitrarily? Appearances
point now to the former, now to the latter. Who can
behold with indifference this varying machinery of
existence? Yet who can furnish the answer ?
And finally, why is all this? This inquiry after
the why and wherefore is the chief of the questions
pressing upon the mind of man, and that of which
26 The Enigma of Existence.
it can least of all divest itself; the question most
worthy of his attention, and yet that also which he
is least capable of answering. Why does anything
exist? Why is there not nothing? Has being a
purpose, an end, a destiny? Pantheism speaks only
of cause and origin, but not of end and purpose.
But this question of the why and wherefore will
not be silenced. It is the question of the intellectual —
interest, the problem of the highest criticism, the
peculiar expression of thought. Man must cease
to think when he ceases to inquire after the where-
fore of existence.
The origin, existence, and purpose of the universe,
then, is the question placed before the mind of man.
It may be answered: Man is the answer. Is man
really the answer? Perhaps he is to the question,
Wherefore? But to the question, Whence? Strauss,
indeed, is of opinion that the mind of man, ‘as the
unconscious mind of nature, created’ the world,
‘ordered the relations of the stars, found earths and
metals, arranged the organic structure of plants and
animals.’ (1) I say that this is folly; and the Scrip-
ture says (Job xxxvili. 4—7), ‘ Where wast thou when
I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou
hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures
thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the
line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof
fastened? or who laid the corner-stone thereof, when
the morning-stars sang together, and all the sons of
God shouted for joy?’
The Relation of Man to the World. 27
Again, if man is the answer to the question where-
fore, is he not himself the question of questions ?
Even the relation of man to the world is a paradox.
The eighth Psalm sets this forth: ‘When I consider
the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and
the stars, which Thou hast ordained ; what is man that
Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that
Thou visitest him?’ The sentiment expressed by the
psalmist is the contrast between impotence and great-
ness, between the exalted and the abject. Man, in
the presence of the universe, is an atom, a vanishing
point, a cipher. And yet he has the strongest feeling
of independence and elevation in the presence of the
world. He cannot but fear every moment being
swallowed up by the universe, and sinking in this
ereat ocean of heaving forces and masses ; and yet
he proudly lifts himself in his own consciousness above
the universe. How impotent is man! ‘There 1s
no need,’ says Pascal, (2) ‘for the whole universe to
arm itself to annihilate him; a breath, a drop of
water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe
should annihilate him, man would still be the greater ;
for he knows that he dies, but the universe knows
not that it annihilates him’ ‘It is thought which
constitutes the greatness of man. But is this thought
also a power in the presence of the world? Man has
a feeling of freedom, and yet he everywhere sees
himself restrained, dependent, limited by the most
insignificant and most material forces. He is made
subject to necessity, and yet endowed with a feeling of
28 The Anomalies of Knowledge.
freedom. How shall this.contradiction be reconciled ?
The relation of man to the world is verily a paradox.
But man is himself a paradox. What an ocean of
anomalies are united in him!—anomalies of know-
ledge, of feeling, of will, of his whole nature.
There is in man a hungering after knowledge, after
truth, after certainty. And yet there is nothing but
uncertainty. What Goethe says in Faust is no rash
exaggeration. There is in each of us something of
this insatiable hunger after knowledge, this longing to
‘Recognise the hidden ties
That bind creation’s inmost energies ;
Her vital powers her embryo seeds survey,
And fling the trade in empty words away.’*
Yet are we also compelled to add:
‘That we in truth can nothing know,
This in my heart like fire doth burn.’
‘We are always groping at problems,’ says Goethe.
‘Man is a dark being, he knows little of the world,
and least of all of himself’ (3) And is this to be the
lot of man, to be ever obliged to inquire after truth,
and never to find it? ever learning, and never able
to come to the knowledge of the truth? Or must’
he content himself with the poor comfort with which
Mephistopheles tries to console Faust ?—
‘Oh! credit me, who, still as ages roll,
Have chewed this bitter fare from year to year ;
No mortal, from the cradle to the bier,
Digests the ancient leaven.’
* Gorrur’s Faust, translated by ANNA SWANWICK.
The Anomalies of the Sentiments. 29
And yet man cannot cease from chewing it, even if
he should break all his teeth over it.
But this is not all. |
Man has a craving for happiness. He longs for
that supreme good which would fully satisfy him, and
allay his deepest need. He seeks it, but finds it not,
amidst the good things which this world can afford.
He strives after happiness, yet ever feels himself miser-
able. He soars beyond things temporal and earthly,
and carries his craving into infinite space. He seeks
God as his supreme good—for we are made for God;
and this characteristic of humanity is an ineffaceable
one. And yet, where is God to be found? He is
lost in obscurity. Then, again, another characteristic
opposes the former, and draws us from God. We all
bear within us a secret opposition to God, and yet we
are made for God! ‘Si Phomme rest fait pour Dieu,
pourquoi n’est il heureux qu’en Dieu? Si ’homme est
fait pour Dieu, pourquoi est il si contraire 4 Dieu?’
‘In vain, O man, dost thou seek in thyself a remedy
for thy misery. Thy highest wisdom can attain
nothing beyond the knowledge that thou canst find
neither truth nor the true good in thyself. Philoso-
phers have promised it thee, but have been unable to
keep the promise.’ (4) And yet we cannot cease from
craving after it. ‘My whole heart burns to know
where the true good is to be found. Nothing would
be too costly to attain it. ‘We long for truth, and
find within us nothing but uncertainty. We seek
happiness, and find only misery and death. We are
30 The Anomalies of the Will.
incapable of ceasing to long for truth and happiness,
and are yet incapable of attaining either. The desire
is left us only to punish us, and to show us whence
we are fallen.’(5) But it is just in the very cireum-
stance that man has a feeling of his misery that his
greatness consists. ‘La grandeur de homme est
grande en ce quil se connait misérable; il est donc
misérable parcequwil Test ; mais il est bien grand
parcequil le connait.’ ‘No one is unhappy at being
a king, except a dethroned king.’ (6) There is, then,
an anomaly within us, in the contrast between desire
and attainment. It is desire which makes us un-
happy; yet this very desire is the sign of our greatness,
but a fallen greatness. Wherein lies the solution of
this enigma ? (7)
But not only our knowledge and sentiments, our
will also is at variance with itself. For as there is in
man a desire for truth, so is there also a striving after
what is truly good, an attraction towards morality, and
a longing for moral freedom. And yet man loves
immorality. His will rises towards the noble, it soars
above the ordinary standard of morality, and yet is
continually suffering itself to be drawn down by its
power. Goethe, indeed, boasts of Schiller, that he
had left behind him that general tendency which
restrains us all.
And certainly Schiller was full of sublime and
noble aspirations. But was he alone free from that
common lot of mortals, the necessity of lamenting the
weakness of our moral nature? We must all experi-
The Anomalies of the Wiil. dl
ence the power of passion, how it can deceive and
persuade, not only the understanding, but the will.
The will is the deepest and highest faculty of man,
an incomparable power, mighty enough to set a world
on flames; and yet, again, how powerless! How
slight often is the temptation before which it falls in
a moment of weakness! How impotent is it in opposi-
tion to the heart! how restrained by the inclinations,
habits, desires, and weaknesses of nature! The most
sublime word a man can utter is, I will. But how
seldom does he really will! He would like to will,
yet does not attain to actual willing. Man is,
through his possession of will, a minor god; and yet
he is the slave of all things, and of his own nature.
Learn, hence, proud man, what a paradox thou art to
thyself ! (8)
It is the feeling of these anomalies, and the impossi-
bility of reconciling them, which has at all times
extorted from poets and thinkers so many bitter
lamentations over the ills of human life, the sorrows
of the human heart. For at one time man reaches,
in proud self-consciousness, or in defiant audacity,
towards the stars, and would take heaven by storm;
at another, he lies in the dust, and how often in de-
filement! Even old Homer complained, that of all
that breathes and moves, nothing on earth is sadder
than man.(9) And the saying of Theognis, that it
would have been best for us never to have been
born, or at least to have died as soon as possible
after our birth, has been again and again repeated in
32 Death an Enigma.
various forms. Poets vie with one another in describ-
ing the ills of life in all its various stages, from the
follies of youth up to sad old age, ‘the meeting-place
of all ills;’ a life which no wise man could desire to
live over again. And even a Pliny, otherwise so short
and terse, becomes eloquent when he describes human
misery: man is, in his view, a being full of con-
tradictions, the most unhappy of all creatures; for other
creatures have no wants beyond their own limits, but
man is full of wants and wishes which can never be
satisfied. His nature is a lie, the greatest poverty
united with the greatest loftiness. Amidst so many
and so great evils, the best thing is that he can put an
end to his life. (10)
Is, then, suicide the highest wisdom? death the
solution of every enigma? How can that satisfy our
reason which our moral consciousness condemns ? And
how can that solve every enigma which is itself the
ereatest of all enigmas? Death adds to the enigmas
which man bears within him, and which his life in-
volves, that which is in fact the greatest. For as
death is the most certain, so is it also the most uncer-
tain of events. For, to quote the words of Pascal,
‘all that I know is, that I must soon die; but what I
know the least of is this very death, from which never-
theless I know not how to escape.’ (11) Yet it is at the
same time the most solemn event that befalls us. For
it is the beginning of an eternity, whether of annihila-
tion or of future life. There is an affecting solemnity
in the certainty, I must die; shall we live after death
Perception of Truth a Moral Act. 33
or not? We must know it. And if we live, what
kind of life will it be? Happy or unhappy? We
must know it, for our eternity is concerned. This
question is of such importance, and touches us so
closely, that a man must have lost. all feeling to be
indifferent about it. Our thoughts and actions will
take an entirely opposite direction, according as we
have or have not an eternal life to hope for. So that
it is quite impossible to decide, with due deliberation,
upon our course of life, unless we decide upon it from
this last-named point of view. (12)
In short, existence is a problem requiring solution.
We cannot withdraw from this question, for it is the
question of our life. There must be an answer some-
where, and we must be capable of finding it. We
must have certainty about this answer if we are to
know peace and security. The world cannot be the
answer. That view of the world which makes the
world a principle, cannot be the correct one. For the
world is itself the enigma. Is man the answer to the
sphinx’s riddle? But if man himself becomes the
sphinx, who is then to solve the riddle? The Chris-
tian view of the world affirms that it possesses the
solution, by referring us to God and to the will of His
eternal love. Shall we find here the truth we are seck-
ing? If we would find it, we must seek for it; and to
seek it rightly, we must be willing to find it.
It is unworthy, and it ought to be impossible, to feel
an interest in all possible inquiries and phenomena,
and none in this greatest of all inquiries. But just
C
34 Perception of Truth a Moral Act.
slightly to nibble at the surface of knowledge, without
penetrating into its depths, cannot be called feeling an
‘nterest in ite What Bacon says of philosophy, ‘ that
a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism,
but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to
religion, applies to the knowledge of all truth. For
truth dwells in the depth, and God dwells in the depth.
He is to be found behind things. The ways of inquiry are
many, but the end is one,—viz. God, who is The Truth.
But we must press forward after the truth. And why
should we not do so? Because there are obscurities in
the way? When are we free from them? Do we
not live in the midst of mysteries? Life itself, the
notion of life, what is it but a dark mystery? If
reality is full of obscurity, how should our knowledge
be without it? What system of truths was ever set
up in which no obscurity was to be found? ‘The
farther we advance in research, the nearer we approach
to the unsearchable, says Goethe. (13) We should
pause upon subjects and questions, and let them make
their influence felt upon us, not hurry from one thing
to another without going deeply into any. We must
be willing to find out the truth of a matter, and
our own notions must not be allowed to interfere.
According to Pythagoras, the knowledge of truth be-
gins with silence, ze. with a quiet and hearty submis-
sion to it, and not with arguments or an inclination to
doubt. There is, indeed, a doubt leading to inquiry,
which may appropriate the promise made by God to
the sincere; but there is also a love of doubting, which
Perception of Truth a Moral Act. oo
‘1s ever learning, yet never able to come to the know-
ledge of the truth’ This is a fault not of the under-
standing, but of the will. No one doubts mathema-
tical propositions. Why not? Because no one has an
interest in doubting them. But the existence of God,
it is just possible that some may have an interest in
doubting this. Our thoughts are far more closely con-
nected with our wishes and inclinations, and, in short,
with our whole moral condition, than is often supposed.
‘The heart has reasons of which the understanding
knows nothing,’ says Pascal; and that famous philo-
sopher Fichte says, ‘Our system of thought is often
but the history of our heart; conviction arises from
inclination, not from reason, and the improvement of
the heart leads to true wisdom,’ (14) Our relation to
truth is not only an intellectual, it is more especially a
moral one. It is the moral position which we occupy
with respect to truth which determines our opinions.
How often does it happen that a moral fall is followed
by intellectual decay! The understanding is venal,
and may be induced by various motives to subserve the
wishes of the heart. Truth isa great and a solemn
matter, It is not easy to endure its glance. When
first it penetrates the heart, it chastises and condemns ;
its after effects illumine and elevate. We must
endure its first operation if we would experience its
subsequent benefits. In short, the perception of truth
ts a moral act,—an act of the will, and not chiefly
of the understanding. For even after every misap-
prehension and doubt has been cleared up, it is the
36 The Search for Truth, and the
will which finally decides upon its reception or rejection.
What we need, then, is willingness to know the truth.
Now, since Christianity declares itself to be the
truth, every man must take up a position with respect
to it. It cannot be avoided. We may oppose it, we
may hate it, but we cannot ignore it, for it stands in
every man’s path, and forces from him an answer to
the question it proposes.
We are, indeed, often told: Christianity is a beauti-
ful theory; but it is nothing more than a theory. It
is too ideal, it does not suit our circumstances. Our
public affairs, political life with its problems and
changes, the great tasks of mankind, art and science,
trade and industry, etc.,—all these are incompatible
with Christianity. Christianity cannot really accom-
modate itself to these actual circumstances. It 1s too
alien to the whole course of our life. It is poetic,
our life is prosaic. It comes from another world,
while we have to pass our lives in this. It directs our
thoughts to another life, but we and all our powers
belong to this. It stands in opposition to our natural
feelings and thoughts. It is the denial of the human.
It does not bring before us a real, whole, and proper
man. Christ is at most ‘an angel riding upon an
animal? Christianity is not human enough. How
are we men to deal with it? We cannot make use of
it. It cannot be the truth which we seek and need.
And what answers shall we make to all this? We
will first appeal to facts, we will invoke the testimony of
history. Is it not a fact that Christianity has become
Answer furnished by Christianity. 37
the chief and most fruitful of intellectual powers ?
Even its opponents are obliged to allow this. They
would not so violently oppose its truth if they were
not forced to own the reality of its power and influence,
and constrained to feel them at every step they take,
whether in the province of external or of intellectual
life. Christianity, then, is not merely a theory and a
poem; it is an actual power, and indeed the greatest
of powers. Do not the ages which have succeeded
Christianity stand far above those which preceded it ?
The age of humanity did not begin till after Chris-
tianity. It must then be adapted to human nature.
It has opened up new depths of feeling and intel-
lect in every province of art and science ; it has
brought forth hitherto unparalleled kindliness and
tenderness of feeling in every relation of social life.
It cannot, then, be a denial of the human, it must be
the truth of human life. In fact the testimony of
history is that Christianity is truth. But it is our
desire to make this truth self-evident. What we are
concerned to show is, that the fundamental truths of
Christianity are the intuitive truths of the mind, and
it is this which will constitute the subject of the fol-
lowing lectures. Christianity, however, founds its
whole system of truths upon. the existence of God.
The first word of Christianity is God. The solution
of the problems of existence is to be found in God.
The truth which we need and seek is God,—the living,
personal God. This is the truth which is the foun-
dation of the Christian view of the world.
LECTURE III.
THE PERSONAL GOD.
eee LLERE can be no higher subject of inquiry
#/ than God. It determines every other ques-
tion which can occupy our minds, and
influences the whole course of our life.
Everything depends upon the answer to the question,
Is there a God, or not? Our view of the world, and
the general tendency of our life, will be in accordance
therewith. It must consequently be the foremost and
uppermost of all questions, and its interest supreme.
It 1s utterly incomprehensible how every other possible
inquiry should engage the attention of the human
mind, while this is passed by with indifference. For
even the loftiest inquiries of art or science, the noblest
exercises of the mind, the most dignified avocations to
which man can devote his life,—what are all or any of
these in comparison with this inquiry, this interest?
How is it possible to be so engrossed with these that
this supreme matter should be forgotten ?
And if this is a question of the whole man, its
answer must also come from the whole man. It is
not only the power of thought and the faculty of
Intuitive Conviction of the Existence of God. 39
perception which must decide upon it. These do not
constitute the whole man. A deep, a moral decision is
involved therein. Not the head alone, but also the
heart and conscience must concur in this answer.
For God is more sensible to the heart and conscience
than to the understanding. If God is the funda-
mental principle, certainty of His existence is not, in
the first instance, the business of the reflecting powers,
but was previously a matter of intuitive feeling. For
fundamental principles rest upon intuitive convic-
tion. And there is nothing of which man has so
intuitive a conviction as he has of the existence of
God.
The denial of God is the denial of a conviction
which we bear within our minds, and hence a mental
error which should be impossible. The ingenious
and sagacious natural philosopher Lichtenberg depicts
this error in his well-known prediction, ‘This world
of ours will become so refined that it will be as ridi-
culous to believe in God, as it now is to believe in
ghosts. And then,’ he continues, ‘the world will
become still more refined ; then we shall believe only
in ghosts. We shall ourselves become as God.’ (1)
The Scripture says (Ps. xiv.), ‘The fool hath said in
his heart, There is no God,’
An intuitive conviction of the existence of God
dwells within the human mind. We can by no means
free ourselves from the notion of a God. We cannot
think of ourselves, we cannot think of the world,
without involuntarily connecting therewith the idea
40 Intuitive Conviction of the Existence of God.
of God. Our thoughts hasten past the visible and
the finite towards a supreme, invisible, infinite Being,
and cannot rest till they have attained their goal.
We are obliged to think of God. Consciousness of
God is as essential an element of our mind as con-
sciousness of the world, or self-consciousness. The
idea of God is a deep necessity of the mind. ‘When
the mind rises, it throws the body upon its knees,
says Lichtenberg. And Epictetus, the heathen moral
philosopher, says, ‘If I were a nightingale, I would,
by singing, fulfil the vocation of a nightingale ; if I
were a swan, by singing, the vocation of a swan.
But since I am a reasonable being, mine is to praise
God. This is my calling. I will fulfil it’ (2) The
highest thought of which man is capable is God,
and this is a necessary thought. Does not, then, its
inherent necessity force upon us the conclusion that
its subject has an actual existence apart from our-—
selves? Such an inference is indeed inevitable. To
think of God means to be certain:of His existence.
We cannot help thinking of God, and we cannot
think of Him otherwise than as existing; it Is a
necessity of our reason. Certainly this consciousness
of God needs development ; but so also do all the
intuitive truths and convictions which we bear within
us. Even self-consciousness must needs be developed.
But is it therefore acquired, or otherwise received from
without? And this is also the case with the consci-
ousness of God, which is, @ priori, a necessary com-
ponent of our mental life.
Its Unwersality. 41
For this reason too it is universal. ‘There is no
people so wild and savage as not to have believed
in a God, even if they have been unacquainted with
his nature,’ says Cicero. (3) And though more than
half a world has been discovered since his days, a
reverence for God and a religion have everywhere
been found. No people is without a conscious-
ness of God. Atheists have had an interest in dis-
covering a nation of atheists, but their efforts have
been in vain. The negroes of Africa, the dark New
Hollanders, the wild Indians of America, have all
been acquainted with a higher being. Even where
it was at first supposed that the opposite was the
case, this supposition has been found to be the result
of superficial observation. And even investigators
more alien from Christianity (such as Waiz in his
Anthropologie der Naturvolker, i. 322, etc.) acknow-
ledge that, at least a belief in invisible, mysterious,
spiritual powers exists where higher notions of Gods,
properly so called, are absent. Certainly nations
and tribes are capable of sinking to an almost animal
savageness and stupidity of intellect. But this is a
degenerate, and not a natural condition, and even
then the notion of a God is not utterly obliterated.
But that which is, as all agree, so general, cannot
be false. This was long since Cicero’s well-known
argument. (4) All error is at last self-destructive ; for
the longer it lasts, the more is its antagonistic spirit
to the very nature of things and the constitution of
man developed. ‘Truth alone is of an enduring nature,
42 Atheism.
because it is ever acquiring fresh strength and vigour
from the very matter upon which it is founded.
Since, then, we find a belief in the existence of
God in all places and at all times, and see it not
diminishing but increasing, we are constrained to say
that ‘it would be a contradiction if this faith could
not only maintain itself, but progressively flourish,
unless founded on universally valid and overwhelming
reasons.’ (5)
This conviction of the existence of God may indeed
be denied, even by those who cannot free themselves
from it. But in this case a man persuades himself
that that which he cannot help knowing, is the only
thing he does not know. Atheism is not a necessity
of the reason, but an act, and in fact an arbitrary
act of the will. The reasons usually advanced in
its favour serve only to conceal its real origin. And
how seldom do they surpass the argument of the
Hindoo, who disputed with a missionary the existence
of God on the ground that he could not see Him!
Whereupon the latter replied that neither could he,
the missionary, see his opponent’s understanding. (6)
A conviction of the existence of God dwells, indeed, in
each of us, but we must on our part allow this con-
viction to have fair play. It is not a knowledge
founded on proofs which force the consent of the
understanding, but a knowledge of inward persuasion
to which the will bows. Belief in God is not a science,
but a virtue. It certainly does not grow from, but
precedes reflection. It is not the understanding which
Proofs of the Existence of God. 43
convinces the heart, but the heart which convinces the
understanding ; just as in moral truths, it is not the
proofs of the reason which convince the conscience,
but the conscience which convinces the reason. The
conviction that there is a God dwells first in our
heart, and hence also in the thoughts of our reason.
‘It has pleased God,’ says Pascal, ‘that divine verities
should not enter the heart through the understanding,
but the understanding through the heart. For human
things must be known to be loved, but divine things
must be loved to be known.’ And Lichtenberg thinks
it questionable ‘whether mere reason, without the
heart, ever lighted upon God; it is after the heart
perceives Him that the reason also seeks Him. It
everywhere seeks for Him, and for traces of Him in
nature, in history, in the mind itself” (7) It is the
most exalted employment of man’s mind, and the
chief proof of its dignity, to follow up these traces
of divinity, that the understanding may attain that cer-
tainty which the heart already intuitively possesses,—
a certainty entirely independent of that which the
thoughts demand,—a certainty not derived from, but
rather communicated to, the mind.
Proofs of the existence of God have at all times
been brought forward. They abound even in the pre-
Christian philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero.
Christian theology and speculation have but adopted
and extended them. They are not intended to prove
to us that with which we are not yet acquainted, but
to justify our intuitive conviction to our reasoning
44 Proofs of the Hwistence of God from Nature.
faculties, by directing us to the traces, scattered on
all sides, of that God whom we already perceive and
know in our hearts.
All Nature around us proves the existence of God.
‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firma-
ment showeth His handy-work. Day unto day uttereth
speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.
There is no speech nor language where their voice is
not heard.’ (Ps. xix.) This thought runs through the
whole Bible, and finds an echo in our hearts. The
sight of nature involuntarily arouses within us the
feeling of the infinite. Claudius, in his Chria, puts
into the mouth of one of the illuminati the words,
‘Whether there be a God, and what he may be,
philosophy alone can teach, and without philosophy
there can be no thought of God’ ‘Good,’ says the
master. ‘Yet no man can say of me with a shadow
of truth that I am a philosopher; but I never go
through the forest without thinking who makes the
flowers grow, and then a faint and distant notion of
a great unknown One comes over me, and so rever-
ently, yet so joyfully, does my heart thrill, that I could
wager that I am then thinking of God. (8) Everything
around us breathes of God. ‘In Him we live and
move and have our being.’ ‘Whither shall I go from
Thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?’
As the invisible soul creates a visible expression on
the countenance of a man, so does nature—which is,
as it were, the countenance of God—betray the hidden
spirit which dwells within it. (9) Unless, however, we
Proof of God’s Existence. 45
bring with us the notion of God, we shall find nature
but dumb. Nature is like a written document con-
taining only consonants. It is we who must ourselves
furnish the vowels which shall enable us to decipher
it. But, on the other hand, the tones within our hearts
need also the aid of nature’s kindred tones to become
articulate speech. Certainly nature alone cannot re-
veal God. He is hidden behind that law of necessity
by which nature is governed. (10) Nature conceals
as well as manifests God. She is a veil, but a trans-
parent one. All things conceal a mystery which
they tempt us to uncover, and the ultimate mystery
is God. But to be found, He must be sought; to be
sought, He must be known; to be known, He must
be loved. They who have no wish to know Him, do
not find Him in nature, which, on the contrary, rather
furnishes them with occasions of scepticism. ‘As
all things speak of God to those who know Hin,
and discover Him to those who love Him, so do
they also conceal Him from those who are ignorant
of Him.’ (11) |
But chiefly does the very existence of the world pro-
claim and prove that there isa God. There is a world.
By what cause does it exist? By itself? They who
know of nothing higher than, and beyond the world,
make it its own creator. But how can it be its own
creator? Where is its creative force? Every force
we discover is a finite force: no single force, then, is
creative. Is it the sum total of forces? No accumu-
lation of the finite can produce the Infinite. Each
46 Proof of God’s Haistence
force is limited by other forces. No accumulation of
limited forces can produce one which is only a limiting
and not a limited one. All the causes which we see in
action are second causes ; no single one is the ultimate,
the supreme, the originating cause. No accumulation
of mediate causes can produce the absolute cause.
Hence we must seek the one supreme force, the great
First Cause, through whom this world of finite things
and forces exists, beyond all finite things, forces, and
causes. All things which surround us point from and
beyond themselves ; each is but a finger-post directing
us onward past nature to the supernatural. And this
supernatural which we seek beyond the world, to which
the world directs us, what is it but God, the personal
God, the personal power of the world? (12) ‘I asked
the earth, says Augustine, in a splendid passage of his
Confessions (x. 6); ‘it said, I am not He; and all that
therein is, made the same acknowledgment. I asked
the sea and the depths, and all that move and live
therein, and they answered, We are not thy God, seek
higher. I asked the winds, but the air, with all its
inhabitants, answered, I am not thy God. I asked the
heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and they an-
swered, Neither are we the God whom thou seekest.
And I said to all things that surround me, Ye have
told me concerning my God that ye are not He; speak
then to me of Him. And they all cried with loud
voices, He made us.’ Yes, all things have a language
which we can understand, and that language utters
their testimony to God the Creator.
From the Existence of the World. 47
The proof of the existence of God, derived from the
existence of the world, has been expressed by various
formulx,—e.g. the world, as the ageregate of things
incidental, demands one supreme essence, bearing within
itself the cause of its own existence (Leibnitz) ; or that
which exists incidentally, demands as its cause that
which exists necessarily (Wolf). Again, vital motion
requires an immovable One as the ultimate cause of
motion, from whom proceeded that impulse which
caused all the activity of life; ‘for how should any-
thing be moved if no moving force had previously
existed?” So argued Aristotle in his Metaphysics, iv.
6, and Newton when treating of the law of gravitation.
Life actually existing points backward to an eternal
life before itself. Organic life had a beginning upon
earth, and hence requires One who produced this be-
ginning. Once more, the duality of the world, as
consisting of matter and spirit, demands a God. For
matter and spirit being essentially unlike, and each
the opposite to and limitation of the other, each is con-
sequently finite, and neither could have originated the
other. Material nature cannot bring forth personal
spirit, nor can the spirit of man produce material
nature. It is folly to suppose consciousness to have
originated from matter; it is madness to suppose the
material world to have been formed by the mind of
man. (13) In short, the existence of the world demands
the existence of God.
Again, what kind of a life would that be which
should be swallowed up in this flood of finitude ?
48 Proof of God’s Existence
There must be an eternal life beyond the changes of
time, beyond the current of events,—an eternal Being,
the cause and origin of all things. Our heart as well
as our reason demands an ultimate, supreme, eternal
One,—God.
Nor is the world’s adaptation to its purposes a less
striking evidence of God, than its existence. Even the
ancient world delighted to contemplate and describe
God as the designer and arranger of the world, and
the artist of the Cosmos. (14) “And certainly the world
is a Cosmos, a harmonious whole, a wondrous edifice of
truly congruous parts, in which the least is connected
with the greatest, the greatest with the least, the most
remote is a necessary part of the whole, and each
must serve another with admirable reciprocity. No-
thing is superfluous, nothing injudicious. It is, in-
deed, possible to degrade this argument of purpose by
carrying it out to trifles; and this has been done to
a degree which provoked the well-known sarcastic
reply, that according to this view God caused the cork-
tree to grow in Africa, on purpose that we might make
our stoppers from it. But neither the abuse of this
argument nor the sarcasm it has provoked, can make
us mistake the direct evidence of this harmony and
mutual relation of the whole and its component parts ;
and the more deeply the mind of man penetrates into
the design manifest in creation, the more perfectly his
ear is attuned to perceive the harmony of the whole,
the more grandly will that full majestic chorus of the
universe, forme1 by the infinite multitude of yoices
From Adaptation of the World to its Purpose. 49
belonging to the things of heaven and earth, burst upon
his senses.
Whence did this harmony originate? If we say
from chance, what is this but an attempt to explain a
fact by an unmeaning word? Chance can sport with
things, and bring about strange coincidences ; but it is
devoid of reason, and cannot produce that mutual de-
pendence which is the work of reason, and which shows
that an objective reason, an unmistakeable intelligence,
governs all things. (15)
Nor is it possible to substitute the laws and forces
of nature for God. Natural force is a power, which,
working blindly, produces an effect; but it is not an
intelligence, which, acting freely, arranges a mutual
connection. Natural law is the rule which determines
the course of things, but not the wisdom which
appoints their end and order. It is impossible to
suppose an unconscious intelligence, for that is a
contradiction in terms; or to speak of unconscious
ideas, for ideas require the conscious and reasoning
principle which produces them. (16) °
If one shipwrecked upon a desert island were to
find a geometrical figure traced upon the sand, would
he not thence infer the existence of a human inhabi-
tant, and feel his heart filled with joy and thank-
fulness to God for the fact?(17) But the world is
more than a geometrical figure; and should not our
souls be filled with joy and gratitude that we can
so plainly see a higher and divine intelligence pre-
siding over it? To deny this intelligence is not
D
50 Proof of God’s Existence from History.
merely an error of the understanding, it is a fault of
the heart.
