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REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS 
 
 AND 
 
 REASSURING HINTS. 
 
Py 
 
REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS 
 
 AND 
 
 REASSURING HINTS 
 
 BEING 
 
 Papers designed to Attract Attention to the Nature of 
 Modern Unlelief, and to meet some of its 
 Fundamental Assumptions. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. HENRY “FOOTMAN, M.A., 
 
 Vicar of Nocton, Lincoln. 
 
 THIRD. EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 FREDERIC NORGATE, 
 4, KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN; 
 WILLIAMS & NORGATE, 20, FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 
 1888. 
 
LONDON : 
 G. NORMAN AND SON, PRINTERS, HART STREET, 
 COVENT GARDEN. 
 
Berra Oso re Ur Ik Dee DhvION: 
 
 I AM induced to respond to the call for another 
 Edition of this book. The present volume will 
 be found, I trust, not less convenient for the hand, 
 and less trying to the eyes, than that of the 
 Second Edition, while its price, intermediate 
 between the two, will still render it accessible to 
 those who may care to permanently possess the 
 work. 
 
 I take this opportunity of saying that I am | 
 much indebted to my numerous critics, not 
 excepting those who have spoken from the 
 standpoint of conscious (and by me readily 
 acknowledged) superiority, both as metaphysicians 
 and as theologians, to myself. But, as those who 
 have read my more recent and more carefully 
 thought-out papers on ‘Ethics and Theology” 
 
 may have noticed, I have not seen any reason to 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 alter my convictions, upon the main subject, to 
 any important extent. 
 
 The only modification of view which seems 
 worth mentioning, as one of which I am con- 
 scious, is that respecting “‘Nature” and Natural 
 Theology. After five years of further thought, 
 and notwithstanding a more careful study of 
 Hartmann’s trenchant ‘‘ Philosophy of the Un- 
 conscious,”’ I am less depressed by the prospects 
 of Pessimism, and more hopeful of Natural 
 Theology, than I was. 
 
 Dr. Martineau’s ‘‘ Study of Religion,” to which 
 I last spring called the attention of the junior 
 clergy of the diocese of Durham, should, I may 
 here add, be studied—carefully read, analyzed, 
 and then read again—by those who are disposed 
 
 to despair of the future of Natural Theology. * 
 
 HENRY FOOTMAN. 
 Nocton, 1888. ; 
 
 * Students of Professor Flint’s works, who may get a little 
 puzzled in places, will find Martineau’'s book very useful. The 
 two authors might be read together with advantage. As to 
 critical difficulties, Row’s ‘‘ Bampton Lectures,”’ especially lectures 
 v. and vi., are invaluable helps, which no student of Evidences 
 can afford to neglect. 
 
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 ‘‘ This is perhaps the calmest, the most courageous, and 
 ‘ the steadiest effort to look Modern Unbelief in the face, 
 ‘‘ which we have yet had from a clergyman of the Church 
 ‘of England. . . . There is, in this little book, a resolution 
 ‘to see the worst of his opponents’ case, and to see it 
 ‘‘ without hysterics or affected horror, which gives us the 
 ‘‘ greatest confidence in his judgment. . . . It would be hard 
 ‘‘to sum up the modern argument against divine design 
 ‘in creation, we think, more forcibly than Mr. Footman 
 ‘manages it. . . . Nor do we think it would be. possible to 
 “meet the force of that statement more powerfully and 
 ‘‘ wisely than Mr. Footman meets it.’’—The Spectator, 
 April 21st, 1883. 
 
 ‘‘ He is quite above the cheap device of setting up an 
 ‘‘ infidel of his own manufacture, to be knocked over with 
 ‘triumphant ease... . The book, as a whole, deserves 
 ‘oreat praise for clearness, vigour, and honesty.’’—V7he 
 Atheneum, August 25th, 1883. 
 
 ‘“The whole of the book derives its interest and value 
 ‘‘ especially from being so evidently at first-hand. Mr. 
 ‘‘ Rootman has read, it is true, and read widely. But he has 
 ‘‘ not compiled. He has thought and felt, and gives us what 
 ‘‘he has telt and thought for himself. He gives his own 
 “ ‘hints,’ not as a panoply of ready-made theistic and | 
 “Christian apology, but as a specimen of the method 
 ‘of personal grappling with the subject — the only one 
 ‘‘ adequate to the nature and gravity of its problems. .. . The 
 ‘style is simple, unaffected, and at times eloquent. And 
 “Mr, Footman has the merit of acting upon, and urging 
 ‘upon all of us, the spirit of Aristotle’s golden principle, 
 ‘ that what persuades men is not argument but personality. 
 ‘“ Every clergyman is liable to be confronted with these 
 ‘‘ problems in his daily work. Would that all were as well 
 ‘‘ prepared and disciplined for the ordeal as Mr. Footman. 
 ‘A conscientious thinker himself, he can face candidly and 
 ‘carefully the true bearing of modern scientific thought. 
 “ He sees the points where the weight of the Christian 
 ‘ position must be thrown.”’—The Guardian, September 12th, 
 1883. 
 
Vill OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 ‘‘ A contribution of solid value to apologetic literature. . 
 
 ‘‘ While there are tokens that Mr. Footman has been much 
 ‘‘ influenced by the teaching of Frederick Denison Maurice, 
 ‘‘ yet he possesses the gift in which that eminent man was 
 ‘“‘lacking,—that of translating the language of the higher 
 ‘‘metaphysic into a tongue understandable by those who 
 ‘have little aptitude for pure speculation.” - The Literary 
 Churchman, June 22nd, 1883. 
 
 ‘There are, however, many persons who have neither the 
 time nor the inclination to study lengthy treatises, who yet 
 ‘‘ need to be put on their guard as to the assaults now being 
 ‘‘made on the very foundations of the Christian faith, and 
 ‘“‘ the defence which may be made on behalf of the truth: for 
 ‘‘ such persons there could hardly be a better book. . . . We 
 have had occasion recently to complain of the awkward 
 ‘‘and affected style in which some of our able Christian 
 ‘ apologists have put forth their defence of the Gospel. It 
 is a great relief to turn to the pure, nervous, gentlemanlike 
 ‘‘ English of this volume.’’—Church Bells, May toth, 1883. 
 
 ‘ 
 
 ~ 
 
 ‘‘ One of the most useful and able exposures and refutations 
 of modern infidelity and atheism we have seen, especially 
 ‘that of the Bradlaugh and Besant type.’’—Zhe National 
 Church, April, 1883. 
 
 ‘Will be read with much interest, even by those who have 
 ‘‘ become weary of the subject as usually treated.”—The 
 Christian Chronicle, March 2oth, 1883. 
 
 ce 
 
 “The Reassuring Hints are the pleasantest reading on 
 what are otherwise dry topics, that we have come across : 
 ‘and Mr. Footman, despite the modest limits of his two 
 ‘‘ lectures, touches with a sweeping and powerful familiarity 
 ‘almost every difference and difficulty which modern science 
 ‘‘ has raised. He invariably puts his opponents’ case better 
 ‘than they could put it themselves.’—The Church Review, 
 April 27th, 1883. 
 
 ‘e 
 
 ‘We earnestly commend the book; it is the book of a 
 ‘clergyman who ‘ reads,’ and we are sure that he at least is 
 ‘‘ not likely to lose touch of the lay mind.”’—The Record, 
 May 25th, 1883. 
 
 ‘Two remarkable papers . . . calculated to make the 
 
 ‘‘ most desultory reader pause.’’—The Clergyman’s Magazine, 
 September, 1883. 
 
ABSTRACT OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAPER I: 
 
 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS GROUNDED ON 
 
 THE NATURE AND PREVALENCE OF 
 MODERN UNBELIEF. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION: Statement of subject and of method; 
 not only descriptions but quotations—harsh but whole- 
 some—as illustrated by what ae ee on the road to 
 Church 
 
 Topics suggested oe Mill’s rior as to (1) sivelied 
 Science, and (2) The Science of Human Nature . 
 
 I.—As To PuysICAL SCIENCE. “ Religious Traditions 
 
 it is considered’”’ to have overturned as to GOD and | 
 
 NATURE 
 
 (a) An effort to trace andy, the ive bE haunt 
 which have provided a ready-made metaphysics for the 
 Physicist.—The ‘‘tang’’ of Locke’s ‘‘ cask.’’-—French 
 Sensualism.—Hume’s ria aa ara a aaa Later 
 Germans 
 
 (6) No GOD, NG Pemermorecr No Deen 
 Clifford on the Corkscrew and Lungs. Bradlaugh (2oth 
 thousand), G. H. Lewes popularized 
 
 PessimMisMs: The lawyer who would not lift his fingee 
 Schopenhauer: Hartmann: Mill . 
 
 Clifford’s sad cry : 
 
 I].—TuHE ScIENCE OF rebates Neen mes 
 changed since Paley’s dilemma. Christianity now 
 catalogued among other natural products, hung up to 
 be looked at with other pictures 
 
 b 
 
 12 
 
 I5 
 
 18 
 20 
 
 22 
 
x CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 II1].—Our Protest that ours is an historical religion, 
 met by ‘HIGHER CRITICISM.” Baur, Strauss, Renan— 
 not confined to thé critics—popularized, translated. 
 Quotation from lecture by Mrs. Besant, ‘‘ When the 
 loud applause had subsided.”—The net-work widely 
 spread.—‘ Our Charlie’s’’ popularity.—Both sexes 
 
 affected.—Atheistic Children.—Secular Sunday Schools 25 
 IV.—TuHe Mora Aspects of the question.—Our 
 alarm. Herbert Spencer hurries forward to help and 
 reassure. Clifford sees no reason for fear—his definition 
 of conscience. Dr. Aveling’s dream of ‘‘ No whtte 
 
 chokers.’’ Attack on the Sermon on the Mount. Sas’ | 
 V.—Conclusion . : : : : ; As 
 PAPER II. 
 REASSURING HINTS AND FURTHER ELUCI- 
 DATIONS. 
 INTRODUCTION . , : 49-58 
 I. Results of previous paper Pade 2) 
 
 II. Spirit in which adverse arguments Grenin Nar Meter Se 
 III. Apologies for egotism, for meddling with Meta- 
 physics, Criticism, and Moral Philosophy . or Ss 
 
 SEcTIOoN I. 
 How to meet the Athetstic Argument. 59-100 
 
 (A) i. The Theistic Argument from my known intelli- 
 gent Existence the best to start with . - WEG 
 Il. This premise denied. Quotations in illustration 60 
 
 11. The Rhetorical tangle of these denials exposed ; 
 importance of grasping the initial certainty . 63 
 
CONTENTS. X1 
 
 PAGE 
 IV. I am driven to seek a Cause of myself. 
 Ultimately, a Supreme Infinite Intelligent 
 
 Cause is wanted . : 67 
 V. The (a) Causal Appetency thallen sed: anid (6) 
 Apprehension of Intelligence obscured . oar 70 
 
 (a) AstoCausaLiry, Hume’s Demonstration 
 confirmed by Science. No Mysterious tie 
 discoverable. This being so, we must turn 
 elsewhere for what we both want. ; yp 
 
 (4) As to the tendency to obscure our appre- 
 hension of Jnutelligence as generically distinct 
 from its environments.—Helps against this 
 tendency: Tyndall, Maudsley, Mill, etc. . aS 
 
 (c) Press the Physiologist with the verdict of 
 
 the Physical Student : : ; : E70 
 
 (B) I. The Physico- theological Arguments not 
 weakened by Modern Science : eee Os 
 II. Uniformity of nature a great support : Cette 
 
 III. Unbroken order suggests Minp—and an 
 answer to Clifford . ‘ ; 85 
 
 (C) I. “ Evolution” does not really eeaien eerste 
 supports : 87 
 
 II. Helps to throw fate on the Eeeray Nain of 
 COL) ion ; go 
 
 (D) I. Pessimism: A Tien to an Natural Theolo: 
 gian, discussed but taken up again further on 2 
 II. What seems the Paramount Law in Nature— 
 
 how it solemnizes life and daily meals . EOS 
 IIl. The wonder is there is so much pleasure as there 
 is.—Paley’s 26th chapter recommended 07 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 How to meet Difficulties from the Science of Human 
 Nature, etc. 100-116 
 
 I. Difficulty stated. AB ale 2 : : - 100 
 
X11 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Il. Treat it thus: (a) Bring out the more Scriptural, 
 more Catholic View of the Person of Christ and His Work 
 in the Universe; (2) Translate a half-truth into a whole 
 truth : , : : : ; 
 III. Show Now it Seeitts: to unconscious yearnings and 
 
 10% 
 
 real distresses (e.g) Clifford’s ; and how— Lats: 
 IV. It helps us to meet and thank the Pessimist me 
 Section III. 
 Critical Difficulties. 116-150 
 1. The Critical view popularized.—Mrs. Besant 
 wants a Bridge . 5 : : LEO 
 Il. Bridge I. The four permitted Epistles . 118 
 Ill. Bridge I]. Early Christian Writings—their 
 witness to the Nature and History of Christ—this the 
 first inquiry, and the most vital . 197 
 IV. Their testimony to date of our Goapeiearn very 
 important, but not so vital—Results to be expected . 144 
 V. The way to get them popularized Bora | 
 SecTion IV. 
 The Moral Aspect. 150-162 
 I, The apprehension not a clerical scare—a layman 
 quoted . 150 
 Lit. Pal ane Pease ilastranen of the festet 
 outcome—thrown back to early days to avoid per- 
 sonalities . 153 
 
 III. The ground “i fine 6 Reece 
 
 . 156 
 
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 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS, GROUNDED 
 ON THE NATURE AND 
 PREVALENCE OF MODERN UNBELIEF. 
 
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 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS, GROUNDED 
 ON THE NATURE AND 
 _ PREVALENCE OF MODERN UNBELIEF: 
 
 WERE I not here through the reiterated invitation 
 of your Secretary, I should certainly feel that this 
 paper was an impertinence. But, as it is, I fall 
 back upon that invitation, as my plea for forgive- 
 ness if, after all, it should turn out that I have 
 but little of interest to say. 
 
 ' The subject which has been assigned me is one 
 which is far too vast for even a hasty treatment 
 in an essay of this kind. Ihave had therefore to 
 make a choice among the many and embarrass- 
 ingly various materials which lie ready to hand, 
 and which might be referred to in illustration of 
 the nature and prevalence among us of a wide- 
 spread and a loudly expressed unbelief. 
 
 The Unbelief of the present day goes. deep 
 down to the roots of all spiritual life, as well as 
 into wide fields of human speculation. It is 
 practical too, and declines to admit that it is 
 
 incapable of supplying the world with a Basis 
 jh * 
 
4 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 of Morals, and an Object of Worship, and an 
 end of Being, which shall in the long-run more 
 than compensate mankind at large for their loss 
 of faith in the worn-out theologies and super- 
 naturalisms of Priest or Intuitionalist. 
 
 I hope that in what I am about to say I shall 
 be fair to the Unbelief and to the unbelievers of 
 the day. I will not confine myself to mere 
 descriptions or general statements as to the spirit 
 of the age, but quote men who are influencing 
 both the educated and the uneducated classes at 
 this hour. I will quote not merely from treatises 
 addressed to the leisurely or the learned few, but 
 from popular lectures and tracts addressed on 
 Sundays and week-days to the eager and un- 
 trained multitudes. I shall claim for such quota- 
 tions that they are fairly representative, although 
 they have not the least pretension to being 
 exhaustive or free from the charge of leaving out 
 some great names or some influential exponents 
 of Scepticisms or of Atheisms, which are both 
 popular and plausible. 
 
 This method will have the further advantage of 
 helping us to know what is really said, not merely 
 to know about it. And this, as it seems to me, is 
 a very important gain to any man who really 
 wishes to appreciate the force and subtlety of the 
 attacks to which the minds of men are now daily 
 exposed. 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. 5 
 
 We have a general notion that the spirit of the 
 age, the leaders of the thought of this time, and 
 the retailers of those thoughts to the populace, 
 are against us. Unbelief is, as we say, ‘‘in the 
 
 “e ”? 
 . 
 
 air.” Articles and pamphlets, like threatening 
 letters, are flying over the land, and when we 
 hear of them, we shudder and pass on. But let 
 us try sometimes to treat them as threatening 
 letters which we have actually ourselves received, 
 and then their due significance, and the nature of 
 their influence and the terrible plainness of their 
 speech will come home to us more effectually, and 
 arouse us permanently, and I hope profitably, to 
 an abiding sense of the conditions of thought 
 under which thousands of men and hundreds of 
 women, to whom we are commissioned to minister, 
 are living. 
 
 An incident will illustrate my meaning. I 
 remember going down into the poorer parts of 
 my London parish one evening to a Mission 
 service. I went with a generally diffused feeling 
 about me that an Atheistic Progressive Club, 
 within a few yards of the Mission church, was 
 exercising an influence which would lessen the 
 number of the congregation, or reduce it. to 
 women and children; and that, so to speak, the 
 public opinion of the district would not be likely 
 ‘to sympathize with any enthusiasms of godliness. 
 ‘At the door of a house as I passed, and which the 
 
6 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 in-coming congregation were in the act of passing, 
 stood a woman with her children. She called 
 out, “‘Going there? No, thank you! I am not 
 “* going to listen to parsons telling a heap of lies.” 
 
 I felt that I realized better, after that blunt 
 speech, the actual forces which were against me. 
 It helped to relieve my mind of any vagueness 
 which might have hung over it, and in which the 
 subject of popular infidelity might have been 
 enveloped. It was unpleasant, but indispensable. 
 Some analogous course of listening to quotations 
 from other and more dangerous antagonists may 
 not be without some corresponding utility on the 
 present occasion. 
 
 The possibility of this benefit accruing to us 
 from contact with the actual words of the setters 
 forth of the new gods of Kraft and Stoff—or of 
 an Ideal, Headless, unproducible Divinity—must 
 be my excuse for any unpleasant sensations which 
 this contact may create in the minds of my 
 present listeners. 
 
 iI 
 
 I will call your attention first to the posthumous 
 work of one who is now looked upon by many of 
 his more advanced admirers as having been too 
 indulgent to some of the received traditions of 
 mankind—as having rather blessed than cursed 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. 7 
 
 the enemy — but who has most powerfully 
 influenced the mind of a very large class of 
 educated men and women, many of whom are 
 now in positions of great influence, or distin- 
 guished in the arena of public affairs. Fohn 
 Stuart Mill exercised an immense influence during 
 his life, and although generally shrouding his 
 religious opinions from public gaze, was always felt 
 to be what I may venture to call an anti-theological 
 force in the world of thought. I remember walk- 
 ing some years ago in Cambridge with two men 
 who have since shown themselves capable of 
 doing great things, when one of them informed 
 me that “‘there would be a tremendous explosive 
 “soon cast into yourcamp. J. S. Millhas written 
 “some Essays on Religion, and you had better 
 “look out for a destructive blow.” 
 
 “Whom do you mean?” I said, ‘‘to whom is 
 ‘‘ your warning specially addressed ?”’ 
 
 ‘“‘To you,” he replied, ‘‘ who seem to think that _ 
 
 *‘ you have got a boot that will fit every foot, 
 
 ‘‘ which you call Christianity.” 
 
 Well, now I want to refer for a few minutes to 
 this explosive shell—which fell from the hand of 
 Mill in the form of Three Essays on Religion after 
 his death, and which contains, beyond a doubt, 
 some of the calmest and most honest statements 
 of deep individual conviction, and want of con- 
 viction, which the present generation has seen. 
 
8 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 He sums up the case as it stood, not only in his 
 own mind, but as it appears to many, and I fear 
 I might say, the majority of the men of light and 
 leading in Physics and in Philosophy among us 
 now. 
 
 (1) As to Fhysical Science : 
 
 “The progress of Physical Science is con- 
 “sidered to have established, by conclusive 
 ** evidence, matters of fact with which the religious 
 ‘traditions of mankind are not reconcilable.” 
 
 (2) ‘‘ The Science of human nature and history is 
 ““ considered to show that the creeds of the past 
 “are the natural growth of the human mind in 
 ‘“ particular stages of its career, destined to dis- 
 ‘““appear and to give place to other convictions 
 “in a more advanced stage. In the progress of 
 “discussion, this last class of considerations 
 ““seems to be superseding those which address 
 “ themselves . directly to the question of truth. 
 “* Religions tend to be discussed, at least by those 
 “who reject them, less as intrinsically true - or 
 “false, than as products thrown up by certain 
 ““ states of civilization, and which, like the animal 
 “and vegetable productions of a geological 
 ‘ period, perish in the periods which succeed it, 
 “from the cessation of the conditions necessary 
 “to their continued existence.” 
 
 Now, as we must try some method, let us take 
 the topics which are here suggested :— 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. 9 
 
 Let us think, first of all, of the conclusions to 
 which Physical Science is supposed to have led 
 mankind, and of some of the religious traditions 
 of which it is the triumphant destroyer. 
 
 There is an old religious tradition that in the 
 beginning Gop created the heaven and the earth ; 
 that the earth is weak and the inhabiters thereof, 
 and that this same Gop—whom we call Almighty 
 Gop—bears up the pillars of it, and upholdeth all 
 things by the Word of His power, ordering them 
 according to -the counsel of His will. The 
 heavens, according to the old religious tradition, 
 declare His glory, and the firmament showeth 
 His handiwork. He maketh also the grass to 
 grow upon the mountains and green herbs for the 
 use of man. Now, in the name of Science, 
 but really by the representatives of Physics, 
 spoiled by bad Metaphysics, this tradition is held 
 to be exploded, or to be relegated finally to the 
 region of Empty Emotion, worshipping in ignorant 
 wonder the Unknown and the Unknowable. We 
 may go on at set seasons if we will, by the 
 permission of such high priests of Physics and 
 of Philosophy, as Professor Tyndall, or Mr. 
 ‘Herbert Spencer (the latter, by-the-bye, a man 
 of ammense, I had almost said prophetic, influence 
 among a most important section of the educated 
 opinion of this day), we may go on worshipping, 
 or being religious, under the influence of our own 
 
IO REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 theological bias, if we will only in our reasonable 
 moods have the candour to confess the origin and 
 the nature of these emotions, and the fictitious 
 and unreal and purely imaginative world into 
 which they introduce the mind of the man over 
 whom their sway is exercised. These religious 
 emotions, we must always in our sober moments 
 recollect, are unaccredited, subjective suscepti- 
 bilities. We have no right to assume that they 
 accord with the reality of things. No consistent 
 Agnostic would be so absurd as to suppose that 
 they did so accord. 
 
 As the result of many convergent, intellectual 
 and philosophical tendencies, tendencies generated 
 in this country by the empiricism of Locke, 
 and the philosophical scepticism of Hume, and 
 fostered elsewhere by the influence of ‘French 
 sensationalism, by the subsequent teaching of 
 Comte in France, and of later philosophers such 
 (e.g.) as Biichner and Vogt, in Germany,—it has 
 come to this, that the student of physical science, 
 absorbed in the observation of physical pheno- 
 mena, and strongly tempted to deny the reality 
 of anything which cannot be submitted to his 
 technical tests, now finds the metaphysics of 
 materialism more and more systematically elabor- 
 ated for his use, and close at hand to supply him 
 with an apparently philosophical justification for 
 yielding to a temptation to which in one form or 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. It 
 
 another, all specialists are peculiarly exposed.* 
 Hence the difficulty of getting anything admitted 
 into the circle of serious discussion which does 
 not readily lend itself to the methods of physics, 
 —hence the contempt with which theology is 
 sometimes treated, and its phraseology parodied 
 by too many physicists of the day. As an 
 example of what I mean, and as a symptom of 
 this disposition, take the celebrated phrase, 
 ‘““ Men of science have come to believe in justifi- 
 ‘* cation, not by faith, but by verification.’’ There 
 isa narrow provincialism of thought latent in this 
 joke, as well as a tone of triumphant contempt, 
 against which, in all good faith, and with no 
 attempt at scolding, our physicists should be 
 respectfully warned to be upon their guard. Its 
 only importance indeed—for of course the joke 
 proves nothing either against justification by faith 
 or in favour of justification by verification—is 
 that it is symptomatic—symptomatic of a certain 
 temper of scientific exclusiveness and of the 
 prevalent pharisaism of some of our physicists. 
 It is as such that I allude to it; it shows us into 
 what we are developed. 
 
 * Cf. N. Porter, on Human Intellect, p. 19. ‘‘ The man 
 ‘confirmed in his associations by a familiar mastery over 
 ‘‘some physical science, is the man of all others, to whom, 
 ‘‘when heconsiders the phenomena of the soul, the facts seem 
 ‘most novel, and the conceptions most unfamiliar.” 
 
IZ REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 (a) It would take too long, indeed, to trace what 
 appears to me the true history of this (so-called) 
 scientific development. Many convergent lines of 
 thought, as I have said, in the past, as well as of 
 scientific habits of investigation in the present 
 age, have combined to produce the present 
 antagonistic and almost contemptuous tone of 
 many of the leaders and propagators of popular 
 materialism. 
 
 Without going back to the nominalism of 
 Hobbes,. I think we may fairly say that the 
 philosophy of John Locke has much to answer 
 for in this respect. 
 
 A sincere Christian, and a most reverent and 
 earnest Theist as Locke undoubtedly was, 
 there can be little doubt that he is, through his 
 empiricism and his sensationalism, the uninten- 
 tional foster-parent of modern materialism in 
 this country. I say this with regret, for if there 
 is a philosopher for whose great character, and 
 sober and conscientious love of truth I have a 
 real reverence, Locke is certainly such an one. 
 There are few men to whom I am intellectually 
 deeper in debt. But grand as he is, and removed 
 by a whole heaven from many of those who have 
 gone far beyond him in the direction of sensa- 
 tionalism, I think I detect, in the language of 
 many modern Materialists and Agnostics, the 
 “tang” of Locke’s ‘‘ cask.” 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. 13 
 
 All before him, in his opinion, had begun at the 
 wrong end, letting loose our thoughts into the 
 vast ocean of being. ‘These men,” he said, 
 “ extend their inquiries beyond their capacity, 
 ‘‘ whereas, were the horizon found which sets the 
 ‘ bounds between the enlightened and the dark 
 “part of things, between what is and what is not 
 “ comprehensible by us, other men would perhaps 
 “with less scruple acquiesce in our avowed 
 “ ionorance of the one, and employ their thoughts 
 ‘¢ and discourses with some advantage and satis- 
 ‘ faction in the other.” All previous philosophers 
 had been occupied with Being—from Socrates 
 to Spinoza. There was to be an end of these 
 adventurous and fruitless voyages. The Sensua- 
 list philosophy of France, well known to many of 
 us, even of those who have not read the actual 
 treatises, through the brilliant lectures of Cousin, 
 developed Locke’s philosophy far beyond the 
 limits which Locke had assigned it, until it 
 reached its climax in Cabanis, who arrived at the 
 conclusion that the soul is only a faculty, nota 
 being, and that thought is only a secretion of the 
 brain. Contemporaneously with the French 
 influence there arose the genius of Hume, a man 
 whom modern - physicists peculiarly delight to 
 honour. (By-the-bye, they who only know Hume 
 through their Paley’s Evidences have no concep- 
 tion of the greatness of his genius.) Hume, 
 
I4 ‘REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 again, taking his ground upon Locke’s empiricism, 
 transformed it, through investigations into the 
 origin of the conception of cause, into a philos- 
 ophy of utter Scepticism. Then came the 
 positive Philosophy of Comte, and the material- 
 istic speculations and inquiries of the later 
 Germans, to whom we owe the doctrine that man 
 ‘““is what he eats,” and to whom we are indebted 
 for the Bible, as it has been called, of material- 
 istic philosophy, “Kraft und Stoff.’ — These 
 streams of thought have found for the physical 
 student a sort of ready-made metaphysics of 
 materialism, and then the absorbing character of 
 the study of physics, the hold which it seems to 
 give men upon the tangible, the vast victories over 
 space and time, which have been gained within 
 the last fifty years by its means, its apparently 
 absolute and undisturbed possession of the field of 
 facts, all these together have combined to make 
 the physicist look upon every fact of mind or of 
 matter, as only a fact when it can be expressed in 
 the terms, or translated into the language, of his 
 pursuit. In short, with him the translation is the 
 original ; what he cannot formulate cannot be 
 known. 
 
