^ — ■ N 
 
 i BT 40 .G27 1923 
 
 Gardner, Percy, 1846-1937. 
 The practical basis of 
 Christian belief 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 A 
 
THE PRACTICAL BASIS 
 OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
"By the Same Author. 
 
 MODERNITY AND THE CHURCHES. 
 
 THE EPHESIAN GOSPEL. 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE OF 
 ST PAUL. 
 
 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN 
 ETHICS. 
 
 EVOLUTION IN CHRISTIAN 
 DOCTRINE. 
 
 Crown 8vo. Cloth. Each 6s. net. 
 
THE PRACTICAL BASIS 
 OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 AN ESSAY IN RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 ; 0^rr iQ/3 
 
 BY ■' 
 
 PERCY GARDNER, D.Litt. ' - 
 
 FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY, AND CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF 
 THE FRENCH INSTITUTE AND THE PRUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
 
 LONDON; WILLIAMS & NORGATE 
 
 1923 
 
Primed in Great Britain 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The coming on of old age warns me that it is 
 time for me to set down in final form the eon- 
 ception of Christian belief to whieh I have been 
 led by the studies and experienee of many years. 
 Throughout a not unlaborious life, during which 
 my chief and professional oeeupation has been 
 the study and teaching of archaeology, there has 
 always been running an independent sub-current 
 of religious thought whieh I eould not eseape. 
 The germs of it are to be found in papers written 
 but not published soon after the completion of 
 my University course in 1870. Since then, my 
 studies have appeared in several published works,^ 
 as well as in many papers in The Hibbert Journal, 
 The Modern Churchman, and elsewhere. 
 
 In these works I have endeavoured, working as 
 a layman and a free-lance, to set forth the 
 modifieations in the basis and the expression of 
 
 ^ It may be convenient here to give a list of these :— 
 Exploratio Evangelica, 1899, 2nd ed., 1907 ; Historic View of 
 the New Testaynent, 1901 ; The Growth of Christianity, 1907 ; 
 Modernity and the Churches, 1909 ; The Religious Experience 
 of St Paul, 1913 ; The Ephesian Gospel, 1915 ; Evolution in 
 Christian Doctrine, 1918 ; Evolution in Christian Ethics, 1918. 
 
 h 
 
 V 
 
vi PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Christian belief which seem to me to be necessi¬ 
 tated by recent tendencies of thought. These 
 tendencies seem to be mainly four : (1) The 
 
 spread of the doctrine of relativity over a wider 
 and wider field; (2) the progress of religious 
 psychology; (3) the comparative study of religions; 
 (4) the change in our views of Early Christian 
 history. It is clear that I cannot profess to be 
 an adept in all these fields. Perhaps no one can 
 make such a claim. But I may venture, without 
 presumption, to state freely any observations and 
 views which occur to me. How far they are 
 true is for others to judge. Anyone who writes 
 from the relativist point of view will always 
 realise that, however well grounded may be his 
 theories, there must necessarily be in them 
 much of the personal element. If this be borne 
 in mind the charge of presumption cannot be 
 brought against him. 
 
 It must be stated emphatically that none of 
 my colleagues, of the Churchmen’s Union or 
 any other society, can be made responsible for 
 my views, unless hereafter they express agreement 
 with them. 
 
 (1) The philosophic doctrine of relativity, in¬ 
 troduced into modern philosophy by Descartes, 
 and carried further by Hume and Kant, has 
 cut the ground away from under older systems 
 of dogmatic or absolute theology. It has been 
 at the basis of recent scientific construction, and 
 
PREFACE 
 
 vii 
 
 now apparently it has received from Einstein 
 mathematical demonstration, though this is a 
 subject on which I do not venture to pronounce : 
 such, however, is the contention of Lord Haldane 
 in his Reign of Relativity, 
 
 It has been maintained by Roman Catholic 
 authorities, and it has been declared in recent 
 works, such as those of Ehrhard in Germany 
 and Dr Harris in England, that the critical 
 philosophy of Kant is, if accepted, fatal to all 
 Christian belief. But Kant himself saw that his 
 views needed supplementing and guarding, and 
 in his Critique of the Practical Reason tried to 
 relay the foundations of belief, not on the 
 intellectual but on the active powers of man. 
 
 It was natural that, starting in 1870, I should 
 have worked on a Kantian basis. The Kantian 
 Critique of Pure Reason seemed to me logically 
 unanswerable. But it was supplemented by the 
 Critique of the Practical Reason, which offered a 
 way, perhaps not altogether consistent, but on 
 the whole satisfactory, for escaping from scepti¬ 
 cism and subjectivity into energy and freedom. 
 The Critique of the Practical Reason is the fore¬ 
 runner of the pragmatist and activist schemes 
 of thought and ethics, which have grown with 
 such vigour in recent years—the schemes of James 
 and Bergson and Croce and others. Thus though 
 I do not find it necessary to retract the argument 
 of the early chapters of the Exploratio, I now 
 
viii PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 think it sufficient to take a start from the practical 
 faculties of mankind, and to leave the question of 
 the abstract possibility of knowledge and ex¬ 
 perience to professed metaphysicians. 
 
 The principle of relativity is by no means 
 opposed to the belief in reality; but it does 
 stand in opposition to the metaphysical notion 
 of the absolute. This term indeed is used in 
 many senses; so many that I think it best 
 avoided. It is much better to speak of the 
 divine transcendence than of the absolute Deity, 
 because this latter phrase has been so much used 
 as a counter in metaphysical discussion that 
 many writers regard it as valuable coin. It is 
 better to speak on grounds of experience of 
 a Deity partly hidden and partly revealed, than 
 on logical grounds of an absolute Being, about 
 whom it is easy to say more than one can possibly 
 know. 
 
 (2) Parallel to the drift in philosophy in the 
 direction of relativity is the drift in psychology; 
 recent works in which subject, leaving the 
 introspective analysis of the intellectual powers, 
 have maintained that the instincts and impulses 
 are the more fundamental and essential part of 
 man; and that intellect, however noble and 
 important, is a side of human nature later in 
 origin and far inferior in driving power. So far 
 as I am acquainted with the works of Freud and 
 Jung and their followers, I find in them much 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IX 
 
 that is repellent, but also much of permanent 
 interest. Their root principles seem to me of 
 value, but they lay an unnecessary stress on 
 unhealthy and abnormal phases of mentality. 
 Their religious views I find intolerable. But 
 such works as James’s Varieties of Religious 
 Experience and M^Dougall’s Social Psychology 
 are of extraordinary value. 
 
 (3) There has arisen out of anthropological 
 research a new science, the science of comparative 
 religion. And it is beyond question that the 
 way of comparing one religion with another, and 
 tracing definite tendencies in one after another, 
 has made us regard religious belief in quite a 
 fresh light. It need not make any Christian less 
 confident in the truth of his own beliefs, and it 
 offers a new and experimental basis for most of 
 the essential beliefs of the Christian Church; but 
 it is a foe to the intolerant exclusiveness which 
 occupies in the history of belief a place parallel 
 to that occupied by the notion of the absolute 
 in metaphysical philosophy. 
 
 (4) The historic roots of Christianity lie in 
 those fields of ancient history to which immense 
 attention has been paid by savants since the 
 Renaissance. By continual working, and through 
 ever fresh discoveries, scholars have gradually 
 developed comparative and critical methods, 
 which have entirely altered our ways of regarding 
 the ages in which Greece and Rome were pre- 
 
X PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 dominant. By an inevitable tendency, these 
 same methods have been applied to the early 
 history and to the sacred books of Christianity, 
 with notable and far-reaching results. The faults 
 of excessive scepticism and of love of system, 
 common in academic circles, have led some 
 eminent critics to views which are unbalanced 
 and fanciful. Such writers as Schweitzer and 
 Schmiedel, not to mention the most extreme, 
 have certainly allowed a pedantic love of sym¬ 
 metry and system to lead them beyond the 
 bounds of moderation. At present, such excesses 
 have caused a certain amount of conservative 
 reaction. But the tendency works steadily, and 
 is not likely to meet any but temporary set-backs. 
 
 It is frequently said by Christian apologists 
 that the conflict between science and Christianity 
 is at an end. There is a certain amount of 
 truth in this statement. The old crude antagonism 
 between Genesis and geology, and generally the 
 tendency of the men of physical science to despise 
 the Bible and the Church, is in our day far less 
 acute. But no one who had adequate knowledge 
 would venture to say that the growing science of 
 psychology, the science of comparative religion, 
 and the progress of historic criticism, have not 
 an important bearing on religious belief. They 
 are in the highest degree destructive of that 
 complacent convention in Christian belief which 
 fancies itself orthodox, being really very far from 
 
PREFACE 
 
 XI 
 
 the orthodoxy of early Christianity. There is an 
 urgent need of reconstruction of belief on a new 
 and more trustworthy basis. This is the object 
 to which the present work is a modest contribution. 
 
 Such attempts at reconstruction are as far as 
 possible removed from merely rationalist and 
 destructive criticism. Modern psychology has 
 fully justified many of the instincts and feel¬ 
 ings which rationalism regarded as superstitious. 
 Modern historic criticism, while diminishing the 
 supernatural and abnormal element in early 
 Christianity, has in fact tended to bring out its 
 pure lustre. A great part, if not the whole, of 
 Christian doctrine turns out to be based upon 
 fundamental facts in the nature of man and the 
 spiritual world. That is the conviction with 
 which I have always written, and the conviction 
 becomes stronger as I grow old. 
 
 It is obvious that, writing in so brief and 
 summary a way, I am obliged to be dogmatic, 
 to state views without fully establishing them, 
 and still more, without replying to the many 
 objections which will occur to readers. I think 
 there are few of these objections which I have 
 not considered and tried to meet in previous 
 volumes. Those who do not grant my premisses 
 will naturally reject the views based on them. 
 Yet I think that, although many points in them 
 may have to be altered as knowledge and science 
 grow, at least the type of them will persist, and 
 
xii PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 I also think that such a basis as I here attempt 
 to lay down will serve for many types of Christian 
 belief, Catholic, Protestant, or even Quaker. 
 
 That this hope is not chimerical seems to be 
 indicated by a test. Recently six excellent 
 addresses on “ Religion and Life ” have been 
 given at Oxford by noted speakers, Anglican, 
 Presbyterian, and Lay. I do not suppose that 
 these theologians would generally accept the 
 views of this book. But I think that any one 
 of the six might adopt them without having to 
 alter his address in any important particular. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 I 
 
 All religions try to shorten the distance between man and God. 
 The Psalms, i. Yet the way hard, 2 . Some mediator 
 necessary, 3 . The prophets and the Son, 3 . The Church 
 and personal approach, 4 . In the Synoptics the Spirit 
 spoken of as leading men to God, 4 . So in the early history 
 in Acts, 5 . But St Paul speaks rather of the life in Christ, 5 . 
 His teaching practical, and neglecting doctrinal elements, 6 . 
 The Fourth Evangelist speaks both of the Spirit and of 
 Christ, 6 . Paul has a scheme of soteriology, the Evangelist 
 of theology, 7 . The latter brings in Hellenic elements, 7 . 
 Hence a Creed, which did not exist among the Jews, 8 , At 
 present the speculative philosophy which produced it is 
 largely out of date, 9 . Yet the Creeds persist, 10 . The 
 laity frankly do not understand them, 10 . But right thinking 
 in matters of religion of the greatest importance, ii. 
 
 II 
 
 The grounds of Christianity must be investigated in all fields, 
 natural science, psychology, and history, 12 . The first of 
 these of less direct importance, though doctrines of evolution 
 and relativity pertinent, 13 . The growth of the historic 
 spirit, 13 . History treated of more fully in Exploratio 
 Evangelica, 14 . The most important to our purpose are 
 recent discoveries in psychology, affecting medicine, educa¬ 
 tion, and especially religion, 14 . Need for complete revision 
 of the creeds, 15 . Tradition must be questioned, and the 
 facts of experience fully considered, 16 . 
 
 xiii 
 
xiv PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NATURE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 I 
 
 Difficulty of the subject, when we pass behind the obvious, 20. 
 The active and conative faculties in man primary, 21. 
 Sketch of the psychology of knowledge from this point of 
 view, 21. The world discovered through its resistances, 22 ; 
 also ourselves, both body and soul, 23. 
 
 II 
 
 Our primary instincts according to M'Dougall, 24. We may 
 further analyse them, 25. Comparison of the human spirit 
 to a particle of radium, 26. But they differ because the 
 former has a power of self-determination, 27. Possibly a 
 man can act outside his physical frame, 28 ; but certainly 
 his mind can so act, by suggestion and telepathy, 29. We 
 naturally think of ourselves as self-contained units, but this 
 is largely illusion, 29. The inner predominant over the 
 outer, 30. Man a centre of force, 31. Extension of the 
 idea of personality to groups and states, 32. In quiet times 
 individualism dominant : less so in stormy times, 33. The 
 surface of consciousness covers much illusion, 34. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PERSONALITY AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 
 
 The human spirit in contact with a flow of life and energy, which 
 may lead to good, 35. 
 
 \ 
 
 I. Personality and the Unconscious 
 
 A variety of comparisons may throw light on this relation, 36. 
 We may compare a coral island built up by living things 
 but resting on the bottom of the ocean, 37. Or a floating 
 iceberg which turns over, and shows a new facet, 38. Or a 
 narrow inlet of the sea which has individuality, but is con¬ 
 nected with the continuous ocean, 39. The will of man like 
 a sluice-gate, 38. The term unconscious only implies not 
 entering into our individual consciousness, 39, Man’s 
 business is to modify the visible world by means of ideas 
 taken from the invisible, 39. The above analogies suggest 
 that every deed of man tends to modify the general un¬ 
 conscious, 40. At present I use vague terms which will 
 become clear later, 41. 
 
CONTENTS XV 
 
 II. The Sub-conscious and the Super-conscious 
 
 Comparison of consciousness to the solar spectrum beyond which 
 rays do not cause perception, 42. It has been evolved in 
 the ages, 43. Phenomena of hypnotism, and of spiritism, 
 an unalluring but necessary subject of study, 45. Most of 
 the ordinary phenomena of spiritism are not above but 
 below the level of conscious life : they are usual among 
 savages, but are later outgrown, 48. Among these are 
 usually trance and ecstasy, though sometimes these are 
 vehicles of the higher, 49. Genius not only shown in the 
 sub-conscious, 50. A fine human personality is really the 
 highest thing, 51. Spiritism as usually practised lowers it, 52. 
 The communications take their tone from the surrounding 
 atmosphere, and are not lofty in character, 53. There is little 
 of ethical idea or on the level of the best human intelligence, 
 54. It is sometimes maintained, however, that their low 
 average level makes them more credible, 55. 
 
 III. The Conscious and Unconscious in Religion 
 
 A relief to turn to conscious humanity, 56. Primacy in the life 
 of will, the wills of men and that of God, 57. This the primal 
 teaching of the Gospels, which has with time taken stronger 
 hold, 59. 
 
 IV 
 
 Three stages in religion ; (i) When it is concerned with the sub¬ 
 conscious, i.e, barbaric or pagan, 61. This necessarily decays 
 as man becomes civilised, 62. (2) When concerned with the 
 
 conscious, notably Greek philosophic theism, 63. (3) When 
 
 concerned with the super-conscious, as the best religion of 
 Judsea, and Christianity, which inculcates harmony of will 
 between God and man, produced by -pxdiyer, 64. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE CLAIMS OF SPIRIT 
 
 I 
 
 The better teaching is that the inner spiritual world is higher 
 than the visible, 67. So Plato, Kant, and others : and so 
 Christianity, 67, From the resistances of physical sur¬ 
 roundings we learn natural law, 68. Parallel is the discovery 
 of spiritual law, 68. In the Middle Ages men regarded 
 knowledge of it as derived only from revelation in books or a 
 society, 68. But inspiration takes form and colour from the 
 intellectual conditions of the time, 69. At bottom the 
 matter is one of experience : the venture of faith and divine 
 aid, 70. 
 
xvi PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 II 
 
 The difficulty lies in the interpretation of such aid, 71. Paths 
 to union with the divine, 72. The way of asceticism in East 
 and West, 72. Some truth in it, as proved by history, 73. 
 The way of practical philanthropy, 75. This has come much 
 into the foreground, 75. The way of intellectual sympathy, 
 76. The devotee of science, 77. The wa-y of art, 77. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The constant hopefulness of nature, 79. The chief duty of man 
 to take a place in the spiritual world and its embodiments in 
 time and place, 80. We have also to consider the point of 
 view of the individual, as men naturally desire happiness, 81. 
 But true happiness comes from conformity to the law of 
 one’s being, even among animals, 82, It is not dependent 
 on outward prosperity, but comes from within, 82. Self¬ 
 subordination to the happiness of others, 83. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 INSPIRATION AND REVELATION 
 
 I 
 
 Inspiration and revelation two sides of the same fact, 84. This 
 fact a special feature of the Jewish race ; absent in Greece, 
 85. The psychology of inspiration, 86. Dreams not of the 
 first importance, 87 : rather any times of quiet and passivity, 
 87. Such times rare in modern life, 88. W. James and 
 the uprush of the unconscious, 88. The Jewish prophets 
 primarily preachers of righteousness, 89. They taught at 
 first that righteousness led to happiness in the individual, 89. 
 Later, they spoke of a future realm of happiness for the 
 nation, 90. The root of inspiration divine ; its expression 
 in words defective, owing especially to a poverty of intellectual 
 outlook, 91. Attempt to foretell future events a failure, 92. 
 Doctrine of infallibility of Scripture, taken over by 
 Christianity, 93. Inspiration not confined to the unconscious, 
 94. 
 
 II 
 
 Difficulty of separating inspiration from its imperfect expression, 
 95. Belief in it based rather on emotion and experience 
 than on reason, 95. What is meant by infallibility, 96. 
 Difficulty in testing inspiration, 96. French Modernists 
 confine it to dogma, and except from it history, 97. This 
 rejected by Rome, 97. In the Middle Ages, the world of 
 nature was contrasted with the world of grace, 98. A 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 • • 
 
 xvii 
 
 modern rendering of this distinction would lie in contrasting 
 what may be called the oxygenic element in life, the realm 
 . of impulse and initiative, and the nitrogenic element, the 
 course of the world, 98. The frontier between the two 
 runs through personality, 100. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 I 
 
 Ethics may be treated in a static or a dynamic way : the latter way 
 is ours, loi. Religion represents the doing of God’s will as the 
 way of goodness, 102. The subject of the divine will may 
 be approached on the intellectual, the emotional, or the 
 active side, 103. On the intellectual side we have moral 
 philosophy, which has of late developed in the direction of 
 Utilitarianism, 105. The result has been a tendency towards 
 overvaluing the obvious and the material, 106. Christianity 
 contrasted with Utilitarianism because it asserts the inherent 
 difference between good and evil, 109. Authority in religion, 
 less conspicuous in Christianity than in Islam : hence the 
 former can progress, no. 
 
 II 
 
 Christ used natural analogies to show the nature of the spiritual 
 life, 112. We may, with the growth of natural and historic 
 knowledge, extend them, 113. The Jewish code of ethics 
 accepted by Jesus, but made elastic, 115, Ethics by him 
 based on the love of God and man, 115. Hence mere 
 attention to the surroundings of life insufficient, 116. 
 Christian ethics based on facts of psychology : it takes the 
 activist view of life, 117. Not all deeds done with good 
 motive good, 118. But accord with the divine will implies 
 a complete conversion of heart, 119. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE DIVINE FATHER 
 
 c 
 
 I. God and Human Personality 
 
 God as transcendent, and the source of all things, 120. Myths 
 of creation, 121. God as immanent, in contact with the 
 spirit of man, 121. Man no parasite, but a giver as well 
 as a receiver, 122. Thus a partnership in conduct, 123. 
 Hence great value of personality, which expands by contact 
 with God, 124. This the essence of the Christian faith, 124. 
 
xviii PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 II. Jewish and Greek Conceptions of God 
 
 The Jewish Jehovah, originally tribal, 125. God in Plato and 
 the Stoics, 125. The Jews thought of God as personal, the 
 Greeks usually as impersonal, 126, In the Gospels, no 
 speculation as to the nature of God, 127. Early Christianity 
 baptizes into Christ the Jewish and the Greek theism, 127. 
 
 III. God’s Power, Holiness, and Love 
 
 An absolute Deity passes our comprehension, 128, As known to 
 us God wields all power except that cut off by human wills, 
 
 129. God the source even of human power and goodness, 
 
 130. So the Old Testament, 130. But God's power best 
 seen in the working of ideals, 132. We become conscious of 
 a higher will, into which we cannot be wholly absorbed, 132. 
 Objection that the phrase “ will of God " is anthropomorphic 
 —not valid, 132. Action and reaction between man and God, 
 132. The notions of fatherhood of God and of brotherhood 
 of man, 133. Without the former, the latter impotent, 133. 
 God no weak or indulgent parent, 134. Nor does he intervene 
 by cataclysms, 135. The current notions of God greatly 
 need stiffening : the divine righteousness often obscured, 
 136. Yet it may be traced everywhere in history and in 
 present social conditions, 137. Sin anti-social and self¬ 
 destructive, 139. The physical world a place not of capricious 
 interference but of law and order, 139. So is the world of 
 human action and morals, 140. 
 
 IV. God in History 
 
 Divine help in the past, especially of England, 141. The love of 
 God a stream of influence which does not affect all men and 
 nations equally, but some more than others, 142. The 
 Jews and the Greeks; so in regard to individuals also, 143. 
 The goodness of God in the forgiveness of sin, 144. Nature 
 implacable ; but divine overruling, 144. 
 
 V. The Divine Personality 
 
 A naive conception of God’s personality untenable, 145. Its 
 meaning not abstract, but relative and practical, 146. A priori 
 arguments out of place, 146. Argument from experience ; 
 especially from the experience of prayer, 147. Close likeness 
 to our relation to fellow-men, 147. Hence it is natural to 
 think of God also as personal, 148. But this is only in a degree 
 legitimate, 149. Analogy of wireless telegraphy, 149. In¬ 
 tellectual difficulties in relation to divine personality induce 
 men to crave mediators, 150, Experience in the same way 
 reveals diabolic personalities, 151. This doctrine generally 
 unpleasing ; so men find substitutes, 151. But the experience 
 they cannot set aside, 152. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 XIX 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE ETERNAL CHRIST 
 
 I. The Person of Christ in the Gospels 
 
 The questions in regard to Christ the most important to Christians, 
 153 * We have to collate the historic picture of Jesus and 
 the vision of the exalted Christ, 154. We must give up the 
 random citing of texts from various books of the Bible, and 
 instead apply to the Gospels the methods derived from 
 criticism of Greek and Roman authors, 155. We must 
 distinguish, in the first place, between the teaching of Jesus 
 as to himself, and the views of the disciples, 156. The 
 Fourth Gospel and the Pauline Epistles belong to the second 
 class, 156. The teaching of Jesus as to himself is of a purely 
 practical, not a speculative character, 158. He does not 
 explain his relation to God, 159. He spoke of a coming end 
 of the world, and seems to have thought of himself as chief 
 actor, 160. But in the Gospels what is primary is not this 
 but a new sense of spiritual values, 161. The roots of the 
 teaching go into the whole spiritual ground of life, 162. 
 Thus it survived the decay of the eschatological beliefs, 162. 
 The miraculous element in the life not of the greatest im¬ 
 portance, 162. Dr Sanday’s view that the seat of the divine 
 in Jesus was in the unconscious is only part of the truth, 163. 
 
 H. The Person of Christ among the Early 
 
 Disciples 
 
 After the Crucifixion the disciples persuaded of the continued 
 presence of their Master, 164. In explaining this, they 
 produced theories as to his nature, 165. Matthew and Luke 
 held a monadic view, and do not speak of pre-existence, 165. 
 Paul regards his Master as a great spiritual Power, pre¬ 
 existent, and at death restored to heaven, 166. The Fourth 
 Evangelist speaks of the ideal Christ sojourning among men ; 
 and holds that his person was superhuman, 166. He 
 maintains that the Jews continually misunderstood his 
 teaching by taking it in a material sense, 167. Even the 
 second coming he spiritualises, 168. His Jesus calls himself 
 the Son of God because consecrated by God, 169. In one 
 place he speaks of him as the incarnate word or reason of 
 God, 169. In the last chapters he speaks both of Christ as 
 coming again and of the Holy Spirit as coming to carry on 
 his work, 170. Paul is convinced that the life of Christ 
 caused a new orientation in the world of spirit, 170. The 
 writer of Hebrews speaks of Christ as Mediator and High 
 
XX PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Priest, 171 : later writers as partaking of the Godhead, 
 whence the doctrine of the Trinity, 173. All these attempts 
 based on the continued inspiration of the Church, 173. 
 
 III. Christ in History and Experience 
 
 We have to consider how the doctrine of Christ and the Church 
 is related to modern experience, 173. The hyphen between 
 Jesus and Christ : an abyss to be overleaped by faith or 
 explained by fact, 174. The historic fact is the change in 
 the relations of God to man dating from the life of Jesus, 175. 
 The rise of the Church a fact without parallel, a crisis repeated 
 in the lives of Christians, 175. But it is really a continuation 
 of the life of the Founder, 175. That inspiration has never 
 wholly died down, 176, In this no rejection of historic 
 methods, since history shows periods of crisis and climax, 
 e.g. the sixth century b.c. and the sixteenth a.d., 179. Such 
 periods really led up to by events, 179. But the appeal to 
 history not conclusive apart from experience which explains 
 it, 180. The eternal Christ revealed in the historic Jesus, 182. 
 Jesus-worship natural and innocent, but is undermined by 
 criticism, though the historic Jesus unique, 183, In the 
 Synoptists traces of humanity obvious : but the Spirit of 
 God behind the humanity, 184. 
 
 IV. The Eternal Christ 
 
 Gradual revelation to men of the eternal Christ, carried on by 
 the Church, 185. The movement “ back to Jesus ” justified, 
 but the object of the Church’s worship really the eternal 
 Christ, 186. To divide the life of Christ, and interpolate a 
 human period, is making time a condition of the eternal, 187. 
 It gives us what may be termed Arian views, 187. Rather 
 we should regard the human Jesus as a revelation in space 
 and time of the eternal Christ, the human side of God, 186. 
 The conditions temporary ; the knowledge imperfect; but 
 the will on the side of God, 188. The nature of Christ’s 
 divinity the matter of incessant speculation in Greek circles : 
 to moderns the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Atone¬ 
 ment more important, 189. These'have a meaning for all 
 time, but the literal or Pauline view overthrown by criticism, 
 189. They are processes carried on by the Church, 191. 
 It is only the divine, however incarnate, which should be the 
 object of worship, 192. The facts of history and experience 
 on which Christologies are based are perpetual, but the 
 rendering of those Christologies in words can only be 
 temporary, 193. Nevertheless, creeds have great value and 
 use, so long as they are regarded rather as historic documents 
 than as infallible, 196. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 XXI 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 The beliefs of the Church dominated by Greek metaphysics ; but 
 may have a basis in experience, 199. Alternative doctrines 
 of the Eternal Christ and the Holy Spirit, 200. The latter 
 arose among the Jews, and was accepted by Christianity, 200. 
 Records of the descent of the Spirit hardly historic, 201. 
 In the Gospels the doctrine dwelt on by Christ himself, 201. 
 Early Christianity confines it to the Society, 202. But 
 imparted to individual members, 203. In the Jewish 
 Scriptures every good gift regarded as given by the Spirit 
 of God, including bodily prowess, 203. Darwin at one time 
 accepted this, but later gave it up, 205. The Spirit works in 
 the unconscious in man ; as does also the Spirit of evil, 207. 
 Difficulty of discriminating, 207. Tests suggested in the 
 Didachi, 208. The emotions belong to the unconscious and 
 so are especially liable to influence of Spirit, 209. Results 
 • sometimes abnormal. But the Spirit works also in conscious 
 thought and will: so the Jewish prophets, 210. The Jews 
 regarded wisdom as a special gift of the Spirit, i.e. a sane 
 view of realities, 211. This notable in many Christian 
 saints, 212. The Spirit acts in two ways—by inculcating 
 love of truth, and helping in the suppression of personal 
 prejudice, 213. St Paul teaches that the intellect is open 
 to divine inspiration, 214. This tradition continued in the 
 Church; examples Clement and Augustine, 214. This 
 point of view much eclipsed in modern times, 215. The 
 need of intelligence divinely directed great among us, 
 especially in social matters, 217. We have to translate into 
 modern conditions the impulses of early Christianity. Un¬ 
 regulated emotion may produce fatal aberrations, 217. 
 St Paul sometimes depreciates what he calls mundane 
 wisdom, because he felt that it needed baptism into Christ, 
 219. With Christianity came a great spiritual crisis : hence 
 the working of the Spirit in all spheres greatly changed, 220. 
 The question of the personality of the Holy Spirit, 223. The 
 dogma of the Trinity a scholastic summary of doctrines in 
 themselves valuable. Jeremy Taylor, 224. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PERSONAL IMMORTALITY AND ETERNAL 
 
 LIFE 
 
 I. Primitive Views 
 
 We know what becomes of the body at death, 225. The crux is 
 the survival of personality, as to which men feel strongly, 226. 
 
xxii PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 According to primitive religion, man continued his 
 ordinary life in a ghostly state, 227. The wizard or witch 
 was in touch with the departed, 228. When such beliefs 
 died down, their place was taken by spiritism, 228. Thought 
 transference is proved, and that mediums have access to 
 mines of knowledge of doubtful origin, 228. Spiritism 
 accepts the monadic view, that after death men survive with 
 their present traits unchanged, 228. But in fact mediums 
 differ as to the source of their knowledge, whether the departed, 
 or earth-spirits, or demons, 229. All lofty religions have made 
 war on witchcraft, 230. Personal survival is hard to imagine 
 without continued memory, and without a body of some 
 kind, 230. For the notion of a non-material body, India 
 substitutes rebirth in other lives, human or animal, 231. 
 
