//O'. 2.2- LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY PRINCETON, N. J. BV A501 .F67 1891 Foster, Randolph S. 1820- 1903. Philosophy of Christian experience i922 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE EIGHT LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE OHIO WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY ON THE MERRICK FOUNDATION BY RANDOLPH S. FOSTER THIRD SERIES NEW YORK: HUNT 6- EATON CINCINNATI : CRANSTON <&» STOWB i8gi Copyright, iSgo, by HJNT & EATON, New York. PREFACE. The Lonored projector of the foundation under whose auspices the following lectures were delivered — himself a ripe scholar, a venerable and venerated teacher, a beautiful exponent of Christian character — still lives. The foundation provides for "a;i annual course of at least Jive lectures on Experimental and Practical Religion.'''' It is doubtful whether, pressed as the lecturer was, at the time he received the invitation to de- liver one of the courses, with other uncompleted and weighty- literary engagements in addition to onerous official duties, and withal not over strong, he could have entertained the suggestion for a moment, but for two circumstances. The first of these circumstances was, that, unconsciously, and probably wholly unknown to himself, the founder of the lecture- ship had been for more than fifty years a constructive force in the mind life and spiritual life of the lecturer. It is not given us to know here what subtle influences go from us, fashioning other lives. Possibly it may be an element of the joy or sorrow of eternity to make the discovery. It gives me profound pleas- ure to make this public acknowledgment of a long-standing debt of gratitude. The pressure of a hand laid on me when a strip- ling is still sensibly felt. The second circumstance that moved me to consent M^as the theme suggested, "The Philosophy of Christian Experience." Had the matter of selecting a subject been left to myself, it is probable preoccupancy with other great discussions would 2 PREFACE. have been a formidable if not fatal liinderance. The mind already tense with uncompleted investigations does not readilj adjust itself to the search for new lines. The offered theme opened an inviting door. The task was accepted. The lectures to follow are the result. The subject is sympathetic with the temper of the age. It deals with facts rather than speculations ; with experimental verities rather than mere dogmas. It subjects Christianity to practical tests, and so puts it in line with scientific method. It offers the inner experiences of the soul to the examination and explanation of reason. The age busies itself with facts, demands facts, will have nothing but facts, relegates all speculation ; the subject accepts the situation, and presents facts for considera- tion — the deepest and most indisputable of all facts : not tlie mere facts of sense, about which there may be dispute and which relate to merely material and temporal things, but the deeper facts of the soul, facts of consciousness, about which it is impossible there should be any dispute ; facts which affect character and destiny, therefore of the most profound interest possible. CONTENTS. JJECT Ij re I, PAGE Limitations and Definitions 6 LECTURE IL Implications and Conditioning Grounds of Experience 26 LECTURE in. Antecedent History and Principles which Color Experience 49 LECTURE IV. Process and I5lements of Experience. Forgiveness 74 LECTURE Y. Elements of Experience Continued. Regeneration 86 ' LECTURE VL Facts which Condition Experience Subsequent to Regeneration 109 LECTURE YJL Some Phases op Experience 127 LECTURE VI IL Possibilities op Grace, and Advices. 154 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. LECTU RE I. LIMITATIONS AND DEFINITIONS. The greatest difRcnlty I have found in jDreparing these lect- ures has been to determine what things to exchide so as to bring them within allowed limits ; and yet so as not to mar them by leaving out matters which ought to be mentioned, as having es- sential bearings on the subject to be discussed. An attempt to give a philosophy of Christian experience without discussing the doctrine of human sin and sinfulness^ for instance, seems to be commencing to build in the air ; the same is true of the doctrine of atonement ; yet any one at all informed on the nature of these subjects and of the breadth of discussion they involve will see that either of them, to be discussed at all, would re- quire more than all the time I have for my entire subject. It is impossible, therefore, for me to enter the field of polemics on these points at all. They are fully discussed in Studies hi The- ology, now going through the press. Tlie only possible atten- tion I can give them in these lectures is the briefest reference and simple statement M^hen continuity of thought demands it. The stand-point from which the discussion proceeds is, broadly, tliat occupied by Arminian theologians, without slavish adherence to all the incidents put into the theory by many of its advocates. Its theory of sin and atonement and cognate doc- trines is assumed as substantially correct, without any attempt 6 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. at unfolding or defending the positions held. But, while this is the stand-point which my mind holds theologically, it must be kept in mind that I have no concern whatever about the defense of any theological system. I am not proposing to treat the subject theologically at all, and am utterly careless about systems as such. My line is entirely another — deals with facts and the philosophy of them. It is proper to say, before entering upon the discussion to which these lectures are to be devoted, that they do not propose a philosophy of religion, or even a philosophy of the Christian system of religion. These are cognate and generally related subjects to our topic, but are broader, and our limits will not permit us even to broach them. There are many able treatises on these distinct topics within the reach of every student, which, in order to the best theological furnishing, ought to be read and studied with care. As an invaluable treatise of this kind, bear- ing directly on Christian apologetics, I commend Walker's Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation ^ in many respects equal, and in some respects superior, to Bishop Butler's masterpiece. The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Consti- tution and Course of Nature, which, of course, no student is un- acquainted with. 1 also commend, as of great value, the two works of Dr. Mark Hopkins, Lectures on Moral Philosophy and Ethics, and The Laio of Love and Love a Law j likewise Bushnell's Nature and the Supernatural. And I will venture to speak of yet one other, which I have been permitted to see in manuscript, for which the world has been waiting too long, and I hope may not have to wait much longer, Comparative Religions, by Dr. William F. Warren, of the Boston University. These lectures will be strictly limited to the investigation of " the philosophy of Christian experience." There have been PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 7 many works written on the subject of Christian experience, some practical and experimental, some speculative, critical, and theological, but, so far as I am informed, while many of these have been stimulating and helpful to thought none have at- tempted a philosophy of the subject. We enter, therefore, upon a somewhat new and, in some respects, unfinger-boarded and un- trodden way. It is proper I should say that our path lies broad away from a strictly biblical or theological treatise ; and from lior- tation or an attempt to stimulate to the pursuit of an experience. I propose no theological polemic. For my purposes I shall make the least possible reference theologizing. Nor will it be expected that I shall deal with matters of exegesis. As nearly as possible I will omit any reference to the text. This may seem strange in treating of such a theme as Christian experience, but it is precisely what my thesis demands. I am to deal with matters of experience — purely subjective phenomena ; to in- quire what they are, and liow they are to be explained. Theolog- ical and biblical principles are involved and will emerge, but they do not enter into my discussion directly. No position taken will depend for its support or will be supported by appeal to the Bible, though some will depend on the Bible for their historical grounds. Perhaps it ought to be stated more explicitly that the method pursued in this discussion is entirely different from that ordi- narilj' pursued in dealing with Christian topics. The usual method is to attempt to find what is taught in or deduceable from the Bible. The book is court of final resort; its dictum is decisive. The aim is to find what it teaches. Now this is not my aim at all. I do not even raise the question. My point is to find what human experience is, and what liuman experience teaches along certain lines. This will explain why so little 'ref- erence is made to the Bible in these- lectures.. Other treatises — 8 PEILOSOPEY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. a former treatise of my own — proceed from the view-point of the Bible. This discussion is from the view-point of the sonl itself. This course is pursued as the only legitimate course in essay- ing to give a philosophy of facts which are wholly facts of ex- perience. I desire attention to every position taken, and hold myself under obligation to the proof that nothing advanced is contrary to the word of God when the proof is demanded. My hope is to show that Christian experience is capable of rational interpretation and defense ; and so to make it appear tliat con- crete Christianity, or the Christianity of experience, rationally unfolded, is precisely the Christianity of the Bible, doctrinally revealed. Some of the positions taken will impinge on current systems, and some opinions about them will be expressed, but only as they bear on the philosophy propounded, not at all on the the- ological polemic. The demand for definition. WJiat is definition f The terms of the thesis call for defiLition. Definition itself needs to be defined. It is essential to definition that it define ; that is, that it should separate the object defined from every other subject, so that it becomes a distinct object of thought — set off by itself. That is the etymological significance of the term — to bound, or set boundaries. Nothing approaches definition that does not secure this first condition. But this is not suflicient. Definition must include all that is essential to the object defined. If any essential is left out, the definition falls short of its aim in an essential point, and the defect may be such as to involve utter error. The statement of the most important fact, with respect to an object, is not a definition of it, though it may in- dicate it. The definition must include every essential and ex- clude every thing else. If more is put into the definition than is PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 9 included in the thing defined, the object is not before the mind, but some other object — a distortion. The included error may be such as to be utterly misleading and involve fatal misdirection. Truth is exact, and to reach it the utmost possible precision is necessary in the use of significant terms ; never more so than in a discussion like the present. General statements, when all their inclusions are fully understood and mutually accepted, may so indicate an object as to preclude the necessity of more formal and elaborate definition, but when the subject is one of fundamental importance, and there are possible diverse views, such general statements are always to be looked upon with sus- picion, and create a demand for examination lest some covert meaning having in it concealed error be intended, or, if not in- tended, be nevertheless introduced. It is not an uncommon thing for error to be so masked in plausible general terms as to impose upon those who use them, as well as those addressed by them. They have such a semblance to truth, and in some in- stances so manifestly contain a truth, that, while containing along with the truth a fatal error, the error is so concealed as not to be discovered, and the truth itself is made to give currency to a destructive falsehood. It is in this way that the most damaging systems of error gain foothold with honest minds. Error never comes naked. It dra2)es itself in garbs of truth and thus insid- iously insinuates and establishes itself. It is a rogue which, knowing that if seen alone it would not be tolerated for a moment, always comes in a crowd of well-known respectable truths, and seeks to gain admission by the good company it keeps. It is by this subtlety that false systems of doctrine and. heretical creeds always put as much truth in them as possible, and give these trutlis prominence, and call themselves by old and honored names, that under these disguises they may inject their poison without starting apprehension. 10 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. Philosophy. By pliilosophj we understand the knowledge and rational explanation of phenomena as to their causes and significance. The term has been variously defined as " The science of things divine and human, and the causes in whicli they are contained ; " " the science of effects and their causes ; " " the science of the sufficient reason ; " " the science of things de- duced from first principles." All these definitions are of the same general import, and, more simply construed, signify that by the term philosophy is meant the understanding and explan- ation of phenomena of which the mind becomes aware eitlier by observation or consciousness ; as to their causes, laws, and significance. To render a philosophy of any subject is simply to give a sufficiently full statement of the facts and contents of the sub- ject, and furnish a rational, that is, an intelligible and adequate, explanation of them. To know a thing and not know its causal grounds is imperfect knowledge — next door to absolute igno- rance — and opens the mind to all sorts of fancies and superstitions. To know a thing and also know its causes is enlarged knowl- edge, and closes the door of the mind against a mob of delusions, but does not furnish it perfect content. There remains still the question, for what ? — or, what does it signify ? to what end is it ? When an object is known as to what it is, and as to its cause, how it is, or by what power it is, and when additionally it is known as to why it is, for what end it is, we have reached true knowledge — science — philosophy. This by a law of the mind is its everlasting search ; until the attainment is reached it can have no fruition of content. It is the goal of rational existence. Experience. The term experience is thus defined by Web- ster : " Particular acquaintance with any matter by personal ob- servation or trial of it ; by feeling its effects ; by living through PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 11 it." It is thus made the equivalent of personal knowledge of external facts and things, by perceiving them or by observation of any kind ; and of all internal states of feeling which emerge in consciousness, whether intellectual, emotional, or volitional. This is a broad use of the term ; and it may be doubted wliether for strict accuracy it is not too broad. There would seem to be a sufficient difference between matters of observation and mat- ters of consciousness not to class them as identical. The one re- lates to matters objective, the other to matters subjective. The objective offers itself to experiment, the subjective to experi- ence. Experience more specifically relates to the internal states and feelings, existing as present, or recalled as past, conscious- nesses, through which one has passed or is passing. This is tlie sense in which it is more commonly used and in which it is in- variably used in these lectures. Whatever a man experiences he knows. It is the knowing that constitutes the experience. If he did not know the expe- rience he could not be said to have it. There is no consciousness of which we are not conscious or of which we have not knowledge. In this discussion I am to be employed specifically about facts — subjective states and feelings which emerge in conscious- ness ; therefore the most immediate and indisputable matters of knowledge. Theories, dogmas, speculative inference as to facts themselves have no place. Consciousness furnishes them. They do not require proof. The experience is the proof. They will ad- mit of no other. The proof of pain is that we feel it. The same is true of all subjective experiences. The proof of them is tliat we have them. The philosophy of these matters of experience comprises sim- ply the consciousness of them, the right understanding of their grounds and sources and their significance, or relation to ends to be served by them. 1^ PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. Tliis exhausts the subject, and leaves nothing further to place them in the line of rational or understood knowledges. We cannot explain how the soul receives subjective impressions. Consciousness itself is a final fact, and admits of no explanation. The furthest possible point to which we can push inquiry as to the facts themselves which emerge in consciousness is to find them and their causes, and the ends they serve. Many times we are compelled to stop short of this. We can simply know the facts. In such cases the philosophy of the facts remains impos- sible. If we can go further, and find how it is that the facts ex- ist and any ends which they are manifestly intended to serve, we have the entire philosophy of them. If we choose to use the term experience in the broadest sense as including matters of personal observation, then there is a dif- ference between an experience of Christianity and a Christian experience. An experience of Christianity is the result of per- sonal observation as to its effects on individuals, peo])le8, and institutions, its moral and social tendencies, liow it affects wel- fare in respect of education, industrial habits, commercial eth- ics, and all things that enter into the general improvement and happiness of communities. One who by living with it has be- come acquainted with it so as to have knowledge of it on these points may be said to have experience of Christianity — he has seen and felt its workings. There is yet a deeper experience than these general effects of the system felt by many — in per- sonal influences which reach them through its teachings, which consciously modify their thouglits, feeling, moral habits, and principles, and personal character — who yet have no Christian experience, but only experience of some Christian influences; who are not, and well know themselves not to be. Christians. The experience in both these kinds indicates something of what Christianity is, and is of high apologetical value. It points PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. IS to a power for good in tlie system which the world needs, and, so, broadly indicates its probable truth ; and where the experi- ence is all one way, as, we are bold to say, it always is, con- demns revilers on their own experience. But it is not an experi- ence of this kind that we seek to illuminate — its matters do not emerge in our tliesis in any form. It is worth while to observe further on this matter of experi- ence that, while matters of experience are relatively the clearest and most satisfactory among our knowledges, things about which we affirm with the greatest assurance tliat we do abso- lutely know, they are knowledges of which we can convey no adequate conception to minds that are wholly out of the plane of the experience. The language of experience is intelligible only to those who have something in common by which to in- terpret it. I was never so impressed with this fact and its im- portance as during the preparation of these lectures. Certain passages of Scripture have come to have an emphasis of mean- ing which I had not before discovered in them : " The natural man receiveth [or knoweth] not the things of the Spirit of God : for they are foolishness unto him : neither caii he know them, for they are spiritually discerned ; " '* It is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them [that are without] it is not given;" "Except a man be born again [or born from above], he cannot see [or discern] the king- dom of God ; " " If I have told you earthly things, and ye be- lieved not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things ? " The import of which is, spiritual experiences cannot be appre= bended by an unspiritualized mind. To speak of them to such is to speak in a practically unknown tongue. The spiritual man lives in a world of spiritual things which to him is perfectly plain, but which is wholly foreign to an unspiritualized mind. Some things all minds have in common concerning which they 14 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. are mutually intelligible to each other ; but the spiritual man has entered a realm which is foreign to his unspiritual friend, and when he speaks of it there is nothing common between them to interpret his meaning — his speech is unintelligible. This is so important that I dwell for its further illustration. When two men understand tlie same language, so long as they converse together in it they are intelligible to each other ; but if one of the two knows a language which the other does not, and he commences to use that, all connection is cut off between them as completely as if they had nothing in common. ' It is so when cne speaks of an experience of which the other has no analogous experience. He may employ a language every term of which is understood, but he cannot make himself intelligible. Take two men, one of whom is blind. Both have perfect use of the same language, and on most subjects they converse intel- ligibly to each other; but on one subject speech to the blind man becomes utterly unintelligible, meaningless: the subject of color. To understand the meaning of that term he must have what he has not — eyes. Without eyes he is left to mere con- jecture. To the one who has eyes nothing is plainer, and to those who have eyes no speech is more intelligible than that which re- lates to color. It is easy to convey the idea of the minutest shades of difference in colors. The same rule applies to flavors, sounds, and, indeed, all matters of sensation. It is no less applicable to matters merely subjective — matters of consciousness. In order to intelligibility there must be something in common. Mutual experiences make mutual intelligibility under the greatest embarrassments. The soul has many languages through which it communicates to kindred souls — not one through which it can communicate with a soul wholly alien to it. Put a spiritualized soul, whose onl}' speech-language is English, in a congregation of spiritualized Gerinan souls, and let the exer- PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 15 cises of hymn and prayer and sermon and sacrament and testi- mony be cA\ in the unknown tongue, the spiritualized English soul will not be a foreigner ; there will be, intoning the unintelli- gible jargon of unmeaning sounds, something wliich it under- stands — the language of face and feature and tearful eye and voice which translates itself by the magic of a common experi- ence — and the sympathetic souls will recognize each other. But they can only interpret each other by a common experience. An unspiritual mind is dead to spiritual things. It walks among them, but does not discern them ; it hears of them, but the lan- guage is unintelligible. It is because of this law that we find it impossible, even un- der the highest spiritual experiences, to form any satisfactory conception of heavenly things, heavenly beings, their modes of life and communication among themselves. Every one who has attempted to think along these lines is conscious of the dif- ficulty. The explanation is, the experiences are out of our plane — there is not enongh in common between us to enable us to form a conception except of the most general kind, and even of such conceptions it is impossible to know how much, if any, truth tliere is in them. The highest certainty we can reacli is that there is a spiritual world comprising divers orders and grades of life, from the Infinite to the most recent and infantile spirit, and that their life is the most exalted. We are wholly unable to fill out or interpret these general phrases, simply be- cause they are out of our plane and our earthly experience has so little in common with them. In like manner and for the same reason are the experiences of a spiritualized soul unintelligible to an unspiritualized soul. Their planes are in this respect uneven — without correspondence. What is perfectly intelligible to the one is not intelligible to the other ; what moves the one does not move the other ; what appeals to the one does not appeal to the other. 