 In Physics, says Professor Tyndall, in an 
 article in a popular Review, ‘“‘we observe what 
 “our senses, armed with the aids furnished by 
 “science, enable us to observe, nothing more.” 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. 15 
 
 (b) Apply this to ‘the whole Astronomic Realm. 
 Atheism is the outcome. ‘‘I have observed,”’ 
 says one, “‘ I have scanned the whole heaven with 
 “the telescope (one of the aids furnished by 
 “* science to the senses), and I can find no God.” 
 
 ‘‘ I have opened the brain with my scalpel,” 
 says another, “and I came upon no soul” (the 
 scalpel being another of the aids furnished by 
 science to the senses). - 
 
 We assert that we can find traces of the 
 workings of <zntelligence in the world of Nature 
 (external nature). Onthecontrary. Observation 
 (we are told) by the senses, aided with the instru- 
 ments of science, shows us no working of mind, 
 or what you call mind, except as the result of 
 brain. ‘‘I ask to be shown,” says an objector, 
 ‘somewhere within the universe, embedded in 
 ‘‘ nervine, and fed with warm arterial blood under 
 ‘‘ proper pressure, a convolution of ganglionic 
 ‘¢ slobules and nerve tubes proportioned in size to 
 ** the faculties of such a mind.” 
 
 Do you not think, we may say, that there is 
 evidence in nature, including the structure of our 
 human frame, of design of a purpose? Were not, 
 for instance, the lungs adapted for respiration ? 
 
 No, says Professor Clifford, in a popular essay, 
 or Sunday Lecture, “‘you must distinguish, you 
 “must not argue as you would about the design of 
 *“a corkscrew. A corkscrew was made by a man 
 
16 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 ‘with a purpose in his mind. No one made our 
 ‘“lungs. The respiratory apparatus was adapted 
 ‘to its purpose by natural selection (7.e. by the 
 ‘* sradual preservation of better and better adapta- 
 “ tions, and the killing off of the worse and imper-: 
 ‘fect adaptations).” This is ‘‘an unconscious 
 ‘‘ adaptation.” Thisis said in a lecture delivered 
 to hundreds, printed and lying on the drawing- 
 room tables of hundreds. Not only so, Mr. 
 Bradlaugh, in the twentieth thousand of a pam- 
 phiet just published, points out that in his opinion 
 the argument from Design does not prove the 
 creation of something out of nothing, because all 
 you have is the adaptation of what are already pre- 
 existing substances. He quotes, too, in this same 
 paper (twentieth thousand) from a man who did 
 much to popularize materialism, G. H. Lewes, 
 ‘‘ There is not a single known organism which is 
 ‘“ not developed out of simpler forms. Before it 
 ‘* can attain the complex structure which distin- 
 ‘“‘ suishes it, there must be an evolution of forms 
 ‘‘ which distinguish the structures of organisms 
 ‘* lower down in the series. On the hypothesis of 
 ‘“a plan which pre-arranged the Organic World, 
 ‘“ nothing could be more unworthy of a supreme 
 ‘“‘ intelligence than this inability to construct an 
 ‘“* organ at once, without making several tentative 
 ‘“‘ efforts. Would there be a chorus of applause 
 ‘“‘ from the Institute of Architects if such profound: 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. Eg 
 
 ‘wisdom as this were displayed by some ‘ Great 
 ** Architect’ of houses?” 
 
 One of the great characteristics, you see, of our 
 modern unbelief is that it finds for itself a popular 
 voice with such amazing rapidity. Therein lies 
 its danger tomen for our time. It is hardly out of 
 the lips of the student before it is in the ears of 
 the multitude. The philosophical speculation, 
 especially if it have in it a dash of an ironical 
 innuendo, is so soon thrown in as a “new light” 
 among the passions and prejudices of the crowd. 
 We miss no small part of the significance of the 
 situation if we ignore this most striking accelera- 
 tion of the pace at which the sceptical, the 
 atheistic, the antichristian ideas are moving from 
 class to class in this one generation. 
 
 (c) But I have quoted this arraignment by Lewes 
 and Bradlaugh of the processes of Infinite Wisdom, 
 not only because it seems to me (circulated as it is 
 by tens of thousands) to be one of the most danger- 
 ous and deadly of the weapons of Atheism, but 
 because it leads me briefly to notice that Pessimism 
 which would destroy all one’s joy in the works of 
 God, and in the old tradition that the earth is full 
 of the goodness of the Lord. It is very important 
 in this respect to notice how thoroughly the 
 method of attack is changed from that of the 
 Deistic controversy of the last century. Then it 
 was the glorification of Nature, in order to depre- 
 
 Z 
 
18 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 ciate the arguments for the need of a Revelation, 
 with which Christianity was assailed. Now, we 
 find ourselves depreciating Nature, and finding in 
 her alleged imperfections and apparent cruelties, 
 an argument against the benevolence oy against 
 the omnipotence of God. One is reminded of the 
 assertion of a once distinguished lawyer, circulated 
 in a widely read magazine article after his death, 
 that there was so much pain and misery in Nature 
 that if he knew she were about to perish, and if, 
 by lifting his finger, he could save her from annihi- 
 lation—he would not lift it. One is reminded of 
 the doctrine of Schopenhauer that the world is 
 the worst of all possible worlds, and anmiluilation 
 (almost equivalent to the Nirvana of some phases 
 of Buddhism) is the highest end of man. One is 
 reminded, too, of a more popular philosopher, 
 Hartmann, who determines, not with a yawn of 
 ennui, but philosophically, that existence is in 
 itself an evil, in proportion as its range is larger 
 and you know it more. The whole constitution of 
 the world (so stupidly does it work) would be an 
 unpardonable crime, did it issue from a power 
 that knew what it was about, which, of course, 
 upon the Materialist theory, it does not. But one 
 is reminded, still more forcibly, of that tremendous 
 indictment which Mr. Mill (a still more popular 
 philosopher) brings against Nature, in the first of 
 those celebrated and widely circulated essays, 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. Ig 
 
 which contain the explosive shell with which my 
 Cambridge friend threatened me some years ago, 
 as certain to be thrown into the Christian camp. 
 “In sober truth,” says Mill, “nearly all the things 
 “‘ which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing 
 “to one another, are Nature’s every-day perform- 
 ““ances.”” And let us remember, this short but 
 trenchant sentence is a fair specimen of the con- 
 clusions of the whole Paper. In short, I know 
 not in the whole range of English literature a 
 more tremendous catalogue of charges against 
 Nature than that which this Essay contains. It 
 will take a good deal of preaching to undo its 
 effects on men, and yet it cannot be ignored with 
 impunity. 
 
 It is the more important too, to notice this 
 assertion, as it comes from a man who does not 
 altogether give up the hope of immortality— 
 although he does not think it can be held as any- 
 thing more than a bare hope—and who seems to 
 feel that there may be some force in the argu- 
 ment from design, in favour of the possible 
 existence of a mind above us, and who, therefore, 
 does not go the length of many of his more recent 
 disciples in the direction of Atheism. But yet, 
 even with Mill we cannot get anything more on 
 this head than an acknowledgment that there is 
 some considerable evidence that there is a Designer. 
 
 He is quite clear there cannot be an Omnipotent’ 
 2 * 
 
20 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 Designer ; also, any evidence, in Mill’s opinion, 
 for Infinite Beneficence is utterly wanting. Physical 
 science and the methods of induction preclude the 
 possibility of the truth of this Religious Tradition. 
 
 But to pass from the Pessimism of Mill and 
 others, there is another and a more trenchant and 
 less modest disputant, to whom I have already 
 slightly referred, and whose ‘‘ Sunday Lectures,”’ 
 and magazine articles have been published since 
 his premature death. Clifford died young. He 
 was second Wrangler and second Smith’s Prize- 
 man in 1867. He was originally, I believe, a High 
 Churchman ; but he shook off his “‘ cradle faith,” 
 as he called it, early, and few men have more 
 ardently or bitterly attacked the faith in the very 
 existence of a GOD at all, or have been more 
 uncompromising in their denunciation of even the 
 most liberal form of Christianity. He was a man 
 of pure life, of ardent affection, and of great 
 courage, but it seemed to me that it went against 
 the grain of his soul even to shake hands with a 
 priest. His motto was, ‘‘Sacerdos, semper ubique 
 “et omnibus inimicus.” When one tried to argue 
 with Clifford, or to point out that the Church had 
 been a bulwark in the early ages against the 
 tyranny of kings, his answer was, ‘‘Oh, yes; 
 “Pope and king fell out, and when Pope and 
 ‘* Cesar fall out, honest men do sometimes come 
 “by their own.” The whole business of religion 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. 21 
 
 was one long sin against mankind. On this ques- 
 tion of GOD or no GOD, hear him for a moment 
 —remember, not the mere professor of mathe- 
 matics—not the dilettante sceptic, but the man 
 who held that truth ought to be shouted from the 
 housetops, not whispered over rose-water when 
 the ladies had left the table, and who did his best 
 to shout it. 
 
 ‘For, after all,” says Clifford, “such a helper 
 ‘of men outside Humanity the Truth will not 
 “allow us to see. The dim and shadowy outlines 
 “ of the superhuman Deity fade slowly away from 
 “before us, and, as the mist of his presence floats 
 “aside, we perceive with greater and greater clear- 
 “ ness the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure, 
 ‘ of him who made all gods and shall unmake them. 
 “From the dim dawn of history, and from the 
 “inmost depths of every soul, the face of our 
 “Father man looks out upon us with the fire of 
 “eternal youth in his eyes, and says: ‘ Before 
 ** Jehovah was, I am.’” 
 
 This is the last message of Science. Nay, rather, 
 let me say, not of science, but of the system of 
 philosophy which many Physicists have adopted. 
 I cannot help exclaiming, “‘ Father, forgive them, 
 ‘ for they know not what they do.” 
 
i 
 
 Are we surprised after this, after a considera- 
 tion so rapid and imperfect, even, as this must 
 necessarily be, of the influence which is being 
 exerted by men of talent and character, and of 
 liberal, if not learned education, that all “ religions 
 ‘‘ tend to be discussed,” to use Mr. Mill’s expressive 
 phrase, “‘ less as intrinsically true or false, than as 
 ‘‘ products thrown up by certain states of civiliza- 
 “‘ tion, and which like the animal and vegetable 
 ** productions of a certain geological period, perish 
 ‘¢ in those which succeed it, from the cessation of 
 ‘the conditions necessary to their continued 
 PEeRISLENLCes., 
 
 Paley, in the preparatory Considerations pre- 
 fixed to his Evidences, makes the following 
 remark :— 
 
 “TI desire that, in judging of Christianity, it 
 ‘““may be remembered that the question lies 
 ‘‘ between this religion and none; for, if the 
 ‘“‘ Christian religion be not credible, no one with 
 ‘“‘ whom we have to do will support the preten- 
 “‘ sions of any other.” 
 
 Times are changed since this dilemma was 
 presented as exhaustive of the subject. Fresh 
 ground has been broken up, and Christianity is 
 catalogued among the many other phases or results 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. 23 
 
 of the so-called ‘‘ Theological Bias” in mankind, 
 as one of the many products of all the antecedent 
 physical, biological, and sociological conditions 
 which it is interesting and useful, and, indeed, for 
 a positive philosopher necessary to study; but 
 about the absolute truth or falsehood of which it 
 has become, in the higher circles of intellectual 
 development, an anachronism to trouble the mind. 
 There is no more favourite subject of criticism 
 now than that of the different religions which have 
 appeared among men, or which have been fanned 
 for a time into a living flame by the earnestness of 
 prophets or martyrs, who were simple enough or 
 ignorant enough to take their legends or their 
 dreams for facts, or by priests, who made a market 
 of the dread or the credulity of wuninstructed 
 masses of mankind. The origin of each religion, 
 the meaning of its symbols, the character 
 and tendency of its doctrines, the range, the 
 durability, the intensity of its influence over 
 various races and in various ages; the way in 
 which its fables have been manufactured into 
 facts, its men transformed into divinities; all 
 these are topics of interest in educated society as 
 well as in Popular Lectures. All religions now are 
 to be dealt with, not as divine verities, but as 
 human products. Religions are hung up at a 
 convenient distance now, like pictures, to be | 
 looked at, to be compared, to be patronized by 
 
24 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 philosophical or atheistic connoisseurs. The 
 music of the human heart is mute, or it is the 
 music of a dream. Its heaven is but the pro- 
 jection of its own untutored selfishness or 
 enthusiasm, and its hell but the ghosts of its own 
 superstitious dread of the unseen malignities ; 
 its sins are but its misfortunes; its reverence 
 for Christ, or for Buddha, or for Brahma, or for 
 Mahomet, but Hero Worship, in a form more or 
 less unworthy. We clergymen have followed, 
 with the rest, cunningly devised fables, to which 
 mankind is prone. Our gods, even when not the 
 creation of our own hands, are always that of our 
 own devising, or of our own superstitious tradi- 
 tions. There is no reality anywhere, no truth any- 
 where, save the truth of Science. Science has 
 swept the field clear from all the weeds and 
 unrealities, and thrown the light of its infallible 
 methods upon the scarecrows of Theology. 
 
 But we may say, stay a minute. We decline to 
 permit our reverence for Christ to be evaporated 
 into a hero-worship, or our faith to be classed 
 among the legends or the empty enthusiasms of 
 mankind in the weaker and more credulous 
 moments of'its history. Ours is a_ /istorical 
 veligion. It is the history of a kingdom of God 
 set up among men. It is not the history of 
 the deification of ideal men, but of the Incar- 
 nation of God. We have historical documents, 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. 25 
 
 authentic and genuine, which explain the origin 
 and justify the continuance of the Faith in the 
 truth as it isin Jesus. Sweep the dreams away 
 if you will, but do not try to sweep off the facts. 
 
 IEE: 
 
 Historical Religion—Authentic, genuine Docu- 
 ments! This introduces us into another and very 
 terrible phase of the war against the Faith. We 
 are face to face now with the ‘‘ higher criticism,’ — 
 criticism for example of the Tiibingen school; 
 with the works, too, of Strauss and Renan; 
 criticisms, and so-called biographies, the assump- 
 tions of which, the alleged and much-vaunted 
 results of which are translated, circulated, popu- 
 larized in lectures, in Halls of Science, to an 
 extent which would surprise many of us who have 
 only a vague notion that Mr. Bradlaugh is dan- 
 gerous and that Mrs. Besant is an Atheistic 
 Malthusian ! 
 
 Just let me recall for a moment some of the 
 characteristics of the original Tiibingen criticism, 
 and of the spirit of the lives of Jesus, of Strauss 
 and Renan. With Baur, a scientific research not 
 only demonstrates the impossibility, but starts 
 with the assumption of the impossibility, of the 
 miraculous. Christianity cannot be allowed to 
 
26 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 claim a miraculous beginning, because it is a 
 universally valid law that everything must take 
 place as a development, a necessary development 
 from germs and causes already extant. He defines 
 the elements of the Christian faith as natural 
 developments of the Jewish religion, and as the 
 resultant of all the co-existent environments of 
 its birth and early career. The resurrection, for 
 example, of Christ was of course not an objective 
 fact, but the doctrine of the resurrection was the 
 necessary result of the firm (but mistaken) faith 
 of His disciples. Of His Godhead, too, at first 
 they never dreamed. The doctrine is a subse- 
 quent development. Again, Christianity became 
 in an early stage split up into two antagonistic 
 schools—Petrine and Pauline. None of the books, 
 therefore (such is the allegation) in which the 
 doctrine of the Godhead of Christ is fully 
 developed can be the composition of the first cen- 
 tury, and no books which are not decisively Petrine 
 or decisively Pauline can be genuine. With this 
 two-edged knife ready to hand, vigorous incisions 
 are made, and book after book disappears from 
 the Bible, and we are left with Romans, Corin- 
 thians, Galatians, Revelation, and with expur- 
 gated and very doubtfully admitted fragments of 
 the Synoptics. St. John, of course, is cut out, 
 and ascribed to some unknown author, after 
 160 A.D., reminding us of Mill’s statement, “‘ Any 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. 27 
 
 ** Alexandrine philosopher will supply us with any 
 “amount of such STUFF AS THIS.” 
 
 Strauss, equally with Baur, discards the miracu- 
 lous, and therefore, of course, utterly rejects any 
 accounts of alleged miracles performed by Jesus 
 Christ, or any doctrine of the miraculous super- 
 human nature of His person. The hero of a 
 biography must be entirely and clearly human. A 
 personage half human, half divine, may figure 
 plausibly enough in poetry or fable, but is never 
 at the present day chosen as the subject of 
 historical narrative. Historical credibility toler- 
 ates no miraculous interruption of the order of 
 events. The allowance of such miracles subverts 
 the very nature of science. 
 
 Renan’s is of course a much more popular and 
 charming book than Strauss’s, and is in some 
 respects a delicious intellectual picture, full of 
 sweetness and light. Renan, however, like 
 Strauss, will have no parley with the miraculous ; 
 except in the form of a legend, or a kind of pious 
 fraud. ‘In the name of universal experience, we 
 “‘ banish miracles from history.” (Not perhaps, 
 may I venture to add, from religion or from 
 poetry.) I need not dwell upon the facile waving 
 of the wand of this weaver of religious romances. 
 We remember it, most of us, all too well. In 
 Renan’s book, as has been well said by Maurice, 
 we have ‘ The life of a Jesus who was not the 
 
28 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 ‘“ Christ; who is not the king of men; who came 
 ‘ from no father in heaven; who baptized with no 
 “ spirit; who did not rise from the dead; who 
 ‘ claimed titles which were not his; who preached 
 ‘“mere deceptions; who yet is recognized as 
 ‘‘a hero by his biographer, and by thousands 
 ‘who have read the biography; who has been 
 “accepted as a substitute for the person whom in 
 ‘‘ our infancy we were taught to revere.” 
 
 The Jesus of the Frenchman has, in too many 
 instances, displaced the Christ of the Gospels, and 
 seems to many men more like a real person, with 
 a real history. 
 
 ‘The pure moral teaching of the Galilean 
 ‘‘Tdyls, the Galilean enthusiasm, the dark and 
 ‘‘ inexplicable fanaticism of the closing scenes; 
 ‘the feminine hallucination of the resurrection.” 
 These have fascinated where the Evangelists have 
 been scorned. One word more on this head. You 
 will be almost sure to see Renan’s Life of Jesus 
 advertised in Bradlaugh’s weekly paper! Care is 
 taken that it shall be known and read by English 
 working men, and that interest shall be taken in 
 it in popular assemblies. 
 
 Now then’ let us go from the criticisms of the 
 Tiibingen scholars, the ingenious assumptions of 
 the German philosopher, the elegant and polished 
 epigrams and attractive word-paintings of the 
 French Orientalist, to the Hall of Science, and 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. 29 
 
 let us listen to the popular lecturer, Mrs. Annie 
 Besant, joint editor, with Charles Bradlaugh, of 
 a popular Atheistic periodical. 
 
 Mrs. Besant then rose, and when the loud 
 applause had subsided, said, “The difficulty is 
 *“ not to prove that Christ was believed to be an 
 “historical personage after the fourth century, but 
 “to bridge over the years between A.D. I—300. 
 ** You cannot carry the history of Christ, and the 
 “history of the Gospel over that terrible chasm of 
 “three centuries. I will give you a coherent 
 “account of the heretical view, and I shall urge 
 that it is more in accordance with the facts of 
 history, human experience, scientific thought, 
 and common sense, than to accept the view 
 that the Jesus of the Gospels is an historical 
 character. We are agreed that the Jesus of the 
 Gospels is a supernatural character. His birth 
 of a Virgin, the marvels surrounding His infancy, 
 His wonderful baptism, His temptation by the 
 devil, His miracles of healing, of destruction, 
 and self-defence, His foreknowledge of His own 
 death, the darkness surrounding His Cross, His 
 Resurrection and Ascension. If you take all 
 these it is impossible to deny that His life is 
 supernatural and miraculous from beginning to 
 end. I do not say you cannot remove all these 
 miraculous surroundings, and still leave the 
 simple Jew, who went about as a teacher of the 
 
 6¢ 
 
 ‘6 
 
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30 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 ** people ; but you have then no longer the Jesus 
 ‘‘of the Gospels. But I have to deal with the 
 ‘“‘ Jesus of the Gospels, and I shall show how 
 ‘various myths floating about, became crystal- 
 ‘“‘ lized round the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 “IT cannot admit the miraculous. That Jesus of 
 ‘the Gospels is miraculous is a stumbling-block 
 “‘ at the veryoutset. There are so many incarnate 
 ‘“‘ gods in history, and they all present the same 
 ‘birthmarks. They are always born at such a 
 ‘‘ remote period, or at some such an out of the 
 ‘“‘ way place, that it.is impossible to submit their 
 ‘‘ claims to scientific investigation. Their births 
 ‘“‘ are always surrounded by prodigies ; they always 
 ‘‘ work miracles when they grow up; there is 
 ‘‘ always something mysterious in their deaths; 
 ‘“‘ they always ascend triumphant at last. I allege 
 ‘“‘that Jesus is one of these mythic characters. 
 ‘““ The essence of the spirit in which Science 
 ‘“‘ meets the record of Miracles, is the spirit of 
 ‘“‘ Hume, that it is much more likely that men 
 “should be deceived than that our whole experi- 
 “ence of nature should have been contradicted. 
 “You all act upon this belief in ordinary life. 
 ‘‘ Even those who accept the Gospel miracles 
 ‘‘pooh-pooh the modern ones.” Mrs. Besant 
 then goes on to expose the invalidity of the 
 testimony from the Fathers, after the manner of 
 the author of ‘‘ Supernatural Religion.” 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. Ses 
 
 I might quote more, but I really have not space, 
 it is enough to show us that the speculations of 
 the great sceptic, and the annihilation effected by 
 the “‘ higher criticisms” are not confined to the 
 study or the treatise. 
 
 The network of this Mission of Atheism, 
 accompanied by systematic attacks upon the 
 historical character of the New Testament, is 
 spread throughout England. 
 
 There is an “open air” propaganda in the 
 summer and autumn. You take up Mr. Brad- 
 laugh’s paper; you will see notices such as these:— 
 
 ““MIDLAND RatLway ARcHES.—Last Sunday 
 “Mr. Haslam delivered an excellent lecture on 
 “ the ‘ Contradictions of the Bible.’ ”’ 
 
 ““ CLERKENWELL GREEN.—Mr. Forder lectured 
 ‘on the ‘ Historical Character of Christ,’ to the 
 “largest audience of the season. There was 
 “some opposition, but Mr. Forder pleased the 
 ** audience by his reply.” 
 
 *“CLAREMONT HALL, PENTONVILLE. — Mr. 
 “Robert Forder lectured on ‘ Early Christianity,’ 
 “and showed the weakness of the evidence on 
 ‘“‘ which it rested and the entire absence of reliable 
 *““ testimony to its truth in the works of the Early 
 Fathers.” 
 
 ““STOCKTON BRANCH.—Dr. Aveling: ‘The 
 ““* Parentage of Man, according to Moses and 
 
32 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 “¢ according to Darwin.’ Evening: ‘Why I 
 
 ‘< ¢ dare not be a Christian.’ ”’* 
 
 ‘‘ STALYBRIDGE.—‘ Is another life possible or 
 
 ce cesifable.s | y | 
 ‘‘ FAILSWORTH.—New Secular Sunday Schools 
 opened.” 
 I suppose there are not less than twenty places 
 of popular atheistical resort in London alone, 
 open every Sunday, and there are branches in a 
 very large number of towns in England. Fore- 
 most is the Hall of Science, in Old Street, just 
 on the borders of Shoreditch; and I am told 
 that the personal influence of Mr. Bradlaugh 
 and the enthusiasm which he excites are most 
 remarkable. I have never been to one of these 
 Sunday lectures, but I have had authentic reports 
 of their proceedings. He is ‘“‘our Charlie,” “ the 
 “ thorough ;” ‘the thorough Razor—good and 
 ‘a keen cutter, highly-polished, firm yet easy, 
 * to the point, always ready, dangerous if handled 
 “ unfairly, sent out with a good case.” 
 
 It is not merely the lectures on Sundays, but 
 the social attractions of this and similar clubs 
 which are so important in their antitheistic and 
 anti-Christian tendency over both sexes. At this 
 club there are quadrille assemblies on Mondays 
 
 n~ 
 
 6é 
 
 * Another topic of this popular Lecturer, is now, I under- 
 stand, ‘‘ The Wickedness of God.”’ 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. aa 
 
 and Saturdays, elementary and advanced dancing 
 classes, billiard-rooms, coffee-rooms, etc. Even 
 children are drawn into the net, as one might well 
 suppose from the Sunday School system having 
 been seized upon by Secularists. A witness came 
 into court not long since. He was told to kiss 
 the Testament, which he held in his hand. 
 “* Please, sir, I object to kiss the New Testament.” 
 “What for?” ‘Please, sir, I am a Secularist.” 
 “How old are you?” ‘Twelve years, sir.” 
 “You may stand down.” 
 
 What an awful sermon this one revelation 
 preaches to us of what is going on around us! 
 
 Even if we had grounds for supposing that such 
 an exhibition as this were an isolated case, we 
 should be struck with astonishment and with 
 profound regret. But when we know what. is 
 going on in all the great centres of industry and 
 influence in England, we cannot but feel that the 
 youthful Atheist is one of a class which is receiv- 
 ing recruits every day to its ranks, and we are 
 filled with profound dismay, and ask where the 
 effect of this mission of Atheism and of Antichrist 
 is to end. Setting aside for the moment the 
 thought of a future life altogether, how disastrous, 
 one is led to exclaim, to all that is most dear to 
 us, both in personal purity and social and national 
 morality, must this strangling of our cradle faiths, 
 and this loosening of the hold of reverence and 
 love for God and Christ ultimately prove! 
 
 3 
 
34 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 IVi 
 
 The PHYSICIST may rejoice in the triumph of 
 science—or rather in the usurpation of universal 
 dominion which the philosophy of the ‘ad- 
 vanced ”’ is seeking to render complete; although 
 to a careful observer it ‘seems evident that, in 
 order to attain this triumph, physical science has 
 had to depart from the true methods of observa- 
 tion and experiment, and to soar in regions of 
 metaphysical conceptions, and, at the best, of 
 splendid guesses as to the origin of things and 
 the source and nature of the mystery of life, 
 before which true science is dumb. The 
 CRITICS may feel proud that their lonely and 
 laborious inquiries, or their too often preconceived 
 and arbitrary canons of interpretation, rejection, 
 and of acceptation of books formerly believed to 
 be genuine, have found for themselves a potent 
 voice among the masses of the people, but what 
 has the Moratist to say to all this? 
 