 II. Modern Popular Views 
 
 The result of the war has been to revive primitive conceptions, 
 232. The Roman Church believes in purgatory, 232. 
 Protestants often believe in heaven and hell as alternatives : 
 but usually the latter is put out of sight, with great in¬ 
 consistency, 233. No one has been able to suggest any 
 kind of individual future life which would not in time become 
 intolerable, 234. Many people think little on the subject, 235. 
 
 III. Earliest Christian Views 
 
 Christians greatly value reported sayings of the Saviour, 236. 
 One of these, as to the woman who had seven husbands, and 
 then died, bears on the present subject, 237. Transitory in 
 it is the expectation of a coming catastrophe, 238. Perpetual 
 meaning attaches to the saying, “ They marry not, nor are 
 given in marriage.” Also to the saying, ” God is not the God 
 of the dead, but of the living,” 239. 
 
 IV. Philosophic Views 
 
 Analogies from the life of nature, 240. Seeds; the caddis-fly, 240. 
 Sleep and anaesthetics, 241. The argument from the moral 
 nature: imperfect equation of goodness and happiness in 
 the world, 242. The activist point of view, 243. Belief in 
 a future life based not on argument, but on an inner urging, 
 
 244. It has tended to the moralisation and energy of life, 
 
 245. Objections of modern materialism, 247. The matter 
 must be fought out in life, 247. The belief has an ultimate 
 basis in the sense of values. Sub-conscious respect for it, 248 
 But on the whole philosophy agnostic. Need of a self¬ 
 surrender to the divine will, 250. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 XXlll 
 
 V. Eternal Life 
 
 Another way of immortality shown by Christian mysticism, 251. 
 Thus in the Fourth Gospel we have the saying, “ If a man 
 keep my word, he shall never see death.” Eternal life not 
 mere continued existence, 252. It is a merging of self in a 
 higher life, 253. This state has been almost attained by 
 some. St Paul speaks of life in the spirit as eternal, 253. 
 And the Fourth Evangelist speaks of eternal life as the 
 result of knowledge of God and communion with him, 254. 
 Whereas continued existence is only a matter of faith, 
 eternal life may be a matter of experience, on which is built 
 confidence in the future, 255. The approach to the divine 
 a gradual process : the ideas of God slowly mould the 
 world, 256. The Christian Church carries on the life of 
 Christ. Such questions as the possible failure of life on our 
 globe need not distress us in view of infinite possibilities of 
 spirit, 257. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 
 
 I. The Collective Consciousness of the Church 
 
 The question of the subordination of the individual to the Society, 
 259. Modern views of a group-mind, which is more than 
 the minds of individuals, 260. But it exists only in organised 
 societies, such as nations, societies, and Churches, 261. The 
 Jewish theocracy and its parallels, 263. The rise of voluntary 
 societies in the decay of the states, 264. These were 
 attached to deities whom the Christians held to be evil 
 spirits, 264. St Paul sometimes speaks thus, but sometimes 
 holds with the Jews that they were nonentities, 266. 
 Difficult to estimate the moral value of such cults as 
 Mithraism, 267. Christianity like these societies in being 
 attached to an unseen ruler and in having sacred books and 
 rites, 268. The inspiration of Christianity gradually took 
 form in creed, ritual, and organisation, 269. See Exploratio 
 Evangelica. The Church thus regarded is an unity,|though 
 at present an invisible unity, 273. 
 
 II. The Communion of Saints 
 
 The Church includes departed members. A natural tendency to 
 invoke their aid, 274. This is certainly not a mere perversion, 
 275. The Saints of Catholicism, historically investigated, 
 prove unsatisfactory, especially because miracles were 
 required for canonisation, 276. Abuses of relic-worship, 277. 
 Also the virtues looked for in saints were not really the 
 
xxiv PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 highest, 278. Auguste Comte’s attempt at a new hagiology, 
 279. Psychologically, saint-worship has often been an aid 
 to religion, 279. The votaries appeal to experience, and they 
 are justified so long as they do not go outside experience, 280. 
 But when we apply tests they usually fail. There is first the 
 test of history, which is very destructive; then the test of 
 fruits, on which the common sense of man insists, 282. The 
 Church carries on the life and obedience of Christ, 283. If 
 communion with saints is communion, not with their past 
 life, but with the divine in them, it may be justified, 284. 
 The influence of the good passes on in many ways to their 
 successors, 285. The Christian eucharist is really an act of 
 union not only with God and Christ, but with all Christians, 
 living and dead, 286. 
 
PRACTICAL BASIS OF 
 CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 I 
 
 All the great religions of the world, and all the 
 
 great religious teachers of the world, have set 
 
 before themselves the object of shortening the 
 
 distance between God and man, of showing ways 
 
 in which man can learn to know and to love God, 
 
 and to do the will of God in the world. They 
 
 maintain that it is possible for man to come into 
 
 the presence of God and to feel in his heart the 
 
 working of Divine power. There is no litany of 
 
 approach to God so great and admirable as the 
 
 Hebrew Psalms ; and by inspired wisdom the 
 
 Christian Church has from the first made them a 
 
 prominent feature of her daily services. Such 
 
 Psalms as the 22nd, the 42nd, the 139th, must 
 
 always remain the most intimate utterances of 
 
 the religious spirit. The Founder of Christianity 
 
 teaches emphatically that God is not only ready 
 
 to allow the approaches of man, but that God is 
 
 1 
 
2 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 anxious to meet man, cares for him with a 
 Father’s care, and rejoices when he turns from 
 evil ways to seek the face of God. 
 
 But though Christianity teaches that the way 
 from man to God is open, yet it declares that for 
 all except a few happily constituted souls it is 
 not easy. There are all sorts of hindrances in 
 the way, from the attraction of the obvious, the 
 weakness of human nature, the deep tendencies 
 to evil which torment all men and often master 
 nearly all. Jesus taught that the gate into the 
 way of life was narrow, and the way itself hard to 
 walk in. St Paul represents life as a long struggle, 
 wherein the approach to God is hindered by a 
 thousand temptations and troubles. The Fourth 
 Evangelist speaks of faith in God as appealing to 
 the children of the light, and yet being ever 
 thwarted and eclipsed by surrounding darkness 
 and evil. 
 
 Hence the great object of religion is to make 
 easier the approach to God, to set forth some 
 way by following which man may approach his 
 Maker, to point to a mediator between God and 
 man, who is inspired from above, and yet is 
 easier of approach than the Most High. The 
 more a man is given to intellectual contempla¬ 
 tion and spiritual search for the divine, the more 
 lofty and sublime appears the being of God. 
 And in the daily strivings and sufferings of men, 
 in the daily struggle between good and evil, they 
 
CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 3 
 
 need the aid of something nearer and more 
 accessible than the ultimate deity of whom they 
 feel, with the Psalmist, and with the author of 
 Job, that he is high and inscrutable. They 
 repeat the words: “ Such knowledge is too 
 
 wonderful for me : it is high, I cannot attain 
 unto it.” 
 
 But God in many ways has condescended to 
 man. At intervals in history he has sent prophets 
 and inspired teachers to make the way towards 
 himself easier. Both in the ancient and the 
 modern world he has thrown out lines of com¬ 
 munication to which men can attach themselves. 
 And in Jesus Christ he has made to men a supreme 
 revelation of himself. As the writer to the 
 Hebrews says, God who in past times spoke by 
 the prophets of Israel (and we may add by the 
 philosophers of Greece), finally spoke to men by 
 his Son, and made permanent in the world the 
 results of the message sent through him. That 
 message has been growing ever since. Ever 
 since, fresh sides of the original inspiration of 
 Christianity have been coming to light, fresh 
 communications on the way opened by the life 
 of Jesus Christ have been coming into the 
 world. 
 
 There have been working side by side the 
 material and the spiritual sides of revelation. 
 The Church, with its fixed ordinances, its rites 
 and sacraments, has kept up a visible road to 
 
4 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 God ; and the mass of mankind have in all ages 
 gained thereby help and energy. The spiritual 
 road has been travelled by the few, the more con¬ 
 templative natures, who have found, not only, 
 or even chiefly, in Church ordinances the influence 
 of the Divine Spirit, but have attained to a 
 spiritual communion with such revelations or 
 emanations of God as have come within their 
 horizon. 
 
 In the Christian religion as set forth in the 
 New Testament the incarnation or the revela¬ 
 tion of God in Christ is set forth in two ways. In 
 the Synoptic Gospels generally God is spoken of 
 as drawing near to men by giving to men the 
 Divine Spirit. How much more shall your 
 Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to them 
 that ask him.” By the Spirit, God awakens 
 enthusiasm in men ; by the Spirit he bestows on 
 them courage and wisdom and the love of what 
 is good. The same line is carried on in the early 
 chapters of Acts ; but the writer of Acts, who 
 attaches great value to the physical phenomena 
 which accompanied the preaching of the Word, 
 loves to dwell on the abnormal phenomena 
 which usually accompany the preaching of a 
 religious revival, ecstatic utterances, faith healing, 
 and the like. These especially he records as the 
 results of the bestowal on men of the Divine 
 Spirit. And as he is our only source for the 
 earliest history of the Church, readers of the 
 
CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 5 
 
 New Testament are apt to let these obvious 
 phenomena figure too prominently in their minds. 
 St Paul in his letters, with eminent balance of 
 mind and sanity, introduces into the picture a 
 better perspective ; and though he does not dis¬ 
 approve of speaking with tongues and wonders 
 of healing, puts far before and above them the 
 higher gifts of the Spirit, wisdom, faith, brotherly 
 love. 
 
 But St Paul often speaks in another way of the 
 higher manifestations of the Spirit, regarding 
 them as the fruit of the life of Christ in the heart 
 of the disciple. For him Christ is united with 
 each of his followers so intimately that the whole 
 Church or body of believers is one in the mystic 
 personality of Christ. He speaks of believers as 
 dead to the world, and made alive by an inward 
 power flowing into them from the exalted Christ. 
 He goes so far as to say, in his own case, that he 
 has ceased to be, and that Christ lives in his 
 mortal body. 
 
 St Paul does not draw any distinction which 
 can be formulated between God and the Spirit of 
 God, Christ and the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of 
 God and the Spirit of Christ. His mind is not 
 at all metaphysical, but in the highest degree 
 practical; and in speaking of spiritual experience 
 he throws his description of it sometimes into 
 one form and sometimes into another, without 
 caring whether these various ways of expression 
 
6 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 are self-consistent or not. In the language of 
 Matthew Arnold, he writes in a literary way, 
 and those who try to take his utterances as 
 science, and to construct with them an arch of 
 dogma, are completely baffled. He knew that 
 his inspiration came from God ; he knew that it 
 was a continuation of the inspiration of the 
 great prophets of Israel; and he knew that 
 it was closely related to the life and the death 
 of Jesus. But he had no definite scheme of 
 theology; and phrases like those of the 
 Athanasian Creed would have conveyed to him 
 little meaning. 
 
 The Ephesian follower of St Paul, who wrote 
 the Fourth Gospel, carries on both the lines of 
 interpretation. In the wonderful discourses 
 which occupy his last chapters, he speaks at one 
 time of the inspiration of Christians as a result of 
 the indwelling of Christ, returned after death 
 to his Church ; at another time he regards this 
 same inspiration as the fruit of the inward work¬ 
 ing of the Divine Spirit, whom Jesus Christ 
 sends to guide, to instruct, and to encourage his 
 followers. 
 
 St Paul has a definite scheme of soteriology, of 
 the way in which sinners are redeemed and justi¬ 
 fied before God, a scheme which was further 
 developed by the great doctors of the Church, by 
 Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and the 
 great reformers of the sixteenth century. But 
 
CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 7 
 
 he has no scheme of theology, of the doctrine of 
 the being and attributes of God. The Fourth 
 Evangelist, on the other hand, dwells less on 
 soteriology. But living in the Greek atmosphere 
 of Ephesus he could not be content without some 
 attempt at a rational theology, though he never 
 developed it beyond the rudiments. In the first 
 verses of his Gospel he identifies Christ with that 
 Divine Wisdom or Reason of which thinkers in 
 the last centuries before our era had frequently 
 spoken. The Jews had regarded the Divine 
 Spirit as an afflatus or breath of life, with which 
 the spirits of inspired men were filled, and which 
 had enabled them to work wonders in the world. 
 But the Greeks sought for wisdom ; and in the 
 Jewish Apocrypha under their influence the 
 Wisdom of God is the great power which ordered 
 the world, and set it going in the paths of pro¬ 
 gress, and which breathes into good men alike 
 virtue and sagacity. But the Logos doctrine 
 which the evangelist states in his preface, he 
 does not work out in the body of his Gospel : 
 only here and there, as in the discourse to Nico- 
 demus, he represents Jesus as imparting to men 
 a higher wisdom. But it has sometimes occurred 
 that a striking use of a word has modified the 
 course of history ; and so it came about in this 
 instance. A series of Greek theologians, Justin, 
 Origen, Athanasius, and others, starting from the 
 phrase logos, worked out a scheme of theology. 
 
8 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 And finally they formed it into a Creed, to be 
 accepted by all Christians under pain of expulsion 
 from the Society. 
 
 The Jewish Church never had a creed beyond 
 the unity of God ; nor has any Semitic race felt 
 the necessity for a detailed scheme of intellectual 
 propositions to enshrine its religion. The creed 
 of Islam is comprised in one short sentence, 
 which affirms the unity of God and the inspiration 
 of Mohammed. The idea of a longer creed came 
 from the Greeks, and not from their religious 
 societies ; neither in the religion of Olympus, nor 
 among the mystic sects of later Greece was there 
 anything of the kind. But the sects of phil¬ 
 osophers who divided among them the heritage 
 of Socrates and Plato found it necessary, in their 
 discussions, to state exactly what views of the 
 nature of God, mankind, and the world they stood 
 for. So the world of thought was broken up into 
 warring sects or cliques, and each regarded the 
 others as living in a mist of error and delusion. 
 And this spirit of sect passed, through the agency 
 of Christians who had been philosophers, such as 
 Justin and Clement of Alexandria, into the fabric 
 of the rising Church. And so the earliest Chris¬ 
 tian Creed, which we find in the baptismal con¬ 
 fession of the Ethiopian eunuch, “ I believe that 
 Jesus Christ is the Son of God,” gradually grew 
 and developed into the great profession of belief 
 formulated at Nicaea and Chalcedon. 
 
CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 9 
 
 In our days there are still philosophers who 
 think that they and their friends alone have 
 found the true and rational explanation of the 
 universe. And so long as they are not too 
 exclusive, there is no need to object to this. 
 Speculative thought is natural to some minds. 
 No doubt it will go on in the future as in the past, 
 just as poetry will go on; and many subtle 
 minds will find in it their highest satisfaction. 
 The perpetual stream of Gifford Lectures shows 
 this very clearly. And almost all thinking men 
 will find in speculation at some time in their lives 
 the fulfilment of a great need. But I think that 
 modern tendencies of thought will make such 
 speculation less usual with the strongest intelli¬ 
 gences than it has been in the past. The system 
 of Hegel is a sort of high-water mark, which few 
 can pass. A study of the history of philosophy, 
 and an attempt to map out the realm of thought 
 is now, even if the results be very inconclusive, 
 one of the best gymnastics of the mind. Anyone 
 who is familiar with the results of philosophic 
 teaching in the Scotch universities, or at Oxford 
 and Cambridge, especially if such teaching deal 
 largely with the works of Plato and Aristotle, 
 will realise its great value in the training of the 
 intelligence. But to ordinary men, the great 
 majority of the intelligent and educated, specula¬ 
 tive philosophy is out of court; either it does not 
 interest them, or they regard it as a mere intel- 
 
10 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 lectual exercise. They think that the great lights 
 of philosophy were partly right and partly 
 wrong ; and that it is not worth the while of 
 those who do not make a profession of philosophy 
 to go far into the subject. 
 
 But while an easy scepticism occupies men’s 
 minds in the matter of philosophy, the organised 
 Churches of Christendom have accepted Creeds 
 authoritatively set forth by Councils as expres¬ 
 sions of eternal and objective truth; and they 
 compel, at all events, those who take active service 
 in them to subscribe such creeds. And meantime 
 the whole character of our intellectual surround¬ 
 ings has so completely changed, that no one save 
 a professed scholar, and even professed scholars 
 very imperfectly, can understand what was in 
 the minds of those who drew up the Creeds, or 
 what their clauses were intended to convey. The 
 minds of the good Churchmen who, Sunday after 
 Sunday, repeat these Creeds are hopelessly out 
 of touch with their original meaning. 
 
 When an average man hears that ‘‘ the Son is 
 of one substance with the Father,” knowing 
 nothing of the elaborate metaphysical subtleties as 
 to substance^ he thinks primarily of some material 
 thing; but as the memorable phrase of the 
 Fourth Gospel, “ God is Spirit,” ^ comes into his 
 mind, that mind relapses into vacuity. Yet if 
 his neighbour refuses to repeat the phrase of the 
 
 ^ Not a spirit, as in the A.V. 
 
CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 11 
 
 Creed, he sets him down as a heretic, probably a 
 Unitarian, and thanks God that himself is not 
 such. In reality he may well be further from 
 orthodoxy than this same neighbour. Hymns 
 Ancient and Modern are full of various heresies ; 
 some of them are almost pagan. Many an 
 English Churchman is really a ditheist. Many 
 a Roman Catholic is a tritheist, adding the 
 Virgin Mary to God and Christ, or even a 
 polytheist. These men may be perfectly good 
 Christians, and members of the spiritual body of 
 Christ; but they have never adequately turned 
 their intellectual faculties towards the theory of 
 their religion. 
 
 Yet right and true thinking, in matters of 
 religion, is important; I do not say as important 
 as right action or right feeling, but yet important. 
 A man should have a reason for the hope that is 
 in him ; for if he has not, he is liable at any 
 moment to be thrust by a sudden misfortune or 
 a wave of disbelief from his anchorage, and to 
 drift into pessimism and despair. “ He that 
 wills to be safe, must thus think of the Trinity,” 
 is a phrase which seems to most people an in¬ 
 tolerable piece of dogmatism. Yet in a sense it 
 is true. Unless a man has found a view of God 
 and eternal life which fits in with his knowledge 
 of material things and with the duties of every 
 day, he is certainly not in a state of safety. He 
 may by the force of custom, or out of respect to 
 
12 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 the opinion of his neighbours, live a virtuous life 
 under ordinary circumstances. But how if he be 
 suddenly thrust out of that course of life, and 
 obliged to fall back on first principles, as so many 
 were compelled to do in the time of the war ? 
 It becomes, therefore, important to question, 
 on the one side the classical documents of the 
 Christian faith, and on the other side the observed 
 facts of religious psychology, in the endeavour to 
 discover what are the true grounds of faith for 
 a modern Christian. 
 
 II 
 
 If the grounds of Christianity are to be investi¬ 
 gated, they must be investigated methodically, 
 that is to say, scientifically. We have to investi¬ 
 gate three fields of research ; the visible material 
 world, the nature of man, that is, psychology, 
 and history. 
 
 (1) The investigation of nature can hardly be 
 of primary importance to us in this connection, 
 unless we are content with materialism, and 
 resolved to set aside all that eludes physical tests 
 and measurements. The philosophers of Ionia 
 started in this direction; Democritus and 
 Epicurus carried on their line, and it has never 
 wanted advocates down to the days of Haeckel. 
 Yet many of the great physical and biological 
 discoveries of recent years have so greatly 
 changed our outlook upon nature, that the mere 
 
CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 13 
 
 phrase of the creed that God is the creator of 
 all things, needs unmeasured amplification and 
 refinement. The theory of evolution, recent dis¬ 
 covery in the analysis of matter, and, last of all, 
 the extension of the theory of relativity to the 
 study of nature, have greatly altered our concep¬ 
 tion of the relation of God to the world. And at 
 every turn we find it possible to draw from the 
 study of the world analogies which enlighten us 
 as to the nature and action of the invisible. 
 
 (2) There were great historians in the ancient 
 world. In their way Thucydides and Polybius 
 have never been surpassed. Early Christianity 
 substituted the Jewish view of history for the 
 Greek; a remarkable retrogression; and for 
 ages all history lost its scientific character under 
 the influence of ethical and religious motives. 
 Not until, within the memory of some still living, 
 the idea of evolution was imported into historic 
 studies, did history set out on a new and scientific 
 career. And even now, in the minds of the great 
 majority of people, when the history of Chris¬ 
 tianity is in question, all historic method is 
 thrown aside, and the historic views of the first 
 Christians are accepted as of divine inspiration. 
 But year by year this latter attitude of mind is 
 receding, and the more scientific treatment of 
 the sacred books and the early history of the 
 Christian Church is becoming more usual; at 
 least in all places of higher education. 
 
14 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 In the present work very little is said in regard 
 to Christian history. It is a subject which I have 
 already treated, to the best of my ability, in 
 published works, such as Exploratio Evangelica 
 and A Historic View of the New Testament, And 
 I have little that is fresh to add. It is true that 
 with the great majority of English writers on 
 the subject, the acceptance of historic method is 
 but grudging and partial. But it is slowly but 
 surely making its way. And its main principles 
 are regarded as beyond dispute in all schools of 
 scientific history. There is no need to attack a 
 cause which is gradually dying. And it is the 
 less desirable to do so, because a sudden and 
 violent inrush of historic method would, beyond 
 doubt, bring in danger to the religious views on 
 which the conduct of most Christians is founded. 
 A gradual infiltration of the method is really 
 preferable. 
 
 (3) But by far the most important, in regard to 
 religious creed, of all the fundamental changes of 
 mentality, is that which consists in the develop¬ 
 ment of the methods of experience and research 
 in the investigation of the faculties of man, and 
 their substitution for the logical and a priori pro¬ 
 cedure of Greek metaphysics. Philosophy of a 
 kind must always remain ; but there is a vast 
 difference between philosophy which starts from 
 some a priori thesis and argues down to the facts 
 of mind and thought, of God and man, and 
 
CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 15 
 
 philosophy which is based upon psychology, 
 which takes its facts thence and tries to make out 
 what those facts imply. Here the greatest recent 
 discovery is undoubtedly that of the unconscious 
 element in the human mind. And with that dis¬ 
 covery goes the perception that the active and 
 conative faculties of man are the most important 
 part of him, and the cognitive and reflective 
 faculties far less closely connected with his ulti¬ 
 mate being. William James especially, in his 
 vigorous and incisive writings, has emphasised 
 the truth of this view. 
 
 The results of this new attention to the psy¬ 
 chology of experience have been far-reaching. 
 Even in the matter of medicine it has completely 
 changed the treatment of such diseases as are 
 not the result of infection or of mere physical 
 disturbance. Faith-healing and suggestion are no 
 longer regarded as appropriate only to quacks ; 
 but are used in great hospitals, and with results 
 which no reasonable man can dispute. In all 
 education a psychological foundation, which 
 analyses the faculties of children and adults, and 
 ascertains by induction how to make the best 
 use of them, has become necessary. Naturally, 
 the discarding of tradition, and the over-valua¬ 
 tion of limited experience may often lead us 
 astray. The Montessori system, for example, 
 lays, in my opinion, far too little stress on the 
 need for training the will as well as the intelli- 
 
16 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 gence. Mistakes must needs be made; but 
 they must be corrected, not by a mere return to 
 traditional ways, but by a wider and a more 
 carefully analysed experience. 
 
 It is the same in religion. Here also an 
 analysis of experience must be the ground of any 
 rational theology. If any communion between 
 God and man be possible, it must be the subject 
 of investigation ; and the true in regard to it 
 must be separated from the false. And we may 
 take this course without any fear. For if such 
 communication were not a real thing, a belief in 
 it could not have persisted with such indomitable 
 energy through all ages. It has, however, been 
 always and everywhere overlaid with a mass of 
 false or at least disputable theory, from the 
 burden of which it must be freed. But the 
 burden must be lifted with the utmost care and 
 reverence. The wheat and the tares grow 
 together, and we have to be very careful not to 
 root up both together. 
 
 These vast changes in the mental horizon of 
 mankind oblige us to look at the historic creeds 
 of Christendom in quite a new light. It does not 
 necessarily follow that those creeds are outworn 
 and useless. They do undoubtedly reflect, not 
 merely the mentality of the early Church, but 
 also its practical necessities. Indeed, the view 
 just stated of the supremacy of the active and 
 practical over the theoretic faculties of man at 
 
CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 17 
 
 once suggests that the Creeds were not in reality, 
 though they might be in appearance, mere 
 logical and a priori constructions, but were a 
 reflection in the world of logical thought of 
 religious feeling and experience. Hence a mere 
 attack on them from the side of logic and science 
 might entirely miss what is of real value in them. 
 They have not to be exploded, but to be accounted 
 for. 
 
 Any modern criticism of them, to be satis¬ 
 factory, must start from an analysis of human 
 nature, and especially from an investigation of 
 the nature of spirit and of personality. 
 
 In all our perceptions clearness of vision and 
 energy of emotion are almost in inverse propor¬ 
 tion to one another. When we feel strongly on 
 any subject, to learn the exact truth about it is 
 repellent to us, is often hateful. Yet emotion is 
 like a climbing plant which may without injury 
 be transferred from one prop to another, and 
 which will learn to cling as closely to the new 
 support as to the old. History is full of examples 
 of such transference, and I need not pause to cite 
 them. There have been strong emotional pre¬ 
 judices which have militated against the recep¬ 
 tion of evidence in regard to the nature of the 
 soul. But, as William James has put it,i “ Let 
 empiricism once become associated with religion, 
 as hitherto through some strange misunderstand- 
 
 ^ A Pluralistic Universe, p. 314. 
 
 2 
 
18 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 ings it has been associated with irreligion, and 
 I believe that a new era of religion, as well as of 
 philosophy, will be ready to begin.” ‘‘ I fully 
 believe that such an empiricism is a more natural 
 ally than dialectics ever were, or can be, of the 
 religious life.” By pursuing this method of 
 empiricism, or reasonable investigation, James 
 produced an epoch-making work on the Varieties 
 of Religious Experience, treating the phenomena 
 of the religious life not as parts of this or that 
 religious teaching, but as phases of the activities 
 of the soul in the presence of spiritual realities. 
 And by pursuing this method I think it possible 
 to present a view of God and the future life 
 which will not, certainly, correspond with all our 
 wishes and emotions, but which may lie before 
 us as a grand range of facts and possibilities. 
 
 No one, by searching, can find out God. And 
 no one, by the mere study of the facts of experi¬ 
 ence, can work out for himself a satisfactory 
 religion. Religion, like power and happiness, 
 comes from within, or rather depends on man’s 
 relations to the spiritual source of life. But, 
 until a man has revised the creed of Christianity 
 in the light of history and psychology, he will not 
 be able to defend it in the forum of discussion, 
 nor to discern in it what has been temporary, 
 and is ready to fall away, and what is of permanent 
 or even of perpetual validity. As a matter of 
 fact, though the Creeds have been kept unaltered 
 
CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 19 
 
 in words, they have changed their real meaning 
 constantly with a changing intellectual outlook. 
 And the great question now is what they mean 
 to us. How can the jewels be reset so as to suit 
 modern modes of thought ? 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NATURE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 I 
 
 Fundamental to our whole inquiry is the subject 
 of personality. And personality is exactly one 
 of those matters which seem at first sight simple, 
 yet soon lead us beyond our depth in the ocean of 
 thought. Like the kindred subject of free-will, 
 it has exercised and will exercise the utmost 
 faculties of man, without admitting of a final and 
 objective solution. 
 