Even the pre-Christian world could perceive the
presence of design in nature; but it is the privilege
of Christian times to recognise the divine government
in history, and to follow its traces with increasing
admiration and joyful elevation of heart. For it is
Christianity, for the most part, which, by means of
the notions of the unity of the human race and the
unity of God, first attained to the idea of a united,
connected, and progressive history of mankind. This
idea was an unknown one to the pre-Christian world ;
it has become a current one with us, and it is a
notion very kindred to the genius of the western
mind, and furnishes, moreover, one of the sublimest
of subjects of human contemplation. What is more
intricate, multiform, and anomalous than the history
of the different nations of the earth? At the first
glance it seems an inextricable coil of men and actions.
At the next it appears a continual repetition, a rising
and falling of nations, a flourishing and decaying
of states, a constant recurrence of the same events
under different forms. But on closer observation
history becomes a wondrous tissue of all the variegated
threads,—a tissue ever lengthening, and continually
advancing according to fixed moral laws. Justice
controls it; moral government presides over the whole,
as it advances step by step to an appointed end. It
is in the writings of the Apostle Paul pre-eminently,
that we find the first traces of this universal view
Proof of God’s Existence from an Idea of God. 51
of the history of mankind. But it’ does not need
a large amount of Christianity to appropriate and
carry it out. Even a Lessing could understand
and teach that history is to be regarded as the
education of the human race; while more than one
of our great historians have recognised Jesus of
Nazareth as that great turning-point in time, in
which all former lines meet, from which all subse-
quent lines proceed, as the key to the enigma of the
world’s history. In fact, whatever we may think of
Jesus Christ, we cannot deny Him this position in
history. And even philosophers who have acknow-
ledged no personal God, such as Fichte, and that
decided non-Christian Strauss, maintain a moral
government of the world. (1s) But this is only
another word for God. For an unconscious govern-
ment, according to moral laws, is simply impossible.
We need not, however, plunge into the sea of
history, and follow out its enigmas, to find out God;
every individual may find His leading, governing,
providing hand in the events of his own Kfe, if he
does not wilfully close his eyes, if he will but believe
what he sees. As we find God in the world, in its
existence, its design, its history, so do we find Him
m our own soul.
We find the idea of God within us, as we also
find within us other ultimate truths. We did not
produce in our own minds the ideas of the Good,
the True, the Beautiful, etc.; we simply think them.
They are not our work, but the work of truth itself.
52 Proof of God’s Existence from an Idea of God.
Objective reason produces them. It is this that is
reflected in our mind, this whose divine light is broken
into various colours by passing through the medium
of our understanding. But what is objective truth,
and where is it? The highest idea we have is the
idea of God. In it are comprised all other ideas.
It is the truth of truths. It was not ourselves who
produced it, but objective reason produced this idea
in our reason. We think of God simply because He
exists. God himself is the author of our idea of
God. The fact of our intuitive idea of God is the
proof of His existence. Such was the argument of
Cartesius, and we cannot but agree with him.
Nor is the nature of the fact less a proof than the
fact itself. For our thoughts are occupied, not with
a mere idea, but with an actual God. We can think
of Him no otherwise. It is a necessity to our reason
to think of Him thus. Not to think of Him as a
reality, is equivalent to not thinking of Him at all.
Hence, from our own thinking of God, we neces-
sarily infer His existence. Such is the famous onto-
logical proof of Anselm. (19)
Kant, indeed, objected that there is no inference
from thought to existence, no bridge out of the
world of thought into that of reality, and argued
that as little as the idea of a hundred crowns could
prove their existence, or include their possession, so
little could the idea of God prove His existence. But
we must distinguish between mere arbitrary notions
or imaginations, and such ideas as are a necessity
Proof of God’s Existence from that of Conscience. 53
to the reason. Necessary ideas are the expression
of a reality. If there were really no bridge between
such thought and existence, our thought in general
would be utterly unconnected with things existent,
and there could be no such thing as objective truth
and certainty for the mind. If this necessary thought
deceives us, all our thoughts deceive us, and our mind
may as well rest from its efforts, for all its thinking is
vain. But, God be praised, this is not the fact. There
is a connection between necessary ideas, thoughts
necessary to the reason, and real existence. For the
very thing we think of is existence, and it is reality
with which the thoughts of our reason are occupied.
Kant decried this inference, but has at least admitted
and even proved another,—viz. the inference from the
moral consciousness. God is a postulate of the moral
sense, a demand of the conscience.
There is nothing we feel more certain of than con-
science. To deny it, is to overthrow the foundation of
all certainty, and to annihilate therewith the whole
moral constitution of the world, which rests upon it.
T’o explain conscience as the result of the training of
the mind, is both a foolish and a vain endeavour. It
may err, and has often erred. But does it follow that
it is generally an error and a deception? The most
sublime truths are just those that are most liable to
abuse. It needs development; but does it follow that
it is acquired and not original? Does not the mind in
general need development? But is it thence to be
inferred that it does not exist? If we should attempt
54 Proof of God’s Existence
to deny it, the fact of its existence would contradict
us. And so if we should attempt to deny conscience,
the fact of its existence would contradict us. No man
can deny conscience: with a good conscience. Kven
while we are trying to deny it, it makes itself felt by
its inward reproofs; and we cannot deny it without
belying ourselves. Conscience is assuredly a fact.
But conscience is also an authority. All bow before
its power. We may despise its commands, but we
must listen to its reproving voice. We may harden
ourselves against its reproofs, but we cannot succeed
in annihilating them. Conscience is independent of
the will. It is not at our disposal. We do not com-
mand it, but it commands us. We do not correct and
direct it, but it corrects and chastises us. We are not
over but under it. It is not under our power, but has
power over us. It follows that it is no descendant of
our will or our reason. Jt is no product of our own
mind. It is the product of a moral spirit above and
beyond ourselves, whose voice speaks to us through the
conscience. Conscience is the supreme and ultimate
court of appeal, the highest moral criterion in all cases.
Hence it is the product of the supreme mind of the
Supreme Lawgiver, of the absolute moral will. The
fact of its existence proves that of God.
The office of conscience is also a testimony to God ;
for it is part of its office to testify of the moral law as
the will of God, and to bring our will into union with
the will of God. Hence even Cicero says, ‘It was
always the persuasion of all truly wise men, that the
~
From that of Conscience. 55
moral law was not devised by men or introduced by
nations, but an eternal law, according to which the
whole world must be ruled. Its ultimate basis is God,
who commands and forbids. And this law is as old as
the mind of God himself. Hence the law upon which
all obligation is founded is truly and pre-eminently the
mind of the Supreme Divinity.’ (20)
Kant proves the existence of God from the necessity
of a reconciliation, and therefore of a supreme recon-
ciling power, between virtue and fortune, duty and
inclination, which are so often found in opposition to
each other. Some find in this argument a low view of
morality, and maintain that it is a higher moral stand-
point to follow virtue for its own sake, and neither to
expect nor wish for any special reward. (21) But the
truth upon which Kant’s reasoning is founded, is the
idea of justice. ‘There is such a thing as justice, and
therefore there is also retribution,—unless, indeed, we
consider it a proof of supreme wisdom—
‘Ohne Wahl vertheilt, die Gaben
Ohne Billigkeit, das Gluck.’
But this is impossible. Our deepest moral conscious-
ness revolts at the thought. The highest state of
existence is that in which the inward truth and the
outward reality are in harmony with each other. This
earthly existence is full of contradictions between truth.
and reality. We cannot but require that these contra-
dictions, which often so painfully stir our moral con-
sciousness, should find a solution in some state of
56 Result.
harmonious moral existence. It is a hope and a faith
of which we cannot divest ourselves.
Hence by all these different paths we arrive at God,
and are constrained to own that our whole being de-
mands God as the truth and object of our existence. In
no earthly circumstances can we find either rest or full
satisfaction, for God is our rest. In no set of notions
can we bid our minds to repose, for the idea of God
can alone satisfy our reasoning mind. We are unable
to set before our moral efforts any end which can
satisfy our will, for communion with God can alone
allay the cravings of our moral nature. (rod is the
truth and object of our whole existence, and no less
so of all existence external to ourselves. In all exist-
ence external to ourselves we see an image of God,—a
mirror in which His one essence is parted and divided
into various rays, which all direct us to their original.
In all the relations of this life we see foundations laid
for a relation still higher; and even the very highest
forms of human existence point to a Supreme One
far above themselves. ‘They would serve us as steps
to mount up above themselves towards God. God is
the truth and object of universal being. Our earthly
life does not attain either its true purpose or highest
consecration till we perceive God’s presence, and re-
cognise God’s image therein. Whatever may be our
worldly possessions, this and this only is, strictly speak-
ing, our own. Hence to deny God is not only to act
in direct contrariety to our reason,—for our reason de-
mands Grod,—but to plunge ourselves into the extremity
The Nature of God. 57
of poverty ; for it makes the whole world dead, cold, and
empty, and deprives all that is around us of its soul
and its truth. In short, God exists because His exist-
ence is necessary, because without Him nothing else
could exist, and because, even if anything did exist
without Him, it would be without value and without
reality. Our deepest conviction is, that there is a God.
This direct consciousness is implanted in every mind.
It is a universal fact—a fact pertaining to the human
race as such.
It is quite true that it is Christianity which has
restored to man the consciousness of this component
part of his mind. Consciousness of God was like a
choked up well, which Christianity dug out afresh.
But it did but dig out what already existed. It did,
as it were, call to remembrance a great but forgotten
or misunderstood truth of the mind. It was in this
sense that Paul preached before the Areopagus (Acts
xvii. 23), the unknown God whom the Athenians had
ignorantly worshipped; whom, in their inmost hearts,
they were unconsciously seeking and intending, and
whom the whole heathen world still unconsciously
seeks and intends. It was in this sense that the
apologists of the first centuries reminded the heathen
of their direct consciousness of God, and convicted
them of an unconscious faith in Him, breaking out
under the influence of inward emotion into invocations
and appeals. ‘Oh, human soul,’ exclaims Tertullian,
‘who art by nature a Christian !’ |
It is then certain that God exists. But what is God?
58 The Nature of God.
Who can describe Him? God is ‘a boundless,
fathomless ocean’—who can comprise His infinity in
words? God is a mystery—who can express His
secret nature? But God manifests himself to man’s
consciousness, so that he has at least presentient
acquaintance with the hidden Divinity, and has re-
vealed His very nature in Christ Jesus, so that in Him
we may, as it were, look into His heart, and know
what He is to ourselves.
God is the power of all being; for He is the eternal
lite, self-originating, and self-sufficing. He is His
own eternal act; hence, also, the origin and end of
all created things, and the Lord of the world ruling
in all and over all. God is the Holy One, who is
perfectly self-consistent. He is unobscured hight and
perfect goodness; hence, also, the origin of all moral
order, the Creator of our moral convictions, and the
only good which can satisfy our moral being. Finally,
God is Love, who has eternally purposed that we
should be His own, and should find in Him peace for
our souls. Creation teaches us God’s power, our own
conscience testifies to His holiness, but His love was
first shown in its fulness in Jesus Christ. The heathen
world had a prescience of the power of God, the
faintest notion of His holiness, but no idea of His
love. We owe the knowledge of His love entirely to
Christianity. And yet this is the knowledge which
we most need; for so long as we are acquainted merely
with the power and holiness of God, the abyss which
separates Him from us remains. His power shows us
Pantheism. 59
our impotence, His holiness our sin. And the self-
knowledge we thus obtain, keeps us at a distance from
God; it humbles us, indeed, before Him, but still
keeps us at a distance. ‘In Christ we have a God
whom we approach without pride, and before whom
we humble ourselves without despair, says Pascal.
And again: ‘The knowledge of God without that of
our misery makes us proud; the knowledge of our
misery without the knowledge of God leads us to
despair; the knowledge of Christ combines both, for
in Him we find both God and our own misery,’ (22)
because we find the love which has reunited us to
God. This is that knowledge which revelation teaches
us, and our heart and conscience say, Yea and amen.
But Pantheism says, No. Pantheism denies the
God of Christianity, and sets up something else in
His place.
The pantheistic question is, indeed, a philosophic
one, and it is not the intention of these lectures to
pursue philosophical inquiries. But it is also a ques-
tion of supreme practical importance, and cannot as
such be entirely passed. I shall therefore discuss it
as simply and as briefly as possible. (23)
The forms of Pantheism are various, yet it has but
a single fundamental notion; and this fundamental
notion from which all these forms proceed is, that there
is at the root of the infinite variety of this world, and
its individual phenomena, a common principle which
constitutes its unity, and that this common principle
is God. But this is no conscious, personal God ; it is
60 Pantheism.
but the common life which animates all that lives, the
common existence being which is in all that exists, or
the reason in all things. We only call it God. This
God has no independent being, he exists only in the
world; the world is his reality, and he is its truth.
This Pantheism existed in pre-Christian times. It
is the foundation on which were raised the religions of
heathenism, the religions of a fanatic sensibility for
nature ; it produced the dreamy and imaginative views
of the Indian philosophy; it founded also a philo-
sophic school—that of the Eleates—in Greece, but the
great philosophers, Aristotle and Plato, taught a per-
sonal God.
Spinoza was its most influential advocate in the
Christian world. And after it had seemed for a long
time buried in oblivion, Lessing recalled attention to
it in his since well-known Discourse with Jacobi. (24)
It was then revived by Schelling, and carried out by
Hegel, since which time it has frequently, and indeed
far oftener than is known or suspected, formed a part
of and entered into generally entertained opinions.
‘The foundation of all that exists, taught Spinoza,
‘is the one eternal substance which makes its actual
appearance in the double world of thought, and of
matter existing in space. Individual forms emerge
from the womb of this substance, as of ever-fertile
nature, to be again swallowed up in the stream of life.
As the waves of the sea rise and sink, so does indivi-
dual life arise, to sink back again into that common
life which is the death of all individual existence.’
Pantheism.. 61
‘Eternal absolute being,’ said Schelling in his earlier
days, ‘is continually separating into the double world
of mind and nature. It is one and the same life which
runs through all nature, and empties itself into man.
It is one and the same life which moves in the tree
and the forest, in the sea and the crystal, which works
and creates in the mighty forces and powers of natural
life, and which, enclosed in a human body, produces
the thoughts of the mind.’ (25)
‘The absolute,’ says Hegel, ‘is the universal reason,
which, having first plunged into nature, and becoming
there lost, as it were, to itself, is then found in man as
self-conscious mind, in which the absolute, at the close
of its great process, comes again to itself, and comprises
itself into unity with itself. This process of mind
is God. Man’s thought of God is the existence of
God. God has no independent being or existence ;
He exists only in us. God does not know of himself ;
it is we who know of Him. While man thinks of and
knows God, God knows and thinks of himself and
exists. God is the truth of man, and man is-the reality
of God.’
Consequently man becomes God. It cannot be
denied that Pantheism is founded upon a great idea,
an exalted sentiment; and that this idea, this senti-
ment, 1s moreover a true one,—viz. that there is a unity
in existence, a connection between our life and the
universal life around us. The life of nature awakens
within us sympathetic feelings, and calls forth a cor-
responding disposition, which is itself a testimony to the
62 Its Practical Results.
relationship existing between the mind and nature. It
is its own laws which the mind recognises in the world
of nature and of mind, and we find therein an objec-
tive reason homogeneous with our subjective reason.
But is this collective life which surrounds us, and the
province of that objective spirit which is reflected in
our spirit, the ultimate, the supreme, the very God ?
It is the error of Pantheism that its thought and feel-
ing are fixed upon and limited by this middle ground,
instead of piercing through it to the great First Cause
of all things, to the absolute reason, to God.
Lhe refutation of Pantheism is to be found, first
of all, in its practical results.
Pantheism annihilates religion. For its God is
not a personal God with whom I can hold a personal
relation, whom I can love, in whom I can trust, to
whom I can pray, whom I may approach and address
as my Friend, but only the power of necessity beneath
which I must bow, the universal life in which I may
lose myself. Pantheism abolishes the very postulates
of morality ; for all the distinctions of good and evil
are but different manifestations of one absolute prin-
ciple. Consequently they cease to be actual moral
contrasts. What we call evil is fundamentally as
necessary as what we call good; how then can we
condemn what is necessary ? (26) Pantheism destroys
hope. For as the flower fades in autumn never to
blossom again, so is man swallowed up in the stream
of existence, to be found no more; all is over with
him. (27) The flower may be placed in the herbarium,
It is opposed to Reason. 63
and aman live in the remembrance of posterity; but
all is over with him. (@s) It is but your egotism, re-
plies the pantheist, that makes you unwilling to come
utterly to an end; yet, since it is God himself who
has placed this ‘egotism’ in our hearts, it cannot
but be truth.
These results are themselves a sufficient refutation
of Pantheism. But it may be objected that this is
a clumsy refutation; since we should not judge by
results, but by the thing itself. ‘Truly it 1s the
thing itself which is seen in its results; but let us
lose sight of them, and prove that Pantheism is its
own refutation. For it is the triple contradiction of
reason, of conscience, and the heart. |
It contradicts reason, for it speaks of God and yet
denies Him. The God of Pantheism is the Infinite
One, but this Infinite One has actual existence only
in that which is finite, which is equivalent to say-
ing that there is actually no Infinite Being. For
how can the infinite be identical with the finite? If
the finite is its reality, it is not its own essential
reality, and hence not infinite. Thus Pantheism, at
the same time, both admits and denies the infinite.
And again, how should the finite be identical with
the infinite? We are told that by dying its finity
is annulled, but only to give place to something also
finite. Hence, we never get beyond things finite into
the world of the infinite. The infinite is nowhere
to be met with. The God of Pantheism is the general,
continually changing into the particular and the indi-
64 It is opposed to Reason.
vidual. By what law? Spinoza answers, ‘By a
divine necessity. But what a saying is this! The
general substance does not independently produce
particular forms. For this general substance acts
according to the law of necessity, but individual forms
depend at the same time upon the law of freedom;
hence these two opposites must be combined to account
for what actually exists. (29) The God of Pantheism
is either nature producing mind, or mind producing
nature. Nature, however, is unconscious, mind con-
scious; how, then, can that which is itself uncon-
scious produce that which is conscious? It is an
old rule of logic that the effect can contain nothing
which did not pre-exist in the cause. Now, con-
sciousness is absolutely new, and opposed to uncon-
sciousness ; how, then, should the latter be the cause
of the former? According to Hegel, the God of Pan-
theism is absolute conception. Because man knows
and thinks of the absolute, 7.e. God, God knows and
thinks of himself. But how can my consciousness
of God be God’s self-consciousness? And if man’s
consciousness of God is not a reality corresponding
to the absolute, while the latter is nevertheless, as
Hegel requires, subject, it must have a higher
reality than is found in the human mind, must be a
higher subject than the human subject,—a super-
mundane subject, a superhuman consciousness, a
self-conscious, personal God, above all mundane ex-
istence. A trace of personality runs through the
whole world. From the very lowest grades of exist-
= ONS ee
lt is opposed to Conscience. 65
ence upwards, life struggles to attain personality, and
becomes personality in man. Whence, then, this trace
of personality in all life, if it is not a universal law 2
and whence this law, if the principle of the world is an
impersonal one? The whole human race combines into
the single organism of the kingdom of God, which, in
its turn, seeks its personality, that thereby it may
attain its climax in the absolute personality, in God,
the crown and summit of every created object. (80)
Reason, then, demands the personality of the absolute,
and Pantheism is in opposition to reason.
Nor is this system less in opposition to conscience.
Our conscience demands the supremacy of moral law,
and the supremacy of moral law demands a personal
God. For He alone can be the supreme lawgiver,
He alone the supreme judge. There is a universal
conviction that the moral law must rest upon a more
than human, that is, upon the supreme and divine,
authority. Civil law, indeed, may be the product of
the human will, of a changeable will. But the moral
law is eternal, and has an eternal origin, a superhuman
Author. It is upon this alone that its inviolable autho-
rity depends. God alone can be the supreme law-
giver; He alone can be the supreme judge. We re-
quire a supreme justice, which, unlike human justice,
cannot err, which the guilty cannot elude. There
must be an ultimate court of appeal to which the
guiltless may resort, from which the guilty cannot
escape. Is it said, Conscience is the lawgiver and
judge: we adduce, in reply, those cases where con-
E
66 Lt is opposed to the Demands of the Heart.
science is neither the one nor the other. It may be
obscured, weakened, stunted, mutilated; it may be
silent, or we may decide in opposition to its dictates.
Where, then, is the justice which is the fundamental
law of human life? Grant that it is nothing but
conscience, it must then be an infallible, inexorable,
unavoidable conscience,—that is to say, an absolute
conscience—God, the supreme conscience of the world.
Our conscience demands a God, but our heart
demands Him no less. We are made for devotion,
faith, love, hope, happiness. Can the world be the
object of our faith and love? The world is ever
transitory and changeable; how are we to find peace
therein? Faith and love are personal relations; we
were made, then, for personal relations. Is man to
be the supreme object of our love? The sister of
Pascal tells us of a paper which her brother always
carried about with him, upon which was written the
words, ‘It is wrong that any one should have an
attachment to me, however voluntary; I could but
disappoint those in whom I should call forth such a
feeling, for I am no one’s aim, and am able to satisfy
no one. Am I not about to die? And then even
the object of attachment would be dead’ And in the
Pensées he thus expresses himself: ‘It is false to say
that we deserve the love of others, and it is unjust to
desire it. (31) Certainly the power of loving each
other is the best and highest attribute of human
beings, but this best and highest attribute is but
prophetic of something still better and higher. And
It is opposed to the Demands of the Heart. 67
where love is real, what we love in man is more than
man. ‘That which Heloise loved in Abelard, which
cultivated and embellished her mind, and taught it to
soar aloft, was not Abelard, but something more than
Abelard. All earthly love points beyond itself. So
exalted a being is man, that the love of God is alone
worthy of him, and can alone satisfy his heart. But
love to God demands a personal God. If we do away
with the personality of God, we do away with all that
is best and noblest in human nature, with faith, love,
and hope; and we get in exchange resignation,—not
meek and patient submission to the will of God, but
that mute, cold resignation which submits because it
must, which bows not to love but to power, which,
with closed eyes, plunges into eternal death, to the
extinction of our best attribute, our personal being.
Pantheism annihilates human personality, by annihi-
lating the personality of God. Its God, being himself
no real and essential life, is not the God of the living,
but of the dead. (32)
In short, Pantheism is in absolute opposition to our
inmost nature, our inmost truth, our inmost craving ;
it is a contradiction of our reason, our conscience, and
our heart. He who admits there is such a being as
man, is constrained to admit that there is a God; and
he who admits that there is a God, is constrained to
acknowledge the personal God. He who says, I am,
must also say, O. God, Thou art; and the entire direc-
tion of the thoughts will be dictated by this admission.
LECTURE IV.
THE CREATION OF THE WORLD.
fone) LE view we entertain of God will determine
B&Q We our view of the world. If God is a living
and personal God, then the world was
made by Him, and creation was a free act
of His power, wisdom, and love. Such is the founda-
tion of the Christian view of the world. As soon, how-
ever, as we enter upon this subject, we are met by the
objections raised by physical science and a naturalistic
view of the world, against the religious, and especially
against the biblical view. These have given rise to a
series of inquiries and doubts, which have occupied, and
often inordinately disquieted, the minds of many.
The conflict between the physical sciences and the
religious view of the world is a product of modern
times. It stands connected with the great advances
lately made in physics, chemistry, astronomy, and
geology. Since the disclosure of hitherto unknown
worlds, the resolution of distant nebulze into systems of
stars by the telescopes of Herschel and Rosse, and the
discoveries made in the world of infusoria by Ehren-
berg, who found, for example, that a single cubic inch
Conflict between Science and Religion. 69
of tripoli contained as many as forty-one thousand
million of the siliceous fossil shells of these creatures,
—new notions have been entertained of this visible
world, and a consciousness of higher powers has, as
may easily be conceived, taken possession of the human
mind, which now believes that neither space nor time
are any longer closed against it. The knowledge thus
obtained has begun to be formed into a naturalistic
view of the world, which is imposing in its appeal to
facts, and its claim to tangible evidence ; for that which
is tangible naturally makes a great impression upon
the mind. On the other hand, religious faith is not
wont to limit its influence to one province of the
intellectual life; it would leaven every thought of
the mind, and bring all into harmony with itself.
Now, it is contrary to the very nature of the mind to
tolerate within itself views diametrically opposed to
each other. Hence a schism has frequently arisen in
modern intellectual life, and a consequent uncomfort-
able feeling of hesitation and uncertainty, whether or
what concessions should be made, to restore, if pos-
sible, the lost harmony of the world of mind. Even
Schleiermacher feared the results of scientific dis-
covery, not merely for the sake of theology, but for
Christianity in general. ‘I fear, writes he to Liicke
in 1829 (Theol. Studien und Kritiken ti. 489), ‘that we
shall have to learn to do without much, which many
are accustomed to regard as indissolubly united with
Christianity. I do not speak of the six days’ work,
but of the notion of creation : how long will it be able
70 Conflict between Physical Science and the
to hold out against a view of the world founded on
scientific conclusions, which no one can escape ?’
‘And our New Testament miracles, for I speak not
in the first instance of those of the Old: how long
will it be before they fall again, but this time before
far more dignified and well-founded premises than
formerly, in the days of the inflated Encyclopzdists ?
What is to be done then, my friend? I shall not
live to see those days, but may lay myself down to my
last sleep in peace. But what do you and your contem-
_poraries intend to do? Will you entrench yourselves
behind these outworks, and let yourselves be blockaded
and shut out from science? The bombardment of
derision would do you little harm. But the blockade!
The starving out by science, which, because you thus
entrench yourselve$, will be forced by you to raise the
standard of unbelief!. Is it thus that the knot of
history is to be severed, and Christianity to be allied
with ignorance, science with unbelief?’ Schleier-
macher has gone to his rest, and so has Liicke, to
whom he thus wrote; but we are here, and have the
work to do which they left undone. What are we
then to say? Is the danger really as great as he
described it, and as many now seem to think ?
When the: Israelites had reached the borders of the
promised land, they sent spies before them to obtain
information concerning the country and its inhabitants,
and to bring them back an account thereof. These
returned dispirited, and discouraged the hearts of the
rest by their report. Two only, Caleb and Joshua,
Religious View of the World. a
retained their courage, and exhorted them to advance,
trusting in God and their cause. And, in his own time,
God acknowledged the courageous, and put the timid
to shame. Thus, too, did Schleiermacher make a short
excursion into the territory of science, and bring back
with him a dispirited heart. Are we therefore to
allow ourselves to be discouraged? Things have not,
I think, come to such a pass.
There has scarcely been a strife in the world, but it
has arisen from the removal of boundaries, and many
a complication might be arranged merely by a. strict
maintenance of boundaries (schiedlich friedlich). The
first and most necessary concern then is, strictly to mark
out and maintain the boundary line between the two
provinces in question. The main thing will then have
been gained. Religion and theology deal with truths,
concerning which science knows nothing, and which
she has therefore no right to deny; while, on the other
hand, science deals with a circle of knowledge with
which religion has nothing to do, and to which theology
has nothing to reply. And even when the two are
dealing with the same subject, it is with two entirely
different sides of it. Religion tells us that God gives
us our daily bread; science teaches us how the corn
grows from the earth. Why should any one say that
because the one takes place, the other does not? Re-
ligion and science have both their rights, but each
within its own domain. es «.
The Judgment of Israel. 223
defying an opposing world—came forward with the
announcement that Jesus, having risen from the dead,
was now sitting at the right hand of God, and would,
as He himself had promised, one day return to judge
the world. Israel rejected this message, excommuni-
cated the disciples of Jesus, and has from that time
led a problematical existence, as the people of opposi-
tion to Christianity, which subsequently began to con-
quer the world. A catastrophe, such as the world has
never since seen equalled, fell upon their land and city
in the destruction of Jerusalem, when a million of men
perished, about ninety thousand were sold as slaves,
and the sun beheld horrors, at the very mention of
which the heart freezes. A prediction of Jesus had
foretold this judgment; and the Christians, mindful of
it, had escaped, while the Jews defiantly held out till
they were buried beneath the ruins of their burning
temple. And when the Emperor Julian, surnamed
the Apostate, some three hundred years after, com-
manded and began the rebuilding of the temple, that
he might prove the words of Christ to be false, earth-
quakes and flames of fire burst forth, as both Christian
and heathen writers testify, which consumed the work
and scattered the labourers; since when it has lain in
ruins, while Israel sits mourning in the dust, and be-
wailing her departed glory. Her sons are scattered
among all nations; their wandering feet have borne
them over the whole earth. Everywhere have they
built them habitations, yet everywhere they are
strangers, bearing both in mind and countenance the
224 | Christianity.
impress of their origin. With a tenacity utterly un-
paralleled, they keep to the traditions of former times,
though their worship was destroyed and rendered im-
possible with the destruction of their temple, and they
can no longer keep their law. Without a king, with-
out a priesthood, without a sacrifice, without a centre,
they still hold together, though dispersed into mere
atoms; and live, in so far as they are not engrossed in
the paltry concerns of the day, on the remembrance of
the past and the hope of the future, though the family
of David no longer exists, and the priestly race of
Aaron can no longer be distinguished,—an enigma in
history to which there is but one solution, and that is,
that the ancient prophecies of Israel were fulfilled in
Jesus the Son of Mary; and that Israel, that great ruin
of a nation in which the fact occurred, is the memorial
and witness of this fulfilled prophecy. Christianity is
the solution of the enigma, Israel.