 The Basis gone, the Christian 7@0s swept away 
 by the relentless hand of an unscrupulous “‘ Free- 
 thought.” Where are we to look now for our 
 apxy in Eruics? Where is our standard and 
 sanction of RiGHT and WRONG? 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. 35 
 
 Very grave fears are necessarily excited in the 
 mind of. any man who has realised what an 
 immense service Christianity and, even, Theism 
 have done to mankind, when we are bidden, as 
 we are, to cease looking heavenward (except for 
 astronomical purposes), and when the bands of 
 righteousness and of veracity and of benevolence, 
 seem loosed from the souls of men! Even stopping 
 short, where, by the bye, we are now peremp- 
 torily ordered to stop short, at the grave, we 
 cannot but feel that a most awful loss has been 
 inflicted upon the human race; upon that very 
 humanity which, so far as I can understand the 
 mew science or nescience, we are bidden to 
 worship henceforth to the utmost of our power ! 
 You have taken away the Divine, you have elimi- 
 nated the Supernatural, you have robbed us of the 
 Authoritative Moral Law of Christ. Have some 
 ‘patience with us while, in what seems to you, 
 our stupid or superstitious dread, we ask you to 
 realize the imminent danger of the new situation, 
 and the moral horrors into which your irrevocable 
 decrees may introduce the world ! 
 
 The answers which we get to such expostula- 
 tions as these are very numerous. One, for 
 instance, of the most distinguished of modern 
 English philosophers, Mr. Herbert Spencer, has 
 done us the justice to admit that there 7s some 
 danger for morals in the new time coming unless 
 
 3 * 
 
36 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 fresh reserves of moral sanctions are brought up 
 in time from the camp of Evolution and of 
 Science. He has hurried forward his work on 
 Ethics, on the very ground that, the supernatural 
 supports and sanctions of morals being swept 
 away, there is a danger of men supposing that 
 there ave no moral standards or sanctions. ‘‘I 
 ** am the more anxious,” he tells us in his preface, 
 ** to indicate in outline, if I cannot complete this 
 ‘* final work, because the establishment of rules 
 ** of right conduct on a scientific basis is a press- 
 ‘‘ing need. Now that moral injunctions are 
 ‘* losing the authority given them by their supposed 
 ‘* sacred origin, the SECULARISATION OF MORALS IS 
 ‘‘ BECOME IMPERATIVE. I expect to present 
 ‘* moral rule in that attractive aspect which it has 
 *‘ when it ceases to be disturbed by superstition 
 ‘* and asceticism.” 
 
 I have read from time to time this new Bible of 
 the Evolutionist, and I am even yet at a loss to 
 find anything in it which supplies an adequate 
 substitute for God, and for Christ’s Authoritative 
 Teaching and Example. It is a most interesting 
 account of the genesis of the conscience and of 
 moral feeling, from pleasure and pain, and of the 
 evolution of conduct correlated to the evolution 
 of structures and functions, and a most persistent 
 assumption of the adequacy of the history (and 
 the hypotheses) of evolution and the survival of 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. By? 
 
 the fittest, to account for, and to satisfy the moral 
 longings of men. But upon the fundamental 
 questions of right and wrong, I cannot extract 
 an answer that will serve my turnasa man asking 
 for Light and Leading in the dark times coming 
 for Morals. ; 
 
 In this matter (that of our anxiety as to our 
 morality), Mr. Clifford is more trenchant, and 
 tells us his mind on this head, in a contribution 
 to a widely circulated magazine, lying, as the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury* says, on the tables of 
 all persons laying claim to culture or education, 
 for the use of their sons and daughters. Clifford 
 was not the man to whisper such things over rose 
 water. He announces plainly that, in losing 
 belief in God, we are parting with what is, at the 
 best, arefined and elevated pleasure to those who 
 can indulge in it. But he fails to see how the 
 foregoing of such a pleasure, when we have no 
 right to indulge in it, can produce, as a conse- 
 quence, a decline of morality. Lord Bacon 
 taught us, with all the weight of his authority 
 and eloquence, that the end of knowledge was 
 the glory of God, and the relief of man’s estate. 
 Clifford, and all too many with him, seem to be of 
 opinion that man’s estate can never be effectually 
 
 * Archbishop Tait, who was living when this Paper was 
 read. 
 
38 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 relieved until you get rid altogether of the dream 
 of God, of the miseries and wrongs of which it is 
 the foster-parent in men. Tantum Religio potuit 
 suadere malorum. We shall gain more than we 
 lose by parting with it altogether. Like a 
 deadly cancer, it had better come out.. Man will 
 be let free from the danger of dangers—the dread 
 of all dreads, the scourge—the scorpion—of sacer- 
 dotal Christianity. That is the system which 
 sapped the foundation of patriotism in the old 
 world; which well-nigh eradicated the habit of 
 intellectual honesty and truth-speaking, which 
 lowered men’s reverence for the marriage bond, 
 placing its sanction outside nature. Bring back 
 this, and the wreck of civilized Europe will be 
 darker than the darkest of the pastages. “ Keep 
 “the human Conscience clear of this.” Conscience! 
 What, sir, may we ask, is the voice of Conscience? 
 Have you not emptied it for me of all its charm 
 and authority, when you have demonstrated that 
 there is no Divine Speaker, of whose word it is 
 the Echo? No! is the reply. ‘* Your conscience 
 “is safe. It is the voice of our father man within: 
 ‘‘us!”’ That seems to me, I reply, hardly a scien- 
 tific expression. It sounds almost as mucha figure 
 of speech as that about “‘ Our Father in Heaven,” 
 which we learnt at our mother’s knee ; but that, 
 of course, is exploded with the rest of our cradle 
 faith. ‘Well; take this then. It ¢s the accumus' 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. 39 
 
 ‘* lated instinct of the race poured into each one of us, 
 “and overflowing as 1f the ocean were poured into a 
 “cup.” Thank you. I asked you for a scientific 
 formula, but you cannot leave it alone. You are 
 compelled to vulgarize and popularize it by figures 
 of speech, about oceans and cups! Just so. The 
 new Atheism must be made popular somehow, 
 and there is nothing ¢el/ls so well as an apt, and 
 yet homely illustration. 
 
 And, indeed, it is all too popular. Nay, any- 
 thing like dread of what may happen, when 
 Atheism reigns supreme, seems to be treated as 
 a kind of high treason to the human race. The 
 era of the complete expulsion of the faith and its 
 ministers from the earth, is looked upon as a 
 Utopia, to be. longed and laboured for, and to be 
 foreshadowed with gloating glee. Let us turn 
 from the rhetoric of the philosopher to that of 
 the more popular missionary of the good (and 
 godless) times which are coming. Here is an 
 article from Mr. Bradlaugh’s paper, written by 
 Dr. AvELING. It is‘a Dream of “‘ The Land of No 
 ‘¢ White-chokers.” Asort of Atheistic Apocalypse. 
 ‘‘ In the country of No White-chokers everybody 
 “looks happy and hopeful, because the evil men, 
 ‘‘ who have so long rendered the dwellers. in our 
 ‘‘ land unhappy and hopeless, are unknown there. 
 ‘To begin with, the mere physical relief to the 
 ‘eye is so great. The moral ugliness associated 
 
40 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 ce 
 
 with it is reflected on to the unfortunate garb, 
 
 ‘ just as the uniform of a convict, were it ever so 
 
 6¢ 
 
 ‘ec 
 
 artistic, would always be regarded by decent 
 people with aversion. It is the badge of intel- 
 lectual slavery, and very repulsive to thinking 
 people to-day. It may possibly be a fancy on 
 my part, but I seem to notice of late an instinc- 
 tive shrinking away from the unhappy wearers of 
 the slave garments, on the part of finer-featured 
 people in public haunts. Now in this other 
 country, these beings are not to be found. All 
 schools are free from this terrible incubus. The 
 prospectus of the establishment for boys and 
 girls (there are no young ladies’ seminaries, no 
 academies for young gentlemen), do not contain 
 the name of a single ‘ Reverend.’ When lectures 
 are given on Science or Art, the chair is never 
 taken by a limp black bag, with a whisp of 
 white tape round his neck. The wealth of the 
 country is infinitely enlarged compared with that 
 of other lands. Tithes, churchrates, Bishops’ 
 wages, all saved, as well as the money squan- 
 dered by sending out white-chokers to WOITy 
 savages. This money is utilized for the purpose 
 of increasing the bodily and mental comfort of 
 men, and brightening the existence of multi- 
 tudes. The founts of knowledge at the Univer- 
 sities are not poisoned at the source by flowing 
 
 “through so pestilent a mass of decaying and 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. 4I 
 
 “‘ decayed creeds. The words Heaven and Hell 
 “have no synonym in the country of No White- 
 “chokers. The blasphemy of the Christian 
 ** Heaven, and the horror of the Christian Hell 
 “are unknown. There is no one to teach these 
 “criminal doctrines. All are too happy, too 
 ‘busy to waste time over tales that have not 
 ‘even the truth or grace of fairy stories. Hence 
 “‘ children are much happier. The men with the 
 *‘ garb of slaves do not dim the home light with 
 “their accursed presence. As they grow up 
 “they are not blasted with the deadly influence 
 “of religion. The children are born, and enter 
 “into life with no intruding priest mumbling 
 ““meaningless blasphemies over their innocent 
 “existence. When the love time glows upon 
 “‘them, they are wedded in the sight of man 
 “‘ without a word of God or Heaven. When the 
 ** end comes, the dead are burnt, after the antique 
 ‘* Roman manner, and no religious rite mars 
 “the sacred loveliness of the thought. ‘He is 
 ** * passed, finished work a little earlier than we 
 “have. He rests from his labours, and his 
 ‘“‘* works and his memory are with us to-day, 
 ** * and all days. 
 
 The social reformers—the social moralists, have, 
 we see, according to this apocalypse, nothing to 
 fear from the threatened destruction of all the 
 existing sanctions and standards of goodness. 
 
 > 99 
 
42 ‘REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 These are the very things which stand in the me 
 of the new and happier times. 
 
 Now any one who asks himself what must be 
 the tendency of such popular writings as thesé 
 must be fearfully indifferent to human happiness 
 and to human progress, if his own answer to his 
 own question do not fill him with many appre- 
 hensions, and with many yearnings for the spirit 
 of Power and of Love, and a sound mind in 
 dealing with this state of things. The teaching 
 comes to this, that on.the Moral and Social sidé 
 of the account, we shall gain more than we losé 
 by the advent of Atheism and the reign of se 
 Secularist. 
 
 We might perhaps be disposed to ask thé 
 missionaries of this new Negation, whether, even 
 under this new régime, they would not be under 
 an incalculable debt to Jesus Christ, and to His 
 inestimable moral teaching. We might remind 
 them that Mr. Mill has told us that mankind were 
 right in pitching upon this man as the ideal object 
 of Reverence, and upon His teaching as that which 
 had conferred an immense benefit upon mankind. 
 We might remember that even Mr. Mill, rejecting 
 the miracles of Jesus Christ, not upon the 4 prior? 
 grounds of Hume, but on account of the meagre 
 evidence, as Mill considered it, in their favour; 
 has yet left it on record, as a legacy to this 
 generation, that there is no better translation of 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. 43 
 
 the Rules of Virtue, from the abstract into the 
 concrete, than to endeavour so to live as that 
 Christ would approve our life. But the new 
 Criticism sets itself to take off the robe of glory 
 which the devotion of ages has thrown round the 
 teaching of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels. 
 The more cultured and courteous indeed, 
 when Jesus is reported to have said something 
 in the Gospels which militates against their 
 theory of the sweet reasonableness of Christ, get 
 rid of the reported saying, by simply telling us 
 (ex cathedra)—“ He could not have said it.” But 
 this does not satify the crowd. _ 
 
 In popular penny pamphlets, now, you will find 
 quite another line is taken. The genuineness 
 of the books, or at least the authenticity . of 
 the report, is for the moment, taken for granted, 
 and then the words and sayings are criticised, 
 and in some instances condemned. One re- 
 members some such a treatment as this, years 
 ago, in Francis Newman’s ‘‘ Phases of Faith,” 
 where you will find, prefaced, indeed, by a con- 
 siderate warning to the sensitive reader, some 
 such an indictment drawn up against our Lord. 
 It is found, too, in some disciples of the Comtist 
 philosophy. But, as significant of the signs 
 of the times, take a penny pamphlet on the 
 “Sermon on the Mount,” by the same Apoca- 
 lyptic writer, whom I have already quoted at 
 some length— ; 
 
44 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 He complains (in his penny* pamphlet or tract) 
 of that sermon—that there is no scientific 
 method in it. ‘‘ Perhaps,’ he says, ‘‘it was badly 
 “ reported, but if these were really the words of 
 “God, there ought to have been no confusion 
 “in reporting.” But, however, taking the frag- 
 ment as we have it, Dr. Aveling complains that 
 there is no perception of the beautiful in it. 
 Our Lord seems to have been unhappily wanting 
 in a sense of beauty. Again, the sermon, and 
 the teaching and life of Jesus show that He 
 could sympathize with the unhappy, but had no 
 feeling for the joyousness of life. He never felt 
 the joy of being alive. Again, “He was ONE- 
 * SIDED:” 
 
 Again: the sermon is rich in platitudes. A 
 great deal of the advice had been given before. 
 
 At the same time, it is fanatical ; things are put 
 too extremely, e.g. over-meekness—quite condemn- 
 able. So, too, poverty of spirit. If Dr. Aveling 
 is told that he is misled by a bad or inadequate 
 translation, he says: “GOD ought to have looked 
 “ after the translation.” 
 
 Then, in this popular pamphlet, the precept 
 respecting turning the cheek to the striker is 
 condemned as cowardly. 
 
 Our Lord’s warning of hell-fire is condemned 
 Se Sena Se ee 
 
 * I refer to the price of the pamphlet that we may realise 
 its popular character and extended circulation. 
 
THE PREVALENCE OF UNBELIEF. 45 
 
 as fanatical. His threats are hideous. ‘“ As men 
 “become more human they will become less Christian !”’ 
 
 Then He was too wnworldly for our pamphleteer. 
 His thoughts concentrated on the unreal, 
 imaginary, other world. Dr. Aveling knows of 
 no deeper condemnation. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Let these instances suffice. They are most 
 significant of the kind of influence that is being 
 exerted, and of the indomitable and _ untiring 
 energy with which the Faith is being assailed in 
 popular, as well as in so-called philosophical 
 circles. They bear out the statement with which 
 I began, that unbelief, philosophical and popular, 
 invades every province of human thought, and 
 that it boasts of being able to find a basis of 
 morals ; an object of worship, mankind ; a com- 
 pensation for the loss of God, and an advance 
 upon the teaching of Christ. 
 
 This is the way in which Science is said to 
 contradict the most sacred traditions of the 
 human race; this is the way in which all religions 
 (except the religion which has no God) tend to 
 be discussed ; and while I am penning the last 
 pages of this hastily written Essay, a lady enters 
 my study, the wife of an East End clergyman, and 
 
46 REASONABLE APPREHENSIONS. 
 
 tells me their great enemy, in a parish of 20,000, 
 is not Dissent, but Infidelity. ‘But you have 
 ‘‘ been,” she says, “‘ in the West of London, too; 
 ‘‘ how is it there?” I answer, “No BETTER — 
 “the atmosphere is charged with it. Any day 
 *“‘ we may have a storm.” 
 
 “Madam, knowing what we know, hearing 
 “ what we hear, do you wonder that I get tired 
 ‘* of discussions upon points on which disciples of 
 “Jesus differ, and that I cannot fan the flame of 
 ‘my enthusiasm in favour.of, or in‘ opposition to, 
 “vestments, or attitudes, or positions. When all 
 ‘the foundations of the earth are out of course, 
 ‘‘ T blame no man who thinks he is in the right in 
 ‘ spending his energies, his reverence on these 
 ‘things. To jim they may be of infinite value. 
 ‘‘ For myself, I am comparatively indifferent to 
 ** Ritual!” 
 
PARE Re Ls 
 
 REASSURING HINTS, WITH FURTHER 
 ELUCIDATIONS. 
 
citie” Dl eae 
 " ¥ ; 
 
 7. a i ’ 
 ae » ia 
 a” 
 
 AP 
 
PAPER Er 
 
 REASSURING HINTS, 
 WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 
 
 _—_——_ 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I. My former paper contained many quotations, 
 some of them very unpleasant and shocking to 
 the Christian ear. 
 
 I was not surprised at the expressions (I had 
 almost said the outbursts) of disapproval and 
 sorrow with which those quotations were greeted. 
 But they have answered the purpose which I had 
 in view when I made them. They have helped 
 some of my brother clergymen, and many of the 
 laity, to realise, as they had never done before, 
 not only the nature but the prevalence of modern 
 unbelief. They have helped some of us to See, 
 as it were, with our own eyes, how persistently 
 and thoroughly the missionaries of unbelief in its 
 most extreme and actively hostile form are at 
 work among the people of this country. We are 
 thoroughly disabused now of the mistaken notion 
 that it is only scientific or learned or educated 
 persons who take an interest in the results of 
 
 4 
 
50 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 metaphysical theories, or of Historical and 
 Biblical Criticism, or who are attracted by the 
 offer of a new Basis for Morals, ‘‘now that 
 “all moral injunctions are losing the authority 
 “* siven them by their supposed sacred origin.’”’* 
 
 Thus far, then, I have reason to be satisfied 
 with the result of my first Paper, and, for many 
 reasons, I could be well content to proceed no 
 further in this business. But I'am met by the 
 reiterated request of your Secretary that I should 
 go on with at least one more Paper on the subject, 
 and I am asked by many correspondents whose 
 opinion I highly value, to make that Paper sugges- 
 tive, to some extent at least, of the ** Answers,” 
 to be given to the missionaries of unbelief, and of 
 the method and the spirit in which the clergy 
 should endeavour to treat the whole tone of mind 
 which those missionaries are endeavouring to 
 produce among the masses of the people, especially 
 in the more important centres of population and 
 intelligence. 
 
 Urged, then, by these requests, I venture, 
 although with extreme diffidence, once more to 
 enter upon the subject of my former Paper. 
 What I am about to say will be, I trust, of some 
 help to at least a few of us, in dealing with the 
 questions at issue between the Christian and the 
 
 a a eee 
 
 * Cf. Herbert Spencer’s Data of Ethics. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 51 
 
 Atheist or Secularist.. My remarks at any rate 
 will have this use—they will help still further to 
 elucidate the thoroughness of the nature of the 
 antagonistic influences which are active in our 
 midst, while, at the same time, they will demon: 
 strate the necessity of our being at least equally 
 thorough in our method of treating these funda- 
 mental principles of life and of morals, which are 
 either openly attacked or secretly undermined, 
 not only by many philosophical sceptics and 
 metaphysical scientists, but by eloquent popular 
 lecturers and pamphleteers of our day. 
 
 II. Before, however, I proceed to the specific 
 discussions of these questions, there are a few 
 preliminary suggestions which I think it will be 
 well to offer as to the general spirit in which we 
 should approach their further consideration. One 
 or two such general suggestions seem especially 
 advisable if answers are wanted which are likely 
 to have any lasting effect upon others. 
 
 The most important preliminary suggestion 
 seems to be this—“‘ Let us be fersonal with our: 
 “ selves—let each one of us be personal with 
 “himself upon this matter.” It is, I think, of 
 the greatest importance that we should go over 
 carefully and periodically, each man for himself, 
 the grounds, which each one feels privately, for 
 himself to afford the strongest support to his faith 
 in the articles of the Christian Creed. His 
 
 4 * 
 
52 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 understanding, dealing with ascertained facts, 
 may be expected to afford some support at least 
 to each Christian man’s individual convictions 
 and hopes. We ought to personally feel ourselves 
 capable of making use of those supports, and of 
 realising their strength in our own case. Each 
 clergyman ought to go into a kind of Intellectual 
 Retreat from time to time. The condition of our 
 modern life, the tendency to deal at second-hand 
 with the most awful questions of Theology and 
 Morals, the whole tone of our Philosophical and 
 Religious worlds, should force us into severe and 
 unsparing self-examination as to the grounds upon 
 which we can, most satisfactorily to ourselves, 
 give a reason for the ‘‘ Hope that is in us.” 
 
 Polemically, indeed, it may be advantageous to 
 _ observe carefully the effect which this or that line 
 of argument may produce in others. But our 
 first consideration is, not ‘‘ what seems to be an 
 ** effective argument or an affecting appeal to the 
 ** world at large,” but, ‘‘ what have we found to be 
 “the most thoroughly effective and the most 
 ‘enduring arguments in our own case ?”’ 
 
 I believe that in the long run we should gain 
 immensely, even controversially, if we did not set 
 about the consideration of these topics as con- 
 troversialists, but as men betaking themselves to 
 private meditation and personal self-introspection. 
 There would be, I think, a freshness, even where 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. Sa 
 
 there was no eminent ability in our method of 
 speaking upon such topics as those embraced in 
 this paper, a freshness which would tell immensely 
 in the long run upon others with whom we came 
 in contact, if we thought out carefully our own 
 individual intellectual position from time to time, 
 afresh, and used our book-work as a help rather 
 than a substitute for painful private thought. 
 We hear and speak much now of the influence of 
 the clergy. The result of my own observation is 
 the conviction that those clergymen exercise the 
 most lasting and beneficial influence who THINK 
 THE LEAST ABOUT IT, and whose thoughts are 
 not too frequently concentrated upon devising 
 methods—or machinery—for making their office 
 respected or their Church a Power. This observa- 
 tion applies first of all to our general work, 
 parochial and ministerial, but it applies also to 
 our influence with, and our power to help or 
 convince, those minds over whom the clouds of 
 doubt and the arguments and innuendos of the 
 Atheist or the Agnostic have cast a shadow. If 
 we want to meet and to remove this terrible 
 trouble, if we want to counteract the influence of 
 these arguments (as I pray God we may) we shall 
 get on better if we first of all are clear in our 
 own minds as to the considerations which weigh 
 most with us and are the greatest help to us in 
 our private thoughts on these matters, when we 
 
54 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 are not thinking of looking for weapons of con- 
 troversy. Influence such as we want in these 
 days is like happiness, in this respect; we shall 
 get more of it if we are not rae heks trying and 
 scheming to obtain it. 
 
 I make these preliminary observations for two 
 reasons. 
 
 First, because I want to warn you at the outset 
 that I am not about to produce a series of ready- 
 made arguments, which can be carried as it were 
 in one’s hand ready to be produced at a public 
 meeting or in sermons, or upon the arrival of an 
 Atheist in our study. Ready-made arguments of 
 this kind, like ready-made clothes, have this 
 drawback, that they very often do not fit the 
 individual case when most wanted for that pur- 
 pose. Even as a matter of influence, the man 
 who makes his listeners feel that he has thought 
 out, at least, something for himself, and that he 
 has carefully appreciated rather than blindly 
 followed the thoughts of others, will leave a much 
 more lasting impression behind him, than even a 
 much abler reasoner is likely to create, who merely 
 awakens in his audience a feeling of his own 
 cleverness or learning, or a sense of his being a 
 dangerous opponent to encounter upon the arena 
 of a logical discussion. Let us remember we 
 have to deal with the whole man in each man, with 
 the tone of mind, with the practical reason, with 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 55 
 
 the conscience and the emotions; and a sharp or 
 ready answer (which we have not made our own, 
 and the force of which we secretly distrust our- 
 selves), is not a weapon which, except in very 
 rare cases, reaches the springs of this complex 
 organization, or moves the /ife out of the darkness 
 of doubt. 
 
 III. And, secondly, I am afraid I say what I do, 
 in this introduction, from a somewhat personal 
 motive, and from a desire to offer some sort of 
 apology beforehand for what may seem to some 
 of you the egotism of some of my subsequent 
 remarks, and for my presumption in venturing 
 (even when asked to do so) upon questions which 
 can only be successfully approached by the Meta- 
 physician, the Critic, or the Moral Philosopher. 
 
 With reference to the egotistic method to be 
 found in some of the following observations, I can 
 only say that I am sure it has tended to humiliate 
 me by forcing upon me the knowledge of my own 
 need of the help of others in trying to think for 
 myself, and by engendering in me an appreciation 
 of the extreme difficulty with which I can think 
 at all so as to be of use to any one but myself. 
 But if the sense of having listened to an egotist 
 should still remain, I cannot help it. With Pro- 
 fessor Grote, I can only say, ‘‘It is a cardinal 
 ‘‘ maxim of mine that every one’s thought should 
 “be his own, and that in reading what others 
 
56 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 ‘‘ have written it isa matter continually occurring 
 ““to me how much better it would have been 
 “if they had been more egotistic—if they had 
 “‘ described the manner in which the thing had 
 “come to present itself to their mind, and let us 
 ** a little see their thought in the forming.”* 
 
 And then I must just add here, in further justifi- 
 cation ofthe line of thought I am about to pursue, 
 that I do not see how it is possible now for us to 
 avoid the metaphysical, the critical, or the moral 
 aspects of the questions at issue. If we do avoid 
 them, we may as well give up the whole question 
 at once, and ‘“‘let things drive”’ as, and where, 
 they may. 
 
 Mr. Bradlaugh, Mrs. Besant, Dr. Aveling, Mr. 
 Forder, will not be persuaded to avoid these 
 aspects of the controversy. They and their 
 coadjutors know perfectly well how to assimilate 
 and then to popularise the result of the Materialist 
 Metaphysic, of the most ‘‘ hacking” criticism, and 
 of the most elaborate philosophical efforts for the 
 complete secularization of morals. 
 
 Under these circumstances, do not let us be 
 frightened at the physicist’s denunciation of meta- 
 physics, or allow ourselves to be misled by the 
 phraseology of those who use the word “as a 
 
 * Compare Professor Grote’s Introduction to his ‘‘ Explo- 
 ‘* ratio Philosophica,”’ p. xlv. to the end. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. ay! 
 
 “stone to throw at a dog,’ and who yet go on, 
 all the same, talking metaphysics without owning 
 it, and invading the province of the metaphysician 
 and the theologian at every turn, Let us, at any 
 rate, become metaphysicians enough to know a 
 metaphysical conception when we meet with it, 
 even when it comes to us, as do the atoms of 
 modern science, in the garb of a positive physical 
 discovery.* So much, then, as an excuse for 
 anything in this Paper which may be censured as 
 trenching on the ground of the metaphysician. 
 The fact is, I cannot “think upon thought,” I 
 cannot meet the philosophical or the popular 
 scepticism, I cannot confront the materialist’s — 
 or the atheist’s hypothesis, without using lan- 
 guage which, in the mind of some, may lay me 
 open to such a censure. I believe it would be 
 better if we clergymen used such language more 
 frequently than we do; and if more of us spent 
 more time and labour in those metaphysical 
 studies which, so long as men have the gifts 
 
 * Compare Lange, translated by Dr. Martineau: —‘‘ There 
 ‘‘is scarcely a more naive expression of the materialism of 
 ‘the day than escapes from Biichner, when he calls the 
 ‘atoms of modern times ‘discoveries of natural science,’ 
 ‘‘ while those of the ancients are said to have been ‘ arbitrary 
 ‘‘ speculative representations.’ In point of fact, the atomic 
 ‘ doctrine of to-day is still what it was in the time of Demo- 
 “critus. It has st¢ll not lost its metaphysical character.” 
 