2 16 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. Cliristian experiences are the experiences of a soul in a fallen world ; that is, the plane in which it lives and by which all its experiences are modified. Its experiences interpret nothing out of its plane. What the experiences of Adam would have been had he not sinned, and become sensualized, for this reason we can but very imperfectly conceive. So far as there was in the plane of his life any thing in common with the life we live we find it not difficult to form a sufficiently clear conception. The general effect of the external world upon him ; his physical sensations ; his love for Eve ; his round of daily employment in tilling the garden ; his growth of knowledge — things of this kind, we fancy, there is enough in common between his life and ours to put us en rapport, so that we get, as we suppose, a tol- erable understanding of his experiences in these respects. But when we attempt to pass beyond this, and try to think of his subjective consciousnesses, or what they would have been had he not sinned, and the kind of man they would have made of him, we find ourselves in a plane which we cannot travel — our guides forsake us. What the daily pabulum of a sinless soul in a sinless world would be we do not know ; we have nothing by which to interpret. We are so accustomed to tainted air that we can hardly imagine respiration possible in any other ; so used to the contact of evil, its absolute ensvvathement every moment, that we cannot conceive life going on without it. We are so used to conflict and trouble growing out of sin that we find it difficult to conceive what would be the use and function of a life in a world where sin did not exist. The experiences of an unsinning and unsinful soul going forward through a life-time in a world which the blight of sin had never reached, in which nothing existed that came of sin, in which all things were in holy harmony ; the experiences of such a soul so in- sphered, I suspect, if recited to us would find in us as little PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTTAN EXPERIENCE. 17 response as a recitation in an unknown dialect, it would have so much in it above our comprehension. It ought to be noted yet further that every experience is col- ored by the subject of the experience. I mean by this that precisely the same experience reports itself differently in minds of dissimilar temperaments, degrees of intelligence, antecedent habits, prejudices, preconceptions, education, and ruling ideas. This fact must be taken account of in dealing with Christian experience. The subjects of Christian experience are extremely various. It is customary to lump Christians in a class and sinners in a class, forgetful of the fact that there are wide dissimilarities in each class. In a fundamental sense there are but the two classes, but in fact there are the widest diversities in each class. Take the class sinners as including all unregenerate men. The common fact is that they all need salvation and must pass through the same experience of conviction, repentance, faith, pardon, and regeneration to obtain it ; but the manner in which they are exercised will differ widely as possible. To under- stand this the class must be broken up and viewed in its several parts. A is a criminal of the deepest dye ; B is ignorant and beastly ; C has never indulged in any excesses, has been scru- pulously moral ; D is impulsive and excitable ; E is cool and self-governing ; F is intellectual and thoughtful ; G has grown up amid prayers and under careful Christian nurture. It is impossible that these circumstances should not color their experiences. In one case there will be sharp and marked con- trasts, in another there will be no distinctly marked change ; one will enter the kingdom with a rush of feeling, another will feel but slight emotion ; one will be able to point to the day and hour of his conversion, another comes into the light gradually ; one is noisy and clamorous, another is quiet and silent. 18 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. It is Avorth while to say yet farther that as there is a differ- ence between a Christian experience and an experience of Christianity so also all of a Christian's experiences are not Christian experience. I moan this: that Christian experience is a peculiar phase of a sonl's experience touching its spiritual rektions which a Christian only knows any thing about ; they are the specific experiences which characterize him as a Chris- tian. But a Christian is a man, and over and above his peculiar experiences which come to him as a Christian and constitute him such — exist only as he is a Christian — he has a broad belt of experiences which come to him as a man. They are a Chris- tian's experiences but they are also the experiences of men that are not Christians, therefore they cannot be said to be Christian experiences. Christian defined. To determine exactl}' what is meant by the phrase " Christian experience " it is necessary that we define the term Christian. Though the term is one in common use, and well understood as to its general import, it is by no means explicit. There are widely variant meanings attached to it as employed by different persons even among ourselves. Popular usage falls entirely short of its strict meaning, and so becomes not only confusing but dangerously misleading • the radical idea is wholly lost, and something else, often not even suggesting it, is put in its place. Christians themselves, and not unfre- quently eminently orthodox Christian teachers, fall into the snare. Were a native of the Congo valley asked what he under- stands by the term he would perhaps answer, " A Christian is a man who comes in ships to barter Kew England rum for elephants' tusks." A Chinese would vary the definition some- what and say : " A Christian is an outside barbarian with a white PHILOSOPHY OF CHPISTIA.V EXPERIENCE. 19 skin, who deals in opium and other foreign commodities." In fact tliese are prevalent definitions among these heathen peoples. There is a remote ground for the perversion. The people who carry on these nefarious practices publish themselves as Chris- tians, and are so recognized in works of literature and history and in the popular language of the world. If we come nearer home the term, as popularly employed, is scarcely less vague or less a perversion. Broadly, all who are born in Christian countries are called Christians : the — worse than the average heathen — rum-seller, the imbruted sot, the de- bauchee, the vilest creatures, men and women. So does the name cover all sin and shame. The historian or statistician defines a Christian as one who is a citizen of a Christian state or commonwealth. Webster, our great English lexicographer, defines a Christian thus : " One who professes to believe, or is assumed to believe, in the relig- ion of Christ : especially one whose inward and outward life is conformed to the doctrines of Christ." If we seek the deeper significance wdiicli professed Christians attach to the term we make scarcely a nearer approach to its true meaning. An average German would probably define a Christian as one who had been baptized and confirmed in the Church of Luther ; an Anglican would broaden the definition so as to include communicants of the Church of Henry the Eighth who have received the sacraments at the hands of an apostolically consecrated priest ; a Romanist would exclude these, and limit the term to believers in the infallibility of Leo XIII and such as attend mass and obtain absolution ; a liberal of the modern tj^pe would extend it so as to include any who practice philanthropy and have outgrown faith in a supernatural revelation or a divine Christ ; others, more strict, would insist that a Christian is one who professes an orthodox 20 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCK creed and strictly observes the rites and ceremonies of some evangelical Church. Recently one of the Christian weeklies sent ont a request to a large number of representative writers and thinkers embrac- ing men and women of note — ministers and laymen of all phases of faith — asking that they would return answer to the question, " What is it to be a Christian ? " * It must be admitted that the question is so phrased as to be somewhat indefinite. The object was undoubtedly to elicit an answer to the question, *' What is it that constitutes a man a Christian?" The demand was strict definition. The answers in most cases show that the respondents had in mind this ques- tion rather : Who by the most liberal construction may be in- cluded in the class Christian ? To this latter question strict definition was not required, but merely the setting forth of some comprehensive test characteristic. The answers, therefore, are not to be viewed as definitions, but simply general state- ments. But taken in this looser sense the answers are remark- able, as showing the })Osturc of the writer's mind with regard to the deeper questions. How does a man become a Christian ? and. What are the constitutive elements of his Christian character ? The definitions are all of them in one form and another beau- tiful and clear statements of some truth. There is not one of them that does not affirm a fact which characterizes a Christian. Most of them set forth a fact which implies the existence of every other essential fact, and so clearly points out a Christian. To be a Christian one must be what is affirmed, and being what is affirmed he will probably be a Christian. So far they desig- nate a Christian. Seven of the thirty do not necessarily imply a Christian at all, though a Christian implies them. Five of the thirty contain all the essential elements of true *See note A, p. 180. PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 21 definition. Several approximate definition, and only fail by being too brief. Of all, Dr. Whedon's is the most complete. There is apparent in most of those which approximate definition a manifest desire to broaden the definition, and a spirit of compromise which is not healthful in these times. To determine what it is to be a Christian, that is, what is a Christian, it is necessary to take into the definition an account of how a man becomes such : what it is that makes him a Chris- tian. He is not born a Christian. He is not a Christian by virtue of his being a man. He does not make himself a Christian. There is a process through which he passes with- out which he cannot be a Christian. It is what he is after the process, and at its outcome, that constitutes him a Chris- tian, The experiences through which he passes in order to become a Christian are so essential that he cannot be a Cliristian without them — they are essential and necessary con- stituents. They must, therefore, be taken into the definition. When these subjective elementary processes are completed he has become and is a Cliristian, and not without or before them. They make him a Christian. After he has become a Christian, what is it to be a Christian resolves itself into the question. How does he show himself to be a Christian? What kind of a man is he in subjective temper and objective life ? What is it in these respects that differentiates liim from other men? As a Christian how must he live? what principles must govern him ? what must be the inner and outer facts ? These inner and outer facts are essential, but they are fruits, not the constituting essence. The essential thing is the subjective life implanted in the soul. The outer expression is proof and incident, and as such sine qua non, but to cite them and leave the implanted life out, from which they spring as fruit, is to leave out the constituting essence. The outer form may 22 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. exist as imitation merely, and instead of having a Christian we liave but an imitator, paste for a diamond, possibly a sheer hypo- crite without the reality. The exterior manifestation is not the reality, and it does not necessarily prove the reality — it is simply external, and may be put on. The inner subjective life is the essential thing, and when it exists the external form must exist as growth or product of the essence, and not as mere imitation — it is the necessary form which the life principle takes. Chris- tianity is not put on, but is put in, as leaves are not put on a tree but spring from the constituting germ. As a tree without leaves would be a deformity — in fact, could not exist — so a pro- fessed Christian without the fruits of holy character would be a monstrosity — not a Christian. There are two errors to be avoided — both equally fatal ; the error of supposing one can be a Christian by clothing himself with mere objective moralities ; and the no less dangerous error of assuming the possibility of subjective grace existing apart from external moralities. The subjective life is the soul, the exterior life the body. "When out of a holy soul we have a holy life, we have a Christian — not otherwise ; " the good tree is known by its fruits." It is the vital germ at last, how- ever, which determines the quality both of the tree and the fruit. Tlie essential thing is the vital germ. It should be remembered that neither the tree nor the fruit is always or necessarily what it seems to be. We cannot, therefore, judge infallibly by appearance. Yet we must judge by appearance, with the reservation that He who searcheth the heart only knoweth what is in man, and his judgment is a right- eous judgment. It should be remembered further that, after all, and despite the wide latitude of indefiniteness attached to the term, there is and can be no indefiniteness in the fact. The term has its rillLOSOniY OF CHRISTIAISf EXPERIENCE. 23 metes and bounds — its inclusions and exclusions. It does not embrace all. It does exclude some. We may broaden or nar- row it, but it will not alter the fact. What then is the meanin*^ we attach to tlie term in the following lectures ? Our answer must be in two parts. First, negatively : A Christian is not such by virtue of his having been born in a Christian country, or of Christian parents ; or by having been baptized and confirmed in a Christian church by an apostolically consecrated priest, bishop, or pope ; or by the personal accept- ance or belief of the most orthodox scriptural creed ; or by the strictest observance of holy rites and sacraments ; or by reiter- ated professions of faith and of regeneration ; or by the most exemplary external moralities and careful ritualistic rules of living; or l>y noble charities and philanthropies. These may all liave more or less relative values ; some of them are neces- sary concomitants as incidents and fruits, but they may all exist and still the essential thins^ be wanting. Second, jpositively : A Christian comprehensively is a child of God by regeneration. This is the all inclusive, absolutely essential thing. It presupposes and is conditioned by certain antecedents, and does not exist without them; these are convic- tion of sin, repentance, faith, and forgiveness. Regeneration, which, as matter of experience, always follows or is coetaneous with these subjective states, and never precedes them or occurs without them, is the culminating fact, and is result of a direct act of God upon the soul, by which it is engrafted into Christ and becomes participant of his life, and so becomes a Christian soul. By the divine life thus imparted the forgiven soul is delivered from the guilt and bo7idage of sin, and has implanted in it a principle of righteousness which makes the sin which it for- merly loved hateful to it ; purifies its affections, desires, and motives, and strengthens its will to the obedience of the law of 24 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. God, and fills it with love to God and nniversal love to man. From out this soul, thus renewed with a new life, emanates if unhindered, as a fountain flows from a perennial spring, a contin- uous stream of virtuous and holy living. The process by which this great change is brought about is a divinely established order, and the consciousness of the soul in passing through it and living it constitutes Christian experience. To become and be a Christian one must have this conscious experience. To the virtuous and holy living, which includes all duty toward God, and toward men, and meaner things, and toward the person himself, which springs from the newly implanted life germ, should be added the inward experiences of conscious faith and trust, and holy motive and purpose, and the peace and joy which Gods give to them that love him. The total experience is that of afiiliation — the consciousness of sonship. It is not a necessity of this definition to assume that all real Christians are equally conscious of having passed through these successive stages of experience, or that they shall in every case be able clearly to discriminate these elements to themselves, much less logically state them to others. This indeed is certainly not true ; but the absence of a vivid consciousness of such subject- ive phenomena does not necessarily imply their non-existence. With many, each special stage in the process — awakening, pen- itence, faith, the assurance of pardon, the inward transforma- tion — is matter of vivid consciousness and absolute certainty : with other many, who give abundant evidence of their thor- ough Christian character by their fruits in temper and their practical daily life — the great inward fact of their filial relation to God — there is no such vivid consciousness. The former speak confidently, often, perhaps, overboldly, of their experi- ence. The latter speak with trembling modesty and even hesitancy if they speak at all — they can fix no day or date PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 25 when tlie great plienomenal change took place : thej do know, however, that they love God, and their lives are redolent of grace — full of the fruits of righteousness. That in every case there has been the great subjective change, the inward trans- forming experience, however dimly perceived in its successive stages, there can be no rational doubt. The total outcome of the regenerate life of the soul is the same in each case of gen- uine Christian character. Personal temperament, environments, habits, education, and such modifying influences, which vary so widely, furnish the explanation to a large extent of the diverse experiences among those who give full evidence of genuine Christian character: " There is a diversity of operation but one Spirit " and the same result. It is no part of the purpose of these lectures to undertake to prove that there have been and are men in abundance who have passed through the experience here described. The tes- timony of millions all along through the Chi-istian ages, from Paul the chief est of the apostles to the most recent convert, must be relied on to establish that fact. If it fail no other evidence on that point could be of any avail. 26 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. LECTURE 2. IMPLICATIONS AND CONDITIONING GROUNDS OF EXPERIENCE. There are three conceivable ways of dealing with the alleged facts of Cliristian experience. These are — first, to deny them and resolve them into mere delusion or hypocrisies. But as the facts are facts of consciousness, attested by a vast multitude of intelligent and, by every proof, conscientious and honest wit- nesses, it is obvious that this ground cannot be maiutained. Denial becomes mere effrontery. To make it good would re- quire that men suppose they have consciousness which they do not have, or that the vast multitude of witnesses in the case are a set of knaves who have conspired through the ages to im- pose upon their fellows by declaring that they are conscions of things of which they are not conscious. This explanation may be satisfactory to minds utterly blinded by prejudice but can have no weight with candid and sensible men. Men will still believe that a fact of consciousness is knowable, and men will still believe that when a vast multitude of good men testify that they have been and are conscious of certain states of feel- ing they really are so conscious. As a philosophy the theory of delusion or hypocrisy is a failure — has nothing to rest upon. The second conceivable method is to admit the facts of con- sciousness and explain them as the product of delusive ideas. In this theory the feelings are admitted to be real but ground- less ; the offspring of mere imagination — chimeras. The theory is that the mind invents or accepts the idea of God, and the idea of a law of God which he imposes on man, and the idea that man is under obligation to obey this law, and the idea that he has broken the law wliicli' he ought to have kept, and the idea that his breach of the law has made him gtiilty, PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 27 and the idea that he is exposed to punishment, and the idea of an atonement, and the idea of repentance and faith as a con- dition of forgiveness. They postulate that in point of fact there are no realities answering to these ideas ; but the Christian per- suades himself to believe there are answering realities. Out of this belief of his springs the feeling of guilt, and the feeling of repentance, and the feeling of pardon, and all other feelings which go to make up what is called Christian experience. The feeling of guilt exists, but there is no guilt ; the feeling of par- don exists, but there is no pardon ; and the other feelings ex- ist, but all of them are product of a mere belief of the mind self-invented and self-imposed. All there is in the case is a set of fancies and a set of feelings which grow out of them. These feelings are called Christian experience. This is the only theory of negation or dissent which approaches a philoso phy. It is an attempt at a philosophy, and it is not without some plausible grounds, which it is due should be stated. It is a fact that mere fancies do produce the profoundest feel- ings, together with the profoundest conviction of the reality of things which do not exist ; as, for instance, a man passing a grave-yard in a dark night sees a white object — a bone six inches high. His imagination transforms it to a ghost. It towers up to the height of six feet ; it moves and approaches him and gesticulates. He sees its waving shroud; he detects its human features ; he is profoundly moved with terror. It was not a ghost ; it was but a bone. His idea of it trans- formed it and it terrified him. Thus a fancy has power to move us. In fact all subjective feelings arc awakened by thoughts. The mental action is always first. Feeling responds to the conception in the mind. All movement in the spiritual world is from ideas ; all experience subjective is born of ideas. 