 From the point of view of common sense and 
 daily life, we can scarcely do better than accept 
 the statement of Dr Sanday in his little work. 
 Personality in Christ and in Ourselves,^ The 
 inner self, he says, is the principle of unity and 
 continuity in a man’s life, the vehicle of reflective 
 consciousness ; and at the same time it possesses 
 a power of initiative and control. Thus it is at 
 once a reflective and an active power, a centre 
 on which outward impressions converge, and a 
 source of force and action in the world. 
 
 Here, however, we stop short at the obvious, 
 and do not try to fathom what Tennyson calls 
 
 1 P. 34. 
 
 20 
 
THE NATURE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 21 
 
 the abyssmal depths of personality.” What is 
 this personality, whence comes it, and whither 
 does it go ? ‘‘ From the great deep to the great 
 
 deep it goes ” ; and we have no means of stopping 
 it, analysing or examining it. In what relation 
 does it stand to the world to spirit and to God ? 
 The Greeks spoke of it as a spark of divine fire, 
 which comes from God and returns to God. 
 This, of course, is but a metaphor, an image. 
 But perhaps by metaphor and image we may 
 gain more light on the subject than by more 
 formal analysis. It is, however, maintained by 
 excellent authorities that the psychological re¬ 
 searches of modern times have put us in a more 
 favourable position for considering the whole 
 question. Our chief advantage lies in the dis¬ 
 covery-—for it is no mere theory—made both by 
 physiologists and psychologists, that alike in the 
 case of men and animals the active and conative 
 faculties are primary and basal: and the intel¬ 
 lectual faculties, whatever their nobility, are 
 later and secondary ; and are always in a great 
 degree dependent for stimulus and direction on 
 the active powers. This view I must assume as 
 established. 
 
 The philosophy or the psychology of knowledge 
 from this point of view is simple. Each human 
 being is a centre of force, a nucleus whence force 
 is always issuing. The discovery of radium, a 
 substance which constantly gives out energy. 
 
22 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 affecting everything around it, but not perceptibly 
 diminishing in substance or in force, gives us an 
 analogy, which, if not pressed too far, is helpful. 
 To a particle of radium we may compare each 
 human spirit, always working outwards, and as 
 it works finding resistances, out of which it 
 frames for itself an universe, or rather, through 
 which it discovers for itself the universe which 
 exists without it, and apart from its activity. 
 
 These last two ways of regarding the matter 
 are, from the purely intellectual point of view, 
 almost equivalent. But from the practical and 
 active point of view they differ as hell and 
 heaven. For the great practical problem of 
 man’s life is to escape from the merely subjective 
 and personal view of the world into one which is 
 real and objective. The search for reality has in 
 all ages been the great problem of philosophy, 
 and the great thinkers have made the transit, 
 some in one fashion and some in another ; but 
 in one way or another all have had to make it, or 
 else to be confined for ever to the merely sub¬ 
 jective in knowledge, and to sterility and in¬ 
 effectiveness in action. To me the whole question 
 of reality and objectivity appears, as in some 
 measure it appeared to Kant, to be one not 
 of intellectual judgment but of practical voli¬ 
 tion. It is on this side that the works of the 
 great intellectualists, from Spinoza to Lord 
 Haldane, seem to me deficient and unsatis- 
 
THE NATURE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 23 
 
 factory, or, rather, to require supplement and 
 completion. 
 
 Our experience of life has to do not with what 
 is self-evolved or imaginary, but with what is 
 real and serious, and on the way in which we 
 deal with it depends not only the value of our 
 philosophy, but the character of our lives, our 
 efficiency in the world, in a word, the saving of 
 our souls. 
 
 Taking, then, experience as real and objective, 
 we proceed to work outwards in touch with it. 
 From resistances of a physical kind we discover 
 the facts and laws of the material world. From 
 resistances of the human medium we discover 
 the world of other selves, amid whom we learn 
 to live in friendship or enmity. From inner and 
 spiritual resistances we learn the nature of the 
 spiritual world, in which God is supreme. 
 
 Apart from our active energy we might live 
 amid these surroundings and not be aware of 
 them ; at most, they would affect us as a meaning¬ 
 less kaleidoscopic show. But activity, energy, 
 purpose, explore the possibilities, and reveal to 
 us an external world, a world of orderly resist¬ 
 ances, which limits us in every direction. 
 
 The same experience of resistance is the means 
 whereby we build up the knowledge of ourselves. 
 To perception, which has to do with what is 
 without us, corresponds sensation, which shows us 
 what is within us, We become conscious, first 
 
24 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 of our wills, then of our bodies, of our intelleetual 
 faculties, of our moral natures, all of which 
 together make us up as individuals. 
 
 The experience of resistance reveals to us our 
 bodies, which are in the main subject to our 
 wills, though it requires constant exercise to keep 
 them so. It reveals to us our minds, and the 
 ways of thought which we cannot alter or escape. 
 It is constantly showing us emotions of pleasure 
 or pain, love or anger, expectation or despair, 
 which often come upon us as a surprise, and it 
 shows us our own wills as definitely working in 
 one direction or another, tow^ards good or evil, 
 towards success or failure, in the line of duty or 
 in the line of self-indulgence, and the same ex¬ 
 perience of resistance in the world of spirit of 
 which we are members reveals to us great 
 spiritual powers which are ever working on us 
 from without and stimulating us from within. 
 
 II 
 
 In a powerful and suggestive work on Social 
 Psychology, Professor M^Dougall sets forth seven 
 instincts as primary and original in man. They 
 are the instincts of flight, repulsion, curiosity, 
 pugnacity, self-abasement, self-assertion, and the 
 parental instinct. I do not regard this analysis 
 as altogether happy. It is particularly unsatis¬ 
 factory to begin with flight and fear and repulsion, 
 
THE NATURE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 25 
 
 that is, on the weak and poor side of human 
 nature, its negative rather than its positive 
 aspect. And it does not seem to me that man 
 possesses a primitive instinct of self-abasement, 
 which is only an absence of the instinct of self- 
 assertion. I think the analysis might have been 
 carried further back. The greatest primitive 
 instinct in man seems to me to be self-assertion, 
 or a desire for the furtherance of life. Tennyson 
 was wise when he wrote : 
 
 “ ’Tis life, not death, for which we pant. 
 
 More life and fuller that we want.” 
 
 And this most primitive of all instincts, which 
 one finds in the mollusc as well as in the phil¬ 
 osopher, divides into two branches, the desire of 
 individual life and the desire of propagation. 
 Out of these two desires all others arise in the 
 process of evolution. But the course of desire is 
 different according to the sphere in which it 
 operates. In the life of the material body it acts 
 simply by resisting disease and injury and decay, 
 appropriating to itself the material surroundings 
 of the body, urging to sexual action. In the 
 social life it acts primitively in war and strife, 
 and the appropriation of women. But under the 
 influence of higher spiritual powers, man learns 
 social conduct first in the family or tribe, then in 
 the community. In the dawn of the spiritual life 
 man tries to secure and to turn to his own pur- 
 
26 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 poses the help of the surrounding spiritual power, 
 by the help of magie and spell. He eomes into 
 contact with that power in pure selfishness ; but 
 he learns by degrees to subordinate himself to it, 
 he is vanquished by its force and goodness; and 
 magic gives way by degrees to religion, self- 
 assertion is replaced by love of what is better 
 than himself. All his instincts become more 
 refined, more moral, more intellectual. 
 
 Man has lower and higher possibilities. Since 
 he is a denizen of the world of sense, it is natural 
 that the exercise of those powers which tend to 
 the vigour of the individual and the carrying on 
 of the race should produce in him a glow of 
 pleasure. A moderate indulgence of those powers 
 makes up a great part of the happiness of life. 
 Many men rise no higher. But to every one who 
 cherishes ideals, a mere sensuous existence, a 
 porcine satisfaction with life, soon wears off its 
 freshness. It fails to satisfy his higher nature. 
 A truer and a far more durable satisfaction comes 
 from the love of God and man, from helping one’s 
 neighbours, and labouring for the improvement 
 of life by transfusing it with the divine ideas 
 which are revealed within. 
 
 While the comparison of a human spirit to a 
 particle of radium is from the practical point of 
 view helpful and suggestive, it requires at the 
 same time careful guarding; it is a comparison, 
 not an explanation. It does not follow because 
 
THE NATURE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 27 
 
 there is some likeness between the spirit of a man 
 and a particle of radium that there is likeness in 
 all respects. The similarity consists in the con¬ 
 stant outward working of both in the world of 
 experience. 
 
 An obvious point of dissimilarity is that, while 
 one particle of radium is just like another in its 
 working, human beings differ one from another in 
 every way. One personality is vigorous, another 
 inert; one is naturally prone to love and sym¬ 
 pathy, another by nature self-contained ; one is 
 active and emotional, another contemplative and 
 intellectual. We notice all these differences in 
 others and in ourselves ; but their origin is most 
 obscure. Sometimes they appear to be an in¬ 
 heritance from parents ; sometimes they seem to 
 go back to remoter ancestors; sometimes they look 
 very much like a new departure, whence and how 
 originated we cannot in the least discover. And 
 in the course of living they change, under the stress 
 of circumstances or under the influence of others. 
 
 Another great difference between the action of 
 radium and human action is that the former takes 
 place uniformly and in all directions. But human 
 force, when it has once, so to speak, felt its sur¬ 
 roundings, has the power to act in any direction 
 it pleases. By the power of self-determination, 
 which exists in its most intimate nature, it directs 
 the stream of energy in some directions rather 
 than others, it inhibits some kinds of action and 
 
28 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 encourages others, thus limiting and controlling 
 its action upon the world, and by so doing form¬ 
 ing in itself a definite individuality. 
 
 Whether a man can exert physical force beyond 
 the limits of his bodily frame is as yet matter of 
 controversy. Such experiments as those of Dr 
 Maxwell in Paris, and those of Mr Crawford at 
 Belfast, seem to indicate such possibilities. But 
 it is unnecessary for me to take up this subject; 
 and it is premature, for there now exists at Paris 
 an International Metapsychic Institute, recognised 
 by the French Government, and controlled by a 
 Council on which sit some of the greatest authori¬ 
 ties in France, England, and Italy. It has a 
 completely equipped laboratory, and is set up in 
 order to test in a thoroughly scientific way all 
 the psychical phenomena attending spiritualist 
 seances.^ 
 
 When we turn to the facts of mind and spirit, 
 we are in a clearer light. For the phenomena of 
 mesmerism, of suggestion, and, above all, of tele¬ 
 pathy, show that the old notion that man is a 
 self-contained and impervious unit is a delusion. 
 
 As regards telepathy, I may content myself 
 with the verdict of Dr W. M‘Dougall, who 
 writes ^ : ‘‘I cannot attempt to present here the 
 evidence for the reality of telepathy. It must 
 suffice to say that it is of such a nature as to 
 
 ^ See the Modern Churchman^ xii. p. 645, 
 
 ^ Body and Mind, p. 349. 
 
THE NATURE OF PERSONALITY 29 
 
 compel the assent of any competent person who 
 studies it impartially.” And the fact of tele¬ 
 pathy is fatal to two views—first, to any mere 
 materialist explanation of the universe, and 
 seeond, to what one may call the merely atomic 
 or monadic theory of personality. 
 
 It is usual and natural to think of our personali¬ 
 ties just as we think of our bodies, as self-con¬ 
 tained units. But this view is largely illusive. 
 Men’s souls are in a sense individual, capable of 
 character and affections, of growth and de¬ 
 generacy, but they are not cut off one from 
 another by rigid and impassable barriers. 
 
 It is by eontaet with the visible and physical 
 world that our bodies grow and take form, 
 through food and exercise and disease. It is 
 through eontaet with our fellow-men and soeiety 
 that we form character. It is by our relations 
 with, and love for, the spiritual world that we 
 develop an inner being and attain to eternal life. 
 The dietum of Kant, that there is nothing good 
 in the world but a good will, is true so far as 
 individuals are concerned ; but there is also in 
 the spiritual world a great current of goodness 
 which may flow into individual lives ; and there 
 are also evil currents which bear men away to 
 destruction and perdition. 
 
 The course of medical discovery in recent times, 
 and particularly the experiences of the Great 
 War, have put in a clearer and stronger light than 
 
30 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 ever before, the predominance of the inner over 
 the outer, the superiority of will and spirit over 
 flesh. It is now known to what an extent sug¬ 
 gestion can cure disease, and direct the nerves 
 and the blood. Faith-healing has been known 
 from the beginning of history. There is much of 
 it in primitive sorcery. The shrines of ^Escu- 
 lapius in Greece were places where healing took 
 place far more often by mental suggestion than 
 by bodily prescriptions. In the early time of the 
 Christian faith, as every one is aware, cures by 
 faith-healing, which were regarded as miraculous, 
 were of constant occurrence. And so on through 
 the Middle Ages. But unfortunately the facts of 
 suggestion and faith-healing had become in¬ 
 extricably mixed up with theories as to the power 
 which wrought such cures : and those who had 
 experience of the healing passed on at once to 
 believe in the saint or the relics which were its 
 occasion. And so at the Reformation, when the 
 veneration of saints and of relics was thrown aside 
 by the Reformers, faith-healing was thrown aside 
 with them, and was regarded, at all events in 
 northern countries, as a mere form of imposture. 
 In the last century, such cures as those worked at 
 Lourdes led observers to see that there were 
 realities underneath erroneous historic and 
 psychical views in the miracles of the Roman 
 Church. And now the great success of Christian 
 Scientists and of faith-healers of every kind has 
 
THE NATURE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 31 
 
 put it beyond question that it was rash to reject 
 the facts of suggestion merely because they were 
 closely connected with unnecessary or unsatis¬ 
 factory theories as to the source whence came the 
 power of the healers. In fact, at present many 
 of those who practise healing by suggestion 
 openly confess that they do not understand the 
 source of the powers they possess ; they are only 
 conscious, through experience, that they can 
 exercise those powers. Indeed, the prevalent 
 view now seems to be that the healers can only 
 act by rousing self-suggestion in the mind of the 
 person to be healed. 
 
 However this may be, and whatever may be 
 the true psychological explanation of faith-heal¬ 
 ing, what it shows beyond doubt or cavil is the 
 superiority of that which is within to that which 
 is without, of the spirit to the body. For this 
 very reason the great medical schools, which 
 always have a strong bias towards materialism, 
 have almost invariably disputed the value of 
 faith-healing and despised those who practised 
 it. But at all events they cannot now deny 
 its validity, or maintain that it is a mere im¬ 
 posture. 
 
 If we free ourselves from the natural prejudice 
 which closely connects the personality with the 
 body, and if we realise that the borders of per¬ 
 sonality are not rigidly exclusive, we shall have 
 no great difficulty in accepting the view that it 
 
82 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 is quite legitimate to speak of personalities which 
 are not merely individual, the personalities of 
 families, of groups, and of states. As has been 
 pointed out by the writers on social psychology, 
 the intellectual and moral qualities of an organised 
 group of persons is not the mere sum of those 
 qualities which belong to the individual members 
 of the group, but something additional, and even 
 something different. 
 
 It requires some exercise of the imagination 
 fully to grasp this fact, since in the group there 
 is no subjective consciousness as there is in the 
 individual; the personality of the group cannot 
 speak with an audible voice, nor be rigidly out¬ 
 lined against the background of the surrounding 
 society ; it is somewhat like the mathematical 
 formulae which cannot be objectively presented 
 to the mind, but can only be discerned in work¬ 
 ing ; but nevertheless it is a definite factor in the 
 world, of which every man of action and every 
 statesman has to take account. In some societies 
 of animals it may be more clearly discerned; 
 every one can see that the hive of bees and the 
 nest of ants have an intelligence and a character 
 far above that of the separate bee or ant, often, 
 indeed, provoking our astonishment. Human 
 societies are not, in the present state of the world, 
 thus clearly marked out and closely united. But 
 nevertheless there exists in every society and 
 in every state a social personality which can 
 
THE NATURE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 33 
 
 impinge upon, and often eontrol, the tendencies 
 of the members of the group. 
 
 In quiet and peaceful times this is less observ¬ 
 able, individualism is dominant, and the common 
 life passes into the background. But when a 
 time of stress and conflict comes, individuals are 
 not merely affected, but are often quite borne 
 away by the pressure of the common life. In 
 1914 and the following years this phenomenon 
 was insistent, and had the control of history. 
 However strongly organised the personality of 
 an individual might be, he could then scarcely 
 ever resist the force of a self-asserting national 
 personality ; he was borne away by it, often to 
 enterprises to which his personal bias had the 
 strongest antipathy. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the surface of self- 
 consciousness, which seems so hard and smooth, 
 covers a great deal of illusion. We all are dis¬ 
 posed to exaggerate the degree of our free-will; 
 we often suppose ourselves to be acting in freedom 
 when we are not really free. We are constantly 
 mistaking the nature of the motives from which 
 we act; supposing them to be higher or lower, 
 or at all events different from those which really 
 sway us. We suppose ourselves to act after full 
 deliberation, when in fact some ancestral ten¬ 
 dency holds us in an iron grip. In the same way, 
 actions which we suppose to be purely individual 
 
 are often dictated to us by a wider group con- 
 
 3 
 
34 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 sciousness. And often the impulse towards 
 them may be communicated to our spirits by 
 spiritual forces which are independent of us, and 
 which we regard as external, though really they 
 are within us, at all events while they act. No 
 doubt a resolute will could in any case determine 
 the line of conduct, and shut out external in¬ 
 fluence. But we are not made that way. Our 
 personalities are fought over by a multitude of 
 spiritual forces, ancestral, surrounding, and 
 above us ; and the most that we can do, in 
 ordinary life, is to help the influences which we 
 respect or love, and hinder those which we dis¬ 
 like. Our wills are ours, no doubt. But so are 
 our bodies ours. And as the body may be pre¬ 
 vented from free action, not only by external 
 forces, but also from the peculiarities of our 
 physical frames, just so the freedom of the will 
 is bounded not only by the wills of others, which 
 may dominate us, but by the character which 
 has been formed by previous action of the will. 
 There is an inertia arising from habit of life, 
 which it may require a strong effort to conquer, 
 or which, indeed, cannot be conquered at all, 
 save by power furnished from without, some 
 spiritual influence coming from the group mind, 
 or from the supreme Ruler of the spiritual world. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 PERSONALITY AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 
 
 The greatest and most essential difference 
 between a material substance like radium and 
 the human spirit is, that whereas the former—at 
 least so far as we can discern—does not depend 
 on anything beyond and outside itself, the human 
 spirit is not an independent and self-contained 
 unit, but is in contact with, and dependent upon, 
 an unlimited flow of power and energy, by the 
 aid of which it can perform many deeds quite 
 beyond the reach of its natural powers ; and if it 
 be cut off from or abandoned by that power, it 
 dries up and fails like a pool left on the seashore 
 by the retreating sea. A man can welcome the 
 spiritual influence, by opening the doors of his 
 spirit; or he can harden himself against it; and 
 that is the difference between life in the spirit 
 and life in the flesh and the self. It is impossible 
 to maintain that this stream of spiritual influence 
 is always on the side of good : sometimes, as the 
 best men of every age have felt, it seems rather 
 to draw us in the direction of evil; but the good 
 in it infinitely overbalances the evil. And history 
 and experience show that the only way to a good 
 
 36 
 
36 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 existence, the path which leads to life, lies 
 through harmony with that great stream of 
 spiritual influence, which has by stages led men 
 up to the highest points attained by human 
 societies and individuals. In the history of the 
 race, as we know it, good has been on the whole 
 stronger than evil. This conviction is hard to 
 maintain in times of disappointment and spiritual 
 dryness. There be many that say, “ Who will 
 show us any good ? ” But the individuals and 
 the nations which fall away from belief in the 
 ultimate dominance of the good are condemned 
 to perish. 
 
 I 
 
 To attempt to throw light upon the difficult 
 questions of the life of the spirit by means of 
 comparisons with the world of sense may always 
 involve some peril. For an analogy must always 
 be a suggestion rather than an explanation ; and 
 there is always a danger that those who appreciate 
 the analogy may strain it beyond its proper 
 bounds. But it is much less risky to set forth 
 two or three analogies in the place of one ; for 
 the different images in some degree cancel one 
 another, and their suggestion becomes freer from 
 perversion. 
 
 The Founder of Christianity was wont to use 
 physical analogies to illuminate the life of the 
 spirit. And he takes precisely the precaution 
 
PERSONALITY AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 37 
 
 which I have mentioned ; he does not work out 
 special comparisons in detail, but briefly men¬ 
 tions one after another, so that light may glance 
 on the subject under consideration at many 
 angles. He speaks of the phenomena of the 
 weather, of sunrise and sunset, of the way in 
 which corn grows in the fields, of the tending of 
 sheep, of the search for treasure ; and in each 
 case directs a ray of light on the great and com¬ 
 plicated matter of the growth of spiritual life in 
 the individual and in society. The procedure 
 which I propose to adopt may therefore claim 
 the highest authority. 
 
 The personality of a man, in relation to the 
 world of spirit, may be compared to one of those 
 little coral islands which abound in the Pacific 
 Ocean. It has been built up by the lives and 
 deeds of thousands of ancestors since life began 
 on our planet. They toiled, often in dark places, 
 but each left by energy and action a little deposit 
 which helped to build up the foundation of a 
 life, while the whole construction rested on the 
 solid ground. The coral island is a beautiful 
 thing; it gives a resting-place to trees and insects 
 and birds ; but it is isolated only in reference to 
 the surface of the sea ; with the solid earth it is 
 invisibly continuous. 
 
 Another comparison may be made to a floating 
 iceberg.^ Only a small part of the iceberg is 
 ^ This comparison has already been made by W. James. 
 
38 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 visible above the level of the sea ; a far larger 
 part floats beneath and sustains what is visible. 
 Sometimes, as the iee slowly melts, the eentre of 
 gravity of the mass is shifted, and quiekly or 
 slowly it rolls over, displaying on the surface a 
 new facet. It is suggestive to compare the ice¬ 
 berg to a human life, with clear-cut form on the 
 surface, yet largely concealed beneath the level 
 of consciousness, and liable to sudden shiftings, 
 the cause of which is quite invisible, while the 
 results are conspicuous and often startling, as 
 when religious conversion takes place. 
 
 A third, even better, comparison would liken 
 the individual life to a narrow inlet of the sea, 
 making its way between rocks and promontories 
 into the solid land. From the rocky surround¬ 
 ings it takes form and character, and gains indi¬ 
 viduality ; yet never for a moment is it separated 
 from the great sea, the tides and storms of which 
 daily affect it. If it were so separated it would 
 dry up and disappear. And through the sea it 
 has a way of connection with all other gulfs and 
 inlets ; so that in fact a stone thrown into, or a 
 fish leaping in, any of them, will produce an 
 effect, of course quite unobservable and infinite¬ 
 simal, upon it. 
 
 The will of man may be compared to a sluice¬ 
 gate which may be open or shut. When it is 
 shut, he cuts himself off, so far as he can, from 
 the influences of the spiritual life about him. 
 
PERSONALITY AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 39 
 
 influences good or bad, healthful or degrading. 
 When it is opened, he admits these influences. 
 
 Such comparisons, which it would be easy to 
 multiply, may serve to give a slight hint of the 
 relation of the individual personality to the 
 surrounding world of spirit. 
 
 When we speak of the unconscious, the phrase 
 requires some explanation. It really means that 
 which does not enter into the personal conscious¬ 
 ness or self-consciousness of individuals. It by 
 no means implies that what we call in reference 
 to ourselves as individuals unconscious, may not 
 be in a different and even a higher sense conscious, 
 though not conscious in us. As I shall try to 
 show later on, the very important element in the 
 unconscious which is divine is necessarily recog¬ 
 nised by us as in a high sense conscious. And I 
 think that most men feel in their relations to the 
 unconscious that there is in all revelations of it, 
 and all impulses which come from it, something 
 akin to consciousness. It is an unmapped ocean ; 
 but when we are on the borders of it and try to 
 look at it, we find that it has currents and tides, 
 waves and storms, which are so full of an intense 
 life that the very phrase, the unconscious, appears 
 very inadequate. 
 
 It is the function of every man, as a conscious 
 being, belonging at once to the visible and the 
 invisible world, to modify the visible world by 
 means of the ideas which he takes from the 
 
40 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 invisible. From the point of view of psychology 
 man possesses intellect, emotion, and will. And 
 to those three faculties three kinds of working in 
 the world are appropriate. It is our business by 
 our intellects to find out the exact truth of things, 
 to discover the laws of working of nature and of 
 human society. It is our business by our emotions 
 to love what is beautiful, to find happiness in 
 admiration of all that is pure and lovely in nature 
 and in man, and to further it in the world of 
 sense. It is our business by the will to set our¬ 
 selves on the side of the morally good, and to 
 work for its victory in the world. By such action 
 a man promotes the will of God in the visible 
 order of things and forms within him at the same 
 time a definite character. 
 
 If the analogies by which I have tried to ex¬ 
 plain in some degree the nature of personality 
 are at all valid, then every deed done in the world 
 not only tends to mould the individual personality 
 of the doer, but also has an effect in the world of 
 spirit, tends to lower or to raise its tone in the 
 matter of truth of beauty or of goodness. As a 
 stone thrown into a pond sets in motion circles 
 on the surface which spread, constantly enlarging, 
 to the edge of the pond, and then react backwards, 
 so that in an inconceivably minute degree they 
 go on acting and reacting for all time; so any 
 great discovery of truth, any vision of ideal 
 beauty, any noble action, works in the world of 
 
PERSONALITY AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 41 
 
 spirit and goes on working, serving in some in¬ 
 finitely minute way to smooth the path for the 
 future diseovery of truth, for the vision of other 
 aspeets of beauty, for the performance of noble 
 deeds in the times that follow. Thus man may 
 take part in the great process of creation, which 
 began before the earliest geologic times and goes 
 on into the infinite future. 
 
 Some readers may think that I am using the 
 phrases of vague pantheism, that I am not clearly 
 distinguishing between three things which must 
 not be confused, the unconscious, the spiritual, 
 and the divine. At this preliminary stage of 
 our investigation my language is necessarily 
 vague. But as we proceed it will become 
 evident that I am quite aware of the danger of 
 confusing these things, and I hope to show that 
 I am no pantheist, but a theist of a very different 
 kind, and, indeed, as I venture to believe, a 
 Christian whose beliefs are closer to those of the 
 Founder of Christianity and his immediate 
 followers than those which are commonly current 
 in our Churches. The unconscious may be re¬ 
 garded as a sort of protoplasm, out of which the 
 conscious spirits of the universe issue, human 
 beings, and other spirits, and even the Creative 
 Spirit. 
 
42 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 II 
 
 The Sub-conscious and the Super-conscious 
 
 When we come to the consideration of the 
 relations between the conscious and unconscious 
 phases of man’s life, we cannot do better than 
 accept Mr Myers’ comparison of the conscious 
 part of man’s intelligence to a solar spectrum as 
 it appears to the human eye A ‘‘ The limits of 
 our spectrum do not inhere in the sun that 
 shines, but in the eye that marks his shining. 
 Beyond each end of that prismatic ribbon are 
 ether-waves of which our retina takes no cog¬ 
 nisance. Beyond the red end come waves whose 
 potency we still recognise, but as heat and not as 
 light. Beyond the violet end are waves still 
 more mysterious, whose very existence man for 
 ages never suspected, and whose intimate potencies 
 are still but obscurely known. Even thus, I 
 venture to affirm, beyond each end of our con¬ 
 scious spectrum extends a range of faculty and 
 perception, exceeding the known range, but as 
 yet indistinctly guessed. The artifices of the 
 modern physicist have extended far in each 
 direction the visible spectrum known to Newton. 
 It is for the modern psychologist to discover 
 artifices which may extend in each direction the 
 
 1 Parts of the following pages appeared in the Hibbert 
 Journal for 1911, 
 
SUB-CONSCIOUS AND SUPER-CONSCIOUS 43 
 
 conscious spectrum as known to Plato or to 
 Kant.” 1 “ The range of our subliminal menta¬ 
 
 tion is more extended than the range of our supra¬ 
 liminal. At one end of the scale we find dreams, 
 a normal subliminal product, but of less practical 
 value than any form of sane supraliminal thought. 
 At the other end of the scale we find that the 
 rarest, most precious knowledge comes to us from 
 outside the ordinary field, through eminently 
 subliminal processes.” ^ I cannot but think that 
 if Mr Myers had grasped this clue with more 
 resolution, and followed it up with greater 
 tenacity, his work would have been even more 
 valuable than it is, though, of course, it is unjust 
 to judge severely the work of the first explorer 
 who “ bursts into a silent sea.” Other writers 
 on psychical phenomena have sometimes not even 
 seen the need of a scale involving higher and 
 lower. This distinction is in fact essential. Our 
 lower nervous centres have a life of their own, by 
 which the necessary functions of the body are 
 carried on, without any knowledge on our part. 
 And through our lives, as we form habits, and 
 learn to do unconsciously what we at first did by 
 conscious effort, we are, so to speak, organising 
 the unconscious, handing over to it more and 
 more of our ordinary working day activities. 
 But for what we give up in this way we may or 
 ought to make compensation by the opposite 
 ^ Human Personality, i. 17. ^ Ibid., i. 72. 
 