58 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 of thought and speech, will never lose their interest 
 for mankind, or cease to be of the deepest interest 
 to the theologian. 
 
 And, finally, to bring these introductory sug- 
 gestions to a close, I must just say, first, with 
 reference to Criticism, that I think it will be an 
 immense gain to the Church when every clergy- 
 man shall look upon it as part of his work (not 
 as part merely of the occupation of his leisure 
 hours) to endeavour to realise for himself the 
 nature and extent of the evidence which exists 
 in proof of, to say the least, the trustworthy 
 character of the main outlines of the Gospel 
 histories, and of the primitive doctrine of the 
 Divine Person of our Lord. And then, secondly, 
 with reference to Moral Philosophy, I will add that 
 every clergyman, not to say every fairly-educated 
 Christian, should spend at least some of his time 
 and energy in endeavouring to gain, and to retain, 
 an intelligent appreciation of the relations of 
 Christian morals to the principle of moral philo- 
 sophy generally, and to those of modern ethical 
 systems in particular. Let us, then, now go back 
 to the four main divisions of our first Paper, 
 Take first the first division of the subject. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 59 
 
 T 
 
 . (A) I. We were brought face to face there with 
 this result. No God. No intelligent presiding 
 Mind. No design, no final causes discernible 
 in the universe. | 
 
 Now, in dealing with these results, or alleged 
 results, of modern science, to what sources of 
 a sustaining character, to’ what line of thought 
 and argument, have we found it most hopeful 
 to recur? : 
 
 So far as I am concerned, I feel sure that the 
 soundest Theistic argument to start with is one 
 which starts from an intuttive certainty. The one 
 existence of which I am certain, of which I was 
 certain long before I had any power to acquire 
 or express the notion of existence in the abstract, 
 is that of my own personal being. “J” am “I.” 
 This seems to me, notwithstanding objections 
 which I shall notice immediately, to be the first 
 and the ultimate certainty, although it may also 
 be the first and the ultimate mystery. Nothing 
 can be so certain to me as myself. My own 
 personal identity remains an object of knowledge, 
 of intuitive knowledge, whatever else gives way. 
 And as it is with me, so it is with every man. It 
 is this ‘‘I” upon the real existence of which I 
 proceed in every act, in every observation, in 
 every communication which I. make with..any 
 
60 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 other person. When the scientist, be he student 
 of organic or of inorganic nature, comes to me 
 with a report of his observations, his discoveries, 
 his inferences, it is an ‘‘ I” whoreportsto an “I.” 
 Whatever may be predicated of the phenomena, 
 whatever doubt there may be as to the nature 
 of the proof of the objective reality of the external 
 world at all (and I need not say there are very 
 strong doubts entertained on this head), one thing 
 is certain to the reporter—his own personal being, 
 his own personal identity. One thing also is 
 certain, to me, the listener or learner—my personal 
 being, my personal identity. If the scientist tells 
 me he can find no traces of mind in the pheno- 
 mena he investigates, and that he brings with 
 him no report of the existence of anything which 
 is beyond the conceivable potentiality of Matter, 
 or of Matter plus Force, to produce, I may not 
 be able, I may not even wish, then and there, to 
 dispute his conclusions: but of one thing at least 
 I am certain, Mind was necessary to the obser- 
 tion and to the negative inference. An “I” was 
 present at the process—an ‘‘ I” brings the report. 
 An “I” is offering indisputable evidence to 
 me, and to himself, of the existence of the very 
 Intelligence, of the very order of being, of which 
 he reports that he cannot find traces through his 
 science. 
 
 II. Here, then, is the known premise of exist- 
 
 OE ——— 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 61 
 
 ence, from which I might hope to be permitted to 
 argue uninterruptedly to any conclusion which 
 may be legitimately deduced from it. But any 
 such a hope will be premature. I said that, as 
 we proceeded, we should probably find, in our 
 resumed considerations of this topic, yet further 
 evidence of the thoroughness with which the 
 grounds of even our Theistic creeds are under- 
 mined; and here such evidence arrives. There 
 are many who will by no means allow even this 
 apparently self-evident truth, and this intuitive 
 verdict of consciousness, to pass by unchallenged. 
 Perhaps from a secret intimation, which his own 
 common sense seems to furnish, of the tremend- 
 ous lever which this intuitive certainty affords to 
 lift us at once out of the sphere of mere phenomena 
 into that of real being, and from a sense of the 
 blow which the very thought of it may inflict upon 
 the very conception of a mindless universe, our 
 atheistic philosopher will be found to deny the 
 validity of the verdict of consciousness on this 
 point, and to denounce this apparently innocent 
 insistance upon my own personal knowledge of 
 my personal identity as an instance of an almost 
 ineradicable vice of the species—an instance, in 
 short, of that tendency to personify,—which seems 
 from his point of view to be almost the original 
 sin of human nature. 
 
 I am not conscious, so I am invited to believe, 
 
62 ' °° “REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 of this mysterious “ self,” or ‘‘ Ego,” or ‘ mind,” 
 —I am conscious, only, of certain sensations; 
 feelings, perceptions, and of the memory of them: 
 What I call: my mind or self is ‘only a series or 
 thread of these sensations and mental conditions. 
 Mr. Baldwin M. Smith for instance, a writer in 
 the National Reformer, thinks it is more correct 
 to say that Mind is no entity, no substance, no 
 function. It is but a word, a name; the word, 
 the name, the label by which we express collectively 
 the functions of the brain and nerves. 
 
 A greater than Mr. Smith, the great David 
 Hume himself, has resorted to a not dissimilar 
 figure of speech, in elucidation of his proof that 
 we have no such idea of ‘self, of its identity or 
 simplicity, as I, in common with other mistaken 
 persons, have’ ventured to affirm that we have. 
 He tells us that setting aside certain metaphy- 
 sicians, he ventures to affirm of the rest of mankind 
 that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of 
 different perceptions, which succeed each other 
 with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual 
 fluxand movement. The mind, continues the great 
 sceptic, is a kind of theatre where several percep- 
 tions successively make their appearance ; pass, 
 re-pass, glide away and mingle in an infinite 
 variety of postures and situations. There is no 
 simplicity in it at one time, nor ¢dentity in different 
 times, whatever natural propension we may have 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 63 
 
 to imagine that simplicity and identity. ‘The 
 ** comparison of the theatre,” he continues, ‘‘ must 
 “not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions 
 “* only that constitute the mind.” * 
 
 III. But I always think when I réad such 
 remarks as these, that one is bound to go further 
 and ask this question,—Are you not in a rhetorical 
 tangle after all? This thread or series, is itia 
 thread or series which is conscious of itself as 
 a series? t And are you who are speaking thus 
 of it, the thread or series?» Does this label put 
 itself upon itself? Does this bundle tie itself up? 
 Does a thread or series or bundle of perceptions 
 say “‘we, or I’’? It is quite clear that the ‘‘mind” 
 can only be spoken of in this fashion, when the 
 
 * See Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature, page 334, 
 vol. i. Green and Grose’s edition. The whole section of 
 ‘‘ Personal Identity’ is deeply interesting, and helps us to 
 understand the genesis of much of our modern scepticism. 
 
 + Cf. Mr. Mill’s Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philo- 
 sophy :—‘‘ If we speak of the mind as a series of feelings, we 
 ‘‘ are obliged to complete the statement, by calling it a series 
 ‘* of feelings which is aware of itself as past and future, and we 
 ‘‘ are reduced to the alternative of believing that the mind or 
 ‘‘ Ego is something different from any feelings or possibilities 
 ‘of them, or of accepting the paradox that something which 
 ‘« ex hypothest is but a series of feelings, can be aware of itself 
 ‘as aseries. The truth is, that we are here face to face with 
 “that final inexplicability at which, as Sir W. Hamilton 
 ‘“‘ observes, we inevitably arrive when we reach ultimate 
 se tacts. 
 
64 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 mind means to the speaker something other or 
 something less than himself, and that the secret of 
 the whole confusion is explained when we force 
 ourselves to clearly state at every turn whether 
 we use these two terms, the term ‘‘1” or “‘ self,” 
 on the one hand, and the term ‘“‘ mind” or 
 ‘bundle of perceptions” on the other, as identical 
 or distinct. 
 
 If, when you talk of your mind as “ my mind,” 
 you only mean a bundle or series of perceptions, 
 passing and re-passing and gliding, then it is quite 
 clear to me that you are using the term Mind to 
 signify something distinct from that connoted by 
 the term “1” or “‘self.” But if, when you speak 
 of your mind as ‘“‘my mind,” you really mean 
 yourself, your whole self, your simple and identical 
 self, then it seems to me impossible to define your 
 mind as a bundle of perceptions, or as a label put 
 upon anything—function or other thing—without 
 talking nonsense, or, if that be too much to say, 
 without at any rate using a mere figure of speech 
 as if it were a real adequate definition. 
 
 I go back, then, to my own intuitive certainty, 
 to what even Dr. Brown calls the irresistible law 
 of our nature, which impresses us with the con- 
 viction of our identity. 
 
 I venture to think with Locke,* that it is 
 
 * Locke’s Human Understanding, book iv. chap. x. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 65 
 
 beyond question that man has a clear conception 
 of his own being—he knows certainly that he 
 exists, although I do not want to be rude enough 
 to do more than quote from Locke his somewhat 
 ironical remark, “that, if any one is sceptical 
 ‘enough to pretend to deny his own existence, let 
 “him for me, enjoy his beloved happiness, until 
 “hunger or some other pain convinces him to 
 etna contrary? 
 
 Feelings, sensations, thoughts, are, to me, 
 utterly empty concepts, unless I can call them 
 “mine” or “thine” or some other man’s.* In 
 the midst of all those “ passing and re-passing 
 “and gliding perceptions,” I, the unit being, 
 recollect (no mere bundle of perceptions can 
 recollect), judge, decide. Nay, my very conscious- 
 ness of the passing, the bygone, the successive 
 character of these perceptions is due, I cannot 
 help thinking, to the existence of my own perma- 
 nent self. I should be incapable of retaining the 
 memory of these states, or of the memory of change 
 and succession at all, if they were not mine 
 Bite. | 
 
 I feel sure then of my own personal identity, 
 and I believe I shall feel sure of it for ever, unless 
 
 a Sw a A Os eS 
 
 * “A mental state which is not produced or felt by an 
 ‘‘ individual self is as inconceivable as a triangle without three 
 ‘‘ angles, or a square without four sides.’’—Noan PORTER, 
 on Human Intellect, p. 95. 
 
 - 
 
66 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 I become insane, and then I may lose this con- 
 sciousness, as many insane people do, and I may 
 be bewildered and victimised by a number of 
 uncontrolled and unconnected impressions, so that 
 I may think that I am not one but many, like 
 the man whose name was Legion, of whom our 
 Gospels tell. 
 
 This consciousness of self, this intuitive certainty 
 which each one has of his own existence and his 
 own personal identity, should be firmly grasped 
 and strongly insisted on, with one’s self, for it 
 may prove of great service as an aid to faith in an 
 unseen Mind above us, to say nothing of the help 
 it may afford to each man in realising his own 
 personal responsibility to an Eternal Judge. You 
 may remember the use made of this consciousness 
 of identity by Butler, in the first chapter of his 
 Analogy, that on a “ Future Life.” We may see 
 in this consciousness an argument also, or at least 
 I think the solid ground of an argument, for the 
 personal nature and personal origin of this Life. 
 It prepares us, at any rate for the apprehension of 
 Personality and Unity of Being above us. It helps 
 us to grasp the thought of the Permanence of 
 Mind. We feel that time and change do not 
 destroy this personal identity. Every particle of 
 my body may have changed, there may not be a 
 single particle in it which went to make it up 
 thirty years ago, yet J am the same “I.” J stood 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 67 
 
 upon that bridge, I entered upon that. binding 
 engagement, I uttered that passionate word. But 
 not only so, thousands of thoughts have coursed 
 through me, many mental states have come and 
 gone, my ideas, my tastes, my very character may 
 have changed again and again, but none of these 
 changes affect in the least degree my personal 
 identity nor the intuitive certainty which I have 
 of that identity. 
 
 IV. This, then, is the known existence from 
 which we have to start. Very well then, take this 
 intuitive certainty of my own existence. What 
 upon reflection, can I make of this, as an aid to 
 my faith in a living personal God? Why can I 
 not rest satisfied with my initial certainty and 
 make the best of this existence, without prying 
 into anything beyond, or asking any troublesome 
 questions of myself about the why, the whence, 
 the whither? The answer is not far to seek. I 
 cannot rest satisfied with the mere recognition of 
 this existence of mine as real, because by the very 
 nature of that existence—being, as it is, intelligent 
 and yet consciously finite—I am driven to seek 
 for a Cause of it (and from all I can gather, 
 every one else is equally driven to the same 
 question). I apply to myself the same principle 
 which I apply to every item of my experience, a 
 principle which may be summed up briefly thus; 
 ‘All finite and limited existence must have a 
 
 Bie 
 
68 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 ‘‘ Cause,” and it is contained in the very concep- 
 tion of Cause that there should be in it Power 
 adequate to the production of the effect, and, in 
 the case at any rate which we are now considering, 
 power superior to the effect. This craving in man, 
 this ‘‘ unwiderstehlicher Hang,” after a Cause is a 
 fact of experience. The existence of this conception 
 in the human mind must be acknowledged, even by 
 those who look upon it as a mistaken appetite, 
 and a subjective delusion—as a phantom-chase 
 in which the human race has got into the habit 
 of indulging itself. I am driven by the causal 
 appetency, which is, I think, the result of my 
 sense of my own utter powerlessness to conceive of 
 myself as self-caused or self-sustained, combined with 
 an undefined conception of the possible existence 
 of a Being who has the power of imparting 
 existence, I am thus driven, I say, to ask for a 
 Superior Intelligence to whom I may attribute my 
 own Intelligence, and of whom I may say, ‘‘7¢ 7s 
 ** He that hath made me, and not I myself.” “ He 
 ** holdeth my soul in life!”” The case I am in, is 
 that of an intelligent being asking for an intelli- 
 gent Cause of my being, and of a consciously 
 finite and limited Being with no power of self- 
 causation, asking for an adequate Cause, and 
 therefore a Superior and Intelligent Cause of my 
 existence. And ultimately, this craving or demand, 
 this thirst of my intelligent nature, will find no 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 69 
 
 satisfaction until it reaches a Supreme Being and 
 an Infinite as well as transcendent and Intellectual 
 First Cause. This last assertion I make upon 
 this ground, that, even if I am assured of a Cause 
 of myself superior to myself and yet not infinite 
 or self-existent, the same reasoning or craving 
 will apply again in the case of the presumed 
 transcendent but finite or dependent being (I 
 must find His Superior), and thus, by one step or 
 by many, I shall be led to acknowledge an Infinite 
 Intelligent First Cause as the only adequate 
 satisfaction to my intellectual cravings.* 
 
 The old faith, then, of my fathers, which pro- 
 claims the existence of One Supreme Intelligent 
 Being, the First Cause of my Life, and of all 
 intelligent life—is a faith which offers an adequate 
 ground and reason for (which in short accounts 
 for) the only existence of which I am intuitively 
 certain, while at the same time it affords a real 
 satisfaction to an ineradicable craving of the 
 human mind. 
 
 Here surely then is a course of thought which 
 may prove helpful to some. It almost at first 
 sight might seem worthy of being called a proof 
 of the Theist’s position. That position as here 
 
 * Cf. The argument for the Intellectual Character of the 
 first Cause, by George Gilbert Scott. A book to be carefully 
 studied. 
 
70 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 expounded is, as has been well said by Mr. Scott, 
 “© a conclusion of a syllogism of which the minor 
 ‘is the assertion of a fact which is intuitively 
 “ known, and the major a principle which we of 
 ‘“‘ necessity apply to every item in the aggregate 
 “‘ of experience, to every fact with which we are 
 ‘‘ brought in contact.’’ But suppose we agree to 
 call these reflections by a less ambitious name 
 than that of proof. Suppose we only say that 
 what we have here suggested is surely some 
 support of our faith in a living God. Even so, 
 we shall be wise not to pass on too rapidly 
 without asking ourselves what the student of 
 physics or the inductive logician will be likely 
 to say to us on this head. 
 
 V. (a) For instance, this ineradicable causal 
 appetency which we thought might stand for our 
 major premise, may we hope to pass unchallenged 
 as we produce it? JI am afraid not; and if so, 
 we had better look to it. 
 
 (b) And then again as to this intuitive certainty of 
 my own Intelligence, which was to serve as our minor 
 premise. There were some ominous words at the 
 close of Mr. Smith’s proposals for a new* defini- 
 tion of Mind, which we passed by at the time 
 without comment, words about the functions of 
 the brain and nerves, which may serve to remind 
 
 * See page 62. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 71 
 
 us of a tendency to which the exclusive study of 
 Physiology is apt to give rise; a tendency, I mean, 
 to obscure the clearness of our apprehension of 
 the reality of Intelligence, and of the essential 
 distinctness of Consciousness from all its physical 
 accompaniments. 
 
 (a) And first with reference to causality. We 
 shall be met, I need hardly tell you, by philo- 
 sophical and scientific repudiation of our notion 
 of Cause, or of any mysterious tie between Cause 
 and effect, or of any active power in the cause, or 
 of any passive power in the effect such as ordinary 
 people and theologians dream of. 
 
 Hume has demonstrated, we may be reminded, 
 that experience only shows Conjunction, not 
 necessary connection between what we call cause 
 and effect. The supposed ‘‘connection,” or power 
 of production, only exists in the imagination. It 
 is the result of a feeling, of a customary transition 
 of the imagination from one object to its usual 
 attendant. ‘‘ Nothing further,’ says our lucid 
 sceptic, ‘‘is the case. Contemplate the subject 
 on all sides; you will never find any other origin 
 of that idea.” The student of Physical Science, 
 again, seems to bring corroborative evidence, so 
 far at least as the negative side of Hume’s specula- 
 tions go. Hecan nowhere find this ‘‘ mysterious 
 tie.” From every department of scientific research, 
 be it inorganic or organic nature, be it the earth 
 
Hie REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 or the sky, the plant or the animal, there is but 
 one report,—all that can be observed is an invari- 
 able order of succession. A cause, in philosophical 
 and scientific language, does not mean a something 
 in which there resides some mysterious “ power ” 
 or “affection” which produces another something. 
 It means only an invariable antecedent,* or 
 concurrence of antecedents. An effect is, in 
 philosophical, or, at least, in scientific terminology, 
 a fact or event, or better, a phenomenon or con- 
 currence of phenomena which has been observed 
 to be a constant consequent of such a concurrence 
 of antecedent phenomena, as we call a “ cause.” 
 Well, if this is all the sceptical philosophy, 
 through its most illustrious modern representative, 
 can tell us of the nature and origin of our notion 
 of Cause; if these are the only causes the man of 
 science can find for us in nature, I think we need 
 not be angry with either philosopher or scientist 
 for telling us the result in the plainest possible 
 language. But we may fairly say that they have 
 not found what we want, nor what they want, yet. 
 Certainly they have not satisfied that original 
 intellectual craving of the human mind after an 
 eit Ae eee ee ee 1 A 
 
 * Mr. Mill’s amended definition is “our invariable and 
 ‘‘ unconditional antecedent.’ But for the purposes before 
 us in this paper we have no need to discuss this amendment 
 nor Dr. Reid’s ‘‘ Reductio ad absurdum,”’ which it was 
 designed to meet. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. She 
 
 efficient Cause which first set Philosophy and 
 Science agoing, and keeps them agoing now. 
 
 The conclusions of Hume may be as he puts it, 
 “agreeable to scepticism,” and yet the words 
 which I will now quote from him have a ring of 
 sadness in them, which makes me suspect that, 
 as a man, he was dissatisfied with his own dis- 
 coveries, concerning the weakness and narrow 
 limit of human reason and capacity. Listen to 
 what follows: ‘‘And what stronger instance can 
 ‘“be produced of the surprising ignorance and 
 ‘* weakness of the understanding than the present. 
 “For surely, if there be any relation among 
 ** objects, which it imports us to know perfectly, 
 “it is that of cause and effect. On this are 
 ‘* founded all our reasonings concerning matter of 
 “ fact or existence. By means of it alone we retain 
 “any assurance concerning objects which are 
 *‘removed from the present testimony of our 
 ‘““memory and senses. The only immediate 
 “utility of all sciences is to teach us how to 
 “control and regulate future events by their 
 *“causes. Our thoughts and inquiries are there- 
 ‘* fore every moment employed about this relation: 
 *“ yet so imperfect are the ideas which we form 
 ** concerning it, that it is impossible to give any 
 *‘ just definition of cause, except what is drawn 
 ‘“‘ from something extraneous and foreign to it.*” 
 
 * Hume’s Essays, vol. ii. p. 76. 
 
74 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 There is no tone of triumph or of satisfaction 
 here. The fact being beyond a doubt that even 
 the great philosopher’s elaborate and unsparing 
 scepticism left him still a man demanding a cause, 
 and not a mere conjunction; a man dissatisfied, 
 although a sceptic delighted, to find that a rela- 
 tion, about which his thoughts and inquiries were 
 every moment occupied, should turn out an 
 illusion after all. 
 
 The philosopher has not found what the man 
 is wanting, and by his own admission the man 
 of science is in the same position. This fact 
 does not lessen our interest in the philosophical 
 theory; it rather increases our interest in it. 
 Neither does it lessen our gratitude to the man of 
 science. It increases our gratitude, since it helps 
 us to feel that we are dealing with an honest 
 reporter, and with one who will not be angry with 
 us if we venture to look beyond the visible and 
 tangible sphere of his observations for a cause, an 
 efficient cause, which he cannot discover in that 
 sphere, not even with the aid of the most delicate 
 instruments furnished by science to the senses. 
 Wishing then! all light to the philosopher, and 
 good speed to the physical student, we pass (for 
 his sake and ours) out of the sphere of their 
 observations, and falling back upon our irresistible 
 causal appetency, and upon the judgment, syn- 
 thetic and yet 4 priovi, which that appetency 
 drives us to affirm as universally and necessarily 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. ae") 
 
 valid, we still claim to assert that of that con- 
 sciously finite intelligent existence, of which each 
 man is intuitively certain, there must be a Cause, 
 an efficient Cause, an adequate and intelligent 
 Cause, in which or in Whom there must be Power 
 to create and to sustain this existence. Physical 
 Science says she can find no such a Power, nay, 
 can find no Cause at all in nature either by observa- 
 tion or experiment. But this failure does not give 
 it the right to contradict the causal judgment, nor 
 to claim the invariable antecedents as capable of 
 satisfying the causal appetency, nor to blame us if 
 we look elsewhere for the Cause, the Power, the 
 Intelligence, which does satisfy it. Our major 
 premise, therefore, remains intact, and we may 
 pass on, carrying the man with us, if not the 
 physicist. 
 
 (b) But before we leave this question there is 
 a very needful caution which has to be uttered 
 respecting the minor premise, that of the certainty 
 of our own intelligence. It is a caution which 
 is suggested by a tendency which the exclusive 
 study of Physiology is apt to generate almost 
 unconsciously in men’s minds ;—the tendency, 
 that is, to obscure the clearness of our apprehen- 
 sion of intelligence, as generically distinct from 
 any of its material environments. The result of 
 this tendency, against which we must be upon 
 our guard, is to lend the apparent sanction of 
 
76 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 science or of exact research, to the materialist 
 philosophy which identifies or confuses the organs 
 of sense with feeling and thought, and which 
 treats Intelligence as only a function of the 
 nervous system. 
 
 It is of great importance, in order to resist this 
 influence, to keep a strong hold upon those 
 declarations of eminent men of science, in which 
 they are found insisting upon the distinction 
 between thought and the activities of even the 
 most delicately organised material organs of our 
 bodies. ‘‘ There is an impassable chasm between 
 ‘““movements of definite cerebral atoms, and the 
 “primary facts which I can neither define nor 
 “deny. I feel pleasure or pain; I taste a 
 ** sweetness; smell a rose scent; hear an organ 
 “tone, together with the immediate assurance 
 “* they give, therefore I exist.’ This isa quotation 
 from a man who cannot certainly be classed 
 among those whose witness has any theological 
 taint in it. 
 
 Or take the following from Dr. Tyndall: 
 
 ‘Thought and sentiment are accompanied 
 “doubtless by movements in the molecules of 
 “the brain, but the mode of connection between 
 “the two is simply to us unthinkable. The 
 “connection between mind and matter is not 
 “necessary but empirical. If we could see all 
 “that takes place in the skull as clearly as we 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. Th 
 
 “ observe the outer phenomena; if we could note, 
 “for instance, that the sentiment of love was 
 “always accompanied by a spiral movement of 
 “the brain particles to the right, while that of 
 ‘hatred was indicated by a spiral movement to 
 “the left, we should still be as far as ever from 
 “ conceiving the nature of the law which ordered 
 ait. 
 
 Or take the following from Dr. MAupsLry.* 
 
 “No observation of the brain, no investigation 
 “of its chemical activities, gives us the least 
 “information respecting the states of feeling that 
 “are connected with them. It is certain that 
 “the anatomist and physiologist might pass 
 “centuries in studying the brain and nerves 
 ‘‘ without even suspecting what a pain or pleasure 
 “is, if they had not felt both; even vivisections 
 “teach us nothing, except through the interpre- 
 “ tation we give them through observation of our 
 *“ own mental processes.” 
 
 Or take the following suggestive statement from 
 Mill’s Logic (vol. i. p. 56, Seventh Edition): 
 
 “In cases of sensations, another distinction has 
 “to be kept in view, which is often confounded, 
 “and never without mischievous consequences. 
 “This is the distinction between the sensation 
 ‘‘ itself, and the state of the bodily organs which 
 
 SRR one ger pe oe a NL Le 
 
 * “ Physiology of Mind,” p. 61. 
 
78 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 “precedes the sensation and which constitutes 
 “the physical agency by which it is produced. 
 ‘¢ One of the sources of confusion is the division 
 ‘commonly made of feelings into bodily and 
 “ Mental. Philosophically speaking, there is no 
 ‘ foundation: at. all for this distinction; even 
 ‘‘ sensations are states of the sentient mind; not 
 states of the body, as distinguished from ‘it. 
 What I am conscious of when I see the colour 
 ‘ blue is a feeling of blue colour, which ‘is: one 
 thing; the picture on my retina or the pheno- 
 menon of hitherto mysterious nature which 
 takes place:in my optic nerve or in my brain, is 
 another thing, of which I am not atall conscious, 
 and which scientific investigation alone could 
 have apprised me of.* These are states of my 
 body, but the sensation of blue which is. the 
 consequence of these states of my body is not 
 a state of body; that which perceives and is 
 conscious is called mind. When sensations 
 
 * I venture most earnestly to commend to. my readers a 
 careful study of Professor Grote’s chapter, On Sensation, 
 Intelligence, and Will, in his Exploratio Philosophica ; 
 especially I would ask for a careful study of his remarks there 
 on sight and seeing. They happily illustrate Crabbe’s lines, 
 which he quotes and justifies philosophically:— 
 
 ‘It is the mind that sees, the outward eyes 
 Present the object, but the mind descries.”’ 
 I cannot help wondering whether Mr. Smith has read this 
 book of Grote’s. 
 