28 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAK EXPERIENCE. This fact explains the terror awakened bj superstitions. Any thing supposed to be real awakens in the consciousness a cor- responding feeling. Errors when accepted and believed affect the mind just as truths do. This law must be admitted. There is no possibility of rejecting it. It is a just question, therefore, Does this fact in any way affect the validity and apologetical value of Christian experi- ence ? If so, how and to what extent? and what is the treat- ment required ? We are compelled to answer, it does have a direct bearing and demands consideration. If the experiences can be explained as the product of delusive ideas, as any feel- ing may be, that being shown it takes all virtue out of Chris- tianity and reduces it to the common level of any other super- stition ; that is, shows that there is nothing in it but delusion, and a delusion which springs from delusion. If the theory could be made good that the experiences are the offspring of chimeras, as it is admitted they sometimes are, the sho\ving would destroy the sj'stem. What, then, becomes necessary to determine the case ? To this we answer, nothing is necessary as to the experiences themselves. These are admitted to be genuine. The whole matter involved turns upon the question, Are the ideas out of which the experiences emerge chimeras — mere fancies — per- versions of reality ? This must be determined by the mental laws by which we try and test the validity of our ideas or of the objects of our conception. What is necessary to the theory proposed is to show that its assumption is true — that is, that there are no realities answer- ing to the ideas out of which the conscious experiences or the subjective feelings arise. The debate turns upon the truth of these ideas. Christianity is responsible to make them good. Doubt is responsible for the showing that they are chimerical. PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 29 The ideas declared to be chimerical are these : The personality of man, the existence of God, the existence of moral law, the fact of human guilt, the experience of pardon. It is obvious that the sponsors for this theory have set aliard task for themselves. It will take some time to work out all tliese points. It will require some sturdy wrestling to prove that God is a chimera. It will take still more time to convince the average man that there is no such thing as human sin while its blistering sores are felt in every soul and revoltingly visible in every hamlet. It would be interesting to see the defenders of this theory put the case to a jury, and hear the argument by which they would prove that murder and lust and incest and cruelty and the rum fiend are immaculate. But I commend to these theorists to begin the defense of their theory, not by grappling with either of the points mentioned, but with this rather : that they may get their faculties in good trim for other lieavy work let them explain to us how a molecule got into tlie business of invention and how it became such an adept as to evolve in every human soul the entire ethical code. When they shall have answered this question it will be time to set them to some other tasks which their theory involves. We cannot here enter tlie polemic on any of these points, as we have only days, and not years, for the discussion. It is safe to say that the advocates of the theory, wdien they contemplate the difficulty of the task before them, will never undertake its defense ; and it is also safe to assume that the mention of the matters which the theory involves condemns it to prompt and inevitable rejection as irrational and impossible. It perishes by mere statement — without an argument. Its existence in any mind is in proof that that mind has never considered it ; that it exists purely as an irrational prejudice. To call it a philosophy is to dignify stupidity with a worthy but desecrated name. 30 PHTLOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. If any thing more should be necessary as a justification for dismissing this theory without argumentative refutation, it will be found in the statement and defense of the third theory. Its unfolding: and rational defense contains the refutation of all competing theories. The remaining theory is that which we defend — the Christian theory. It is based on the truth of consciousness and the honesty of those who affirm that they are conscious of certain subjective experiences. It affirms the facts. Its mode of ex- plaining them is that they have real grounds. It adduces what these real grounds are. The grounds adduced must be adequate to account for the subjective effects developed in experience. It finds in the adequate conditioning grounds the real source of the conscious effect. A rational explanation is reached. We have thus all the requirements of a philosophy of Christian experience. We have seen that every other theory put forward, and every other conceivable theory, fails not only to explain the facts, but also that they must be rejected on other grounds of error and falsehood. To inadequacy they add inadmissibility as irrational, and not merely as irrational but as impossible. They meet none of the requirements of a philosophy. They are mere " hruta fulminay When there are several theories whnch seem equally adequate to account for phenomena, and when none of them contain in- admissible elements, the mind may be left in duhlo as to which shall be accepted as the actual theory. But when there is but one theory which will account for the facts, and when against that theory no real objection can be urged, that theory of right demands acceptance ; it, on rational principles, has right of way. That is precisely the case we have here, which we shall now rniLO SOPHY OF CHRTSTIAy EXPERIENCE. 81 proceed to show. The point is to show the adequate grounds of Christian experiences. For any experience tliere must exist certain conditioning and adequate causes. No experience is uncaused. To put clearly before us our task we restate in brief the ex- perience the philosophy of which we are to render. It embraces live discrete facts of consciousness : («) Consciousness of guilt ; (])) consciousness of repentance ; (c) consciousness of faith ; {d) consciousness of pardon and forgiveness ; {e) consciousness of a new life springing in tlie soul; with other subsequent experiences which need not here be mentioned. The contents of these phenomena of consciousness will be more fully de- veloped in subsequent lectures. Our first business will be to state what are the implications of the experience. It is true that any experience furnishes its own proof and cannot be required to furnish any other; and it is also true that any experience is j)roof of all its necessary implications and conditioning grounds. Its existence demands their existence. The knowledge of any effect contains in it the knowledge that whatever is necessary to its existence exists. But to render a philosophy of an experience, or any effect, it is necessary to consider and understand what the conditioning implications are, and to furnish a rational vindication of tliem if necessary ; in any event they must be vindicable. If an alleged implication is beset with insurmountable difficulties — is not rationally vindicable — the theory is driven to the expedient of alleging mystery ; that is, the admission that there is no philosophy, that is, no rational explanation, of the j)lienomena. In such a case the mind is disturbed with uncertainty. The ground of rational certitude is taken from under it, not as to the experience, about which it is impossible it should be un- certain, but as to the alleged implications or conditioning 3 32 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. grounds. In the presence of insurmonntable difficulty as to the alleged conditioning grounds the mind is rationally shaken as to it, and is compelled to entertain the thought that possibly there is some other explanation ; that is, possibly the true philosophy has not now been reached. If, on the other hand, the alleged conditioning grounds of the phenomena are adequate to explain them, and if they are rationally vindicable, and if none other can be alleged, the inevitable conviction is that we have reached the real explanation, and the mind settles dowu into certitude and content. It has reached the solid ground of philosophical certainty. ]S^ow, what are the implications of Christian experience ? The facts are not the implications ; they are the experience. The implications are whatever is necessary to their existence — those things without which the experience could not be. What are they? Keep in mind what tlie experiences are, and follow us while we find their implications. We start with the first experience named : sense of guilt. This is common to all souls. Now the adequate explanation of the sense of gui'.tisthe fact of sin ; and, as we have seen, there is and can be no other ex- planation. The knowledge by the soul that it is guilty includes not simply a feeling of guilt, but a knowledge of the reality of that, whatever it is, which makes it feel guilty. That which creates the sense of guilt is the knowledge the soul has of the fact that it has sinned. The reality of sin no man can dispute. That which we inquire after now is what implications underlie this fact of guilt. AVhat is guilt ? It is desert of punishment for violating a law whicii ought to have been obeyed, and which the violator knew anil felt ought to liave been obeyed. This is not a mere lexical pniLOSoniY OF christian experience. 33 definition of the tci'ni. It is the exact meaning which the sonl itself attaches to it when it predicates guilt of itself ; it is just what is in consciousness. When it says I am guilty it means to affirm I have broken a law which I knew I ought to have kept, and my consciousness is that I am condemned — I feel it, I know it. Every soul knows perfectly what it means by having precisely that experience. 31y first jJohit is that the experience of guilt is conditioned on the spiritual nature of man. Guilt is spiritualistic. It demonstrates tlie spiritual world. If there were no other fact it, standing alone, necessitates that its subject should be a self-conscious, intelligent, free, responsible spirit. It is impossible to predicate guilt of a thing under the law of necessitation. Let any one undertake to conceive of a beino;or thing that has no intelligence, no self-consciousness, that knows nothing, being guilty and feeling guilty, he will imme- diately discover that it is impossible for him to think it ; or let him conceive of a being that is driven by necessity, that has no power in itself to determine its states and acts, that it is w^hat it is by imposed constitution, and does wMiat it does with no power to the alternative, he will find no difficulty to think such a being, but he will find it impossible to attach the idea of guilt to it; for that he must find another kind of subject : an intelligent and self-determining being and one who has the idea and feeling of oughtness, or obligation to a definite course of action. If the molecular universe is under the law of necessity, which is the last and unquestioned deliverance of science, the very norm of science, the molecular universe excludes guilt. In that realm it cannot be found — it cannot even be thought as possible. Its presence proclaims a non-molecular, that is, a spiritual, subject. The same result follows from all other phenomena of Christian 84 rniLOSOFHY OF CimJSTIAN EXPERIENCE. experience : repentance, faitli, pardon, regeneration, adoption. These predicates require as conditioning ground a spiritual being. Trj to think of a molecular being, a being composed of material atoms, a compound of " carbonic acid, water, and aunnonia" — Huxley's definition of man — organized and driven by necessity, assuming to itself to be an ego, and then predicat- ing of itself I am guilty, and, on the ground of guilt for being Avliat it is by necessity, repenting, exercising faith, and suppli- cating pardon, and then receiving pardon from the being who made it what it is ; and it will at once be discovered how utterly absurd and ridiculous the thing is. Nothing is plainer than that guilt and pardon, and all their attendant and conconu- tant experiences, require a spiritual subject, under law but free as to its action, and possessing alternative power. Christian philosophy is responsible for this underlying, conditioning postulate. It rests upon it. If it can be shaken the ground of both guilt and pardon will be removed. Disprove the spirituality of man, the whole theory topples into chaos. The phenomena of feeling would, however, remain to be explained. With the spirituality of man as conditioning ground the phenomena are perfectly intelligible. Without it reason be- comes confounded, and is compelled to admit that it has no explanation to offer. AVhile a non-free being cannot be guilty by possibility, it is obvious that a being who knows his law, and lias power to obey it, and feels the obligation to obey it, cannot but be guilty if he violates it, and only a free being can violate its law. Guilt demonstrates, and does not merely render probable, the per- sonality of man; that is, that he is an intelligent and free spirit. There is no explanation possible of the fact without the implication. I have said that guilt is spiritualistic ; that there can be no PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. S5 guilt without a free personal subject; but I now say there can be a free personal subject without guilt. Guilt necessitates a personal subject, but a personal subject does not necessitate guilt. There are, we may safely believe, millions of personal subjects who know nothing of guilt. But there is not one being who can feel guilt and not be a free spirit. The idea of pardon becomes absurd in the absence of con- scious freedom on the part of the subject of pardon. Pardon for what ? For being or doing what it was impossible to the subject to avoid ? Pardon by whom ? By the being who neces- sitated the action ? Both guilt, which involves personal fault, and pardon, which implies penalty, are fatal to any system of mate- rialistic necessity ; and no less so to any system of necessitating agency of God in respect to acts or states which are assumed to involve guilt. Pardon to an unfree being is as absurd as par- don to a material substance for being influenced by the law of gravitation or any other law. Right and wrong, as ethical terms, are meaningless as applied to any unfree act or state^ whether in the spiritual or material universe. The sense of right and wrong to an unfree being is impossible. The sense of obligation to one act or state as against another act or state to an unfree being is a delusion and a snare. The entire eth- ical system perishes under the idea of necessity. Thus funda- mental to all ethical experiences, such as sense of obligation to any given thing, feeling of guilt for any given thing, repent- ance for any given thing, or pardon for any given thing, is the idea of freedom in the case. My second jpoint is that Christian experience requires a per. sonal God, and is conditioned upon that ground. Gxiilt is also theistie. There can be no guilt without God. If it requires a free subject it also requires a binding law. There 36 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. can be no gnilt without a law wliich imposes obli^^ation on the subject, but wliicli at the same time does not necessitate liim. But a law which imposes obligation to obedience must be anthori- tativ^e, and must be felt to be so ; otherwise neither the idea nor sense nor fact of obligation could be felt ; and without these, and not simply without these ideas but also without the absolute fact of obligatoriness, it is impossible that guilt should exist. But a law to be obligatory and authoritative must be instituted and enforced by a being who has the right and also the power to enact and enforce it. Without such a being there can be no law and no guilt. Guilt, therefore, has as necessary condition precedent God. Allow the fact of guilt, it is impos- sible to disallow the fact of God. The possibility of the one necessitates the actuality of the other. In the last result guilt involves, that is, it is of its essence, that there is an oughtness and an onghtnotness ; and tliesc ideas have no standing-ground outside of God. The ethic is in him and of him. Take him away, the entire ethical system perishes. But if now we pass beyond the experience of guilt to the experience of pardon we find as an implication or conditioning ground of this further experience not simply the idea and fact of God, as Author and Administrator of law, enforcing obligation ; we do still find this, but we find additionally a being who has the right and the power to cancel guilt, and one who exercises that power and right. Fortius implication Christian philosophy is responsible; that is, it must be able to render a rational account of it. It demands that there is a being who is above all law except the law he finds in his own nature, and who has the right and obli- gation to his own nature to enact and administer laws over all other beings. There is theism without guilt. Heaven is theistic ; holiness is theistic ; all ano-els are theists. There can bo a God in a PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 37 universe in which no guilt is, but there can be no guilt in a universe where no God is. Guilt is proof of a God. Pardon implies five things : {a) that there is nothing in the nature of guilt that renders it absolutely irreinissible under all cii'cunistances : if it were, pardon would forever be impossible ; (J)) that there is nothing in the nature of God or in his admin- istrative relations to the universe that renders pardon absolutely impossible to him, otherwise guilt would be absolutely irremis- sible and pardon could not exist ; {p) that in order to terminate guilt there must be an administrative act of pardon : it cannot terminate itself ; {d) that there is a disposition on the part of God to exercise the pardoning power ; {e) that there is nothing in the circumstances of guilt, or in tlie nature of God, or in his administrative relations to the universe, which absolutely de- mands that he should in any case exercise the pai'doning power unconditionally. These principles we regard as of fundamental importance, but time will not permit us to enter upon the polemic which would be demanded for their support. One of the five, how- ever, we feel called upon to note more at length ; namely, that the fact of pardon implies not simply the power and right to pardon, but also a disposition to do so. If God were not dis- posed to pardon it is impossible there should be any pardon, since it is impossible to conceive of his doing any thing to which he is absolutely indisposed. But if the exercise of the pardoning power depended solely on his disposition to pardon it would require that it should be exercised in every case. There could then be no distinction between righteousness and unrighteousness in his administration. The ethical system would be plunged into chaos. The disposition to pardon must, therefore, find a limit to its exercise both in his nature and in the general welfare of the universe. Thus we find that with S8 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. the disposition to pardon revealed in the fact of pardon, there must be conditions on which he will exercise the power. The disposition is not a disposition to pardon indiscriminately, nni- versallj, or on the principle of arbitrary selection, or in any case unconditionally. He will pardon when the interests of righteousness, that is, of right administration, will permit it. The experience requires as a conditioning ground not simply a personal God, but an infinitely holy God. It requires that his holiness should not be simply the holiness of immaculate purity that cannot tolerate moral imparity — it does require that — but also the holiness of infinite and eternal love, that must include in it compassion for the sinful, and that must in all possible M'ays seek to save any who may have sinned ; in all possible ways, which means ways possible to the ethical nature of God and the ethical nature of sinning creatures. My third point is, Christian experience is Christie / that is, it requires Christ as a conditioning ground. That this is so theologically and scripturally is not what is meant. That would resolve itself into a mere question of what the Bible teaches. But that is not tiie matter we have in hand. We are not at present set to find what the Bible teaches. That were compar- atively an easy task. It is ours — a much more diflicult task — to find the philosophy of our experience. And the point we now make is that the experience itself cannot be explained without Christ, and is explained with Christ. No Christ, no Christian experience ; or no possible ex- planation of the experience. The experitnce to which we now particularly call attention is that of pardon. The existence of the race as guilty and needing pardon is condition precedent to pardon, and in a future discussion it will appear that that fact requires Christ as its explanation. PHILOSOPUY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. S9 The guilty race has its existence in liim, and could not exist without him, on fundamental ethical grounds, and not on mere scriptural grounds ; but that is not the point we at present seek to develop. The point we now make is that the experience of pardon iui- plicates Christ, and cannot be explained without him. We have already shown that pardon, which is an administrative act of God, implies a disposition on his part to pardon ; but we have also shown that the disposition could not result in uncon- ditional pardon, since tliat would subvert the ethical system. Pardon, if administered, must be on conditions which would preserve the holiness of the administration. Christ furnishes that condition in his atoning work, and this appears in the ex- perience. The experience is not simply pardon, but pardon conditioned by atonement in Christ. It is not pardon without Christ, but pardon through Christ. This is not simply the teaching of the Scriptures, but it is the experience. The Christian experience is that pardon is received on two conditioning grounds — repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ. When this repentance is adequate and faith is exercised, the soul becomes conscious of pardon, and not until that. Tlie faith is faith in Christ as an atoning Saviour. Now this fact of the administration proves one of two things : either that the pardoning act is based upon a pure fiction and a faith which is utterly false, or that there is a real atoning Christ who conditions the pardon. If we take tlie former view it M'ill require that God conditions pardon upon a fiction, and that in order to it he requires or honors, as condition precedent, faith in a pure fable, and bases his administration upon a false- hood. To escape tliis atonement in Christ must be real, and so the requirement of faith be vindicable on principles of truth and righteousness. 40 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. How atonement becomes available to pardon is a point to be considered further on. That which we now affirm is that Christ is a necessary conditioning ground to.tlie experience of pardon under the Christian dispensation : so necessary that it cannot be explained without him. I cannot here enter the polemic as to the person of Christ — the question of his divinity — a question having important relations to the philosophy of pardon. What I do affirm is that the experience of pardon on faith in Christ requires a de facto Christ, and the de facto Christ embraced in the faith — Christ an Atoner, through Avhom the pardon is administered. It is Christie, since it cannot exist where Christ is not known, and since it cannot exist where Christ is known, except by faith in him, and since it invariably exists where faith is exercised in him. It is impossible to explain it witliout Christ. I have said that Christian experience is Christie. There may be Clnist and an atonement and possibly no Christian ex- perience, but there can be no Christian experience without Christ and his atonement. The experience is proof positive of Christ and of atonement in Christ. 