44 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 process : by bringing into consciousness more and 
 more of that which is above us. 
 
 The conscious personality of man is a thing 
 which has gradually, through an unmeasured 
 series of ages, been brought about by a slow 
 organisation of the unconseious to serve the 
 ethical needs of the raee. As we look down the 
 biological scale we see a dawning conseiousness, 
 the nature of which we cannot fully realise, in 
 the animal world. Among all human beings 
 found in travel or read of in history it is fully 
 formed ; so that its growth can be but a matter 
 of conjeeture and inferenee. Perhaps some of 
 the most interesting studies in regard to it may 
 be made in the ease of such creatures as the ant 
 and the bee, which have developed intelligence 
 and purpose, by means of their peculiar social 
 organisations, to an extent far beyond what 
 might seem to belong to their size and strueture. 
 But man himself, when in an uneonscious or 
 semi-conscious condition, or in a state of in¬ 
 fancy, can give us much information as to the 
 rise and the nature of consciousness. 
 
 Unless we grasp and hold fast the notion that 
 there is a higher and a lower in the unconscious 
 life, that it has a scale whieh is at bottom ethical, 
 psychical phenomena will remain for us a con¬ 
 fused tangle, or may be the means of leading us 
 astray. 
 
 It is impossible at this point to avoid some 
 
SUB CONSCIOUS AND SUPER-CONSCIOUS 45 
 
 consideration of the phenomena of hypnotism, 
 for by them the question of the relation between 
 the conseious and the unconscious in man is 
 raised in an acute and inevitable form. And 
 with hypnotism goes that spiritism which is as a 
 system built upon hypnotism. Here, unfortu¬ 
 nately, we are entering ground on which it will be 
 impossible altogether to avoid controversy. But 
 I will confine myself to a statement of my own 
 views, without entering into the innumerable 
 cross paths which lead to interminable discussion. 
 I will try to keep fact and theory as far as possible 
 apart. 
 
 This path of knowledge was opened wider by 
 the diseoveries of Mesmer, who was the first to 
 set forth in a striking and effective way the direct 
 power of a mind and will over the mind and will 
 of others. To whatever unworthy purposes mes¬ 
 merism has been turned, however it has been 
 mingled with imposture and the love of money, 
 it was yet based on actual facts of human nature. 
 Almost every great scientific invention appears 
 first as a toy, before its serious use is discovered. 
 It was by a kind of instinct that the ruling schools 
 of medicine, in their traditional materialism, for 
 a long while refused to allow that there was in 
 mesmerism, or the hypnotism which has taken its 
 place, anything save fancy and imposture. That 
 phase of opposition has, however, passed away ; 
 no one capable of understanding the nature of 
 
46 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 evidence could now deny that hypnotism has 
 brought to light unsuspected powers of the human 
 spirit, and has proved how large a part of our 
 life and personality never comes to the surface 
 or into the field of ordinary observation. And 
 investigations such as those of the Society for 
 Psychical Research have carried the evidence 
 further and brought into the light a mass of 
 phenomena which are not necessarily connected 
 with hypnotism, yet which belong to the uncon¬ 
 scious side of our lives—dreams, motor auto¬ 
 matisms, trances, ecstasy, and the like—which 
 must be taken into account by anyone who here¬ 
 after may write on psychology. 
 
 The subject, though an interesting, is scarcely 
 an alluring one. At present the true and the 
 false, the healthy and the morbid, the moral and 
 the immoral, are mingled almost inextricably in 
 the writings which deal with the more obscure 
 psychical phenomena. One feels in reading them 
 that one is in a land where barbarous survivals 
 are mixed up with lofty aspirations, where witch¬ 
 craft is scarcely distinguished from religion, and 
 the morbid visions of the hysteric are put on the 
 same level as the sacred inspirations of the 
 prophet. The science of the unconscious is yet 
 in its infancy, and has not learned to know its 
 right hand from its left, to distinguish between 
 good and evil, to discern between fact and fancy. 
 And yet one sees that many of the most sacred 
 
SUB-CONSCIOUS AND SUPER-CONSCIOUS 47 
 
 experiences of mankind are of the same class as 
 the more repulsive phenomena of hypnotism. 
 They resemble them as good wine resembles 
 vinegar, or a sweet fruit a poisonous berry. 
 Those who would learn anatomy are obliged to 
 make very unpleasant dissections of dead bodies. 
 And those who would really understand the facts 
 of the higher religions cannot afford to throw 
 aside phenomena of which the early Christian 
 Fathers would doubtless have said that they 
 were produced by demons working in imitation 
 of the angels of light. 
 
 The great defect and danger of spiritism is its 
 want of an ethical standard, its way of confusing 
 the higher and the lower in its revelation of the 
 unconscious. I am convinced that often the 
 higher and more worthy of the inspirations which 
 pass into the world pass not through the gate of 
 the human faculties which have become uncon¬ 
 scious as man has become more civilised, but at ' 
 the other end of the scale, through the gate of 
 human character and personality which is in 
 touch with something not lower but higher than 
 itself. It is not that which civilised man has in 
 common with the savage that can serve as a 
 connecting link between man and God, but 
 rather the highest parts of human nature. 
 
 Even writers like Mr Myers, and (in a less 
 degree) Professor William James, seem to me not 
 sufficiently to distinguish between what is sub- 
 
48 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 conscious and what is super-conscious in men. 
 It is true that from the merely psychological side 
 it is not easy to distinguish these. But they can 
 be distinguished by other tests, notably that of 
 fruits. And they must be kept apart. It is not 
 easy to distinguish logically between a good 
 picture and a bad, but the difference is really 
 enormous. It is not easy to make distinetion 
 between the love between men and women which 
 is merely instinetive and that whieh is the basis 
 of all the higher manliness and womanliness ; 
 but the distance between them is like the distanee 
 between heaven and hell. 
 
 By far the greater part of the phenomena on 
 which the spiritualists pride themselves is in 
 relation to that which is not above but below 
 the level of conscious life. Some of the lower 
 forms of animal life, insects especially, have 
 powers which seem to us mysterious; their 
 senses are open to impressions which we cannot 
 discern. The way, for example, in which the 
 male and female of rare butterflies contrive to 
 find one another out over great distanees shows 
 a power, possibly of scent, of which we can 
 scarcely form a notion. The senses on which 
 wild animals depend for their living are sharpened 
 to an almost supernatural aeuteness. The 
 savage will find his way through a forest by 
 minute indieations which he can scarcely explain 
 to a civilised man. And the sensitively organised 
 
SUB CONSCIOUS AND SUPER-CONSCIOUS 49 
 
 among savages, who become magicians or 
 medicine-men, do not merely live upon the 
 ignorance and credulity of the tribe, but appear 
 to possess second sight and other means of in¬ 
 formation besides those of ordinary sense. 
 Among ourselves second sight and magic still 
 linger in the more backward parts of the country. 
 The possession of these faculties belongs not to 
 the best and most ethical of the race, but to the 
 most primitive elements among the people. 
 
 It is doubtless out of more vague and general 
 faculties that the senses of the civilised man have 
 been gradually formed in the long course of ages 
 by the stress of a life becoming ever more con¬ 
 scious and personal. Man has given up some of 
 the possibilities which once lay before him, in 
 order to reach a higher level upon the whole. 
 The praeter-usual faculties of the sensitives are in 
 fact a survival from a past level of being, or a 
 reversion to it. In America they are probably 
 one of nature’s reactions from a too ordinary and 
 prosaic level of life, a life without the passion, 
 the poetry, the imagination, which are refined 
 and spiritualised forms of the abnormal faculties 
 of the savage. 
 
 Thus I certainly cannot agree with Mr Myers 
 
 when he speaks of trance and ecstasy as the 
 
 highest form of communion between man and 
 
 the unconscious. While we must allow that 
 
 occasionally spiritual truth and lofty impulse 
 
 4 
 
50 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 have come to man by way of trance, yet ecstasy 
 is a phenomenon infinitely more familiar to the 
 medicine-man of the savage, and to the ministers 
 of the lower religions, than to man in his higher 
 forms. It is a rank shoot, such as are the suckers 
 which spring from the roots of rose trees when 
 the vitality of the tree does not flow properly into 
 its branches. Such shoots need cutting and graft¬ 
 ing before they can produce fair flowers. So races 
 of men when oppressed by a too materialist and 
 humdrum civilisation have a tendency to hark 
 back to the ways of more keenly alive, though 
 less cultivated ancestors. 
 
 It is no doubt true that some of the highest 
 teaching and of the noblest deeds of the past have 
 been the outcome of trance and ecstasy. St Paul 
 was caught up into the third heaven, and heard 
 words which he will not repeat. Socrates would 
 stand rooted to the ground, and insensible to all 
 that was going on about him, and the divine 
 voice by which he guided his conduct would 
 at such times be heard by him. Joan of Arc 
 implicitly followed the guidance of voices which 
 she heard in her trances. So the saints of the 
 earlier, and the religious leaders of the later. 
 Church have frequently been in the habit of 
 falling into states of trance, and have in those 
 states received great messages for mankind. 
 
 But these divine communications have been 
 few in comparison. And they have constantly 
 
SUB-CONSCIOUS AND SUPER-CONSCIOUS 51 
 
 become rarer as man has grown more rational 
 and more fully conscious. The progress of civil¬ 
 isation may have deprived us of some things we 
 are unwilling to lose, as it has given us much for 
 which we may be thankful. In our day it is quite 
 certain that no man of sound judgment would 
 value a statement uttered by a sensitive in a 
 state of trance more than the well-weighed words 
 of a wise and good man. 
 
 In his treatment of the exceptional pheno¬ 
 menon which we call genius, Mr Myers does not 
 take the best line. He speaks of it as a sudden 
 uprush of the sub-conscious in a man. This is a 
 better view than that of writers like Lambroso, 
 who classify together genius and madness. Yet 
 it is defective. An uprush of the sub-conscious 
 in a man might be an intensification in him of 
 what is most like the animals, and might drag 
 him to a far lower level than that of the conscious 
 self. But often in the flashes of genius it is not 
 the sub-conscious which prevails, but the super¬ 
 conscious. Something of heaven is drawn down 
 to earth. The man of genius is the man who 
 sees further than others into the nature and 
 causes of things ; but he does so usually not by 
 a sudden vision, but by long pondering. A better 
 view of genius, as indeed Mr Myers allows in 
 another place, ^ is that it is an intensifying, by an 
 accession of spiritual force, of the highest powers 
 
 ^ Human Personality^ i. 78. 
 
52 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 of a man, the most clearly marked points of his 
 personality. We must recognise the fact that in 
 almost all inspiration there is a joint-working of 
 man and not-man ; that a man can in a measure 
 prepare himself for inspiration, as an iron rod can 
 be arranged to attract the lightning. Every good 
 gift and every perfect gift is from above, and the 
 gifts are not usually bestowed apart from the 
 receptivity of those to whom they are given. 
 There is, no doubt, an unexplained element. 
 Sometimes God chooses the weak things of the 
 world to confound things that are strong, and 
 makes foolishness triumphant over wisdom. We 
 may recognise here the working of a deeper law ; 
 but we must not commit the fatal mistake of 
 supposing that God rules not by law but by 
 caprice. 
 
 The highest thing we find in the world is a 
 noble human personality. And it is one of the 
 great practical paradoxes of life that the human 
 personality which is most constantly in quiet and 
 patient communion with the divine does not 
 thereby become poor and colourless, does not 
 sink into a mere vehicle of an external power, 
 but develops more remarkably on its own lines, 
 gradually growing nearer to the height of that 
 side of divine power and wisdom with which it 
 has affinity. In the mesmeric or spiritualist 
 trance, on the other hand, the sensitive loses the 
 conscious life to become the medium by which 
 
SUB-CONSCIOUS AND SUPER-CONSCIOUS 53 
 
 certain unexplained intelligences operate. And 
 the more often this takes place the more com¬ 
 pletely does the sensitive lose in power of will 
 and character, becoming possessed, the prey of 
 other forces. 
 
 And it must be added that if we accept the 
 test set up by the Founder of Christianity, ‘‘Ye 
 shall know them by their fruits,” spiritism will 
 hardly pass the ordeal. It has been noted, both 
 in England and America, how much laxity in 
 conduct, especially in financial probity and sexual 
 morality, follows in the wake of spiritism. And 
 the supposed revelations from the unseen world, 
 when they are printed in books, are certainly 
 not at all on the same level as the great inspired 
 books of Christian history. There is much in 
 them of vague sentimentality; but little of 
 a definite character which can be brought to 
 any test of fact. 
 
 It has been observed that when the circle is 
 spiritist, the communications always profess to 
 come from the spirits of men and women who 
 have lived in the world ; but when the circle 
 does not consist of convinced spiritists they pro¬ 
 fessedly come from a variety of sources, fairies, 
 demons or earth spirits. The intelligences who 
 communicate in some circles teach the doctrine 
 of the transmigration of souls into new bodies ; 
 in other circles they repudiate this teaching ; the 
 tenor of their assertions is quite different in 
 
54 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 England or America from what it is in France, 
 and so forth. There does not at present appear 
 to be any certainty that the communications 
 move outside the thoughts and beliefs of those 
 present at the sitting. It has been shrewdly said 
 that the only spirit whose working can be clearly 
 traced at spiritualist meetings is the Zeitgeist, 
 Therefore I think we are justified in claiming that 
 the religious views professed by the spiritists, 
 views revealed in trance and expressed in auto¬ 
 matic writing, must be, not indeed set aside as 
 worthless, but judged by the same tests as other 
 professions of faith. 
 
 In the teaching of spiritism there is nothing 
 on a level, I do not say with the New Testament, 
 but with the writings of many eminent phil¬ 
 osophers and theologians. Swedenborg, who 
 stands highest among those who have professed 
 to obtain a modern revelation from a super¬ 
 natural source, took for granted in his writings 
 that the Old Testament was verbally and literally 
 inspired by God. What could be the value of a 
 construction based upon such a foundation ? 
 The whole history of modern spiritism is of a 
 kind to inspire one with little confidence. It 
 may be, as Mr Myers eagerly believed, that the 
 communications from the unknown realms of 
 spirit are now fast changing their character, 
 and becoming more systematic and more trust¬ 
 worthy. Of the future we need not judge, but 
 
SUB-CONSCIOUS AND SUPER-CONSCIOUS 55 
 
 the past lies open to our inspection, and does not 
 stand justified when tried by the Master’s tests. 
 
 We shall in vain search the spiritist literature 
 of our time for the great ethical ideas which have 
 in the past history of religion made up, and do 
 to-day still make up, its life-blood. It does not 
 tell us of sin and of forgiveness ; it does not repre¬ 
 sent the path to heaven as a steep and difficult 
 one. It does not dwell on the nobleness of self- 
 sacrifice, of the daily and hourly need of divine 
 grace, without which man is but a poor phantom. 
 It reflects nothing but a vague religiosity, and 
 represents all men as alike in the way of salvation. 
 It is but too true a reflection of what is weak and 
 fanciful in the religion of the age. As in the 
 stern days of the Reformation all the phenomena 
 of sorcery and witchcraft took a lurid hue from 
 the fierce religious feeling of the time, Satan and 
 his spirits and the fate of the doomed showing 
 large in the foreground, so the necromancy of 
 to-day depicts a future state of being colour¬ 
 less and meaningless, like the lives of many 
 comfortable Christians, without spiritual passion 
 or ambition. Mr Myers makes it a great merit 
 of modern spiritism that according to it “ of evil 
 spirits other than human there is no news what¬ 
 ever ” ; to which we may add that even human 
 spirits seem in the spiritist revelations to be often 
 tricky and mendacious, constantly foolish and 
 trifling, but seldom seriously wicked. But does 
 
56 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 a world of milk-and-water platitude bear any 
 relation to our existing human world, full of 
 cruelty and crime, as of noble self-sacrifice ? The 
 future world revealed by spiritists is a fair reflec¬ 
 tion of their own beliefs, but no great revelation 
 to man. 
 
 It is maintained, for example, by Mr A. R. 
 Wallace, a name of the highest rank in scientific 
 research, that the mediocrity and common-place 
 character observable in the communications of 
 the mediums is only what we might expect if the 
 communicators are human beings released from 
 the body, since the mass of mankind are of this 
 ordinary type. If we accept the spiritist com¬ 
 munications at their face value, we must allow 
 considerable force to this argument. But we 
 may well prefer to think that, granting the fact 
 * of communications of this kind, we do not yet 
 really understand their origin, that they cover 
 much illusion, and that God has reserved for 
 those who love and serve him some better fate 
 than to become wraiths and spooks, and to spend 
 energy in such paltry and superficial talks as con¬ 
 stitute the great mass of spiritist revelations. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The Conscious and Unconscious in Religion 
 
 It is with a feeling of relief that I turn from 
 the phenomena of spiritism to those of will and 
 
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS IN RELIGION 57 
 
 personality, from the sub-conscious faculties of 
 man to those which are conscious, from the 
 passivity of the medium to the activities of 
 human character. 
 
 It may fairly be said that the essentially 
 active nature of man, the place of will in the 
 constitution of the world, is a truth which has 
 gradually been growing upon humanity during 
 all the ages of its thought. Little was made of 
 the will in the philosophy of Greece, though it 
 was better appreciated by Aristotle than by 
 Plato, and better by the Stoics and the neo- 
 Platonists than by Aristotle. Modern philo¬ 
 sophy has made far more of the will than ancient; 
 and in modern philosophy we may see a gradual 
 appreciation of its primacy growing from Locke 
 to Kant, from Kant to Schopenhauer, from 
 Schopenhauer to William James. 
 
 The greatest of the discoveries which have 
 resulted in modern days from the better appli¬ 
 cation of method in psychological study is the 
 recognition of the primacy in man of will, as com¬ 
 pared with the powers of perceiving and judging. 
 We recognise in man, in the first place, a force 
 working from within outwards. It is of his very 
 essence to strive, to try to impose his own forms 
 upon the outer world. He is not a passive but 
 an active being ; and thought, in all its elabora¬ 
 tion, must be regarded as a product, and not the 
 primary product, of living. 
 
58 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 And when we consider this active centre of 
 force, we shall find it no mere mechanism for the 
 weaving of sensations into experience, and for 
 arranging facts in logical order, but a living 
 creature whose origin goes back to the very 
 beginnings of humanity, and whose evolution 
 is the history of the race. It is the crown of 
 creation, the leaven which the Maker of the 
 world added to the scheme of things visible, in 
 order that by degrees it should leaven the whole, 
 and transform it into a temple of the Divine 
 Spirit. 
 
 We have long passed the time when it could 
 be supposed that belief was a matter only of 
 reasoning and consistency. Belief is the expres¬ 
 sion of a spirit, conditioned indeed by the data of 
 experience and the laws of the human mind ; 
 but yet a thing fashioned from within, and not 
 imported from without. What a man really 
 believes, that he is ; and by that he regulates 
 his conduct, throwing all his experience into the 
 mould of an inner life, and arranging it on the 
 lines of character. 
 
 I do not mean that all belief is a merely indi¬ 
 vidual matter, or that every man has to form it 
 from the elements for himself. Every man is 
 more than a mere individual; he is one of a 
 family, a nation, a church. But we touch 
 ground, so to speak, when we realise that in the 
 last result the forces of which the human universe 
 
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS IN RELIGION 59 
 
 is made up are the wills of human beings and the 
 Divine Will which stands over against them and 
 yet works within them. And of any universe 
 which is not human we can in the present state 
 of our faculties know nothing. We only know 
 nature as mirrored in the human consciousness ; 
 we only know the will of God as our wills find it 
 out. 
 
 If this be the tendency and the result of modern 
 psychology, of man’s study of himself, it will at 
 once appear how much the course of thought has 
 done to bring us nearer to the point of view which 
 was taken up by the Founder of Christianity. 
 When he spoke, the world of philosophy was filled 
 with the notion that the intellectual faculties of 
 man were sufficient not only to enable him to 
 discern what was right, but to induce him to do 
 it. To follow reason was regarded as the sum of 
 virtue, and man’s passions and emotions were 
 considered to be mere sources of delusion and 
 error. Intellect was treated as the Godlike 
 element in human nature ; emotion and volition 
 were placed at a lower level. His teaching that 
 goodness lay in conformity with the will of God, 
 that even for the knowledge of spiritual things 
 obedience was a surer guide than reasoning, that 
 the test of doctrine lay in the fruit which it 
 brought forth in the life, that man must be 
 cleansed from the heart outwards rather than 
 from the intelligence inwards—all this teaching 
 
60 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 was quite contrary to the doctrine of the Platonic 
 schools, and might well appear to the Greeks as 
 mere foolishness. And so deeply rooted was the 
 opposite view of life that very soon the intel¬ 
 lectual teachings of Platonism became grafted 
 upon the root of Christianity. Even the author 
 of the Fourth Gospel, one of the greatest of 
 theologians of all time, imported into Christianity 
 the Greek doctrine of the Logos, though he was 
 in spirit too near to his Master to adopt a really 
 Greek view. 
 
 Man must learn by degrees, and the race only 
 reaches the truth after following misleading 
 paths until it reaches a blind wall. It was 
 impossible for the educated world of Hellenism 
 to change in a moment its point of view. But 
 we may fairly say that the teaching of Christ has 
 been by degrees taking a stronger and stronger 
 hold of thought. And we may fairly say that 
 not until the newer psychology made its way, 
 and the primacy of the active over the reasoning 
 faculties of man was established, could the 
 Christian view appear as really the most philo¬ 
 sophic, as most in accord with the facts of human 
 nature and the ways of God as revealed in the 
 working of the world. 
 
 IV 
 
 It is necessary, however difficult it may be, 
 seriously to attempt the distinction of higher and 
 
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS IN RELIGION 61 
 
 lower, to regard religion as an evolution from the 
 lower to the higher, to consider the will of God 
 as a gradual revelation to the world. In this 
 revelation there are three stages : (1) that in 
 
 which religion is mainly concerned with the sub¬ 
 conscious ; (2) that in which religion is fully 
 
 conscious ; (3) that in which religion is directed 
 towards the super-conscious. In all historic 
 religions these three elements are blended, mixed 
 in various proportions. It is the proportion in 
 which they are mixed which fixes their place in 
 the hierarchy. 
 
 (I) The Pagan religions of the ancient world, 
 and the modern religions which are on a level 
 with them, seem to live with faces turned back¬ 
 ward, towards the origin of man. In them there 
 survive many of the instincts which lie at the 
 roots of our animal life. When they emphasise 
 the relation of man to the deities, they think of 
 these deities as representing the great facts and 
 processes of nature, in close connection with 
 which man has grown up—the sun as the source 
 of light and heat, the rain which is the cause 
 of fertility to the soil, the rising of the sap in 
 the trees, and the influences of the seasons of the 
 year and the successions of the moons on the . 
 instinct of self-propagation. The religions of 
 Babylon and of Egypt, the lower strata of the 
 religions of Greece, were of this character. Man 
 realised that he shared the overflowing life of 
 
62 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 nature, and wanted to reeognise in joy and in 
 gratitude his kinship with things around him. 
 It is evident that when men are at this stage, 
 sueh eonditions as those of dreaming, tranee, 
 and eestasy are religious, since they give pre¬ 
 dominance to the sub-conscious faculties, to the 
 life which carries on the necessary natural 
 functions of man, as apart from the life of the 
 intelligence. And we may readily hence under¬ 
 stand that an intensification of the sub-conscious 
 life would commonly be accompanied, especially 
 among the abnormally sensitive in nerve, by a 
 non-moral exaltation, often leading to gross 
 debauch, and sensual excesses of an extravagant 
 kind. Indeed, such aberrations from the standard 
 of the ethical life have marked most popular 
 revivals of religion, from the days when the 
 Roman Senate put down with a stern hand the 
 inroads of Oriental mysticism in southern Italy 
 to our own times, when some of the new religious 
 societies of America have superseded the precepts 
 of the Decalogue. 
 
 Naturalist religion tends inevitably to decay 
 as man becomes civilised. In the ancient world 
 it survived longest in out-of-the-way places, 
 among the hills of Phrygia or in the recesses of 
 Syria. Thought and human intercourse weaken 
 it. But it leaves behind it a progeny who carry 
 on its ideas at a somewhat different level; it is 
 continued in the lower mysticism and in poetry. 
 
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS IN RELIGION 63 
 
 The profound tendencies, rooted in the heart by 
 unnumbered ages of feeling, cannot easily be 
 extinguished. Nor is it desirable that they 
 should. Happiness and enthusiasm, which in 
 man depend in so great a degree on the instinctive 
 feelings, must find an adequate expression ; and 
 without some such expression the life grows sad 
 and stagnant. In actual living the sub-conscious 
 faculties of man find their chief employment. 
 In a more articulate way they find a vent and an 
 expression in art, which is nearly always at 
 bottom the ghost of dead religion, or at all events 
 the outgrowth of suppressed religion. And not 
 only art properly so called—painting, music, and 
 poetry,—but also such mixed customs as dancing 
 and personal adornment go back to a religious 
 origin, and preserve for us some fragments of 
 the enthusiasm of the sub-conscious. 
 
 (2) Of the religions which belong almost wholly 
 to the conscious nature, the best examples are the 
 monotheism of some of the later philosophical 
 schools of Greece, especially the Stoics, and the 
 Confucianism of China and Japan. Here we 
 have systems of belief and of conduct based upon 
 reason, belonging primarily to the brain, and 
 thence influencing the life. These religions find 
 form in ethical maxims rather than in doctrine ; 
 they do not give birth to any elaborate ritual; 
 they are even hostile to art. They seem to those 
 who look on them dry and cold, wanting in 
 
64 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 adaptation to human nature, and cut off from all 
 the springs of enthusiasm. Yet it would be a 
 mistake to suppose that they are without force 
 in the world. They belong, it is true, to the 
 intellectual, to the few rather than to the many. 
 But in a healthy and normal state of society the 
 intellectual few lead the many, and though the 
 influence of intellect on life cannot be compared 
 with the influence of love, sympathy, or enthusi¬ 
 asm, yet it is a steady and a uniform force. No 
 one has more clearly shown than has Auguste 
 Comte that, in spite of the weakness of human 
 intellect in comparison with the active powers of 
 man, it yet has a directing ability. The rudder 
 does not propel the ship, but in the long-run it 
 decides into which harbour the ship shall come, 
 in spite of the most violent gales. In any organ¬ 
 ised and civilised society, if there be a clashing 
 between the conscious and the sub-conscious 
 forms of religion, the former will come to the 
 top, and the latter find refuge among the under 
 circles. 
 
 (3) Fortunately, however, there are forms of 
 religion which are higher than either of these, 
 and combine what is best in both. These are 
 the religions of super-consciousness, the only 
 example of which that need be considered is 
 Christianity in its many forms and aspects. 
 The essential features of Christianity I have tried 
 to point out elsewhere. It is essentially a religion 
 
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS IN RELIGION 65 
 
 of consciousness, since it measures everything in 
 terms of human will, purpose, and personality. 
 It is an anthropocentric as opposed to a pan¬ 
 theistic faith. It teaches that it is by conscious 
 striving that a man must enter into the kingdom 
 of God. It lays the utmost stress on correctness 
 of conduct, on the performance of one’s duty to 
 one’s parents and one’s neighbours. It exhibits 
 the road to heaven as a steep and arduous way, 
 full of difficulties which can only be surmounted 
 by working with full purpose of heart. It makes 
 goodness consist in deed as well as in thought. 
 Its righteousness goes beyond the righteousness 
 of those Jewish Puritans the Pharisees. 
 