But if I say Christianity, I thereby say Jesus Christ.
Christianity appeared in the world, not as a system of
philosophy, not as a code of morality, but as an actual
fact—the fact of the individual Christ Jesus. All
depends on Him. With Him, Christianity stands or
falls. It cannot be separated from Him. It was not
His precepts, but His person and His testimony con-
cerning himself, which brought about the crisis in
Israel. He himself made His whole cause depend
upon His person. We cannot separate it from Him.
Rationalism has attempted to separate Christianity »
from Christ, and to reduce it to mere morality, But
—
a
Christianity. yA 6
experience has proved the attempt impossible. Jesus
Christ does not bear the same relation to Christianity
as Mohammed does to Mohammedanism, or as any
other founder of a religion to the religion he has
founded; but He is himself Christianity. To speak
of Christianity, is to speak, not of doctrines and pre-
cepts, but of Jesus Christ. Christianity is indeed a
summary of truths, a new doctrine, a philosophy if
you will, a new view of the world, a new explanation
of history, a new mode of worship, a new morality, a
new rule of life, etc. It is all these, because it is a
fact universal in its nature. But all these depend
upon the person of Jesus Christ, are given with Him,
and included in Him—stand and fall with Him. Tf
we, therefore, turn our attention to the position and
significance of Christianity in history, it is the his-
torical position and significance of Jesus Christ himself
which meets our view. To this subject we shall next
address ourselves.
LECTURE IX.
CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY.
foe weg LLY are a few apparently unimportant words
with which the evangelist St Luke opens
his narrative of the birth of Jesus, when
he says (Luke 1. 1), that in those days
there went out a decree from Cesar Augustus that all
the world should be taxed, and proceeds to relate that
this taxing took place at the time of the birth of Jesus,
in conformity with prophecy, in Bethlehem, the ancient
home of the house of David ;—they are, I say, few and
apparently unimportant words, and yet they designate
in a characteristic manner the whole historical position.
For these two circumstances are included in them: the
coincidence of the appearance of Jesus in history with
the culmination and close of the ancient times, as exhi-
bited in the Roman emperor; and the subordination of
the course of the world’s history to the progress of the
sacred history, and its consequent actual union with it.
The age then existing was itself conscious of its
approaching end. The Roman empire was not an
accident, but the necessary result of preceding history.
We may perhaps say, that every Roman general who
The Universal Empires. 227
ascended the Capitol in a triumph, surrounded by the
applauding soldiers and populace, was a type of the
emperor, who was not after a short enjoyment of
official dignity to abdicate the supreme power to an-
other, but to make it permanent. And those several
possessors of power, such as a Pompey, an Antony, a
Cesar, who, in the midst of the stormy excitement
of their times, raised themselves above their fellow-
citizens, what were they but preliminary approxima-
tions to him who was to establish the future imperial
power, and make it a permanent possession of his
family? ‘The republic of so many centuries would
not so willingly have surrendered itself to the new
imperator if the empire had not been the mature fruit
of the whole previous growth, and a necessity of pre-
ceding history. In it the Roman universal empire
found its close, and the fulfilment of its vocation.
There was an ancient prophecy in Israel—found in
the book of Daniel (ii. 29-42, and vii.)\—of the suc-
cession of the various universal empires, with whose
climax the kingdom of the Son of man and of His
saints was to coincide.
Consciousness of the mutual connection of all men
on the one hand, and the impulse of authority on the
other, had early given rise to the idea of uniting
all the various nations and kingdoms of the world
into one great empire, which was to include the whole
earth. To that resolute Babylonian monarch, Nebu-
chadnezzar, may this proud and magnificent notion
a notion so much
be in the first instance referred,
228 The Universal Empires.
the grander, the further removed foreign states and
nations were from the circle of vision. And there
was a truth in the notion; for there is in the soul of
man a consciousness of mutual connection with the
whole race, and we cannot conceive the end to which
all the events of history are tending to be any other
than the union of mankind into one great family.
The present phase of history, indeed, is that of nation-
alities, but cosmopolitanism is its future. We may even
say that this notion is God’s own thought concerning
mankind ; for this is the end towards which all His
ways are tending. As far, however, as the manner
in which it was conceived and the means by which its
realization was sought by those powerful rulers of Asia
were concerned, it was a depredation committed upon
truth; for it was undertaken in the service of an
ambitious thirst of power, and was thus a mere carica-
ture of the divine thought. But, once introduced into
the course of human affairs, this thought had its his-
tory in the gradual progress of its realization. The
idea of universal empire formed, from that time forth,
the motive power of history. Often, as one attempt
after another at its realization failed, it was neverthe-
less ever taken up again, with the view of attaining
by the use of new means what the former had failed
to ensure. Four great attempts at realizing this idea
have special prominence in history—the Babylonian,
Persian, Grecian, and Roman monarchies. The me-
mories of these empires are combined respectively with
the names of Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander, and
The Babylonian and Persian Empires. 229
Cesar. The two first are closely connected with the
history of Israel, the two last with the entrance of
Christianity into the world.
It was Nebuchadnezzar who, by leading Israel into
captivity to Babylon, dissolved their state, and thus |
executed the long threatened judgment of God upon
that disobedient people. Cyrus, on the contrary, by
his permission to the Israelites to return and to re-
build their temple, restored to their commonwealth
the form, though a mean one, in which it was to
experience and receive the fulfilment of its ancient
hopes, and the blessing of true redemption. The con-
tact of the people of the promise with Gentile nations,
had in both instances served to transplant even into
heathen soil the peculiar truths of their religious
knowledge and hope, and>so to fulfil, with respect to
the heathen, that prophetic vocation which the chosen
people had to all the nations of the world, and thereby
to prepare the heathen world for the fulfilment of the
promise.
The two other monarchies—the Grecian under Alex-
ander, and the Roman of the emperors—stand in close
relation to the entrance of Christianity into the world.
It was the grand idea of Alexander to establish the
extensive empire which he had so hastily won in his
stormy attack upon the ancient bulwark of the Asiatic
countries,
an empire extending from the mountains
of Macedonia to the rivers of India, and compounded
of nations so widely differing from each other,—
upon the common mental basis of the Greek tongue
230 The Grecian and Roman Empires.
and Greek civilisation. And when, after his early
death, his kingdom fell into ruins, the separate states
which arose from it, with their Grecian rulers, only
served to carry on this work of Alexander, and to
complete the task of penetrating the Oriental world
with the language and civilisation of Greece. The
unity of language and education, however, thus brought
to pass in the whole civilised world of that age, Was,
according to the counsel of God, to form the intellec-
tual basis for the announcement and propagation of
Christianity, which was brought to these various nations
by means of the Greek tongue. Surely it may here, if
anywhere, be perceived how a divine thought directs
the course of history.
All the separate states and kingdoms, however,
which had arisen from the great empire of Alexander,
were received into the Roman empire, and thus united
also to the west of Europe, and drawn into the great
stream of universal history. The Roman empire gave
an external form, as Alexander’s empire had given an
intellectual preparation. It was by the Roman empire
that nations hitherto so reserved and exclusive towards
each other were united into one great whole, and a
connection and intercourse established between them
which were carried on also in the matter of universal
civilisation. _ All this contributed to implant in the
minds of men the idea of a single kingdom which was
to combine varieties of nations and customs in a higher
unity, and thus to prepare for that great thought of
Christianity, the kingdom of God. At the same time
Intellectual Development. 231
it prepared the ways by which the gospel might reach
the Western nations; for the roads upon which Roman
officials and troops passed and repassed from the capital
to the provinces, or by which merchant vessels sailed
backwards and forwards, served also for the messengers
of Jesus Christ to travel with the word of life from
the Euphrates to Rome and Spain, in that great region
of nations within which the world’s history was then
transacted. This whole realm was included under one
common law, to establish whose authority and make it
the protecting power of public life, was the special voca-
tion of Rome. It was under the protection of Roman
law that the infancy of Christianity was passed ; and
the life of that apostle whose task it was to realize the
universal mission of Christianity in the Roman world,
the Apostle Paul, shows us how Roman law protected
him against the fanaticism of his Jewish enemies.
But the state of affairs at the birth of Christ—a
state designated by the words Roman empire, and the
name of its first emperor, Augustus—was the result of
the previous growth of ages. All its processes, even
those of intellectual development, meet here.
Special mental endowments were bestowed upon
those nations who were destined to be the depositaries
of this intellectual development, and the means of
transmitting to us the produce of mental culture
in the ancient world. In them was the mind of
man to manifest its highest possible attainments, and
at the same time its limitation. At first, intellectual
life in general was most intimately connected with
232 Intellectual Development.
the idea of the nation and the state. The state
appeared as the highest form of social life, to which
all others, even that of the family and of religious
life, were subordinate. The human race beyond the
state and nation was ignored. All intellectual cul-
tivation was in the fullest sense national; and,
indeed, nearly all Greek. Besides the intellectual
cultivation of this nation, there was in general none
at all, but only barbarism. All other nations were
barbarians in the eyes of the Greeks. Morality and
religion were also national and political. Virtue
and sin were political virtue and political sin, and
none else were known. And this was the case with
religion itself. A religion for the human race, a
universal religion, was declared by the philosopher
Celsus, several centuries after the birth of Christ, to
be folly.) The state, the nation, was the source
of every action of life. But this source soon showed
itself exhaustible. The national spirit sank ever
lower and lower, and was at last extinguished. Poli-
tical existence decayed, and men, abandoning the pur-
suit of politics, betook themselves to a more general
cultivation of learning. In the prevalence of Grecian
art and philosophy, the Greeks sought and found an
indemnification for the loss of their national and
political independence. It was thus perceived that
political existence was neither the highest nor the
deepest and final source of mental life. Very inte-
resting is it to observe the mental process which was
gone through towards the close of ancient history,
Intellectual Development. 233
while the spirit of universalism was endeavouring to
work itself out of the spirit of nationalism,—a process
carried on in every department of life, in the religious,
the moral, and the philosophical. The bounds of
national religion were broken through, and amidst the
most opposite religions the best was sought for, though
in the variegated mass of superstitions a satisfactory
result could not be obtained, nor indeed any except
the confession, made by the philosopher Plotinus, that
man cannot come at the gods, but the gods must
come to men. In ethics also the national point of view
was abandoned, and a general morality and moral
philosophy striven after,—a morality which, in its
external expressions, often furnishes the most striking
points of contact with that of Christianity, though with
even more abundant diversity of spirit, and without
desiring to become power andreality. Philosophy, too,
was seeking general truth, and was endeavouring to
penetrate the mystery of the general relation in which
God and the world stood to each other, but without
freeing herself from doubt and uncertainty, and final
despair of the attainment of any truth. And rightly
has that question of Pilate, uttered in the slighting
and contemptuous tones of a blasé, What is truth?
been ever regarded as an involuntary expression of
the result to which the inquiries of the ancient world
had conducted it. All efforts at discovering truth
had failed, and it seemed best to give up this fruit-
less enthusiasm ; yet the deeply-rooted desire could not
be extirpated from the human heart. The product of
234 Jesus Christ the End of Ancient,
the Alexandrine speculation concerning ideas, which
was to explain the mystery of the divine and of its
revelation, was but a faint shadow of truth,—the shell,
so to speak, of the actual fruit, which was still want-
ing; yet for that very reason a prophecy of the real
and actual truth which was not to proceed from the
exhausted power of the human mind, but to enter
into the world as an act of God, and which did enter
it in the person of Him who could say of Himself, ‘I
am the Truth,’
Hence Jesus Christ is the end towards which all
ancient history tended, whether external or internal,—
an end required by the whole previous development,
the answer to the question with which it concludes, the
solution of its enigma, the key by which we may be
enabled to understand the history of the world. He,
the miraculous gift and act of God, coming from above
and not from beneath, is not its product; but He is its
requirement, and therefore, though with respect to His
nature and origin its supernatural, yet in His historical
position its natural close. He is, so to speak, the filling
up of the void which the history of mankind had left,
but which it was unable from its own resources to fill.
Such is the position of Christianity, i.e. of Jesus
Christ, in history, retrospectively viewed. He is the
_ goal to which it was tending, and its close. And corre-
sponding with this is the position He occupies in history
prospectiwely viewed: He ts its starting-point and tts
power. A new era begins with Him, over which He
is the ruler.
;
|
|
;
1
:
and Beginning of Modern History. 230
Before Jesus took leave of His disciples, He com-
manded them to carry their message to all nations, to
baptize them all in His name, and to gather them into
the one Church of the new human race, having previ-
ously given them the promise that the gospel should be
preached in all the earth, and that there should be one
fold and one shepherd. ‘This saying seemed a simple
impossibility ; in the mouth of any other, it might have
been called the saying of amadman. For how should
these few men, unlettered fishermen and publicans as
they were, and of the most despised nation upon earth,
be able to induce the rest of the world to receive a
religion whose central object was a crucified man, and
which announced a way of salvation as far removed as
possible from flattering the inclinations of men, and
standing in sharpest contrast to all their natural no-
tions? The very thought of mankind as a great
unity,—the thought, moreover, of one religion for all,
a universal religion; of one flock, which was to include
all nations, every variety of nationality, of position
in life, of degree of education,—the thought of the
Church as we have it and know it,—was the grandest
thought ever conceived or expressed by aman. The
very thought was itself a miracle, its realization the
very greatest of miracles; the permanent, ever-present
miracle, compensating us for the absence of all others,
conceivable only through what Jesus added, that they
should be endued with power from on high, and
through what St Luke relates in the beginning of the .
Acts of the Apostles, that the Spirit of God came
236 Lriumphant Progress of Christianity.
upon them and made them other men, enabling them,
in the power of this new Spirit, to conquer the world,
and to erect a kingdom which, being founded, not like
the kingdoms of the old world, by means of natural
though unusual power, but created by the word of
God’s Spirit, is to endure for ever.
There cannot be a more sublime subject of contem-
plation than the triumphant progress of Christianity
during the course of the world’s history.
Everything seemed to conspire to render its victory
utterly impossible. Its origin was against it; it seemed
but a Jewish sect. Its advocates and followers had
nothing attractive about them, and belonged for the
most part to the lower and uneducated classes. Its
doctrine was a ‘stumbling-block ;’ it appeared a most
vexatious ‘foolishness.’ Its reverence for God, too,
was suspected; for the Christians, using no images
of the gods, were taken for atheists. The worst and
most immoral things were said of its mysterious rites.
Public opinion was prejudiced against them, philoso-
phers assailed Christianity with intellectual weapons,
while the authorities opposed it with brute force. (2)
And yet it triumphed. So early as the reign of Nero,
it was, as the Roman historian Tacitus indignantly
asserts, very widely diffused. Nor did it avail to arrest
its progress, that Nero, in order to divert from himself
the guilt of the great conflagration of Rome, executed
vast numbers of Christians, not so much, as Tacitus
Says, because they were guilty of this crime, as because
they were hated by the whole human race. (3) Never-
Triumphant Progress of Christianity. 237
theless Christianity continued to spread. An interest-
ing letter of the younger Pliny, governor of Bithynia,
in Asia Minor, to his friend the emperor Trajan, written
about seventy years after the death of Christ, is still
extant, distinctly portraying the state of the Christian
cause at that time, in the places which had been the
scenes of St Paul’s and St John’s ministries. ‘This
superstition,’ writes Pliny (4), ‘has spread on all sides;
in towns, in villages, and in the country; the temples
of our gods stand deserted, and sacrifices have now for
a long time ceased to be offered. I arrested a few
girls called deaconesses, and put them to the torture,
but discovered nothing besides excessive and pernicious
superstition. ‘They confessed that they met together
before dawn, to sing praises to Christ, as to God.
They make solemn engagements to each other,’ he
adds, ‘to live a moral and serious life.’ And a cen-
tury later, Tertullian, in his Apology, could say to the
heathen, ‘We are but of yesterday, and yet we have
towns, islands,
taken possession of your whole country
the camp, the palace, the senate, the forum; we have
left you only the temples. (5) Nor could the great
persecutions, of which ten may be enumerated, ever
hanging over the Christians, arrest the triumphs of
Christianity. No age, no sex, was spared; all the
strength of the empire was put in requisition; cer-
tain of the most energetic of the emperors, such as
Decius and Diocletian, considered it their special duty
to root out Christianity from the world, because the
very existence of the Roman empire depended upon its
238 Triumphant Progress of Christianity.
extirpation. But the arm of the executioner failed
before the fidelity of the Christians. Diocletian was
obliged to give up his work; he retired from the stage,
but Christianity remained, and in the person of Con-
stantine ascended the imperial throne, and has since
governed, even externally, the Roman world. (6)
The triumph of Mohammedanism cannot be com-
pared to this. Mohammedanism came forward as
‘a religion of this world, a religion of conquest and
of sensuous enjoyments, and the sword was its
preacher. (7) Pascal says of it, ‘Mohammed founded
his dominion by killing, Christ by suffering himself to
be killed” ‘Humanly speaking, Mohammed chose
means adapted for conquest, Jesus those adapted for
defeat.’ Instead, therefore, of concluding, since
Mohammed succeeded, Jesus Christ might well suc-
ceed, we should rather say, Since Mohammed suc-
ceeded, Jesus ought to have failed. (s) The propaga-
tion of Christianity can be effected only by means of
conversion ; and what that means, he can understand
who knows what it means to convert one single man.
Let any one try to uproot from one single heart the
supremacy of selfishness; yet this was a struggle with
the supremacy of selfishness in the world! It is not
denied that external circumstances, such as the unity
of the empire, intercourse between distant countries,
identity of language and education, favoured the
spread of Christianity. But what were these external
circumstances but the work of Divine Providence ?
Nor is it less admitted, that a feeling had at all times
Triumphant Progress of Christianity. 239
existed, that something new, something better than
had yet been known, would appear. But what was
this feeling but the God-ordained result of that pre-
ceding development which was intended to prepare
for Christianity a way into the hearts of men? Nor is
it denied that the morality of Christianity and of its
advocates was a great power. The world had never
before witnessed a moral purity so sublime, a brotherly
affection so hearty; and the very heathen could not for-
bear admiring it. ‘See how these Christians love each
other,’ they exclaimed ; ‘how ready they are to die for
each other!’ (9) They love almost before they know
each other. (10) Even Julian the Apostate speaks
with admiration of the holy walk and brotherly love of
the Christians. And Lucian the satirist says, ‘It is
marvellous how these men rush to one another in mis-
fortune. ‘Most of them,’ says Galenus, ‘are not in a
condition to philosophize, but they live like philoso-
phers.” ‘What women the Christians have!’ exclaims
Libanius (11) with astonishment. But what was all
this but the fruit of the Spirit of Jesus Christ? Such
morality was itself miraculous. It is not denied that
the martyrs were, by means of their stedfastness, the
most impressive preachers of Christianity, and ‘their
blood the seed of the Church.’ (12) ‘Boys and
maidens, says Lactantius, ‘conquer their tormentors
by their silence. (13) And it also happened that
some converted even their executioners. It was no
fanaticism, but the bright reflection of that new life
which they received from the Spirit of Christ, which
240 Triumphant Progress of Christianity.
enabled them to encounter death with quiet and peace-
ful sober-mindedness, without a thought, too, of obtain-
ing glory from men; for in the eyes of the world their
confession of faith was a disgrace, and many died
whose very names were known to God alone.
All these means contributed, and could not but con-
tribute, to the success of Christianity, which certainly
would not have conquered the world without them.
But these means were the means of God and of His
Spirit.
It was not so easy a matter, as it may perhaps
appear to us, to conquer heathenism; for the heathen
religion had so intertwined itself with the social and
intellectual life of the people, that it seemed impossible
so to separate them as to uproot the one and to leave
the other standing. He who was an enemy to the
faith of his forefathers, seemed also an enemy of the
state, and of civilisation in general. (14) National life
was founded on religion, and had grown up with it;
the departments of religion and politics were indis-
solubly united. All national acts were at the same
time religious acts; all public affairs partook of a
religious character. Christians were regarded as the
enemies of the state, and even patriotism seemed to
demand enmity to Christianity, which was viewed as
of all things most perilous to the nation. All the
earlier apologists had to defend Christianity against
these reproaches. And this was the case also with
education. Art and science, and all mental cultiva-
tion, had developed themselves in connection with
Triumphant Progress of Christianity. 241
“religion. To seek to promote Christianity, was to
threaten the annihilation of the intellectual produce
of ages. Christianity was looked upon as synonymous
with barbarism. Its first apologists were repeatedly
obliged to repel this imputation. Even at the present
time, we may obtain a lively impression of the state of
affairs in those days. We have, for example, only to
descend into the subterranean vaults or sepulchres in
which the Christians met to celebrate their rites, and
then to compare with them one of those charming
Grecian temples in which the people offered their
sacrifices, or one of those magnificent amphitheatres
in which they assembled at joyful spectacles, or per-
haps even at the bloody conflicts of Christian martyrs
with wild beasts, to perceive and feel how great a
moral force was needed to gain the mastery over the
mighty power of heathen religion and heathen life.
And Christianity did gain the mastery; yet far from
annihilating, it preserved, purified, received into itself,
and united with its very being, the cultivation of the
ancient world, and transmitted it to posterity. After
having taken possession of the Roman world, it laid
the German world, which then began to occupy the
stage of history, at the feet of Jesus; made its people
the instruments of transmitting its doctrines to futu-
rity, and developed in them a new intellectual life.
Many a shock had the Church to encounter in its
course,—fightings within and foes without, the false
religion of Mohammed, and the wild hordes of Huns
and Mongols. But it withstood all these perils and
Q
242 Triumphant Progress of Christianity.
attacks, and was only the more firmly rooted in the
minds of men, the more firmly planted in the midst of
all human interests. A band of men, indeed, appeared
in this country, towards the close of the last century,
who strove and hoped to put an end to the religion of
Jesus Christ; and a storm also soon arose in France
which threatened the extinction of the Christian
Church. But the storm blew over, and the Church
stood fast; while the faith of Christ did but acquire
fresh strength and gladness from the troubles it
endured, and from the terrible commotions of the
times. Nor is our own age less an age of conflict ;
and the great cause which is now being contested
in the intellectual arena is nothing else than the
supremacy of Christianity. But its advocates, far
from being discouraged, are combining aggressions on |
the enemy abroad with defensive operations at home.
No age has for many centuries been so pre-eminently
an age of missionary exertion among the heathen
as the present; and slow as may be the progress
actually made, still it is progress, and all are firmly
persuaded that the cause of Christ must yet triumph
among all nations,—that the words of the apostle,
that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, must
yet be fulfilled,—that the poet’s saying shall yet be
realized—
‘The struggle shall not cease
Till vict’ry crown His cause ;
Till each remotest nation
Is subject to His laws.’
Power of the Christian Spirit. 243
The progress of Christianity in history has been a
triumphant one. But the progress of Christianity is
that of Jesus Christ. When we say Christianity, we
do in effect say Jesus Christ, for everything depends
upon Him. And what Christianity means, is to bow
before Christ, and honour Him as the only and eyer-
lasting Saviour of us all. Christianity, however, is
not merely a power possessing external sovereionty,
but a power exercising an inward and spiritual
authority. Not merely the external religions of
the various nations, but the entire intellectual life
of mankind, has been conquered and renewed there-
by. With Christianity a new era dawned upon the
human mind, and the whole moral and social life of
our race.
Christianity introduced the era of humanity. (15)
Not before its advent did men look upon themselves
as members of one great family. Not before were the
rights of human personality acknowledged. What have
been termed the rights of man, are the fruit of Christi-
anity. It made mo changes in the external arrange-
ments of society; it left laws and privileges, manners
and conditions, customs and ranks, as it found them;
but it introduced a new spirit into all these relations of
life. It did not even externally abolish slavery ; but it
taught all to recognise in the slave a man, a Christian
brother, and thus gave an internal blow to this objec-
tionable institution. It raised the condition of women
from a degraded to a most honourable and influential
one. It made love, which, as Montesquieu says, at the
—
244 Power of the Christian Spirit.
time of its introduction, still bore only a form which
cannot be named, the noblest and tenderest power of
mental and spiritual life. It withdrew children, whom
the heathen world had felt no scruple at destroying
either before or after birth, because they were regarded
as property which its possessors were fully justified in
disposing of at their pleasure, from the arbitrary power
of their parents, and placed them under the Saviour’s
protection by declaring them to be, by baptism, children
of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven.
Not till Christianity appeared did the love of one’s
neighbour, in the true sense of the word, exist. Chris-
tianity introduced humanity into the world, and incul-
cated the virtue of compassion. Care for the sick and
poor, which has played so famous a part in the history
of the Christian world, was one of its happy fruits.
That spirit of love, of resignation, of self-sacrifice,
which is the loveliest and noblest product of the moral
lite, proceeded from Christianity, from the cross of
Christ. It was Christianity which broke down the
wall of partition between ranks, nations, and states.
Not before did there exist upon earth such a thing as
international law, upon which, in our days, the whole
framework of society depends. That history is not
one continuous war of all against all, that right and
law form the foundation of national life, and that con-
sequently commerce and intercourse, and a general
civilisation of mankind, have been rendered possible
upon earth, are blessings for which we are indebted to
Christianity. And with the sway of law in individual
Power of the Christian Spirit. 245
states it has combined the spirit of gentleness, and
reminded men that even the transgressor is still a man,
and should be an object of our compassion, because he
is an object of divine pity, and because it is the will of
God to save his soul. Together with the rights of
personality which Christianity acknowledged, it estab-
lished also the rights of private judgment and liberty
of conscience. The first defenders of Christianity
were also the first proclaimers of liberty of conscience ;
and how much soever this principle may at times have
been sinned against by the advocates of the Church,
yet liberty of conscience, the necessity of which has
now become a matter of universal conviction and
admission, was itself the fruit of Christianity. But
it was not merely liberty which Christianity granted
to the conscience: it did this indeed, but it did far
more: it brought also comfort to the conscience, peace
to the soul, delivery from the sense of guilt, conscious-
ness of pardon, assurance of God’s mercy on the ground
of that ever-availing atonement for sin by the sacrifice
of Jesus Christ, whereby conscience is healed of its
wounds, the mind relieved from anxiety, and the heart
from heaviness, in which lies the best comfort in all
sufferings, the best remedy for all the sorrows of this
life, and which, at the same time, constitutes the true
moral power of all working and acting. For life is
valuable in proportion to the work effected therein ;
but the power of happy working depends upon a good
conscience, assured of God’s forgiveness. Hence
Christianity, by its announcement of God’s mercy in
246 Universal Character of Christianity.
Christ, became at the same time the source of a new
and hitherto unknown moral power. ‘The ancient
world was unable to form even a distant imagina-
tion of such characters—thoroughly moral characters,
g, in self-denial
as in activity—as Christianity has produced. It
equally great in doing as in sufferin
was the infusion, too, of this new moral power which
fertilized, developed, and ennobled the mental efforts
of man in the various departments of art and science.
What but Christianity called forth from the hidden
depths of the heart and mind, the strict genuine
earnestness and versatility of scientific research, the
sublime purity and truth of artistic representation, the
depth, the psychological truth, the abundance of poetic
productions? In short, Christianity became the power
of a new life to mankind, not only in a religious, but
also in an intellectual and moral sense.
And this new life is capable of infusing itself into
every phase of life, just because it is in its nature
spiritual, and not merely any one special form of ex-
ternal life: it is equally able to assume the most
opposite external appearances, and to enter into and
become the soul of the most opposite kinds of life.
What a variety of forms has not Christianity assumed
in different ages of the Church! During the first
centuries, when it celebrated its triumphs in the suffer-
ings of the martyrs, and its rites in the obscurity of
the catacombs; in the ages after Constantine, when it
made the cross the banner of warlike hosts, and the
first jewel of crowns; in the middle ages, when from
lis Testimony to Jesus Christ. 247
Rome it gave laws to the world, built its splendid
cathedrals, and brought forth from its fertile bosom a
rich world of poetry; in the Reformation period, when
it awakened and comforted consciences by its earnest
preaching of the word, and infused fresh spiritual life
into the Western world; during the war mania of _
Germany, when, with its hymns of comfort, it soothed
the crushed and trampled people, or afterwards be-
stowed upon the human mind that enfranchisement
which fitted it for its subsequent bold philosophic
investigations, or implanted in the narrow circle of the
quiet in the land the germ of a new future; or in the
present century, when it marched before our hosts
to lead them to the victory of freedom from foreign
bondage, and afterwards aroused the spirit of compas-
sion to gather the outcasts into places of refuge, or to
exercise its kindly offices in the abodes of sickness.
Under all these differing aspects it has remained one
and the same, and its witnesses in all ages are as intel-
ligible to us, and awake within us as responsive an
echo, as the preaching to-day. And under what vari-
ous forms do Christianity and the Church exist at the
present day; under what various phases of manners
and customs, of doctrine and worship, amidst the
nations of the north and of the south, the civilised
and the uncivilised! Yet however various its forms,
however diverse its relations, it is ever one and the
same: the confession of faith in Jesus Christ, the
Saviour of sinful man! Rent as the Church now is,
in one thing all churches are unanimous: the apostolic
~
248 = Christianity a Testimony to Jesus Christ.
confession of faith in God the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, is the common faith of all Christians and of all
churches. If none other is to be found among men,
the cross of Christ has, so far as they have suffered
themselves to be gathered into the Church of Christ,
instituted a unity among them, a unity of faith and
confession, of love and hope. Various as may be their —
grades of intellectual culture, the preaching of the
cross is to all the one truth, the one wisdom; manifold
as may be their nationalities, in Christ Jesus all, the
Indian as well as the European, the Negro as well as
the Asiatic, reverence their Teacher, their Redeemer,
their Kang.