3£y fourth point is : Christian experience requires as its conditioning ground the ojfice and icork of an omnipresent agent, the Holy Ghost. That- this is a scriptural doctrine no one acquainted with the teaching of the sacred books M'ill call in question. But this is not what I am set to ascertain and defend. My work is to show that the experience demands it. What is the particular experience to be accounted for which requires the action of any other personal agent in the soul than the soul itself ? The phenomena to be accounted for are : Sense of guilt, contrition of heart, the commitment of the soul to Godj consciousness of pardon, the radical revolution of the sotil PniLOSOPIIY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 41 in Us affections, and entire volitional life, and a consciousness of the divine favor. These comprise the elements of the experience. To account for these experiences, we must attribute them to the soul itself as product of its own action pure and simple; or we must find them as product of some other agent inworking them by its sole efficiency ; or we must find them as product of the coaction of the soul with another agent operating with it and in it. Sin is an act, or both an act and state, of the soul. Con- sciousness of the act or state of sin might conceivably account for the deep conviction of guilt without supposing any other coacting agent. But I am safe in aftirming that it accords with the experience that the soul is not alone in the experi- ence. In conviction there is the consciousness of another with the soul. "We think there can be no mistake about this. That consciousness must be explained. Repentance is also an act and state of the soul. It is conceivable that the soul is suffi- cient alone to account for it; but here again we think there can be no mistake that there is the consciousness of a super- natural presence with the soul in its struggles for pardon. Men are not alone either in their conviction of sin or their repent- ance, or in their final act of faith. There is throughout the con- scious coaction of another with the soul — helping, encouraging, inspiring. No one who has passed through the experience will doubt this. In the yet deeper experience of forgiveness the conscious- ness is of a witnessing to that fact by the pardoner. Of this there is concurrent testimony, not by all who give good evi- dence of Christian character, but by a large proportion of such. This consciousness is to be accounted for. The natural explan- ation is that the pardoner attests his own act. Allowing that 42 nilLOSOPHT OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. a de facto pardon has taken jslace, it is inconceivable that the pardoner should not witness to it — that he should leave the soul to the hazard of mere inference. As a fact he is present, for he is the Omnipresent. But, if now we pass to the still deeper experience of the new life which springs in the soul, this must be accounted for. However there may be obscurity as to the fact of the direct witnessing of God to the forgiveness act, there is no uncer- tainty as to the springing of a new life in the forgiven soul. There is no fact of consciousness more explicit than this. The revolution is complete and radical. The soul knows it as it knows itself. The affections change their objects. What was loved is now hated ; what was hated is now loved. The motives which were dominant are displaced, and new motives emerge. The masters once rearnant are driven out and a new king is enthroned. The whole current of the life is changed, and this often in a moment. The will, once rebellious, is now loyaL " Old things have passed away, all things have become new" — the man is born again. These facts, for they are facts, demand an adequate explana- tion. If the facts referred to mere externalities — mere change of conduct or the adoption of new principles, new governing ideas, there might be no need to go beyond the soul itself for the explanation. However difficult that task, a strong will, sustained by a clear conviction, might be adecpiate to it. It has oftenoccurred with no other cause than self-determination. But that is not the case we have here to be accounted for. The case we offer is totally different. It is the case of a soul suh- jectively changed — a soul revolutionized. To this, we affirm, the soul itself has no power. The will has no power over either the affections or motives. It can go adverse to them, but it cannot change them. The soul cannot righteous (Bush- PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 43 nell) itself. The sources of this change must be from above or from without. The soul must be a co-factor in the change ; it cannot take place without it, but it must have the concurrence and co-working of a power superior to itself. To effect this great change, like passing from death unto life — in the fact, a change from death unto life — it requires that its guilt should be purged by forgiveness ; a guilty soul cannot be a righteous soul, and it requires that it should be in the fellowship of the divine life — that the fountain should be opened in it. This great change demands God with and in the soul both as for- giving and renewing. The soul has no power to revolutionize itself. It has power to determine its volitional activity within certain limits. It can determine to break off from sin, but it cannot purge itself of sin. It can determine to seek forgiveness, but it cannot forgive itself. It can, with divine help, commit itself to God, and, in a word, do all that is required of it in order to its salvation, but it has no power to save itself. God onlj' can save ; God only can put his life into the soul ; God only can revolutionize the affections and transform the soul from the love of sin to the love of holiness. This act of new creation is not required of the soul itself simply because it is out of its power. God requires of it that it shall furnish the conditions within its power, on which he can effect the great change in it from spiritual death to spiritual life. If the facts of Christian expei'ience are conditioned upon certain preconceptions, or more yet upon certain ground facts, in such manner that the phenomena cannot be explained or tlieir existence rationally conceived without the reality of the conditioning facts, then the phenomena become demonstration of the reality of the conditioning grounds, just as any phenom- ena point to the reality of that which gives rise to them or of 44 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. which they are phenomena. Thouglit, self-consciousness, rational volition, demand a personal subject ; and where the phenomena are found mind must exist as conditioning ground or cause. Form, color, gravity demand matter and cannot be explained without it. The phenomena, v/herever found, proclaim tlic conditioning ground. In like manner, the consciousness of sin, wliich is but another name for the consciousness — tliat is, the knowledge — of the transgression of law, demands the exist- ence of a law that is transgressed. The phenomena of con- sciousness demonstrate the existence of the law. If the con- sciousness is tliat the law is imposed and binding, and not a self-created imagination, the plienomena point to and demon- strate an objective source — the law demonstrates a lawgiver just as certainly as guilt demonstrates a law-breaker. So, far- ther, if the breaking of the law involves guilt- — tliat is, liability to punishment and personal demerit — the guilt incurred by tlie violation of law demonstrates the freedom of the violator, since guilt cannot attach to any necessitated act. Thus the fact of human sin, attended witli the phenomenon of conscious guilt, demonstrates the existence of God as lawgiver, the personality and responsibility of man as a free personal being, and the entire substance of an ethical system. If, further, among the phenomena of Christian experience there emerges the consciousness of pardon this phenomenon proclaims a pardoning power in the administration of the moral system who has authority to suspend or restrain the penalties affixed to violations of law. If the pardon is consciously obtained through or at the end of repentance and faith as con- ditioning ground, and if the faith required and exercised is faith in Jesus Christ as an Atoner and Saviour in some way and for some cause, then the pardon, consciously experienced, can only be explained by the i-eality of Clirist and his redeeming PniLOSOPEY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 45 act. It arises solely on tliis ground. The experience is moral demonstration of the reality of tlie conditioning cause of the phenomena of pardon and forgiveness. If pardon is attended with a life implanted or a conscious renovation or regeneration of the soul receiving the pardon, the accompanying regenera- tion demands the regenerating agent just as much as any effect demands its approj)riate cause. All effects are signs — phenomena of causes. I name as final conditioning fact to Christian ex2)erience the truth and knowledge of revelation. There is, and can be, no Christian experience outside of the knowledge of the Bible and the knowledge communicated in the Bible. This I affirm is a fact. The fact shows that the Bible is a necessary conditioning ground to the experience. Upon the announcement of this postulate the question imme- diately springs in 3'our minds, What of the heathen, and what of infants, and what of the multitude of souls who cannot be said to have any proper knowledge of any spiritual truth ? To this question I answer, it is certain that neither a heathen who has never heard of Christ, nor an infant who as yet knows nothing, nor an immature or imbecile intellect that has no ethical possibilities, can be a Christian or have all the elements of Christian experience. They all lack the necessary conditions of Christian experience, which, in smn, is the knowl- edge of God as he has revealed himself to men in his holy word and in Jesus Christ, his Son. That is a fact which cannot be disputed. My thesis does not require me to deal further with the ques- tion, but simply to point out the grounds of Christian experi- ence and furnish a rational explanation of it. I might pass on without giving further attention to the side question which 46 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN' EXPERIENCE. spi-ings in your minds, but jou would not be satisfied with that, I ain sure. What of the heathen? what of infants? what of imbeciles? I have said thej cannot be Christians. Does any l)ody doubt it? But must they then be lost? Why should they be lost? For not being what it is impossible they should be, and that b}' no fault of their own ? Did God ever require an impossi- bility ? Who will dare to say so ? Did he ever condemn a soul for not being or not doing what it was forever impossible, with- out fault of its own, it should be or do ? Who dares to say it ? There is a great temptation to branch off into a theological dis- cussion, but I must demonstrate my theory of the will by re- sisting the temptation. The subject is fully discussed in Studies in Theology. I think it must appear to all, to say the least, a very re- markable fact that the phenomena which emerge in Christian experience demand precisely those conditioning grounds which have been cited, and which are laid down in the Scriptures and cannot be explained without them. When a theory is pro- pounded on a given subject, the scientific norm for determin- ing the truth of the theory is that the theory accounts for all the facts. When it does this, and the facts cannot be accounted for in any other way, the theory itself is considered as rationally established. This is precisely the case we have here. The facts to be accounted for are of the class of facts best known — the facts of consciousness — facts of experience. The specific facts are, a human soul conscious of guilt, a human soul con- scious of repentance, a human soul conscious of pardon, a human soul conscious of a radical change in its loves, aspirations, motives, emotions, purposes, all its subjective ethical feelings and perma- nent states ; as to all these a new creature. The conditioning grounds alleged as explanatory of the facts or ^^henomena are the PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 47 soul, a free responsible being, a law broken, a sovereign Lawgiver, a Redeemer, through whom pardon is extended, a renewing Holy Spirit by whom the soul is regenerated. These conditioning grounds adequately account for the phenomena, and there is no other possible way of accounting for them ; and so the phenom- ena point to and demonstrate the ideality of tlie conditioning grounds. It is in noticeable harmony with this tliat those who deny any one of these fundamenta to Christian experience, say tlie personality of the human soul, or the personality of God, or the historical verity of Jesus Christ and his redemptive work, or the personality and office of the Holy Spirit, one or all, are sure also to deny the reality of Christian experience and resolve the whole series of phenomena into sheer delusion or absolute hy- pocrisy ; and, contrariwise, those who make small account of Christian experience are certain to be skeptical on one or all of these fundamenta. The two interests are so inseparably inter- blended that one invariably and by logical necessity carries the other. The essence of Christianity requires both and perishes in the absence of either. The statement here made does not render it necessary to af- firm that among sects which theoretically deny some of these fundamenta, say, the redemptive work of Christ, or the proper Godhood of Christ, or the office and work of the Holy Spirit as a distinct personality, or the implied doctrine of the Trinity, there are no Christians. Such an affirmation would be unchar- itable and without support of evidence. Without doubt there is a spiritual instinct, a faith of the heart, that many times goes deeper than a creed, and not unfrequently adverse to it. It is not for us either to judge or dogmatically affirm as to what may be the possibilities of grace under the embarrassments of a de- fective creed ; nor, further, is it necessary to deny that an ex- 48 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. perience of saving grace equivalent to a Christian experience as ground of peace and ultimate salvation may be attained even by a heathen soul who never heard of Christ or the Holy Ghost. What we do affirm is that the fundaraenta named are indis- pensable conditions of Christian experience and of all saving experience, whether they are recognized or not. That the clear apprehension of them is important to a clear experience cannot be reasonably doubted. That intellectual confusion with regard to any one of them tends to obscure all spiritual consciousness of grace we are compelled to believe; but that a de facto redemp- tion may be made available by the Holy Spirit, whose office and even whose existence is dogmatically denied, grace triumphing over defects of intellectual apprehension, we also do not find it possible to doubt. Hindered by mental obscuration, the soul may, and probably, I think I may say certainly, often does, find its way to the all-loving Saviour imperfectly conceived of. We hold as axiomatic that any sincere and earnest soul, under any dispensation or in any possible outward darkness, honestly and according to its best light seeking God, will find its wry to him, and by means of a redemption wrought by Christ, even if it have no knowledge of it or him, will, by the ever-present Holy Spirit, come to salvation; but thougli a soul so circum- stanced may be saved through Christ, it cannot, by reason of its circumstances, have a Christian experience, but only the essen- tial equivalent of it. Ko other view can be held Mathout consigning to inevitable destruction the entire heathen world, which in all the ages ]3ast and at present comprises almost the entire mass of mankind. Of the exact processes of the Holy Spirit in regenerating the heathen, and also in regenerating in- fants, nothing is revealed and nothing can be known. To doubt that there is a process is to impeach the administration of Jeho- vah with diabolical cruelty and injustice. PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. LECTURE 8. A2n"ECEDENT HISTORY AND PRINCIPLES WHICH COLOR EXPERIENCE. Tlie universe is a free j)roduct of God. To say that lie liad a purpose in its creation is only to say that he is an intelligent being and acts as such. To say that that purpose was the highest possible is only to say that he is the infinitely wise and good. That purpose must have had respect both to himself and to the universe to be. For himself it could have been no less a purpose than his own highest glory — that is, that the total outcome should most perfectly accord with his infinite perfections, should most perfectly manifest them, and should so serve his own highest blessedness of perfect self-content. It is impossible to conceive that he should have proposed any thin* less than this for himself without ascribinor to him moral defect of some kind. For the universe itself his purpose must have been that it should be so planned and made as to attain in the total outcome the highest good that could possibly be secured to created existence, for to aim at any thing less than this would imply moral defect — that is, defect in goodness. If infinite wisdom could have devised any thing better than that which was devised, and if infinite power could have caused it to be, infinite goodness must have purposed it, unless we su2> pose that infinite goodness could prefer and did prefer that which is not best to that which is best, which is a contradic- tion. The result is that the universe that is comprehending the total outcome is the best possible to its maker, most per- fectly manifesting his glory, and to the greatest possible degree securing his blessedness, and at the same time having secured to it the greatest good possible to infinite wisdom, power, and goodness. All of which is but sayiug that a person possessed 50 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. of perfect wisdom, perfect power, and perfect goodness, and acting out these attributes, must choose and execute the best thing possible. Any system made to seiwe the ends of infinite wisdom and goodness must be regulated by law. Lawlessness is chaos. The universe exists, therefore, under law. The source of law is not only by i-ight but of necessity the author of the system. The system includes its laws and does not exist apart from them. In the natural system the will of the author is law and con- formity is enforced by his power. In the ethical system his will is law enjoined upon the subject but conformity is not en- forced, but left at the option of the subject, with amenability. Under the natural sj'stem the quality of the thing made is concrete — posited in its creation ; that is, it serves just the end it was created to serve. In the ethical system the subject is created with powers inherent, but his ethical quality is self- determined by the use he makes of his power. Voluntary, un- enforced conformity or disconformity to his law determines his quality. His quality is not concreated but is self-pro- duced. Under the ethical system there must be a period and opportunity during which the subject shall furnish the proof what his volitional course and disposition will be with respect to his law — that is, what manner of being he will determine himself to be. This period is called probation. There is no place for probation in the natural system ; it is a necessity in the ethical system. Under probation the subject determines his quality, and there is no other way in which it could be determined. It cannot be concreated ; it must be self-originated. It may be to infinite wisdom foreknown. When the quality of the subject has been finally self-de- termined by his volitional conformity or disconformity to the PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 51 law enjoined upon him, it is a real quality of righteousness or unrighteousness, as the case may be, and will at the end of pro- bation be irreversible — that is, such that he will not reverse it. The quality thus self-superinduced must determine how the subject shall be disposed of under law. There is an immut- able ethical necessity that he should be disposed of accord- ing to his character of righteous or unrighteous. Man is a spirit, and as such he comes under the law of the spiritual world and not under the law of things. Christian experience is of the Spirit and is purely spiritual. It is to be interpreted wholly from this stand-point. Now, what is the law of the spiritual as contradistinguished from the law in the natural world ? In the natural world the reigning law is that of necessity — all effects are necessitated effects. One all-embracing and comprehensive power explains' every thing. All events are forced and directed by one sover- eign will. It is pure monergism. Were this the only consti- tution the univeree would be reduced to mere things driven by necessitating force. Under such a system it would be impos- sible to introduce or locate the idea of responsibility anywhere below the necessitating agent. Upon such a foundation it would be impossible for an ethical system to arise. Pure mo- nergism excludes ethics. Nature knows no ethics. Through- out all its realm the word ought finds no place, and that simply because of its reigning law. The law of the spiritual world is fundamentally difierent. Spirits are free, self-determining be- ings. They are not driven by necessity either from within or without. The sources of their action are subjective — that is, self-inhering. The constitution under which they exist is that of free personal powers. Any interpretation of them and their expression must recognize this fundamental law ; but though free powers they are not without laws for their government. 52 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. As they are different in constitution from things, thej being self-determining powers, and things being not powers at all, but mere concrete expressions of a power by which they exist, so they are different in governing laws, the laws of things be- ing simply the rules of action of the being who constitutes them and drives them, and the laws of free spirits being rules of action enjoined upon them by their creator for their gov- ernment, but to the obedience of which they are free — that is, not necessitated — but are held responsible ; that is, are under obligation of duty and are answerable for delinquency. The spiritual Avorld exists and is administered under this fundamental constitution over all realms where it is found for ever and ever. It is the fundamentum of an ethical system. Any exj^eriences in the spiritual world are to be interpreted by it. Of the spiritual world our knowledge is limited, but there is, and necessarily must be, one reigning constitution throughout. Under that constitution it is certain that every responsible spirit has to undergo some kind of a probation upon the out- come of which its ultimate destiny depends. There are and can be no untested responsible spirits in the universe. Proba- tion is a necessary inclusion of any ethical system administered over fallible beings. As it is a necessity to a moral being that he should be free to his law, so it is a necessity that it should be possible for him to break his law and come under its con- demnation. Probation simply means a period, long or short, during which there shall be a fair and adequate opportunity furnished to establish the fact whether a free being will per- manently respect the obligations of duty, and at the end of which, having had a fair trial, he shall be answerable for his conduct. Tlie implications of a probation which sliall termi- nate in a fixed ethical character, and ultimate ethical state of PHIL SOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 53 reward or penalty, are not simply that tlie trial shall have been beneficently fair, but that during the trial the sul)ject shall have assumed an attitude to obligatory law which to it is of its own choice final. Until that stage is reached it is impossible that probation should terminate, under a beneficent system. The exact circumstances under which other spirits not of the human race have undergone their probation are unknown to us. There is room for great possible diversity. We will not enter the field of conjecture. WJcat is probation f It will aid to the right understanding of the case if we give yet more specific attention to what is involved in the idea of probation. The term itself means to try or test ; a method of trying and testing. When applied to a person it means that he is subjected to tests to determine his ethical quality, that is, that he may furnish the proof of what manner of person he is, and will permanently be. But the object of probation is not simply to determine the quaUty of the person tested, but that, the quality being determined, a basis may be furnished for the proper disposition of the person tested. In the case of man, or any spirit, the end of the testing or probation is that he may furnish the proof of his etliical quality, and so be assigned his permanent proper place under ethical law. Kow there are several implications in this which need to be noted and which must determine the righteousness of the proceeding. I note then, first, in order to an ethical probation the ethical idea must exist in the probationer ; tliat is, there must be the idea of right and wrong, and there must be felt obligation to the right. In a universe where these correlate ideas did not exist there could be no ethical character, and so no ethical tests. 