WITH -FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 79 
 
 “are called bodily feelings, it is only as being 
 “the class of feelings which are immediately 
 ** occasioned. by bodily states.” 
 
 I-make these few quotations merely with a view 
 of helping us to realise how men of science and 
 inductive philosophers are often obliged to .speak 
 of the mind as generically distinct from the body, 
 and to point out the danger of confusing the 
 material organization with a mental. state of any 
 sort, and a fortiort the danger of confusing a 
 material organization with intelligence or mind 
 itself or the ‘‘ Ego.” | 
 
 (c) Further, besides keeping hold of. these 
 quotations, or of similar avowals from. similar 
 sources, we should try, I think, to hold the 
 physiologist fast to that important declaration of 
 the physical student, in which he tells us that in 
 nature he cannot find ‘‘causes,”’ but only invariable 
 successions... When we are told that affection of 
 the nerve causes the sensation, or.that there is in 
 matter very highly: organized.a potentiality of 
 producing thought, and even an ‘‘ Ego,” we must 
 remind our informant again that the most that 
 he can mean is that he finds, or expects: to 
 find, an invariable succession. between these two 
 apparently utterly unconnected. series. . There is 
 ‘‘no mysterious tie.” There is no childish notion 
 of power, or of adequate power being discoverable 
 in matter of any sort, to cause anything or any 
 
80 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 mind. The mystery remainsa mystery still. The 
 chasm is still impassable. There is an invisible 
 something still wanted to account for intelligence— 
 to account for me. I am intuitively certain, I 
 repeat, of my own existence, of my own intelligent 
 being. Iam not certain in the same way (although 
 I do not at all dispute your scientific inferences) of 
 the existence of that material organism which I 
 call my body. I infer that you are right when you 
 explain this material organized frame to me. I 
 am willing to act upon the supposition of the truth 
 of your report. Iam grateful for your discoveries, 
 but they do not account to me for my own 
 existence. I certainly cannot accept them as 
 introducing me either to the efficient cause of it 
 or to an adequate substitute for it. 
 
 I have tried then to look all round for the most 
 formidable or the most dangerous of the arguments 
 or tendencies against which I have to make way, 
 or which we are likely to meet with in these days 
 when we affirm that our faith in an Intelligent 
 Creator is helped by the consideration of the 
 reality of our finite existence. I do not say there 
 are no other arguments or tendencies which may 
 assail this conclusion. But I have named those 
 which are most likely, I think, to accost us in the 
 present condition of our popular philosophy and 
 in the prevailing tone and fashion of so much of 
 modern unbelief. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 8I 
 
 B. I. I turn now to another support, which 
 our understanding affords to our faith in the first 
 article of our Creed. We approach the Physico- 
 Theological argument, that “old and respectable 
 argument” which, in some one or other of its 
 forms, is always popular with the students of 
 Natural Theology, and which I do not think that 
 modern science has essentially weakened. 
 
 We go now to “Nature,” or the external 
 world, that world, of the reality and independent 
 existence of which, reflection upon the evidence 
 afforded by our senses enables us to feel con- 
 vinced. 
 
 Into that world I go, with my consciousness 
 of my own dependent personal existence, and 
 convinced of the existence of the Supreme Being 
 from whence I am derived, and of whose power 
 and will I am an effect. I go now to “ Nature,” 
 I approach it prejudiced, if you will, by my own 
 previous reflections and conclusions, prejudiced in 
 favour of the teaching which tells me that I shall 
 find in that world more, indeed, than human 
 intelligence can construe completely, but yet an 
 ORDER, as well as a grandeur which only mind 
 can construe at all, and which therefore only mind 
 can have produced or sustained. I carry with 
 me, too, my “causal appetency,” my inherent 
 quest of causes, a craving to find a power adequate 
 
 to the production of such universal order. I want, 
 6 
 
82 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 I expect, rightly or wrongly, to find evidences of 
 a Power with a purpose, which implies a Person 
 with a will, persistent, and self-consistent; a 
 Person or Intelligence with a complete mastery of 
 every atom through all time, with such a complete 
 mastery as seems likely only to be found in one 
 to whom the minutest constituents of the ordered 
 universe owe their original nature—their very 
 existence. Further, when I speak of power or of 
 force applied to material things, I refer, involun- 
 tarily perhaps, but really, to a notion which I owe 
 to my consciousness Of EFFORT when I exert force 
 to put matter in motion myself. My inherent 
 quest of causes will continue to drive me on until 
 I find, through faith if not through physics, 
 indications and proofs in the universe of the 
 operation of the only efficient cause with which 
 I am intimately acquainted—Mind, Purpose, 
 Personality.* Has physical science destroyed 
 the possibility of such proofs? Does it bring 
 news of any discoveries which contradict my 
 expectations and make ‘‘the hope drunk ‘wherein 
 
 * See Herschel’s celebrated judgment, quoted by Dr. 
 Martineau, in his ‘‘ Modern Materialism,” p.55- No student 
 of Metaphysics should be without this invaluable pamphlet 
 of Dr. Martineau’s. It will repay the most careful analysis, 
 and is a most refreshing illustration of the possibility of 
 combining depth of thought with exquisite lucidity and 
 beauty of language. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 83 
 
 “I dressed myself?” Note, please, I do not say, 
 Has science given rise to any speculations which 
 may have this effect? I desire to confine myself 
 to its conclusions, and to those broad and well 
 attested generalizations which each experiment 
 and each discovery confirms. 
 
 II. Take one or two illustrations of my meaning. 
 Take the ever-enlarging and ever-strengthening 
 belief in the Reign of Law, in the Uniformity 
 of Nature, which the experience of mankind 
 strengthens from generation to generation, and 
 which has become one of the foregone conclusions 
 of science. Take it as true that Dr. Chalmers’ 
 eloquent description of the Constancy of Nature 
 is vouched for by the gross and general experience 
 of men, and is, in its allusions to the verdict of 
 science, still more strikingly expressive of what 
 is now universally believed, than it could have 
 been when the words first proceeded from the 
 eloquent lips of that Chrysostom of the North. 
 Suppose, if I may quote his own exquisite lan- 
 guage: “That nature’s seeming anomalies can 
 *“‘ be traced to a law that is inflexible, that what 
 “might appear at first to be the caprices of her 
 “waywardness are in fact the evolutions of a 
 “mechanism that never changes; that, the more 
 “‘ thoroughly she is sifted and put to the test by the 
 “interrogations Of the curious, the more certainly 
 “they will find that she walks by a rule which 
 
 6%* 7 
 
84 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 ‘“ knowsnoabatement, and perseveres with obedient 
 “ footsteps in that even course from which the eye 
 ‘“‘ of strictest scrutiny has never yet detected one 
 hair-breadth of deviation. Suppose, that even 
 the fitful agitations of the weather have their law 
 and their principle; that the intensity of every 
 breeze, and the number of drops in every shower, 
 and the formation of every cloud, and all the 
 occurring alternations of storm and sunshine, and 
 the endless shiftings of temperature, and those 
 tremulous varieties of the air which our instru- 
 ments have enabled us to discover, but have not 
 enabled us to explain, still follow each other by a 
 method of succession which, though greatly more 
 intricate, is yet as absolute in itself as the order 
 of the seasons, or the mathematical courses of 
 astronomy.” And suppose, finally, that each 
 new accession that has been made to science, 
 since Dr. Chalmers’ time, has strengthened and 
 deepened in the minds of civilized men those 
 impressions of the all-embracing uniformity of 
 Nature; the question has still to be asked, Has 
 science anything to tell us which prevents a 
 reasonable and thoughtful man—already certain 
 of his own existence and convinced of the intel- 
 lectual nature of the Cause of that existence— 
 from inferring from this magnificent spectacle of 
 order that an Eternal Mind, persistent in its 
 sublime purpose, untiring in the exercise of an 
 
 nw 
 
 ‘ 
 
 nn 
 
 n 
 nw 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 85 
 
 infinite skill, capable of inexhaustible effort, is the 
 author and sustainer of that whole Kosmos— 
 before which, as Kant has it, our conception (or 
 rather judgment) dissolves into an astonishment 
 all the more eloquent because it is dumb.* 
 
 III. Supposing I cannot find GOD in Nature, 
 or prove to demonstration His existence from 
 Nature alone, yet having found Him within me, 
 am I not entitled to argue that I see without 
 me the working of the same Power to which 
 I owe my being? Is there anything in the 
 unbroken order of the universe to suggest the 
 reasonableness of excluding the thought of a will, 
 a purpose, a skill, a power of creation, from my 
 conception of its origin? So far as I can see, the 
 unbroken order suggests the Mind, instead of 
 grounding an argument for its exclusion. It 
 iS surely of the very essence of intelligence to 
 produce unity and order in every sphere of its 
 influence, and, as has been well said, the higher 
 the type of the mind the more strongly this 
 peculiarity is displayed. 
 
 a ee ee oes ees ee 
 
 * Kant’s Kritik, p. 477, Hartenstein’s Edition— Dass 
 ‘sich unser Urtheil yom Ganzen in ein sprachloses, aber 
 ‘‘ desto beredteres Erstaunen auflésen muss!”’ Kant him- 
 self seems for the moment overcome by the force of an 
 argument which he afterwards says has not in itself the force 
 of a demonstrative certainty without some other support, 
 We have shown that it has other support. 
 
86 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 My highest conception of the work of mind is 
 that of a personal power and personal influence 
 producing order in every department of its opera- 
 tion, both in the minute and the magnificent, and, 
 so producing and sustaining it, that the power is 
 felt rather than seen, hidden very often from the 
 notice of an ordinary observer, and working so 
 constantly and so quietly that some of its most 
 exquisite adjustments of means to ends wear the 
 air of ‘‘ unconscious adaptations.”* Is there any- 
 thing in the discoveries of modern science which 
 forbids me, on pain of being excommunicated 
 from the society of those who hold on by facts, 
 from perceiving in Nature, evidences, or, at least, 
 indications of the working of such a power there ? 
 May I not, at any rate, claim the uniformity of 
 Nature, the eternal reign of law, as corroborating 
 my inference from my own existence to that of 
 one intelligent, one infinite Cause? May not God’s 
 persistent purpose be offered as a reasonable ex- 
 planation of the unbroken continuities of Nature? 
 
 It 18 a tremendous conclusion, as Paley says, 
 that there is a God, One God! But no one can 
 say that science contradicts it. I do not say it 
 proves it. But what I do feel sure of is, that the 
 wider the sweep of its legitimate generalisations 
 shall become, the nearer it approaches the Utopia 
 
 * See Clifford, On the Lungs, quoted page 15. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 87 
 
 that sometimes flits before it, when in its search 
 after unity it shall resolve all derivative laws into 
 cases of one all-embracing simple ultimate law, 
 the nearer it will bring us to a proof of the 
 existence of the One Infinite Person to whom we 
 are forced to attribute the origin of our finite yet 
 inquiring minds. 
 
 C.I. But before I close this necessarily im- 
 perfect consideration of this section of our subject, 
 it is only right to notice one discovery or work- 
 able hypothesis of modern physical science, which 
 seems to many utterly destructive of the theistic 
 position, at least so far as that position rests upon 
 the physico-theological argument, and claims the 
 suffrages of the students of ‘‘ Nature.’”” We are 
 now becoming accustomed to the conception that 
 the universe as it at present exists is the result of 
 evolution, The present complex assemblage of 
 phenomena has a history, and has taken unnum- 
 bered ages to arrive at its present stage in the 
 march of its progress; and, at each stage, higher 
 and higher, that is, I suppose, more and more 
 delicately organised, forms have been originated. 
 Only permit yourself, we are told, to deal freely 
 with past time, and not to be afraid to give things 
 time to have worked, and your imagination must 
 be dull indeed if you cannot conceive of the genesis 
 of aworld fromthe primordial homogeneous atoms; 
 homogeneous to start with, but gradually developing 
 
88 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 heterogeneity as the ages rolled. The universe, 
 it is now asserted, was not made nor created, but 
 rolled out of the pre-existent particles, by a pro- 
 cess of evolution carried on during the ceaseless 
 movements of these eternal and immortal things. 
 Well, I never saw these atoms, but invisibility is 
 no proof of non-existence, and therefore, although 
 of course their existence is at best but a probable 
 inference, I will not spend time in incredulous 
 inquiries for further information about them. 
 They are, I presume, indivisible extended solids, 
 out of which this Marvel has been evolved. How 
 they came into existence, no one, I suppose, 
 pretends to be able to tell us; the genesis of 
 an atom being as difficult to account for as that 
 of aplanet. But, under any theory, they are, I 
 suppose, something more than adaptations of 
 already pre-existing substances.* They are the 
 pre-existing substances. But, even so, can it be 
 seriously maintained that they are self-caused ? 
 And, if not, then the more simple and homo- 
 geneous these primordial atoms are proved to be, 
 the more am I lost in wonder at the magnificence 
 of the Intelligence to whom, as it seems to me, 
 you must attribute their mysterious capacities for 
 evolving life and breath and all things. No man 
 can take even an ordinary seed, it may chance 
 
 * Bradlaugh, quoted ante, part I., p. 16. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 89 
 
 of wheat or of some other grain, into his hand, 
 without being lost in wonder as he thinks of the 
 mysterious powers of reproduction or of develop- 
 ment, of which it is the germ and envelope! But 
 the thought of what must have been rolled in to 
 the primordial atoms, these indestructible germs, 
 in order that the ordered universe can have been 
 evolved from them in millions of years, is a 
 thought which drives me to my knees—and which 
 forces from me the exclamation, “‘O Lord, how 
 ‘* glorious are Thy works! Thy thoughts are very 
 “deep!” Of course this state of mind and this 
 involuntary expression of admiring adoration may 
 arrise from my being prejudiced, from my going 
 to external nature on the look-out, as it were, for 
 Mind behind the scenes. But, even if this be so, 
 it ought to be remembered that the prejudice is 
 the result of my having previously convinced 
 myself, by a by, no means hasty or irrational 
 process, of the existence of an Infinite Mind, of a 
 living Author and Sustainer of my own existence. 
 The prejudice therefore in question amounts 
 rather to a reasonable readiness to acknowledge 
 the weight of any evidence in the history of nature 
 which suggests the presence and the result of 
 Persistent Purpose and of vast foresight as well as 
 of Creative Power. Such seems to be the case, 
 such seem to be the suggestions irresistibly forced 
 upon us, as we trace back in thought the course 
 
gO REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 of nature in the past until we are arrested at the 
 presumably primordial germs from which, as by 
 the hand of some mighty magician, the present 
 universe has been gradually drawn forth. 
 
 II. I may, of course, be misled by my theo- 
 logical bias, but I cannot help feeling that the old 
 Hebrew conception of the Eternal Jehovah, 
 Jehovah of Sabaoth, is one upon which the new 
 science helps us to dwell with an ever-deepening 
 wonderand awe. Allseems, after all, summed up 
 in that magnificent expression, Lord God of Hosts 
 —lLord God of the heavens and the earth and of 
 all the host of them! The disciplined hosts of the 
 universe have received their being, their direction, 
 their organization from Him! The stately march 
 of the vast procession of things has been conducted 
 by a wisdom which cannot have been the product 
 of their accidental concurrence, and which must 
 have existed before the worlds were. 
 
 But forgive me for reverting thus to the Old 
 Testament Name of God. I have done so because 
 we seem to gain thus, by thehelp of the light of the 
 new science upon the Old Revelation, a grander 
 and a less misleading conception of the Great 
 Creator and Sustainer, than we could ever have 
 done by merely resorting to figures of speech drawn 
 from the mechanical arts of the builder or the 
 architect, useful as such figures of speech may 
 sometimes be to the intellect and imagination. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. gI 
 
 But be this as it may, we have said enough to 
 justify us in concluding that it does not appear 
 that our faith in a living God is in any way 
 weakened, or rendered less reasonable, by the 
 conception or the hypothesis of Evolution; or 
 by the history or explanation of the traces of that 
 Evolution which carry us back into the indefinitely 
 extended past. 
 
 “Tt is” (to quote again Paley’s well-known 
 exclamation), ‘‘it is a tremendous conclusion that 
 “there is a God.” Sometimes I feel that some 
 of us do not make enough of this conclusion, do 
 not feel sufficiently grateful when we are led to 
 recognise that any thoughtful man of science, or 
 any philosopher has at least got so far and can 
 go so far with us as this. Sometimes, too, I 
 think that we do not frequently enough call 
 attention in pulpit or in class-room to the supports 
 which help to sustain our faith in Him, and to 
 the light which the science of the present seems 
 often to cast upon the awful nature of His Power 
 and the reliable persistency of His Will. 
 
 I say the science of the present; for what may 
 be the teaching or the’ hypotheses of the science 
 of the future, I have no means of even guessing. 
 The rate of change of scientific hypotheses is so 
 rapid that, as the late Professor Clark Maxwell 
 well points out, twenty years hence we may find 
 a disagreement between her then verdict and her 
 
92 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 present one. But whatever may be the course of 
 the human mind in its study of Nature, whatever 
 its theories as to the genesis of things, I feel as 
 sure as I am or can be of anything which is yet in 
 the future, when I add, in concluding this section 
 of the subject, that it will only be science, falsely so 
 called, which will either scorn or crush the belief 
 of man, in his best moments, in the Infinite and 
 Intelligent Cause of all—a living and Eternal God. 
 The foremost men of science will still be able 
 then as now toenter into the spirit and to embrace 
 the faith of one of the most eminent of scientists, 
 and one of the most humble and heavenly minded 
 of men, who said a few days before his death, to 
 his friend, ‘‘ Old chap! I have read up many queer 
 “‘ veligions ; there is nothing like the old thing after all. 
 “© T have looked into most philosophical systems, and 
 © T have seen that none will work without a God.” 
 D.I. You will be, all of you, beginning to be 
 anxious for some sign from me that I do not 
 intend to make this Paper interminable, and you 
 would recognise, perhaps, the passage from the 
 first to the second main division of our previous 
 Paper, as an indication of the approach of such a 
 welcome sign. I will not delay much longer the 
 consideration of that second division. But bear 
 with me a moment while I remind you of that 
 PESSIMISM of which I spoke in my first paper, 
 that pessimism which plays, as Dr. Martineau 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 93 
 
 says, the cynic to the universe, and which dis- 
 tresses and haunts so many thoughtful men. 
 
 The way in which such men have put their 
 difficulty before me sometimes, has caused me 
 much self-questioning, and many a sigh for “light 
 “and leading.” They may be overheard throwing 
 their doubts into the form of a question : “‘ Granted 
 “the irresistible force of the evidence for the 
 “‘ existence of an Infinite and Intelligent Cause ; 
 “‘ granted the splendour of the conception, such 
 ““as you expound it, of a persistent purpose of 
 “One Eternal Will, creative and controlling; can 
 ‘‘ we from Nature arrive at any definite conclu- 
 “sions, any trustworthy indications, as to the 
 ‘* disposition, the benevolence or the malevolence, 
 “ of that Eternal Being towards the creatures of 
 “* His hand?” 
 
 Now it is useless to attempt to deny that one 
 of the besetting difficulties of Natural Theology is 
 to find a satisfactory answer to such a demand. 
 
 The thought of the pain, of the apparently 
 undeserved and hopeless and useless suffering of 
 which this earth has been for countless ages the 
 theatre, isa thought which generates harassing and 
 harrowing questions, as to the goodness of God; 
 and, apart from the Revelation of God in Christ, I 
 must own I know of no answer to those questions, 
 no answer which even hope itself can seize on as 
 completely reassuring. 
 
94 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 I suppose that each man has some difficulty, 
 some thought which weighs at times very heavily, 
 and which he feels is too heavy to be rolled off 
 without the aid of the Christ who has redeemed 
 him. Such a difficulty, such a heaviness assails 
 my own mind at times when I think of the 
 indifference, the apparent cruelty, the devouring 
 maw, of Nature’s laws. As a Christian, indeed, 
 I can afford to look at this awful thought steadily 
 and often. Nay, if I want words to express my 
 sense of the incubus which seems to lie upon the 
 universe, and which suppresses at times the 
 Hosannas of rapture, I can find none so apt as 
 those of the great Apostle, when he tells us that 
 “ the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together 
 “in pain until now.”’* But at the same time I 
 must candidly avow that, on the ground of 
 “* Natural Theology,’ I am frequently embarrassed 
 as I think of the problem which it sometimes 
 ventures to solve, that of the Character, the 
 Nature, and the Disposition towards the sen- 
 
 * The following words of CHRISTLIEB are worth pondering. 
 ‘‘ Buchner and others frequently argue on the erroneous 
 ‘‘ suppostion that theologians who believe in the Bible look 
 ‘“‘ upon the world in its present condition as absolutely perfect, 
 ‘‘ andthey seek by various examples to provethe contrary. If 
 ‘‘ they would take the trouble to turn to Romans viii. 19 ff. 
 ‘they might see that, long before their arguments, the 
 ‘imperfection of the world in its present condition was 
 ‘‘ taught by Scripture.” 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 95 
 
 tient Creation, of the Eternal God. This being 
 the case I shall revert to this painful and difficult 
 matter again, in the second division of this Paper, 
 in which I shall have to bring into prominence 
 the more strictly Christian aspect of the whole 
 subject. In the few remarks which follow here, 
 I shall try to offer only the considerations which 
 Natural Theology seems capable of affording or 
 suggesting on this point to her students. 
 
 II. In the first place, I think we learn from a 
 contemplation and study of Nature, that the 
 production of pleasure, or of the pleasing or 
 soothing sensations of which animal life is 
 capable, is not a paramount object of its Author 
 and Governor. As things are now, and as things 
 have been so far as we can trace them back, the 
 process of creation and of development seems too 
 terrific to permit us to rest in what I may venture 
 to call the Hedonist-view of God. Neither does it 
 seem tome that Nature indicates that the para- 
 mount object of its Creator is the preservation of 
 individual sensitive existence, except for a very 
 limited period, nor even that of any one type or 
 species, except for a correspondingly limited 
 period. 
 
 If no being can be called good in whose works 
 and ways one or other (or both) of these ends 
 cannot be discovered as their final cause, then I do 
 not see how from Nature alone you can say that 
 
96 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 God is good. I speak with great diffidence, with 
 great deference, but so far as I can see the law 
 which is paramount, and the furthest reaching in 
 Nature, is the one which combines into one 
 decree these two clauses: “Be fruitful and mul- 
 ‘* tibly—slay and eat.” And the main object, if I 
 may venture so to construe in inadequate language 
 the apparent object of an infinite Mind proclaimed 
 in facts, seems to be the production, through 
 sacrifice, of higher life out of the death of the 
 lower. The more I read and think and try to © 
 observe of ‘*‘ Nature,” the more deeply does this 
 view of God’s work in Nature seem ingrained in 
 me. This may at first seem rather a melancholy 
 conclusion, and it certainly does add a sadness 
 often to my daily life, even to my daily meals, but 
 it adds, too, a sacredness to them, and helps me to 
 find an answer to my friend who asked as we sat 
 down to feast together, ‘‘ Why should this act of 
 ‘* all others be made religious in this arbitrary way 
 uby se elace ws. 
 
 If then this be the teaching of Nature as to the 
 end of its Creator’s work in her, we can see how 
 readily she lends herself to the charge or the 
 suspicion of cruelty or indifference to suffering,— 
 especially in the ears of those who go to Nature 
 with a feeling that if her God were good and 
 benevolent there would be no fain inherent in her 
 system at all. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. Q7 
 
 III. On the other hand, if we fully recognise 
 the purpose which, as I have said, Nature seems 
 to lead us to infer is paramount in the mind of 
 her Author, we shall be very much struck with 
 the immense and incalculable amount of happi- 
 ness which prevails in the sentient creation at 
 any given moment, and which has prevailed upon 
 the earth through countless ages of prehistoric 
 times. 
 
 The feeling which will then attend our con- 
 templation of Nature will be one of wonder that 
 a design anda method, which, prior to experience, 
 we should have said must be attended at every 
 turn by individual suffering, and must have almost 
 excluded pleasure from the universe, should 
 yet have been executed in a manner so wise 
 and so kind as to have filled the earth with 
 such a vast aggregate of pleased and enjoyable 
 existences. 
 
 At this point I would venture to recommend, to 
 the harassed mind, the careful study of the twenty- 
 sixth chapter of Paley’s “ Natural Theology,” on 
 the “Goodness of the Deity”; a chapter which 
 sets out with the two following propositions: 1. 
 In a vast plurality of instances in which contri- 
 vance is perceived, the design of the contrivance 
 is beneficial 2. The Deity has superadded 
 pleasuve to animal sensations, beyond what was 
 necessary to any other purpose, or when the 
 
 a 
 
98 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 purpose, so far as it was necessary, might have 
 been effected by the operation of pain. 
 
 No one, I think, can read what Paley goes on 
 to say in proof or in illustration of these two 
 positions, without feeling refreshed and delighted. 
 Very few, I think, can turn from the perusal of 
 Paley’s very beautiful description of the happier 
 phases of sensitive creation, without feeling that 
 they have been reminded of some instances of the 
 amplitude of Divine benignity which they had 
 forgotten or overlooked. The instances which he 
 cites, although they may be selected instances, 
 selected with skill from the teeming life of the 
 world, are certainly, as he maintains, instances 
 which cover large provinces of sensitive existence, 
 each case being the case of millions—of myriads. 
 It is worth remembering, too, what we are apt to 
 forget—that in each individual of these myriads 
 how many things must go right, for it to be at 
 ease, yet how large a proportion is so, in every 
 assignable instance ! 
 
 What Paley here says, too, about PAIN should 
 be carefully studied, not the less so because it is 
 clear that Mr. Mill had arrived, through what 
 was probably an independent study, at similar 
 conclusions to Paley; although our more modern 
 Natural Theologian (Mill) seems unable to feel 
 grateful, or unwilling to express gratitude, to God 
 for the amount of proof, which he admits to 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 99 
 
 exist, of Paley’s, and his own, conclusion, “ that 
 “there is no indication of any contrivance in 
 “Nature to produce pain.” * 
 
 Nevertheless, as I must add, despite Mill’s 
 criticism of what he calls the clumsiness of the 
 contrivance employed for some other purpose, 
 I cannot help turning over my Paley again, and 
 feeling some relief of mind when I read such a 
 passage as this which follows: ‘“‘No anatomist 
 “ever discovered a system of organisation 
 
 “calculated to produce pain and disease, or in. 
 
 “explaining the parts of the human body ever 
 “said: ‘This is to irritate; this is to inflame ; 
 “this duct is to convey the gravel to the kidneys; 
 “this gland to secrete the humour which forms 
 “the gout;’ if he comes at a part of which he 
 * mesons not know the use, the most he can say is, 
 
 ‘it is useless; no one ever suspects it is put 
 “ there to incommode, to annoy, or to torment.” 
 ai particularly commend, indeed, the whole 
 chapter to your attentive reconsideration. It is 
 written in Paley’s happiest vein, and if we read 
 it without expecting too much from it—without, 
 that is, expecting that it will prove that pleasing 
 sensations are the end and aim of God’s work 
 in Nature—we shall be relieved to find with what 
 a vast mercy God has carried out a work, and is 
 Ne a a Sella OLAS NN YR RA RMS ee yh 
 
 * J. 5S. Mill’s Essays on Religion, p. 191. 
 | Le 
 
100 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 carrying out a purpose, in which some other end 
 than the production of pleasure is clearly pre- 
 dominant. 
 