 But there is also another side to it. It teaches 
 also that without divine aid man cannot advance 
 in the life of religion, that while a good will is 
 the end of preaching, a will cannot make itself 
 good. Progress in the higher life requires two 
 elements : the resolute setting of the will of man 
 upon what is right, and the aiding of man’s will 
 by the will of God. 
 
 The life of the Spirit does not, according to 
 Christianity, consist in a mere abdication, in 
 paralysis of will and subjection of the intelli¬ 
 gence to some outer force ; but in correlation and 
 co-operation in man of what is his own and of the 
 power which is not his. The means is prayer, 
 and the various ordinances of religion, such as the 
 
 Communion, which are the vehicles of prayer. 
 
 5 
 
66 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 The religions alike of the sub-conscious and the 
 conscious have no need of prayer, or at least ot 
 prayer in its highest forms, the first because it 
 has to do with what is beneath man, the second 
 because it has no communion save with man. 
 But to supra - conscious religion, prayer is the 
 natural attitude of mind. And by the road of 
 prayer the divine inspiration is constantly passing 
 into human life ; so that, to revert to our former 
 comparison, the rays which were above the 
 spectrum of consciousness enter into it more 
 and more fully. 
 
 I do not, of course, use the term prayer here in 
 any narrow sense, but as including all the forms 
 of communion with the higher power. Prayer 
 may find articulate expression in words, or it 
 may be an unexpressed emotion. And articulate 
 prayer may have a vast range, from the natural 
 and innocent petition for personal help to the 
 profoundest submission to the recognised will of 
 God. At all times, however, the prayer of a 
 man is the fullest and truest expression of his 
 conscious spiritual life. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE CLAIMS OF SPIRIT 
 
 I 
 
 From the days of Plato onwards, the higher 
 teaching, the doctrine of the great thinkers, has 
 been that the inner and spiritual world is the 
 true and eternal element, the world of sense the 
 temporary and evanescent element. The sen¬ 
 suous is but the reflection of the spiritual : those 
 who see with the eyes of sense, but not with the 
 eyes of the spirit, are blind. Those who allow 
 themselves to be dominated by the visible, by 
 that which appeals only to the life of the world, 
 are torpid or dead : those who amid mortal 
 surroundings live the life of the spirit, are truly 
 living. 
 
 The view which the Platonists try to justify 
 to the understanding, Christianity has from the 
 first proclaimed, not on grounds of reason, but 
 on grounds of inward perception, and the feeling 
 of values. It has taught that a man who would 
 be worthy of life must look not at the things 
 which are seen, but at the things which are not 
 seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, 
 but the things which are not seen are eternal; 
 
 67 
 
68 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 that a man’s life consists not in what he possesses 
 but in what fundamentally he is, that to gain his 
 soul he must be willing to give up all worldly 
 advantage, that he must have faith to dwell 
 among the things of the spirit. 
 
 It is from the resistances offered to our energies 
 by the material world that we have learned 
 natural law, and from such experiences our 
 intellects have built up a reasoned system of the 
 world. Our ancestors when in a primitive con¬ 
 dition had little notion of natural law; but 
 supposed that the forces of nature and material 
 things had a power of self - determination, 
 possessed something like human free-will. Only 
 as they rose by degrees to the perception of fixed 
 rule and uniformity in nature were they able to 
 order their actions under material conditions, so 
 as to gain effective control of the surrounding 
 world. Only as we in our turn discover the 
 laws of human nature, and the uniformities in 
 our relations to our spiritual environment, can 
 our intellects guide us into appropriate and 
 effectual action in that environment. 
 
 In the Middle Ages, men drew a hard-and-fast 
 line. Knowledge in regard to the world of 
 sense, they held, man could gain by the exercise 
 of his natural powers. But knowledge in regard 
 to the unseen world of spirit, and with knowledge, 
 due and suitable action in regard to it, they 
 thought could only be gained through revelation. 
 
THE CLAIMS OF SPIRIT 
 
 69 
 
 And the revelation they supposed to be embodied 
 in a book, or in an organised Church. All that 
 man’s intellect could do was to discover the 
 dictates of that book, or that Church; after which 
 his intellect and his will alike were bound to 
 accept such dictation. 
 
 But when once criticism fairly set about the 
 task of considering the nature of inspiration and 
 of revelation, this easy resort to an infallible 
 guide became impossible. At the time of the 
 Reformation it was clear to the peoples of 
 northern Europe that many of the teachings, 
 and much of the practise of the Church which 
 claimed to be infallible, were contrary to the 
 light of intelligence and the voice of conscience. 
 For a time the Reformers intrenched themselves 
 behind the refuge of an infallible Bible. But 
 when historic and literary criticism had passed 
 its most rudimentary stage, it became obvious 
 that a book so complex and so wanting in self¬ 
 consistence could not be infallible—that in fact 
 it was not one book, but a literature. Thence¬ 
 forward the spirit of man was driven from all 
 shelters into the open sea, and was obliged, 
 willing or unwilling, to go forward. 
 
 That all truth in doctrine, and all goodness in 
 action, are the result of divine inspiration we may 
 still believe. But this inspiration does not come 
 into human life as through a transparent medium, 
 but through “a dome of many-coloured glass.” 
 
70 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 It stands in relation to temporal surroundings, 
 to schemes of philosophy which are dominant, 
 to ancestral methods of conduct, above all to 
 the fixed and inevitable scheme of human nature. 
 
 It has to be filtered through a personality, and 
 conveyed in words which were formed only with 
 reference to the visible and tangible. It is only 
 through an analysis of the nature of inspiration 
 and the human faculties on which it acts that we 
 can hope to rise through the temporary and 
 imperfect expression towards the divine thought 
 which the mind of man can constantly approach 
 without ever completely reaching it. Of inspira¬ 
 tion and revelation I speak more at length in 
 the next chapter. 
 
 At bottom the whole question is one of fact 
 and experience. We have the facts of religion 
 working in the world about us. And we have 
 a series of biographies of all periods in the 
 history of the Church. There is an enormous 
 consensus of testimony. Thousands have testified 
 that when their own powers of action were 
 exhausted, they have been aided and sustained 
 by a spiritual power working in them, raised from 
 despair to hope, from feebleness to efficiency, 
 from pessimism to a free and joyous activity. 
 They have thrown themselves into the river of 
 spirit, sometimes doubting whether they would 
 ever come to the surface ; and they have found 
 themselves borne up and carried onward to ends 
 
THE CLAIMS OF SPIRIT 
 
 71 
 
 which seemed beyond their attainment, very often 
 to ends which they had not seen or anticipated. 
 The venture of faith has been justified. Of course, 
 one could not say that this is always the case in 
 the world, though some will say that it is always 
 the case in their own experience. There is risk 
 which has to be incurred ; otherwise faith would 
 have in it little merit. And so poor is the courage 
 and the will of man, that however clear may be 
 the recollection of past aid, it yet always does 
 require some strain to put the matter to the 
 proof again. Jesus said, “ Every one that 
 asketh receiveth ” : but men have not believed 
 his word, because they have not recognised the 
 spiritual aid, unless it has carried them exactly 
 the way they wished to go. God will certainly 
 not be dictated to. But the possibility and 
 the actuality of divine aid seems to me as 
 well established by history as any of the 
 regular phenomena of the moral constitution 
 of things. And it takes place not only in the 
 great crises of life but in the small events of 
 every day. 
 
 II 
 
 The intellectual difficulty lies in the interpreta¬ 
 tion of the source and the meaning of such aid. 
 Here, beyond question, there is the greatest 
 difference of view between man and man, accord¬ 
 ing to the country, the education and the personal 
 
72 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 character of each. Here we have to trust to our 
 intellectual powers, which are very feeble and 
 prone to every kind of illusion and of error. 
 The varieties of religious experience are many ; 
 but the interpretations of that experience are 
 infinitely more varied. 
 
 There are various paths to union with the 
 divine. The first is the path of asceticism, set 
 forth by Buddhism, and eastern religions gener¬ 
 ally. These religions teach that all desire is an 
 evil, and only by quenching it can a man attain 
 to peace and rest, that the wants natural to man 
 as man must be thwarted and starved, so that by 
 degrees he may quench the desire of life, and 
 attain, not in one life, but in the course of many 
 lives, to that condition which is called Nirvana, 
 which may be considered, according to the 
 point of view which one takes, as either the 
 cessation of being or absorption in the general 
 life. To the eastern mind the highest phase of 
 life upon earth is passive contemplation of the 
 divine, accompanied by complete indifference to 
 pain and pleasure. The duty to one’s fellows is 
 not to inflict upon them any pain, and to encourage 
 them on the road to Nirvana. 
 
 This oriental frame of mind has had many 
 echoes in the west. To pass by such Greek sages 
 as are little more than names to us, such as 
 Pythagoras and Empedocles, we find it reflected 
 in some of the many forms of Platonism. Some 
 
THE CLAIMS OF SPIRIT 
 
 73 
 
 Platonists speak of the spirit as imprisoned in 
 the body, and only to be released by mortifica¬ 
 tion of the body. It is probable that this view 
 came into Platonism from Orphism ; but Plato 
 and his successors raised all the mysticism which 
 they adopted to a higher level, both ethical and 
 intellectual. This side of Platonism became more 
 and more prominent as the ancient world became 
 weary, and drew towards its dissolution. It 
 passed on into rising Christianity. 
 
 The asceticism of monk and hermit in the 
 Christian Church has had much in common with 
 that of the Buddhist saint. In more recent 
 times the pessimistic philosophy of von Hartmann, 
 which regards individual existence as an evil, 
 is closely related to Buddhism. And in the poems 
 of Shelley, one of the least consistent of human 
 beings, one may find traces of asceticism mingled 
 with overflowing joy of life :— 
 
 “ He has outsoared the shadow of our night; 
 
 Envy and ealumny and hate and pain, 
 
 And that unrest which men miscall delight, 
 
 Can touch him not and torture not again.” 
 
 After all, if the world of spirit is one, including 
 individuals, there must lie a truth at the founda¬ 
 tion of asceticism, of the practice, even if that 
 practice may often have been defended by false 
 theory. The members of monastic societies, and 
 even solitaries, do serve a function in emphasising 
 
74 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 and strengthening the relation between God and 
 man. By rigorously training the body, and by 
 keeping mind and desire away from the things 
 of the world, they widen the connection which 
 unites man to God, and they produce in the 
 world of spirit fresh courses of energy. In ways 
 invisible and often unfathomable they further 
 the divine will. And indeed, if it were otherwise, 
 if all the prayer and devotion of the monastery 
 were merely wasted, poured out in vain, it would 
 be impossible to understand how thousands in 
 all periods, living and reasonable men and women, 
 would have found in the life of the cloister their 
 best happiness, and regarded expulsion thence 
 as the greatest of calamities. When Angelique 
 Arnauld was allowed to follow her wish and 
 become a nun, she could not help dancing for 
 joy. It is by no means only those who have met 
 with misery and disappointment in the world 
 who have found a refuge in the cloister, but 
 thousands of men and women before whom life 
 spread like a pleasant garden. They have chosen 
 what they liked best. The persistency of the 
 monastic impulse, even amid the most modern 
 conditions, and in the most prosperous countries, 
 shows that it meets an enduring need of human 
 nature, is a testimony to the reality of the invis¬ 
 ible. No doubt in the Middle Ages the tendency 
 went too far; and no doubt the combination of 
 active service with contemplation is an improve- 
 
THE CLAIMS OF SPIRIT 
 
 75 
 
 ment. But to set aside the whole ascetic tendency 
 as a baseless aberration would be folly. Tenny¬ 
 son says that the thoughts of poets enrich the 
 blood of the world. In the same way the prayers 
 and meditations of the cloister have enriched the 
 life-blood of Christianity. 
 
 But with Christian asceticism there has nearly 
 always been mingled something of a second way 
 to the divine, practical philanthropy. In view 
 of the origins of Christianity, and the recorded 
 life of the Founder, it was almost impossible 
 that in his followers there should not be com¬ 
 bined with self-denial and contemplation of the 
 divine nature something of care for human 
 happiness. In the biography of the Gospels we 
 find the combination of nights of communion 
 with God and days of faith-healing and active 
 beneficence. The death on the cross may be 
 regarded either as a complete surrender to the 
 divine will, or as a self-sacrifice for the good of 
 mankind. Love to God and love to man were 
 regarded by Jesus as mutually complementary. 
 And the Fourth Evangelist, who so wonderfully 
 comprehended the spirit of his Master, writes 
 that no one can love God who does not also love 
 his brother. 
 
 In our days the way of practical benevolence 
 has come so much into the foreground that it has 
 almost obscured the way of contemplation and 
 of the love of God. The religious societies which 
 
76 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 cultivate contemplation and the practice of wor¬ 
 ship are giving way to such as have an active 
 mission in the world. The type of sainthood is 
 becoming more and more practical, the type of 
 Father Damien, the apostle of the lepers, rather 
 than the type of the hermit and the recluse. The 
 thing which beyond other things the Christian 
 Church has to teach the community at present is, 
 that apart from ideals and the service of God, 
 philanthropy will bring no cure to human evils, 
 but even intensify them. We need to reverse 
 the saying of the Evangelist, and to proclaim 
 that he who does not keep God ever in his mind 
 will love his fellow-men to no great purpose. He 
 is likely, in the long run, to do them more harm 
 than good. If he promotes their happiness it 
 will probably be at the expense of others. 
 
 There is a third way of approach to the divine, 
 which, however, is necessarily confined to the few. 
 It consists in so deep a love of, and sympathy 
 with, the intellectual side of the natural and the 
 human world as to enter, so to speak, into the 
 thought of the Creator, to rejoice in what is called 
 by Bergson devolution creatrice, to understand 
 more and more of the inner meaning and re¬ 
 lations of the world, both material and human. 
 Whereas asceticism is a decaying cause, the intel¬ 
 lectual sympathy with God is becoming more and 
 more possible, as we sound deeper abysses of 
 experience, and learn more and more of the 
 
THE CLAIMS OF SPIRIT 
 
 77 
 
 working of law and of inspiration in the world. 
 As asceticism needs for its supplement practical 
 philanthropy, so this higher philosophy is natur¬ 
 ally allied with the pursuit of science, not for the 
 mere rewards which such pursuit may bring, but 
 as an end in itself, the pure love of knowledge 
 and truth. 
 
 The world at large little understands or ap¬ 
 preciates the devotee of science. It sets him 
 down as an unpractical dreamer, except when 
 from time to time he astonishes it by some 
 brilliant discovery which can be put to practical 
 use. If his devotion renders him, as it often 
 does, a somewhat abstracted husband or in¬ 
 efficient parent, it abuses him for selfishness. 
 The Marthas of the world are always claiming 
 from him a practical co-operation, which he is 
 often unfit to give. Seldom indeed is his life 
 one of prosperity or worldly success. Yet as a 
 class the devotees of science, of truth in nature 
 and in history, are probably as happy as any 
 class of men. Great and even small discoveries 
 of new scientific laws or new keys to history and 
 conduct give them a pleasure which is not only 
 keen but pure, and which entails no reaction. 
 They also “ touch God’s right hand in the 
 darkness, and are lifted up and strengthened.” 
 
 Yet another way towards the dominance of 
 spirit is that followed by artists, poets, musicians, 
 when they devote themselves wholly to their 
 
78 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 crafts, and undergo the rigorous self-discipline 
 and training which they all involve, in the pur¬ 
 suit of beauty, of harmony, of the embodiment 
 of the ideas revealed to their spirits in painting 
 or statue, in poem or musical composition. As 
 God, by pouring into the world the breath of life, 
 produces men with character and purposes, so 
 the artist creates forms which take their place in 
 the world of sense, revealing what had been 
 only implicit and undefined, and thereby stirring 
 the spirits of men and leading them towards 
 happiness. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Since, however, man is an individual, we must 
 consider the matter before us also from the indi¬ 
 vidual point of view of happiness. Men will 
 naturally say that it may be a worthy course to 
 further the spiritual life in the world, but that 
 they want also to see wherein it will further their 
 own ultimate well-being. 
 
 It is the weak point of all theories of ethics 
 that the question why a man should postpone his 
 own happiness to the good of the race remains 
 insoluble. It can only be met by an appeal to 
 faith, to the higher nature. The answer of Jesus 
 was, ‘‘ that ye may be the children of your Father 
 in heaven.” The answer of mediaeval Christi¬ 
 anity was, “ that you may secure future happiness 
 in heaven.” John Stuart Mill, in utilitarian 
 
THE CLAIMS OF SPIRIT 
 
 79 
 
 despair of finding a sufficient motive, said that 
 anyone who refused to consider others should be 
 treated as a mad dog. All states try, by rewards 
 and punishments, to secure a certain amount of 
 self-sacrifice in the individual; but in western 
 countries the growth of individualism and the 
 chaos in ethics have made such legislation in many 
 matters ineffective. Thus in modern life the 
 man who pursues a life of materialist selfishness 
 often does not meet with obvious punishment. 
 
 I am no better prepared than other moralists 
 to provide a self-regarding reason for social 
 conduct. But I think that when society has 
 better organisation something more of discipline 
 will be attempted. Meantime I may observe 
 that a reasoned selfishness is not very common as 
 a ruling principle in life, though an impulsive or 
 emotional selfishness may be. And when we 
 consider the analogies to be found in the world 
 we shall see that reasoned selfishness is decidedly 
 out of place in the biological scheme of things. 
 
 A very consolatory reflection, amid the dis¬ 
 appointments of life, may be derived from the 
 eternal hopefulness of nature, and of the creative 
 spirit who works through nature. The moment 
 rain stops the earth begins to dry up ; no con¬ 
 tinuance of bad weather at all diminishes the 
 hopefulness with which nature turns to brighter 
 days. If one examines the shrubs and trees in 
 November, one finds that leaves do not drop off 
 
80 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 merely because they are decayed; they are 
 pushed off by the buds which are already begin¬ 
 ning to form in preparation for the spring of the 
 next year. In the case of healthy human beings, 
 the moment disease has passed its crisis, the 
 powers of new growth and recovery begin to 
 assert themselves. Nature is never weary and 
 never despondent, but always striving towards 
 recovery and new life. The keener our sympathy 
 with nature, the stronger will be the contagion 
 by which nature passes on to us this keen and 
 hopeful frame of mind. 
 
 So, if we would be the children of the author of 
 nature, we are urged never to despair, however 
 dark the clouds may be, but to keep doing, always 
 aiming at what is better, and when we fail begin¬ 
 ning again. Such constant striving, however it 
 may seem in this or that case to be frustrated, 
 must in the long run tend to produce a better 
 earth, and a nearer approach to heaven, just as 
 the creative spirit, always working in the world, 
 has by degrees produced plants and animals of a 
 higher grade and of greater beauty. 
 
 The view maintained in this work is that it is 
 the main end and business of every man to take 
 his due place in the world of spirit. To the laws 
 of that world he owes loyalty. To other citizens 
 of that world he owes consideration and affection. 
 To the Ruler of that world he owes both love and 
 obedience. That by such a course he will reach 
 
THE CLAIMS OF SPIRIT 
 
 81 
 
 his own best happiness is not a thing that can be 
 proved. It must be accepted by that stress of 
 heart and will which is called faith. But if it 
 cannot be proved, it certainly cannot be dis¬ 
 proved. In the main conduct, as in most of the 
 urgent decisions, of life a man must take risks. 
 He will learn in the course of living that such 
 ventures of faith justify themselves in practice. 
 And so he will believe that the venture in the 
 quest of eternal life will also justify itself. As 
 St Paul puts it, “If ye live unto the flesh, ye 
 shall die ; but if ye through the spirit mortify 
 the deeds of the flesh, ye shall live.” And he 
 will find that if he allows the connection between 
 his spirit and the Divine Spirit to be blocked, 
 whether by actual transgression or by an accumu¬ 
 lation of indolence and self-will, his inner life 
 will grow poorer and poorer ; so that however he 
 may seem to the world to prosper, he will become 
 in his own eyes contemptible and wretched. 
 
 That a man’s life consists not in the extent of 
 his possessions, that wealth and outward pros¬ 
 perity have very little relation to happiness, any¬ 
 one can see who looks a little beneath the surface. 
 If anyone considers who among his friends are 
 really the happiest, he will seldom find that they 
 are the wealthiest and most prosperous. The 
 opposite view is easily recognised as an illusion. 
 Yet there are undoubtedly conditions in the 
 
 world more favourable to happiness than are 
 
 6 
 
82 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 their opposites. Health among the first, and 
 domestic relations of a satisfactory kind, and 
 kinds of work which suit the individual and exer¬ 
 cise his powers without overtaxing them. But 
 
 « 
 
 yet all these together, though they may promote 
 happiness, do not constitute it. Happiness is 
 from within; it is a central fountain of life, 
 which will find easier course when circumstances 
 are favourable; but which will break a way 
 through almost any obstacles. This inner spring 
 is dependent on relations to the spiritual source 
 of life. It rises and falls, is full or runs dry 
 according to laws which none of us can fathom. 
 But the chief condition of it lies in a right relation 
 to the law of our being, in an inward sense that 
 we are pursuing the course which the author of 
 our being intended us to pursue. Happiness in 
 the main depends on the harmony of our per¬ 
 sonality with such a course ; unhappiness, on a 
 divergence from it. 
 
 Experience shows that the greatest source of 
 happiness in the world is the fulfilment by indi¬ 
 viduals of the law of their being, rather than the 
 pursuit of pleasure. 
 
 It is so even among insects. In a hive of bees 
 the drones are all eager to have intercourse with 
 the queen when she makes her nuptial flight. 
 One only succeeds, and he perishes in the act; 
 yet he is the happiest of all, and all would gladly 
 change places with him. The workers, unde- 
 
THE CLAIMS OF SPIRIT 
 
 88 
 
 veloped females, seem to find infinite unselfish 
 happiness in storing honey for the hive and tend¬ 
 ing the grubs which shall develop into bees. It 
 is so among animals. The dog who has any 
 goodness in him does not hesitate for a moment 
 to attack a dog larger than himself, in the service 
 of his master. But the dog is at a high level of 
 the animal world, and he may by love, fidelity, and 
 devotion to his master even be said to enter into 
 the world of spirit, and to attain a happiness 
 greater than any mere indulgence of sense. 
 
 I have above spoken of the two instincts of 
 self-expansion and of sex as the primary im¬ 
 pulses of man, on the gratification of which 
 happiness naturally depends. On the first of 
 these instincts is based that passion for carrying 
 out the law of one’s being of which I have been 
 speaking. On the second is based a man’s re¬ 
 lation to society. No man can be happy unless 
 he meets with the appreciation of his fellow-men 
 and with the stronger feeling of love from a few. 
 In rare cases he may be called upon to sacrifice 
 both of these to his loyalty to the higher calling. 
 But generally speaking they regulate his conduct. 
 And they cannot be attained without a certain 
 degree of self-subordination to the happiness of 
 others. The man who sacrifices to his own 
 success, duty and the happiness of those about 
 him is not only base, but also in the long run 
 the most miserable of mankind. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 INSPIRATION AND REVELATION 
 
 I 
 
 Inspiration and revelation are two sides or 
 aspects of the same fact. Each implies the com¬ 
 munication to chosen men of impulses coming 
 from that which is super-conscious. I have 
 spoken of this process elsewhere as the communi¬ 
 cation to man of the divine ideas. But when 
 one thus uses the word ideas, it is necessary to 
 explain that one uses it rather in a Platonic than 
 in a modern sense. One means by it the primary 
 impulses, which are ever coming from God and 
 moulding the world of nature and of man in the 
 direction of the better. Such impulses may 
 take body in many forms, in literature, in art, in 
 great reforms, in noble enterprises. But between 
 inspiration and revelation there is this distinction. 
 When we speak definitely of inspiration we refer 
 mainly to the character and spirit of the messenger 
 who is filled with an impulse from above, and by 
 it carried above the level of ordinary life. And 
 when we speak of revelation we refer primarily 
 to the intellectual fruits of inspiration, the 
 speeches which the inspired man utters, the 
 
 84 
 
INSPIRATION AND REVELATION 
 
 85 
 
 treatises which he writes, the belief which he 
 formulates. 
 
 A full and warm belief in the value of inspira¬ 
 tion and revelation belonged eminently, though 
 of course not exclusively, to the Jewish race. 
 Through all its ancient history, Israel has been 
 the race of inspiration. Prophets arose in genera¬ 
 tion after generation, speaking in the name of 
 Jehovah, and calling on the people to repent, 
 to remember the loyalty due to the divine ruler, 
 to trust in him with all their hearts, and to keep 
 the law which he had given. Hence arose the 
 Jewish scriptures, which may fairly be called the 
 basis of western religion, the basis on which 
 Christianity built an immortal structure. 
 
 Among the Greeks inspiration was far less 
 regarded. Any sort of fanaticism, any claim to 
 a special relation to the divine, was looked on 
 by the Greeks with suspicion, and keenly criticised. 
 In the case of a few of the immortals, Socrates, 
 Plato, Epictetus, such claims were allowed by 
 their disciples : but their utterances were so 
 
 much subordinated to reason and method that 
 
 » 
 
 they had little of the stirring power of the prophets 
 of Israel. The ancient sacred literature of India 
 1 and Persia is at a wonderfully high level; but it 
 I also is so transfused with meditation as to become 
 j rather theosophy than religion. The relations 
 of the Jewish seers to God was so close that they 
 were able to learn and to set forth more of the 
 
86 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 divine purpose than the wise men of all the 
 nations. They revealed God as the Greeks 
 discovered man and the world. 
 
 Above, in discussing the sub-conscious, the 
 conscious, and the super-conscious in knowledge, 
 and particularly in religion, we have been investi¬ 
 gating the psychology of inspiration. But it 
 may be well to retrace here the lines of the 
 subject. 
 
 Recent psychology has dwelt, as I think with 
 excessive emphasis, on the part played by dreams 
 in human life. No doubt it is not rare for those 
 whose dreams are of a more persistent and con¬ 
 nected kind to learn from dreams much in regard 
 to the part of their being which is unconscious. 
 This is, of course, no new discovery : in all countries 
 and at all ages dreams have been often regarded 
 as a kind of revelation, though seldom of the. 
 highest kind. There were in Greece many 
 temples in which invalids slept, in the hope that 
 in dreams the nature of their illness, and perhaps 
 some remedy offered by the gods, might be 
 revealed. In many parts of the Old Testament 
 dreams are spoken of as revealing the sacredness 
 of a locality, or the way to the divine favour, or, 
 in particular, the course of future events. The 
 beginning of Matthew’s Gospel is full of dreams, 
 in which specially favoured servants of God are 
 shown what they ought to do, or whither they 
 should go. Belief in heaven-sent dreams has 
 
INSPIRATION AND REVELATION 
 
 87 
 
 been one of the strands of which all religions in 
 the past have been made up. The recent treat¬ 
 ment of dreams has regarded them as throwing 
 light not upon the nature of duty or divine 
 impulses, but upon the sub-conscious elements 
 in a man’s own being, dragging into light hidden 
 reasons for his actions, and enabling him or his 
 advisers to counteract by conscious processes 
 pernicious tendencies. 
 
 In my opinion it is easy to make too much of 
 dreams in this connection. Vivid and connected 
 dreams are concomitants rather of disease than 
 of health. The ordinary, well-constituted man 
 may indeed dream, but his dreams are so vague 
 and fleeting, so inconsistent and irrational, that 
 very little indeed can be made of them. When, 
 however, dreams are vivid and persistent, it is 
 natural to seek an explanation of them. Sooth¬ 
 sayers of all ages have found one of the most 
 lucrative branches of their trade in the explana¬ 
 tion of dreams. Usually they lend themselves 
 to a score of explanations. Some may indicate 
 bodily illness, some mental overstrain, some a 
 great nervous shock. A few, among many, may 
 come through the gate of horn, and give informa¬ 
 tion of a valuable kind, as to the unconscious 
 elements in the personality of the dreamer. 
 