54 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPEPJENCE. I note, second, the subject ninst be put under law wliich en- joins the right, and creates in the subject the feehng of obliga- tion to it, which necessitates that the subject should know the law, and sliould feel not only obliged to it but obliged by it, because it enjoins what the subject believes to be right. The ethical quality of the act of obedience demands not only that the law should be kept, but that it should be kept because the sub- ject believes that it ought to be kept. It is this sense of ought- ness which puts ethical quality in the act of obedience, not simple obedience itself, I note, tliird, that in order to ethical probation the subject must not only know his law and feel under obligation to obey it, but he must be fully able to obey it, and at the same time must have power to disobey it. For if he have no power to obey it it is impossible that he should be under obligation to obey it, and it is also impossible that failure to obey should be any test of his ethical quality ; and, contrariwise, if he have no power to disobey it obedience is no ethical test. It follows that the subject, while obliged by the requirement of the lavv, cannot be necessitated by internal or external force. He must feel the obligation of duty or ouglitness, but must be free from con- straint. It is this wliicli lifts him into ethical quality, and dis- tinguishes him from mere things. I note, fourth, tliat not only must the subject be free, so that the act may be his own proper personal act and so determine his ethical quality, but it must, in order to be a real test, l)e an act not simply to wliich he is free with alternative power to the opposite, but it must be an act in the presence of such influences to the opposite as furnish the proof that his adher- ence to the right is such that under no possible exigencies nriLOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 55 of liis existence it will ever be reversed. The test is a final test, and furnishes to iniinite wisdom the conditions of a final disposition of the case, so that the probation ends and destiny- is reached. It thus appears tliat under any ethical system the evil of dis- conformity to its law must be possible to the subject, and the evil of punishment be a necessity when such disconformity exists by final choice. Whether a soul can be saved without probation, that is, for- ever fixed in happiness without having passed through a proba- tion, is a point about wliich it is impossible to know, but it is absolutely certain tliat no soul can be condemned or consigned to inevitable curse without an equitable probation. If heaven may be given as a free gift without conditions, and if one ma,y be perpetually holy without ever having passed through the haz- ards of the opportunity and temptation to choose evil, it is ab- solutel}^ an impossible idea, on ethical grounds, that any one should be consigned to hell without opportunity of an opposite fate, and impossible also that he should enjoy heaven without a choice of holiness. How God saves infants and imbeciles is not revealed, but that it is impossible they should be lost is one of the clearest ethical certainties ; and that it is impossible they should be saved without a free adherence to righteousness is equally certain — holiness is self-determined and vice versa, and holiness constitutes heaven. The case of the heathen is that they are amenable to the law under which they exist, and under it serve their probation. To man there is but one probation, and thatit is in time and while he is in the body we believe on scriptural grounds, and on no other. We do not therefore undertake to give a jjhilosophy of 56 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. it. We do see that a perfectly equitable probation in wliich there is an adequate and fair opportunity to a happy issue in every case is an ethical necessity. The method and time-limit of probation, revealed or not, is one which infinite wisdom and goodness will devise, and which will approve itself to the uni- verse as both just and generous. No human soul, infantile, im- becile, or heathen, exists or will be disposed of for eternity apart from atonement in Christ, and no soul can fail of the benefits of the atonement unto eternal salvation without personal incor- rigible sin against the light vouchsafed. These are points determined by immutable ethical principles. The circumstances under which a human soul passes its proba- tion are important to be noted, as they furnish an explanation of its peculiar experiences. There can be no philosophy of Christian experience without taking account of them. The statement will have to be somewhat extended, but will be re- duced to as brief limits as possible. The first point we note as having bearing is this, human souls have a racial origin — they, while having an individual- ized identity, which separates each soul from every other soul so as to make it a distinct being, do not severally exist alone and apart, but come into existence in a race order and derive something affecting their state from heredity. We cannot here introduce the polemic on traducianism and creationism. The second point we note is, every human soul propagated in fact enters upon its existence and upon its probation in an abnor- mal condition, that is, in inherent disconformity with its law — a state propagated in it. This fact tinges its whole experience as a soul, and gives rise to all the peculiar phenomena of Christian experience. rniLOSOPHT OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 57 We might pass on without further consideration of this point, but the result would be unsatisfactory. The question how abncrmalcy came to be a fact becomes important as affecting points which will emerge further on, and needs a brief treatment. To answer this question we need to push our researches further back, into earlier incidents of our race history. The next point I note, therefore, is, that the head of our race M-as a created soul who was placed on his probation in a normal state. I do not enter upon the polemic here as to the measure of either his intellectual or moral or spiritual endow- ments. The only point I make is he had nothing intrinsic, and there was nothing extrinsic in disharmony with his law. The law under which he was placed was suited to his capacity, and there was nothing abnormal in him or in his environments to hinder or embarrass a fair probation ; there was every thing in both respects to aid to a desirable outcome. The next point I note is this, to which I attach the greatest possible emphasis ; his probation was for liimself alone. It seems strange that it should be necessary to emphasize this point, since it is in contradiction of fundamental ethics that it should have been otherwise. The only excuse for the emphasis is that a vicious theologizing, running through the centuries, has assidu- ously taught that he served a probation for his unborn posterity. The next point I note is, that this first created soul failed in his probation ; that is, he broke the law given him, and never given to any one of his posterity, and became liable to its penalty, which was declared to be death. The occasion of the failure was temptation. The sources of the temptation were external and internal. lie was tempted by a malign spirit. He was also 58 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EIPEPIENCE, prompted by liis own constitution. There was food for temp- tation stored in hi in. Tlie law suggested resistance, because it forbade something tlie soul desired. It is so in every moral act. It is important to note the difference between temptation and sin, and also the difference between temptableness and sinful- ness. Temptation is not sin. There can be no sin without temptation ; and also there can be no probation and no ethical subject without temptation or temptableness. Temptation is felt solicitation to sin, with a conscious abiHty to comply with the solicitation and an attraction to it. Sin is the yiekling of the will to the solicitation under tlie sense of obligation to the opposite, and with power to the opposite. The solicitation to sin does not mar the moral integrity of the tempted soul, nor does the feeling of its attraction. It taxes its will and puts it under stress. When the temptation is resisted it strengthens the will and tends to establish the sonl in righteousness. By a series of resistances of solicitation to sin solicitation loses its power, and there conies a time when the influence of temptation diminishes to zero, and the will strengthened by exercise, or the soul, will forever stand in the perfect and immovable integrity of righteousness. AVhen that point is reached pro- bation has answered its end and destiny is determined — the soul is forever sphered in holiness and the perfect rest and peace of eternal life. So, contrariwise, when the will yields itself to the solicitation of sin it sins. It is the yielding that is the sin. With the yielding temptation acquires additional power, and the power to resist is weakened. Ultimately the power to resist is reduced to zero, and the influence of evil is raised to complete dominance. Character is fixed in irreversible sin, that is, the soul has freely determined itself to sin by a free choice which under no circumstances in its future history it will reverse. Probation ends and destiny begins — the soul is lost. PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 59 It may be of advantage to note the avenue of temptation to the unfallen Adam, Doubtless the sources of temptation are varied, as the environing circumstances of individual spirits vary. The temptations by which angels lost their first state are not revealed, and there is nothina; in common between their plane and ours by which we can interpret them. The case of Adam is stated and it is perfectly intelligil)le to us. His temptation arose through the sensuous and intellectual nature he possessed. His law — a divine statute, not a constitu- tional law — forbade him to partake of a certain fruit. The law became the occasion of temptation. He desired that which was forbidden for two reasons ; it appealed to liis sensuous nature^ it appealed also to his intellectual nature It attracted him because it looked as if it would be pleasant to taste. It attracted him because it would broaden his knowledge. He was so made that these two facts could not fail to create desire. The desire became source of temptation. Note, there was no sin in the desire. That was natural, and with his constitution was inevi- table. It was tliat fact that made the law a test. If the for- bidden object had not been adapted to awaken desire there would have been no probation or no test in the case. His sin commenced not with desire, but with the going over of tlie will to the choice of the forbidden thing. All sin has its seat in the will. The appetites and passions and intellectual aspirations' are not sins. They belong to the original furnishings of the soul. Sin is volitional indulgence in contravention of law. So long as the desires are kept within bounds of law they are proper and right, serve a constitutional function, and accoi'd wdth the will of God. They are limited by law. When the will which is appointed to govern tliem and keep them within law, turns traitor to its trust sin is the result. Let us try to get as nearly as possible at the exact truth 60 PHILOSOrHY OF CRBISTIAN EXFER/ENCE. aimed at by all these and similar statements. To do this, wc beffin with the statement that man is a beina; who has relations to a sensuous and supersensuous world. lie was made for final existence in the supersensuous realm. That was to be his home, and in its employments he ^7as to find his perfected bliss. His faculties were to be awake and opened to its realities, and his supreme affections to be set on it. The thought of it was to be the supreme power molding his life and pursuits. He was to live in expectancy of it and nnder its abiding influence. Supreme love to God and absolute subjection of himself to God was to be the governing norm of his life. But he was also placed in an animal body, which related him temporarily to a sensuous world which appealed to him in various ways, and had power with him in various inferior ministries of tem- poral good. He was to use it, but in subjecti onto higher, super- sensuous realities. The discernment and maintenance of this law of subordination of the sensuous to the supersensuous was to constitute his perfection — it was his supreme law. The introduction of sin reversed this law — put the animal supreme and the spirit in subjection ; ])ut him under the dominion of the carnal mind and sensuous lusts, turned all his loves and desires tow\ard the earth, made him dead to the supersensuous. This is, and has been since the original severance of man from his Maker by disobedience, the estate of man by nature ; that is, by birth. The animal essentially dominates him — he is by degeneracy " of the earth, earthy" — he delights in an dlives for sensual pleasure. His sins all emanate from this source. He is not spiritually minded. Spiritual realities are undiscei-ned and unloved. The original law of his being is utterly broken. This is the fall of man — his depravity, his native sinfulness called. He is estranged from God and is immersed in fleshly lusts and sensualities — under the dominion of sensuous thius-s. rniLosopiiY OF christtan experience. 61 It is a fact that the first attraction which reaches the soul on its entrance upon hfe is sensuous. As soon as it begins to live a conscious life or becomes able to feel an attraction it is drawn by and to the world and the flesh. As yet it has no idea of the supersensuous or spiritual. It has no proper rational life even. It is in an unethical state ; that is, the ideas of right and wrong and obligation on the ethical ground of oughtness do not exist in it. Long before it reaches these ideas — the idea even that there are any spiritual realities or any moral laws — it has already become immersed in sensuosity ; that is, its whole thought and offection and volitionating determine toward the earth. It is completely earth-bound. There is nothing else in the scope of its vision. It discovers in the world life in which it is bound things which powerfully attract it. There is no counter-attraction, for the supersensuous is wholly un- known. The earth spirit, which theologically takes the name of depravity, has complete sway in it. This is an important and indisputable fact. But, meantime, in its deepest nature it is spiritual, and is made for another kind of life. The life it at present, that is, during the reign of sensuosity, lives is not altogether an alien life ; it pertains to its constitution, but it is not its truest and best life ; not the life that will ultimately develop in it, not the life it must permanently live. Under the film of sensuosity which now invests it there lies, without sign of life, a conscious- ness yet to be awakened toward an as yet unknown supersensu- ous world whose reality and power it will inevitably come to feel. In the core of its deepest, truest self is an ethic, a moral norm — a religion. Wlien this hidden life shall begin to de- velop itself and its impulses shall begin to be felt, a new ex- perience will develop in the soul, which will fii'st appear as a schism, a discord, a warfare, as the pull of two conflicting 62 FEILOSOFHY OF CHRISTIAN EXFERIENCE. attractions, one toward the objects whicli have liithcrto swayed it, in wliicli it has hved and found delight, and which have become masterful to it ; another attraction toward objects and interest now for the first dimly discovered to it, but which press upon it and urge it as of supreme importance : the attractions of the supersensuous world ; the sense of God ; the pressure of a feeling of obligation toward him ; the yearnings after something not given in sense ; the indistinct outline of realities lying beyond time and away from the earth ; voices calHng to it, pleading Avith it, urging it — voices which it cannot hush. Tlie ethical life begins. It is in this innermost nature of the soul where Christian ex- periences are born. These are the first buddings, the dawning of the God consciousness, the germinations of the spiritual life. Tlie antecedent life of sensualism inherited, while tending to sin and enslaving the soul up to the time when a higher con- sciousness is awakened, has no ethical character, and it never could acquire ethical character if the subject did not come to a state of knowledge in whicli he felt the obligation to bring it under lav/. There is no sin in an impulse of nature, no differ- ence what it is, until it comes into relations with will and law. However it became a fact, it is a fact that the human soul finds itself in the earliest stages of its etoical consciousness dead to spiritual realities. It is quite impossible to determine at what stage of life the soul conies to ethical consciousness. It is certainly not in early infancy. It doubtless varies in dif- ferent cases : environments are influential and determining causes. With some ethical consciousness is awakened much earlier than with others. But, be it sooner or later, whenever the soul attains fully to that state it finds itself assuming an attitude of resistance to law, alive to evil lusts and sensuality, and opposed to - whatever would restrain its wrong-going — PEILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 63 earthly, sensual, and devilish. Sin takes possession of it and makes it a willing slave. It is not wholly depraved, however ; along with its lirst ethical conscionsness it finds itself encom- passed with redeeming influences. It discerns right and wrong. It becomes aware of something urging it to the right, for the divine Spirit meets its dawning consciousness. It is not wholly abandoned to evil. Its earthward and evil tendencies encounter opposition, Init its inclination is to evil, and were it left wholly to itself, and environments without redeeming influences, it would immediately sink into loathsome sensuality and utter depravity : the impulses from within are all that way ; and that it is not utter- ly lost and dead to righteousness is because redeeming influence reaches it. If the depraved impulses are restrained it is by gracious agency from without. It is early susceptible to the saving and restraining influences which come to it from the Holy Spirit. It may be early saved, before it comes to the con- sciousness of the power of evil within it, before it has acquired a relish for evil, and especially before it has come under the dominion of habits of sin ; but in that case salvation must come from without. It cannot save itself. This is the state and character of every human soul when it opens into ethical consciousness. Its first tendencies are earth- ward and evil, and without exceptions the tendencies ultimate in the actual sin as well as sinfulness of the soul. In a soul in this case Christianizing experiences take their rise. I do not doubt but that this statement will seem to put the soul at great disadvantage, and will seem to impeach God with un- generous, if not unethical, treatment of it; nevertheless, that the statement is correct, accords with the facts, I do not doubt. If we were compelled to accept the theological statement, long time persistently made, that the soul is i-endered guilty 64 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. by heredity, there would be some show of reason for the alle- gation that it takes its existence at great disadvantage, and wonld place the administration in an nnvindicable light before the universe ; or if it could be shown that the mercy element introduced into the administration did uot place the soul so marred on a fair footing for its personal probation, the same result would follow. But if redemptive Influences reach it in its new needs which more than counterbalance its injuries, then its marring would not be to its disadvantage. If it gains more in Christ than it lost in Adam its chances are improved. The probation of an abnormal soul must, under a righteous administration, be planned in the recognition of that fact. It is customary to assume — and it is not peculiar to any theo- logical system, Arminianism and Calvinism in all their shades asserting it — that that Edenic probation, admitted to be per- fectly fair, was a probation in which the eternal destiny of the subject was involved: Calvinism being responsible for the position that the subject included all the unborn souls of the human race, a pseudo-Arminianism not unfrequently expressing itself in a way that involves the same unethical idea : and as the probation issiied in failure it is as constantly assumed by Calvin- ism that by the failure the guilty subject, including all hu- manity, M^as brought under condemnation to eternal death ; Arminianism meanwhile, often by misstatement saving itself from the atrocious idea. On this unethical basis Calvinism builds its entire system, so replete with horror that it makes one stand aghast to read it. I dare not pursue the subject further. Before stating the true exposition of that ancient chapter of race history, I raise a question concerning that Adamic proba- tion which, so far as I know, has not appeared in theological PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 65 polemics upon that point. That question is this : Where does it appear in the Scriptures that the probation in which the Adam was phiced was one wliich involved even his own eternal des- tiny ? It is scripturally and historically certain that it did not, and we find ourselves compelled to affirm that there are ethical grounds why it could not. The revelation affirms that for that sin, and all other sins of men but that of a final irreversible self-determination to evil by any soul for itself, an anticipated remedy was already prepared before that first failure had oc- curred. The purpose of redemption antedated the fall. " Tlie sacrificial lamb was in purpose slain from the foundation of the world." It was not an after-thought, an expedient to meet an unforeseen contingency. This is biblical, and it is also ethical. The outcome of that Edenic chapter of probation and failure was not that the penalty of the law was executed upon the trans- gressor, if so be the penalty was eternal death. If it was eternal death it never M^as and never will be executed upon any soul of man. The sin of Eden did not send Adam to final perdition, and could not. That the penalty of eternal death was not executed could have been for no other reason than tliat i\. was not contentful to the divine nature that it should be — that is, the nature of God w^ould not permit it. That he did not permit it is in proof that for some reason his nature would not permit it — could not on some immutable ethical grounds ; for there could be no other reason. Let us search more nar- rowly into that chapter of probation and see if we cannot find an explanation that will shed light on the whole transaction. I am fully aware that I am attempting to ti'ead a perilous edge, where great caution is necessary, and therefore ask critical at- tention to every point raised, that if error appears anywhere it may be pointed out. I think I am safe in saying that up to date no theological rendering of the Edenic case has been 66 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIEKCK perfectly satisfactory, while some which have most widely pre- vailed, and continue to be put forward, with great but faltering persistence, have irrecoverably lost the respect of mankind. In substance, I believe our Wesley an version of Arminianism has most nearly reached the solution, but with some marring, and with incidents of disharmony with itself, which more careful and critical statement may eliminate. In the examination I start with the statement that I accept without reservation the historical account of the case made by Moses. I believe it is a true and divinely revealed account of the Edenic or Adamic probation. The search is as to exactly what the account contains, in the light of fundamental ethics, and subsequent history, and revelations that have a bearing on the subject. The account given b}' Moses is the simplest possible. This is its great merit. There is nothing outre or mysterious about it. The circumstances are natural and intelligible. It has all the appearance of a plain unvarnished story. It commends itself as probable. There is nothing in human knowledge of an his- torical, rational, scientific, or ethical kind to throw doubt upon it. The deepest philosophy suggests no improvement of it. It claims to have been received from God. The subject-matter is such as to exclude the possibility of any other authorship on any other theory than that it is fiction of human invention. Of this there is no evidence and much disproof. The law was the simplest possible, but it served as a moral test — that is, the test whether the subject would obey law. That was what it was for. It perfectly answered its end. Would a more complex and difficult law have been better ? Who will affirm it, considering the circumstances of the case ? The law forbade that which something in the nature of the 8',il)ject craved. This is important to bo noted. Could it have PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE, 67 been a moral test without that ? Could it have been less and answer the end of determining character ? The outcome was that the subject chose unrighteousness. Simple as the test was he did not endure it. I am willing to saj, in order to give all possible strength to the case, that it was foreknown that he would fail. This fact must be taken into the account in order to the explanation of the whole case, and must give complexion to it. I cannot here enter into the polemic or foreknowledge further than to say that it had no influence whatever as causing the act of disobedience, but it was influential as affecting the administration with respect to the act of disobedience. The whole subject in all its bearings is fully discussed in the treatises already referred to. We have now reached the point in the history where objection springs. It is said the subject, considering his inexperience, never should have been placed in a situation of such imminent peril. The objection is purely instinctive. Has it been considered what the position means ? Can there be an ethical system without such ])eril ? "What is righteous character but the free choice of right with the possible choice of wrong ? To assume that no subject should be placed in such condition of peril as to possibly make a wrong choice is simply to assert that a moral universe ought not to exist. That depends on what the foi-e- known outcome will be. It is perfectly safe to affirm that its existence, caused by a holy and loving God, is stronger proof that it ought to exist than any evidence to the contrary from purely instinctive judgment of any finite creature. But it is said that the foreknowledge of failure in this case at least ought to have estopped the peril. That depends on two things ; namely, how this particular history stands related to the whole ethical system in all time and over all worlds, and what else was foreknown of the outcome of this trial. 