Such is the universal position of Chr istianity among
‘ ‘mankind. Iti Is a divine power revivifying every phase
of life. But Chr -istianity 4 is a testimony to Jesus Christ ;
for it originated with Him, was given, and exists in
Him. He is Christianity. Hence Jesus is not a man
like other men, subjected to human partiality and
limitation, but of universal importance, and the con-
veyer of divine life. How then could He have been,
as Renan says, an enthusiast and fanatic, aid His
disciples still more such? A stream so pure and so
fertile in blessings could not spring from so dark a
source. ‘The stream which proceeded, and still pro-
ceeds from Him, testifies: Here is the revelation of
God, and therefore the light and life of the world.
He is the eternal life; we have God in Him. And
this is what the Gospels also testify of Him.
LECTURE X.
THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
geome e ERE is scarcely any subject of inquiry
BEA POE) which lays so great a claim to the religious
interest of the present day as the person of
Jesus Christ. Nor has any other a mght
to demand an equal interest ; for it is a matter in which
Christianity itself, nay, universal history, is involved.
‘It concerns Him who,’ as Jean Paul Richter says,
‘being the holiest among the mighty, the mightiest
among the holy, lifted with His pierced hand empires
off their hinges, and the stream of centuries out of its
channel, and still governs the ages.’ (1) In our days,
indeed, far less interest is felt in dogmatical than in
historical inquiries, and yet history is but the vehicle
and husk of doctrine. The strife about doctrine has
been, in fact, transported into the region of the history
of the life of Jesus Christ. And how great is the con-
trast presented by the opposite opinions! As great as
the difference between the eternal Son of God and the
son of Joseph.
The contrast between these views is old, though
heightened at the present day.
250 Oppositions in Ancient Times.
From the very first, Christians have rendered divine
honour to Jesus Christ. Even in the New Testament
they are designated as those ‘who call upon the name
of the Lord Jesus.’ (2) And Pliny, in his epistle to
_ the Emperor Trajan, speaks of the hymns which the
Christians sang in their assemblies, to Christ as to
God. (8) This fact, if we knew nothing else of the
teaching of the apostolic church concerning the person
of Jesus, would be a sufficient testimony to the divine
honour which was rendered to Him. Very early,
however, do we meet with a twofold opposition to
church doctrine, a Jewish and a heathen one. Jewish
error saw in Jesus only the very greatest of the pro-
phets, His superhuman greatness being lost in His real
humanity. Heathen error saw in Jesus a superhuman
being, who had descended to this earth from higher
spheres, but it resolved His historical reality into mere
appearance. In the former, history prevails to the
disparagement of idea; in the latter, idea to that of
history. The Church beheld in Jesus Christ the union
of the two, of history and idea, of the divine and
human. How, indeed, the two could coalesce into a
perfect unity, remained a problem to reason, which
never will be able to rise to the full measure of the
fact. But how far are we also from so attaining to
the fulness of the fact as to leave nothing unknown,
even in inquiries concerning natural life, so soon as
they penetrate beyond the mere surface! The faith
and confession of the Church, moreover, are indepen-
dent of the attempts of human reason to comprehend
Oppositions in Modern Times. OST
and fathom the mystery of the person of Jesus Christ.
And in this faith the various churches are unanimous.
Dogmatic differences concerning this question are but
of slight moment compared to the unanimity of faith.
Christians of all churches bow the knee at the name of
J esus.
Rationalism obliterates the divine element in the
person of Christ, as well as the supernatural in general.
And even when it speaks of a ‘ heavenly appearance in
this sublunary world, this is but a figure of speech;
for in its view He is still only the greatest of moral
teachers. But it was soon perceived that the mere
moral teacher did not satisfy the requirements of the
facts. Christianity is a phenomenon far surpassing
the bounds of mere morality. The portrait drawn in
the Gospels is far too great to be realized by the wise
rabbi of Nazareth; and philosophic speculation sought
to grasp the deeper idea of Christianity. But if
Rationalism advocated history at the expense of the
idea, speculation advocated the idea at the expense of
history. Jesus was only a symbol—the symbol per-
haps of divine wisdom, according to Spinoza; or of
ideal perfection, according to Kant and Jacobi; or of
the union of the divine and human, according to Schel-
ling and Hegel. How far Jesus himself approximated
to this ideal, for He did not fully attain to it, cannot
be said, but is a matter of indifference, as everything
depends upon the idea, not upon the fact. But it is
vain to persuade us to such a notion; for that which so
powerfully enchains us in the Gospels, which makes
25% Strauss and Renan.
such claims to our whole interest, what is it but the
historical reality of the person of Jesus? We feel it
impossible to stop short, and be contented with the
mere idea. Strauss attempted, from this philosophical
point of view, to get rid of the history altogether.
He resolves it almost all into poems which owed their
origin to the poetic spirit of the Christian Church,
leaving but a very scanty residuum of historical reality.
But if the Jesus whom we meet with in the Gospels is
the product of the Church, whose product is the Church
itself? The small remains of the history of Jesus left
to us by Strauss, bear no proportion to the effect
whose cause they are said to be. Renan, on the other
hand, is convinced that the power exercised by this
history was too great to allow it to be resolved into
myths. His book is, in this respect, a step in advance
of that of Strauss. He does homage to the historical
reality. The philosophic mind of the German might
content itself with abstractions and ideas; the more
realistic mind of the Frenchman demanded historical
facts. He says, and rightly, that the cause, which lay
in the person of Jesus, must correspond to the prodi-
gious effect produced; that Jesus could not have been
the mere fiction of His biographers; that the Gospel
history must, in the main, have been an actual occur-
rence. By a survey of the country in which its facts
took place, it acquired in his eyes a palpable embodi-
ment. Jesus is, in his eyes, ‘a man of enormous
proportions. But he writhes to escape from the ad-
missions which, according to his naturalistic view, he
Se
Renan. 253
cannot concede. He multiplies fine expressions and
high-flown sentences to escape that one simple confes-
sion, that the person of Jesus is a miracle, and that
the essence of His history is supernatural. For he
absolutely denies the supernatural and the miraculous,
because he admits no world beyond this finite world,
no free and personal God, and no personal immor-
tality. (4) Miracles, however, form an essential part
of the life of Jesus. Hence he chooses rather to view
them as delusions and deceptions of Jesus himself, and
to ascribe to Him the application of the maxim, that
the end sanctifies the means; in other words, he pre-
fers annihilating the moral character of Jesus, to
acknowledging that in Him we do meet with super-
natural power. But as long as a moral sense exists, it
will resist the notion that Jesus employed all sorts of
artifices, and such as even ordinary morality would be
incapable of tolerating: as, for instance, assuming the
appearance of knowing men’s thoughts; or consciously
defiling the purity of His teaching by an intermixture
of fanatic enthusiasm, for the sake of increasing its
efficacy, in consequence of the willingness of the
people to be deceived; or that He declared himself to
be the Son of God, and made this declaration a funda-
mental principle of His kingdom, while His own better
knowledge opposed it; or that in Gethsemane He was
thinking with sad despair of the sparkling streams of
His home, and of the Galilean maidens who were ready
to bestow upon Him their affections. Such notions
could only have entered into an imagination run wild,
254 The Gospels.
and a son of modern Paris. No, as long as the Gospels
exist, so long will they be the sufficient refutation of
such blasphemies ‘against Him who was the purest of
the pure. Let us then question these Gospels concern-
ing the person of Jesus.
But first let me be permitted to say a few words on
the Gospels in general.
Jesus himself neither composed nor bequeathed to
us any writings; for He was no philosopher, or
founder of a religion in the ordinary sense. His
person and His work are the writings which He
inscribed in broad characters on the history of man-
kind; and the work of His Spirit in the heart is
the epistle which He is day by day inscribing in
ineffaceable characters within us. His disciples, how-
ever, did compose writings, from which we receive
more detailed information concerning Him, and by
which even the oral tradition and announcement of
Him, which have since the day of Pentecost been
current in the world, have been supported and pre-
served. We might, indeed, have been certain of the
existence of Jesus Christ, even if we possessed no
Gospels ; the Church itself, its very existence, would
then be our Gospel. And we might be certain of the
main facts of His life, even if oral tradition were
uncertain and varying in details. This uncertainty in
detail would not destroy our certainty of the general
and the whole. We might never have read any-
thing concerning the first Napoleon, and yet we might
know what was most important concerning him; and
Testimony of the Ancient Church. 255
even if nothing had been written about him, the main
facts of his life would still be established. Yet what
is the impression made upon the minds of men even
by a Napoleon, compared with the memorial which
Jesus has set up in their hearts; and what are the
effects left by the former, compared with the work
which the latter has effected! Our faith, then, does
not depend upon writings, and their truth and genuine-
hess or ungenuineness, but upon facts which belong
to history, and upon effects produced within our hearts.
The written narratives are, however, the support and
defence of our faith. They portray to us so vividly
the image of Him whom we know and love, and repre-
sent His features with such exalted purity and living
power, that we can but recognise in. them the finger
of God, and esteem and honour them as our best and
dearest earthly treasures. |
_ The repeated attacks which have been made upon
these books have diffused the notion, especially among
the uninformed, that they are not so unassailable as
the Christian Church has hitherto esteemed them.
Not only, however, is this suspicion entirely without
foundation, but it would, besides, be in the highest
degree arbitrary to infer the uncertainty of the facts
from the supposed uncertainty of the writings.
How, then, does the case stand with the Gospel nar-
ratives ?
It must not be forgotten that these are not like
writings discovered at some time or other in a library,
and concerning whose origin doubts might reasonably
256 The Gospels.
be entertained, because nothing further was known of
them. They did not originate in private, and after-
wards pass from privacy into publicity, but were from
the very first public documents. ‘The first Gospel, we
are told, was written by the Apostle St Matthew for
the Jewish Christians of Palestine, before he left that
country to preach the gospel in other lands. The
second, according to Church tradition, was composed
under the eye of St Peter. The third tells us that it
was the result of diligent investigation in the Holy
Land, and was dedicated to a noble Roman for his
further instruction, to become hereafter through him
the property of the Christian Church. The fourth
declares itself to be the narrative of an eye-witness,
and gives sufficiently clear indication of being the
work of the Apostle John; and we are elsewhere
informed that this same apostle for a long period
preached Jesus to the Church of Ephesus, and com-
posed this Gospel at the pressing request of its elders.
The Gospels, then, are no private writings, but have
borne a public character from the very first. (5) They
appeared and were diffused under the eyes of the.
Church, and were sanctioned by the custom of public
reading in the Christian congregations. There were
several other evangelical narratives, as we see even
from the opening words of St Luke’s Gospel, but they
were defective in completeness and certainty of matter,
nor was their origin of equal authority. Hence they
gradually gave place to these chief writings, and sub-
sequently disappeared, while the former progressively
Testimony of the Ancient Church. 257
increased in estimation and acceptance. We have but
few remains of the Christian literature of the first
century. It is not till the year 150 that these become
more copious. Yet scanty and fragmentary as this
literature is, we find in it repeated references to the
Gospels; and the more abundant this literature becomes,
the more numerous are such references, and the more
firmly is the ecclesiastical authority and use of these
writings established. (6) And this testumony of the
-ancient Church will be the more highly estimated,
the more we know from individual examples how
accurate and tenacious it was in the matter of trans-
mission, even where traditions of subordinate interest
were concerned,—a circumstance which cannot but pre-
possess us in favour of its testimony to the Gospels. (7)
And it is just in the case of that very Gospel with
which in this matter we are most concerned—the Gos«
pel according to St John—that this narrowed chain of
transmission comes in most opportunely ; for Polycarp,
Bishop of Smyrna, who suffered martyrdom at the age
of 90, was a disciple of the Apostle St John. And
Trenzus, in whose writings we find abundant. testi-
mony to the Gospel of St John, was himself a dis-
ciple of Polycarp. Now, Irenzeus must have been in
possession of accurate information on the point; for
Polycarp, his teacher, would naturally tell him much
concerning his own personal intercourse with the aged
apostle. Irenzus, then, must have known whether
the fourth Gospel were really the work of St J ohn,
and certainly would never have ascribed it to him,
R
258 The Gospels.
if it had been so far removed from the times, and so
contrary to the mind of that apostle, as negative criti-
cism asserts.
But it is not merely the external testimony of the
Church which bears witness to the Gospels; there is
also their self-testimony, the testimony furnished by
the harmony, the keeping, the entire character of their
narratives. And, first of all, let this be considered,
that oral instruction was contemporary with written
documents. The first Christian instruction was in-
struction in the facts of Christ’s history. The know-
ledge of this history thus became the common property
of the whole Church; not in the first instance by
means of the Gospels, but by oral tradition, as all had
unhesitatingly received it from the apostles. Would
then the Gospel narratives have met with acceptance,
if they had not been in accordance with this oral
tradition? or this instruction having originated with
eye-witnesses, if the written records had not appealed
to such eye-witnessing, whether their composers had
themselves been eye-witnesses, as Matthew and John,
and perhaps partly Mark, or had received their
information directly from eye-witnesses, like’ Luke,
they could not have met with acceptance. But this
character is borne by the Gospels. Their thorough
originality, and the fact of their being the result of direct
knowledge, are very evident. (8) An air of freshness,
the charm of originality, pervades them all, constituting
their peculiar attraction, and producing their winning
power. We see, we hear Jesus himself, we pass with
Their Self-Testimony. 259
Him through the various phases of His history. There
are no reflections upon the history, but an embodiment
of facts ; no pedantic representations of histor » but
the history itself; it speaks to us, and we are trans-
planted into the midst of its scenes. And these direct
representations will endure any amount of investiga-
tion, A mass of geographical and other notices are
interspersed. We can verify their accuracy, and all
such verifications become corroborations,
But their chief subject is the portrait which they draw
of the Lord Jesus. It is such as no human being
could have invented; it must have been copied from
an original. We might say of a man that he was
without sin and without error, and the very image
of divine holiness. But we could not portray such
an image without some features being introduced
by our limited, erring, sinful minds, which would
betray their origin. Here, however, we have a per-
fect, a detailed, and lively picture, in all possible
situations, amidst all changes of inner and outer life,
and in the most striking contrasts. And in every
feature, in every slightest turn, this form commands
our admiration, and makes us bow down before it.
No one can invent after this fashion. (9) And least
of all could Jews have done so; for this was not by
any means the ideal of their minds. They did not
give reality to their ideal, but the reality first gave
to them this ideal. For the ideal which possessed
their minds might, perhaps, have corresponded to some
Jewish scribe; but how little of such a character did
260 The Gospels.
Jesus possess! He was a perfect contrast to such
an ideal. With that want of self-reliance, that depend-
ence upon the authority of their teachers in religious
matters, which the disciples of Jesus shared with the
rest of their unlearned fellow-countrymen, they would
never have emancipated themselves from the patterns
those authorities had prescribed, and have set up a
model so entirely different, if this model which they
portray with such.overwhelming power and sublimity
had not actually appeared before them in the person
of Jesus. Cardinal Wiseman says, in one of his lec-
tures: ‘We have in the writings of the rabbins ample
materials wherewith to construct the model of a perfect
Jewish teacher: we have the sayings and the actions
of Hillel, and Gamaliel, and Rabbi Samuel, all perhaps
in great part imaginary, but all bearing the impress of
national ideas, all formed upon one rule of imaginary
perfection. Yet nothing can be more widely apart
than their thoughts and principles, and actions, and
character, and those of our Redeemer. Lovers of
wrangling controversy, proposers of captious paradoxes,
jealous upholders of their nation’s exclusive privileges,
zealous uncompromising sticklers for the least comma
of the law, and most sophistical departers from its
spirit ; such mostly are these great men,—the exact
counterpart and reflection of those scribes and Pha-
risees who are so uncompromisingly reproved as the
very contradiction of gospel principles. How comes
it that men, not even learned, contrived to represent
a character every way departing from their national
Their Self-Testimony. 261
type, at variance with all those features which custom,
and education, and patriotism, and religion, and nature,
seemed to have consecrated as of all most beautiful 2
The evangelists must have copied the living
model which they represent ; and the accordance of
the moral features which they give him can only pro-
ceed from the accuracy with which thay have respec-
tively drawn him.’ (10)
It is not denied that we, who possess the original,
might be capable of inventing something similar. But
even then, what kind of an invention would it be?
Renan, who endeavours to set up an ideal of his own -
invention, which shall present the essential facts of the
Gospels, furnishes us with an answer. The Jesus
whom he depicts, is, with all his elevation and amia-
bility, but an enthusiast and fanatic, who does not
scruple to employ even immoral means for the accom-
plishment of his purpose. Such being our delineations,
even in spite of this model, how should these Jewish
publicans and fishermen, who had such entirely opposite
models, have sketched this marvellous portrait? It
is by their contents that the Gospels bear witness to,
and ever create faith in, their truth. Even a Goethe
was unable to escape this impression. ‘I esteem the
Gospels,’ says he in the Conversations with Eckermann,
il. 371, ‘to be thoroughly genuine; for there shines
forth from them the reflected splendour of a sublimity
proceeding from the person of Jesus Christ, and of so
divine a kind as only the divine could ever have
manifested upon earth.’
262 The Gospels.
It would be quite sufficient for our present purpose
if this internal and external testimony confirmed only
the more essential and general contents of the evange-
lical narratives ; for if we are but certain of the person
of Jesus Christ, we are certain of the main point.
But this certainty extends also to details. The occur-
rences in question were the common property of the
Christian Church, and not unknown even to its adver-
saries; for, as St Paul could assert before Festus the
Roman governor, these things were not done in a corner
(Acts xxvi. 26), but before the eyes of all. They
formed the subject of many discussions between Jesus
and His adversaries,.and were at last the cause of the
trial to which He was subjected, and of His execution.
Renan, indeed, supposes that the evangelists have
given their accounts in somewhat the same manner as
the achievements of Napoleon might have been nar-
rated by one or more of the old grenadiers of his guard,
who would have given us graphic details, interesting
anecdotes, a lively impression of events, but would
have confused the events themselves,—might have
placed Wagram perhaps before Marengo, or made
Napoleon expel Robespierre from the Tuilleries, or
omitted matters of the utmost importance. But were
the disciples, then, at such a distance from their Lord
as a few grenadiers would be from Napoleon? Would
it not have been a far more apt comparison to have
spoken of the members of his staff? And do not the
apostolical epistles, even if we confine ourselves to
those whose authenticity no reasonable person has ever
The Trustworthiness of their Narratives. 263
doubted, furnish collateral corroboration? In them
also we find at least the most important facts of
Christ’s life,—His miraculous origin, His ministry,
His atoning death on the cross, His resurrection, His
heavenly glory. There is, in fact, but one objection at
the bottom of all the different arguments which have
been set up against the historical truth of the gospel
narratives; and that is, the denial of miracles—the de-
nial of another world. And this is an objection arising
not from historical criticism, but from philosophical
views. ‘They who believe in the existence of another
world, and see in the person and history of Jesus
Christ a revelation thereof, find this stumbling-block
removed, are convinced of the truth of the miracles in
His history, nay, cannot but require it to contain
miracles. We have but one condition to insist upon
in the case of miracles, and that is, that they should
have a moral purpose; that they should be neither
arbitrary nor fantastic, but should subserve the reve-
lation of truth and grace which appeared in Christ
Jesus. And who, that knows the gospel narratives,
does not perceive and acknowledge that this condition
is observed? If we would obtain further certainty
on the point, we need only compare the apocryphal
gospels, and their arbitrary and tasteless narratives of
miracles devoid of any moral purpose, or the series of
legends which have been formed concerning Mohammed,
with our gospels, to be convinced that these are as far
removed from those as the heavens are from the earth,
and to perceive what striking confirmation these cari- ~
264 The Gospels.
catures of the evangelical narrative furnish of the
works of our evangelists. (11) |
To what strange means do not men have recourse
to get rid of the gospel history, when they have first
resolved not to accept it! Strauss began in 1835, by
his Leben Jesu, those attacks which have since been
repeated under so many and various forms. His
notion was, that the early Christians adorned the image |
of their Master with heavenly features derived from
the prophecies of the Old Testament, and thus formed
a tissue of mythic and legendary narratives. But, in
fact, if the disciples had set themselves to devise an
image of the Messiah according to their own expecta-
tions, they would have produced an entirely different
one. They would have delineated the royal Son of
David, and not the Prophet of Galilee, crucified and
risen from the dead. The external facts of Christ’s
history were rather hindrances than aids to their faith;
for they were in accordance neither with their wishes
nor their hopes. Nothing but the overwhelming im-
pression made by Christ’s person lifted them above all
these stumbling-blocks to their faith, and convinced
them that He was the Messiah. N othing but so extra-
ordinary a phenomenon as the life and miracles of
' Jesus, as depicted in the Gospels, could haye pro-
duced this effect. And how could such a circle of
myths have been formed in so short a period as that
which elapsed between the history itself and its deli-
neation (12), and especially in that age of historical
accuracy and abundant literary activity? (13) Such a
Attacks upon them. 265
notion is opposed to all historical possibility. Single
legends and myths may be produced by the unusual
impression which an astounding fact or imposing per-
sonage may produce upon the minds of men, and
be added as embellishments to an historical narrative,
but not a life which is but a series of miracles.
Strauss himself, however, acknowledged that his
attack had been a failure, and that his master, Baur,
had carried out what he had but attempted. ‘In my
youthful impetuosity, I sought to conquer the fortress
at a stroke; but it was my greater master who first
undertook the regular siege, before which its walls
could not but fall’ (44) And certainly Baur must
have conquered the fortress, if it had not been impreg-
nable. With that indefatigable patience of which only
a German scholar is capable, he took a tedious road to
prove that in the several Gospels we have memoirs
which are the product of later times, and of various
opposing tendencies in the Church, and that they can-
not therefore be absolutely relied on. This was to
apply especially to the Gospel of St John. And natu-
rally so; for if this be a genuine record of the hfe
of Christ, the higher view of His person is ensured.
Hence every effort was made to refer this work to
about 150 years after Christ. But such attempts were
as fruitless as they were wearying. The school of
Baur is being every day more and more broken up ;
and he himself acknowledges that, after all, the person
of Jesus Christ remains a great historical mystery, and
that ‘in any case the entire importance of Christianity
266 Lhe Gospels.
to the whole world depends upon His person.’ (15) He
was obliged, moreover, to leave the enigma of the
resurrection unsolved. But if the resurrection re-
mains an enigma, then is the person of Jesus one also.
And if this remains unexplained, what is the use of
all other explanations of the history of mankind ?
A. series of the writings of the second century have
been handed down to us; and if these are compared
with the writings of the New Testament and with the
Gospels, nothing but an utter want of discrimination
in literary productions could fail to make us sensible of
the immense chasm which separates them. To refer
the Gospel of St John to the second century, is as
though we were to attribute the most powerful of
Luther’s writings to some unknown author during the
thirty years’ war. (16) Any one maintaining such a
notion would expose himself to the ridicule of all
connoisseurs and scholars. Even Schelling designates
this difference as the strongest proof of the originality
of the New Testament writings; while the very critics
of Baur’s school have recognised this chasm between
the writings of the New Testament and those of a later
period,—a chasm as great as that which exists between
the productions of a classical and post-classical age. (17)
Much has been made of the discrepancies said to
exist between the several Gospels, for the sake of inva-
lidating and casting doubt upon their testimony. But
these supposed discrepancies, even if they affect par-
ticulars and externals, leave the essence of the history
untouched. In no other case would such variations
Attacks upon them. 267
be considered a valid argument against the matter
itself. (18) And how have not the Gospels been
tortured to bring out these discrepancies? It cannot
be denied that Lessing was well practised in criticism 5
yet even he cannot help exclaiming, ‘If Livy, and
Dionysius, and Polybius, and Tacitus, are so candidly
and honourably treated by us, that we do not lay them
upon the rack for every syllable, why do we not ex-
tend equal liberality to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John?’ (19) Such discrepancies as have been dis-
covered generally owe their origin to an entirely exter-
nal view and comparison of the narrative, which omit
all inquiry after the fundamental idea upon which
each evangelist selected and arranged his materials.
Of late, however, there is a recoil from such prejudices
against the gospel narrative; and even Renan cannot
help allowing the historical character of the essential
part even of St John’s Gospel, though he certainly
treats it in a manner arbitrary beyond comparison,
bringing forth from it a history which is in truth only
the product of his own imagination.
Having thus briefly spoken of the Gospels themselves,
we will return to our inquiry concerning the person of
Jesus Christ.
It is the peculiarity of the Gospels, that they every-
where present to our view the person of Jesus Christ.
It is impossible for us to stop, if we would, at His
teaching. We everywhere meet with Himself. We
see His image in all that He says. It is He who lends
to His words that peculiar charm, that wondrous mix-
268 The Gospel Delineation of Jesus.
ture of sublime strictness and ingratiating kindliness,
which renders them so irresistible. From Himself
proceeds that fragrance which pervades His words,
and makes them words of life. It is the form of Jesus
Himself which shines through all He says and does, and
constitutes the central point of the gospel histories.
What, then, is that portrait of Jesus which the
Gospels delineate ?
It was in a remote town of Galilee, we are told, and
in the family of one of its more obscure inhabitants,
that Jesus grew up. His birth, indeed, directs us to
Bethlehem, the city of David; and miraculous occur-
rences connected with that event are narrated. But
His subsequent career stood in no kind of connection
with those earlier events of the newly dawning salvya-
tion, when it had seemed as if a new sun were about
to dawn upon Israel; and the miraculous incidents of
His earlier days seemed but to encircle His after
obscurity like a dream. Many of those who had
witnessed them were dead; and the report having
gradually died away among the survivors in Beth-
Jehem and Jerusalem, it was concluded that this re-
markable child had perished among the infants whom
Herod sacrificed to his suspicions. These things were
no longer spoken of in Bethlehem and J erusalem,
while in Nazareth they had never been heard of; and
Mary and Joseph kept their experiences in the depths
of their own hearts, as a secret of which they could
speak to no one, because no one could understand it—
of which they did not even venture to speak to each
Fis Youth. 269
other, because they themselves could not understand
it. And least of all would Mary have spoken of it to
her Son: for in what terms could she talk of it to
Him? Thus He grew up in the house of His parents
like any other child.
But the traditions of David’s house, the great pre-
dictions and the hopes which were attached to them,
lived in the hearts, and must often have been upon the
lips, of these descendants of a great and royal ancestor.
They were the atmosphere in which Jesus lived; while
the Scriptures, into which, according to Jewish custom,
he was early initiated, were the food with which His
mind was fed. It was these which developed His
thoughts, constituted His knowledge, and even His
comprehension of himself.
We would willingly have learnt somewhat concern-
ing His youth, and imagination has filled the space
left vacant by the evangelists with all kinds of
legendary and miraculous histories. But they are
all fictitious. One single occurrence, one single
saying, is preserved by St Luke,—the saying of
Jesus in the temple when a child of twelve years old
—that memorial of His advancing self-consciousness.
The journey to the feast, the holy city with its
associations, the temple and its worship, all that He
saw and heard, felt and thought, might well have
moved Him, and given a new impulse to His thoughts.
Then, also, the mystery of His own nature began to be
clearer and more certain to Him. He felt and per-
ceived that He stood nearer to His Father in heaven
270 The Gospel Delineation of Jesus.
than to His parents upon earth—that communion with
God was more His home than the earthly house in
which He had dwelt and grown up. This thought
and this saying broke forth from the depths of His
soul like the first bright beam, enlightening His
whole being. From this time forth He became more
and more conscious of the miraculousness of His own
nature. He learnt to understand himself. But He
was silent. He was subject to His parents; He ful-
filled a son’s duties like any other man; He assisted in
His foster-father’s handicraft; He, as well as Joseph,
was called ‘the carpenter’ in Nazareth; and when the
latter died, as it appears, prematurely, he provided, as
the head of the family, for its wants—yet he was silent.
He kept His own miraculous nature a holy secret, and
was silent. He went, according to Jewish custom,
every Sabbath into the synagogue; He heard the law
and the prophets read and expounded ; yet He main-
tained His silence, meekly waiting until His Father
should give Him a sign to come forth and bear public
testimony to what He had long silently cherished in
His soul.
We need not complain that we know too little of
His youth and mental development. We know
enough; and what we do know of this, His period
of silence, is, in one word, His meekness, which is
peculiarly striking in the picture which the few fea-
tures of the historical narrative place before us.
And this is also the most prominent feature in the
picture given us of His public ministry.
His Publie Ministry. 271
He comes to the Baptist to be baptized by him like
any other Israelite, at the dawn of the kingdom of
heaven, though He well knew that it was himself who
was to introduce that kingdom. John refused, and
would rather have sought baptism from Him, as one
higher and greater than himself, whose shoe’s latchet he
was not worthy to unloose; but Jesus bid him perform
his office, even for Him, saying, ‘ Suffer it to be so now,
for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.’ At
this baptism the Father bore, as we are informed,
miraculous testimony to His Son; after which, Jesus,
coming up out of the water, departed into the wilder-
ness. ‘hence, after experiencing mysterious tempta-
tions, He returned into the Baptist’s neighbourhood ;
and as He was silently going on His way, some of
John’s disciples followed Him. ‘Come and see,’ are
the only words He addressed to them; but such was
the impression made by His person, that they were
bound to His cause for life. He returns to His home;
He is present at the marriage of Cana; in all that
He says and does we behold the same meek reserve,
advancing only step by step in the path which God
points out, and patiently waiting the progressive de-
velopment and extension of His ministry—waiting till
the increasing interest excited by His words and deeds,
and His whole public life, brought multitudes to Him
from even remote distances, and till He gradually
called forth a religious movement which reached to
the borders of Israel, and at the same time awakened
and increased the enmity of His opponents. His whole
272 The Gospel Delineation of Jesus.
life was one continued series of journeyings, full of
unrest and privation, a round of ceaseless activity and
exhausting labours. |
From the very commencement of His Galilean
ministry this was the case. He had departed from
Nazareth to make Capernaum the central point of His
agency. He had been teaching on His way thither,
and He arrived on the borders of the lake of Galilee
accompanied by multitudes. Here he entered into a
ship to free himself from their pressure, and taught
them from it, while they stood on the shore. He called
disciples to follow Him ; He entered into the synagogue,
and taught and healed in the midst of much popular
excitement. Departing thence, He entered into the
house of Peter’s mother-in-law, whom He healed of a
fever. In the evening, when the Sabbath was past,
there were brought unto Him from all parts the sick
and possessed, and He was employed in succouring
them till far into the night. Before the morrow’s
dawn He departed into a solitary place to pray; but
even there He was followed and sought for. After
this fashion did His ministry begin in Capernaum;
and thus was it continued in other places. More than
once does the evangelist relate that He had not time
so much as to eat: it seems that He was even so
engrossed with work, that it was thought necessary
forcibly to restrain Him, because it was feared He
might lose His senses (Mark ii. 21).