 So far as I am able to judge, infinitely more 
 valuable thoughts and impulses come into the 
 mind at the moment of waking than in the 
 
88 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 course of dreams. Often it has happened to me 
 to find formed within me at the moment of 
 waking, a conviction or a purpose, which hot only 
 had not been present when I went to sleep, but 
 seemed to me quite new. But, in fact, at any 
 time of quiet or meditation, during a solitary 
 walk, in the presence of sea or mountain, when 
 one is recovering from illness, when the mind is 
 withdrawn from the daily cares and troubles of 
 life, one feels rising within one hopes and pur¬ 
 poses which sometimes give a new aspect to 
 
 life. Probablv there was never a time when 
 
 «/ 
 
 men were less given to quiet and receptivity. 
 The pace of life is always increasing; we rush to 
 constant occupation and perpetual preoccupation ; 
 we are always doing something or talking to 
 some one. Hence the aspect of religion is changed; 
 there is more of ritual and ceremony, less of inward 
 and meditative religion. That our ways tend 
 to make our Christianity more superficial, more 
 restless, less serious, can hardly be denied. 
 
 William James has spoken of genius as a sudden 
 or abnormal uprising of the unconscious in us. 
 This definition may serve, if by genius we mean 
 not only genius for good, but genius for evil 
 also. The unconscious is a profound sea, on which 
 we fioat, and its supersession of the conscious may 
 lead to sublime heights of art, of feeling, or of 
 virtue, or may debase us by drawing us back towards 
 the savagery from which we have emerged. 
 
INSPIRATION AND REVELATION 
 
 89 
 
 Inspiration in religion is what Matthew Arnold 
 called genius for godliness, a pouring out in our 
 lives of the impulses of the Power that makes for 
 righteousness. This we may most clearly see in 
 the case of what one may call the classical 
 examples of inspiration, the Hebrew prophets. 
 At times when the national life was sinking to a 
 low ebb, when the Jewish nation was reverting to 
 the level of the Canaanites around, they came to 
 call the nation to repentance, to renewed worship, 
 to the hope of a better future. 
 
 Primarily, they were preachers or proclaimers 
 of the need of righteousness, of a just, pure, and 
 noble life for the nation and the individual. 
 But they went beyond mere exhortation to the 
 practice of good. Their inspiration, so to speak, 
 overflowed into the way of thought and intelli¬ 
 gence. In accord with the general feeling of the 
 time they declared, in the first place, that right¬ 
 eousness led to national prosperity and a high 
 place among the nations. So far they preached 
 for all time. But they also taught that in the 
 individual life righteousness led to outward pros¬ 
 perity and success. This was far more doubtful 
 doctrine ; and in the book of Job we have a 
 magnificent protest against its universal truth, 
 though even Job comes to a “ happy ending,” 
 and the patriarch recovers his worldly possessions. 
 So the growing conviction that the noblest life 
 is not necessarily the most prosperous forced 
 
90 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 inspiration to take a less individual course, 
 and to predict for the nation a happy time in 
 the future, when it should become a holy people, 
 and rule in peace and plenty among the nations. 
 
 Hence arose the great apocalyptic literature of 
 later Israel, which led in turn to the preaching 
 of the kingdom of heaven by John the Baptist, 
 and in an infinitely nobler form, by Christ himself. 
 And thence, again, arose the great mediaeval 
 teaching of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, which 
 dominated the minds of our ancestors, and still 
 to a great degree dominates the minds of nations 
 influenced by Christianity. 
 
 The point on which I want to insist is that the 
 root of prophecy was an impulse or urging arising 
 from the unconscious. It was a call proceeding 
 from the great Ruler of the unconscious world, a 
 divine idea which tended to the formation of 
 great ideals in a race chosen to lead and instruct 
 mankind, and to the raising of the level of 
 humanity. 
 
 The comprehension of the idea by the Prophets 
 and their attempt to give it intellectual form, 
 were always very imperfect. Even when the 
 inspiration was of the purest and highest type, 
 the words and deeds in which it took concrete 
 form and expression were the words and deeds 
 of an individual; for of the inspiration of societies 
 I am not at present speaking; that I must deal 
 with later. The individual, then, who was the 
 
INSPIRATION AND REVELATION 
 
 91 
 
 channel of inspiration had to give it expression 
 through his concrete personality. Hence, end¬ 
 less perversion and adulteration. The moral 
 nature of the prophet was not, could not be, 
 perfect, but was humanly imperfect and one¬ 
 sided. However much he might strive to set it 
 aside and to be a mere mouthpiece of the inspira¬ 
 tion, he could not do so wholly. Necessarily, he 
 was under the dominion of what Bacon calls the 
 idols, the idols of the cave and of the tribe. As 
 the worship of Jehovah had in Israel constantly 
 to contend against the worship of inferior deities, 
 so the word of Jehovah in the spirit of the prophet 
 had to struggle against a host of idols, desires, 
 prejudices, personal feelings. He would often 
 retire into the wilderness to starve and mortify 
 the personal bias ; but even so, wherever he went 
 he carried with him his personality, with all its 
 weaknesses and with all its strength. He would 
 even so find that— 
 
 “ Time, like a dome of many-eoloured glass, 
 
 Stains the white radiance of eternity.” 
 
 But what seems to a modern mind even more 
 disastrous to the purity of inspiration is the 
 limitation of intellectual outlook. The prophet’s 
 knowledge of nature and of man was very im¬ 
 perfect ; even of the social and political world 
 beyond the reach of his own observation and ex¬ 
 perience it was so small that he would constantly 
 
92 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 be drawing false inferences and making hasty 
 generalisations. When we think of these things 
 it may well seem a marvel that after all there is 
 much which belongs to all time, much which only 
 needs resetting to be a light to the modern world. 
 That this should be the case proves the funda¬ 
 mental reality of the inspiration, proves that the 
 prophet was really in contact with a vast region 
 of the unconscious, underlying the being of 
 nations and of individuals, a world of ideas 
 generally dawning on the world and destined 
 to dawn upon it in the future. As ^neas saw in 
 Hades the souls which should animate those here¬ 
 after to be born, so the prophet saw something 
 of the underlying forces which should gradually 
 inform the world. 
 
 It was but natural that with this deeper view 
 within him, he should have felt able to foretell 
 actual events in the world,—the fall of Tyre, the 
 ruin of Babylon. But naturally, when he came 
 to speak of actual events, he would be liable to 
 many misleading tendencies, he would speak of 
 that of which he had little knowledge. So his 
 definite predictions were very often falsified. And 
 when he spoke of what was far removed from 
 human knowledge, the creation of the world, the 
 course of the stars, and the like, he would naturally 
 only speak in what seem to us parables and images. 
 
 In Jewish prophecy we find the phenomena of 
 inspiration in their simplest and most intelligible 
 
INSPIRATION AND REVELATION 
 
 93 
 
 form. But all inspiration, that of the Christian 
 origins, that of the Catholic Church, that of great 
 modern prophets, is of the same general character. 
 It implies a source in the unconscious, and for 
 all the nobler kind of inspiration in what I have 
 called the super-conscious. It is all liable to be 
 perverted by selfishness, prejudice, hate. And 
 it has always to be expressed in terms of the 
 intellectual equipment of the age. It is of all 
 degrees of value and trustworthiness from the 
 almost worthless to the sublimest efforts of 
 genius, or to such utterance of supersensual 
 truth as many of us might accept as infallible. 
 
 The predominance of revelation in Israel has had 
 extraordinary effects, both for good and evil, in 
 the course of Christianity. At the time of the 
 rise of Christianity, the Jews had become con¬ 
 vinced of the perfection and infallibility of their 
 sacred books, an infallibility not only spiritual, 
 but literal. No reader of the New Testament 
 can fail to observe with what complete confidence 
 the Jewish sacred writers are cited. Often, indeed, 
 their words are misinterpreted; but that they 
 are liable to error seems hardly to be hinted, 
 except where they were emended by Christ him¬ 
 self. The Christians took over from the Jews 
 the doctrine of the infallibility of scripture, and 
 before long certain of the early Christian writings 
 were added to the Jewish canon, and shared with 
 it the robe of infallibility. 
 
94 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 I have already tried to show that inspiration 
 belongs not only to the unconscious, but also to 
 the conscious elements in man. It may act, not 
 by superseding the normal powers of intelligence 
 and action, but by raising them to a higher 
 level, and imparting to them a greater force. 
 Genius may be shown, not by an uprising from 
 the unconscious, but by an intensification of the 
 conscious. It may be exhibited by the man of 
 science in a profounder vision into the realities of 
 nature and human society, as well as by the 
 highly-trained artist in rising above the level of 
 his previous work, or by the statesman who 
 succeeds by pains and thought in really adapting 
 legislation to the natural instincts of a country. 
 It seems to be at bottom insight; and the in¬ 
 sight may be a result of the fullest working of the 
 natural powers of a man, as well as of a sudden 
 and unforeseen illumination. 
 
 II 
 
 One of the greatest, perhaps the very greatest, 
 of all the difficulties which modern Christianity 
 has to face, is how to deal with religious inspira¬ 
 tion. Theoretically, the distinctions are clear. 
 We have to discern between the true inner 
 illumination and the faulty and imperfect ex¬ 
 pressions to which it gives rise. The former is 
 not easily tested, and can only be satisfactorily 
 judged by the test of fruits. The latter is subject 
 
INSPIRATION AND REVELATION 
 
 95 
 
 to the ordinary intellectual and critical investiga¬ 
 tions of mankind. But the great difficulty is 
 that the followers of the inspired person do not 
 easily admit this distinction. His inspiration 
 and its expression are to them all one ; and they 
 think that any one who ventures to criticise the 
 expression must also deny the inspiration. The 
 adherents and followers of the prophet will have 
 all or nothing. Whatever he says must be 
 accepted bodily, and any criticism is regarded 
 as an attack upon the genuineness of the in¬ 
 spiration. Hence arise the interminable contro¬ 
 versies as to the inspiration and infallibility of 
 the Bible and the Church. 
 
 In the light of reason, nothing could seem more 
 incongruous than any doctrine of infallibility. 
 For everywhere, among things to be known, we 
 find a multitude of probabilities of error to one of 
 truth. The wisest man will hold erroneous views 
 as to a thousand subjects ; and his whole life may 
 be devoted to a gradual elimination of what is 
 false, and a pursuit of what is true. 
 
 The belief in infallibility, whether in the Bible, 
 the Church, or any other authority, is obviously 
 not based upon reason, but upon an emotion of 
 veneration. Of course, it may be blindly accepted 
 from custom or from social influence. But when 
 it is more reasonably held, it may be based upon 
 experience. It will often happen that, when a 
 man is following his own opinion, there breaks in 
 
96 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 upon him a voice from some high source, spoken 
 or written, which at once carries him away, which 
 makes him feel that his own opinion is super¬ 
 ficial, poor, and worthless, and that the new light 
 is of infinitely greater value. He follows this 
 light, and finds that it has led him to truer 
 thought and nobler action than he could by 
 himself have reached. If this has happened 
 often, his view of the inspired voice will rise 
 higher and higher, until he follows it without 
 hesitation or demur. He may well speak of it 
 as infallible. But what he really means, by the 
 phrase, is not that he thinks it wholly incapable 
 of error, but that he thinks it far more likely to 
 be right than any view which he could form by 
 the exercise of his own judgment. The infalli¬ 
 bility will be limited, no doubt, to special fields ; 
 for no man can deny the truths which he learns 
 by actual experience in the world at the bidding 
 of an authority however venerable. But in 
 matters beyond sense and daily experience, he 
 will rely on an authority which he has tried and 
 not found wanting. 
 
 An intellectual apprehension of the nature of 
 inspiration, revelation, and infallibility is not 
 extremely difficult. But when an individual man, 
 or a society which is also in a sense an individual, 
 tries to guide the course of life and belief amid 
 the facts and impulses which arise out of in¬ 
 spiration, there arise the greatest difficulties. 
 
INSPIRATION AND REVELATION 
 
 97 
 
 Partly these come of the differences of tempera¬ 
 ment and tradition and education, partly of the 
 varied experiences met in the course of living. 
 I may glance at a few of the more fundamental 
 difficulties, and the more usual way of meeting 
 them. 
 
 One method of solution of the general problem 
 was brought into strong light by the French 
 Modernists in recent times. It lay in the dis¬ 
 tinction between doctrine and history in inspired 
 literature, especially in the Bible. The Modernists 
 accepted the claim of the Roman Curia to infalli¬ 
 bility in the matter of doctrine, or dogma as they 
 preferred to call it. The Church, they held, had 
 a right of divine origin to form organisation, to 
 prescribe rites and ceremonies, and even to 
 establish dogmas in regard to moral and spiritual 
 truth. But in matters of history it had no right 
 by authority to impose on the faithful any par¬ 
 ticular view. The history recorded in the Bible, 
 and the history of the Church, must be judged in 
 the light of recognised canons of historic research. 
 The distinction is luminous, and it has been put 
 forth with remarkable lucidity by M. Loisy. 
 Unfortunately the Roman Church would not, 
 and in fact could not, accept it; the Church 
 claimed the right to fix and to interpret religious 
 history just as clearly as it claimed the right to 
 formulate doctrine. And indeed, to draw a 
 sharp line between dogma and the history of 
 
98 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 doctrine, Rome held to be impossible. Moreover, 
 it is clear that if once we apply our critical 
 faculties in the field of religious history, we must 
 needs apply them also in the field of religious 
 psychology, and so, in fact, to the very basis of 
 all doctrine. 
 
 In the Middle Ages, by the great schoolmen, a 
 broad line was drawn between secular knowledge, 
 in regard to which sense and experience sufficiently 
 inform us, and religious knowledge, which comes 
 wholly from revelation. But however strongly 
 the line was drawn, it could not be wholly satis¬ 
 factory or final, since in many fields of knowledge 
 secular knowledge or science clashed with the 
 revelation contained in the Bible. In prosecuting 
 and condemning Galileo, the Church claimed 
 supremacy in the field of astronomy; and if 
 astronomy fell within her domain, it became hard 
 to say what department of science fell outside it. 
 
 Since in more recent times methods almost as 
 rigorous as those of physical science have been 
 applied in the field of psychology and sociology, 
 those studies have fallen more definitely into the 
 class of natural knowledge. And since psychology 
 is usually regarded as the basis of religious know¬ 
 ledge, no kind of doctrine can hope wholly to 
 escape the clutches of criticism. 
 
 A distinction which may be regarded as a 
 parallel to the mediaeval distinction between 
 secular and religious knowledge, which may. 
 
INSPIRATION AND REVELATION 
 
 99 
 
 indeed, almost be considered as a translation of it, 
 is still possible, if we adhere to the activist or 
 pragmatist scheme of thought. This is the dis¬ 
 tinction which I have tried, rather by suggestion 
 and analogy than by strict logic and definition, 
 to draw between the oxygenic and the nitrogenic 
 elements of life. Impulse, energy, initiative, 
 moral purpose, belong to the primal active prin¬ 
 ciple of our being, and may well be compared to 
 oxygen. Resistances which impede or limit that 
 energy, the physical world, organised society, the 
 experiences of practical life, all tend to direct and 
 control it. From the interplay of the two 
 elements arises the world of knowledge and the 
 world of conduct. The active principle is mainly 
 dependent for energy and even for direction on 
 the inflow from the unconscious, on inspiration. 
 The passive or resistant element is there, ever 
 limiting and diluting, but in it we do not trace 
 any direct inspiration, though it may constantly 
 be the cause of the realisation of inspiration. 
 
 We have thus, in a manner, two worlds, which 
 theologians have called the world of grace and 
 the world of nature. To the former inspiration 
 naturally belongs; it is the country of the divine 
 ideas, the kingdom of heaven of the Lord’s 
 Prayer. In it the will of God is ever done. And 
 the highest hope of the Christian is in some 
 degree or some respect to produce an image of 
 that world in the visible and sensible frame of 
 
100 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 things. This latter world is that called in the 
 Gospels the kingdom of this world. Here is the 
 realm not of ends but of means ; here science 
 rules, and all things, from the planets downwards, 
 move in regular course according to ascertainable 
 laws. 
 
 Between the two realms there is a debatable 
 frontier, which runs through the region of per¬ 
 sonality, personality which may by grace be 
 raised to an indefinite height, or may by con¬ 
 formity to evil be infinitely degraded. It is 
 for the personality to judge of the pure in¬ 
 spiration by its kindredship to the divine ideas. 
 And it necessarily falls to science and experience 
 to judge of the outward expressions of inspiration, 
 to separate them if possible from their prime 
 source, even it may be in some cases to find for 
 the idea an expression more suitable to advanced 
 knowledge and more refined feeling. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
 I 
 
 There are two ways of approaching the subject 
 of ethics. The first may be called the static 
 way. It approaches the subject from the out¬ 
 side, and tries to order in regular series our duties 
 to ourselves, our family, our nation, to arrange 
 their hierarchies and to reconcile their clashings. 
 This has been the usual way of approach in the 
 past. But there is a second way, which we may 
 call the dynamic, which regards men not as 
 external phenomena, but as centres of force, 
 developing from within. In following this method 
 we follow lines which are really psychological, 
 not contenting ourselves with the surface view 
 of things, but digging downwards towards the 
 ultimate springs of action, and trying to estimate 
 the forces which have brought into existence, 
 and which sustain, the visible activities of the 
 world and of mankind. 
 
 It is clear that this latter way of approaching 
 
 the subject of Christian ethics is that suited to 
 
 the present work. In every country the accepted 
 
 code of ethics is the result of forces, good and 
 
 101 
 
102 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 evil, which have played upon the national life. 
 The mere fact that such codes exist and main¬ 
 tain themselves shows that they must have 
 relative merit; but they are never perfect, 
 indeed usually are very far from perfection. But 
 to change them radically and suddenly is very 
 difficult, unless in times when society has had rude 
 shocks, or a great moral awakening. But what 
 is possible is to examine them in a reasonable way. 
 And it is the duty of every one to do what he can 
 towards performing the duties laid upon him by 
 the general ethical feeling, and to try to raise 
 the standard where it is low or perverted. 
 
 Leaving out of account the religions of India 
 and China, all the great religions which have 
 arisen in Europe and the Near East have repre¬ 
 sented doing the will of God as the sum of morality. 
 It is scarcely necessary to cite passages from the 
 sacred books of Judaism and Christianity to prove 
 that those two religions take up this attitude 
 since the Jewish Psalms, and the Gospels and 
 Epistles of the New Testament are full of exhorta¬ 
 tions to do the will of God, and of descriptions of 
 the goodness and the happiness of those who do 
 so. In the Koran the duty of submitting to, and 
 of promoting the divine will is, if possible, even 
 more prominent. And in the only other religion 
 which has had much vogue in Europe, that of the 
 Stoic philosophers of Greece and Rome, the sum 
 of virtue is represented as consisting in the 
 
CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
 103 
 
 conformation of one’s life and purposes to the 
 world order, which is the outward manifestation 
 of the divine principle in the world. 
 
 But although all religions are alike in accepting 
 this ultimate principle, they approach it from 
 different sides, and vary greatly in their views 
 as to the practical way of its realisation. In 
 Islam, the great stress is laid on dutiful submission 
 
 to what is ordained bv the divine will. In Stoicism 
 
 •/ 
 
 also, submission is the chief duty of man, though 
 this religion of the ancient world lays more stress 
 than any of the Semitic religions on the intel¬ 
 lectual element. To learn by thought and con¬ 
 templation what is the order of the universe to 
 which man has to conform is put in the fore¬ 
 front. In the Jewish religion the stress is laid 
 more on emotion and action, on love of God and 
 righteousness of life. But it must be observed 
 that in the Wisdom books. Proverbs, Ecclesias- 
 ticus, and the Wisdom of Solomon, the intel¬ 
 lectual element is very prominent, a fact which 
 is too often overlooked by Christians. 
 
 It is evident that as man has a threefold nature, 
 intellectual, emotional, and volitional, the subject 
 of the Divine Will may be approached from each 
 if these sides. A man has to learn what is the 
 will of God, he has to admire and to love it, and 
 he is able to direct his purposes and endeavours 
 in such a way as to promote it in the world 
 around. And it makes the greatest difference to 
 
104 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 his religion which of these lines of approach is 
 with him primary, and which only secondary. 
 
 But men do not approach the Divine Will from 
 without, as they approach phenomena in the 
 visible world, but from an inner impulse which 
 works within and through them. The ground 
 of the whole universe, so far as we can discover 
 it, is a constantly working energy which has by 
 degrees moulded the world to what it is, an impulse 
 to life and activity, which is discovered in the 
 life of plants and animals, and still more in the 
 activities and energies of men. It works ever in 
 the direction of the ideal,—ideal beauty in the case 
 of nature, ideal truth and virtue in the human 
 world. But this ideal is approached but slowly 
 through long ages of striving ; it is not easily 
 attained. There are constant hindrances, and 
 forces continually opposing. Why evil exists we 
 can no more discover than why we ourselves 
 exist. To deny the existence of evil may be 
 attempted by a paradoxical philosophy ; but no 
 sane person would really take such a view. 
 Every day and all day we are struggling against 
 evil, against ugliness and falsehood and sin, and 
 we know that we should never get the better of 
 them but for the power which works within us, 
 which we are able, if we choose, to defy and 
 disobey, but which all the time we feel to be a 
 better inspiration. 
 
 The supreme task of every man in the world 
 
CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
 105 
 
 is to learn what is good and what is evil, to love 
 the good and hate the evil, to do the good and 
 avoid the evil. 
 
 To approach the subject of conduct from the 
 side of observation and intelligence, to discover 
 the nature of good and evil action, has been in 
 all ages the task of moral philosophy, ever since 
 the greatest of iconoclasts, Socrates, exposed 
 remorselessly the hollowness and insufficiency of 
 the notions of good and evil accepted by the people 
 of Athens. His chief task was to show that this 
 superficial code was self-contradictory and impos¬ 
 sible to justify to the reason. And a great 
 series of philosophers, following in his steps, 
 approached the questions of good and evil in a 
 logical and metaphysical way, some with greater 
 and some with less success. 
 
 In his well-known Essay on Lord Bacon, 
 Macaulay has contrasted the results of the 
 moral philosophy of the schools with those of 
 the experimental science of modern times. The 
 former he contemns as empty verbiage ; the latter 
 he praises as a continuous attempt to minister to 
 the comfort of human beings, to the multiplica¬ 
 tion of the enjoyments and the diminution of 
 the sufferings of life. Of course, no one could 
 maintain that science has not largely succeeded 
 in this purpose, especially medical science. But 
 few people who reflect, with the memory of 
 recent years and the facts of modern life fresh 
 
106 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 in their minds, would venture to regard the 
 progress of physical science as a panacea for the 
 woes of humanity. We have seen too much of 
 the perversion of science to purposes of slaughter 
 and destruction, too much of its insufficiency to 
 raise the level of real happiness, to believe that 
 it is capable by itself of bringing in an ideal 
 state of society. And on the other side we see 
 the absurdity of condemning moral philosophy 
 because it is not progressive in the sense in 
 which physical science is progressive. We can 
 greatly change our physical environment; but 
 human nature changes but very slowly, and the 
 ethical ideas and inspirations of the great moral¬ 
 ists of all ages are full of value and of instruction 
 for us. In every age there are voices which bid 
 us aim not only at comfort but at ideal good ; 
 and if those voices were silenced, the world would 
 soon begin to retrogress towards savagery. 
 Science, as such, is quite as ready to further the 
 schemes of devils as the divine ideas. A good 
 man will use the discoveries of physical science 
 to help his fellow-men ; but a bad man will use 
 those discoveries to destroy them. And the 
 mass of mankind, who are neither conspicuously 
 good nor conspicuously bad, will simply use the 
 conveniences of life as they multiply, without 
 being in any serious way the better and happier, 
 or the worse and more degraded, in consequence 
 of them. On the whole, unless used in accord- 
 
CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
 107 
 
 ance with the laws of God and man, they tend to 
 produce that restlessness and discontent, that 
 drifting away from old anchorages without find¬ 
 ing new ones, which is so marked a feature of 
 our age. 
 
 In a high degree the ethical philosophers 
 purify the blood of the world, check growing 
 fanaticisms, show the reasonableness of goodness, 
 encourage love of purity, of duty, and of honour. 
 
 But the great defect of all systems of ethics 
 based on reason and contemplation is that they 
 comparatively seldom lead to vigorous action. 
 Psychology easily explains this when it shows 
 that by its very nature contemplative thought 
 is an impediment to action. Thought can only 
 come in when action is delayed and thwarted. 
 And in the same way thought is hostile to emotion, 
 which is the element which gives energy and force 
 to action. For such reasons ethical philosophy 
 must always influence the educated few rather 
 than the many. In an age like ours when demo¬ 
 cracy has become far more powerful, and even 
 claims universal sway, it is exceedingly hard for 
 even the soundest thinkers to gain power over the 
 motive forces of the nation. They may speak 
 most reasonably, but they have no way of gaining 
 influence. The mass of mankind have no time to 
 listen to reason, and no wish to listen to it, if 
 feeling or interest urge them in another direction. 
 Hence, although ethical philosophy can never 
 
108 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 become wholly powerless, since it is or ought to 
 be based on fact and reality ; and although it may 
 often be able to restrain a definitely immoral 
 tendency in conduct, yet it is obliged to pass on 
 the task of leading popular opinion to some of 
 the various enthusiasms, religious and social, 
 which have more hold on the conscience and the 
 heart. 
 
 Most modern schemes of ethics are in a greater 
 or less degree pervaded by the utilitarian principle. 
 This is a natural result of the dominance in 
 thought of the methods of physical science. 
 The most obvious and simple way of judging of 
 actions is to consider their consequences ; and 
 in that way one can find definite evidence for and 
 against them. Ever since the time of Bentham, 
 utilitarian reasoning has been more and more in 
 use in matters of law and legislation. But the 
 great difficulty and danger of utilitarian reason¬ 
 ing, outside a very narrow field, is that by an 
 inevitable tendency it is led to assign most weight 
 to what is obvious and insistent, what can be 
 clearly set forth, what can be with some accuracy 
 weighed and measured. It is not that the 
 principle of utilitarianism leads necessarily to 
 this result: but it is a result which it is almost 
 impossible to avoid in practice. One may take 
 the word utility in a lower or higher, a more 
 materialist or more spiritual way. Taking it 
 at its highest, the useful is the same as the ethic- 
 
CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
 109 
 
 ally good. But if we so read utility, the intro^ 
 duction of it into the reasoning does not help : 
 it is a mere change of words. But it is inevitable 
 that the desire to give clearness and practical 
 value to his conclusions, must draw the utili¬ 
 tarian constantly in the direction of the material 
 and the obvious. Man’s need of food and of 
 clothing, of a comfortable home and reasonable 
 recreation, is so clear, that such immaterial and 
 imponderable things as religion and, for that 
 matter, happiness itself, are likely to be under¬ 
 valued, or even overlooked. It was simply by 
 giving way to this tendency that Bentham 
 reached such definite results. Anyone who denied 
 his scale of utilities would necessarily give up his 
 system, which no doubt had its value in questions 
 of law and legislation, but had little value in the 
 more complicated conduct of daily life. Even 
 John Stuart Mill, for all his noble ideals, was 
 through his early training made a victim to the 
 same tendency, and was frequently led into 
 sophistry, especially in that astoundingly one¬ 
 sided work. The Subjection of Women, 
 
 It is sometimes said that the great precept of 
 Christianity, “Ye shall know them by their fruits,” 
 adopts the utilitarian principle. And in a sense 
 it does so. It sanctions the appeal to experience 
 and fact for moral principles. But it avoids the 
 great danger of utilitarian ethics by retaining 
 the ideas of good and evil. It does not think of 
 
no PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 fruits as useful, but as good or bad, sound or 
 corrupt. No one, according to Christianity, is 
 saved by merely giving intellectual assent to 
 ethical teaching, but by practising it in the 
 world. 
 
 The kingdom of heaven opens to those who 
 not only know but do the will of God. If we 
 know the will of God and love it, we shall cer¬ 
 tainly do it. But the two roads of knowing and 
 loving start differently, and in most of their 
 course are independent. 
 