68 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. But it is said in any event the treatment of tlie subject is inexcusably severe. Infinite love ought to have interfered. Here, again, we have the cry of the she wolf — mere instinct witliout reason. Has the case been severely treated ? I am sure that justice never has been done to this question. Let us calmly look at it in a changed form. How ought it to have been treated and how has it been treated ? Is there ground for the charge of severity ? I am sure that any thing like a fair examination will secure the verdict that the treatment has been the tender- est possible — the treatment of unsurpassed and unsurpassable love. What are the facts ? Was the culprit dealt with liarshly ? Was he driven away in wrath to irrecoverable doom ? Was he consigned to I'emediless sin and everlasting torments? Were his unborn descendants left to welter in the horrors of inevita- ble sin and shame as the result of his inexcusable deed ? Where is it said ? Shall we forever continue to asperse God and per- vert the plainest statements of history at the dictation of a false human creed on the one hand, or the mere ebullitions of unreasoning instinct on the other? Is there to be no limit to the blasphemy against infinite love ? What says the history ? Does it not faithfully record that, foreseeing the calamity, infinite love had already provided a remedy ? Does it not show that the probation, instead of being ended and the ciise finally adjudicated, was only begun ? the first chapter merely of continuous history ? Would it not be wiser to be at the pains to read the history through ? The story is a pathetic one. It reveals to us a loving father dealing M'ith an erring and wayward child— the more you put in the sin of the child the greater the tenderness of compassion on the part of the father. A grievous wrong had been com- PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN' EXPERIENCE. 69 mitted — a tragedy of evil initiated — the peace of the universe disturbed, not by the eating of an apple, as fools flippantly assert, but by an act of disobedience which involved the clioice of evil instead of good ; which changed the character of the transgressing child ; which changed his relations to law ; which immutable ethics demanded should be recognized in the after- treatment of the transgressor ; wdiich no power could obliter- ate ; which to remedy would cost an infinite price of suffering and sorrow. We stand at the open door of the greatest tragedy of all time. Tlie guilty culprit, who, willingly or not, had opened the " Pandora's box " and let loose the fiends of evil to raven and destroy, stands before whom ? An inexorable, an unre- lenting judge ? A frowning, lowering, onmipotent vengeance ? No, not that ; but before a holy and compassionate father, com- pelled to deal with his offending child but moved with pity and intent on remedy rather than punishment ; not moved more by justice than by love — more by justice tempered by love. Com- passion intones the entire narrative. He reproves but he com- forts. Could he have done less 1 At what infinite cost he un- dertakes to remedy the breach ! What was the result ? The sin had been committed ; it could not be recalled. Neither the sinning child nor sinned- against parent had power to obliterate it. It must be dealt with as sin. This immutable ethics demanded. The culprit was marred in character, the evil of sin had gone into his soul ; but it was by his own choice. He was turned out of Paradise. It was prepared for the sinless. lie had sinned. Was a wrong done him in sending him away ? To assume it is to assume that the sinning and the sinful should have no different treatment — -again the cry of the she wolf ; in- stinct against reason. I ask critical attention to the further statement I now make. 70 PHILOSOPHT OF CHRISTIAK EXPERIENCE. Tliougli turned out of Paradise, with a character mari-ed and with a nature perverted by his sin, the culprit was not for- saken but was permitted to live under a prolonged probation — the continued probation mercifully adapted to his altered cir- cumstances. It was not now a probation of an innocent person to test whether under temptation he would choose evil instead of good. That test had been already passed and he had deter- mined himself to evil. It was not a probation to test whether, now that he had be- come guilty, he would reconsider and restore himself to right- eousness. That was impossible. Guilt once incurred cannot purge itself. The sinner cannot annihilate the fact of his sin nor remove its guilt by any atonement he can offer or repara- tion he can make. It was not a probation under which, by a sovereign act, the culprit was forgiven or placed under a less rigorous law. The law could not be relaxed ; it can require nothing less than righteousness and absolute obedience. Nor can there be an act of sovereign forgiveness for its violation. Under continued probation the law is neither abolished nor modified, and under it there is no sovereign forgiveness. It was not a probation under which incurred guilt was im- puted to another and the righteousness of anotlier imputed to the culprit. Though a probation under un relaxed law it was not a probation under law alone, in which failure in a single case, or even many grievous and continuous failures, closed the test and consigned the culprit to the doom of final and irre- trievable ruin, I call special attention to this statement. The probation was that of a guilty sinner, made such by his own free choice of evil under the most favorable opportunity and highest motives to the choice of good ; of a sinner who by PUILOSOrUY OF CIlRISriAN EXPERIENCE. 7/ liis sill had not only incurred guilt but had thereby introduced into his nature a perverting habit and tendency to evil which bound him to perpetual sinning so far as any power himself possessed. A soul touched with the virus of sin cannot cure itself. There is in it no power of self-redemption. This it is that makes the deepest evil of sin. It is obvious that probation to such a soul, were there noth- ing more to be said, would be meaningless. Where there is only one possible outcome, what the end will be is determined before the trial. We add, therefore, it was the probation of a guilty and sin- ful soul under the provisions of an atonement originated not by itself but by the infinite love against which it had sinned; an atonement which was to be wrought out at a great price of suffering voluntarilj^ endured on its behalf ; an atonement un^ der which its sin, and any and all sins it might commit, might be forgiven, audits blighted and perverted nature be restored to normalcy, on one condition: that it should yield to the mighty persuasions of love under helpful influences of a regen- erating power ever at hand, which enable it to renounce its sin and sue for pardon, I cannot here enter at all into the polemic of that atonement in any aspect of it as to its extent or the why of its efficacy, but rest the statement here, with the assertion of the fact that there was such an atonement made for the sinning Adam and for all of his posterity covering their sin, and that con- tinued probation is under its provisions. Does this look like severity ? Does it reveal to us a charac- ter inexorable and unrelenting — an unforgiving vengeance as seated on the throne of the universe ? Is it hard treatment to ask a sinner to renounce his sins and sue for pardon ? Is it hard treatment to provide an atonement for him at the greatest 75 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. possible cost when lie was too poor and helpless to provide one for himself ? Is it hard treatment to bear with him through years of impenitence and insolent wickedness, persuading and entreating him not to destroy himself ? Is it hard treatment to enlist all possible influences to save him — to move heaven and earth on his behalf ? Is it hard treatment if, after all pos- sible efforts to save him he is still found to be impenitent, and, has made for himself the irreversible choice of evil, to send him away to his own place ? Where else should he be sent ? What other disposition could be made of him? If when the probation ends it is because character has assumed an un- changeable type by the irreversible choice of evil, and if at the end destiny is determined by fixed and incorrigible im- penitence self-elected, under all the circumstances investing the trial who but a devil dare accuse the ever blessed God with having been unmerciful ? Who can name any thing that should have been done that has not been done ? In passing away from the chapter of initial probation in Eden I affirm that neither Adam nor any one of his posterity ever was damned to eternal and irretrievable death for the sin ■vvhich he then committed. I further affirm that no such result followed the act, because the nature of God was such that he could not permit it — such that he never proposed any thing of the kind — and not because of any change of mind arising from unexpected exigencies. I affirm yet further that the act of Eden did change the rela- tions between God and the sinning Adam, and did radically affect the nature of Adam, introducing into his soul a tendency to sin which he, left to himself, had no power to reverse. I affirm that this new but foreseen condition of things was the basis of an atonement sohenie antedating the sin, by which PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 73 probation was continued and under which eternal destiny is administered. I affirm that Adam's sin in the breach of the Eden law, and all other sins that he ever committed, were his own sins, and nobody else's, and that there never was or could be a sharer in ]iis guilt ; and, therefore, that the atonement provided was not an atonement for the guilt of any one of his posterity with respect to that act, since they were not, and could not be, guilty concerning it. I affirm still yet further that such are the relations of Adam and his posterity that, by heredity and natural descent, the niarrino; which sin brouo-ht into his nature is transmitted to his posterity, and that all born of him receive from hhn a fatal bias to sin such that not one of his line has ever escaped it ; and such that, but for tlie restoring agencies which emanate from the atonement under which they take their existence, they would be involved in utter ruin ; and, therefore, such as would have prevented their existence had no provision been prepared and made for its remed}'. I affirm yet once more that while hereditary depravity does not involve guilt on the part of those wlio receive it, either for the sin which introduced it or on its own account, it is an evil which must be removed ; and that the atonement provides for its removal or deliverance from its power on the same condi- tions on which personal sins are forgiven — regeneration and forgiveness being concomitant of the same act of justification by which a sinner becomes a child of God and heir of eternal life. 74 PUILO SOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. LECTURE 4. PROCESS AND ELEMENTS OF EXPERIENCE. FORGIVENESS. We have seen now how sin was introduced, that is, how man came under the miseries of sin. It is not our business in these lectures to more than state these scriptural deliverances. We find the fact of sin ; this is God's explanation of its origin. We assert that no other account ever has been given, or ever can be given, which does not make God the direct author of sin, and make him solely responsible for it. These facts show, that God is responsible for creating the possibility of sin, but that man is responsible for creating the fact of sin against God's expressed prohibition and desire. This statement is in- tended in all its inclusions to be exact. There is a measure of responsibility on the part of God which must enter into his treatment of sin, for the possibility of which his creative act had prepared the way. Let us try to find just what that meas- ure of responsibility is, and just how it must influence his administration. This will appear if we reflect : {a) he made the subject so that he could sin — if he had not so done there could have been no sin ; (J) he placed him in conditions where he would })e ex- posed to the temptation to sin — if he had not so done there would have been no sin ; (c) he foresaw that he would sin. Of these facts there can be no doubt, and in his own account of it they are not disguised but are fully stated. Under the light of these facts his administration must be vindicated before the universe. His holiness, which is but another name for the in- finite purity of his justice and love, is involved. If the circumstances of the trial were fair up to the point where sin emerged there can be no real ground of fault in the PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 75 divine proceeding up to tliat point. But an absolute prerequi- site to that is that the trial should have been perfectly fair ; that is, that the subject of tlie trial had complete and adequate power to know and do what was required. It may be well to linger for a moment here. If he create a moral being at all he must involve tlie possibility of sin. The one is the inclusion of the other. It was, therefore, the alter- native of no moral universe or the possibility of sin. Any plan of creation which would exclude a moral universe, tiiat is, a universe with persons, would reduce him to tlie necessity of making a universe simply of things, with no minds to enjoy it and no ethical or intellectual good to be enjoyed ; a universe, therefore, with no other significance than simply a meaning- less exhibition of power for himself to contemplate — a uni- verse that could display no attribute of either justice or love or the infinite perfection of holiness in any form, and from which all ethical enjoyment must be excluded. If he create moral beings he must put them under moral laws. That which his conjoint attributes of justice and" love require — attributes never separated or separable in administra- tion over finite moral beings — is that he enact laws obedience to which would express loyalty to essential righteousness, and disobedience to which would involve the essence of willful sin. For such disobedience he must enact suitable penalties, both as incentives to obedience and as expressing his own righteous- ness. Such laws must be level to the comprehension of the creature or they would be as unjust as unmerciful. The law must demand nothing difficult of obedience to the subject in view of his measure of ability ; it must, in other words, be ad- justed to the kind of faculty he possessed and the precise envi- ronments in which he was placed, so as neither to be oppressive or difficult. It must furnish him a fair and perfectly equitable 76 PHILO SOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. chance to secure all the good of obedience and avert all tlie evils of disobedience. Nothing short of this would render it possible to vindicate the character of the Creator. And up to the point of the occurrence of sin these facts would furnish a perfect vindication. Allow now that he knew that the perfectly fair trial would issue in disobedience, does this circumstance in any way affect the question of how he should administer on its occurrence ? "We are compelled to answer affirmatively. In the iirst place we are compelled to answer that such foreknowledge of the outcome, wliile it is admitted that it would not lessen the crime of disobedience, as mere foreknowledge would in no way be causative of the act; and while it would in no way render the trial unfair, it must do one of two things — namely, (a) either it must estop the creative act because of the evil outcome foreknown, or (Ij) it nmst require the introduction of an element of mercy into the administration by which pardon would be jDossible, or the character of God must be forever unvindicable before the universe. We assert this, with whatever it involves, not merely as probable, but as absolutely certain and ethically necessary, and we linger for a moment for its defense. That God himself so viewed it is apparent in the fact that he did, on the occurrence of the sin, intro- duce the mercy element in the administration, and in the further fact that he purposed so to do before the creative act. That he did so do he declares himself. And that he j)repurposed so to do was not an unethical purpose, but was so because his ethical nature demanded it — because he could not be the eter- nally holy God, that is, the eternally just and loving God, and not do it. The fact that he did so do, and prepurposed so to do, prove that it was according to his nature to do it, and that PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 77 not to do it would liave been contrary to his nature. This is a sufficient answer, but it may be useful to state the underlying principles which must have so determined him. The question whether he would create a moral being who he knew would sin against him, and who he knew on the occurrence of sin would become accursed, was one touching his free act, Now, the determination of that question how he would act must depend upon what would be the outcome of the act of tlie creature he was to make. If he knew perfectly that it would issue only in curse is it possible to reconcile it to any thing that we are com- pelled to think of God that he would proceed to create with no alternative in his mind as the means of averting the curse ? What could move him to the act ? AVhat end of justice would be served ? What end of his own glory in any possible aspect ? By supposition he perfectly knew that only one result would issue ; that, the eternal and remediless curse of the creature he made. The thought that he would proceed with this only alter- native is blasphemous. If this were the only alternative pres- ent to his thought every attribute of his nature must revolt against the creative act. But suppose now that he foresaw the sin and the incurrence of its penalty, and along with it purposed immediately to intro- duce redemption, at once the question, Shall he proceed to create ? has another aspect — a new line of administration places the question whether he will create or not in a new light. The knowledge that the creation of a free being must involve the possibility of sin, and the foreknowledge that the possibil- ity would certainly ripen into reality, and the knowledge that the reality would expose the culprit to curse and ruin, in the absence of any plan to avert the calamity, must inevitably have arrested the creative act, unless some remedy was seen to be possible. But allow the prepurpose to furnish such a remedy, 78 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. would then either justice or love now stand in tlie way of pro- cedure ? Would not both of these eternally co-working attri- butes unite to impel to the creative act ? To this question there can be but one answer ; that is, that in the degree in which a personal universe is more to be desired than a mere universe of things it would be wise to proceed. But still the question would emerge, Suppose that it was foreknown that the remedy provided would not be entirely effectual ; that some among myriads would reject and remain under curse ; what then ? The question is a fair one, and to it we have to answer : The case must be reviewed in connection of the entire ethical system. We think it is safe to assume that if God foresaw that the moral system would issue only in disaster he could not on any ethical principles have created a moral system. It is impossi- ble to conceive infinite goodness as creating when it was fore- known no good, and only evil, would inevitably, or even cer- tainly, result from his act. The same principle applies to any one individual in the moral system if so be the particular indi- vidual could be estopped from existence without involving the destruction of a paramount good. But if it was foreknown that among a vast number of beings under moral conditions some would certainly bring evil upon themselves, but that the vast majority would attain to the greatest felicity ; and if it were impossible to eliminate the evil without at the same time preventing the good, it cannot be shown upon any ethical grounds that the good ought to be deprived of existence in order to prevent the self-incurred evil of the few who would come to grief under the system. All that can be required for the perfect vindication of infi- nite goodness is that the system adopted should be the best pos- sible, securing the greatest amount of good attainable, and PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 79 reducing the evil to the lowest minimum. This his own ethical nature must require. If it were possible for him to keep out all evil without also preventing a paramount good his nature would require this. Should it be foreknown that evil would arise under the sys- tem his whole ethical nature, justice as much as love, would put a demand on him to limit it as much as possible by the em- plo^'ment of all possible agencies for its extirpation. The nec- essary outcome of his proceeding must be that he did all pos- sible to prevent evil finding an entrance into the system, and, after it made its appearance, every thing possible to extirpate it, short of a method that would involve still greater evil by eliminating all possible good, or the greatest possible good. It is in the light of these principles that we must judge of and interpret his proceedings with man, and especially the workings of the remedial system. But some one is ready to say : Had not God power to pre- vent evil from invading the universe ? To say he had not, is it not to limit his omnipotence ? To this question we answer in two parts : (a) He had the power to prevent evil by not cre- ating a moral universe. If he might omit that there would be no evil. But could he, as the infinitely good and holy, omit it ? {b) But could he not have made a moral system with only good in it ? "We answer. Yes ; that was precisely the moral system he did make. There was no evil in any thing that he made. But had he not power to prevent it from being intro- duced ? To this we answer again in two parts : (a) Power cannot prevent a moral creature from going wrong except by de-ethicalizing him, that is, by overthrowing his ethical nature. Ethical acts are not preventable by power ; but (b) if he could prevent it how is it to be accounted for that he permits it on any 6 80 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. other principle than that he prefers it on its own account, or be- cause there is a paramount good in it? which is a contradiction. It is easy to folly and effrontery to say : Why, if God is dis- pleased with sin, did he not prevent it, and if he desires to get clear of it wliy does he not banish it ? But this is mere ebullition of ignorance — the cry of the she wolf. The answer to all such inane blasphemy is : Sin is here be- cause man chooses to sin. It is here, not because God is pleased to have it, but because men are pleased to commit it. He did not and does not prevent it because he does not choose to abolish men and a moral universe, and because he has no power to prevent it if free beings choose to have it. His law and the sinless system he created represent his feeling with regard to it. The plan of rescue from it expresses his desire to get rid of it. If there were any other possible, more effectual way, it is certain that he would have adopted that. Sin is here by choice of man. It is fonnd to be the most patent and the most potent fact in human history, and, we may be bold to say, the most dreadful fact in the entire history of the universe. No one disputes it. Its fell shadow falls atliwart the entire history of the race. Its malign and awful presence reveals itself in every soul of man. It is unmixed evil, and portentous of still deeper evil. This statement accords with every consciousness. It carries terror to every reflecting mind. It projects its portentous gloom over a possible immortality. Only fools make light of it. To the question. How shall it be dealt with ? what will be the outcome ? the guilt-smitten soul returns only the dumb answer of instinct. The spontaneous first thought is to appease aveng- ing wrath which it feels lowering over it. All heathenism is the exponent of this thought. All its rites and offerings are peace- offerings — appeasements. Tlie entire history of hcatlienisra PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 81 proclaims man's consciousness of guilt and dread of venge- ance — bis hopeless impotence cowering before tbe terrors of retributive wrath; the impossibility of self-deliverance but the inevitability of the effort. No offering can appease avenging justice while sin remains. Justice cannot be bought off. The thing God hates is sin. The blood of bulls and goats, and more costly offerings, is not what he wants. They are nothing to him. What is wanted is salv^ation from sin. That will stay all penalty — nothing else can. No human effort that comes short of this is of any avail. The problem is how to get rid of sin. That solved, all else is easy. Sacrifices do not put it away. No sacrifice; not even the great sacrifice God himself provided. No sacrifice appeases. What is wanted is not ap- peasement ; it is the removal of sin. This can never be done in any other way than by inducing the sinner to renounce it In order to that he must be revolutionized — made over. As any sacrifices he may offer cannot do that, so also he cannot revolutionize himself. He has no power to do it in himself. Here is where the religion of culture is a failure. Culture cannot remove guilt. Culture cannot change the nat- ure. These are the things that are wanted. Sin kills. What is needed is a power to make alive. Failing to appease avenging wrath by any thing it can do, and failing to be able to restore itself by any thing that it can do — hopelessly guilty, bound hand and foot to evil, smitten with despair — the affrighted soul turns upon its Maker and Sovereigp and accuses him as a merciless tyrant. In vain does Sover- eignty rcpl}^ : Is not the law just ? Does it require any thing oppressive ? Is it not beneficent as well as just ? Would not obedience to it have worked for the highest welfare ? Does not its transgression work endless harm and misery ? As a loving sovereign was I not bound to make such a law ? Would 82 PEILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN' EXPERIENCE. I have been guiltless had I made any other law less perfect ? Can I be just or true to the creatures I have made and permit it to be set aside and trampled on ? Am I not bound to secure the good it provides for by compelling it to be respected by enforcing its sanctions ? Were not you fully warned of the consequences of transgression ? Was not your disobedience a free voluntary act ? Is not the harm that comes to you in its penalties of your own procuring? Can yon with reason or justice complain of me for your self-incurred evil by the per- verse and willful abuse of what I intended for your good ? The defense seems to be fair. There is not one of the allega- tions implied against which a word can be said. But despite the defense the affriglited soul feels that, dealt with on these principles of rigorous justice, it is the victim of a great wrong — the justice is too severe to be just, even ; in its unrelenting rigors it overleaps itself and becomes stained — justice, pure and simple, unmixed with mercy toward a finite and fallable creature, becomes cruelty. The soul continues its plea. It says, allow that justice condemns M'ith justice, yet the thing is wrong. The injustice lies further back, in giving me existence and placing me in exposedness to such a fate. • It is cruelty to create a fallable creature and place him under cir- cumstances where he ma}^ however freely, incur remediless evil upon a single chance. I had no choice in my creation. Your sovereign act placed me here in being. You made me what I am. Had it been possible to know these grievous possibilities, and had I been allowed a choice, I would have preferred not to be. It was an act of pure and cruel despotism that made me under conditions that have brought these evils upon me. There is not even the excuse of good intention marred by un- foreseen contingencies. Thou knewest even when creating me what the outcome was sure to be. Waxing still more bold, the PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 83 defiant, not merely affrighted and helpless, soul continues its plea. Looking Sovereignty in the face it says : I never had a chance ; I was sent here maimed — a hopeless cripple, with im- possibility to do otherwise than sin. The blight of another's curse for his own sin, not mine, reached me in the womb ere I was born, and so warped my faculties that escape from this curse which I now suffer was never in my reach. I am fore- doomed by the sin of another, of which my sins are unfree ac- cidents however they seem to be my free and personal acts. To this impeachment there is and can be no answer if we suppose the divine government based and administered on the principle of abstract and absolute justice alone which renders penalty irremissible if the subject is to be such a subject as man. With such a subject there can be no irremissible pen- alty for sin. There may be penalty eternally inflicted but it must be remissible penalty. That it continues forever must not be because he who executes it could not and would not re- mit it, but because he who suffers it has finally and irreversi- bly rejected the merciful conditions on which alone it could be remitted. The penalty abides because the sinner has irreversi- bly and freely determined the rejection of proffered pardon, fixing himself in sin, and not because it is de facto irremissible. In recognizing the principle of mercy and possible pardon, and in providing for it in actual administration, which all ad- mit, God himself shows that the actual administration is not on the principle of abstract and absolute justice alone, and is not BO because it ought not, that is, ethically could not, be so carried on. The mercy which he introduced was not unethical, but what, was obligatory on him as an immutable ethical principle of his nature ; as much so as that of justice itself. Grace is his free act, but not, therefore, in contravention with ethical obligation. He could no more administer without mercy than without j ustice. 84 PHILOSOPHT OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCK • Mercy must not be in contravention of justice, and no more can justice be in contravention of mercy. The two eter- nal and immutable attributes must be administratively harmo- nious. The law in all of its requirements and sanctions must accord with perfect justice, for he cannot be in conflict with justice. It must be administered in mercy, but not at the sacrifice of tlie principle of justice, for he cannot be less than merciful. This was the great problem, the greatest of all prob- lems, for the Infinite to solve. To the impeachment of igno- rant fright and terror the infinite heart of love replies: " It is not so. The case is not at all as you put it ; it is the extremest opposite. If my dealing with you were as you assume, though you are a worm, and even on the ground that you are a worm and I the Almighty, your accusation would be just. I should then deserve the execration of every creature in the universe. 1 should not be able to think of myself but with abhorence. If there is a single creature in the wide realm of existence whom I have treated as you allege you have been treated, no matter what his sin, my infamy were greater than that of devils. But you are mistaken. The indictment is false in all of its essen- tial and malign features. This is what is true : I did permit vou to be brought into existence with a marred nature whose tendencies are to evil. It is also true that it is by reason of no fault of yours that you are so marred. It is further true that you have no power to remedy the marring of nature which comes to you by inheritance. It is also true that your per- sonal sins have had their source in the natural depravity which was propagated in you without your consent. So much I am compelled to admit. If now the defense stopped here nothing is more certain than that the indictment would stand in every feature of it. But infinite love proceeds with its defense : It is not true that I have ever accounted you guilty, or that I have PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 85 ever proposed to punish you for the nature you inherit, or that I have required of you the impossible thin<^ of rectifjdng it by your unaided self-power. It is not true that I have left you to the inevitable punishment of your sins personally commit- ted by the free choice of evil, even. It is not true that I have cruelly forsaken you in your sad and helpless condition and left you to your self-chosen wickedness. What is true is, I have ever been a pitying Father. In your helplessness I have laid help upon One mighty to save ; I have borne with 3^ou ; I have provided for you full and ample opportunities to make your existence one of immeasurable blessedness. This is the one thing I have constantly sought in all my dealings with you. I have made infinite sacrifice for you ; I have employed all possible influences to save you ; I have offered forgiveness ou the single condition that you renounce your sins ; I have per- suaded and entreated you. If finally you are lost it will be after all efforts to save you have been unavailing, and then only because when it was fully in your power, made so by un- solicited help, you have rejected offered mercy and have of your own volition irreversibly elected evil instead of good. I call the universe to witness that I have exhausted the resources of infinite love. What could I have done that I have not done ? " This defense accords with the exact facts ; and that it is a perfect defense no spirit in the universe can gainsay. Love intones all the proceedings of God with respect to man from the beginning to the end. There is not a chapter from the opening chapter in Eden, not an incident to the closing chap- ter of eternal doom, that does not reveal infinite love as pre- siding: over the destinies of men. 86 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. LECTURE 5. ELEMENTS OF EXPERIENCE. The preceding discussions liave sufficiently developed the principles and the facts of administration under which Chris- tian experience emerges ; that it is the experience of a soul under a beneficent probation, under which every soul of man has a fair chance to secure to itself a happy immortality. The discussion first disclosed how man became involved in sin, and then unfolded the method by which infinite love seeks to deliver him from sin by a continued probation under redemptive influences and agencies. It further developed that in the entire history and providential plan of proceeding there is nothing arbitrary, or artificial, or merely volitional on the part of God, but that the whole proceeding has been and is conducted on the immutable ethic of the divine nature. I deem it important, before stating the facts of experience which in their wholeness constitute Christian experience, to state once more that they are facts which do not emerge in the soul by its own agency alone, nor by the agency of God alone, but by the concurrence and coaction of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost — the Trinity in the Godhead — with the soul. I reaffirm also that God in Trinity has no j)ower to recover the sinful and guilty soul without its coaction. This may seem like abold statement, but a moment's reflection, without argu- ment, will justify it. If it M'cre possible to Godhead to save the soul without its coaction, then all souls would be brought to the experience of salvation if it were not that God did not wish to save them ; for if he could work salvation in one without his coaction, he could work salvation in all without PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 87 their coaction. The explanation why some will not be saved is not that God did not choose to save some, and did choose to save otliers ; but because some souls determined, by a free, irreversible choice, not to be saved. This position is essential to the philosophy of Christian experience, and is iniportant to be emphasized, because of a long time vicious theologizing, which ascribes every thing in salvation — that is, in Christian experience— to tlie direct and sovereign act of God on the souls of a certain number called the elect, or to an irresistible efficacy in means employed. In either form the idea is unethical and false. Nothing done by God, either through or without the atonement, ever did or ever can save a responsible human soul without its own coaction. Tlie trutli is, God seeks to save all men, and out of his infi- nite love, self-moved, lias provided means and a method of salvation, which include conditions to be performed freely by man ; and among these means are the atonement (atonement is only a means) wrought by Christ, and a revelation of that fact to man, accompanied with instructions, invitations, and prom- ises, and with helpful influences of the Holy Ghost, empower- ing, but not coercing, man to comply with the conditions. Until the conditions are complied with salvation is not effected. When man performs his part God saves him ; that is, brings him into the full and completed experience of salvation. Thus God and man are co-factors. The whole scheme of salvation is to be interpreted in the light of this principle, and it is fatal to the whole scheme of election and all the unethical postulates and warnings connected therewith, and the doctrine of atone- ment built thereon. Before more specifically naming and elaborating the several separate elements of Christian experience, we call attention to the fact that there is an exact and loo^ical order in which these 6^ PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. elementary parts emerge. The order is philosophical ; that is, rational; it never is and cannot be inverted. Each incident occupies the precise place it must occupy to accord with the mental and moral constitution of the soul, and each incident has a differentiable conditioning ground. The experience is a unity out of severalty, each incident of which is necessary to the completed whc»le — nothing can be transposed or omitted, though the expe/^^nce may be intermitted at any point short of completion — the beginning does not necessarily carry with it the end. The end is only secured by the soul freely comply- ing with the conditions until the end is reached. N^o soul ever did or ever can comply with the conditions throughout and the end fail. ChHstlan experience is absolute proof of the truth of Chris- tlaniiy. There is perfect harmony between the experience and the entire code of doctrines in the Christian system. All the doctrines have bearing in some way on the experience. The experience is Christianity incarnated — concrete experience of it. Whut are the elements of Christian experience ? In the present lecture they will be named and explained in the order of their occurrence. We are now prepared to take up and examine the facts of Christian experience. There are elements in Christian experi- ence that are common to all men, which therefore exist where no completed Christian experience exists, but without which there is no Christian experience; which, therefore, must be taken account of in any adequate statement of the constitutive elements of Christian experience. The beginnings of grace are revealed in every adult human soul. These primary and PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTTAN EXPERIENCE. 89 initial experiences constitute the conditioning grounds of all subsequent experiences, without which they would be impossi- hle ; they furnish the necessary bases of all after stages. They are of divine emanation. The human soul has no power to lift itself to God, if God do not first condescend to it. It must forever remain in the sensuosity into which it is fallen, did not God lift it up out of the abysm by some helpful movement upon it, enabling it to coact with him. This is called initial grace. Divine illuTnination is the first element in any soul's de facto redemption — its first redemptive experience. This is vouchsafed in a degree to every human soul. There is a divine "liglit that lighteneth every man that cometh into the world," which is sufficient, if followed, to lead it to its fountain and source, so that there is no absolute necessity that any soul of man should be lost. But the light which shines dindy in the benighted chambers of a heathen soul, while it may lead it to the everlasting fountain of light and life, is not adequate to a Christian experience. There must be added supernatural revelation. The light which shines from the holy pages of revelation and from the holy character of Jesus of Kazareth furnishes the divine illumination which is necessary to the dawn of Christian experience. Through these God comes to the sensualized soul, and by their shining lights up the super- sensuous and unseen, as nature and the Spirit in the use of mere nature do not. In their shining the powers of the invisible world appear — the soul discerns itself and its law — the path of duty and of life is made plain to it. The divine illu- mination thus projected into the soul becomes matter of con- sciousness. Under it all things appear in a new light ; that which was before in a haze of uncertainty becomes real; faith 90 PHILOSOPHT OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. in the supersensible is born. It is the iirst end of "the path that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." It is a holy light, and it reveals the " holy of holies " — the hohness of God, the holiness of heaven, and the great fact that nothing unholy can enter therein. The human soul, under divine illumination, becomes conscious of a law revealed to it which demands holiness. The heavenly light opens npon it ineffable sanctities. Conviction, the second stage of experience, is born. The illuminated soul, under the heavenly shining, discovers that it is utterly defiled. Patent as that fact now becomes to its consciousness, but for that opening to it of the holy of holies it could never have made the discovery. To a soul that has closed its doors against the shining of that holy light sin seems a trivial thing — an accident or mistake merely — a passing misconduct — a happening that has no deep significance, which comes to the earthly life of man and makes a momentary stain, may be, but which time and other experiences will efface ; but, to one who has seen God in his revelation, who has passed through into the inner shrine of the divine sanctities, that has seen the veil uplifted, and through the veil has beheld the unspeakable vision of stainless and immaculate purities — the effulgence of a holiness before which even the heavens are stained and angels are charged with folly — a blaze of righteous- ness which consumes all iniquity — sin becomes exceeding sinful, a very tragedy of evil. That such is the eternal holiness of God is the burden of revelation ; the express teaching is, that he cannot look upon sin with allowance — that it is the one thing which his nature abhors with unmitigated loathing. In the light of this revelation the illuminated soul sees itself, and there is borne in upon it the sense of utter guilt and defile- PHILOSOrilY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 91 ment. The eternal ethic slays it. To it sin is never again mere petty delinquencies — mere external follies and foibles — the epliemeral incidents or escapades of transient thoughtlessness. The blaze of day has peneti'ated its innermost consciousness, and the holy law lays itself along-side of the habitual thoughts and desires and purposes which are found there, and the dis- covery is made to it that itself is shot tlirouo:h and through witli the deadly virns — that itself is rotten and leprous, a filthy cage of reptiles and unclean birds, that ic is evil and oidy evil, and that continually — that its very sanctities are unholy lusts. It sums up its whole moral consciousness in one word : *' Unclean, unclean, unclean." No soul lias ever seen itself in the light of revelation, or in the light of true self-knowledge, that will not recognize the realism of this dreadful picture. There is a general vague sense of sin which all men feel. Under redemption no soul of man is or can be without this. It emerges in the dimmest twilight of ethical consciousness. It brings to the soul disquiet and unrest, unsatisfiedness with itself, weariness with its state, the dull pain of a diseased nerve ; but it is often for a time, and. possibly on account of personal delin- quency forever, kept under opiates or drowned with dissipations or eager pursuits of pleasure or business. It is incipient but smothered conviction. The grace of thorough awakening, when admitted to the soul — that is, wdien the soul yields its consent to look at itself in the light of the divine law — is a great uplift toward spiritual life, the beginning of a great experience, often alarming and deeply painful at first, but always medicative, healing, the bursting open of the door for the in-comino; of a celestial sruest. It is not pretended that in every case of genuine Christian experience there is the same degree of vivid consciousness of the utter corruption of the heart or the same Dhenoraena of self- 92 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. accusing. Personal history accounts for wide diversity ; but a sense of guilt is a universal concomitant of all Christian experi- ence. Many times tlie divine illumination brings out into start- ling prominence some one act of enormous sin and fixes the gaze of the soul exclusively upon it, and impales, transfixes it with the single fact. Many times it is a long line of criminal offenses, a life-time of sins, that is held before its gaze. Again, it is simple conviction of neglect, ingratitude, unworthiness ; but it must be conviction of sin, consciousness of guilt, if the soul is ever to rise out of it into a sense of pardon. Sinfulness emerges as ground of condemnation. Now it is possible to conceive of the soul's experience stop- ping here. There is no absolute necessity in the nature of the soul that it should