Such was the commencement of His Galilean mini-
stry. And this continued for weeks and months, year
Ils Public Ministry. 273
after year. The Gospels furnish us with details suffi-
cient to enable us to form a picture of His public life
in this place. It may be described, both externally
and internally, as one of exciting and exhausting
activity. If we inquire, however, what was the soul of
this activity, we shall be constrained to say that it is
the life of a Saviour which is here depicted,—a life
dedicated to the poor, the sick, the forsaken, the de-
spised,—a life of devotion to the unhappy, to deliver
them from the sorrows of life, and especially from sad-
ness of heart. Publicans and sinners, the mourners
and the sorrowing, these are the society He seeks.
To the afflicted He brings consolation, and calls the
weary and heavy-laden that He may give them rest.
A spirit of compassionate love and beneficent kindness
animates every act of His life. We read in the Old
Testament of a revelation of God vouchsafed to the
prophet Elijah (1 Kings xix. 11): ‘And, behold, the
Lord passed by, and a great strong wind rent the
mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks, before the
Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after
the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the
earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but
the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still
small voice. And it was so, when Elijah heard it,
that he wrapped his face in his mantle.’ Such was
God in Christ. (20)
If ever love appeared on earth, it appeared, under
the form of gentleness and meekness, in Christ. But
over the form of the meek Saviour of sinners is shed
Ss
274 The Gospel Delineation of Jesus.
abroad a glory and majesty which cause us involun-
tarily to bow the knee before Him. Who can contem-
plate Him in His silent course without feeling that
there is in Him a mysterious and hidden majesty, and
seeing it shine forth from His every word and deed ? (21)
And most of all in His deepest humiliation.
His love was rewarded by a criminal’s death on the
cross of shame. After having done good to all through-
out His whole life, He departed from life with a crown
of thorns about His head. He was about three and
thirty years old when He died, and to what a death
did He submit! Whatever human malice could in-
vent that was painful to mind and body was united in
it. And Jesus was no unemotional Stoic, who could
look down with proud disdain either upon suffering or
the human beings who inflicted it. He felt it all in
His inmost soul. The greater His love, the more
bitterly did He feel that His own people, whom He
had come to redeem, should so basely reject Him.
Nothing can be more touching than the simple and
unadorned accounts given by the evangelists of the
last hours of Jesus. It is almost with indifference
‘that they relate occurrences one after another, while
scarcely a remark betrays their inward emotion. But
their narrative is on this account all the more striking.
It is not only themselves but their subject which is
speaking tous. And how does not that subject address
us! It is no ordinary human life which we are here
contemplating. What we see and hear in Gethsemane
and on the cross, compels us to feel that we are here
LNs Life and Death a Revelation of Divine Love. 275
in the presence of a deep mystery. It is an inward
wrestling of His soul with God which we seem to per-
ceive, a transaction of the invisible world which gleams
through the veil of visible events. We cannot but
feel that a great and mysterious act is here taking
place. We cannot but have a notion of an atoning
sacrifice.
In the midst, however, of the sufferings which over-
whelm Him, He is ever equal to himself. The meek
tranquillity with which He endures whatever wicked-
ness chooses to inflict, and the forgiving love with
which He encounters its malice, strike us more power-
fully than even in His life. The former overcame His
betrayer, the latter converted the thief; while through-
out the whole scene there shone such a splendour of
greatness and majesty, that even from the heathen
centurion broke forth the confession, ‘Truly this was
the Son of God!’ Nor can we refuse to say, This is
more than a sage, more than a martyr, more than a
man. (22) The mystery of His death and sufferings
is disclosed to us by the mystery of His person.
fis person is a miracle. We could not avoid such
a confession, even if we were acquainted only with
His ministry, and knew nothing of His origin. That
union of meekness and majesty which sets so incom-
parable a stamp upon His whole demeanour, that silent
power of love which makes His life a revelation of the
heart of God,—all are but the manifestation of that
holiness which is the moral characteristic of His per-
son and nature. None can avoid being most forcibly
276 The Gospel Delineation of Jesus.
impressed by the holy purity of His nature. If all
else be denied, this at least must be admitted. The
question of Jesus, ‘ Which of you convinceth me of
sin?’ unanswerable in all previous times, remains so
even in our own.
But further, the portrait of the Lord Jesus is one
of sublimest and purest harmony, both as regards His
mental and moral nature.
There is disharmony in the inner life of every other
man. ‘Those two poles of mental life, knowledge and
feeling, head and heart; those two powers of the moral
life, the reason and the will,—where shall we find them
in unison? In the case of Jesus, on the contrary, we
are vividly impressed with the feeling that perfect har-
mony prevails in His mental life. There is absolute
peace in His inmost being. As we could not bear to
conceive in Him any single mental faculty prepon-
derating, and others consequently retiring, but are
constrained to think of His intellectual parts and
nature as perfectly proportioned, so is it also with His
joint mental and moral life. It is a human life of
perfect harmony. He is all love, all heart, all feeling ;
and yet again He is all mind, all mental enlightenment
and sublimity. There is no schism between feeling
and reason in His nature. There is, moreover, the
greatest vitality of feeling and emotion, of thought
and resolve, and yet this vitality of His inner nature
never passes into passionate excitement; all is quiet
dignity, peaceful simplicity, sublime harmony.
Such is the image which the gospel narrative pre-
~
Mis Consciousness of Communion with God. 277
sents to us, and of which we are constrained to say—
Such was He, such must He have been. And in such
an image is reflected the moral harmony of His nature.
It is because there was in Him nothing of that moral
discord which pervades the inner world of all other
men, that His mental and spiritual life were so har-
monious, so peaceful. Jesus was in perfect harmony
with himself, because He was in perfect harmony with
God. Such was His ever present consciousness. He
knew himself to be in absolute communion with the
Father. In all of us, even in the most pious and most
holy, the consciousness of communion with God is ever
accompanied by that consciousness of sin, atoned for,
indeed, and forgiven, yet still a consciousness of sin,
which forms its background and postulate. With
Jesus it was otherwise. His was a pure and absolute
consciousness of communion with God. Jesus lived
in continual prayerful intercourse with His Father,
His whole life was a life of prayer, but He never
prayed for forgiveness. He taught us to pray, Forgive
us our debts; but He never prayed thus himself. He
alone of woman born needed not to do so. He knew
nothing of this wall of partition between himself and
His Father. His soul, His reason and will, were ever
and completely in His ‘Father’s business.’ How, then,
was it possible that a man descended from sinful man
should be thus exempt from the universal moral law
of all other mortals? He could not have been circum-
stanced as other men. His origin must have been
other than that of all the sons of man beside. His
278 The Gospel Delineation of Jesus.
nature must have surpassed the limits of the merely
human. Thus much is surely required by the moral
phenomenon He presents to us.
Such is also the teaching of His miracles.
The Gospels tell us much of His miracles. His
life is full of marvellous deeds, entirely surpassing the
utmost measure of power and command which the
human mind is wont to exercise over nature. We
have no need of a perfect acquaintance with all the
hidden forces and laws of nature, in their full extent,
to be certain that they are indeed miracles which we
here read of. No powers of mature can change water
into wine, or by a mere word give sight to the blind,
hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, cleansing to
the leper, and even life to the dead. Yet Jesus per-
formed these miracles as though they were natural to
Him. (23) They were not works effected by exertion,
but deeds of voluntary power. The attempt has been
made to withdraw them from His life, to get rid of
them by artificial, or so-called natural, explanations.
But in vain. We might as well try to expunge from
the lives of Cesar or Alexander their military achieve-
ments and battles. What would then be left? His
miracles form far too essential a part of His life and
ministry to be removed therefrom. His history would
then be indeed utterly incomprehensible. What was
it but His miracles which attracted the people in such
multitudes after Him, that the envy of His adversaries
was continually and increasingly excited, — which
formed the subjects of so many disputations with His
Mis Miracles. 279
opponents, who dared not utterly deny them, but knew
no other subterfuge than referring them to demoniacal
agency? ‘To these deeds also did the apostles after-
wards appeal as to acknowledged facts, of which many
witnesses then existed (eg. Acts x. 87). And even
after the days of the apostles, the apologist Quadratus
(at the beginning of the second century) speaks of
certain who were healed or raised from the dead by
the Lord, as still alive when he was writing. (24) In
short, it is undeniable that the miracles of Jesus Christ
are historical facts.
Yet we feel that, after all, it is with the Lord Jesus
himself and not with His miracles that we are con-
cerned. He did not perform them for the sake of
being a worker of miracles. It was His heart im-
pelled Him; His pity urged Him to receive the
wretched, and to aid them. But it was not merely
temporal misery which He had in view. No one can
for a moment imagine that He intended to be a mere
healer. His aim was far higher. The object of His
actions was the salvation of the soul. It was weakness
of faith which He desired to heal by His miracles.
These were natural to Him. He was ever conscious
of possessing miraculous powers; the angels of God
were ever at His service, ready as His ministers to do
His pleasure; but He made His power subservient
to His calling,—His calling as the Saviour of men.
His miracles were designed to glorify Him, but only
that they might produce or increase that faith in Him
which would save souls. And this salvation which He
280 The Gospel Delineation of Jesus.
came to bring was typified in His miracles. They
were pure deeds of mercy; for He came not to de-
stroy men’s lives, but to save them. ‘They were not
arbitrary acts, but had each a moral motive and moral
conditions; not acts of power merely, but of saving
love. They were a commentary, not of words but of
facts, upon His person and teaching; they were, so to
speak, a hieroglyphic of His doctrine. But at the
same time they show that He must himself have
been a miracle,—must far surpass all ordinary human
beings.
fis word accompanies His miracles. Miracles illus-
trate His teaching, and His teaching again interprets
His acts. Not without it have His miracles a reli-
gious significance. His teaching is the chief matter
even to us; for the fact, really is, not that we believe
His teaching for the sake of His miracles, but that we
believe in His miracles for the sake of His teaching
and for His own sake. Because we feel certain about
Himself and His teaching, we feel certain also of His
miracles. If He were not what He is, and if His teach-
ing did not approve itself to our hearts as it does, His
miracles would not make upon us the impression they
do. We should be constrained to regard them as his-
torical facts; we should be forced to confess that we
could not explain them; we should be obliged to admit
their genuineness, and to infer from them that Jesus
was more than an ordinary man; but they would be
of no importance to our religious life: they would
furnish us with an historical problem, but afford no
Ils Teaching. 281
solution to the religious problem. That they do this,
is entirely owing to their connection with His teaching
and person. It is this which bestows upon them their
higher authentication and religious importance. It is
this which constrains us to say His teaching presup-
poses such miracles, and such miracles presuppose such
teaching. Each presupposes, each authenticates, and
each explains the other. (25)
Let us now turn to His teaching.
Once, when the Sanhedrim commissioned its officers
to seize Jesus, and bring Him before them, they re-
turned with their mission unperformed, and with the
confession, ‘Never man spake like this man’ (John
vii. 46),—a confession in which we cannot but unite,
in which all ages cannot but unite. Kighteen cen-
turies have passed since Jesus taught, and during their
course the opinions of men have undergone many
changes, but His word has preserved its old, yet ever
fresh power over their minds. No learned interven-
tion, no special preparation is needed to understand it,
and to experience its effects. It is equally compre-
hensible by all, exerts an equal power upon all, with-
out distinction. It is only because we have become
too accustomed to it, that it does not always exercise
upon us its original influence, nor produce equal
effects ; but when once we unclose and surrender our
hearts thereto, it then appears before our mind in all
its victorious power, as though the words were pro-
ceeding directly from the mouth of the Lord Jesus
Himself.
282 The Gospel Delineation of Jesus.
Wherein, then, does the peculiar power of His teach-
ing consist? 'The secret of its influence lies in no
peculiar excellence of diction. Jesus was no poet, no
orator, no philosopher. It is not the charm of poetry
which attracts us, not the ingenious application which
surprises, not flights of eloquence which carry us away,
not bold speculation which evokes our astonishment ;
it is none of these. No one could speak with more
simplicity than Jesus speaks,—whether we consider
the Sermon on the Mount, or His parables on the
kingdom of God, or the so-called high-priestly prayer.
No one could speak more simply than Jesus speaks.
But this is the very reason of His influence, that He
utters the greatest and most sublime truths in the very
plainest words, so that, as Pascal says, one might
almost think He was himself unconscious what truths
He was propounding, unless He had expressed them
with such clearness, certainty, and conviction, that we
see how well He knew what He was saying when He
spoke of the greatest and sublimest matters in the
plainest words. (26) We cannot fail to see that the
world of eternal truth is His home, and that His
thoughts have constant intercourse therewith. He
speaks of God and of His relation to Him, of the
supermundane world of spirits, of the future world,
and of the future life of man; of the kingdom of God
upon earth, of its nature and history; of the highest
moral truths, and of the supreme obligations of man,
—in short, of all the greatest problems and deepest
enigmas of life,—as simply and plainly, with such an
ITs Self-Testimony. 283
absence of mental excitement, without expatiating
upon His peculiar knowledge, and even without that
dwelling upon details so usual with those who have
anything new to impart, as though all were quite
natural and self-evident. (27) We see that the sub-
limest truths are His nature. He is not merely a
teacher of truth, but is himself its source. Truth is a
part of His very being. He can say, I am the Truth.
And the feeling with which we listen to His words
is, that we are listening to the voice of truth itself.
Hence the power which these have exercised over the
minds of men at all times and in all places.
But not merely is His teaching the outward mani-
festation of the essential miraculousness of His person,
He also makes His person the central point of all His
teaching. Ue is Himself the matter of His teaching.
Did He speak of the kingdom of God? it was Himself
who established this kingdom, and faith in Him was the
means of entrance into it; while possession of this king-
dom. was in every case and for ever associated with His
person. Was He ateacher of the most exalted morality?
was His doctrine the purest and most exalted moral
philosophy? was it His great achievement to change
religion and morality from merely external acts into
an inward state of heart and mind ?—this state was a
state of mind and disposition of heart towards Himself.
To believe in Him, and by virtue of such faith to love
God, this was His doctrine. It is of Himself that He is
really speaking. Even when He is not directly allud-
ing to Himself, He makes Himself the central point of
284 The Gospel Delineation of Jesus.
His every announcement. And most of His teaching
does this not indirectly, but directly. He founds all
upon His person. The cause He advocates, the salva-
tion He brings, the demands He makes, the future He
announces,—all depend upon His person. ‘Tr 1s I,’ is
the great text of all His teaching. ‘If ye believe not
that I am He, ye shall die in your sins’ (John viii. 24),
is a saying in which His whole doctrine may be summed
up. And what a wonderful saying it is! There could
not be one more lofty, more self-conscious. Not one
of the great instructors of mankind ever dared to speak
thus. Nor could we have tolerated such words from
any other. Others have dwelt upon the cause they
advocated, the matter they communicated, and have
perhaps affirmed concerning it, that it was truth. But
the importance of their persons arose in each case from
the importance of their matter. Jesus, on the other
hand, makes everything depend upon His person; in
fact, His person is His matter. He ever casts the
weight of His person into the scale. When He would
most emphatically assure or confirm, His words are,
‘Verily, verily, I say unto you.’ We are to believe
His words, not because of the truth of their matter,
but because of the dignity of His person. Because it
is He that utters it, therefore it is true. The antho-
rity of the declaration rests upon the authority of the
person: ‘ Verily, verily, I say unto you.’ Never man
spake like this man. God alone had thus spoken in
the Old Testament. Jesus speaks as if divine autho-
rity became Him. And yet He was the meekest of
His Universality. 285
all men; a circumstance which gives all the greater
force to the words, ‘It is I’
What then is He?
He has comprised all that He tells us of himself in
the two titles which He appropriated, and which have
ever since been His current designations. He called
himself the Son of Man, and the Son of God. What,
then, do these names import ?
' What does He imply when He calls himself the Son
of Man? By this title He, on the one side, includes
himself amongst other men—He is one of our race;
while, on the other, He thereby exalts himself above
the whole race besides; as, in a truly exclusive sense,
the Son of mankind, its genuine offspring, the one
man towards whom the whole history of the human
race was tending, in whom it found its unity, and in
whom history finds its turning-point as the close of the
old and the commencement of the new era. His title,
Son of Man, implies that in Him is comprised the
whole race, and that He is the object of its history.
There is in the whole demeanour of Jesus Christ
the characteristic of universality. This is an impression
He makes upon every one. There is throughout the
history of all nations a tendency to comprise itself in
certain individuals of comprehensive mind and charac-
ter. Every nation reverences such heroes of its history,
who are in a higher sense than others the depositaries
and organs of the national genius, and in whom the
nation sees itself, as it were, incorporated. Still these
have all been but approximations and contributions to
286 The Gospel Delineation of Jesus.
a perfect representation. And this has been more
especially the case when a comprehension of the entire
nature and mind of the human race is concerned.
Even such as have been most representative of the
human mind, even the most nearly universal geniuses
we can think of,—how far are they from being indeed
representatives of mankind! Jesus was such a repre-
sentative man; but He was the only one the world
ever beheld. He is the living prototype of the human
race. In Him were perfected and exhibited, not merely
individual aspects of human nature, but in Him is pre-
sented to our view, in its primitive truth and purity,
free from the disturbances and perversions introduced
by sin, human nature itself. In Him we find the -
realization of our true nature. It is in this character
of primitiveness that Jesus Christ is the universal
archetype. How various soever men may be -with
respect to their nationality and individuality, every
one may equally look upon Jesus as his prototype. It
is true that He was, as to outward circumstances, both
individual and national—He was the Son of Mary,
and a member of the commonwealth of Israel; His
external life comprised but 4 limited circle of situa-
tions,—and yet this definite and special form of His
historical manifestation so thoroughly bears within it
the character of universality, that He is the supreme,
the all-embracing, the inexhaustible prototype of all
men, in all ages and under all circumstances. In His
presence all national peculiarity, distance of time,
variety of mental cultivation, vanish. ‘When we see
[his Universality. 287
how He can have been followed by the Greek, though
a founder of none of his sects; revered by the Brahmin,
though preached unto him by men of the fisherman’s
caste; worshipped by the red man of Canada, though
belonging to the hated pale race,—we cannot but con-
sider Him as destined to break down all distinction of
colour, and shape, and countenance, and habits, to
form in himself the type of unity to which are refer-
able all the sons of Adam.’ (28)
In Him mankind has found its oneness, and the
history of mankind its consequent object. He is He
that was to come. All history previous to His coming
was a prophecy of Him. The whole course of ex-
ternal events, and the progress of the human mind,
were tending towards Him; the result of both was to
demand without being able to produce Him; hence in
Him both find their completion. The secret of His
power, and the pledge of His success, lay in the fact
that He is the demand and object of the entire collec-
tive progress of mankind. He is the fulfilment both
of Israelitish prophecy and Gentile prediction; for He
is the manifestation of the divine counsel for the salva-
tion of men. But He is, moreover, the fulfilment of
that prophecy which is uttered by our own hearts.
He it is who is the secret object of our aspirations.
This is the hidden tie which, unconsciously to our-
selves, unites us all to Him, and involuntarily attracts
us toward Him. It is He at whom we are aiming,
unknown to ourselves. We are all so disposed towards
Him, that without Him our souls are without rest;
288 The Gospel Delineation of Jesus.
because He is the truth of our being. Thus is He the
object of us all.
And this is the cause of His universal position with
respect to the world. He speaks of this in the most
emphatic manner. He connects the fate of the whole
world and of individuals with His person—makes it
dependent on faith in Himself. His words surpass
all human measure when He speaks of this. But He
is Lord of the world, only to be its Redeemer. He
came to seek and to save that which was lost. It is
redemption from sin, man’s true relation to God, peace,
salvation, that He would give to the world. He is the
Lord, only to be the Redeemer, the Mediator, by whom
the wall of partition, erected by sin between God and
man, is to be abolished, and the atonement made which
is to be the foundation of the new covenant. ‘Thus is
it that Jesus speaks of Himself, of His vocation, and
significance.
And in this respect He places Himself in opposition
to all mankind, besides raising Himself far beyond
our level; and appears in the presence of the whole
race with divine plenipotence and authority, especially
when He speaks of His future, which He does in the
strongest imaginable terms. It was just while He was
being condemned as a criminal, and saw the shameful
death of the cross before Him, that He repeated to
His judges the saying which He had already uttered
to His disciples, that He should be raised to the night
hand of the Divine Majesty—would appear in divine
glory, surrounded by the angels of God, who stand at
Eis Future. 289
His service and fulfil His commands—would summon
all nations before His judgment-seat, and judge them
according to their conduct towards himself. That
Te did thus express himself, is an historical fact;
for it was made the ground of His condemnation, and
afterwards formed the universal faith, the firmest hope,
of the early Christians. But what an unparalleled
saying is this! In the mouth of any other man, it
would have been madness. Even the insane arrogance
of the Roman emperors, who required divine honours
to be paid to their statues, never reached so inconceiy-
able an extreme. And in this case, such words are
spoken by the very meekest of all men; spoken with
the greatest calmness, not in a moment of excitement,
which might perhaps render Him incapable of correctly
calculating their effect, but repeatedly, for the instruc-
tion of His disciples, for the warning of His enemies,
in all tranquillity and repose, and at a moment when
He was indeed externally submitting to violence, but
internally triumphing over his foes
was rising superior
to all the baseness and wickedness of men by the eleva-
tion of His moral nature, and celebrating His greatest
moral triumph ;—it is at such a moment that He desig-
nates himself the divine Ruler and J udge of the world.
Such an assertion must be truth; for in this case
there is no middle ground between truth and madness.
No rationalistic ideal of virtue can avail us here: to call
Jesus the mere prototype and prefigurement of man-
kind, will not suffice to justify such language: we are
constrained to quit the limits of humanity, and to look
T
290 The Son of God.
for the root of His being, the home of His nature and
life, in God himself, to explain the possibility of such
a saying, which would be but an unsolvable psycho-
logic enigma if Jesus were nothing more than man.
Such a saying would be an impossibility, if He were
under the same laws of finite existence as ourselves.
He must be removed by His very nature from the
region of merely finite existence, and must belong
to that of the divine and eternal life. The absolute
relation to the world, which He attributes to Himself,
demands an absolute relation to God. 'The latter is
the necessary postulate of the former, which can only
be really understood from this point of view. Only
because Jesus is to God what He is, can He be to
us what He says. He is the Son of man, the Lord
of the world, its judge, only because He is the Son of
God. |
It is thus that He ever designates himself. If he
would speak of that which is highest, deepest, most
mysterious and peculiar in his nature, He calls him-
self the Son of God. This is no notion or invention
of later times; it is the testimony of Jesus Himself.
It is His own statement, it can be denied by none.
The first Gospels contain it, as well as the fourth.
Even though the fourth goes more deeply into this
subject, and more opens up to us the secret and eter-
nal foundations of the being and nature of Jesus,
than the others; though the three first exhibit more
His relation to the world, while the fourth dwells
more upon His relation to God, which forms the
His absolute Communion with God. 291
hidden background and postulate of His relation to
the world, the former contain the statement itself,
as well as the latter, and express it characteristic-
ally in the most unambiguous manner. ¢ All things
are delivered unto me of my Father,: and no man
knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth
any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomso-
ever the Son will reveal him,’ are words found in St
Matthew’s Gospel (chap. xi. PE) He stands in a
relation to the Father altogether unparalleled. As the
nature of the Father is hidden from the world, so also
is that of the Son; but as the Son is known to the
Father, so is the Father to the Son. There is the
most intimate understanding between the two, while
both stand in the obscurity of divine mystery with
respect to the world,—a mystery undisclosed till Christ
quitted His divine concealment, and appeared-in the
world of men. He severs himself from men, and in-
cludes himself in the Godhead as one who is more really
and more strictly a component part of Divinity than He
is even of humanity, to which, nevertheless, He appears
so closely to appertain. This subject also forms the
ever-recurring theme of the fourth Gospel. Jesus
calls himself the Son of God in an absolute sense,
and not in the sense in which men, for instance, may
be called sons of God—by virtue of creation, or of
moral likeness to Him. In the case of Jesus, this title
denotes a relation of essence and nature. By it He
makes a distinction between himself and man, which
is one, not of degree, but of nature. God is indeed
292 The Son of God.
our Father as well as His, but in an utterly different
sense. He bids us say, Our Father; He never calls
God so himself: His relation to God is unique. His
fellowship with God is absolute (John x, 33, 38); His
presence, the vision of Him, is actually that of the
Father (chap. xiv. 9 ff. and xvii.) ; He has divine life
in Himself (v. 26), and will therefore be honoured
even as the Father (v. 23); in short, he includes
Himself in the Godhead, and thus appears before the
world and the whole human race as One forming a
component part of divinity. But how could a human
being stand so related to God, that the strictest fellow-
ship should exist between the two without any inter-
posing limit, neither that of sin nor of creaturehood,
unless He formed an essential, and therefore eternal,
part of the divine nature? And thus these considera-
tions force us of necessity to demand His eternal
existence,—a fact which Jesus in the fourth Gospel
so frequently affirms, when He says of himself that
He came forth from the Father, and is come into the
world; when he surpasses even what His Jewish
opponents urged as an objection, by that remarkable
saying, ‘ Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham
was, I am’ (John viii. 58); and when He designates
this his pre-temporal existence as one in which He
participated in the divine love and glory (xvii. 5, 24).
Thus does He make himself a sharer of the very
nature and existence of God; and in such a sense it
is that He calls himself the Son of God. That such
tenets have, at least as far as their principal matter
LTis absolute Communion with God. 293
is concerned, been actually transmitted through the
Gospels, must be acknowledged by even the most
critical. Even Renan cannot help admitting that
Jesus did, though not till the latter period of his life,
call himself the Son of God in a superhuman sense,
and make faith in this declaration the first command-
ment of His kingdom. He, indeed, regards it only as
the fruit of a pernicious enthusiasm, and as a fanatical
delusion of Jesus, which He expiated, as it were, by His
death. Were such indeed the case, we should say that
Jesus deserved death, that the Jewish authorities justly
condemned Him as a blasphemer, and that He died
for His own sins, and not for ours. But who that has
not yet lost every impression of the moral purity and
sublimity of His character, and of the tranquil glory
of His spirit, could possibly entertain such a thought?
Who would venture to degrade Jesus to such sad
depths of moral and mental error? Let us rather
suffer ourselves to be raised by Him to those heights
on which He stands, than first degrade Him to our
level, and then associate Him with men of such de-
luded minds and perverted characters, as we regard
either with compassion or contempt. No; as far as
we are concerned, the decisive question is, Did Jesus
really call himself the Son of God in this superhuman
sense? If so, such an assertion could not but be truth.
We are told that when Napoleon, at St Helena, was
one day conversing, as his custom was, about the great
men of antiquity, and comparing himself with them,
he suddenly turned to one of his suite with the
294 The Son of God.
inquiry, Can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?
And when the latter confessed that he had not yet
taken time to consider, he continued: Well, then, I
will tell you. And then he compared Christ with
himself, and with the heroes of antiquity, and showed
how Jesus far surpassed them, concluding with the
words, ‘I think I understand somewhat of human
nature; and I tell you all these were men, and I am
a man; but not one is like Him: Jesus Christ was
more than man.’ (29)
And so He must be. If He is indeed, as He says,
Lord of the world, He can only be so by being, as He
teaches us, a component of the Godhead. The his-
torical Christ and His teaching are facts. These facts
can be, and are, authenticated; but they will remain
an unsolvable enigma until we suffer them to receive .
the solution afforded them by His own testimony to
His divine Sonship. If He is the Son of God in this
sense, then all is clear, and all else that we are told of
Him necessary. But if this is not the case, then we
are absolutely ignorant what to make of Him. And
of what value is all the other knowledge we may ac-.
quire, all our knowledge of the human mind and its
history, of human nature and its destiny, if we are
obliged to leave the greatest fact of human history—a
fact asserting itself to be one which can solve every
enigma, and render our whole life a blessing—utterly
unaccounted for? And even if we are willing thus to
leave it, we are unable to do so; we everywhere en-
counter it. We must assume some position with respect
His absolute Communion with God. 295
to it. No other position, however, which is not an
absolutely self-contradicting one, is possible, than’ to
allow the validity of Christ’s claim to be, according to
His own testimony, the eternal Son of God, and Him-
self of divine nature.
Such is the involuntary impression made by His
entire history. It was the confession of overwhelming
emotion, when Thomas, overpowered by the appearance
of the risen Saviour, exclaimed, My Lord, and my God!
But this confession of emotion becomes also the con-
fession of the conviction to which the exercise of our
reason at last, of necessity conducts us.
Jesus left two institutions. He did not appear on
earth to appoint external ordinances of religious life.
It was in the mind and heart, in the inmost soul,
that He desired to lay the foundations of that
edifice which was to endure when heaven and earth
should pass away. Yet He did institute and be-
queath to us two ordinances—those two transactions
which form the culminating point of Christian and
ecclesiastical life—the two transactions which, to dis-
tinguish them from all others, we call sacraments:
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Their institution by
Christ Himself is beyond all question. Each is myste-
rious in its own nature, and each announces a mystery.
In the words in which He instituted the rite of bap-
tism, Jesus inserts His own name between those of the
Father and the Holy Ghost; thus inserting it within
the boundaries of the divine life and nature, and saying
of Himself that He is the Son of God in the sense
296 Conclusion.
of being a participant in the divine essence. In the
words in which He instituted the Holy Supper, saying
of His body and blood that He gave them for the sin
of the world, He declares the ultimate object of His
appearance upon earth, in which the eternal counsel of
God’s love is manifested and fulfilled. Baptism teaches
us Who it was that appeared on earth in the person of
Jesus Christ; the Lord’s Supper teaches us for what
purpose He appeared. That is, the two mysteries of
the Trinity and the Atonement are actually announced
and taught to us in these two institutions of Christ.