 Most of great religions of the world have started 
 from authority. Judaism has an ordered and 
 authoritative exposition of ethics in the Penta¬ 
 teuch, Islam in the Koran. These codes are 
 vastly superior to the mere customary and tribal 
 morality which they superseded ; they represent 
 a sudden raising of the ethical standard. Most 
 people would allow that the Mosaic code marked 
 a great advance on the current morality of the 
 heathen nations of Canaan, the tribes whom 
 Joshua subdued. That the code of Mohammed 
 also marked an advance on the religion of the 
 tribes of Arabia is less generally realised. Many 
 people are so shocked at one particular institution 
 of Islam, polygamy, that they are blinded to the 
 excellence of many sides of the religion. But the 
 historians who have studied the origin of that 
 religion have highly estimated its moral value. 
 And travellers in the Near East who have come 
 
CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
 111 
 
 into contact with Mohammedans always speak 
 highly of the character of many of them. In the 
 history of Islam, as in that of Christianity, there 
 have been frequent reformations, as sages and 
 saints have turned back from the corruption 
 around them to the purity of the pristine faith. 
 And as J. H. Newman has well observed, we 
 cannot wholly deny the inspiration of a religion 
 which has been so firm a bond of soeiety and 
 so greatly promoted brotherly feeling among 
 believers. There have been times in the history 
 of the world when the Mohammedan states were 
 superior to the Christian alike in ethies and in 
 intellectual enlightenment. Nevertheless, both 
 Judaism and Islam are, by the very fact that they 
 are religions of authority, and so incapable of 
 conforming to the intellectual and social changes 
 in their surroundings, put out of court as religions 
 of the future. 
 
 Christianity is also, in a measure, a religion of 
 authority, since it has sacred books and definite 
 organisations. But it differs from Judaism and 
 Islam, in that what is laid down by authority is 
 not a detailed code of practices, but the assertion 
 of principles and ideals. Very often, as indeed in 
 Central Africa at the present time, this fact puts 
 the higher religion at a disadvantage as compared 
 with the lower. But Christianity has after all 
 the enormous advantage that it can change, can 
 [ evolve in the direction of the ideal. It is free 
 
112 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 from the bondage of the letter, and free to take 
 in the fresh revelations of the Divine Spirit. 
 
 II 
 
 The Founder of Christianity not only laid down 
 the principle that beliefs must be judged by their 
 fruits, but also repeatedly showed how a con¬ 
 sideration of the facts of nature and of human 
 society can enlighten us as to the will of God. He 
 constantly compares the facts of the life of the 
 spirit to those of the visible world. Such com¬ 
 parisons are no mere illustrative analogies, but 
 the result of a marvellous insight, which saw 
 how the laws of the universe are fundamentally 
 the same in the domain of the visible and the 
 invisible. 
 
 I may cite a few of the many sayings of the 
 Saviour which are of this kind. “ When it is 
 evening, ye say. It will be fair weather, for the 
 heaven is red. And in the morning it will be 
 foul weather to-day, for the heaven is red and 
 lowering. Ye know how to discern the face of 
 the heaven, but ye cannot discern the signs of 
 the times.” Among city dwellers the face of the 
 heavens does not attract much attention; but 
 anyone used to going abroad at all times and 
 seasons may find constant analogies between it 
 and the dealings of God with men. If one regards 
 sun and rain, wind and storm, from a merely un¬ 
 sympathetic point of view, one may find little but 
 
CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
 113 
 
 disappointment; but if one looks at them with 
 patienee and endurance, they may become a 
 school of hope and a constant inspiration of con¬ 
 duct. In another place the Saviour reads the 
 parable of the fig-tree. “ When her branch is 
 now become tender, and putteth forth its leaves, 
 ye know that the summer is nigh.” And again, 
 ‘‘ Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of 
 thistles ? Even so, every good tree bringeth 
 forth good fruit, but the corrupt tree bringeth 
 forth evil fruit.” The kingdom of heaven is 
 frequently spoken of, not as a cataclysm suddenly 
 revealed, but as a state of society which grows 
 naturally. ‘‘ The kingdom of heaven is like 
 unto a grain of mustard seed, which a man took 
 and sowed in his field.” Ultimately it is the 
 same power, which brings the plant out of the 
 seed, which guides societies in the way to a 
 nobler life, and which urges individuals to do 
 something to promote the working of the divine 
 will. 
 
 As we have a far wider knowledge of natural 
 
 law than existed at the time of the origin of 
 
 Christianity, we might expect that the field from 
 
 which such analogies as these are drawn would 
 
 be in our time vastly increased. And this is 
 
 certainly the case. Wordsworth, for example, is 
 
 always watching nature and finding in it hints of 
 
 moral and spiritual truths. Since Wordsworth 
 
 wrote, the hurry and stress of modern life has 
 
 8 
 
114 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 made the discernment of the spiritual in the 
 natural less possible; but some writers, such as 
 Maeterlinck, carry on the same line of thought. 
 
 As regards the deducing of ethical principle 
 from surveys of history, we are obviously at a 
 great advantage as compared with the Jewish 
 teachers of Christianity. For them real objec¬ 
 tive history, the tale of the rise and decay of 
 nations and states, hardly existed; they saw the 
 past through a mirage of national prejudice ; and 
 the myth-making tendency was still dominant. 
 Before us now there lies an almost infinite series 
 of views into the past, in which the consequences 
 of national virtues and national sins are written 
 large for our edification. Not, of course, that it 
 is ever possible to deduce principles of action, 
 individual or social, from the mere contemplation 
 of past history. Views of history cannot give us 
 ideals; but when we have before us the ideals, 
 history can instruct us with infinite wisdom in 
 what ways these ideals may best be attained, 
 and how the hindrances to them may be removed. 
 But in the simple minds of the first Christians 
 such perspectives did not exist; only in the 
 history of the Jewish race they saw the lines of 
 good and evil drawn in harsh outline, with little 
 light and shade. 
 
 It is by analogy and by parable, rather than by 
 any regular reasoning, that the Saviour proceeds 
 when he maps out the ways of conduct. No 
 
CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
 115 
 
 doubt he accepts the ten commandments and the 
 current rules of social conduct. Sometimes, as 
 when he speaks of divorce, he deliberately amends 
 them in virtue of his personal inspiration. He 
 does not treat the Jewish law of conduct as final 
 or infallible. Mere external rules of action he 
 treats so lightly that most hearers of his sayings 
 do not realise that he conformed in practice to the 
 commands of the Pentateuch. For example, there 
 can be no doubt that, like all Jews, he had a strong 
 repulsion to the eating of animals technically un¬ 
 clean, yet most Christians have no scruple in eating 
 such, and do not realise how far they therein depart 
 from the mind of their Master. He taught the 
 unimportance of the merely external so effectively 
 that, so far as I know, there is no Church which tries 
 strictly to mould the daily life so as to conform 
 to his. It was, he taught, not that which affected 
 the life from the outside which raised or debased 
 a man, but that which came from the heart, and 
 so moulded the mind and the body. 
 
 Thus his appeal was not to any code, nor to 
 any system of ethics, but to the spirit. And in 
 a way which cannot be mistaken he founded his 
 ethics on inner impulses, on two emotions which 
 he laid at the root of all goodness,—first, love of 
 God; and second, love of man. But of these he 
 regarded the former as by far the more important; 
 love of man, however much it might be essential 
 to the due tone of intercourse between man and 
 
116 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 man, was after all only a consequence and 
 corollary of the love of God. A man should love 
 God with every power of his nature, mind and 
 heart and will, to the very utmost of his powers ; 
 but it would be enough if he loved his neighbour 
 as himself. 
 
 No one has so clearly and eloquently expounded 
 these phrases as the author of Ecce Homo! He 
 shows that in the love of God is included the love 
 of the divine element which exists in every man. 
 It is because men are children of the same Father 
 in heaven that they are in the highest sense 
 brothers. The love of God kindles a flame which 
 becomes an enthusiasm of humanity, a Are never 
 extinguished, because however low a man or 
 woman may fall, however they may sink into the 
 ocean of crime or the morass of swinishness, they 
 can never wholly destroy the divine element 
 within them. And the divine element is that 
 which Christians should love with every power of 
 their being; and which they would wish to 
 rescue and redeem at any cost. 
 
 There could not be a greater contrast than 
 exists between a love which contains so much of 
 the divine and the ideal, and such love as com¬ 
 monly exists in the world, which often satisfies 
 philanthropists, and which has no doubt led to 
 much practical beneficence, the love which is 
 content with improving the external conditions 
 of life, providing better food, better houses. 
 
CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
 II7 
 
 lighter hours of work, and not troubling about a 
 better condition of spirit. No doubt much or 
 most of the improvement of visible conditions 
 has been the result of the activities of really 
 Christian natures, who have seen that tolerable 
 conditions make the life of the spirit easier, while 
 dirt and hunger tend to quench it. But no man 
 who had anything of the spirit of Christ would 
 be content with reforms which only touch the 
 outside of life. 
 
 Christian ethics are based upon two great facts 
 or laws of psychology, which hold everywhere. 
 The first of these is that life works from within 
 outwards, not from without inwards. The second 
 is, that the springs of action are far more easily 
 moved by emotion than by reasoning. Not, of 
 course, that emotion necessarily leads to good 
 action. Indeed, history shows that a life full of 
 energy and success may owe its impulse to private 
 ambition, to covetousness, or even to an un¬ 
 quenchable hatred. Wherever there is a possible 
 good to be attained, there is a possible evil to be 
 wrought. But if we assume with Christ that 
 love is better than hate, that it is our business in 
 the world to promote good and resist evil, then 
 the conformity of his teaching as to the ways to 
 accomplish these purposes to the ultimate laws 
 of human nature makes Christianity an intensely 
 practical religion. 
 
 The practical basis of Christian ethics is most 
 
118 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 definitely set forth in the saying that if a man 
 is anxious to do the will of God, he will know 
 whether his ethical principle is good or bad. 
 Here we have the clearest antithesis to the way 
 of the moral philosophers who seek, whether 
 by a setting forth of metaphysical principle, 
 or by use of the utilitarian method, to work out 
 schemes of virtue. And the Christian teaching is 
 thoroughly sound and scientific, if we grant the 
 activist principle of life, if we hold that human 
 action is from within outwards. If action can 
 only be vigorous, and in a higher sense successful, 
 when it is in accord with the impulse of the general 
 life, and the tendency of the Power that makes 
 for righteousness; if action precedes and dominates 
 thought, rather than thought action, then we see 
 clearly that right doing will cause right thinking. 
 It is in the turning of the scales of will that thought 
 is born ; and if the scales are rightly turned, the 
 thought will be right. 
 
 No doubt this view needs some guarding. 
 For it cannot be held that well-meaning in itself 
 will lead to right action ; every one knows how 
 often good intention accompanies foolish and 
 pernicious action. By the phrase, ‘‘ being willing 
 to do the will of God,” the Saviour means some¬ 
 thing far less superficial and obvious than having 
 good intentions. He means being in the depths 
 of the heart at one with the divine will, having 
 purposes in conformity, not with mere benevol- 
 
CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
 119 
 
 ence and good nature, but with those divine ideas 
 which are ever working beneath the surface of 
 human life. This is a state not to be easily or 
 quickly attained, only to be approached by long 
 self-discipline and striving,—in a word, by attain¬ 
 ing to the love of God. As love of friend or 
 neighbour will greatly enlighten our eyes as to 
 their character and disposition, unless perverted 
 by unworthy elements, so the love of God will 
 lead to a knowledge of the character and purposes 
 of God, and so to the highest ethical level. 
 
 But it is clear that mankind in general live at 
 a lower level than this, which one may call the 
 “ oxygenic ” kind of life. We stumble along as 
 best we can through the swamps and deserts of 
 life ; we do not fly above it. And therefore, in 
 ordinary practice, we do not reach first principles. 
 The consideration of the consequences of action; 
 principles accepted by the society in which we 
 live, or by any Church of which we are adherents ; 
 natural kindly feeling, may all serve us, not as 
 ideal guides, but as signposts of which it is wise 
 to take account. But the ideal is still there ; 
 and the nearer we come to it the better for our 
 higher life. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE DIVINE FATHER 
 
 God and Human Personality 
 
 I WILL sketch the implications of such views as 
 I have above suggested, upon religious belief as 
 to God, and Christ, and the Communion of Saints. 
 But first I will try to show that such views have 
 been the essential Christian belief from the very 
 first, though they have been overlaid by many 
 temporary forms and expressions. 
 
 God is the source of all things, visible and 
 invisible, and the Father of men, and in a higher 
 sense the Father of Christ. As transcendent, 
 God is the originator and sustainer of life, and of 
 all the conditions of life. His eternal working has 
 led mankind to the assumption of those condi¬ 
 tions, those forms, as Kant puts it, which make 
 perception and experience possible, that is to 
 say, space as the condition of a visible and 
 material universe, time as the condition of the 
 successive manifestations of life. Thus has been 
 prepared the framework through which the 
 divine energy works. 
 
 Of course, the ancient cosmological idea of the 
 
 Babylonians and the Hebrews that God at a 
 
 120 
 
GOD AND HUMAN PERSONALITY 121 
 
 definite time brought order out of chaos and 
 created the ancestors of the existing races of 
 plants and animals, has passed into the realm of 
 mythology. We can now look back through 
 almost infinite ages, and see how, through the 
 constant working of an Inner power, by the pro¬ 
 cess of evolution, living things gradually came 
 into being, and grew less and less ungainly and 
 crude, until at last they became a world full of 
 beauty and charm. But the manner of becoming 
 makes no difference as to the eternal source. 
 We even freely use the word Creator, though the 
 meaning we attach to it is very different from the 
 meaning in which it was used by those who 
 formulated early beliefs. And God, as the foun¬ 
 tain-head of life and energy, as the source of the 
 striving of all things to fulfil the law of their 
 being, stands on an immeasurably higher plane 
 than the great artificer of the ancient religions 
 who made order out of chaos at a definite moment 
 of history. 
 
 But modern religion turns more and more 
 from the author of the world to the immanent 
 Deity, the God with whom men can have spiritual 
 communion, who stands in contact, actual or 
 possible, with the spirits of men; the creator of 
 things invisible. Mankind has learned to recog¬ 
 nise that there exists, in and around us, an infinite 
 well-spring of energy which works not in defiance 
 of, but through, the wills of men. That energy 
 
122 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 is like a stream flowing through a thirsty land 
 whieh can only yield its fruit when irrigated ; 
 the human will is the sluice-gate through which, 
 when it is opened, the fertilising water flows into 
 each fleld. But we are all very much under the 
 sway of sense. So, whereas no cultivator remains 
 ignorant of the source of the supply of the water 
 he needs, many of us are ignorant or unheeding 
 of the source whence comes into our lives the 
 divine blessing of spiritual power. “ The God in 
 whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy 
 ways, hast thou not glorified.” The recognition 
 of divine help, of favour and grace, has given rise 
 to the higher religions, each of which interprets 
 it in a different way, usually in close connection 
 with its own historic origin. 
 
 This is a true view of the relation of God to 
 man ; but it is a one-sided and incomplete view. 
 For God is not a giver only, nor man a receiver 
 only. Man is not a mere parasite : for it is one 
 of the surest laws of the living world that any 
 being which is merely parasitic begins at once to 
 shrivel and degenerate. Man can give to God, 
 as well as take from him. He does so by means 
 of that marvellous power of volition, of self- 
 determination, which is one of the fundamental 
 facts of the universe. Every time that man puts 
 himself on the side of God, and acts according 
 to the will of God, he strengthens that will. 
 The spiritual world being a whole, and all the 
 
GOD AND HUMAN PERSONALITY 123 
 
 parts inter-connected, no motion can be set up in 
 any part of it but the results spread outwards, 
 as the ripples in a river spread outwards when a 
 stone is thrown into it. Thus no man can work 
 on the side of goodness but he increases the force 
 of goodness in the world, and makes it easier for 
 all other men and women to do what is right. 
 We see clearly every day that right doing in the 
 world is a contagious power, and helps right 
 doing ; and we may believe that that which takes 
 place in the visible world is paralleled and re¬ 
 inforced by that which takes place in the invisible 
 world which lies beneath what is visible. 
 
 Thus there is a partnership between God and 
 man in the realm of conduct. God inspires man 
 with the desire to do what is righteous, and gives 
 him strength for carrying out his desire, strength 
 in the inner man. And man in return, by a will¬ 
 ing obedience to the divine impulse, fortifies 
 that impulse and helps to moralise the world. 
 And when conduct aimed at the ideal brings upon 
 a man suffering, as it so often does, the power of 
 God lightens the suffering and enables a man 
 to bear it. Nay, more, though this is a doctrine 
 which can only be accepted by that strain on the 
 will which is called faith, God even suffers with man, 
 bears a part of his burden. With human afflic¬ 
 tion he is afflicted, and over the deeds of courage, 
 self-sacrifice, self-control, which are the life-blood 
 of the world, we may believe that he rejoices. 
 
124 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 If in previous paragraphs I have seemed to 
 undervalue personality by not speaking of it 
 as an eternal and indestruetible monad, surely I 
 make amends by suggesting for it a magnifieent 
 part in the active world of humanity and of 
 conduct. I do not represent it as living to itself 
 like a beautiful flower, but as passing like the 
 flower into the stage of fruit, as forming itself 
 in order that it may be a support and help of God 
 in the everlasting strife with evil. To some this 
 subordination to the unseen may appear harsh, 
 and too severe for most men to appreciate. But 
 such a view overlooks the fact that by the very 
 constitution of the universe all happiness comes 
 to creatures when they fulfil the law of their 
 being, and further life. The crudest delights, 
 such as enjoyment of food and drink, are of this 
 kind, as are the delights of sex, the ultimate 
 source of most of the world’s rapture. It is the 
 same in the higher sphere. It is of the very 
 essence of the spiritual world that by doing the 
 will of God we should ever grow more vigorous, 
 more healthy, and more happy ; and by opposing 
 it we should be stunted and blighted. 
 
 This is the essence of the Christian faith as 
 set forth in the earliest documents of Christianity, 
 and as embodied, often in grossly materialised 
 and even grotesque forms, in the popular beliefs 
 of mediaeval and modern Europe. There are 
 aberrations from it to the right and the left, 
 
JEWISH AND GREEK CONCEPTIONS OF GOD 125 
 
 strange crystallisations of it in creeds and articles. 
 But there have arisen at intervals thinkers and 
 mystics who have ever tended to renew its hold 
 on the life of the world. 
 
 <1 
 
 Jewish and Greek Conceptions of God 
 
 The tribal religion of the Jews recognised as 
 the source of divine activity Jehovah or Yahveh, 
 the ancient patron of the race. He in origin 
 was not very different from the gods of the sur¬ 
 rounding nations, as in origin mankind did not 
 greatly differ from the ancestors of the tribes of 
 apes. But the good providence of God, working 
 in and through the inspired prophets of Israel, 
 gradually refined and exalted what may be called 
 the God-consciousness of the people, until we 
 have the wonderfully exalted and intimate sense 
 of God which is embodied in the Psalms, some of 
 which express in a way which has never been 
 surpassed, the feelings of awe, gratitude, and 
 devotion, which belong to the highest religious 
 consciousness. 
 
 The Greek idea of God, starting from the same 
 primitive superstitions as the Jewish, developed 
 in a different direction. Here it was not the 
 prophets—for the Greeks did not greatly reverence 
 the prophet—but the philosophers, in whom the 
 higher idea evolved. By a process, which has 
 been admirably set forth by Dr Edward Caird, 
 the more intellectual of the Greeks came in time 
 
126 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 to a severe monotheism, the most inspired 
 expression of which we find in Plato, and the 
 fullest development of which is shown in the 
 writings of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. The 
 one was despotic master of the civilised world, 
 the other a lame slave; yet their idea of God is 
 almost identical, and much of it finally trickled 
 through into Christianity. This Greek religion 
 does remarkable justice to some of the sides of 
 human experience of the divine, and preaches a 
 very exalted morality; its weakness is on the 
 side of the emotions, which ancient philosophy 
 consistently despised. 
 
 The radical difference between the Jewish and 
 the Greek conception of God lies in this, that the 
 Jews regarded God as personal, the Greeks as 
 impersonal. The contrast thus broadly stated 
 is somewhat exaggerated. For in the highest 
 expressions of Jewish religion, such as passages in 
 the Psalms, in Isaiah, and in the book of Job, we 
 find phrases which imply in God personality, but 
 personality very far removed from that of man. 
 “ As the heavens are higher than the earth, so 
 are my ways higher than your ways, and my 
 thoughts than your thoughts.” Verily, thou art 
 a God that hidest thyself.” And the Greeks 
 when they worked their way from a Zeus who was 
 not only personal, but full of human frailties, to a 
 divine Father of mankind, did retain in their 
 higher conceptions something of personality. But 
 
JEWISH AND GREEK CONCEPTIONS OF GOD 127 
 
 on the whole the contrast between the Greek 
 and the Hebrew religious spirit in this matter is 
 striking. And as early Christianity started rather 
 from the Jewish than from the Greek idea of 
 God, it is natural that this belief in divine person¬ 
 ality should have dominated it. 
 
 In the Synoptic Gospels there is no speculation 
 as to the nature of God. The point of view is 
 strictly practical, we might say pragmatist. It 
 is the relation of God to man, his working in 
 the world of nature and in the hearts of men that 
 is spoken of. The will of God is mentioned, but 
 again in a purely practical way, as the law to 
 which man is bound to conform. The love of 
 God to man is constantly insisted on; but here 
 again the word “ love ” only helps us by an analogy 
 to understand the action of God in the human 
 world. In the Fourth Gospel the phrase God 
 is Spirit ” ^ takes us for a moment beyond the 
 bounds of practical religion into the realm of 
 thought; but the phrase is not expanded or ex¬ 
 plained. The view of St Paul is like that of the 
 Old Testament, but that he adds that God is the 
 Father of Christ, and revealed through Christ. 
 
 The task of Christianity was to develop what 
 was best in the theology of Judsea and Greece, 
 and to bring it on to a higher platform by help 
 of the Spirit which worked in the Church, in a 
 word to baptize it into Christ. It was by the 
 
 ^ Not a spirit. See R.V. 
 
128 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 life of the historic Jesus and by the working of 
 the spirit of Christ in the Church that the theism 
 of the ancient world was transmuted into 
 Christianity. , 
 
 God’s Power, Holiness, and Love 
 
 Presently I shall speak of the most specific 
 part of the doctrine of Christianity, of the Founder 
 of the Faith, and of the Holy Spirit, which is the 
 continual inspiration of the Christian Church. 
 But at present I wish to dwell in more detail on 
 the revelation of God our Father in the New 
 Testament and in the life of Christianity. I will 
 speak successively of the power of God, of his 
 holiness, and of his love. Of all three I will treat 
 from the practical point of view, in the light 
 of experience. There has been in philosophy a 
 great deal of writing in regard to the Absolute. 
 As to that I have nothing to say. That God is 
 transcendent I earnestly believe ; human thought 
 cannot fathom the depths of divinity. We can 
 bathe in the shallows of the sea and pick up on 
 the shore the treasures which the waves throw 
 up ; but at the ocean which lies beyond we can 
 but gaze and wonder. But an absolute Deity as 
 a being to be talked about, admitted into our 
 little schemes of thought, comprehended and 
 fathomed, is beyond the reach of my intelligence. 
 According to strict interpretation, absolute is 
 the opposite of relative. An absolute deity, as 
 
GOD’S POWER, HOLINESS, AND LOVE 129 
 
 opposed to a relative deity, that is to a deity in 
 constant relation to man and nature, is neces¬ 
 sarily outside the range of thought and human 
 intelligence. If it pleases some philosophers to 
 talk about the Absolute, so be it; but ordinary 
 men will insist on melting down what they say, 
 inquiring what is the value of their assertions in 
 regard to scientific truth and the conduct of life, 
 and only accept what seems worth accepting. I 
 shall speak of the great attributes of God, power, 
 goodness, and love, only in their relation to human 
 experience. 
 
 The power of God includes all power in the 
 Universe, excepting only that which is shut off 
 from the rest by what I have called the sluice¬ 
 gates of will. The forces of nature, of gravita¬ 
 tion, electricity, vitality, are of God, and form 
 part of the great scheme of things which was 
 made for man, and of which man is the crown 
 and consummation. The energy stored in every 
 atom of matter, which is available in coal, in 
 mineral oil, in radium, the energy which streams 
 from the sun, is an offer by God of unlimited 
 sources of power, to be well or badly applied. 
 But in no such rigid and fixed ways does the 
 divine power work in human consciousness, but 
 on the lines of freedom. I say in “ human con¬ 
 sciousness,” though probably many thinkers 
 would prefer to say wherever there is conscious 
 life,” even among animals, which like man have 
 
130 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 power to work either in accordance with, or in 
 opposition to, the law of their being. But I 
 prefer to speak of the consciousness of man, 
 which we can study and comprehend, while that 
 of animals is at present almost a sealed book to 
 us. And what this human consciousness reveals 
 to us is a vast ocean of spiritual power, on which 
 we can draw, if not to an infinite extent, at any 
 rate to an extent only limited and bounded by 
 the conditions of our mortality. 
 
 In the Jewish scriptures, the prowess of Joshua, 
 the strength of Samson, the wisdom of Solomon, 
 are all spoken of as the direct results of divine 
 aid and inspiration. Epictetus speaks in the 
 same way of his powers of thought and of endur¬ 
 ance. And I venture to say that it is the natural 
 and spontaneous view of every one gifted with 
 natural piety. 
 
 But when a man adds to natural piety 
 reasoned religion, he begins to distinguish. He 
 finds that the power of God, even if present 
 in every outpouring of good energy, is yet 
 infinitely more traceable in such thought, such 
 feeling, and such action as are concerned with the 
 ideal. The character of action is not indifferent 
 to the divine energy, which sometimes approves 
 and sometimes disapproves it. Righteousness 
 and kindness in conduct, beauty in art, truth in 
 matters of intellect, are in the line of divine 
 approval. 
 
GOD’S POWER, HOLINESS, AND LOVE 131 
 
 The more freely the personality exposes itself 
 to the influence of the world of spirit, the more 
 fully conscious does it become of a higher will, 
 dominant in that realm, and urging it to certain 
 courses of action. Into that higher will it can 
 never, according to the teaching of Christianity, in 
 this life be wholly absorbed. That is the dream 
 of the oriental ascetic, but not of the work¬ 
 ing Christian. At the highest point of his life, 
 in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Founder of 
 the faith does not show a will wholly absorbed 
 in the divine, but prays, “Not my will, but thine, 
 be done.” Seekers after God, in the phrase of 
 Longfellow, “ touch God’s right hand in the 
 darkness, and are lifted up and strengthened.” 
 But God’s right hand does not carry them away ; 
 it only enables them to walk upright. 
 
 To the phrase “ the will of God,” the objection 
 is often made that it is anthropomorphic, repre¬ 
 senting God as a “ magnified and non-natural 
 man,” in the well-known phrase of Matthew 
 Arnold. Such a meaning as that I disclaim. I 
 use the phrase, in a purely practical way, to 
 express the experience which is testified to in 
 hundreds of biographies, of a power not oneself, 
 over and above oneself, which urges in the direc¬ 
 tion of the good. Arnold’s definition of God was 
 as “ the power, not ourselves, which makes for 
 righteousness.” But we need a wider definition. 
 In relation to the will the phrase may be satis- 
 
132 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 factory. But the great spiritual power works 
 not only in relation to the will, but also in the 
 field of emotion and thought. Therefore it will 
 be more satisfactory to speak of God as the power 
 which impels in the direction of the ideal, or, in 
 more Platonic phrase, as the “ source of ideas.” 
 I have used these phrases in various writings, but 
 their meaning is apt to be misunderstood, as we 
 are apt, in ordinary conversation, to use the 
 word ‘‘ idea ” in a very loose way. 
 
 Between God and man there arises a constant 
 process of give and take, of veneration and con¬ 
 scious obedience, which grows and matures as the 
 individual grows and matures. And from this 
 intercommunion spring alike wisdom and emotion, 
 a gradual expansion of the mind towards what is 
 as yet unknown, and a gradual deepening of the 
 feeling which is embodied in the eternal phrases 
 of the Lord’s Prayer. Of course, the phrase, “ Our 
 Father who art in heaven ” may be used in many 
 senses; and to no two persons will it have 
 exactly the same meaning. To us in the 
 twentieth century it is largely emptied of mean¬ 
 ing, because our ideal of human fatherhood has 
 degenerated. A father among us commonly seeks 
 rather to be a friend and companion to his 
 children than an object of profound respect. 
 And children who think their father mistaken, 
 have little scruple in disobeying him. But from 
 the beginning it was not so. To the Jews of the 
 
GOD’S POWER, HOLINESS, AND LOVE 133 
 
 time of our Lord the paternal relation was a very 
 severe one. At an earlier time the father had 
 had power of life and death over his children, 
 and he was still the venerated chief of a clan, 
 the ultimate judge of all questions. It is thus 
 that the phrase of Jesus would be understood by 
 his contemporaries. 
 