 INE 
 
 I. The time has now arrived for me to pass to 
 the reconsideration of the second main division 
 of our previous Paper—that which we introduced 
 by a quotation from Mr. Mill, in which he ex- 
 pounds the method in which all religions tend to 
 be discussed,* less, as he says, as intrinsically 
 true or false, than as products thrown up by 
 certain states of civilization. There are diffi- 
 culties in this part of the subject which I know 
 from my own experience are real oppressions to 
 the minds of many thoughtful persons. The 
 influence of the tone of mind which Mr. Mill 
 here so lucidly describes is often realized by a 
 clergyman when he feels it his duty to urge upon 
 his lay friends the claims of missions to heathens. 
 And I do not hesitate to aver my belief that the 
 tendency to which Mr. Mill here refers is one 
 which keeps back a large number of persons 
 from an active interest in Missions, and which 
 seriously, although indirectly, affects the income 
 of Missionary Societies. 
 
 * See first Paper, p. 22. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. Iol 
 
 With this particular result, however, of the 
 tendency in question, I am not now professing to 
 deal. I mentionit merely as an illustration of the 
 way in which the practical work of the Church 
 is often hindered by the operation of speculative 
 opinions which at first sight might seem to 
 influence only a few students or philosophers, 
 and to be hardly worth the notice of practical 
 people. Here Iam rather anxious to dwell upon 
 the tendency itself and its more general influence 
 upon men’s estimate of the Christian Faith. 
 
 The sort of feeling which arises in men’s minds 
 nowadays upon this subject is one which reminds 
 me of the answer of a sedate fellow-commoner, 
 who, when asked what he thought of Baptismal 
 Regeneration, replied that he thought it was “a 
 “very good thing in its way.” What he felt 
 about a particular Church doctrine very many 
 feel about the whole Christian Faith. They 
 think it is a very good religion “in its way.” 
 But, then, they also feel, so are other religions in 
 their way. And why, if this be so, ‘* worry 
 “ savages,” or attempt to convert Mahommedans 
 or Buddhists to vour religion, when their own is 
 evidently so much better suited for them than 
 yours can be? Your Christianity (so many seem 
 to be saying, and more thinking), your Chris- 
 tianity is what it is by reason of a long train of 
 antecedent circumstances, extending through ages 
 
102 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 behind us, of which circumstances, together with 
 those of your present environment, your religion 
 is really the product. And the same assertions, 
 the same scientific account, applies, it is thought, 
 to all other religions. Given the observed phe- 
 nomena of individual human organisms, studied 
 under the guide of the biologist, and the verified 
 results of the scientific historical method under 
 the guidance of Sociology, and we can trace all 
 these religions, your own included, to a perfectly 
 naturalsource! Allreligions are much morealike, 
 it is said, than you would think at first. They all 
 have many legends, cosmogonies, moral maxims, 
 rewards and punishments, about which, when 
 you go to the bottom, when you take things, 
 as Hume would say, “pretty deep,” there is a 
 strong family likeness. They all stand in some 
 relation, more or less harmonious, to the Con- 
 sciousness of the masses; when they cease to 
 stand in any such relation they will gradually 
 lose their hold upon the age, unless indeed the 
 masters of the mysteries are sufficiently dexterous 
 in bringing them into some sort of at least 
 apparent harmony with that consciousness, in 
 which case they obtain a new lease of life. But, 
 of course, all this is not apparent to a one-sided 
 enthusiast or an earnest believer, if it were they 
 would cease to be enthusiasts, or to believe. No 
 doubt, they tell us, you are firmly persuaded of 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. I03 
 
 the reality of the object of your faith. So are 
 other religionists of the reality of the object of 
 theirs. But this proves nothing, they go on to 
 say, as to the real objective existence of any 
 corresponding object either in your case or theirs. 
 It rather seems to afford, to a candid onlooker, 
 the proof that there is no such an object in rerum 
 natura, as that on which either of you fasten your 
 faith. The only thing of which invulnerable 
 proof seems to be afforded is that of the wide- 
 spread and almost irresistible tendency of the 
 human mind to reach out towards the Infinite, 
 and to aspire to commune with some unknown 
 and unknowable Absolute Being. 
 
 Now there is no doubt in my mind that these 
 feelings, whose expression J have thus ventured 
 to paraphrase, are becoming more general than we 
 clergy have yet realized them to be, ana that they 
 have a very large influence over men’s ways of 
 looking at the Christian religion, and over their 
 methods and manner of educating their children. 
 
 II. The question arises, how are we to deal 
 with these feelings? How are we to meet these 
 deep and powerful streams of tendency? Upon 
 this point I must ask leave to say a few words 
 which I think may prove of use. 
 
 (a) Passing by the obvious remark, that we find : 
 positive philosophers compelled to own how 
 widely spread ‘and how apparently ineradicable 
 
I04 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 is the sense in the human mind of the need of 
 communion with an Infinite, or, at least, a Super- 
 natural Being, the first thing to be said, and said 
 so as to make men feel that we really mean it, is 
 that we have no interest whatever, as Christians, 
 in pouring any ridicule or contempt upon “ other 
 ‘‘religions,” or in depreciating the value of any 
 truth or beauty which may be found latent or 
 expressed in any doctrine or myth of the 
 Brahmin, the Buddhist, the Mahommedan, or in 
 the savages’ religions, or which can be traced in 
 the exploded mythologies of the defunct religious 
 systems of antiquity. All light is from the Source 
 of Light. We do not look upon our Lord as the 
 founder of a rival religion, but as the Light which 
 lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 
 There, in Him, was and is the light, the true light 
 which lighteth every man; at His coming that 
 light was made manifest, but not created. He 
 was in the world, in the hearts of men, although 
 they knew Him not. We believe He is still 
 working in men now, although they know Him 
 not yet, and have never yet recognised His voice 
 as that of the Word of God. We do not speak 
 thus in spite of our Faith, but because of our 
 Faith, and of our attachment to the fundamental 
 doctrine of the Catholic religion. We do not 
 speak thus because we want to find some excuse 
 for the temporary indulgence of a charitable 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. I05 
 
 disposition, or for getting out of the groove of 
 our narrow religious associations. We speak thus 
 because, with the Bible and the Creed in our 
 hands, we must do violence to both if we take 
 narrow views of the Person of Christ and of His 
 work in the universe, or if we look upon Him as 
 having shed no light beyond the pale of Christen- 
 dom, or as having stirred no yearnings after 
 goodness and glory save in the minds of those 
 who are consciously to themselves under His 
 inspiring illumination, and consciously to them- 
 selves the objects of His eternal charity. If we 
 believed our Lord to be Jess than He really is; if 
 we narrowed our conception of Him so that we 
 only regarded Him as a great teacher who was 
 murdered eighteen hundred years ago, and whose 
 name was afterwards used by His followers as 
 forming an excellent foundation for one more new 
 religion ; and if we had attached ourselves to this 
 religion, and held a brief for this religion, and 
 felt towards it as we might towards a favourite 
 party or a cherished sect; then, indeed, we might 
 be suspected of being conscientiously bigoted in 
 proportion as we were conscientiously Christian.* 
 But take your conception of Christ from the New 
 
 a ee 
 
 * I shall never forget the deep impression made on me 
 at my Institution, by a prayer of the Bishop—‘ for the 
 whole human race.” 
 
106 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 Testament. Realize what is meant by the first 
 chapter of St. John’s Gospel, by the Epistles to 
 the Colossians and Ephesians, by the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews, by St. Paul’s sermon at Athens, by » 
 the whole book, and then see whether, together 
 with a burning desire to proclaim His Name to 
 mankind, there must not also be in the mind of 
 a servant of Christ, a delighted readiness to 
 welcome every good and beautiful thought, every 
 maxim of justice, of purity, or of pity, every 
 effort to bring about a peaceful although costly 
 reconciliation of man to his Maker, and every 
 dream of such a reconciliation of which he may 
 find any record or traces in any of the religions 
 of the world; and not only to welcome them, 
 but to own them, as signs that the Word of God 
 has not left Himself without a witness anywhere, 
 and that He is preparing the hearts of men to 
 lay hold on the news, on the Gospel, which they 
 are anxious to hear,* and which we believe they 
 all want. 
 
 (0) Again, when we are met by the assertion 
 that the Christian Creed, like all other creeds, is 
 a product thrown up by certain states of civiliza- 
 tion, and that it represents the natural growth of 
 
 * See the preface to Mr. Holland’s Logic and Life, pp. 
 7,8, and also, Maurice’s ‘‘ Boyle Lectures,” passim ; a most 
 invaluable book. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. I07 
 
 the human mind in particular stages of its career, 
 and that it is destined to give way to other creeds 
 as mankind becomes more enlightened, or possibly 
 (although this is not quite so certain) to no creed, 
 as mankind becomes perfectly illuminated, so that 
 we may see all things in the clear light and with 
 the dry eye of science; when we feel these 
 thoughts in the air, even when the words do not 
 reach us, the question arises, How can we best 
 meet them? meet them so as to satisfy rather than 
 repress them ? 
 
 How, it is asked, do you proceed? What line 
 do you propose to take ? 
 
 Well, I must say here, let each man, be he 
 clergyman or layman, meet these difficult ques- 
 tions in his attempts to deal with others, by the 
 answers which he has found most permanently 
 helpful in dealing with himself. My answer is 
 this—I believe that we can translate your half- 
 truth for you into a whole truth. The principle 
 which lies at the bottom of these statements— 
 statements which owe much of their influence 
 to the prevailing popularity of broad historical 
 generalisations conceived in the spirit and bor- 
 rowing the terms of the scientific evolutionist— 
 the principle, which these statements half conceal 
 and half express, is one which we have ever 
 recognised as fundamental—one to which we get 
 a clue which is worth following further, when 
 
108 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 we say that the Living Word of God was 
 manifested in ‘‘ THE FULNESS OF TIME.” ‘There 
 was no infraction of any law, there was no 
 arbitrary interference with the course of things, 
 no change of mind in God, involved iv that 
 tremendous event which we cail the 'ncarnation. 
 The way had been preparing for ages, and 
 whispers of what was coming had been over- 
 heard in every clime. Fables of incarnations, 
 expectations of incarnations (without which the 
 fables would never have been believed), dreams 
 and legends of deliverers of men, the thirst for 
 some sign that the Eternal was in communion 
 with men, or that He could be put into com- 
 munication with them by sacrifice or by pain 
 and death, the ineradicable tendency of the 
 human. mind to feel after a God, to make for 
 itself a God in human shape, and arrayed in 
 the attributes of human beauty,—the desire, as 
 with the Oriental, to lose the human in the 
 Divine ;—these, no less than the prophetic 
 declarations of the seers of Israel,—these, no 
 less than the long and painful preparation and 
 education of the chosen race,—were all really 
 preludings of the Incarnatior of the Divine and 
 Eternal Word. That there were myths, legends, 
 phantasies of the human mind springing out of 
 human misery and human hope, and that many 
 of these remind us, as we read them, of the 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS., I0g 
 
 Christian doctrine, this does not at all suggest 
 the reasonableness of dismissing the Christian 
 doctrine into the region of the unreal or the 
 fantastic. The unity of the human race in every 
 clime, in every age, in every stage of civilization,— 
 this might well lead us to look for just such 
 indications of that unity as these legends and 
 phantasies present to the thoughtful student. 
 Welcome all these indications of the anxiety of 
 men to find some relief from pain, from the 
 enduring sorrow of sin, some answer to their cry 
 to Heaven for signs of sympathy and co-opera- 
 tion from above! Welcome all these obstinate 
 struggles of the human race to assert its relation- 
 ship to the one Supreme Ruler and Sustainer of 
 men! Welcome these proofs that men have 
 never been able to rest for long in the lower 
 region of sense and of phenomena! God—such 
 is our faith (such, if you will, is our superstition) — 
 was thus speaking (nay, in many countries is thus 
 speaking now) by divers portions and in divers 
 manners through these unconscious prophets of 
 the heathen world,—God, we say, even that one 
 God, was thus speaking to others, Who has now 
 spoken to us by His Son, by Whom also (no 
 science contradicting this) He made the worlds. 
 We offer, then, a welcome to these unconscious 
 prophecies of the human heart in every age. They 
 help us to see that in human history, as in the 
 
IIo REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 history of the material creation, a pathway is 
 prepared. A divinely conducted evolutionary 
 process is discerned now in all history. The 
 human mind is being gradually adapted there for 
 the reception of the Divine donation of Himself 
 which God had purposed through all eternity, so 
 that the Incarnation of the Word of God with all 
 that flows from it—His life, His teaching, His 
 sacrifice—does not come upon the world as a 
 mere Wonder to strain the power of faith, or a 
 mere dogma with no foot-hold in human instincts 
 and with no voice for human needs. We should 
 feel surprised, therefore, now, rather than grati- 
 fied, if we found no signs in human history or 
 in other religions that men had been visited by 
 longings, and had suggested to themselves answers 
 to those longings which, as guesses, or better, as 
 glimpses of the true answer, help us to realize the 
 process of ‘‘ unconscious adaptation”’ by which the 
 Manifestation of the Eternal Word was pioneered. 
 We would not have had it otherwise than it is. 
 “Great events, like great discoveries, are always 
 pioneered ; for great events, like great discoveries, 
 never take place by accident, although to the 
 careless thinker they may sometimes seem to do 
 so. The possibility of accident would exclude the 
 possibility of the sure word of prophecy. 
 
 III. We have hitherto confined our view, in 
 discussing this division of our subject, mainly to 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. ita i 
 
 the thoughts, the longings, the unconscious pro- 
 phecies, of other religions in the past, or of races 
 who have not yet been evangelized in the present. 
 But now I wish to take a step further, and I wish 
 to point out that there are utterances of men of. 
 no religion, of men, at any rate, who have lost 
 their cradle-faith, which may be regarded as 
 longings and prophecies which nothing but the 
 Divine event of the Incarnation can satisfy. 
 Take, for instance, that utterance of the late 
 Professor Clifford which I quoted in a previous 
 paper,* and which excited such evident sorrow in 
 the minds of all who heard it. Surely, even in 
 that utterance, we may trace the uneasiness of an 
 unsatisfied mind, and an indication of the source 
 from which alone hope and rest can come to it. 
 I cannot help feeling that there, too, even in that 
 shocking utterance of Clifford’s, we may trace the 
 human need of finding somehow what Dr. 
 Westcott calls Theanthropism, and an unconscious 
 homage to that Incarnation, all faith in which, in 
 theory, Clifford had renounced. Clifford’s soul 
 was unable to part with God without a declara- 
 tion which makes it clear he wanted to find a 
 Being who was Eternal and yet Human, for his 
 very life. He could not be content with an 
 abstraction, nor with a “mist.” He wanted, he 
 
 * See Paper I., page 21. 
 
II2 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 says, to see the face of our Father man. He gave 
 involuntary evidence to the truth that the great 
 Helper of man cannot be one who stands 
 altogether ‘‘ outside Humanity.” And surely our 
 Blessed Lord, the Ancient of Days, the Ever- 
 lasting Father, the Man Christ Jesus, standing 
 not outside our humanity, but very Man, of a 
 reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting, is 
 just the Helper which Clifford really longed for. 
 Here, surely we may say, is the Helper from 
 within ‘‘looking upon us with the fire of eternal 
 “youth.” Here is the Helper whom Clifford’s 
 philosophy hindered him indeed from owning, but 
 for whom, even his almost plaintive cry for help 
 from within, was an unconscious prayer, an 
 unconscious prophecy. I think he would have 
 said so by this time had he lived. I feel sure he 
 knows it now ! 
 
 IV. But I see other indications in contemporary 
 philosophical utterances of an unconscious thirst 
 for the Gospel of the Word of God. I have used 
 the phrase ‘‘ Help from within,” and I have alluded 
 to the anxiety of men to find some relief and 
 sympathy in the midst of pain and sorrow and sin. 
 The sense of that pain and sorrow, the sense that 
 there is something wrong which needs to be put 
 right—something in men and in the world which 
 makes the thought of life very sad, and crowds it 
 with terrible liabilities to failure and agony,—this 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. its 
 
 has weighed often very heavily upon the human 
 mind; it has driven some men into hopelessness, 
 others into a settled cynical contempt for their 
 kind, others into blank atheism ; it is a view of 
 things, too, or rather, a deep dissatisfaction with 
 things as they are, and a recognition of stubborn 
 facts, which has had no small share in producing 
 that pessimist view of all life and nature of which 
 I spoke in my previous Paper—that half-mocking, 
 half-despairing feeling which finds vent in the 
 philosophical dogma that proclaims this to be the 
 worst of all possible worlds, or in the lawyer’s 
 irony, who would not lift his finger to save such a 
 world from annihilation to-morrow. 
 
 Well, we take these dissatisfactions, these 
 longings for deliverance, these alternations of 
 despair and indifference, of horror and disgust, 
 as further indications of the longing of man for 
 Redemption, and of his perpetual craving, through 
 the ages, for the time when it shall at last be made 
 manifest that ‘‘the sufferings of this present season 
 “are not worthy to be compared with the glory 
 ‘that shall be revealed in us.” A consummation, 
 I may add, which the best and tenderest of men 
 devoutly trust may synchronise with the fulfj- 
 ment of the prophecy that “the whole creation 
 “shall be at last delivered from the bondage of 
 “corruption into the glorious liberty of the children 
 fol God,” 
 
II4 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 But this is not all. I thank the pessimist for 
 forcing upon me anew the conviction of what an 
 awful thing it istolive. Ithank the man of science 
 for reminding me of the grim inequalities of Nature. 
 I thank the scientific historian for demonstrating 
 to me afresh the deadly struggles, the blood- 
 stained battlefields, the cruel, crushing forces of 
 wrong and lust, through which those who have 
 gone before me made their way to liberty and to 
 rightly ordered social life and true manhood, and 
 bequeathed all this to their children and to mine 
 to fight for and retain. I thank any man who 
 makes me see that the world we live in is no play- 
 ground, no holiday spectacle, but an arena of deadly 
 conflict in which it is shame and ruin for any man, 
 however humble, to trifle with his fellows or 
 himself. I thank any man who reminds me, as 
 the pessimist does, that there are moments when 
 hope seems a mockery, and God’s world left alone 
 to make the best of a bad business, and when the 
 echo of the curse seems louder than the whisper 
 of hope. 
 
 No one who is listening to me now, no one 
 ‘ who will ever read these words, should they be 
 printed, can have felt the horror of such moments 
 more deeply than I have, or have come nearer to 
 the very jaws of despair. I thank God I have 
 been delivered from despair, and so, too, from 
 the cold and cynical indifference into some form 
 
WITH. FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. rok 
 
 of which, as a refuge from torment, I should 
 probably have allowed my mind to have become 
 congealed. But what has saved me from despair 
 and from indifference alike? The GosPEL oF 
 CuRisT has here, as in other cases, been the 
 Power of God unto salvation for me. It has 
 enabled me, or rather, He has enabled me, as He 
 has done thousands upon thousands of perplexed 
 and suffering men and women, to look the worst 
 in the face steadily, and yet to hope and pray still 
 for the great human family, which that same Christ 
 assures me the Eternal Father still loves. Nay, 
 I can even pray now for that whole sensitive 
 creation, in which He tells me not a sparrow falls 
 to the ground without His Father. 
 
 The ground of hope is in the very God, depar- 
 ture from whom and loss of likeness to whom, we 
 can see now, was the original curse which has put 
 all things wrong. (A doctrine, by the bye, of 
 which I had glimpses when I found out that 
 nothing but moral regeneration could cure even 
 the physical ills of society.) Our only hope, I say, 
 is in this God, and the news, ever fresh to me day 
 by day, the news is, that we may hope in Him. 
 ‘“‘The Holiness of God incarnate in the flesh of 
 “this labouring humanity, the holy image of 
 ‘“‘God’s perfect Righteousness, taking upon Himself 
 “the agony of man, accepting on His shoulders 
 “the burden of all this awful woe, resigning His 
 
 8 x 
 
I16 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 “spotless spirit to the grief of all this bitter 
 “desolation, dying the death which justifies all 
 ‘‘ death, in that it turns death itself, by the honour- 
 ‘‘able way of sacrifice, into the instrument of the 
 ‘higher inheritance,”’*—all this seems to break 
 in upon my saddest thoughts, upon my dreariest 
 forebodings, and assures me that God has not left 
 His earth forlorn, nor refused to suffer with His 
 suffering family. His Gospel helps me to be 
 patient; helps me to labour. It arouses me from 
 my lethargy, it gives me an interest in my kind; 
 it makes the meanest man I meet of wonderful 
 account; it throws a gleam of glory upon every 
 sick-bed which I am commissioned to approach ; 
 it makes me just able to bear to hear out to the 
 end the saddest stories of triumphant wickedness, 
 or of social wrong, and yet to feel certain at the 
 close that evil cannot triumph finally, and that 
 God cares, and has declared Himself. 
 
 igh 
 
 I. But, meanwhile, you may feel that it is time 
 to turn now to the results of Criticism and to the 
 alleged impossibility of finding any really trust- 
 worthy historical sources of information which 
 
 * Holland’s Logic and Life, page 95. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 1 i 
 
 can justify our notions of the Divine Character 
 and Claims of our Lord. The matter is really 
 very pressing, for we must not forget that we 
 have to take account, not only of the influence of 
 books, such as those of Renan and Strauss, or 
 even of those learned and relentless German 
 critics and historians, such as those whose names 
 crowd the footnotes of “Supernatural Religion;” 
 but also of that of popular lecturers and mission- 
 aries of secularism, such (¢.g.) as Mrs. Besant 
 and Mr. Forder. 
 
 We will turn then now to the third division of 
 our former Paper, and I will ask you to read 
 again, with care, that extract from Mrs. Besant’s 
 Lecture, in which we have the negation and 
 the scorns of the higher critics popularized, 
 and received by admiring audiences with loud 
 cheers.* 
 
 If you will read again that report of Mrs. Besant’s 
 Lecture, you will find that she says there, ‘the 
 “* difficulty is not to prove that Christ was believed 
 “to be an historical personage after the fourth 
 ‘century, but to bridge over the years between A.D. 
 *“ I—300 ; you cannot carry the history of Christ 
 “and the history of the Gospel over that terrible 
 “chasm of three centuries.” I draw attention to 
 these words because I know, from experience, 
 
 * First Paper, p. 29. 
 
118 ’ ‘REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 that we have here an expression of an opinion 
 which is held by no inconsiderable body of the 
 working classes, and of an argument which is 
 used in their controversies among themselves 
 with considerable effect. It is, then, of great 
 importance to the Church of the future, that this 
 argument and this opinion should be fairly and 
 fully met by the Christian thinker, and I am glad 
 to see that it is announced that the ‘‘ Date and 
 “‘ Credibility of the Gospels,” is to be the subject of 
 one of the forthcoming Present-Day-Papers of the 
 Religious Tract Society. Meanwhile, however, I 
 think we may try to get people to see that there 
 are a good many bridges by which this chasm of 
 Mrs. Besant’s may be crossed; and were it not 
 that the Christ of the Gospels is obnoxious to 
 Mrs. Besant’s foregone conclusion, a conclusion 
 which excludes the miraculous of any kind from 
 the historical ground, I cannot help feeling that 
 she would herself admit that we get across on 
 much more solid ground than she is now disposed 
 to allow. 
 
 II. Bridge 1.—Have we ever yet realized the 
 incalculable value, as Bridges, of the EPISTLES 
 OR VOT EAU. 
 
 It is nowtwenty years ago, I should think, 
 since the importance of the Epistles of St. Paul as 
 independent primitive witnesses to the original, 
 the supernatural character of the Christ of history, 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. Big 8 
 
 was first forced upon my attention by a remark- 
 able essay or sermon appended to Dean Stanley’s 
 ‘“* Epistle to the Corinthians.” His conclusion 1s, 
 that if we had, up to this time, been readers of 
 the Epistles only, and had now for the first time 
 become acquainted with the Gospel narratives, we 
 should be constrained to say, “ We have found 
 ‘Him of whom Paulin his Epistles wrote.” Itis 
 not much, he adds’ (somewhat underrating, I 
 cannot help thinking now, the force of his own 
 reasoning), it is not much, but considering from 
 whom these instances have been taken—from a 
 source so near the time—most of them from 
 writings whose genuineness has never been ques- 
 tioned by the severest criticisms, it is something, if 
 it may suggest to any one a steadier standing 
 place, and a firmer footing, of however narrow 
 limits, amidst the doubts or speculations which 
 surround him. I would earnestly recommend 
 some of my brother clergy to work out for them- 
 selves the suggestions of that paper of Stanley’s. 
 For twenty years it has been an incalculable help 
 to me from time to time, and has helped to make 
 me feel, and to make others feel, that the Christ 
 we worship is not a Mythical Personage, but the 
 Christ of History. But there is another popular 
 work upon the same subject, which has come out 
 quite recently in the Expositor for 1881, a work the 
 suggestions and citations of which ought to be 
 
I20 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 carefully studied, and the instances and proofs of 
 which should be worked out carefully, one by one, 
 by the perplexed Christian. The papers to which 
 I refer, are entitled the Historical Christ of St. Paul, 
 by Dr. G. Matheson. They contain, I venture to 
 say, a most important contribution to Christian 
 Evidences. If I had to preach now, as I once 
 had the responsibility of doing, Sunday after 
 Sunday, to a congregation in which there was a 
 large infusion of thoughtful and educated men, I 
 should hardly let a Sunday go by without making 
 some effort in the pulpit to familiarise their minds 
 with Dr. Matheson’s method, and to prepare them 
 for the ultimate acceptance of some at least of his 
 conclusions. There would be no fear whatever of 
 disturbing unnecessarily, or injuriously, the minds 
 of the less thoughtful members of such a congre- 
 gation. Reference would have, of course, to be 
 made to the destructive criticism, or to mythical 
 theories, or to the modern scientific disinclination 
 to accept miracles as historical, but the minds of 
 men of the world, to say nothing of thoughtful 
 students, are perfectly familiar, at second hand if 
 not at first hand, with these phenomena of present 
 day thought. The air is full of the subject, and 
 it gets a voice in the light literature of the 
 fashionable philosophical articles and critiques in 
 current Magazines and Reviews. In short, the 
 lay-mind is much better acquainted with the 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. LZ 
 
 negative or destructive side of the critical argu- 
 ment, than we clergy are apt to imagine. With 
 the constructive side of it, however, I do not think 
 the laity are sufficiently acquainted, either through 
 books or sermons, and this defect is one which it 
 will be no mean part of the duty and privilege of 
 the clergy of this generation to remedy, to the 
 utmost of their power. 
 
 Well, then, you may say, admitting this duty to 
 be incumbent upon us, what is the result of this 
 revived effort to get behind the four Gospels? 
 With the help of writers such as those I have 
 named, I will endeavour to give an idea of a 
 method of dealing with the Epistles of St. Paul, 
 which shows their value as independent corrobora- 
 tive testimonials to the historical reality of the 
 Christ of the Creeds. It is a method, of course, 
 of which I can only hope to give the barest outline 
 here, and one the full force of which no one can 
 realize until he has worked it out piece by piece 
 for himself. But still I think we shall find that 
 ultimately, although not perhaps at first, we shall 
 arrive at conclusions which will seem to make the 
 words of Polycarp to the Philippians applicable to 
 ourselves afresh. ‘‘ The blessed and glorious Paul 
 *‘ wrote letters to you, into which if ye diligently 
 ‘look, ye will be able to be built up to the fulness 
 “fof the faith given to you.” 
 