These are the two central truths of Christianity. But
with them we enter into its inner sanctuary; and it
was only to the threshold of that holy of holies that
I designed to lead you, by bringing before you the
fundamental truths of Christianity, and seeking to jus-
tify their truth and necessity.
My task is ended. The road over which we have
travelled together began with the anomalies of exist-
ence, the enigmas of human life, the problems of
human nature. We saw that the enigma of existence
demanded God, the personal God. But God is not a
dead power, but living love; and His love not suffer-
ing Him to remain locked up in mystery, He revealed
himself to man. The object, however, of His revela-
tion is Jesus Christ. In Him it was that God mani-
fested Himself ; in Him the anomalies of our existence
are revealed. Let us, then, not shrink from confess-
ing that we do bear anomalies within us. They are
Conclusion. 297
the thorns which will not suffer us to rest. We can
find no rest till we find Christ; in Him contrasts are
reconciled. It is He who reconciles the contrasts, God
and man, holiness and sin, heaven and earth. He is
the absolute atonement. If we could penetrate all space,
we should but find the God of power; if we could
survey all time, we should but see the God of right-
eousness. We can know the God of grace only in
Christ Jesus. But the God of grace alone can recon-
cile the contrasts of creation and of our hearts. In
Christ Jesus, Christians have in all ages found their
peace and joy. ‘The collective life of the whole
Church is a confession of Christ. All its deeds, its
whole worship, its preaching, its prayers, its sacred
songs, its holy rites, are but a testimony to Him;
while all art, whether of language or pictorial repre-
sentation, which has from the first been ever made
use of by her, does but serve to glorify Him. And so
long as gratitude shall yet be found on earth, so long
will He be remembered, so long will His name dwell
in the hearts and hover on the lips of men. They who
would deprive mankind of Him, would tear out the
corner-stone of the noblest edifice of humanity. But
it is not merely the memory of a departed benefactor
which Christianity preserves; it is a relation to a living
one, a personal and vital relation. At His name all
hearts beat, all knees bow. And in all time will the
image of Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, exercise
its mysterious power over the minds of men, and the
Spirit which proceedeth from Him become a bond,
298 Conclusion.
uniting them in faith and love to himself, and thus a
bond of love uniting the whole human race. So long
as there are Christians in the world, and such there
will be to the end of time, they will recognise each
other by the salutation, Blessed be Jesus Christ!
With these words I conclude. I have sought, to
the best of my ability, to give an account of the firm.
foundations of our common faith. I have endeavoured
to show that we follow no cunningly devised fable, but
the truth, justified as such to our reason, our con-
science, our affections.
It only remains to commend to God’s blessing the
words which I have been permitted to deliver in your
hearing.
NOTES.
NOTES TO LECTURE I.
(1) Goethe’s Works, edition in 40 vols., 1840, vol. iv. p. 264.
(2) Fabri, Briefe gegen Materialismus, 1856. Motto.
(3) St Paul, in his speech before the Areopagus at Athens
(Acts xvii. 11-31), has given a sketch of the leading features of
this Christian view of the world, and entered more fully into the
same subject in the first eleven chapters of his Epistle to the
Romans.
(4) Compare K. von Raumer’s Geschichte der Pedagogik, second
edition, 1846, pp. 37-65, and Zeitschrift fiir Protestantismus und
Kirche, 1855, vol. xxx., Die Humanisten und das Evangelium ;
also Hundeshagen’s Der deutsche Protestantismus, 1847, p. 56,
and Gieseler’s Kirchengeschichte, u. 4, p. 408.—The saying of
Picus of Mirandola, Philosophia querit, theologia invenit, religio
possidet veritatem.—Poggius reproaches Philelbus with things qua
etiam prostituti et meretricarw verentur verbis proferre. Puerorum
atque adolescentum amores nefandos sectaris. Of his own facetiz
he says to Valla, Quid mirum facetias meas non placere homini
inhumano, vasto, stupido, agresti, dementi, barbaro, rusticano ?
Ac ab reliquis aliquanto quam tu doctioribus probantur, leguntur
et in ore et manibus habentur.
(5) Strauss deemed it seasonable, in 1862, to republish the
memoir of Hermann Samuel Reimarus, and his Schutzschrift fiir
die vernunftigen Verehrer Gottes.
300 Notes.
(6) Schiller thus expresses himself concerning and against
Kant in his treatise, Ueber Anmuth und Wiirde, which first ap-
peared in Die Neue Thalia, 1793: ‘He became the Draco of
his age, because it seemed to him as yet neither worthy nor
capable of receiving a Solon. From the sanctuary of pure
reason he brought forth the forgotten yet well-known moral
law, placed it in all its holiness before the degenerate age, and
little cared whether there were eyes able to bear it. But in what
had the children of the family offended, that he should only care
for the slaves?’ On this contrast in the moral principles of Kant
and Schiller, compare my Lehre vom Sreien Willen, 1863, pp.
347, etc.
(7) Goethe, Spriiche in Reimen, Werke, vol. iii. Dp.
(8), p. 22. Guizot, L’Eglise et la Sociéte Chrétiennes en 1861, p.
13: All the attacks which are in our days directed against Chris-
tianity, however different in their nature and intensity, have a
common starting-point and a common aim,—the denial of the
supernatural in the destinies of man and of the world, the aboli-
tion of the supernatural element in the Christian and every other
religion, as well in their history ag in their doctrines. Strauss,
in the dedication of his Leben Jesu, p. ix., says: ‘A view of the
world which, with the renunciation of all Supernatural sources of
assistance, leaves man to himself and to the natural order of
things.’
(9), p. 23. I will here exhibit in juxtaposition some of the con-
fessions of the advocates of the non-Christian view. Strauss,
indeed, formerly boasted of the real Christianity of his view of the
world (compare Zwei friedliche Bliitter, 1839, pp. 30, etc.: ‘We
consider our present view more Christian than the old Christian one
itself’); and his article on The Temporary and the Permanent in
Christianity concludes with the words: ‘ Let us have no fear that
we shall lose Christ, if we find ourselves obliged to expose much
which has hitherto been called Christianity! If, then, Christ
remains, and remains as the highest object we can _ possibly
imagine with respect to religion, as the Being without whose
presence in the mind perfect piety is impossible, surely there is
alia ii i i et a a
Notes. 301
left us in him that which is essential in Christianity’ (p. 182).
Subsequently, however, he placed himself in far more decided
opposition to historical Christianity. In his Lebens- und Charak-
terbild Méirklins, 1851, p. 125, he describes the naturalist Feuer-
bach as ‘the man who put the dot upon the i we had found,’ and
characterizes the breach with Christianity as the inevitable require-
ment of truthfulness, e.g. 124, 127, 130, etc. The preface also to
his Ulrich Hutten (1860) is full of bitterness, while the saying, p.
24, is not merely bitter, but blasphemous: ‘ We that are outside
(the Church) can declare that none of us has ever thought, or will
think, of denying to old Captain Schiller the fatherhood of his
son in favour of a higher being; nor of attributing to the medi-
cines which he, as doctor to the regiment, prescribed, the power
of raising the dead; nor of using the circumstance that even
to the present day there is still a mystery connected with the
poet’s grave, to favour the supposition that he was raised to the
heavenly regions in a living body.’ In his Leben Jesu, 1864, he
describes the modern view of the world, advocated by himself,
which leaves a man to himself (p. 9) ; and afterwards adds, p. 19,
‘He who would rid the Church of popes, must first rid religion
of miracles.’ The poetic confession of Prutz (Deutsches Museum,
1862, p. 687), ‘ Kreuz und Rosen,’ accords with the expressions
of this philosophico-theological representative of the ‘modern
view of the world : ’—
Nur mir kein Kreuz auf’s Grab gezetzt
Sei’s Holz, sei’s Eisen oder Stein !
Stets hat die Seele mir verletzt
Das Marterholz voll Blut und Pein ;
Dass eine Welt so gottbeseelt,
So voller Wonne um und um
Zu ihres Glaubens Symbolum
Sich einen Galgen hat erwihlt.
D’rum nicht das Kreuz mir auf das Haupt !
Pflauzt Rosen um mein Grab herum ;
Die Rose sei das Symbolum,
D’ran eine neue Menschheit glaubt.
The following translation may give some idea of these lines :—
302 Notes.
Place ye no cross upon my graye,
Of stone, of iron, or of wood ;
My soul has ever loathed that tree
Of martyrdom, of pain, and blood.
It ever pained me that a world,
Filled by a God with light and joy,
Should choose, as symbol of its faith,
The rack on which a slave must die.
Let then no cross my headstone be ;
But plant ye fragrant roses there :
Of a new manhood’s glorious faith,
Be roses now the symbol fair.
But the most uncompromising expression of these opinions—
as far as relates to their application to political life—appears in
J. B. v. Schweizer’s Zeitgeist und Christenthum (Leipsic: Otto
Wigand, 1861). The multiform and practical activity of the
author, at the head of a numerous party —an activity only
temporarily interrupted by an external occurrence — renders
his work doubly important; and the reckless consistency with
which the principles he advocates are applied makes it an actual
programme of the movement. Its fundamental idea is the irre-
concilability (of Christianity, as well as every positive religion,
with the advancing and victorious spirit of the age. The manner
in which this idea is carried out—so far, that is, as the contents
of his book touch upon our subject—is as follows :—How did this
religion originate ? and how is it maintained ? Through a three-
fold need (p. 15): a metaphysical one, which betakes itself to
an admission of a supernatural cause for an explanation of the
inexplicable ; a moral one, which demands an equalizing and
retributive justice for the solution of the enigma of moral evil ;
and a need of assistance, which, in the feeling of its impotence,
would willingly lean upon a strength beyond its own. But, in
this threefold respect, religion is the product of weakness—the
weakness both of the reason and the will. Hence it is chiefly
found among the weaker sex (pp. 313, etc.) ; for strength both of
reason and will is wanting in woman; and all women, from the -
queen to the maid-servant, are given to superstition (p. 3238).
Religious faith is as much a superstition as fortune-telling, ete.
Notes. 303
(pp. 316, etc.). Christianity is at present in a process of irresis-
tible dissolution. Science and education are ever more and more
replacing Christianity and all revealed religion (pp. 76, 84). More-
over, the spirit of the age cannot be reconciled with Christianity.
What is the principle of the spirit of the age? Cosmopolitan
democracy (p. 99). The antagonistic principle thereto is conser-
vatism.. Now, religion, Christianity, the Church, are eminently
conservative powers. Hence Christianity and the spirit of the
age confront each other, not as two opposite opinions or views,
but as two opposing principles (p. 105). These antagonisms are
irreconcilable ; no composition can avail. ‘When our business
is to seize the favourable opportunity of crushing the power by
which the good cause is systematically depressed, to make room
for the incorporation of the political principles of the age in its
external regulations, every obstacle must be levelled with un-
Sparing severity ; and its champions must advance with an iron
consistency, whether their way lies through the gay fields of
spring, or over ruins and corpses.’ When, then, the State is
such as modern culture would have it, what is to replace Chris-
tianity therein? A new religion is impossible. The same pro-
gress of education which has begun to extinguish Christianity, as
being a revealed religion, makes all revealed religion impossible
(p. 190). ‘The State of the future will be able to exist without
religion’ (p. 196). Consequently penal statutes, and not religion, |
are seen to be the true and real palladium of public security and
civil order (p. 225). Then will dawn an era of humanity and
toleration (p. 226). And it will be one special advantage, that
there will then be no theology and no theologians, and that the
intellectual powers thus placed at our disposal will then be
applied in an economico-national and productive manner (p. 267).
And how much wealth, too, will be saved, when there are no
more churches and clergymen, etc., to pay for! Whoever shall
still desire to have a religion, will be obliged to have it at his own
expense (p. 270). Such is the programme of the spirit of the age.
Thus utterly antagonistic are the confronting principles, though
their antagonism is not always so clearly perceived or expressed.
304 ) Notes.
NOTES TO LECTURE II.
(1) Strauss, Glaubenslehre, 1851.
(2) Blaise Pascal, the acute mathematician, the clever, witty
opponent of the Jesuits, and a brilliant author of the golden age
of French literature, has left in his Pensées fragmentary materials
for an apology for Christianity, which he regarded as the work
of his life. He declares that ten healthy years were needed for
such a work, while God had bestowed upon him only four sick
ones, He died 1662, at the age of 39. Amidst the anguish of
various acute disorders, which left him little rest either by night
or day, he not only solved that most difficult mathematical pro-
blem (on the cycloid), which none other was able to solve, but also
left behind him the materials which he had collected for this
great work. His death entailed upon posterity the duty of taking
up and continuing the work commenced by him. On Pascal,
compare Tholuck, Vermischte Schriften, 1839, Part i. pp. 244, ete. ;
Reuchlin, Pascal’s Leben und der Geist seiner Schriften, 1840;
Neander, Wissen Schaftl. Abhandlungen, published by Jacobi, 1851;
Meingarten, Pascal, als Apologet des Christenthum, 1863—Modern
editions of his Pensées, Paris, Didot, 1861; with the Pensées of
Nicole; and that of Prospere Faugére, 2 vols., Paris, 1844. I
quote from Faugére’s edition, but insert also the pages of Didot’s
in brackets. The passage cited is vol. ii. 84 (49). Compare
generally the whole section, Grandeur et misére de lhomme, ii.
79, etc. (44, etc.), from which most of the quotations which follow
from the Pensées are taken.
(3) Goethe, Gespriiche mit Eckermann, ii. 132. Compare also
Rousseau, Emile, i. iv. vol. ii. (auvres, Paris, 1820, vol. ix.) p.
17: Nous navous point la mésure de cette machine immense, nous
nen pouvons calculer les rapports ; nous n’en connaissons ni les
premieres lois, ni la cause finale, nous nous ignorons nous-mémes ;
nous ne connaissons ni notre nature, ni notre principe actif.
(4) Pascal, Pensées, ii. 90 (149), ii. 147 (178).
(5) Pascal, Pensées, ii. 88 (149); compare also p. 104 (180):
Notes, 305
Nous avons une idée de bonheur et ne pouvons y arriver; nous
sentons une image de la verité et ne possédons que le mensonge: in-
capables dignorer absolument et de savoir certainement, tant il est
manifeste que nous avons été dans un degré de perfection dont nous
sommes malheureusement déchus !
(6) Pasc. Pens. ii. 82 (48).
(7) It is the feeling of this contradiction which begets aspira-
tion, as Schiller expresses it in his poems ‘Schusucht’ and ‘ Der
Pilgrim :’—
‘Ah! the pathway is not given ;
Ah! the goal I cannot near:
Earth will never meet the Heaven,
Never can the There be Here !’*
And to name another poet: it can certainly be from no leaning
to orthodoxy, that, as Goethe says of Byron’s Cain, ‘a kind of
anticipation of the coming redeemer runs through the whole
piece.’ Compare note 11.
(8) Pascal, Pensées, i. 104 (180), on the anomaly of man’s
will, Compare also Rousseau, Emile, i. iv. p. 41: L’homme n'est
point un; je veux et je ne veux pas, je me sens a la fois esclave et
libre ; je vows le bien, je Vaime, et je fais le mal ; je suis actif quand
J ecoute la raison, passif quand mes passions m’entrainent ; et mon
pire tourment quand je succombe est de sentir que j’ai pu résister.
(9) Homer’s Iliad, xvii. 446.
(10) A copious collection of similar expressions is found in
Thudicum’s translation of the Tragedies of Sophocles, 1827, Pt. i.
p- 311, ete. Notes to Gdipus in Colonos; I will quote from the
work: ‘ A tone of gentle lamentation resounds throughout anti-
quity ; an inconsolable lamentation among the older poets, who
looked forward to no better future. ‘‘ Generations of men fall like
leaves (Jliad, vi. 146, xxi. 464); no creature is more miserable
* BULWER’S Translation.
U
306 Notes.
than they (xvii. 446) ; they are like a thing of nought (Gd. sex.
1166); ashadowy dream (Pindar, p. 136); like a dream (Aischylus,
Prom. 549); a vapour of smoke (Soph. Phil. 932, Antig. 1152) ;
but phantoms (Aj. 126); are passing away.” Pliny, who is gene-
rally so concise and terse, becomes eloquent when describing the
miseries of mankind’ (fist. Nat. vii. init.). The epigram of
Hisop (Anth. gr. x. 123) is especially striking: ‘How can we
escape thee, O life, without death? Thy torments are innumer-
able, and it is hard both to bear and to escape thee. Nature has
adorned thee with beauty : the expanse of ocean, the earth, the
stars, the bright orbs of the sun and moon; all else is pain and
fear ; and he who attains aught good is soon seized in retribution
by Nemesis.’ Plutarch gives a fine fragment (De Consol. i. p.
276) :
Come, O death, thou true physician for all our ills ;
Thou heaven, that shelterest man from the storm of want.
According to Pliny (vil. init.), ‘many have thought it the best
lot never to be born, or to have died very speedily.’ Alexis
(Athen. ti. 124, 6) cites as a saying of many wise men, ‘It is best.
never to have been born, or, if born, quickly to reach the goal.’
Even before Theognis, Bacchylides sang (Fr. iii.): ‘It would
have been better for us not to have been born, and never to
have seen the light of the sun.’ And Theognis himself (548, ed.
Welcker) : ‘It would have been better for an earthly being never
to have been born, and never to see the piercing ray of the sun ;
and for one who is born soon to pass through the gates of Hades,
and to lie deep under the earth.’
To these may be added the words of yeh (id. Col.
1225): ‘Happiest never to have been born! yet it is certainly
the next best thing for the living quickly to return to the place
whence he came.’
The saying of Pliny, above quoted, is taken from his Natural
History ; comp. the similar collection of Pliny’s sayings in Het-
tinger (Apologie des Christenthum, i. 1868, p. 52). He refers
also to a poem of Lenan’s, which may appropriately be inserted
here: it was written in his later years, just before his madness,
and is published among his poetic remains by Anast. Griin
(Stuttg. 1851), p. 198 :—
Notes. 307
’S ist eitel Nichts, wohin mein Aug’ ich hefte !
Das Leben ist ein vielbesagtes (miihevolles?) Wandern,
Kin wustes Jagen ist’s von dem zum andern,
Und unterwegs verlieren wir die Krafte.
Ja konnte man zum letzten Erdenziele
Noch als derselbe frische Bursche kommen,
Wie man den ersten Anlauf hat genommen,
So méchte man noch lachen zu dem Spiele.
Doch tragt uns eine Macht von Stund’ zu Stund’,
Wie’s Kriglein, das am Brunnenstein zersprang,
Und dessen Inhalt sickert auf den Grund
So weit es ging den ganzen Weg entlang.
Nun ist es leer; wer mag daraus noch trinken ?
Und zu den andern Scherben muss es sinken.
Which may be translated thus :—
Vain emptiness where’er my glances stray,
Life’s but a tedious journey towards no shore ;
A fruitless chase from this to that, nought more :
We lose our little strength upon the way.
If we might run our whole long race on earth,
And at the end possess the same strong heart
As when in ardent youth we made our start,
The sport might even furnish cause for mirth.
But man borne onwards is, from hour to hour,
Like a frail pitcher, brpken at the well;
Its water oozing out—while still a power
Supported it, still drop by drop it fell,
Empty at last—what is there left to drink ?
Among its fellow-potsherds let it sink.
To which I append the conclusion of a sonnet by Michael Angelo
given by Winckelmann in his Kunstgesch. Pt. ii. note 149 :
y]
Tu desti al tempo l’anima, ch’é diva,
E in questa spoglia si fragile, e stanca
La incarcerasti, e desti al suo destino.
Tu la nutri, e sostieni, e tu layviva:
Ogni ben senza te signor le manca :
La sua salute é sol poter divino.
308 Notes.
(Literally Translated.)
Thou gavest to time, the soul which is divine; didst imprison
it in this weary and fragile garment, and deliver it to its fate.
Thou dost nourish, sustain, and revive it: without Thee, O Lord,
it wants every good ; divine power is its only safety.
Among the works from which I have derived assistance in the
composition of these lectures, I would particularly mention the
above cited work of Hettinger, a Roman Catholic theologian in
Wurzburg. The similarity both of the plan of the book and of
general religious opinions, has necessarily created many points of
contact ; but it is to his copious reading especially that I have
been indebted for supplying the deficiency of my own. J can but
rejoice at this coincidence with a theologian of another church, in
a matter in which the advocacy of the general truth of Christi-
anity against non-Christian opinions is concerned.
Lasaulx— Ueber die Linosklage, Wurzb. 1842—begins with the
words: ‘It has often been remarked, that in the majority of
genuine national songs there is a prevalence of the melancholy,
the plaintive, the aspiring. Aspiration is an innate feeling in
man, inseparable from his inmost nature. Since the fall, his
aspirations have been mingled with a feeling of sadness for his
loss of innocence ; and these two radical feelings of the human
heart, aspiration and sadness, have ever pervaded all genuine
national poetry’ (p. 9). ‘So universal a lament over the loss and
ruin of the original beauty of life, must date from a time ante-
cedent to that of the history of individual nations; it can but be
the echo of a feeling which has possessed not this or that nation,
but the whole human race. This note of sadness is the key-note
of the earliest history, and runs in various forms through the
oldest national traditions.’ Compare also on this subject note 7,
Lecture Vii.
(11) Pase. Pens. ii. 9 (154).
(12) Pase. Pens. ii. 6 (151, ete.).
(13) Spriichein Prosa, WW. vol. iii. p. 325, and p. 181: ‘It is
much easier to recognise error than to discover truth : the former
ee
Notes. 309
lies on the surface ; the latter is buried in the depths, and it is not
every one who is capable of searching for it.’
(14) Pase. Pens. ii. 172 (291, 265). J. G. Fichte, Bestimmung
des Menschen, WW. ii. pp. 293, 294. Fichte, in this work, often
returns to this thought, e.g. p. 254: ‘If, then, the will be sted-
fastly and sincerely fixed upon what is good, the understanding
will of itself discover what is true. P. 256: ‘Our opinions are
founded upon our impulses ; and as are the inclinations of an in-
dividual, so are his convictions.’ Compare also Goethe. Spriiche
in Prosa, p. 238: ‘Everything depends upon the inclinations:
where these are, there the opinions come forth; and as they are,
so are the opinions.’
NOTES TO LECTURE III.
(1) Lichtenberg’s Miscellaneous Writings, collected from his
literary remains after his death, vol. i. p. 166. With the pre-
ceding compare Pascal on the necessity of the knowledge of God,
xi, 20: Il est sans doute qwil n’y a point de bien sans la connais-
sance de Dieu; qu’a mesure qu’on en approche on est heureux et
que le dernier bonheur est de le connaitre avec certitude ; qu’a
mesure qu’on s’en éloigne on est malheureux, et que le dernier mal-
heur serait la certitude du contraire.
(2) Lichtenberg, i. 47; Epiktet. Dissert. i. c. 16: Opp. ed.
Schweighaeuser, i. p. 91.
(3) Cicero, De legibus, i. 8 (24): Ex tot generibus nullum est
animal preter hominem quod habeat notitiam aliquam dei, ipsis-
que in hominibus nulla gens est, neque tam immansueta, neque tam
Sera, que non, etiam si ignoret qualem habere deum deceat, tamen
habendum sciat. Artemidorus, ’Ovespoxpitixayv, i. c. 8: ‘There is
no people without a god, none without a supreme governor ; but
some honour the gods in one manner, some in another.’ Compare
on this subject, Fabricit Bibliographia Antiquaria, ed. 3, 1760,
pp. 3803 sqq., where a larger collection of the opinions of ancient
310 Notes.
writers, proving the universality of a belief in God, is adduced ;
Liiken, Die Traditionen des Menschengeschlechts, Munster, 1856,
pp. 15, etc. This work, the fruit of fifteen years of industry,
seems less known and appreciated than it deserves.
(4) Cicero, De natura deorum, i. 17: Intelligi necesse est esse
deos, quoniam insitas eorum vel potius innatas cognitiones habemus.
De quo autem omnium natura consentit, id verum esse necesse est.
(5) Fechner, Die drei Motive und Griinde des Glaubens, Leipzig,
1863, pp. 62-70: ‘The great fable of God and a hereafter could
not have diffused itself so widely, nor have maintained its power,
if it had been indeed a fable. Error and truth have this in com-
mon, that they are both capable of transmission; but there is
this difference: transmission takes place, in the case of truth, to
an indefinite extent, while error can only be transmitted within
definite limits. or belief in what is true is ever being accom-
panied in its course by that which is stable and serviceable,
while belief in what is false is ever being opposed by that
which is stable ; and this element of stability, increasing with the
propagation and duration of belief, at length necessarily attains
the supremacy to the advantage of truth. The more widely faith
is diffused, and the longer it endures, the more occasion will it
offer and find of developing and approving its agreement with,
or opposition to, the nature of man and of things in general. A
faith whose matter does not grow out of the nature of things and
the real necessities of man, cannot be of long duration. The
longer it lasts, the more widely it spreads, the more its antagonism
to the nature of things and of men is developed, and its perni-
cious results accumulated and diffused, the nearer does it approach
its crisis; and thus have we seen one fable fall after another,
while truths have but become more firm and stedfast, and have
ever deepened and strengthened their foundations. We may con-
sequently draw a conclusion concerning the truth and beneficial
influence of any faith, without being obliged to investigate either
its internal evidences or external results, since its very existence
proves what are its effects. Since, then, faith in the existence of
God is most widely spread among all the nations of the world;
since this has endured since the earliest times, and maintained
Notes. 3h4
itself during the course of ages, appearing indigenous not only
among all nations capable of civilisation, but even among those
whose capability of civilisation might be doubted; since its deve-
lopment is found rather to increase than to decrease in proportion
as the civilisation and progress of mankind advance; since, ac-
cording to its nature, it is raised above the strife of conflicting
views, is already the most universal point of union among man-
kind, and exhibits powers of becoming increasingly so; since,
moreover, it is ever manifesting its power by the most potent and
enduring effects; and since, finally, the individual cases of unbelief
appear only exceptionally, and among individuals and nations of
low degrees of cultivation or of partial tendencies, the historic
argument, considered from whatever point of view, is entirely in
favour of a belief in God; nay, the whole realm of existence
would be maintaining that which was in opposition to its own
nature, by bringing this faith into such universal prominence, so
powerfully maintaining and so constantly developing it, unless its
reasons were overwhelming and universally valid.’
(6) Compare also Marcus Antoninus, xii. 28: ‘To him who
asks thee when thou hast seen gods, or how their existence was
disclosed to thee, that thou shouldest honour them so highly,
answer: In the first place, they are evident even to the sight
(namely, by their effects); in the next, I have never seen my
own soul, and yet I respect it.” Compare Jacobi, Von den gétt-
lichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung, 2d edition, 1822, p. 11.
(7) Pasc. Pens. i. 155, 156 (80, 31); Lichtenberg, 1. 88;
Jacobi, p. 9.
(8) Matthias Claudius, Werke, 7th edition, 1844, vol. 1. p. 10.
(9) Jacobi, p. 7.
(10) Jacobi, p. 189. Pasc. Pens. ii. 118, etc. (248): Drew est
un dieu caché.
(11) Pasc. Pens. i. 9, 8, 58; ii. 113, 114, 118, and elsewhere
(242-246).
312 Notes.
(12) Guizot, L’eglise et la Société Chrétiennes, p. 14. Compare
also Napoleon, Mémorial de Sainte-Heléne par Las Casas, vol. iv.
p- 160: Tout proclame Vexistence dun dieu, c'est indubitable. P.
162: Dire dou je viens, ce que je suis, ou je vais, est au dessus de
mes idées, et pourtant tout cela est. Je suis la montre qui existe et
ne se connait pas. Vol. v. p. 324.
(13) Compare Kahnis, Die Lutherische Dogmatik, i. 1861, pp.
157-161, where further notices of the history of this proof are
brought forward.
(14) Compare the treatment of this proof in the above work,
161-168.
(15) Hettinger (Apologie des Christenthums, i. 129) cites the
followmg expressions of Midler and Agassiz:—‘The beautiful
harmony existing between all the parts of the universe,’ says the
former in his treatise on Comets, ‘affords unmistakeable traces
of a self-conscious and freely acting will. The comets are irre-
futable and plain tokens of a wise and almighty God ruling the
universe.” And Agassiz (On Fossil Fish, i. 171): ‘This world is
the manifestation of a mind as powerful as it is fertile, the proof
of a benevolence as infinite as it is wise, the most tangible evi-
dence of the existence of a personal God, the first creator of all
things, the regulator of the whole world, the communicator of all
good.’
(16) Compare Perty, Anthropologische Vortriige, 1863, p. 39:
‘Many have spoken of ideas which change in the course of time,
and with them the organisms which are their realization; but
ideas presuppose such a producing principle. Some who accept
no creative principle make the kosmos itself reasonable; reason-
able and alive, and yet unconscious!’ Rousseau, Emile, i. iv. vol.
li. pp. 36, etc. : Il ne dépend pas de moi de croire que la matitre
passive et morte a pu produire des étres vivans et sentans, qwune
Jatalité aveugle a pu produire des étres intelligents, que ce qui ne
pense point a pu produire des étres qui pensent. Je crois done que
le monde est gouverné par une volonté puissante et sage; je le vois,
ou plutot je le sens et cela m’importe & savoir.
Notes. 313
(17) Compare a corresponding notice in Hettinger, p. 127, notes.
(18) Strauss, Glaubenslehre, i. 392.
(19) Compare other remarks on this subject in Kahnis, pp.
153, etc.
(20) Cicero, De legibus, ii. 4.
(21) So, e.g., frequently Strauss, Glaubenslehre, i. 399 | Leben
Miirklins, p. 155, and elsewhere.
(22) Pasc. Pens. ii. 814, 315 (219, 245).