ever pass from under or beyond this experi- ence. We should then have a soul forever self-condemned and gnawed with perpetual remorse, or a dead or a lost soul. Itself could never abolish the fact of its guilt. The law which con- demns it could never be reversed, for it is an immutable law. Its condemnation must be perpetual and its remorse everlast- ing — the inextinguishable fire and the deathless worm, the hell of the Bible. If we suppose the process to stop here, conviction is not an element of Christian experience, but an element of the experience of a lost soul that might have led on to Christian experience. To raise conviction to the quality of an element of grace, and thus bring it into the line of saving experience, it must condition a further experience. We have said that the soul has no power to reverse the facts and lift itself out from under the condemnation which kills it. If now we suppose God to be moved with pity at its forlorn condition, and by as imperative a law as the law of holiness it- self we are compelled to think he was, and could not but be, so moved (and this intuitive judgment is shown to be true by his FHILOSOPEY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 93 own revelation, for lie declares that lie was so moved with pitj), riie question emerges, how could pity become available to rem- edy the case ? It is certain that there are some thinc^s which God, however "moved by pity, could not do. He could not reverse his own law without subverting his own immaculate holiness, for his law is the simple exponent and expression of his holiness. He could not change the fact of sin. It is not in the power of God even to make tiiat not a fact which is a fact. He could not ignore the fact and treat the guilty sinner as if he were not a sinner ; for that would require him to subvert the ethic of his own nature by making no distinction between righteousness and unright- eousness. He could not force a reversal of character in the sin- ner himself; for that would be to reduce the sinner from a per- son to a thing, and so to violate the law of his personality. These are things wliicli we know could not be. And yet we know just as certainly as we know any one of these facts that mercy is one of the eternal attributes of his nature, precisely as we know that justice is. The law convicts of sin, and still sets forth its unabated com- mand — relaxes nothing. Tliere is no salvation by the law. But so there is no salvation without it. It must do its work. It must convince of sin, whether the sinner be saved or not. If punished, it must be with the knowledge and consciousness of sin. If saved, it must also be after the knowledge and deep consciousness of sin. Without this consciousness it is impossible that it should be brought forward into other experiences which are necessary to the experience of pardon. That the process do not stop here it is requisite there should be further illumination b\^ a further revelation. The law is not sufficient. Up to this stage the soul stands before the external and internal Sinai — the eternal law and inexorable justice. The 94 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. revelation transfixes with terror — slays it. There is nothing else that it can do. No sound of mercy intones condemning law. Its only sentence is : "The soul that sinneth, it shall die.'' It pro- vides for no pardons. It inspires no liope. It relentlessly kills. The glare of its awful light smites with despair and deatli. The eternal ethic of the divine nature requires that it should be so. But, then, is there no salvation ? None by the way of Sinai. The law cannot save. Nor can there be salvation by the over- throw of the law. Nor can there be salvation inconsistent with law. We may venture to say the problem is too deep for us. Humanity can neither save itself, nor see any way in which God himself can save the guilty. Calvary furnishes the only solution. The probation under law is not final. The case is transferred from the law to the Gospel. Probation is carried over from the region of law to the provisions of grace. It is God who changed tlie venue and or- dered the trial to proceed under new conditions. It is thus that salvation is of God. I do not here enter the polemic as to how God could adjourn the case from strict justice or mere law to the court of mercy. It is sufficient that ho did so do. That fact proves that it was in harmony with the eternal ethic of his nature to do it. I re-affirm that it was a Ticcessity to his nature to do so in his administration over a race and over the individuals of a race constituted as our race is. He could no more be an infinitely holy God without the mercy which provides a possible pardon to sin in a case such as man's, than he could if the princi]ile of justice were left out of his administration. God's throne could not stand unimpeached under the single aspect of abstract and inexorable justice as the dominating principle of administration. I venture to go yet further, and to affirm that there is no such PHILOSOPEY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 95 attribute in God as abstract justice unintoned witb mercy. lie is always just; never less tluin just; but he is also always merci- ful. It is a neces!^ity to the peace of the universe that his throne t;hould be clothed with the milder attribute of compassion in any degree that will be consistent with the general welfare of the system. Mere justice is the last resort of administration after mercy has exhausted all its resources. The final act of justice in awarding punisliment can never be reached without previous efforts of mercy to avert the necessity ; so that justice does not stand alone in the administration. Tlie seemingly contradictory ideas of rigorous justice and placable mercy are the immutable foundation of the etliical system. They are twin and mutually modifying attributes of the divine nature, never separated and, neither, never alone in administra- tion. Together they constitute the holiness of the divine law it " eternal life " depends upon acceptance of Christ, submission to Christ, co-operation with Clirist, and reproduction of Christ Boston, Mass. Charles C. Bragdon, Principal of Lasell Seminary. Question: " "What is it to be a Christian ? " Answer, brief and adequate: Mark i, 18. To be a Christian seems to me to mean not necessarily to be a mature Christian, nor a faultless human being, but a /(jHowe?-. Better tlian all human comment is found in Matt, xx, 34, 27 and 28, and Matt, xxii, 37 and 3t). AuBURNDALE, Mass. Mrs. Margaret Bottome, President of the Order of King's Daughters. " What is it to be a Christian ? " I answer : To believe what Jesus Christ says, and to do what Jesus Christ tells us to do. I remember hearing Mr. Moody tell of one who wanted to be a Chris- tian, and he did all he could to show her the way; but no ligiit, no joy, came to her. At last, in utter despair, he said, "Will you follow me in our Lord's Prayer, sentence by sentence ?" So he commenced " Our Father " — and she repeated it after him until he reached the sentence, " forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." She quietly said, " I never say that." "Why not?" said Moody. "Because there is a woman who injured me, and I never will forgive her." " Then," said he, " you will never become a Christian." " Well, here it ends," she said. And it did end in her going to the asylum in two years after. (May be it was called a case of religious insanity, but it was the want of it.) No, the time has come when we would better, with the life of our Lord in our hands, lind out whether we are Christians or not. We will not need any formulated creed. Self-denial will take us a shorter wav to becoming a Christian than any Shorter or Longer Catechism that I know anything about — the simple " follow Me," which means to us, do as I tell you. And the first thing he will tell us to do is to believe. He tells the truth when he says that God loves us and is our Father. The best and hardest thing is to really believe God is our Father. PniLOSOPHT OF CnRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 183 And when we really say "Father!" we are Christians — not perfect Christians, but Christians. Our soldiers were as much in the army after they had taken the oath as they were when captains or generals. Try this simple way! The oalli is, '■'■ I will obey Jesus Christ; " and in less than five minutes you will be a Christian. Try it ! 29 "Washington Place, New York. Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D., Pastor of Plymouth Church and Editor of the Christian Union. To be a Christian is, according to the New Testament phraseology, to be a follower of Christ — not to think something about him, but to appreciate him, love him, try to be like him, and trust in the help wliich comes through him for accom- plishing the work which he gives his followers to do. Brooklyn, N. Y. Professor David Swing, D.D., Pastor of the Independent Church, Chicago. AH those terms which end in " «ms " in Latin and "nos" in Greek mean "be- longing to." An AmericamMS is a man who belongs to America. This is the truest and sharpest meaning of Christiawws or Christian — a man, woman or child that belongs to Christ. The person who is like Christ in thought and deed, and who ardently wislies to become more and more like him, is the best Christian conceivable. As a "Whig, or a Democrat, or a Republican may still be an Anieri- cau, so a Methodist, or a Baptist, or a Calvinist, may be a Christian. It is not necessary that a Christian should believe in any doctrines except those taught by Christ. He need not have Moses for a master. If necessary, he can live upon the Gospel of John or Matthew. Methodism or Calvinism does not harm him, but it is Christism that makes him and saves him. 403 Superior Street, Chicago, Ilu Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, D.D., Pastor of the Lafayette Avenue Church [Presbyterian], Brooklyn. " "V^'liat is it to be a Christian ? " Jesus Christ answered this question when he said tliat whoever would be his disciple must deny himself and follow him. The man, therefore, who forsakes his sins, and b}' the help of the Holy Spirit endeavors to keep the commandments of his atoning Saviour and Zorc?, is a Christian. Faith joins the sinner's soul to the sinner's Saviour. Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, Lecturer, Author. In late years, I have come to place great stress on life and character, as fur- nishing the best evidence of one being a Christian. "By their /rw'fe ye shall know them." 184 PHILOSOPHT OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. And yet, it seems to me that a belief in the historic Christ, based on tlie New Testament histories, and illustrated and fortified by the researches of tlie reliable biblical scholars of the day. is essential, if one would be a well-grounded and intelligent Christian, theoretically. Secondly: To this intellectual conviction must be added a persistent and courageous endeavor to act up to one's higliest ideal, and to live a life of love to God and man, in accordance with the teachings of Christ. The life must be dominated by a high purpose, " To think, to feel, to do Only the holy Right ; To yield no step in the awful race. No blow in the fearful flght." One cannot be a Cliristian who does not aim to live among his fellows in love and helpfulness, bearing their burdens and illuminating their darkness. As tl.e law of Christ's life was service to the world, so should it be that of those who call themselves by his name. " By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." Melrose, Mass. Rev. Charles Gordon Ames, Pastor of the Church of the Disciples [Unitarian], Boston. I respond to your request for an answer to the question, " What is it to be a Christian ? " not without some reluctance, and not wholly to my own content ; for behind every question lurk a hundred others, and who can voice the un- speakable ? Words, too, are ambiguous and leaky ; they never hold half one's meaning. All the same, I suppose we ought to keep on talking as the Spirit gives utterance to every man. " What is it to be a Christian ? " We may be helped to an answer by the ideal " good man '" described by Jesus — a man who "out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things," and who is thus known by his fruits to be a partaker of the divine nature. But a truly penitent sinner may also be called a Christian, as soon as his will goes over to the side of goodness. If I try to distinguish between the ordinary 'good man " and the Christian, the latter presents himself as a conscious child of God, of tlie Christ pattern; that is, as one whose virtue is fashioned and colored by the Spirit of loving trust and obedience which we call sonship, of which brotJierhood, justice, and willing service are the sure outcome. Technically, or according to the common use of language, the Cliristian is one who has reached this experience of sonship by the Christ-method, through the trusting surrender of self-will; or by heeding the counsels of perfection given and illustrated by Jesus, whose su- preme sacrifice was simply the making of the Father's will his own. Faith, hope, love, pardon, the new life, regeneration — all inhere in this enthronement of the divine authority within the will. But the name Christian is of secondary importance, and of ten definitions all may be true. One finds in the New Testament no exhortations to be " Christian ;" PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 185 the whole urgency of the Gospel is to produce " sons of God" of such quality that the Father's life may be in them ; that liis Spirit may bear them witness, lead and sanctify them ; and that the well-beloved may not be ashamed to call them brethren and joint-heirs with himself to the inheritance of love, wisdom, and power. We have many ways of talking about it ; and spiritual experience has endless varieties; but all genuine goodness is of one stuff; and it never includes God's grace and man's freedom. Boston, Mass. Eev. Charles H. Parkhvirst, D.D., Pastor of the Madison Square Church [Presbyterian], New York. The following paragraph states as succinctly as I am able to do my conception of the essential fact in personal Christianity. To be a Christian is humanly to incarnate the very life of God; and thus to be, in the strictest sense of the expression, a little Christ in our own little world. 133 East Thirty-Fifth Street, New York. Miss Frances E. "Willard, President of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. "What is it to be a Christian? " I have been trjMng to find out the answer to this most momentous question of all time for well-nigli fifty years 1 For, as one has said, tlie statements concerning Christ are of such a character that, if they are true, it matters very little what else is false; and if they are false, it matters very little what is true. The foun- dation-line of my character-pyramid is that they are as true, though not so de- monstrable, as the proportions of geometry. This granted, I should, say that to be a Christian is to be adjusted to God's laws written in our minds, our members, and our spirits as accurately as the eye is adjusted to light, the ear to sound, the heart to love, the soul to faith. It is to have one's lifesliip consciously guided by the Holy Spirit, God whispering his oracles through conscience, and to believe with one's inmost nature, intellect, sensibilities, and will that " God was manifest in the flesh, reconciling the world unto himself through Christ Jesus," our elder Brother, our Exemplar and Redeemer. En route in New York. Hon. JTranklin i^airbanks. President of Fairbanks Scale Company. I could answer your inquiry at length, but to be very brief answer as follows : "What is it to be a Christian ? " To be a Christian is to believe on, and to follow, tlie Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, one of the Trinity. Acts viii, 37 ; John xi, 27. To be a Christian one must have a change of heart, the "new birth." John iii, 3, 5. St. Johnsbury, Vt. 186 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. Rev. A. J. Gordon, D.D., Pastor of the Clarendon Street Church, Baptist, Boston. To be a Christian is one thing ; to begin to be a Christian is quite another tiling. Tlie first attainment involves a life-time of toil and conflict and discipline; the second involves a surrender of the will to Christ. To believe on the Lord Jesus, wliicli means to receive Christ as our personal Lord and Saviour, is the step by which we enter on the Christian life. In order that our faith may be proved to be sincere, it must be openly confessed. "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." Rom. x. 9. This belief expressing itself in confession is that by which one begins to be a Christian ; to be a Christian involves a whole suc- ceeding life-time of obedience, cross-bearing, and holy living. Boston, Mass. Borden P. Bcwne, LIj.D., Professor of Philosophy, Boston University. To be a Cliristian is to live in loving submission and active obedience to the will of God, trusting in his mercy in Jesus Christ. Boston, Mass. Mrs. Lucy Rider Meyer, M.D., Principal of the Chicago Training School, and Superintendent of the Chicago Deaconess Home. To be a Christian is 1. Not to be a church member, though all Christians ought to be church members. 2. Not to be religious, though all Christians will be religious. 3. Not to '•■give one's body to be burned," though all Christians, 'oj the grace of God, would, if need be, give their bodies to be burned. To be a Christian is 1. To be born of God. " Except a man be born again, he cannot see the king- dom of God." 2. To bs saved from sin. " Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for ho shall save his people from their sins." 3. To be like Christ. " It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master." 4. To possess Christ. "He that hath the Son hath Christ." Chicago, III. Rev. Arthur T. Pierson, D.D., Editor of the Missionari) Review of the World. To be a Christian is to accept Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord; as Saviour, to save from sin's penalty and power; as Lord, to rule over the heart and life. A Christian is, therefore, one who heartily believes on Jesus, and is therefore a fol- lower of him. Philadelphia, Pa. PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 187 Bev. Benjamin St. James Fry, D.D., Editor of the Central Christian Advocate. To be a Christian is to obtain by faith in Ohrist the renewing and rectification of one's spiritual life, which life attains perfection in loving God with all the soul and mind and might and strength, and one's neighbor as one's self. * St. Louis, Mo. Marion Harland, Author, and Editor of the Home-Maker. To be Christians is, first of all, believe, love, and trust in our crucified, risen, and ascended Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, for our temporal salvation from sin, and eternal safety from tlie consequences of sin. As the fruit of this act of " saving faitli," it follows that we should grow, dailj', into likeness to him and nearness to him, looking to him for counsel, comfort, and strengtli. If we love him, we will keep his commandments. His Spirit informs the desires and shapes the actions of his true children. Thus springs into e.xercise the highest form of humanity. As he loved us, we must love also one another. New York City. Joseph Cook, Lecturer, Author, Editor of Our Day. A Christian is one who has obtained deliverance from both the love and the guilt of sin througli the new birth and the atonement; one who has the faith that makes' faithful ; one who loves what God loves and hates what God hates : one who has gladly, affectionately, and irreversibly accepted God in Christ as both Saviour and Lord ; one who sees God as Creator and Saviour so vividly and intelligently as to be willing to accept him as Ruler also; one who so beholds the cross of Christ that it is no cross to bear the cross. Boston, Mass. Bev. John P. Newman, D.D., LL.D., Bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church. You ask, " What is it to be a Christian?" There is a world of difference be- tween a Christian and a Christ-like man. We count Christians by hundreds of millions, but the Christ-like people are reckoned only by millions. He who accepts Christ as "God manifested in tlie flesh;" his teachings as divine revelations to mankind; his ordinances of religion as the holiest obligations; Ills conditions of repentance, faith, conversion, as essential to eternal life ; his claims on the love of the soul, the purity of the life, and on charity for nlan and devotion for God, is a Christian by profession of faith, as distinguished from ail unbelievers wiiether in heathendom or Christendom. This is the honorable difference between the believer in the Lord and the Jew, the infidel and the pagan. Such are historical and doctrinal Christians, and the world is full of them. Let us believe that many such are beautiful in morality and lovable in pliilanthrophy. This is an immense power seen in governments, in sj^stems of education, and in social reforms. All hail ! to a power so potent and sublime I All this is the fruit- age of a true professional conviction. 188 PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE But there remains something deeper, broader, grander to be possessed. Tlie measure of this better estate ranges from a desire to " flee from the wratli to come,' to "all the mind that was in Christ," dominating the whole man, and an individ- ual incarnation of Jesus, so that "Christ livetli in me." To cherish this desire by- all possible means of grace, until all that is evil in us is eliminated, all that is good in us is brought to maturity, and all that is lacking in us is supphed, is the duty and the privilege of each. Within these extremes are all true Christians. The "bruised reed " and the " smoking tiax " are not to be despised. The " leaven in the meal " and the " mustard seed " in the earth are symbols of Iieavenly grace in the human heart. This is the babyhood of the Christian, lovable and beauti- ful as infancy. Beyond is the manliood, wherein the Christ-spirit holds every ap- petite and passion within the limits of law — purifies each motive, exalts each purpose, enonbles each aspiration, intones the conscience to the severest morality, enshrines the love of God and man in the "heart of hearts," and lifts up the hu- man will and the divine will in their duality into a perfect oneness in our Lord. Many have attained thereunto. They are walking in white; their conversation is in heaven. To them, prayer is tlie habit of the soul. Faith is the normal condi- tion of ihe Spirit. Love is enthroned. 01 that this experience may be my re- alized answer to your question, " What is it to be a Christian ? " Nashville, Tenn. Bev. D. A. ■Whedon, D.D., Of the New England Southern Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church. A Christian is one who believes and practices the truths and doctrines of Christianity, consisting of the facts of Christ's life and liis teachings as found in the four gospels, and the doctrines based upon them by his apostles. One may, therefore, be a good Jew, a good Buddhist, a good Confucian, a good Moham- medan, or a good Agnostic, and be no Christian ; for though he may believe some truths and practice some virtues which are taught by Christ, he rejects the Gos- pel and refuses supreme allegiance to him. Christ's first teaching was to call to repentance ; his second, the necessity of a new birth; his third, faith in himself as essential to salvation. Tlie believing penitent God accepts, forgives, and brings into right relations to himself. By an inward supernatural change he makes the love of God the supreme affection of his soul and gives him power to refrain from sinning and to obey God. He also gives him a filial relation to himself, graciously adopting him as a child. The sinner thus becomes a Christian, and to continue a Christian he must continue what God has made him — forgiven, renewed, and his child. A Christian, then, is one who takes Christ as his Saviour to save him and his Lord to rule him; who loves God more than all else, and his neighbor aa liimself; who, as to himself, subdues the evil within him; as to God, obeys his laws as given in the Scriptures ; and as to liis fellows, walks honestly, justly, unselfishly, kindly, helpfully, as Jesus would do in his place. East Greenwich, R. L DATE DUE *■■■'■' CAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S A.