 What we want is a fifth Gospel ; some indepen- 
 
122 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 dent yet trustworthy evidence of the primitive 
 historic conception of Jesus. 
 
 See, then, the interest of St. Paul’s Bpisties 
 when we remember that we may regard them, 
 especially those four of them which have escaped 
 the scythe of the most jealous and _ sceptical 
 criticism, as furnishing us with that fifth Gospel; 
 when we remember that although now bound 
 up in the same boards with our four Gospels, 
 these Epistles are distinct and original sources of 
 information, having all the charm and all the 
 authority of documents of an earlier date of 
 composition than any one perhaps of our four 
 Gospels would be allowed to be considered to be, 
 at any rate in precisely its present form. 
 
 Again, we want earlier dates. Well, here we 
 have them! We are within twenty-five or thirty 
 years at the furthest from the date of the cruci- 
 fixion. And not only so, not only are the dates 
 delightfully early, but the epistolary form will give 
 us that advantage of wndesignedness in the evidence 
 to which Paley calls attention when dealing with 
 these Epistles as corroborative of the history of 
 the Acts of the Apostles. We shall then thus get 
 unconscious testimony, testimony which springs 
 forth incidentally, and testimony which is all the 
 more convincing when we have once grasped it, 
 from the fact that many of us have not been 
 accustomed to look for it here. We shall not get 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 123 
 
 a great deal of detailed history, but we shall find 
 a history underlying the allusions, the exhortations, 
 the familiar greetings even, of a convert writing 
 to correspondents who must have been already 
 familiar with the history. The deeply interesting 
 question is, what is this history? Is it in any 
 essential features like or unlike the history of the 
 Gospels? What, should we say, must Jesus have 
 been, what His life, His teaching, His claims, His 
 character, supposing we had no other sources 
 than these Epistles from which to draw our 
 portrait of Him, or from which to elaborate our 
 conception of His nature and our doctrine of His 
 Person ? 
 
 From a careful perusal then of the Epistles to 
 the Romans, the two Epistles to the Corinthians, 
 and the Epistle to the Galatians (the four per- 
 mitted Epistles), one is absolutely forced to 
 acknowledge that the Jesus of the four Gospels 
 cannot be the creation or the result of the various 
 myths floating about, and ultimately in the second 
 or even third century crystallised round the figure 
 of Jesus of Nazareth. The historical Christ of St. 
 Paul, as discerned through these Epistles, makes 
 the mythical theory absolutely incredible. For 
 what we gather from these Epistles taken together, 
 and without reading a page of the Gospels, is 
 this— : 
 
 In the fulness of time our Lord was sent forth 
 
I24 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 from God,* born of a woman, and springing, so 
 far as His human nature was concerned, from a 
 Royal stock, a lineal descendant of the seed of 
 David according to the flesh (His Messiahship not 
 being, you see, an afterthought of second century 
 theology, bolstering up, as some allege, its mythical 
 phantasies by the construction of two irreconcilable 
 genealogies). Ultimately, indeed, by an act which 
 St. Paul refers to in the opening of his Epistle to 
 the Romans (the Resurrection), Jesus was declared 
 or determined to be the Son of God, but He came, 
 notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding His 
 royal lineage, in poverty, and was a Man of 
 sorrows; so notoriously so, that the suffering and 
 poverty of Christ are spoken of by St. Paul in a 
 manner which takes it for granted that his 
 correspondents were quite aware of them. But 
 this marvellous Master of St. Paul is further 
 declared by St. Paul to be born or made under the 
 law. An expression which may fairly be said to 
 be a pregnant and brief intimation, among other 
 things, of the fact that Jesus was circumcised on 
 
 * The expression, ‘‘ God sent forth His Son”’ (Gal. iv. 4), 
 is generally held to imply the pre-existence of the Son. 
 Bishop Lightfoot says it must not be pressed to imply also 
 the unity with the Father. But in any case it is a very 
 remarkable expression, taken in connection with its immediate 
 context, ‘born of a woman,” and this again is a very 
 remarkable expression taken in connection with that. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. I25 
 
 the eighth day, and that after forty days He was 
 presented in the temple. Again we infer from this 
 expression of St. Paul, indicating as it does a 
 conformity to all the ordinances of the Jewish 
 ceremonial law, that at the age of twelve, Jesus 
 must have passed through a probation such as 
 awaited every Jewish child, and that He would 
 probably be thirty years of age before He entered 
 upon any public teaching. 
 
 So far the Pauline ‘‘ Gospel of the Infancy,” as 
 it has been well called. Now we meet with a 
 very marvellous impression produced by our Lord 
 upon His disciples and contemporaries, that of 
 His sinlessness. ‘‘ He knew no sin” (2 Cor. v. 21). 
 And we must bear in mind that this expression 
 does not merely mean that He led a blameless life. 
 It is quite clear that the impression of our Lord’s 
 sinlessness must have been one of the most 
 tremendous of all possible thoughts to a Jew, to 
 whom the thought of sinlessness was associated 
 only with the character of the eternal Jehovah. 
 The way, too, in which St. Paul speaks in Romans 
 iil. of the propitiation which God set forth Jesus 
 Christ to be, bringing in, as he does, that cele- 
 brated declaration, immediately after his sweeping 
 statement that a// have sinned, renders it impossible 
 to imagine that he could have thought of Christ 
 as any other than the only one who had ever been 
 fashioned as a man, upon whose soul, even in the 
 
126 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 eyes of God, there was no taint of human 
 corruption. Let it be remembered that we are 
 not concerned now with the doctrine of the 
 sinlessness of Christ nor with that of His propitia- 
 tion. We are only concerned with the evidence 
 afforded by St. Paul of the current belief among 
 Christians in the lifetime of the Apostles, as to the 
 nature and person of Jesus of Nazareth, a belief, 
 be it observed, which was clearly held by them 
 prior to the date of these Epistles. Does not 
 this consideration seem to help us out of the 
 ‘‘mythical” theory? But even this is not all. In 
 this matter of the sinlessness of Jesus of Nazareth, 
 I think we can go further back than even this, and 
 that, too, without touching one of the four Gospels 
 at all. From St. Paul’s descriptive account of the 
 Institution of. the Holy Communion by Jesus, we 
 have, as it seems to me, Christ’s own words, as 
 there reported, in corroboration of this awful 
 claim made for Him by His early disciples ; words 
 which seem to prove that He had not this honour, 
 of which we speak, thrust upon Him by the over- 
 wrought imaginations of His followers. May I 
 ask you to'turn to the eleventh chapter of the 
 first Epistle to the Corinthians and, just for one 
 moment, before we touch the central point of 
 interest, see what St. Paul tells us by way of 
 allusion, as to the time, and as to an important 
 incident, of that Institution? It is the earliest 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. BAT d 
 
 written record, remember, of the Institution of 
 the Holy Communion, but it is plain it could not 
 have been the first time that the detailed history 
 of it had reached the ears of Christ’s followers 
 at Corinth. This is how St. Paul puts it: “I 
 ‘received of the Lord that which also I delivered 
 ‘unto you, that the Lord Jesus (the Jesus of history) 
 “the same night in which He was betrayed took 
 ‘‘bread.”’ You see he is not telling them “ Jesus 
 ‘‘was betrayed,’ and betrayed in the night. He 
 alludes to this matter as one well known, and only 
 alludes to it in order to mark the time of another 
 occurrence. Does this look like a ‘‘myth’’? 
 But to resume the main topic before us. Passing 
 by all the many natural reflections which arise in 
 the Christian’s mind, as he recalls the scene of 
 the night of the betrayal, think of a dying man 
 saying this to Jews: ‘‘ This cup is the new 
 ‘covenant in my blood.” The covenant was, as 
 has been said by Dr. Matheson, the most awful 
 thing that could be named. It expressed, it con- 
 noted to the friends of Jesus the whole secret of 
 the relation between man and God. To introduce 
 deliberately a new relation, to proclaim Himself 
 then and there to be the ground and the mediator 
 of that new relation with Jehovah, to speak of the 
 pouring out of His blood as the initiation of that 
 new covenant—was not this to advance an awful 
 claim to sinlessness, to a life in which there was 
 
128 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 no flaw? I conclude in language that is better 
 than any which I can use: “‘ Here is a portrait of 
 ‘‘a Man belonging to a race, of all others the 
 ‘* most impressed with the consciousness of human 
 ‘* depravity, and standing Himself in the immediate 
 ‘* presence of death, which is wont to lay bare the 
 “secret of all souls; yet in the very midst of His 
 ‘* race, and in the very presence of death, declaring 
 ‘* Himself, by a life of unblemished sinlessness, to 
 ‘have bridged the chasm between the human and 
 Pine ivine ss: 
 
 (I made some quotations in my previous Paper 
 which shocked you. This one which I have now 
 made will go far to compensate you for that pain.) 
 But to continue. Do we wonder after this that 
 we find St. Paul assuming that wherever Jesus is 
 acknowledged, that wherever a saint or, as we 
 should say, a Christian, is found, there Jesus is 
 worshipped with a worship such as no true Jew 
 could have offered to any being but to Jehovah? 
 The assumption that this was the kind of worship 
 then offered to Jesus Christ by the universal Church 
 is certainly manifest in these words of greeting to 
 the Corinthians, “ with all that call upon the NAME 
 ‘*of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place.” The 
 very expression, “call upon the Name of the 
 ‘‘Lord,” could not have been taken to mean 
 anything less than this worship, by a Jew, who 
 remembered its Old Testament connotation. And 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. I29 
 
 St. Paul’s words in the tenth chapter of the 
 Romans, from the first to fourteenth verse, will 
 help to bring this fact very vividly before our minds 
 if we read them side by side with this greeting to 
 the Corinthians.* Of course it may be said that 
 the existence of this worship does not prove that 
 it was not an idolatry. I am not here concerned 
 with this objection. Our contention is, that this 
 worship of Christ was so common, so universal, 
 among His disciples, and so common among them 
 within twenty-five years of His crucifixion, that it 
 is alluded to then by St. Paul in a letter, acknow- 
 ledged to be genuine, as something well known 
 and which excited no wonder, and which must 
 have been in existence for many years. And, 
 further, we contend that this worship of Christ at 
 this early date seems only a reasonable service in 
 men who believed in Him at all, and who accepted 
 any version or account of Christ’s own tremendous 
 assertions of His claims which bore any essential 
 resemblance to that contained in St. Paul’s 
 narrative of the Institution of the Holy Com- 
 munion. We learn, then, from these early and 
 
 * See Bishop Pearson on the Creed, Article ii., “Our 
 Lord.” ‘‘ For the true notation of the word,” says Pearson, 
 ‘‘it will not be so necessary to inquire into the use or 
 ‘origination of the Greek, much less into the etymology of 
 ‘ the correspondent Latin, as to search into the notion of the 
 ‘ Jews.’ The whole article is interesting. 
 
L340 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 authentic documents, that the Christ, the Messiah, 
 of history, was one who claimed, and who received, 
 an acknowledgment of His sinless personality, 
 of His Divine authority and power, from all His 
 disciples. And this lesson is one, I may add, 
 which is deepened and confirmed by the further 
 consideration, that He seems to have authorized 
 them to go to the length of placing His own name 
 beside that of the Great Father and of the Divine 
 Spirit (2 Cor. xili. 14) in their most solemn acts 
 of benediction. 
 
 So far then as to His Person. Now can we 
 learn anything further as to the nature of His 
 teaching and disposition while on earth? And 
 still clinging to the same Epistles, and still keeping 
 the four Gospels closed, can we infer anything as 
 to the character or condition of His early disciples 
 and as to any other well-known incidents in our 
 Lord’s career ? 
 
 And first as to the nature of our Lord’s teaching 
 generally. It is clear from St. Paul’s Epistles, 
 that although He claimed to be the Messiah, our 
 Lord spiritualised the conception so that* the 
 kingdom of God was never to be dreamed of as a 
 vival of that of the Czsars. Christ’s kingdom 
 was one of righteousness and peace and of spiritual 
 joy. His Messiahship was to be sealed in His 
 own Blood, not in that of others in conflict with 
 the kingdoms of this world. And St. Paul must 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. I31 
 
 have had some precept of His Lord before him, 
 to which he attached supreme authori ity when he 
 wrote, ‘‘ Render therefore to all their dues; tribute 
 “to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, 
 “fear to whom fear, honour to whom honour” 
 (Rom. xiii.). If this maxim had been merely an 
 idea of his own he would have said so. He would 
 have said something analogous to the words he 
 uses in treating of the subject of marriage: J, not 
 the Lord (x Cor. vii. 12). 
 
 Again, as to our Lord’s teaching, as to His 
 whole attitude, with reference to the Law. Here, 
 too, we find that our Lord must have fulfilled the 
 law and yet spiritualised it, and that St. Paul, 
 speaking 7 Christ, must have learned from Him 
 that Love is the fulfilling of the law. “ What the 
 law could not do in that it was weak through the 
 flesh, God (did) by sending His own Son. Thus 
 condemning sin in the flesh, that the righteousness 
 of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not 
 after the flesh but after the Spirit’? (Rom. viii. 3, 
 4). Christ’s teaching then must have been an 
 expansion of the Law, and must have given a new 
 power of obedience to His disciples, a power 
 working from within outwards. He must have 
 made it more awful and yet more sweet, more 
 spiritual and therefore more practical, than the 
 law of Moses. The r2th and 13th chapters of the 
 Epistle to the Romans may be taken as specimens 
 
 Gus 
 
132 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 of the spirit of Christ’s teaching, of His practical 
 and spiritual application of His own Divine 
 precepts of the law. St. Paul invests these moral 
 exhortations, which cannot too often be read and 
 pondered, not with his own authority, but with 
 his Lord’s. He speaks here, he says, through the 
 grace of God given unto him, to members of one 
 body in Christ. He sums up his pleadings by a 
 command which evidently embraces all that he 
 has been saying, in one sentence: Put ye on the 
 “Lord Fesus Christ, and make not provision for 
 ‘the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof!” 
 
 The Christ of the Sermon on the Mount was 
 with him, so that he spoke with authority here, 
 and not as the scribes. 
 
 But we must hasten to the conclusion of this 
 branch of the subject. We certainly, standing on 
 this Bridge of the four permitted Epistles, have 
 already seen enough to convince us that the 
 Jesus Christ of the Gospels is not the mythical 
 crystallization of the second or third centuries. 
 We cannot open and read these early, these almost 
 contemporary letters, without finding ourselves 
 in the very thick of allusions, of statements, of 
 exhortations, of assumptions, which drive us to 
 the conclusion that the Christ of real history is 
 also the Divine claimant of the worship and the 
 love of mankind, and that His whole life was one 
 grand miracle. And this is perhaps enough for 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 123 
 
 Our present purpose. . It may be _ interesting, 
 however, just to mention, as we proposed, a few 
 more features of His character and a few further 
 incidents of His career before we pass on; features 
 and incidents which we may gather from these 
 Epistles and which may help, indirectly at any 
 rate, to confirm our faith, by helping us to realize 
 the unity of the New Testament. 
 
 We gather then from St. Paul that his Lord 
 was TRUE, and that He must have left a profound 
 impression of the reality of His character, of the 
 trustworthiness of His every utterance, upon the 
 mind of His disciples. We are so familiar with 
 some of the expressions which imply this that we 
 are apt to pass them over. ‘I say the truth in 
 “ Christ, I lie not” (Rom. ix. 1), as if the very 
 thought of Christ transferred His members into 
 the atmosphere of truth and of sincerity. ‘As 
 “the .tvuth of Christ is in me” (2 Cor. xi. 10). 
 “In Him was not yea and nay, but. yea and 
 “Amen” (2 Cor. i. 20). An echo almost, one 
 “would say, of the Verily, Verily, the ‘Amen, 
 ““ Amen, I say unto you,” which we know so well, 
 of the “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” of 
 the mythical crystallisation. 
 
 Our Lord too was infinitely wise. ‘‘He was 
 ** made wisdom unto us.” 
 
 He was utterly unselfish. ‘‘ Even Christ pleased 
 ** not Himself”? (Rom. xv.). 
 
134 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 He was meck and gentle. ‘‘I1 BESEECH you by 
 ‘the meckness and gentleness of Christ.” It was not 
 a mere ideal excellence but a definite character, 
 well known to his correspondents, and one upon 
 which he could ground an appeal. 
 
 He was Love, the infinitely endearing Charity. 
 “The love of Christ constraineth us.” ‘ Who 
 ‘‘ shall separate us from the love of Christ.” 
 
 These allusions to the love of Christ are the 
 more suggestive when we recall St. Paul’s high 
 ideal of love (x Cor. xiil.) We see from that 
 chapter that the love of Christ would include His 
 long-suffering, His kindness, humility, unselfish- 
 ness, the absence in His character of envy or 
 jealousy or ill-temper, of peevishness or passion, 
 as well as the conspicuous presence of that meek- 
 ness and gentleness already referred to. 
 
 SomuchastoSt. Paul’s view of Christ’s character. 
 Let us pass to the mention of a few of the later 
 incidents in our Lord’s history—and in that of His 
 immediate followers. Besides those already noticed, 
 of His birth and early childhood, and of His 
 betrayal, and of the Last Supper, we gather from 
 St. Paul’s permitted Epistles, that our Lord was 
 crucified, and that this crucifixion took place under 
 the authority and sanction and through the instru- 
 mentality of the princes of this world. The final 
 blow at His life was struck by the Gentile Power, 
 and this under a mistaken notion of Christ’s real 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. Tah 
 
 character and claims; had they known Him they 
 would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. We 
 learn that He was buried, and that on the third 
 day He rose again. We have also a full and 
 interesting notice of events subsequent to the 
 Resurrection. Jesus was seen of PETER,* then 
 by the twelve (an expression by the bye, which, 
 used in this way without any comment or explana- 
 tion is strong proof of the original number of the 
 Apostles, and of the general use of the term in 
 St. Paul’s day), then by five hundred brethren 
 the majority of whom were alive when Paul was 
 writing, then of Fames and then by all the 
 Apostles. We learn also, by an incidental 
 allusion in Rom. x., that our Lord ascended. We 
 learn, finally, that St. Paul had, by some means, 
 been assured that the risen and ascended Christ 
 was the all-discerning and righteous Judge before 
 whose judgment-seat each man would be made 
 manifest at last. 
 
 Now open the Gospels. And before you read 
 them, tell me, do you expect to find there a simple 
 Jew who went about teaching (this and no more), 
 or will you be surprised to find the simple yet 
 
 * St. Paul had made personal acquaintance with St. Peter 
 (Gal. i. 18), and had no doubt heard the full account of this 
 appearance from Peter’s own lips, during the fifteen days 
 that these two strangely different and sometimes differing 
 men had met at Jerusalem. 
 
136 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 sublime record of One before whom we fall in 
 adoration and in wonder as our Lord and our 
 God? Nay, further yet. 
 
 Will you not be surprised nowif you do not find 
 in those Gospels the story of such an awful, yet 
 gracious Being, one with God and one with our 
 suffering humanity, such as He must have been 
 whom St. Paul’s letters have prepared us to 
 expect ? 
 
 I said, ‘‘now open the four Gospels.” But 
 perhaps I said so prematurely. At any rate, I 
 am quite willing, for the purpose of this argument, 
 that we should now close them again and wait 
 awhile, holding as it were in solution the lessons 
 which we have thus far learnt while we turn 
 to look for another bridge across the chasm. 
 Accepting then St. Paul’s doctrine of the Person 
 and work, of the nature and the claims of our 
 Lord, such as we have seen that doctrine to be, 
 let us look about for some links of connection 
 between that doctrine and the faith of the Church 
 such as it can be proved to have been a hundred 
 years afterwards; in the last quarter of the 
 second century. Ask for evidence, if any there 
 be, of the permanent hold, which the doctrine 
 of the Person of Christ, whether derived from 
 St. Paul or any other sources, really had upon 
 the Church of God. Seek an answer to this 
 question (still keeping your Gospels closed ) ; 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 137 
 
 what thought they of Christ during those hundred 
 years? Was it another Christ? Was it, I 
 mean, a Christ with another nature, with other 
 pretensions, with another and less miraculous 
 history ? 
 
 III. Earty CHRISTIAN WRITINGS (Bridge 2). 
 —Turn to the Christian writings of this period. 
 Turn to see for yourself who and what is the 
 Christ who stands out in clear relief in the pages 
 of the early Fathers, of the apologists, of the 
 heretics, even if you will, of that century. The 
 materials may be comparatively limited, the 
 evidence may come to us in a somewhat different 
 form from that which we may have expected; but 
 still, see, is it not the same historical Christ to 
 whom we are introduced all through? See 
 whether here, or anywhere, you can find any 
 traces of a Christ who was other than that awful, 
 that sublime, that supernatural Saviour, in whom 
 alone St. Paul and all Christians of the first 
 century, all Christians since the Resurrection, 
 have recognised their Lord. 
 
 When this is done, then open your Gospels 
 again, and see whether you are not forced to the 
 conclusion ‘‘ This is He. He and no other! He 
 ‘‘and no less!”’ It is the same Jesus! Nay, see 
 further, whether you are not now struck with this 
 fact, that in your long and steady reading of the 
 Christian literature of these hundred years, you 
 
138 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 find upon looking over your notes that (with a few 
 unimportant exceptions) you have added nothing 
 to that knowledge of the sayings, or of the details 
 of the life of Christ which you might have 
 obtained from these four Gospels alone, short and 
 fragmentary in form as they seem to be, had 
 you relied upon them as your sole source of 
 information at the first. 
 
 Then ask one final question: May it not, after 
 all, be true that these four Gospels moulded the 
 second-century traditions of Christendom, and 
 not the traditions the four Gospels? 
 
 This last question I put last because it must 
 come last, in the method of bridge-formation, 
 which I wish here to recommend. - 
 
 This method which I venture to suggest to you, I 
 may add, is one which I have tried for myself, and 
 one which I believe will help us to help others to 
 find a firm footing for their faith. It is one, too, 
 which will make the truth more vivid to the mind 
 than a mere on-looker would at first suppose. 
 Since some of my friends got frightened by the 
 author of “Supernatural Religion,” I have felt 
 that the first great question is, not that of the 
 authorship or date of our Gospels, important as 
 this is, but that of the substantial identity of the 
 original Christ with the Christ of the Catholic 
 Church. What we want to know is, whether, in 
 accepting the Christ of Christendom, we are on 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 139 
 
 the track of fables or of facts. And in this inquiry 
 we cannot do better than take warning by the 
 weighty words of Dr. Westcott, who tells us that 
 we are in danger, when endeavouring to meet this 
 question, of losing sight of the real point at issue 
 by diverging to a discussion on the canonicity of 
 the four Gospels. ‘‘ For Christians,” he goes on 
 to say, ‘the Gospels have their special religious 
 ‘‘ sionificance, but for others theyare simply records 
 “of particular facts. The truth of the facts is 
 ‘in this latter case the one question to be settled ; 
 ‘and not any theory which may or may not have 
 ‘been held as to any books in which the facts are 
 wa narrateds’* : 
 
 It is to avoid this danger that 1 venture to 
 suggest to those of us who are brought face to 
 face with modern unbelief, a method which begins 
 with an investigation of facts as they can be made 
 out apart from our Gospels, and then goes on to 
 compare those facts with the four Gospels. I 
 know that, at first, we may seem in this method 
 to be ceasing the quest for evidence of the 
 genuineness or authenticity of these invaluable 
 documents; and so we are for a time; but this 
 evidence will come to us with a much more attrac- 
 tive and decisive force if we seek first the answer 
 
 en nnn EE a EEEEEEE EER 
 
 * See Dr. Westcott’s Preface to the fourth edition of his 
 “ Canon of the New Testament,” page xxxv. 
 
I40 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 to the fundamental question: Who and what is 
 the real Christ of History? And I have put our 
 minds at peace to start with, by beginning with » 
 the “Epistle bridge,” upon which we may feel 
 firm, as we are busy with the early Christian 
 literature from, say, Clement of Rome to Justin 
 Martyr (inclusive). 
 
 Only do let us try this method, not merely 
 recommend it. Do let us persuade people to read 
 for themselves these works, not merely to read 
 discussions about them either on one side or the 
 other. They are, many of them, easily accessible 
 to even the English reader, and they would form 
 very instructive and interesting readings with 
 which to vary a course of Lectures on Early 
 Church History, a course, by the bye, in which 
 we might thus take care that the people should 
 hear the right side first upon this subject, instead 
 of their hearing the wrong side (as we cannot but 
 call it) first, from popular secularist lecturers or 
 pamphleteers. 
 
 But be this last suggestion as to popular read- 
 ings and lectures applicable or not to the case of 
 any of our parishes or congregations, one thing is 
 quite certain, that no mere statement of results 
 such as I could find room for in this Paper could 
 adequately convey the total general impression 
 which will be indelibly left upon the mind of any 
 candid man who will take the trouble to go through 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 5 
 
 the process for himself. Yet read what follows 
 as a summary of what may be gained from the 
 study of the Apostolic Fathers alone,—Clement, 
 Ignatius, Polycarp, Barnabas. The words are 
 Dr. Westcott’s : 
 
 “The Gospel which the Fathers announce 
 “includes all the articles of the ancient creeds. 
 ‘Christ, we read, our God, the Word, the Lord 
 ‘‘ and creator of the world,who was with the Father 
 ‘before time began, humbled Himself and came 
 “down from heaven and was manifested in the 
 ‘flesh, and was born of the Virgin Mary, of the race 
 ‘of David according to the flesh; and a star 
 “of exceeding brightness appeared at His birth. 
 ‘“¢ Afterwards He was baptized of John to fulfil all 
 ‘‘ righteousness, and then, speaking His Father’s 
 ‘“‘ message, He invited not the righteous but sinners 
 “to come to Him. Perfume was poured over His 
 “head, an emblem of the immortality which He 
 ‘breathed on the Church. At length, under Herod 
 ‘‘and Pontius Pilate, He was crucified, and vinegar 
 ‘Cand gall were given Him to drink. But on the 
 “first day of the week He rose from the dead, the | 
 ‘“firstfruits of the grave, and many prophets were 
 ‘raised by Him for whom they had waited. After 
 ‘‘ His resurrection He ate with His disciples. He 
 ‘ascended into heaven, sat at the right hand of 
 ‘‘the Father, and thence He shall come to judge 
 “the quick and the dead.” There are also in 
 
I42 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 these Fathers numerous parallels to the discourses 
 and precepts of our Lord reported in the Gospels.* 
 
 The only thing which should be added here, 
 because it is better that people should hear it first 
 from us, is that there are no references to any 
 specific miracles of our Lord in the Apostolic 
 Fathers. But we should recollect that all miracles 
 are implicitly included in the Incarnation and 
 Resurrection of Christ. And, further, as Dean 
 Plumptre has shown us in his introduction to the 
 Acts of the Apostles, we have in that work a similar 
 reticence and vagueness in this respect, and yet 
 it is quite compatible there (and why not here) 
 with a full and intimate knowledge on the part of 
 the author of many of the specific miracles of 
 -Christ.t 
 
 But it is when we reach the works of Fustin 
 Martyr that we seem to get more thoroughly into 
 the stream of Christian history, of citation, allu- 
 Fre ES ead oe rei WALT sos be Sob FO 
 
 * As e.g., Polycarp to Philippians, c. ii., remembering 
 ‘what the Lord taught us, saying, ‘ Judge not that ye benot 
 ‘judged ; forgive and it shall be forgiven unto you.’’”’? No 
 chapter or any Gospel is quoted, or any Evangelist by name 
 referred to; this was not the method of the time. But this 
 does not at all affect our general argument here. 
 