(23) For further information on this matter, I refer especially
to the excellent work of Weissenborn, Vorlesungen tiber Panthe-
ismus und Theismus, Marburg, 1859.
(24) Jacobi, Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an Herrn
Moses Mendelssohn, Breslau, 1785; and Mendelssohn, Moses
Mendelssohn an die Freunde Lessing’s (a supplement to Jacobi’s
correspondence on the doctrines of Spinoza), Berlin, 1786. Engel
asserts that the publication of these letters was the immediate
cause of Mendelssohn’s death ; so much did he take it to heart,
that his friend Lessing should have withheld from him such a
secret as his pantheistic opinions, while he revealed it to Jacobi
in the conversation which took place at Wolfenbuttel. ‘ Yet
M. M. would perhaps have died even if the letters had not been
published,’ says Claudius. Compare generally Matth. Claudius,
v. 102-120.
(25) Schelling gives a poetical representation of his pantheistic
speculations in an interesting poem (of the year 1800), which we
here append (Sammtl. Werke, Div. I. vol. iv. p. 546) :—
Wiisst’ auch nicht wie mir vor der Welt konnt grausen
Da ich sie kenne von innen und aussen
Ist gar ein triig’ und zahmes Thier,
Das weder drauet dir noch mir.
ol4
Notes.
Muss sich unter Gesetze schmiegen,
Ruhig zu meinen Fiissen liegen.
Steckt zwar ein Riesengeist darinnen,
Ist aber versteinert mit allen Sinnen,
Kann nicht aus dem Panzer heraus,
Noch spreugen sein eisen Kerkerhaus,
Obgleich er oft die Fliigel regt,
Sich gewaltig dehnt und beweet.
In todten und lebendigen Dingen
Thut nach Bewusstsein miichtig ringen.
Daher der Dinge Qualitiit,
Weil er drinnen quallen und treiben that
Die Kraft wodurch Metalle sprossen,
Biiume in Friihling aufgeschossen,
Sucht wohl an allen Ecken und Enden
Sich ans Licht herauszuwenden,
Lisst sich die Miihe nicht verdriesgen
Thut jetzt in die Héhe schiessen,
Sein Glieder und Organ’ verlangern,
Jetzt wieder kiirzen und verengern,
Und hofft durch Drehen und durch Winden
Die rechte Form und Gestalt zu finden
Und kiimpfeud so mit Fuss’ und Hind’,
Gegen widrig Element,
Lernt er im Kleinen Raum gewinnen.
Darin er zuerst kommt zum Besinnen.
In einen Zwergen eingeschlossen,
Von schoner Gestalt und graden Sprossen
(Heisst in der Sprache Menschenkind)
Der Riesengeist sich selber find’t
Vom eisernen Schlaf, yom langen Traum
Erwacht, sich selber erkennet kaum,
Ueber sich selbst gar sehr verwundert ist,
Mit grossen Augen sich griisst und misst
Mocht’ alsbald wieder mit allen Sinnen
Tn die grosse Natur zerrinnen,
Ist aber einmal losgerissen,
Kaun nicht wieder zuriickfliessen,
Und steht zeitlebens eng’ und klein
v]
Notes. 315
In der eignen grossen Welt allein.
Furchtet wohl in bangen Traumen
Der Riese mocht’ sich ermannen und biumen
Und wie der alte Gott Satorn
Seine Kinder verschlingen im Zorn
Weiss nicht dass er es selber ist.
Seiner Abkunft ganz vergisst
Thut sich mit Gespenstern plagen,
Konnt’ also zu sich selber sagen :
‘Ich bin der Gott den sie im Busen hegt,
Der Geist der sich in allem bewegt ;
Vom ersten Ringen dunkler Krafte
Bis zum Erguss der ersten Lebenssifte,
Wo Kraft in Kraft, und Stoff in Stoff verquillt
Die erste Bliith’, die erste Knospe schwillt
Zum ersten Strahl von neugebornem Licht,
Das durch die Nacht wie zweite Schépfung bricht
Und aus den tausend Augen der Welt
Den Himmel so Tag wie Nacht erhellt,
Ist eine Kraft, ein Wechselspiel und Weben,
Ein Trieb und Drang nach immer hoherm Leben.’
( Translation.)
I know not why I should shudder at the world, since I know it
both within and without. It is a very lazy and tame animal,
which threatens neither you nor me. It must submit to law, and
lie quietly at my feet. Truly a giant spirit lies within it, but this
spirit and all its senses are petrified ; it cannot get out of its coat
of mail, nor burst its iron prison-house, though it often flutters
and mightily stretches and struggles, striving powerfully after
consciousness in things both animate and inanimate. Hence
arises the quality of things, because this spirit gives forth and
diffuses therein the force which causes metals to flow and trees to
burst forth in spring, and tries on all sides to get out towards
the light. It cares not for trouble, and now soars upwards,
lengthening its members and organs, then again shortening and
narrowing them, and hopes by turning and winding to find the
right form and shape. And thus, struggling hand and foot
against the opposing element, it learns to find in a small thing
316 Notes.
Space in which it first comes to its senses. And now the giant
spirit finds himself enclosed in a dwarf of beautiful form and
similar offspring (called in language a man). Wakened from his
iron sleep and long dream, he scarcely knows himself, and is much
astonished. He salutes and surveys himself with wondering eyes,
and would fain be again dissolved with all his senses into vast
nature. But when once he has burst forth from it, he cannot
flow back again into it. So he remains during life narrow and
small, alone in his own great world. Sometimes, indeed, in terri-
fied dreams he fears lest the giant should take courage and arise,
and, like the old god Saturn, devour his own offspring in his
anger. He knows not that it is but himself ; he quite forgets his
origin, and torments himself with phantoms, when he might say
to himself, ‘I am the god whom the world cherishes in its bosom,
the spirit which moves in all things. From the first effort of
occult forces to the diffusion of the first living sap in which force
wells forth (verquillt) into force, and matter into matter, and the
first flower, the first bud swells, to the first ray of new-born
light, breaking through the darkness like a second creation, and
enlightening the heavens day and night from the world’s thou-
sand eyes, there is but one force, one alternating agency, one
weaving, one impulse, one tendency towards ever higher life.’
(26) Compare Friedr. Schlegel, Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit
der Indier, 1808, pp. 127, 97, 98, 114; Jacobi, Von den gottlichen
Dingen, p. 154.
(27 and 28) Compare the poetic confession of the hopelessness
of Pantheism in Riickert’s beautiful poem, Die sterbende Blume.
Pantheism calls the demand for continuous personal existence
the assuming selfishness of the individual ; e.g. Strauss, Leben
Miérklins, p. 156.
(29) Compare what Stahl Says on this subject in his Funda-
menten einer christlichen Philosophie, p. 24.
(380) Compare the above work of Stahl, pp. 14, ete., on the
impossibility of the unconscious originating the conscious. Com-
pare also, e.g., Rousseau, Emile, iv. vol. ii. p. 36: Il ne dépend pas
ee eT eee
Notes. 317
de mot de croire—que ce qui ne pense point a pu produire des étres
qui pensent.
(31) Pascal, Pensées, ii. 198 (287), ii. 171 (292).
(32) Ludwig Feuerbach has written a poem of eighteen
pages long upon death (Reimverse auf den Tod), 1830, iii.
~ 19-108.
Hs zieht mich fort von diesem Leben.
Dass ich dem Nichts mich thw’ ergeben
Die alte Fabel lehret zwar,
Ich kime zu dem Engelschaar ;
Doch das ist Wahn der Theologen,
Die uns von jeher angelogen
Mein leidiges Derselbesein
Das modert in dem Todtenschrein
Es endet die Identitas
Der Tod ist nicht ein leerer Spass.
D’rum liebes Ich, ade! ade!
Auf ewig hin! o weh! o weh!
O liebe Seel’! 0 jammre nicht
Wenngleich das Ich zusammenbricht.
Ks zieht mich in das Nichts hinunter
Als neuen Lebens Feuerzunder ;
Zu euch, ihr lieben Kindelein
Die ihr statt unsrer treter ein
Und athmet eure Lebensluft
Aus unsrer kalten Todtengruft.
Ich muss im Nichts zu Grunde geh’n
Soll neues Ich aus mir entstehen, ete.
( Translation.)
I depart from this life to surrender myself to nothingness. The
old fable indeed teaches that I should come among the angelic
host; but this is only a delusion of theologians, who have ever
318 Notes.
deceived us. My troublesome self will rot in its coffin; identity
will be at an end, for death is not a mere joke. . . . Therefore,
beloved ego, adieu, adieu for ever. Alas, alas! weep not, dear
soul, though the ego is shattered to pieces. . . . I go down into
nothingness, to become the fuel of fresh life. . . . To you, beloved
posterity, who will take our places, and draw the breath of life
from our cold graves. . . . I must come to utter nothingness if
a new ego is to arise from me, etc.
These verses are preceded by a series of articlés on death, in
which death is glorified, as e.g., p. 20: ‘ Temporal sensuous death
presupposes a non-temporal supersensuous death. This eternal
supersensuous death is—God.’
NOTES TO LECTURE IV.
(1) The same view is expressed in O. L. Erdmann’s lecture on
the relation of scientific investigation to religious faith, in the
official account of the thirty-fourth meeting of German men of
science and physicians at Carlsruhe, Sept. 1858: Karls. 1859,
p. 19. We append a few extracts by way of specimens. P. 20:
‘There is a boundary which natural science, from its very nature,
cannot, and must not, pass; I mean that boundary beyond which
the experience of the senses and the conclusions founded thereon
are impossible.’ P. 21: ‘Experience, upon which all natural science
is founded, knows nothing of a beginning from nothing, nor of an
ending in nothing. But is such a beginning and ending therefore
impossible ? 7.e. is such a view contrary to reason, and to the laws
of thought? Certainly not! It is true that we can form no
conception of the nothing that must have been before creation ;
we cannot understand it. Is, then, that alone possible which we
are able to conceive and understand?’ ‘The question concerning
the origin of matter, the question of creation properly so called,
will never be solved to man’s mind. It is not a matter of science.
Matter is to us a postulate.’ P. 22: ‘Science offers no answer to
the above questions (i.e. concerning the origin of matter, etc.) ;
they touch a boundary which human investigation can never pass.
tis here that science ends and religion begins; the latter alone
2 ee a
Notes. 319
answers these questions by teaching us faith in God, the almighty
Creator of heaven and earth.’ Compare also A. v. Humboldt:
‘Cosmogony assumes the pre-existence of all the matter now
diffused throughout the universe, and only occupies itself with
the various conditions which this matter passed through, till it
received its present form and composition. All that lies beyond
this circle belongs to the province of philosophy.’ In the article,
Die Entbindung des Wérmestoffs, etc., in Moll’s Jahrbuch der
Berg- und Hiitten Kunde, vol. iii. p. 6. Tholuck’s Miscellaneous
Works, vol. ii. p. 155.
(2) Compare Erdmann, p. 21: ‘ What first caused that motion
to take place in supposed eternally existent matter, which has
resulted in the present state of things?’ ‘How did vegetable,
animal, and finally human life awaken upon earth?’ Hettinger,
p- 174, cites from Virchow (Ges. Abh. 1856) the passage: ‘No
more than a cannon-ball can set itself in motion by its own
inherent power, or than the force with which it strikes against
other bodies can be the simple result of its material properties ;
no more than the heavenly bodies can be self-moving, or their
motive power be derived from their form and composition, can
the phenomena of life be entirely explained by the properties of
the matter of which the individual parts are composed.’ Also
Cornelius, Ueber die Bildung der Materie, 1856, vii. 16, 18, 19:
‘How it happens that one atom should operate upon another
through vacant space, is simply incomprehensible.’ Compare
Wilmarshof, Das Jenseits, Part i. 1863, p. 23.
(3) Compare Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, ii. 26:
‘We shall in vain endeavour to escape the consequences of this
reasoning, by seeking a cause for the variety of forms in the
variety of operative forces. For what made the operations of
these forces so diverse that they should produce forces so various,
all founded upon different yet harmonious ideas?’ Compare
also Fechner, Die drei Motive, etc., p. 117: ‘I read once how the
larva of the stag beetle, when about to enter its pupa state, con-
structs for itself a far larger dwelling than its enfolded body can
fill, so that its future horns may find room enough. What does
the larva know of its future horns?’
320 Notes.
(4) Strauss, i. 683; to which A. v. Humboldt, in his letters to
Varnhagen (p. 117), replies: ‘ What displeases me in Strauss, is
that scientific levity which makes him find no difficulty in deriy-
ing the organic from the inorganic, nay, in forming man from the
primeval slime of the land of Chaldea.’
(5) Erdmann, p. 19: ‘It is now again asserted that the origin
of organic nature in general may be explained by the operation
of physical and chemical forces. There is no need of the eternal
wisdom of a Creator; natural necessity is everything. In fact,
even reason has its fanaticism; and while seeking to annihilate
one superstition, it may chance to create another ; while exorcising
phantoms, it may happen to honour an empty word as a living
creative power.’ Perty, Anthrop. Vortr. p. 22: ‘Chemistry can
transform organfc substances into each other; in time it may
perhaps compound organic substances from their elements, but it
is more than doubtful whether it will ever be able to bring forth
animate cells, which, according to all past experience, originate
only from cells, or a collection of cells, z.e. an organism. Hven in
nature, organic matter seems to proceed solely from organisms.’
Compare also Schleiden, Das Alter des Menschengeschlechts, etc.,
1863, p. 28: ‘The former experiments of Ehrenberg, Schwann,
Schulze, and others, confirmed in our own days by the extensive
investigations of Pasteur, have proved that a so-called generatio
originaria or exguivoca, i.e. a formation of specifically distinct
germs from formless matter, without the co-operation of given
organisms, does not occur in nature. On the other hand, the old
saying of Harvey (?), ‘‘ Everything that lives proceeds from an
egg,” has been completely corroborated, and is but expressed with
greater physiological definiteness in the words, ‘‘ Everything which
has life (viz. plants and animals) proceeds from a cell.” It is
only for the first formation of an organism that it was felt neces-
sary to embrace the view of a spontaneous cell-formation or
primitive generation,—a view, however, which at the same time
extinguishes the conditions of its existence. But this view,
though often met with, is purely imaginative. Exact natural
science will rather confess not only her ignorance, but her
impotence, to explain the origin of the first living organism
from any of the natural forces with which she is acquainted.
Notes. 321
With organic life, an entirely new principle was introduced into
nature.
(6) Compare Hettinger, p. 191.
(7) The epitaph of Copernicus is as follows :-—
Non parem Pauli gratiam requiro,
Veniam Petri neque posco, sed quam
In crucis ligno dederas latroni,
Sedulus oro.’
Kepler concludes his work, On the Harmony of Worlds, with the
words, ‘I thank Thee, my Creator and Lord, that Thou hast
given me this joy in Thy creation, this delight in the works of
Thy hands. I have shown the excellency of Thy works unto
men, so far as my finite mind was able to comprehend Thine
infinity. If I have said aught unworthy of Thee, or aught in
which I may have sought my own glory, graciously forgive it.’
And it is said of Newton, that, like Klopstock, he never named
the name of God without uncovering his head. On Kepler, com-
pare his life by Breitschwert (1831), and the notice of it in
Tholuck’s Miscellaneous Works, vol. ii. pp. 884-402.
(8) Compare Chalmers’ Discourses on the Christian Revelation
(6th edition, 1817), and Tholuck’s Verm. Schriften, vol. i. 209.
(9) Compare Kurz, Bibel und Astronomie, 4th edition, 1858, p.
339; and Ebrard, Der Glaube an die heil. Schrift. und die Ergebnisse
der Naturforschung, 1861, pp. 6, ete.
(10) Compare Midler, Astron. Briefe, p. 219.
(11) Midler, Astron. Briefe, p. 236.
(12) Compare Ebrard, Der Glaube an die heil. Schrift. und die
Ergebnisse der Naturforschung, p. 164; also Kurz, pp. 224-232.
On the weight of the several planets, compare the tables in Pfaff’s
Schipfungsgeschichte, 1855, p. 245. Even a Ludwig Feuerbach,
when opposing the opinion that all the planets are inhabited
x
322 Notes.
worlds, reminds us, that ‘not everywhere, where sufficiency of
space is found, do we find also the conditions under which organic
life, especially in its higher forms, can exist.’
(18) Kurz, Bibel und Astronomie, p. 290.
(14) Compare Seit der Leipziger Schlacht in the Morgenblatt,
1864, Nos. 1-3,—an interesting article, though written from a
naturalistic point of view.
(15) Baumgiirtner (in Freiburg): a lecture on the importance
of the human race in the works of creation, given in the official
account of the meeting of thirty-four German natural philoso-
phers, etc., 1859, p. 15. With respect to the succession of the
several formations, Naumann, in his Lehrbuch der Geognosie, 2d
edition, 1862, vol. i. p. 44, divides the sedimentary formations
(i.e. those which arose from the gradual deposition of water, and
which contain fossil remains, in contradistinction to those of vol-
canic origin, and without such remains) into (1) Paleozoic or
primary, (2) Mesozoic or secondary, (3) Canozoic or tertiary and
quaternary, which latter contain extant forms. The primary,
again, are distinguished into (1) the Silurian or older transition
rocks; (2) the Devonian or later transition series (these names,
Silurian and Devonian, being derived from districts in Britain,
where they occur, viz. from Wales, the dwelling of the ancient
Silures, and Devonshire); (3) the Carboniferous series; (4) the
Permian formation, or Red Sandstone, and Zechstein. The secon-
dary formation is divided into (1) the Triassic, (2) the Jurassic,
(8) the Chalk formations. The tertiaries are divided into the
Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene. These are followed
by the quaternary formations of the Diluvial and Alluvial periods.
(16) Compare the above work of Naumann, pp. 556, 564; and
Ueber die Thierreste in Steinkohlenbildungen, pp. 573, ete.
(17) Lichtenberg, Geologische Phantasien im Géttinger Taschen-
buch fiir 1795, p. 79, from Tholuck’s Verm. Schrift. ii. 156.
(18) Compare, e.g., Perty’s Anthropologischen Vortriige, p. 40.
Notes. o2an
(19) Darwin, On the Origin of Species by means of Natural
Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle
Jor Life, 1859. The views here propounded goon found much
favour, but at the same time no less opposition, in Germany.
Thus, e.g., Perty finds in Darwin’s proposition, that man arose
from a single primordial cell by a process of natural generation
during about twenty million years, only ‘bold flights and arbi-
trary assertions.’ Compare also what, e.g., Heer says in his
speech at the centenary festival of the Scientific Society of
Zurich (Zwei Vortrige von Escher und Heer: Ziivich, 1847), on
the ‘not gradual ascent,’ but ‘retrograde’ formation of nature:
‘The thoughts of God, then, are incorporated in creation at one
time directly, at another indirectly, both which modes of incar-
nation of divine ideas are to us equally incomprehensible.’ To
add to these a philosopher who at the same time takes hig stand
on the platform of accurate scientific research, we may here cite
also Fechner, who in his article Die drei Motive, etc., pp. 237,
etc., pronounces against Darwin’s conclusions, ‘in which the
enormous mass of facts adduced do not furnish the slightest
proof,’ and ‘whose numerous inductions make a mountain, in a
certain sense, bring forth a mouse.’
(20) Compare on this subject, ¢.g., Perty, pp. 50 ff.
(21) Compare the excellent section in Pfaff’s Schipfungsge-
schichte, 1855, pp. 615, ete.
- (22) Compare Pfaff, pp. 504, 505. The annual quantity of
coals obtained in England is estimated at thirty-four million tons,
while the other countries of Europe, exclusive of Russia, yield
sixty millions annually. In North America, the Pittsburg strata
alone embrace, according to Naumann, i. 590, upwards of 690
square miles. According to Bischof, the plants which produced
the coals of the Saarbruck districts alone must have taken
1,001,477 years in growing. In this computation, however, no
account is taken of the strata, often 100 feet deep, between the
several coal seams (Pfaff, p. 506).
(23) Compare Anthrop. Vortrdge, p. 16.
324 Notes.
NOTES TO LECTURE V.
(1) So, e.g., Schleiden, Dre: Vortrdge fir gebildete Laten,
1863, vol. iii. Die Stellung des Menschen in der Natur, p. 48:
‘The calculable difference between a Goethe and an Australian
savage is far greater than that between the latter and a brute.’
P. 50: ‘With respect to the formation of the hand and foot,
men and apes (viz. gorillas) differ far less than one ape does
from another’ (the gorilla from the ourang-outang). ‘ This is
also the case with the teeth’ (p. 55). Even in the matter of
the brain ‘there is no essential difference,’ and ‘ the subordinate
differences which are perceptible are quite as, or even more,
decided between various human races and individuals’ (p. 56).
Even the religious instinct no more essentially distinguishes men
from animals, than its preparation of honey, etc., causes the bee
to cease from being one (p. 61). The power of self-consciousness
alone forms the impassable gulf. Oken thinks that man may be
called ‘the only grown-up animal.’ That mere materialists, such
as Buchner (Kraft und Stoff, 7th edition, 1862, p. 218), should
recognise no essential difference between men and brutes, is only
to be expected. Compare note 20.
(2) Waitz Gn his Anthropologie der Naturvélker, i. 281),
though ‘not opposed on principle to Darwin’s theory,’ since he
absolutely requires ‘a natural origin of mankind,’ nevertheless
acknowledges that ‘it must be candidly owned that all analogies
to the transformation of the ape into the man are nothing better
than utter failures of empirical science.’ Compare also Note 19
to Lecture IV. The difference between man and the animals has
been stated to consist in the fact that the former makes ingenious
tools, or cooks his food; or, as was said by the light-minded
Beaumarchais, Boire sans soif, et faire Vamour en tout temps, c'est
ce qui distingue Vhomme de la béte. |
(3) Waitz gives an exposition and description of Agassiz’
doctrine, p. 218, though even he is inclined to accept the view,
that ‘there were perhaps several localities in the torrid zone in
Notes. 325
which mankind first appeared, and whence they proceeded’ (p.
229); while the facts he adduces are nevertheless decidedly in
favour of the unity of the human race. Compare the quotations
next following.
(4) On the division of races in general, compare Waitz, p. 258 :
‘It is well known that the human race has been very variously
divided, and this because sharply marked differences do not exist.
Cuvier adopts three classes, Blumenbach five, Lesson six, Bory
fifteen, etc. Nor has there been less variation in the principle of
division than in the number of classes. Blumenbach founds his
division on the varying diameter of the skull. The Caucasian
race is distinguished by an oval form of skull, and by the slight
projection of the cheek and upper jaw-bones; the Ethiopic differs
on the one hand, by having a far greater breadth of skull in pro-
portion to the height, while the Mongolian exhibits a longer and
squarer form of skull.’ Compare Pfaff, Schépfungsgeschichte, p.
633. And A. Wagner (Geschichte der Urwelt, ii. 34) similarly
accepts as leading types, the oval form of countenance prevailing
among the Caucasian, the flat face of the Mongolian, and the
wedge-shaped face of the black races. Compare Perty, Anthropol.
Vortrdge, p. 66. The facial angle, which was first made the basis
of classification by Camper (1765), is formed by two lines, one
drawn from the forehead through the upper jaw, the other through
the ear and the base of the nostrils. This angle ranges on an
average from 80° to 90° among Europeans (?.e. the upper part of
the face is proportionately prominent), while among some Negro
tribes it amounts to 70°, and among apes reaches at most (accord-
ing to Poppig) 50°. Among the Bushmen, however, we occasion-
ally meet with an angle of almost 90°. (Compare Pfaff, p. 642.)
On which account Blumenbach makes the diameter of the skull,
instead of the facial angle, his basis of classification, while con-
vinced, at the same time, that this, far from furnishing proof
against the unity of the human race, is very corroborative of this
fact. Compare, in his Beitrdge zur Naturgeschichte, i. 156, ete. :
‘Words of Comfort in a general Family Concern.’ We cite the
beginning of this article: ‘There have been people who have
seriously protested against the classification, in the system of
nature, of their own worthy selves in one common species with
326 Notes.
the Negro or the Hottentot. And, again, there have been others
who have felt no objection in pronouncing themselves and the
ourang-outang to be creatures of one and the same species ; for
that famous philosopher and thorough humorist, Lord Monboddo,
says so in so many words: “It has been incontestably proved
to my judgment that the ourang-outang is of one and the same
species with ourselves.” On the other hand, another wag (but
not quite so thorough-paced a one), the world-famed philosophus
per ignem, Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus, not being able to
understand how all the sons of men could belong to one and the
same race, created two Adams (upon paper) for the solution of
his doubts. Now, it might somewhat contribute to the comfort
of many, in a matter of such general family interest, to name
three philosophers, of an entirely different order, who, much as
they may differ from each other in their other opinions, are per-
fectly agreed on this point, probably because this is a matter of
natural science; and they were, one and all, the most famous
natural philosophers whom the world has lately lost, viz. Haller,
Linneeus, and Buffon. All three considered man and the ourang-
outang to be as widely separated as heaven is from earth, and
esteemed all true men, Europeans, Negroes, etc., as mere varieties
of one and the same species.’ Compare Tholuck’s Verm. Schr.
i. 210.
(5) Compare further details in Pfaff, Schépfungsgesch. p. 618 ;
especially Waitz, Anthrop. etc., i. 195, etc.
(6) Perty, Anthrop. Vortrdge, p. 104.
(7) Waitz, 1. 230: ‘Man seems to resemble the domestic
animals in his capability of settling in various climates, with this
single difference, that he can bear such a transportation and
settlement just in proportion to the degree of civilisation he has
attained. As races of animals degenerate in strange climes, and
more and more approximate to the native races, even without
intermingling with them, so also does man, except in so far
as essential differences of food, modes of life, and civilisation,
between settlers and natives, prevent such a result.’ Many
investigators maintain that the Negro type has begun to approxi-
Notes. oat
mate to the white races in America. Perty, 104. Among
animals, the difference between animals of the same species ex-
tends even to the form of the bones, the number of the ribs, ete.
Compare Blumenbach, Beitr. zur Naturgeschichte, i. 24, etc. ;
Morgenblatt, 1833, pp. 204, etc., ‘ Geologische Grrillen ;’ Tholuck,
Verm. Schrif. ii. 219, ete. )
(8) Perty, pp. 70, 86.
(9) Perty, p. 78; also Waitz, i. 390.
(10) Perty, p. 85.
(11) Waitz, i. 226; Perty, p. 43.
(12) ‘Waitz, 1. 228.
(13) A copious collection of these common national traditions
will be found in the before cited work of Liiken, Die Traditionen
des Menschengeschlechts, 1856.
(14) Andr. Wagner, Streitschrift gegen Burmeister, p. 41.
(15) Waitz, 226.
(16) Compare the complaint of Achilles to Odysseus in the
lower regions, Odyss. xi. 488: ‘Speak not another word of com-
fort concerning death, O noble Ulysses! I would far rather till
the field as a day labourer, a needy man without inheritance or
property, than rule over the whole realm of the departed.’
It was customary at feasts and drinking parties to place a silver
skeleton on the table, and to pass it round with the words:
‘Woe to us poor creatures! What a cipher is man! Such shall
we all become, when once Areus carries us off. Let us then live
indeed, as long as life is bestowed upon us.’
Compare Lessing, Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet, Ausg. von
Lachmann, viii. 254. Petron. ed Mich. Hadr, (p. 115): Potantibus
ergo et accuratissimas nobis lauticias mirantibus larvam argenteam
attulit servus sic aptatam ut articuli ejus vertebreque laxate in
328 Notes.
omnem partem verterantur. Hane quum supermensam semel
iterumque abjecisset et catenatio mobilis aliquot figuras exprimeret
Trimaleio adjecit :
Heu, heu nos miseros quam totus homuncio nil est,
Sic erimus cuncti postguam nos auferet orcus,
Ergo vivamus dum licet esse bene.
(17) Compare Karl Vogt, Kéhlerglaube und Wissenschaft,—a
controversy with Rud. Wagner, 1855; and the contemporary
work of Louis Biichner, Kraft und Stoff, 1855. Both treatises
went through several editions in a remarkably short time (the
latter, seven before 1863). Also Moleschott’s Der Kreislauf’ des
Lebens, 1852; Lehre von der Nahrungsmitteln, 1850. On the
other side appeared Jul. Schaller’s Leib und Seele, 1855; Titt-
mann’s Ueber Leben und Stoff, 1856; Aug. Weber’s Die neueste
Vergétterung des Stoffs, 1856 ; Frohschammer’s Menschenseele und
Physiologie, a controversy with Karl Vogt, 1856; Fabri’s Briefe
gegen Materialismus, 1856, 1864; and Kritische Umschau in der
materialistischen Streitliteratur in der Evang. Kirchenzeitung, Juli
und Aug. 1856. Also Fichte’s Anthropologie, 1856, ete.; Rud.
Wagner’s Der Kampf um die Seele vom Standpunkt der Wissen-
schaft, 1857. Among the latest treatises we would mention with
special commendation Von Ruete’s Ueber die Existenz der Seele vom
Naturwissenschaftlichen Standpunkte, 1863, justifying in the way
of induction ‘the view of the independence of the soul,’ by show-
ing that, ‘in the perceptions of the senses, the spiritual principle
acts in a manner independent of purely sensuous impressions, and
to a certain degree wholly inexplicable by such impressions’ (p.
88). I commend to my readers the various interesting informa-
tion which this work contains.
(18) Even the Latin poet Lucretius, in his great poem De
Natura rerum, fully teaches this psychologic materialism, €.g. Il.
446, etc.: ‘We further remark also, that the soul is brought
forth at the same time as the body, grows with it, and becomes
old with it. When mighty time at length destroys the body, and
the members fail, their power having become exhausted, the mind
fails also. Thus the soul dissolves upon the whole being, and is
dispersed as smoke is dispersed in the higher air. As we see it
Notes. 329
brought forth at the same time with the body, so does it grow
with it, and is with it dried up by old age.’