 + With reference to the specific miracles, the well-known 
 fragment from the “ Apology of Quadratus”’ might be cited 
 to show that in the early years of the second century our 
 Lord’s miracles of healing and raising the dead were well 
 known. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 143 
 
 sion, argument, which makes it quite certain to 
 my mind that the Christ whom we worship nowis 
 the Christ of History, and not a mythical crystal- 
 lization of the third century. Even supposing 
 we admit, for the moment, what we do not admit, 
 that there is no proof that our Gospels were used 
 by Justin Martyr (A.D. 140) at all. He certainly 
 presents to us a Christ who is in all essential 
 features of His nature, His claims, His teaching, 
 and His history, the same as that whom St. Paul’s 
 permitted Epistles call upon us to follow, whom 
 the Creeds of Christendom have taught us to con- 
 fess, and whom we shall read of in our Gospels 
 when we open them again. But here, even more 
 than in the case of the early Fathers, no mere 
 isolated citations, no bare statement of results, 
 will produce the impression which I have stated, 
 or convey an adequate idea of the profound con- 
 viction which a careful reading of Justin Martyr 
 will leave upon the mind. But do not, I venture 
 to say, try FIRST to make out a case for our four 
 Gospels from Justin Martyr; let that case stand 
 over a little, and you can come round to it sub- 
 sequently. The first great question is: What 
 thought he, what taught he of Christ? Get a 
 clear and definite answer to that question from 
 him first; an answer which will be the more satis: 
 factory and conclusive from the fact that he does 
 not pretend to be the deposit or the expounder of 
 
144 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 any new discoveries or revelations on this subject, 
 but simply to represent the faith of all Christians, 
 —the worship, the creed, of his time. 
 
 IV. But I must draw to a close my few hints 
 upon this division of my Paper. I wish it could 
 have been made more suggestive than I am afraid 
 it will be, of that method of meeting the critical 
 difficulties of the day, which I think will be found 
 most availing in the long run. Before, however, 
 we proceed to the next and last branch of the 
 entire subject of this essay, there are two general 
 observations which I would ask to be allowed to 
 offer. 
 
 And first, although I have said that the finding 
 of the historical Christ should be the first object 
 of our search in the Patristic and Apologetic 
 studies, I by no means wish it to be inferred that 
 I wish the other line of inquiry, that into the 
 evidences of the early use and existence of our 
 four Gospels, to be dispensed with as superfluous. 
 It is, on the contrary, one of very great interest 
 and importance. And I will just add a few hints 
 as to some results which may be expected. 
 
 (1) A caréful study of the report which Eusebius 
 gives us of the testimony of Papias (who was 
 probably a pupil of the Apostle St. John), may 
 fairly be said to form an excellent imtroduction to 
 this critical inquiry, and due weight must be 
 attached to the close proximity of this Father to 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 145 
 
 the Apostolic Age, and to his intimacy with the 
 daughters of Philip the Apostle. Careful attention 
 also should be paid to the accurate translation of 
 the Greek title or description of his celebrated 
 work, ‘‘An Exposition of Oracles of the Lord.’’* 
 The fact, too, should be grasped, that he was an 
 expositor and not an historian, and one therefore 
 who did not pretend to exhaust his subject. He 
 makes no claim to completeness, and we cannot 
 therefore conclude from his silence as to any 
 oracle or gospel, that it did not exist or was not 
 known in his time. Weighing these preliminary 
 considerations carefully, it is difficult to persuade 
 oneself, after reading the words of Papias, that 
 neither St. Matthew’s nor St. Mark’s Gospel was 
 in existence in his day—in existence, I say: I do 
 not say active circulation. 
 
 (2) Again, when we take up distinctly and 
 separately the inquiry into the date and authen- 
 ticity of our four Gospels, great attention should 
 be paid to the light thrown upon the subject by 
 the charges brought against Marcion, an early. 
 heretic, you remember, still teaching when Justin 
 Martyr wrote his first Apology. Even if we refuse 
 to give much weight to the charges of Marcion’s 
 adversaries, it is a significant fact that they 
 always charge him with mutilating something which 
 
 * Not the Oracles. 
 IO 
 
146 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 already existed. That something certainly included 
 our Gospel according to St. Luke. It will be of 
 great assistance also to observe that the author 
 of ‘‘ Supernatural Religion ” now admits that Dr. 
 Sanday has convinced him that our third Synoptic 
 existed in Marcion’s time, and was substantially 
 in the hands of Marcion, and that, therefore, the 
 existence of our Gospel of St. Luke frior to 
 A.D. 140 ts proved. But if this be so, then surely 
 our third Synoptic was in Fustin Martyr’s hands, 
 although, in accordance with the general usage of 
 his time, and especially in accordance with that of 
 the apologetic writings of the early ages, Justin 
 Martyr does not cite it by name. 
 
 (3) But a still more important contribution to 
 our means of forming a correct conclusion as to 
 the early date and circulation of our four Gospels, 
 one indeed of the most interesting that I know of, 
 will be found in Tatian’s “‘ Diatessaron.” 
 
 Tatian was a hearer, if not a disciple, of Justin 
 Martyr, and like Justin Martyr a convert to the 
 faith of Christ. During Justin’s lifetime Tatian 
 remained in communion with the Catholic Church. 
 He subsequently became a well-known heretic. 
 But the interesting point for our purpose is the 
 discovery of an Armenian commentary written by 
 St. Ephraem of Edessa (A.D. 373), upon this 
 “Diatessaron” of Tatian’s. This discovery is 
 due to the publications of Mechitarist monks at 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 147 
 
 Venice, and the contents of this commentary 
 prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the 
 Diatessaron of Tatian was a concise compilation 
 of our four Gospels, and it brings to us just that 
 valuable evidence of the connection of Tatian’s 
 Gospel with those in our Canon, which the author 
 of ‘‘ Supernatural Religion” sought for but could 
 not find. We are forced now by this discovery to 
 the conclusion that in Fustin Martyr’s time all our 
 four Gospels were in existence, and, to some extent 
 at least, in circulation among Christians. In 
 order to realize the importance of this result, I 
 advise my hearers to read carefully a series of 
 important articles by Dr. Wace, in the Expositor 
 of 1881,—on Tatian’s Diatessaron, and to put them 
 into the hands of any intelligent layman who may 
 be anxious to see for himself some evidence of the 
 way in which contributions towards the settlement 
 of modern critical doubts are being made by the 
 care and learning of contemporary scholars and 
 divines, such as Bishop Lightfoot and Dr. Wace, 
 Dr. Westcott and Dr. Sanday. Ultimately these 
 careful contributions, although they may not 
 attract popular attention at first, will tell upon 
 the people at large, and be recognised as of 
 general and abiding importance even by practical 
 men of business. 
 
 V. This last remark brings me to the second 
 and last class of observations, which I asked 
 
148 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 to be allowed to offer before passing to the brief 
 reconsideration of the last main division of our 
 Paper. 
 
 I have alluded to the value, the practical value, 
 of contemporary scholarship and learning among 
 the recognised leaders of the English clergy. 
 The more one knows of what is going on in the 
 secularist camp, or in critical literature, the more 
 one feels impressed with the need there is among 
 us of an ever increasing number of men whose 
 lives are devoted to critical investigations, and 
 upon whom one can rely for the results of 
 thorough, impartial, and original methodical 
 research. But this is not all. We want some- 
 thing more as well. We want a large body of 
 studious clergy who are capable of assimilating 
 these results readily, and of transmitting popularly, 
 what they have gained from headquarters, to the 
 minds of the masses of the people. A good deal 
 of this transmission will have to be done by 
 lectures, speeches and sermons ; some of it, surely, 
 by an adaptation of that invaluable method of 
 public “‘ Bible-readings”’ in which the present 
 Bishop of Lichfield, while he was Vicar of 
 Kensington, rendered such invaluable service to 
 so many educated men and women of West 
 London; some of it, again, may be done by men, 
 of whom may God send us many more than we 
 have got, who are capable of writing trenchant 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. I49 
 
 and impressive pamphlets and tracts. In order, 
 however, to carry out such a work as this we 
 must largely increase the number of highly 
 educated and fairly learned clergy, and we must 
 also have an increasing body of clergy who are 
 interested in the course of modern thought and of 
 modern philosophical and moral speculations, and 
 in the tendencies of social and political theories 
 which abound among us at this time, and which 
 are profoundly modifying men’s views of religion. 
 In short, we want a large body of clergy capable 
 of bringing out of their treasures things new and 
 old, to help us here. And how are we to get such 
 abody? I do not know. I only know that one 
 way not to get them is to talk and write as if such 
 a body of men would have an easy time of it, and 
 to confine the epithet “ hard-working ” clergy to 
 that very valuable body of men who are good 
 organizers, good men of business, good popular 
 preachers, good ecclesiastical musicians, good and 
 industrious Ritualists.* All these are very valuable 
 adjuncts and helps to us. But do not let us 
 assume that no clergy who cannot be brought 
 into this latter category of Church workers, can 
 do much hard work, work which will tell in future 
 
 SS a a ee ee ae 
 
 * I need perhaps hardly say that I do not use the word 
 “Ritualist” here with even the suspicion of an opprobrious 
 connotation. : 
 
 A i 
 
I50 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 generations as well as in this for the Master of 
 the vineyard, and for the Church and Realm of 
 England. 
 
 Vs. 
 
 I. And now I am led by a not unnatural 
 transition to offer a few words in conclusion upon 
 the moral aspects of the whole subject upon which 
 we have been engaged. Those of you who heard 
 or read my first Paper will remember that I 
 called distinct attention to the not unreasonable 
 apprehension with which many thoughtful men 
 cannot help looking forward to the ultimate 
 influence upon morals of the popular Atheism and 
 Materialism of our time. 
 
 The materialist philosophy, the predominance 
 of the physico-chemical view of man, the loss of 
 all vital faith in the existence of an Eternal 
 Person to whom, in the last resort, each man 
 is responsible,—all this seems only too likely, 
 even against the expressed wish and the living 
 examples of many of the more eminent leaders of 
 this Modern Unbelief, to give a terrible’ stimulus 
 to the darker side of our human nature, and to 
 lend the aid of philosophical plausibilities to the 
 ethics of self-indulgence and the creed of lust. 
 And in the present condition of society no one 
 can say that we want any fresh stimulants for the 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. Lat 
 
 animal appetites or any philosophical shelters for 
 that povnua capkos, which some do expound 
 the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, 
 some the desire of the flesh. What I am afraid 
 of is, that fresh stimulants and fresh excuses are 
 being fast furnished for those who want to take 
 the lower line, and that to those who are tempted 
 to live to themselves or to seize the bribes of the 
 flesh, reasons are being provided for the hope that 
 is in them that they may do it with impunity if 
 they do it with prudence. 
 
 I am not alone in this opinion, nor is it a mere 
 clerical scare. ‘‘I cannot imagine,” says one of 
 my correspondents, a layman, a careful observer 
 of men, a man of wide and liberal views, and 
 accustomed to great affairs, ““I cannot imagine 
 ‘‘ any style of preaching more attractive to half- 
 ‘* educated or to dissolute men and women than 
 ** that which you quote (from Mrs. Besant and 
 ‘‘ others), while there are others who have no 
 * time to give to the consideration of metaphysics 
 ‘‘ who are fascinated by the new negations, not 
 “sorry to be relieved from the disturbing in- 
 ‘* fluences of early teaching, and who do not wish 
 ‘‘to have any fresh sanctions of morality put in 
 ‘“‘ the place of those from which they rejoice to feel 
 *‘ themselves freed.”” When a man of the world 
 speaks thus you may feel sure matters are 
 becoming serious, and the gravity of the situation 
 
 De 
 
I52 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 appears to be this, that, under the new régime, the 
 very sternest reproof which you can administer to 
 the very vilest, the very worst of men, is one in 
 which you can charge him with having made a 
 miscalculation, or what the majority consider, 
 or have agreed to punish, as a miscalculation. 
 Pleasure, more or less refined, being the only 
 God, and pain, more or less intense or enduring, 
 being the only devil, such an one has, you can 
 assure him, taken a line of action through which, 
 again in the opinion of the majority, he has gone 
 badly to work to secure the favour of the one and 
 to avoid the grip of the other. But I do not see 
 how, if he holds out like a man, and a logician, you 
 can get any further with him thanthis. With the 
 new ethics triumphant, and when in the third or 
 fourth generation, the old religious and ethical 
 superstitions have been thoroughly bred out of 
 men, I do not see how you are to produce those 
 initial feelings of shame, that initial sense of sin 
 and of personal responsibility which is the true 
 preliminary, at any rate, to individual and social 
 Regeneration. 
 
 Let it be, distinctly understood that I do not 
 want to use the weapons of invective. When we 
 thus speak we are only exposing what we feel 
 to be the inevitable tendencies of the new Ethics 
 of Materialism, and the block which they will 
 ultimately lay in the road of moral progress, if 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 153 
 
 they are to remain in that road to the third and 
 fourth generation. To avoid hurting any one’s 
 feelings, let us go back eighteen hundred years, 
 and bring out, in this way, the difficulty of arousing 
 upon the negative and attractive assumptions of 
 the Materialist or the Secularist Ethics, even the 
 indispensable initial feelings of shame or of guilt. 
 
 II. Let us see what a consistent disciple of 
 the Secularist Ethics could have said to St. Paul, 
 had St. Paul only had the weapons of the Epi- 
 curean Materialist or of the Physico-Chemical 
 Moralist, in his hands. We shall see at a glance 
 how strongly entrenched Felix would have been, 
 how unanswerable his defence would have been, 
 even had St. Paul confronted him with the biting 
 bitterness of Tacitus, who tells us that Felix was 
 aman who ‘per omnem savitiam et libidinem jus 
 ** vyegium servilt ingento exercutt.” 
 
 If pleasure and pain are the sovereign masters 
 of the universe, where was there any room for blame 
 of Felix, who, on his own principles, and upon the 
 (presumed) principles of the Apostle, could have 
 demonstrated the prudence and the providence with 
 which he had arranged his life, so as to get out of 
 it the largest possible amount of pleasure and the 
 least possible amount of pain or of inconvenience? 
 
 If St. Paul had addressed to him a remonstrance 
 on the ground that a larger amount of pleasure 
 was to be obtained from the spectacle of a well- 
 
154 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 ordered and justly governed province than could 
 possibly be extracted from that of a people preyed 
 upon and cruelly and wantonly farmed, for the 
 purpose of finding fuel for the passions, or food 
 for the cupidity of the governor, Felix would have 
 had his answer ready. ‘‘ Pleasures and pains are 
 “‘matters of taste. The synthesis of organs 
 “(which the vulgar call Felix) experiences no 
 “sensations of pleasure so intense, and so self- 
 ‘‘ regarding, as those which the present line of 
 ‘“‘ life procures. These sensations of pleasure 
 “‘may not perhaps last quite so long as those 
 *‘to which that synthesis of organs called Paul 
 ‘‘ wishes to habituate the synthesis called Felix. 
 ‘“‘ But it prefers, or, to adopt the metaphor of the 
 ‘“* metaphysician, ‘I’ prefer intensity to duration. 
 ‘‘ That may be an imprudence, a mistake, from 
 ‘‘ your point of view, but neither from your point 
 ‘* of view nor from mine can it be what is vulgarly 
 ‘called a sin. The only mistake which I am 
 “afraid of, is that of incurring the wrath of 
 ‘‘ Cesar. But I havea brother at court, a power- 
 “‘ ful synthesis of organs, upon whose influence 
 ““T can depend for the favourable adjustment 
 ‘‘ of my relations with the Imperial authority. 
 ‘‘ This Ceesar’s wrath is the only judgment to 
 ‘come I have any need to dread, and against 
 ‘this Iam insured. Sensation, we are agreed, 
 ** ceasing with the organs of sense, nay, if there 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 155 
 
 “ bea soul, I myself ceasing with the scattering of 
 “that soul’s exceedingly fine particles, there can 
 ‘be no pain which I cannot at once put an end 
 ‘‘ to, when life becomes intolerable, by embracing 
 what even the rigid Stoic calls the ead éEayoyn 
 of suicide. Responsibility, too, ceasing with 
 my power to answer, and with the dream of a 
 Living Judge and Ruler beyond, to whom any 
 answer can be given, what you call my con- 
 science may be reasoned into peace and re- 
 strained from paining menow, without any super- 
 stitious dread of its reviving, in the future, any 
 of the remonstrances or torments of the past.” 
 
 I have thrown the picture back into the past 
 for a moment to avoid mentioning living men 
 with disparagement. But I see in that picture a 
 warning of what we may come to, or of what, 
 when all godliness is bred out or whipped out of 
 our children’s children, they may come to, if we 
 do not mind what we are about. The fact is, we 
 cannot reason with the present generation, or 
 with any generation of men, upon righteousness, 
 temperance and judgment to come, upon any 
 such retrograde and pagan principles as those in 
 which, in the name but not with the sanction of 
 science, we are sometimes invited now to take 
 refuge, and which are offered to us as substitutes 
 for those Divine sanctions here and hereafter 
 which it is proposed to explode. And hence the 
 
156 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 gravity of the situation, and the need of living, 
 preaching, and writing in the full consciousness 
 of its gravity ; hence, too, the need of foresight and 
 of insight on our part, that we may act as good 
 ‘‘ watchdogs” of. Christian civilization and of 
 moral progress, and point out faithfully to men, 
 even at the risk of seeming impertinent alarmists, 
 the retrograde tendency of much of the popular 
 philosophy and of the whole Secularist view of 
 life and of society. I think that if we realize the 
 situation thus, even yet, some of the missionaries 
 of Secularism will be got to see that they are 
 advocating principles which, if universally or 
 generally accepted and acted upon, will put the 
 world backward instead of forward, and evolve us 
 downwards instead of upwards, nearer to the ape 
 and to the dust than to the ideal manhood towards 
 which all pure and ardent souls must ever yearn. 
 III. But be this as it may, I yet feel that in 
 dealing with the great mass of the people it is 
 just here, on the moral ground—just here, where 
 there lies the shadow of our darkest apprehensions 
 —that we may find the materials of hope. Here, 
 in the inner man; here, in each man’s conscience, 
 we may be sure, if our creed be true, there are 
 sparks of celestial Light which may be fanned 
 into a flame, if we are wise. Let us always deal 
 with men upon the supposition that our creed 7s 
 true, let us always appeal to them as to those in 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. L457 
 
 whom the Spirit of God is bearing witness and 
 seeking to convict and to convince them of sin 
 and righteousness and judgment. Let us always 
 assume that we have a Divine Ally in every 
 human heart. He is not far from any one of us, 
 philosopher or critic, secularist or atheist, priest 
 or prophet, even although we may refuse to 
 recognise His Presence or to listen to His Voice 
 within.* 
 
 As we appealed at the outset to the witness 
 which each man bears within him as to his 
 own mysterious personal identity, and used that 
 witness as an introduction to the argument for 
 the existence of a Supreme Intelligence, a Person, 
 a living God in Nature; so now, in the last resort, 
 we still may appeal to this consciousness of 
 personal identity, and to the ineradicable, although 
 often withered, sense of personal responsibility 
 which accompanies it, as a witness to each man 
 of the Living Judge, and of the righteous retri- 
 bution which awaits him. And surely the appeal 
 will not be in vain for ever, especially from the 
 lips of those who are commissioned to proclaim 
 
 * When I was vicar of Shoreditch I often took down the 
 Baptismal Register Book, and looked steadily at the name 
 of ‘‘CHARLES BRADLAUGH”’ there, and prayed and wondered 
 about him. The answer I generally got was this—‘‘ The 
 ‘ Spirit of God has not done with Charles Bradlaugh yet.” 
 
158 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 that the Judge is also the awakener of the con- 
 science, yea, the Eternal Friend and Saviour and 
 Fellow-Sufferer, who “‘has grieved as men, and 
 “like slain men been slain.” 
 
 God help us to treat men, to speak to men, to 
 live, nay if He sees fit, to die, so that we may 
 co-operate in living and in dying with this inward 
 Monitor, this silent Reprover, this Lord of the 
 conscience of each man—with this Eternal Lover 
 who loves too dearly to let men alone. God help 
 us! For what we want is to strike the conscience, 
 and yet revive the spirits, of men; so to preach 
 Christ that all may see and make their children 
 see that He, who to all sin must ever be a 
 consuming fire, is yet to all sinners the God of 
 Hope! 
 
 The task is tremendous, but we will not 
 despair; for not only have we, as I have said, an 
 ally in each man’s conscience, but we have, also, 
 a Life, a Sacrifice, an Act of God, which at one 
 and the same moment reproaches and ennobles 
 men. 
 
 ‘Through sacrifice to higher life.” We thought 
 we saw this law written in the works, and 
 gradually revealing itself in the long and often 
 painful processes, of “Nature.” Ultimately, I 
 believe, we may be led to trace the operation of 
 an analogous law in the history of man, and in 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. es US 8 
 
 the dealings of God with us from generation to 
 generation. Every act, every course of action, 
 every life, which has been, in a willing and 
 conscious agent, an illustration of this law of 
 Sacrifice, a homage to this principle of progress 
 and of ascension, has had a Voice for some one. 
 It has addressed itself with silent eloquence to 
 that which is characteristically and essentially 
 human inus. It has struck the conscience, and 
 yet has fired the spiritual ambition of men, so 
 that they have been inspired to make a demand 
 upon themselves for something higher than their 
 former self—for a life, often, which should in 
 some respects, at least, correspond to that con- 
 ception of life and of duty by which the original 
 Sacrifice had been inspired, and by which the 
 tone of the mind had been sustained at that high 
 pitch which alone could have conducted it to such 
 a grand consummation. And if this be so, surely 
 we may feel that such a Life and such a Sacrifice 
 as that of Jesus Christ (the Word of God, the 
 Son of Man) are pre-eminently calculated to 
 arouse the conscience, and yet to inspire the heart 
 with hope, if once men can be got to see Him as 
 He really was and is. Such a Life, such a 
 Character as this, seems to be in itself the very 
 warning, the very “threat,” if you will, which we 
 need, that a life of selfish trifling, of degrading 
 animalism, of faithlessness to one’s highest calling 
 
160 REASSURING HINTS, 
 
 must, if persisted in, end in Hell, in the pain and 
 shame of a man degraded and separated from his 
 highest, that is from his only proper, condition, 
 that of proximity to God. But at the same time 
 there also is this grand Power in such a Life, 
 especially when you remember whose as well as 
 what it was, that with the very message of 
 expostulating urgency and of crushing reproach, 
 it brings another message, that of righteous 
 mercy, of infinite pity, and so of hope; a promise 
 and potency of recovery—of Heaven—here and 
 hereafter. 
 
 I say of heaven here, for truly, notwithstanding 
 Dr. Aveling’s pamphlet,* I believe that wtter trust 
 of Christ, the practical and universal adoption, 
 for one generation, of the principles, the 700s of 
 Christ’s Life, and of His teaching, say, in the 
 Sermon on the Mount alone, would make earth a 
 heavenly spot for all succeeding generations of 
 men. But as this cannot be, I will venture to 
 affirm, still in spite of Dr. Aveling, that in 
 proportion as men become more Christian they will 
 become more human. I say they will become more 
 human—less brutal, less cruel, less cowardly, 
 gentler with others, sterner with themselves ;— 
 less factious, less bigoted, less scornful ; less given 
 to exasperating epithets, to bitter thoughts, to 
 LL nee ee Te eee 
 
 * Cf. First Paper, page 44. 
 
WITH FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS. 161 
 
 bitter words, to devouring lusts, to vindictive 
 reprisals, to secret impurities. As men become 
 Christian, they will be more truly men; and earth 
 being freed from some of its deadliest curses, 
 will become more heavenlike. As men become 
 more Christian, we shall get rid of the many 
 superstitions, the many mocking infatuations, of 
 Mammon worship, and of the corroding cares 
 of faithless anxiety, and of half at least of the 
 horrid temptations, which those infatuations and 
 those cares breed in men and women, to offer 
 their souls for sale or to buy the souls of others, 
 as they would chattels in a shop. 
 
 But there is no room here for more hints as to 
 the bearing of the Character, the Teaching, the 
 Authority of Christ upon the future happiness 
 and peace of this world. I hope one day to 
 publish a volume of discourses on the Sermon on 
 the Mount, in which this fertile topic will be more 
 fully illustrated and enforced. I will do no more 
 here than just add my profound conviction that 
 a greater mistake cannot be made than that of 
 supposing that because our Lord brings another 
 world into light, and brightens the hope of 
 immortality, His teaching and His word are not 
 for this world too, and for men and women now 
 and here. The truth is that the very character 
 which is essential for the future world is the 
 very character which here, in this world, is 
 
162 REASSURING HINTS. 
 
 the salt of the earth, and that without which we 
 can have no hope of true progress and true 
 happiness below. What must be for heaven, will 
 not only do, but will be the very best conceivable 
 gift, for earth. A generation utterly Christian is 
 our grandest hope for man even if when we die 
 all is over, even if human life stopped dead at the 
 grave. 
 
 In conclusion then, we repeat, the moral ground 
 is one at once of the very gravest anxiety, and of 
 the very liveliest hope. We have still, in Curist’s 
 presence in man’s conscience, our hope; in His 
 Lite, His teaching, His Sacrifice, our mightiest 
 instrument, with which to touch the conscience 
 and to revive the moral and spiritual aspirations 
 ofmen. God help us to use this instrument; to 
 hold up this Divine Character to the hearts of 
 this generation. But if we are not capable of 
 doing this work for Him and for our fellows, may 
 He find some others that are. 
 
 Along the whole line, then, which, at the 
 instigation of your Secretary, we have passed over 
 together, there are ‘‘ Reasonable Apprehensions ” 
 and “‘Reassuring Hints” of Hope. 
 
 G, NORMAN AND SON, PRINTERS, HART STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Crown 8vo. cloth, price 2s. 6d. 
 
 PPEeS AND? DHEOLOGY, 
 
 PAPERS AND DISCOURSES 
 
 IN AID OF 
 
 SPIRITUAL MORALITY & INTELLIGENT FAITH. 
 
 “These are the papers of a very genuine man, who really 
 ‘faces the difficulties with which he deals, and does not attempt 
 ‘to evade them. Some of them are better than others, but all 
 ‘show a candid and a masculine mind, which is incapable of 
 ‘evading a serious difficulty, and which meets it with all the 
 ‘‘ereater candour and seriousness, the more serious it is.... . 
 “Tt is a book which indicates the deepest convictions of a 
 genuine Christian who finds his theology the only key to the 
 ‘‘realities of life,”’"—Spectator, December 17th, 1887. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 FREDERIC NORGATE, 
 5, KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN; 
 WILLIAMS & NORGATE, 20, FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 
 
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