Feuerbach thinks (Sammt. Werke, iii. 399) ‘that the reasoning
of Lucretius against immortality is still valid, and that nothing
better could be said against the copulation of a mortal and im-
mortal nature than he has said already.’ Ludwig Feuerbach is
the philosopher of modern materialism. Comp. Grundsdtze der
Philosophie der Zukunft, 1848, ii. 269: ‘The task of later days
was the realization and humanization of God; the conversion and
dissolution of theology into anthropology’ (sec. i. 52). Conse-
quently man is the sole and supreme subject of philosophy, and
anthropology, including physiology, the universal science (sec.
54). But this in the sense ‘that God himself is defined as a
material being (sec. 14), and man received in his sensuous reality.’
‘The body in its totality is my Ego, my very being.’ ‘ Modern
philosophy is a candid sensuous philosophy’ (sec. 36). Sensu-
ousness alone is truth and certainty (sec. 38). Then certainly
‘the contrast of body and soul is logically untenable’ (ii. 358).
‘ Sengsuousness is reality ;’ ‘sensuousness is perfection’ (ii. 366, 367).
‘He who ceases to be sensuous, ceases to exist’ (p. 368). These
thoughts are also repeated and carried out with greater detail in
his articles on Death, vol. iii, Moleschott, Physiologie des Stoff-
wechsels in Pflanzen und Thieren, 1851, says, p. 12, ‘A non-
sensuous being is nonsense.’ P. 14: ‘ Life can only be understood
as a change in matter.’ P, 22: ‘The pivot upon which modern
wisdom turns is the physiology of the changes of matter.’ For
other expressions, see text. Buchner (Kraft und Stoff, 1862)
designates Vogt’s comparison, ‘that the thoughts bear the
same relation to the brain as the bile does to the liver, or the
urine to the kidneys,’ a very ill-chosen one, yet thinks ‘ the
agency of the mind a function of the brain’ (p. 188). ‘ And now,
can it still be denied that the mind of man is a product of the
matter of the brain?’ (p. 148). At pp. 149, etc., it is asserted that
there are no innate ideas, but that everything, even the moral
sense, ‘is dependent on external circumstances.’ Consequently
(p. 179) ‘we can have no science, no idea of the absolute, i.e. of
that which leads us beyond the world which is about us, and is
the object of our senses.’ The same is said to hold good of the
notion of God (pp. 170, etc.) ; and this is proved, partly by an
330 Notes.
appeal to nations asserted to be without religion, partly upon the
authority of Feuerbach’s philosophy. Naturally, therefore, there
is no continuity of personal existence (p. 185) ; and consequently
the specific difference between man and the brute creation is
denied (pp. 217, etc.).
(19) Comp. O. L. Erdmann (Ueber das Verhiiltniss der Na-
turwissenschaftlichen Forschung, etc., p. 20): ‘ What we see or
feel, m short what our senses perceive, exists; we cannot but
believe it! But must, then, that which we do not see or feel, or,
in short, perceive by our senses, be therefore non-existent? The
question needs no answer.’ ‘If the nature of life and the action
of the reasoning mind cannot be explained by mechanical or
chemical laws, the view that we have here of effects produced
by other causes is, according to the general principles of science,
not only allowable, but strictly enjoined.’ ‘ That mechanical and
chemical causes exercise a most powerful influence upon the
manifestations of vital and mental agency, is a fact which no one
would venture to deny. But when from this fact it is inferred
that life and mind can have none but mechanical and chemical
causes, Such a conclusion could only be arrived at by means of a
logic which would also infer that, because I know of none but
mechanical and chemical effects, therefore none other exist.’
(20) Buchner. P. 217: ‘Man has no absolute superiority to
the brute, and his mental ascendancy is but a relative one. No
single mental capacity belongs to man alone,’—not then self-
consciousness and moral and religious convictions? The two
latter, indeed, Biichner generally denies. P. 218: ‘The mental
process which takes place in animals (namely, the reflection
accompanying their acts), is in its nature entirely identical with
that which takes place in man.’ P. 221: ‘ Finally, how far is the
Negro removed from the ape?’ P. 222: ‘ Burmeister describes
the Brazilian aborigines as animals in all their acts and instincts,
and utterly without the higher intellectual powers,’ ete. In
opposition to this degradation of man to a mere animal, comp.
Rousseau’s Emile, i. iv. p. 39: Quoi! je puis observer, connaitre
les etres et leurs rapports; je puis sentir ce que c'est qwordre,
beaute, vertu ; je puis contempler Vuniverse, m’élever & la main qui
——— SS eee
Notes. 331
le gouverne ; je puis aimer le bien, le faire ; et je me comparerais
aux betes! Ame abjecte, c’est ta triste philosophie qui te rend
semblable & elles: ou plutét tu veux en vain Cavilir ; ton génie
dépose contre tes principes, ton ceeur bienfaisant dément ta doctrine,
et Pabus méme de tes facultés prouve leur excellence en dépit de tor.
(21) This classification of soul or living principle into vegeta-
tive, sensitive, and reasoning, is an old one, both in theology and
philosophy. The notion is not that a man possesses various souls,
but that it is the same spiritual life by virtue of which a man
lives in a general sense, which enables him to receive sensuous
impressions, to think and to will. Compare also Hettinger, p.
985; and Delitasch, Bibl. Psychologie, 2d edition, 1859, p. 59.
(22) Compare Goethe (Spriiche in Prosa, vol. iii. p. 172):
‘Man would not be the most distinguished being upon the earth,
if he were not too distinguished for it.’
NOTES TO LECTURE VI.
(P. 180) Plutarch, Advers Calotem Epicureum, ¢. 31. Compare
Fabric. Bibliogr. Antiq. p. 804; Artemidori, Oveipoxpitinay, 1. 6:
‘There is no nation without a God, without a supreme ruler; but
some honour the gods in one way, some in another.’ Compare
also the fine passage in Guizot’s Deglise et la Société Chrétiennes
en 1861, p. 14: Dans tout les leux, sous tous les climats, & toutes
les Epoques de Uhistoire, & tous les degrés de la civilisation, Vhomme
porte en lui ce sentiment, j’aimerais mieux dire ce présentiment, que
le monde quil voit, Pordre an sein duquel il vit, les faits qui se
succedent régulierement et constamment autour de lui ne sont pas
tout; en vain il fait chaque jour, dans ce vaste ensemble, des décou-
vertes et des conquétes; en vain il observe et constate savamment les
lois permanentes qui y président ; sa pensée ne senferme point dans
cet univers livré & sa science; ce spectacle ne suffit point a son
ame; elle s’élance ailleurs ; elle cherche, elle entrevoit autre chose,
elle aspire pour Cunivers et pour elle-méme i d@autres destinés et a
un autre maitre :
Par dela tous ces cieua le diew des cieux réside
332 Notes.
a dit Voltaire, et ce dicu qui est par dela tous les cieux ce west
pas la nature personifiée, cest le surnaturel en personne. C’est
a lui que les religions sadressent, c'est pour mettre Vhomme en rap-
port avec lui qu’elles se fondent. Sans la foi instinctive des hommes
an surnaturel, sans leur élan spontané et invincible vers le surna-
turel, la religion ne serait pas.
(1) Joh. v. Miiller’s Werke, Cottasche, Ausg., Part 23, p. 5.
(2) The question concerning the psychologic nature of religion,
whether it is knowledge, will, or feeling, has been much dwelt
upon in theology. ~It was originally looked upon as an act, as a
definite kind of worship of God (cultus dei)—this was the case in
the ancient Church, till the times of the Protestant theologians,—
then as knowledge—till the days of rationalism and of the Hegelian
philosophy,—since Schleiermacher, as a certain state of feeling,
which is, however, always passing into knowledge. To describe
religion as faith, is a current expression with modern theologians.
Compare, e.g., Kahnis, Dogm. i. 181, 142, ete.
(3) Fichte, Sdmmtl. Werke, ii. 253, etc: ‘This organ (i.e. that
by which the highest reality is attained) is not knowledge; it is
faith—that voluntary repose in the view naturally offered to us,
because in this view alone can we fulfil our destiny. It is not
knowledge, but the determination of the will to allow to know-
ledge its legitimate exercise.’ Compare also his remarks upon
the free-will ageney of faith.
(4) Compare, on this whole section on prayer, the fine passage
in Guizot’s L’eglise, etc., p. 14.
(5) Compare Lasaulx, Ueber die Gebete der Griechen und
Romer, Wurzb. 1842, p. 5: ‘Prayer was combined not only
with religious hours, and the more important concerns, but with
almost every incident, of daily life.’ Pp. 9, etc. : ‘In the earliest
times it was the custom, more especially during the stillness of
the night, with uncovered heads, and under the open vault of
heaven, to invoke the gods, and to surrender the mind to the con-
templation of the infinite. The regular times of prayer were morn-
Notes. 333
ing and evening ; also the commencement and the close of meals.
Besides, it was not only religious transactions, combined with
sacrifice, but all the important incidents of life, which were begun
with prayer. The assemblies of the people and of the senate, all
military undertakings, contests of all kinds, wagers, even plays,
were all begun with Zeus, that is, with prayer. In Rome, it was
the custom, according to the directions of king Numa, to offer,
at the beginning of every year, certain prayers and sacrifices for
success during its course. The presiding magistrate opened all
the electoral comitia with a solemn carmen precationis; and
while the musterings of the people on the field of Mars, and
the sessions of the senate, began with similar ceremonies, the
consuls, as heads of the republic, were inaugurated with a solen-
nis votorum nuncupatio in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus,’ ete.
Lasaulx supports each of these assertions by passages from ancient
authors. The sayings of Plato cited in the text are found in
Plat. De legg. iv. p. 356, and Tim. pp. 22, 4, etc. Plato himself
acts in the same manner: Tim. pp. 57, 8; De legg. iv. pp. 347, 1,
x. pp. 193, 11; Epinomis, pp. 352, 10. Similarly does Demos-
thenes begin his discourse De corona by invoking the gods; and
Servius, ad En. xi. 301, affirms of the Romans, Majores nullam
orationem nisi invocatis numinibus, inchoabant, sicut sunt omnes
orationes Catonis et Gracchi (Lasaulx, p. 9). Even Julius Cesar
approached Jupiter Capitolinus step by step upon his knees, when
he offered up his thanksgivings after his fourfold triumph (Dio
Cassius, 43, 21; Lasaulx, p. 12). Of the various opinions on
prayer, I will only further cite those of the sophist Maximus of
Tyre (Diss. xi. p. 207): ‘Every one ought, like Socrates, whose
life was a continuous prayer, to beg for nothing from the gods
but virtue of soul, a quict mind, a blameless life, and a death
joyful through hope’ (Lasaulx, p. 8). Upon the desecration of
prayer, compare Dollinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, 1857,
p. 635.
(6) Vinet, Reden iiber religidse Gegensttinde, tibers. von Vogel,
Frankfurt, 1835, p. 345.
(7) Kant, Religion innerhalb der Griinzen der blossen Vernunft.
Stimmtl. WW., published by Rosenkranz, x. 236, note.
334 Notes.
(8) On the relations of Christianity and education, compare
Lubker’s Vortriige tiber Bildung und Christenthum, 1863; also
Harless’ Das Christenthum und die Literatur der Allgemeinen
Bildung. Zeitschr. fiir Kirche und Protestantismus, Nov. 1862,
reprinted in his work, Das Verhaltniss des Christenthums zu
Cultur- und Lebensfragen der Gegenwart, 1863. With regard to
national and social life, compare Montesquieu, L’esprit des lois,
xxiv. 3: ‘Wondrous phenomenon: the Christian religion, whose
sole object seems to be the happiness of a future life, establishes
the happiness of this present life.’ And he proceeds to carry out
this thought still further. Compare also Hettinger, pp. 21, 407;
also the Morgenblatt, 1863, 19. Is it asked whether the Chris-
tian religion is consistent with political economy? The first
despatch of the Transatlantic telegraph was as follows: ‘ Glory
to God in the highest, on earth peace, goodwill towards men!’
(9) Proudhon also begins his Systéme des contradictions écono-
miques, ou philosophie de la misére (1846, two vols.), with an
investigation of the idea of a God; and Guizot makes this thought
the foundation of his Discours sur Ul Histoire de la Révolution
d’ Angleterre (1850). Hettinger (p. 407) quotes, among others,
the remark of Edmund Burke: ‘ We know that religion is the
basis of civil society, and the fruitful source of all blessing and
comfort in human intercourse.’
(10) Guizot, L’eglise, etc., p. 167.
NOTES TO LECTURE VII.
(1) On the purer knowledge of God in ancient times, com-
pare Luiken, Die Traditionen, etc., p. 27, where corresponding
remarks from Creuzer, W. Schlegel, Movers, Grimm, and Gottfr.
Muller are cited. How the conviction of this fact was inherent
even in antiquity, is shown by Cicero, De legg. ii. 11: antiquitas
proxime accedit ad Deos (compare also Tusc. i. 12). With re-
gard to Plato, Hettinger refers, p. 422, to Philebus, p. 16 (of
fey WarLol xpeirroves nuay nol eyyurépa Osay oixovuTes TavTny
ee == Oe
> SE
Notes. 335
Qnuny waptdocav); Timeus, pp. 22-48. Lasaulx, Ueber die
theologische Grundlage aller philosophischen Systeme, p. 13; and
Ackermann, Das Christliche in Plato,* p. 52 (‘As often as he
brings forward any doctrine, he refers to ancient sacred tradi-
tions,’ etc.).
(2) The first Platonic passage is in the dialogue Alcibiades,
ii. p. 150, belonging to the Platonic school. Compare also Plato,
Politia, pp. 271-275 : ‘till One comes to instruct us thoroughly.’
The second passage is in Plato, Phzdo, p. 85. The third in
Cicero, Tusc. i.11: harum sententiarum que vera sit, deus viderit ;
que verisimilis, magna quexstio est. A similar one will be found
in De nat. deor. iii. 39. The fourth in Cic. Tusc. ti. 1, 2: igni-
culos nobis dedit parvulos, quos celeriter malis moribus opinionibus-
que depravati sic restinguimus, ut nusquam nature lumen appareat.
(3) Kant to Jacobi in Jacobi’s Werke, iii. 528.
(4) Schiller, ‘ Die Gunst des Augenblicks,’ and ‘ Das Gluck.’
‘From the clouds, from God’s breast,
Must our happiness fall.’
Ah! happy he upon whose birth each god
Looks down in love, whose earliest sleep the bright
Tdalia cradles, whose young lips the rod
Of eloquent Hermes kindles ; to whose eyes,
Scarce wakened yet, Apollo steals in light ;
While on imperial brows Jove sets the seal of might, etc.
Great is the man, I grant, whose strength of mind
Self-shapes its objects and subdues the Fates.
Virtue subdues the Fates, but cannot bind
The fickle happiness whose smile awaits
Those who scarce seek it; nor can courage earn
What the grace showers not from her own free urn!
From aught unworthy, the determined will
Can guard the watchful spirit ; there it ends,—
The all that’s glorious from the heaven descends. f
* The Christian Element in Plato, translated. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
+ Butwer’s translation of Schiller’s poems.
336 Notes.
(5) Plutarch, De recta ratione audiendi (Hettinger, p. 507) ;
Kant, Religion innerhalb der Greuzen der blossen Vernunft, 1793,
etc. In Kant’s Stimmtl. Werken, von Rosenkranz, 1838, Part x.
Even the title of the first treatise is as follows: ‘On the in-
dwelling of the evil together with the good principle, or on the
radical evil of human nature.’ Compare my work, Die Lehre vom
freien Willen, etc., 1863, pp. 847, 348.
(6) Vol. xxx. Winckelmann, Antikes. Heidnisches, pp. 10-18 :
‘If the modern, at almost every reflection, casts himself into the
infinite, to return at last, if he can, to a limited point; the
ancients feel themselves at once, and without further wander-
ing, at ease only within the limits of this beautiful world. Here
were they placed, to this were they called, here their activity
has found space, their passions, objects and nourishment.’ And
then he describes how the ‘heathen mind’ produced such a
‘condition of human existence, a condition intended by nature,’
that ‘both in the moment of supreme enjoyment and that of
deepest sacrifice, nay, of ruin, we recognise the indestructibly
healthy tone of their minds.’ Marklin in Strauss’ Leben Mérk-
lins, 1851, p. 127: ‘I would with all my heart be a heathen, for
here I find truth, nature, greatness.’ Strauss calls a Christian
an angel riding upon a tame animal, and praises the ‘ healthy
sensuality’ of Greek life in Schubart’s Leben, ii. 461. To which
Noth replies in Studien und Kritiken, 1850, 2. And even Goethe
admits, in the above cited work, p. 14, ‘that the relation to
women, which has become so refined and intellectual among us,
was scarcely raised above the limits of the most ordinary neces-
sity.’ On this ‘healthy sensuality’ in general, compare subse-
quent remarks in note 1 to Lecture VIII.
(7) Compare above, note 10, Lecture II., the collection of
Thudichum, in his translation of Gidipus, Col. v. 1191, ete. An
ancient oracle, said to have been given to Midas by Silenus, in
answer to the question what was the happiest lot for man, reads
as follows: ‘Oh, ye children of a day, begotten of the unhappy
God and of the evil Tyche, why do ye constrain me to say what
I had better conceal? It is more peaceful to hide life from its
own evil. Never to have been born is the happiest lot for man.’
Notes. 337
Aristot. ap. Plut. Cons. ad Apoll. c. 27. Compare this whole
work of Plutarch in general. Thus speaks also the Delphic oracle
in Cicero, Tusc. i. 47. And Pliny, H. n. vii., in xxviii. 2: ‘Qua-
propter hoc primum in remediis animé sui habeat, ex omnibus bonis
que homini natura tribuit, nullum melius esse tempestiva morte.’
Liiken, p. 802: ‘The old poets, in general, are full of these lamen-
tations; and Grecian mythology, much as it was apparently opposed .
to the Hastern religions, with their penances and mortifications, by
a certain outward appearance of cheerfulness, could not conceal its
internal stamp of a certain amount of tragic despair, arising from
the struggle of the human mind against adverse and inexorable
fate. We see the philosophers succumb at last to the universal
sadness.’ Lasaulx, Abhandlung iiber den Sinn der Gidipus-sage,
Wurzburg, 1841, pp. 10, etc. : ‘No nation felt more deeply than
the Greeks the unhappiness arising from the weakness and sin of
the natural man. An under-tone of lamentation runs through
the natural splendour and joy of Grecian life from its beginning
to its close. Its greatest poets and sages have repeatedly ex-
pressed the sentiment, that no mortal can be esteemed happy
before his death. In every mouth we find the same sad ery, “It
were better never to have been born ;” and its fellow, ‘‘ Or to
die as soon as possible.” Achilles, the ideal of Grecian life, was
cut off in the flower of life, at the commencement of its history ;
and Alexander, the Macedonian hero, fell in the prime of his
youth, at the close of its national existence (Hegel’s Philosophie
der Gesch. p. 232). The life of Gidipus, too, who may be re-
garded as a representative Greek, contains little else than the
fact of this secret unhappiness of Greek consciousness.’ Lasaulx
even interprets his name, of d/rovs (the two-footed, 7¢.e. man),
man of woe. ‘Since Greece, after all, attained only to a false
solution of the riddle of human life, it could not but perish.’
Lasaulx concludes his ingenious treatise (p. 13) with the words,
‘Except the legend of Achilles, I know no grander vision of
Greek mythology than the history of Cidipus.’ With respect to
Greek art, Thiersch expresses himself in the same sense, at least
concerning the superlatively beautiful statue of Leucothde in the
Glyptothek of Munich, in the Verhandlungen der Erlanger Philo-
logen Versammlung, p. 46: ‘A gentle touch of melancholy—a main
feature of the higher kind of beauty—is here unmistakeable,’ ete.
re
338 Notes.
I have elsewhere frequently met with this feature in ancient
works of art. Compare also Histor.-Polit. Blitter, 1864, vol. lit.
No. 9, p. 765, in an article on ‘Count Friedr. Leopold Stolberg,
according to his modern biographers, Dr Menge and W. von
Bippen.’ Amidst the various notices on this subject (viz. of Stol-
berg on ancient and modern works of art during his stay in Rome,
1791-92), the acute remark which he makes in this work on the
character of ancient, in comparison with Christian plastic art,
and subsequently confirms in his history of the religion of Jesus,
is particularly worthy of attention. He finds, namely, an expres-
sion of deep and serious melancholy stamped upon the heads of
all the antique statues, whether of gods or men,—a certain
character of severity and want of sympathy, which hovers, like
a dark cloud, suggestive of the notion of death, even upon the
features of divine and eternal youth. This judgment has been
almost unanimously confirmed by later esthetics and connois-
seurs, by Solger, Schnaase, Lasaulx. Hegel compares Niobe,
whose beauty was petrified by grief, with the Virgin, whose grief
was of an entirely different kind: the sword pierces through her
soul, and her heart is broken; but she does not turn into stone.
She not only possessed love, but her whole heart was love—the
free, concrete, genuine feeling (Innigkeit) which in the midst of
bereavement abides in the peace of love. Hegel, Asthetik., pub-
lished by V. Hotho, 2d edition, vol. iii. 46. Compare also vol. ii.
77, 101, 425, etc. On the Indians, see Fr. Schlegel, Ueber die
Sprache und Weisheit der Inder, p. 100: ‘If all that the old
poets have sung, in isolated passages, of the miseries of exist-
ence ; if all those sad rays of a truly terrible view of the world
which the notion of a blind fate has scattered amidst the legends
and histories of various nations in deeply significant tragedies,
were collected into one picture, and the transitory and poetic
fancy exchanged for real and lasting earnestness, the peculiarity
of the ancient Indian view would thus be best comprehended.’
Compare also Hettinger, p. 127.
(8) Seneca, De ira, iii. 26; compare ii. 9 and 27; De benef,, 1.
10. Compare Liken, pp. 403-405.
(9) Comp. Liiken, Die Traditionen des Menschengeschlechts, p. 74.
as Ue
GEE —eEE——e—
Notes. 339
(10) Very instructive, in this matter, is what we read of the
life of Perthes (Perthes Leben, i. 60, etc.), who himself passed
through the various phases of progress, from Kant to Schiller, and
thence to Christian truth.
(11) Compare Stahl, Fwndamente einer christlichen Philosophie,
Pp. 39.
(12) Rougemont, Christus und seine Zeugen Uebers. von Faba-
rius, 1859, 245.
(13) E. G. Strauss, Leben Jesu, preface xviii. : ‘The chief stum-
bling-block to our age in the old kind of religion, is this delusion
of miracles.’
(14) Rousseau, Lettres de la Montagne, p. i. lettre iti., Guvres,
Paris, 1820, p. 250: Cette question sérieusement traitée, serait
impie, si elle n’etait pas absurde: ce serait trop @honneur & celui
qui la resondrait negativement que de le punir; il suffirait de
Penfermer. Mais aussi quel homme a jamais nié que dieu pat faire
des miracles ?
(15) Guizot, L’eglise, ete., p. 14.
(16) Niebuhr, i. 470, etc. And immediately before : ‘ He whose
earthly life and sufferings were depicted, would have, in my
estimation, a perfectly real existence, and his entire history the
same reality, even though not one single particular had been
literally narrated. Hence, even the fundamental fact of miracles
must, according to my conviction, be conceded; or else the view
must be embraced, that the holiest of men was a deceiver, his
disciples either deluded or liars, and that deceivers could have
preached a holy religion, of which self-denial is the chief duty,’
etc. (Brief an B , 1812). On the miracles of Mohammed,
compare Tholuck, Verm. Schr. i. 27. The following specimen of
the fanciful nature of Mohammedan miracles, given by Tholuck
in this passage, may suffice: ‘In order to fulfil a test demanded
by his adversaries in Mecca, Mohammed caused it to become night
at mid-day: thereupon the moon hastened forwards, performed a
o40 Notes.
seven-fold circuit round the Kaaba, and bowed down before it ;
then did obeisance to the prophet, and cried aloud in presence of
all the inhabitants of Mecca, Peace be unto thee, O Achmet!
It afterwards went into the prophet’s right sleeve, and then came
out of his left ; and having severed itself into two halves, which
betook themselves, one to the east, the other to the west, and
finally reunited, it quietly continued its course ‘‘ without any one
perceiving any kind of derangement.”’ But all these narratives
belong to subsequent times, as Mohammed himself declared that
he was incapable of working miracles.
(17) A similar examination of testimony is found in Hettinger,
pp. 528, etc. Compare also Rougemont, Christus und seine Zeugen,
p- 126; Das Zeugniss der Apostel, pp. 145, etc.; also Auberlen,
Die gottliche Offenbarung, i. 7, etc.
(18) So especially Holsten, a follower of the so-called Tubingen
school, in his essay, Die Christusvision des Paulus und die Genesis
des paulinischen Evangelimus, Zeitschrift fiir wissenschaftliche
Theologie, 1861, iii. pp. 224-284. The appearance of Christ to
St Paul, on his way to Damascus, is said to have been a purely
mental occurrence, connected with the peculiar nervous tempera-
ment of the apostle, who was subject ‘ to epileptic fits ;’ to which
also are to be referred the buffetings of the messenger of Satan,
of which he subsequently speaks (p. 251). It is by such means
that the effort is made to invalidate St Paul’s testimony to the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, Beyschlag
points out in his article, Die Bekehrung des Apostels Paulus mit
besonderer Rucksicht auf die Erkldrungsversuche von Baur und
Holsten, in Studien und Kritiken, 1864, No. 2, pp. 197-264, how
clearly and emphatically Paul distinguishes between inward
visions and external appearances (compare Acts x. 17, xii. 9,
Xvi. 9, xxii. 17, 2 Cor. xii.) : ‘ consequently his whole conscious-
ness of apostleship depended on the point that he had seen the
Lord not merely in a vision, but bodily’ (p. 225). Holsten
indeed owns that ‘ criticism must endeavour to comprehend this
vision as the inward psychological act of his own mind;” i.e. she
cannot upon her own historical postulates (which deny transcen-
dent causality in general) admit the historical fact.
Notes. 341
(19) Auberlen starts from this point in his above cited work, p.
La.
(20) Baur, Das Christenthum und die Kirche der drei ersten
Jahrh., a newly revised edition, which appeared shortly before the
author’s death, 1860, ii. p. 39.
(21) Compare note 17. Baur himself owns in the above cited
work (p. 45), ‘If we can only see a miracle in his conversion, in
his sudden change from the most violent opponent of Christi-
anity into its most decided herald, it appears so much the greater,
since, in this revolution of his convictions, he broke through even
the restraints of Judaism, and merged his Jewish exclusiveness
in the universal idea of Christianity.’ Though he makes this a
purely mental occurrence, he cannot help confessing that ‘no
psychological nor dialectic analysis can fathom the mystery of
that act by which God revealed His Son to him.’
(22) Lessing’s Works, edited by Lachmann, x. 10.
(23) From Lessing, notes to Fragment i., ‘On the crying out
of Reason in Pulpits.’ Works, x. 14.
(24) Goethe, Gesprdche mit Eckermann, ii. 182: ‘Man is a
mysterious being,’ etc. Compare also i. 226, 227, iii. 199. ‘We
are all walking in the midst of mysteries’ (iii. 200). Spriiche in
Prosa, Works, iii. 169, 298, 325. Faust, 1st and 2d parts, Works,
u. 30, 12, 15.
(25) Stahl, Fundamente einer christlichen Philosophie, P. vii.
(26) Compare Fabri, Briefe gegen Materialismus, p. 163.
(27) Pasce. Pens. ii. 347 (186). Also the next sentence, Que si
les choses naturelles la surpassent, que dira-t-on des surnaturelles ?
Hamann’s saying in Hettinger, p. 419. Compare also the whole
of Hamann’s introduction to his Biblischen Betrachtungen, i. 15-63,
andi. 103. ‘The further reason penetrates, the thicker is the
labyrith in which she is lost.’
342 Notes.
(28) Fechner, Die drei Motive und Griinde des Glaubens, p. 4.
(29) Gespriiche mit Eckermann, 1. 227.
(30) Compare Hettinger, p. 445; also Bacon, De augm.
scientia, x. 1: Modo animus ad amplitudinem mysteriorum pro
modulo suo dilatetur, non mysteria ad angustias animi constrin-
gantur.
(P. 193) Pascal is ever returning to this opposition of Chris-
tianity to our reason, and using it as a proof of its truth. Com-
pare, ¢e.g., Pens. ii. 105 (181), with reference to the doctrine of
the fall and that of hereditary sin, or 1. 145 (184), le ¢hristianisme
est etrange, etc. ;—ii. 146 (211): sources des contrariétés ; un dieu
humilié, et jusqu’a la mort de la croix; un Messie triomphant de la
mort par sa mort; deux natures en Jesus Christ, etc. Compare
also Weingarten (Pascal als Apologet des Christenthums, 1863, p.
28): ‘The concluding idea of the Pensées is the divine irony of
Christianity, by which the apparently false and incredible is used
as an evidence of truth,—that irony of which St Paul speaks in his
first Epistle to the Corinthians, and which is expressed also in that
well-known saying of Tertullian, which might, if anything could,
serve asa motto to the Pensées: Credo quia absurdum, cum credi-
mus, nihil desideramus ultra credere.’
(31) Julius Miller in the Deutschen Zeitschr. fiir christlichen
Wissenschaft, etc., 1853, No. 36, p. 240.
(32) Pascal, Pens. ii. 146 (182).
(33) Pasc. Pens. ii. 156.
(34) Pase. Pens. ii. 204 (198).
(35) Pase. Pens. li. 8347 (186).
(36) Pase. Pens. i. 156 (80, 31).
Notes. 343
NOTES TO LECTURE VIII.
(1) On the immoral influence of the Greek religion and mytho-
logy, compare the copious treatise of Tholuck in Neander’s Denk-
wiirdigkeiten, i. 1823, pp. 1-246; also Tzschirner, Mall des Heiden-
thums, i. 1829, p. 26, note. For examples of the influence of certain
works of art, Plin. H. nat. 86,5. Hence the attacks upon heathen
art in the ancient Church. »
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