 It is only a strong belief in the Fatherhood of 
 God which can furnish an adequate basis for a 
 belief in the brotherhood of men. People often 
 talk of the love of man for man, of the people of 
 one race and disposition for those of another race 
 and disposition, as if it were a simple and ob¬ 
 vious tendency. And great sentimentalists like 
 Rousseau, at the time of the French Revolution, 
 have placed this sentiment of humanity at the 
 base of all virtue. They have thought that the 
 diversion of thought and affection into the ways 
 of religion was the great hindrance which stood 
 in the way of universal love between man and 
 man. The sentimental philanthropy of Rousseau 
 paved the way for the anti-human destructive¬ 
 ness of the Napoleonic wars. We have only to 
 look at the state of Europe to-day to see how 
 small is the natural tendency of man to love man¬ 
 kind. We see nation bitterly hostile to nation, 
 class to class, district to district. And a nation 
 will justify its hatred on the ground of patriotism, 
 somehow learning to think that it stands itself 
 for all virtue, and its rivals for all vice and 
 
134 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 cruelty. The extreme symptom is that every 
 nation is talking about atrocities committed 
 against its members by other peoples ; tales of 
 such atrocities, partly true and partly false, cir¬ 
 culate everywhere, and they are believed, not so 
 much on grounds of evidence, as because it is 
 considered natural that rival nations should 
 behave in such a way. 
 
 Mankind would never have advanced from a 
 savage to a civilised condition but for the 
 religious ties which united men into clans with 
 common worships and nations with recognised 
 deities. And the love for man as man, the ‘‘ en¬ 
 thusiasm of humanity,” will never get the better 
 of the rivalries and hostilities between groups of 
 men, classes in industrial countries, and nations 
 of various blood and traditions, unless it is rooted 
 in a sense of a common relation of all alike to the 
 spiritual source of humanity. At present it is 
 beyond doubt that there is more of the feeling of 
 kinship between nations among Mohammedans 
 than among Christians, and it is based on their 
 religion. Until Christians return to the sense of 
 humanity based upon religion felt in the early 
 Church, it is hard to see how the excesses of 
 national feeling can be checked. 
 
 From the lowering and misinterpretation of 
 the idea of paternity the phrase “ Our Father in 
 heaven ” has greatly suffered. And not only on 
 the side of religious thought, but, what is much 
 
GOD’S POWER, HOLINESS, AND LOVE 135 
 
 more important, on the practical side. Men have 
 come to think of God as a weak and indulgent 
 parent, who will not be hard on them in any case, 
 who will think more of their happiness than of 
 their perfection, and give them the things which 
 they want or think they want. This way of 
 regarding God had spread widely ten years ago, 
 and veneration was drowned in a flood of sickly 
 talk about the divine love. It is little wonder 
 that when the trying days of the war came, the 
 bitter experiences of the campaign made many 
 thousands of souls doubt of the existence of God, 
 and say that if there were a God, he would not 
 allow the war to go on. Their feeling had a ground 
 of truth. There is not, in fact, any such God as 
 they had heard of in church and chapel, a God 
 of infinite mercy but no stern principle, who does 
 not chastise, but only removes from men the 
 punishments which they have justly deserved. 
 
 If God had arbitrarily intervened to stop the 
 war, without removing the causes which brought 
 it on, he would have acted like an unskilful 
 physician who removes symptoms and leaves 
 the disease which caused them unchecked. He 
 would have done no real good, and yet he would 
 have destroyed the moral order of the world. If 
 God now intervened to stop in Russia the distress 
 which has been caused by the wickedness of some 
 and the weakness and stupidity of others (for the 
 drought is not at the bottom of the famine), he 
 
136 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 would intervene between moral cause and effect, 
 and again destroy the ethical character of the 
 world. Of course this is no reason why we 
 men should not do all in our power to alleviate 
 the terrible sufferings of the Russian people, so 
 long as we do not promote the evil courses of 
 which it is the result. Being men, we are bound 
 to be humane, and follow humane impulses ; but 
 the humanity of God is of another and a deeper 
 kind. 
 
 The ordinary Christian teaching about God 
 needs infinite stiffening. Such stiffening comes 
 mainly from two sources, the study of scientific 
 law in the universe, and experience of the working 
 of God in the human world. In the Bible the 
 sterner side of God is quite as prominent, even in 
 the New Testament, as the more humane side; 
 it is only that preachers had fallen into the way 
 of dwelling on the latter to the exclusion of the 
 former, whence the sickly one-sidedness of our 
 current religion. For it is quite certain that if 
 God forgives he also punishes; if he comforts he 
 also afflicts. It is certain that multitudes, and 
 those of the best of our race, have found the 
 approach to God not easy but hard, the way that 
 leads to life narrow and stony. What our age 
 greatly needs, as a supplement and corrective of 
 the doctrine of the divine kindness and com¬ 
 passion, is a doctrine of the divine righteousness, 
 emphasis laid on the working of God as one 
 
GOD’S POWER, HOLINESS, AND LOVE 137 
 
 who hates all sin, all falseness, all cowardice, and 
 all stupidity, who punishes those who pursue 
 unworthy purposes and lower the moral tone of 
 those with whom they come in contact. 
 
 This is, as is clear enough, an aspect of the 
 divine of which in our days men gladly lose sight. 
 And yet, surely, never before in the history of 
 the world were the workings of the divine 
 righteousness more manifest. The spectacular 
 collapse of German overweening ambition is a 
 revelation of that side of God to which Greek 
 tragedy bears special witness, his hatred of 
 ambition which has no regard for the restraints 
 of humanity, but sets the attainment of its own 
 ends above any thought of goodness. And the 
 great and persistent friction between classes is a 
 nemesis of the immoral greed of capitalism during 
 the last century. We have made haste to be 
 rich, in defiance of all care for human life, and the 
 well-being of our fellow-men. We have exploited 
 the material world, not caring what became of 
 the interests of other peoples. And the result is 
 written large all about us. Our riches are cor¬ 
 rupted and tainted with a curse. There has never 
 been a time when there was so little enjoyment to 
 be had from those material goods which were 
 meant for our enjoyment. A feeling of insecurity 
 and recklessness has taken possession of men of 
 the well-to-do classes, so that many of them 
 cease to have any regard for the future, and try 
 
138 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 to extort from the present moment any poor 
 satisfaction which it may seem to afford. And 
 the proletariate in all Europe, and not least 
 in England and America, are profoundly dis¬ 
 contented, always striving for more, and many 
 of them openly speaking of revolution, though 
 they cannot point out any possible result of 
 revolution which would in fact improve even 
 their material prosperity. 
 
 The way of God in the punishment alike of 
 German military ambition and capitalist greed 
 is the same way which God has taken in such 
 cases through the whole course of history. He 
 has allowed the fault to work out its own evil 
 consequences. The insane recklessness of Ger¬ 
 many in war banded against her so many foes 
 that even her superb courage and organisation 
 broke down under the strain. It is over again 
 the moral taught by the history of Sparta, when 
 she became the oppressor of Greece, and of Spain 
 when the conquest of America had roused in her 
 a reckless ambition. And the reaction against 
 capitalism has come from the spread of the 
 materialism of the capitalists to the working 
 classes, whom they have used as pawns for the 
 attainment of their own ends. The grasping of 
 the artisan must lead, as the greed of the capitalist 
 has led already, to discontent, restlessness, and 
 faction; and in the end, unless it is checked, to 
 the destruction of civilisation, perhaps of the white 
 
GOD’S POWER, HOLINESS, AND LOVE 139 
 
 races. Sin arises and grows, and for a while men 
 rejoice in it, and find its fruits sweet. But as it 
 spreads and develops it shows that self-con¬ 
 tradictory and anti-social character which is 
 inherent in all sin, and poisons the blood of the 
 countries or the classes whom it holds in its grip. 
 In the long run the righteousness of God vindicates 
 itself with terrifie force, and men are swept away 
 like birds in a hurricane. 
 
 The conception of God which dominates the 
 great majority of people is still at the pre- 
 scientific and arbitrary stage. They think that 
 if there be a God he must needs interfere in 
 the orderly course of affairs in the interests 
 of morality, or what they choose to regard as 
 morality. And when great calamities or catas¬ 
 trophes happen, and the heavens remain silent, 
 they dethrone God in their hearts. They say, 
 in the current phrase, that they have no use for 
 such a Deity. A far more serious question is 
 whether God has any use for them. Instead of 
 trying to find out what the ways of God really 
 are, they make up their minds what they ought 
 to be, and when experience explodes their facile 
 optimism they abandon religion altogether. 
 
 But the universe under the government of 
 God is a moral whole, a realm of order and law. 
 We see this easily in regard to the material world. 
 If chance ruled there, or if the divine power were 
 constantly intervening, there could be no material 
 
140 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 progress, and no steady use of the resources 
 which lie around us. If iron sometimes floated 
 and sometimes sank, how could we make iron 
 ships ? If gold were sometimes heavier and 
 sometimes lighter than silver, how could we have 
 a trustworthy coinage ? Unless we could exactly 
 calculate the force to be got out of a ton of coal, 
 engineering would be paralysed. 
 
 And in just the same way in the world of 
 human action and morals, unless the results of 
 action were fixed and definite, the sinews of con¬ 
 duct would be cut. If habitual self-indulgence 
 did not weaken character, and systematic ill- 
 doing deprave it, we should soon cease to strive 
 after goodness. If deeds of mercy and kindness 
 did not regularly bring happiness both to giver 
 and receiver, there would be a flaw, a discon¬ 
 tinuity in the moral universe. 
 
 The Jews, as was natural at the time, thought 
 that the interventions of God took the form of 
 suspensions or violations of law in the material 
 world. They thought that God would smooth the 
 waves for a ship which carried a great mission. 
 They thought that if they repented at a time of 
 famine God would at once send rain. And many 
 people to this day remain in this pre-scientific 
 frame of mind. But Christians ought to re¬ 
 member that it is expressly condemned by the 
 Saviour. ‘‘ God maketh his sun to rise on 
 the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on 
 
GOD IN HISTORY 
 
 141 
 
 the just and on the unjust.” We have here an 
 express denial of the ordinary Jewish belief. 
 God does not directly punish sin by withholding 
 rain. And yet since moral law underlies mere 
 physical law, it remains in a real sense true that 
 “ a fruitful land maketh he barren, for the 
 iniquity of them that dwell therein.” 
 
 God in History 
 
 Nevertheless it is not a wise, nor in the event a 
 true view, which contents itself with prophecy- 
 ing evil, and which looks on the world in a merely 
 pessimistic light. The history of England, 
 beyond that of other countries, gives us many 
 glances in which hope predominates. Over and 
 over again, the mercy of God in dealing with our 
 ancestors has tempered his justice. Many times 
 we have seemed to be on the brink of ruin, and 
 the hand of God has rescued us. Many times the 
 land has been through the phases marked in the 
 107th Psalm. “ Fools, because of their trans¬ 
 gression, and because of their iniquities, are 
 afflicted. Their soul abhorreth all manner of 
 meat; and they draw near unto the gates of 
 death. Then they cry unto the Lord in their 
 trouble, and he saveth them out of their dis¬ 
 tresses.” We are now suffering, and we shall 
 suffer more : but we have no right to despair of 
 rescue. Only one thing is essential, and that is 
 a right heart. But the mercy of God does not 
 
142 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 over-ride the human will, it only aids and inspires 
 it, raising up from time to time the men who save 
 soeiety. 
 
 Righteousness extends from God to man, and 
 in a measure from man to fellow-man, but not 
 from man to God. But the divine love, whieh is 
 the eomplement of righteousness, flows in two 
 streams, from God to man, and from man to God. 
 The love of God to man is a great stream of 
 cosmie influence, which began before the world 
 came into being, and has flowed ever since, 
 though far more strongly into some lives than 
 others, for the notion that God loves all men 
 equally is a mere metaphysical figment. God 
 loves all; but the influx of divine love, or at all 
 events the experience of divine love, is much more 
 evident in some lives than in others. The Jewish 
 race, no doubt, went too far when they imagined 
 that they were a people chosen out of the world 
 and regarded with exclusive love by God. 
 “ Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated.” 
 Yet can we doubt that there was a special love 
 of God for the race which did far more than any 
 other for the realisation in the world of the 
 divine ideas ? Can we put the Jewish people 
 in antiquity on the same level of divine favour 
 as Babylon and Tyre ? 
 
 And the Greeks in the course of history have 
 been quite as much a chosen race as the Jews. As 
 it was the function of the Jews to emphasise the 
 
GOD IN HISTORY 
 
 143 
 
 divine element in conduct, so it was the function 
 of the Greeks to emphasise the humane element 
 in philosophy, in literature, and in art. Our daily 
 life, the level of civilisation which we have 
 reached, probably owes as much to the one race 
 as the other. As Sir Henry Maine so lucidly 
 showed, in the history of the nations, stagnation 
 is the rule, and true progress the exception ; and 
 but for the Greeks we might have rested in the 
 contemplative incapacity of India, the savagery 
 of the earlier Middle Ages in Europe, the fossil- 
 isation of China. Our ideals in poetry, in art, 
 in society, are derived from Greece, and spring 
 out of the divine revelation to Greece, and the 
 love of God for the leaders and teachers of Greece. 
 
 It is the same in the case of individuals. The 
 love of God shines into their lives with varied 
 brightness, and in many forms, endowing one with 
 unquenchable energy for good deeds, another 
 with a passionate love of truth, an enthusiasm of 
 veracity, another with an insatiable desire of 
 what is beautiful. To more ordinary people 
 these endowments come in a less copious stream, 
 and with less clear indications of their source, so 
 that a man will often ascribe to a parent, a teacher, 
 an institution, what really came to him through 
 such agency direct from above. As St Paul 
 puts it, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God 
 gave the increase.” 
 
 Another kind of experience through which we 
 
144 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 realise the goodness of God is the forgiveness of 
 sin. There are among us many, in these days, who 
 speak with dislike, and even contempt, of the 
 Christian doctrine of sin. They think that if they 
 occasionally go wrong it is only natural, and God 
 will not resent it. Kindly men among us, they 
 think, are not quick at resenting injury : and a 
 Deity whose nature is love will be still readier to 
 forgive. But as a matter of fact, if we study the 
 course of the world, what is most obvious is the 
 extreme sternness of the divine justice. The 
 smallest slip, even an almost unavoidable bit of 
 ignorance, is remorselessly punished. A man goes 
 on heedlessly, not thinking, and he is suddenly 
 caught in the wheels of an inexorable necessity, and 
 crushed or badly mutilated. Experience teaches 
 nothing more thoroughly than the stern regularity 
 with which the forces of nature and of the human 
 world work, and the hopelessness of trying to 
 escape them. 
 
 It is only religion which shows another side to 
 the divine order. When that order is violated 
 condign punishment follows. But if a man 
 acknowledges his transgression, and comes to 
 God for forgiveness, a strange thing happens. 
 No miracle takes place, no sudden interposition 
 between cause and effect, but nevertheless the 
 whole aspect of things changes, as an iceberg 
 may turn over, and show a new outline above 
 the water. A man may even glory in his 
 
THE DIVINE PERSONALITY 
 
 145 
 
 tribulation, when it brings him a closer and more 
 vivid view of the divine goodness. Such is the 
 experience of the forgiveness of sin which has 
 been felt by innumerable Christians in all ages. 
 And if a man denies God, and expels religion 
 from his life, the result will not be to free him 
 from the painful consequences of a collision 
 with law, but will be only to prevent him from 
 enjoying the sense of forgiveness, of reconcilia¬ 
 tion, which would mitigate those consequences, 
 or even drive them out of sight. 
 
 The Divine Personality 
 
 In the world of modern thought the naive 
 Jewish conception of the personality of God of 
 course requires modification. Our knowledge of 
 nature has been enormously developed, and our 
 conception of the universe infinitely expanded. 
 But our experience of God in relation to man is 
 in essence not unlike that of the prophets and 
 psalmists of Israel, only that in Christ that 
 experience has been greatly raised and extended. 
 God has been revealed in Christ in new and 
 wonderful ways. And our belief in the person¬ 
 ality of God, which rests on that experience, has 
 been exalted and refined. But when we speak 
 of the divine personality, what we really mean 
 is that in Christian experience God shows some 
 of the attributes of human personality, wisdom, 
 goodness, and kindness. We must not limit the 
 
146 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 conception of God to personality ; but only say 
 that as he is revealed to men he shows a side 
 kindred to human personality. It is a practical 
 view, justified by and necessary to the ethical 
 life. It may be infinitely expanded by pious 
 meditation, but can never be safely used as a 
 foundation for speculative sehemes of meta¬ 
 physics. After gaining all the knowledge we 
 can of God’s ways of working in the world of 
 humanity, and having glimpses of a sublimity 
 which we cannot measure, we have to combine 
 with the trust in the divine fatherhood as taught 
 in the Lord’s Prayer the phrase of Isaiah, ‘‘As 
 the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my 
 ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts 
 than your thoughts.” 
 
 In approaching the question of the divine 
 personality from the practical point of view and 
 by the method used in the present work, we must 
 regard as, generally speaking, inconclusive any a 
 priori arguments derived from our theories as 
 to the nature of spirit or the constitution of the 
 world. And we must reject as illusory the view 
 of the man in the street that God is a monad, as 
 ourselves are monads, so that we can speak of 
 him as a magnified non-natural man. We must 
 take our start from the facts of religious experi¬ 
 ence, and see what is really involved in them. 
 
 The belief in the divine personality is really 
 based on the fact that when we approach God 
 
THE DIVINE PERSONALITY 
 
 147 
 
 in prayer and meditation we find resistances of 
 a particular kind, which are parallel to the 
 resistances which we meet in approaching our 
 fellow-men. If God were, as some writers have 
 maintained, merely evolved from our own con¬ 
 sciousness, these resistances would not exist. We 
 come to God with wishes and petitions arising 
 out of our own feelings and hopes. If God were 
 a subjective projection, these petitions would 
 meet no response, but die away into the empty 
 sky. And this no doubt is the experience of 
 many, who in consequence cease to have any 
 real belief in God. But in the case of those who 
 cultivate the life of the spirit, it is otherwise. 
 They feel themselves in a presence of overpower¬ 
 ing force. Their wishes and hopes often cease 
 or are transformed ; they feel the poorness of 
 siich energies. Or again, these wishes are strength¬ 
 ened and purified, so that the petitioner feels that 
 he has a right to them, and that they are in the 
 line of the higher life. 
 
 There is in this a close and remarkable likeness 
 to the approach to our fellow-men. I do not mean 
 ordinary acquaintances, but the few for whom 
 we have a very high regard ; in whom, as we say, 
 we believe. As we speak to them we find that in 
 the intercourse of soul with soul our feelings 
 change, our views are raised and refined. We 
 feel the influence of the personality of our friend 
 dominating our own, and giving us a new outlook 
 
148 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 which is partly our own and partly his. Hence 
 arises in us that intense belief in the reality and 
 objectivity of our friend’s being, our recognition 
 of his excellent personality. 
 
 It seems very natural to feel in the same way 
 as regards God. We recognise that his thoughts 
 are not our thoughts, nor his ways our ways, 
 but immeasurably superior. And the conclusion 
 comes on us at once, that as our friends are persons 
 so is God a person. The parallel is so obvious, 
 and the conclusion so simple, that everyone, I 
 suppose, naturally is disposed to accept them. 
 And there is surely no harm in doing so. 
 
 Direct and perfect communion with God is 
 so rare and so difficult that hardly anyone can 
 hope to attain to it; probably in the whole 
 course of history it has been attained to but 
 once. To feel the divine presence, and to gain 
 thence moral energy and intellectual enlighten¬ 
 ment, is possible for most; but fully to compre¬ 
 hend the nature of God, and to repair to him as 
 an infallible guide, is quite another thing, a 
 thing to which men may make infinite approach 
 without ever reaching it. 
 
 A comparison may be useful. Wireless tele¬ 
 graphy enables anyone to be in communication 
 with his friends. But he will only receive the 
 message of those friends if his instrument is of 
 a particular pitch ; and other communications 
 with which he has nothing to do may so crowd 
 
THE DIVINE PERSONALITY 
 
 149 
 
 upon him that the one desired message may not 
 reach him. Similarly, in the stress of the world, 
 and amid the discordant urgings of surrounding 
 human beings, the voice of God may be inaudible. 
 But even if a man have become spiritually deaf, 
 the testimony of others and the reading of books 
 of religion is quite enough to prove the objectivity 
 of divine communications. 
 
 When, however, we reflect, we find that the 
 parallel between communicating with God and 
 communicating with our fellow-men is not so 
 close as we might imagine. When we consider 
 what beliefs as to God have been held even by 
 civilised and intelligent people; when we observe 
 that, even among Christians, it is quite usual to 
 make an appeal to some delegate of God, some 
 saint or angel, take the place of direct communica¬ 
 tion, we shall discern the intellectual dangers 
 which beset any attempt to deduce from religious 
 experience any reasoned or satisfying doctrine 
 of God. The best formula which I can suggest 
 is that we learn by experience that there is in 
 the divine nature, in the ruler of the spiritual 
 world, something akin to personality, something 
 that may answer our appeals as a friend might 
 answer them, yet that any personality which we 
 can ascribe to God is so infinitely above and 
 beyond any which we can comprehend, that we 
 are utterly lost in the contemplation of it. 
 
 Later on I shall return to this subject of 
 
150 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 mediators between God and man. Probably to 
 many, or most people, it is easier and more help¬ 
 ful to think of divine aid as coming from some 
 lesser source than God. Probably modesty would 
 suggest to many that in the small affairs of 
 daily life it is presumptuous to expect direct aid 
 from the infinite source. Yet the experience of 
 life shows that aid from above does come even in 
 small and almost indifferent matters. The fact 
 is that the distinction between small and great in 
 practice is almost arbitrary ; and we never know 
 whether the thing we are doing is important or 
 unimportant, whether it is negligible or whether 
 it will have abiding consequences. Therefore if 
 any man prefers to think that God appoints a 
 subordinate power, some guardian angel, to 
 watch over him, to avert evil and lead to the 
 higher, it seems to be quite a legitimate view. 
 It is, of course, thoroughly Biblical; “He shall 
 give his angels charge over thee, and in their 
 hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time 
 thou dash thy foot against a stone.” “ Are 
 they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to 
 minister unto those that shall inherit salvation.” 
 Like most views in religious matters, it is liable 
 to abuse, and may easily drift into superstition. 
 But the man who sincerely believes in divine aid, 
 however he may account for it, is infinitely 
 nearer to the truth of things than the man who 
 disbelieves in it. 
 
THE DIVINE PERSONALITY 
 
 151 
 
 There is another aspect of things which must 
 not be overlooked. In the Gospels the great 
 enemy of God, Satan, is spoken of as personal, 
 and his action in the world is spoken of as similar 
 to, but ever opposed to, the action of God. 
 Modern sentimental Christianity, while pouring 
 out oceans of vague religiosity in regard to God, 
 does not speak of Satan or regard him seriously. 
 Yet those who have been most advanced in the 
 spiritual life have intensely believed in his exist¬ 
 ence, and attributed to him a personality corre¬ 
 sponding to the divine personality, with the 
 substitution, at every point, of evil for good. 
 And belief in the diabolic personality rests on the 
 same general ground of experience as belief in 
 the divine personality. But since the latter 
 belief is comforting and the former belief dis¬ 
 turbing, people overlook the parallelism. 
 
 There are many modern substitutes for the old 
 Christian doctrine of the personality of the Power 
 of evil. Some, especially among men of science, 
 regard evil in the human world as mere survival, 
 as the working in and below consciousness of 
 atavistic tendencies in man, of ‘‘ the ape and 
 tiger,” of the fierce passions of the savage, and 
 the callous selfishness of the barbarian. Some 
 regard evil as imperfect and inchoate good; 
 some consider wickedness as a sort of aberration 
 or disease. 
 
 Evil and wickedness exist; but to try to 
 
152 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 account for them is to enter into endless specula¬ 
 tive difficulties. All that I am bound to main¬ 
 tain is, that in fact man is inwardly tempted to 
 evil, and outwardly is always falling into evil. 
 Forces and tendencies in the world of spirit are 
 not all good, but sometimes very evil. Our spirits 
 live in a world of mixed good and evil, and the 
 course of our lives may bend in the direction of 
 good or in the direction of evil. It is our one 
 great business to admit through the gate of the 
 will impulses tending to good, and to shut out 
 impulses tending to evil. And this we certainly 
 cannot do by any inherent power of our own. 
 It is only the spirit of good which can quench the 
 spirit of evil, just as in our arteries the phagocytes 
 can destroy the germs of disease. But it is for 
 us as moral beings to help the power that makes 
 for good. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE ETERNAL CHRIST 
 
 The Person of Christ in the Gospels 
 
 The most fundamental problems which lie 
 before Christian thought are the nature of Christ 
 and the generic consciousness which unites Chris¬ 
 tians into a Church. These questions may not 
 be of supreme importance to the unreflective. 
 The great majority of Christians accept from 
 authority the views on the subject which satisfied 
 a past generation. But they are of the utmost 
 importance to those who think, and wish to 
 think consistently. And in an age like ours, 
 when everything is brought into question, and 
 when self-satisfied youth is ready to throw away 
 every belief of which it does not see an obvious 
 justification, it becomes of very great moment 
 that all who are attached to Christianity should 
 be able to give a reason for the faith which they 
 cherish, should not be at the mercy of the sceptic. 
 
 In more than one of my published papers I 
 have examined the root and the validity of the 
 current doctrine of Christ. I have set side by 
 side the historic picture of a human Jesus and 
 
 163 
 
154 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 the mystic vision of the exalted Christ,^ and I 
 have maintained that the spirit of the Christian 
 passes by faith from one to the other, and unites 
 them by an effort of will and personality. But 
 hitherto I have not tried to set forth in the 
 light of reason a justification for that synthesis ; 
 I have contented myself with hinting that the 
 justifications attempted in previous ages are no 
 longer quite valid. I have stopped short, in 
 great part, from a feeling which the Greeks called 
 aidos, an inevitable diffidence. 
 
 But to anyone conversant with the literature 
 of the day, such scruples may well seem out of 
 place. 
 
 Until recent years it has been the custom of 
 theologians to cite in regard to the doctrine of 
 Christ passages taken almost at random from 
 the Bible, which was regarded as inspired or 
 infallible. If some of these passages were in¬ 
 consistent with others, an art, the art of the 
 reconciler or expositor, was brought in to produce 
 harmony out of an apparent discord. Not only 
 were all the four Gospels used as first-hand 
 authorities as to the sayings and doings of Jesus, 
 but passages from St Paul’s Epistles, the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, and other documents of the 
 New Testament, were freely quoted as authorities 
 for the Christian teaching in regard to the 
 
 ^ Modernity and the Churches, p. 230 ; ‘‘ Jesus or Christ ” 
 {Hibbert Journal, Supplement, 1909), p. 45. 
 
THE PERSON OF CHRIST IN GOSPELS 155 
 
 Founder, without regard to the context or the 
 circumstances of writing. Even passages from 
 the books of the Old Testament were used to fill 
 any apparent gap in the record, not, of course, 
 in a quite literal, but in a transfigured, sense. 
 Most of the writers of the Roman and the Anglican 
 Churches, whatever may be their claim to method, 
 still usually follow this course. And it is the 
 course adopted in the great majority of the pulpits 
 of the land. Nor is any other course desired by 
 the mass of the Christian laity. 
 
 But such procedure has become impossible to 
 all who have been affected by the tide of humanist 
 criticism, which, starting with a more careful 
 investigation of the literature of Greece and 
 Rome, has gone on to apply the canons thence 
 derived to the books comprised in the Bible. 
 Naturally it has raised strong opposition. It has 
 been set down to the malignity of German 
 specialism. In many quarters any protest, how¬ 
 ever ignorant, against what is called ‘‘the higher 
 criticism,” meets with applause. All this is 
 absurd. It is quite true that specialism in 
 theology, as in many other things, has been 
 carried to excess in Germany. But the main 
 principles of historic and literary criticism, as 
 applied to the Bible and the early history of 
 Christianity, are not at all peculiar to Germany. 
 They are accepted wherever education is on a 
 reasonable basis. Florence and Paris, Basel and 
 
156 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Brussels, the English and the American Cam¬ 
 bridge, are in this matter at one. The very 
 phrase “ higher criticism,” which is supposed to 
 embody a claim to superiority, really only means, 
 in all well-informed schools of theology, criticism 
 which passes beyond mere verbal and textual 
 research to the matter and origin of the documents 
 of the Old and New Testaments. 
 
 The first and the most fundamental problem 
 set before New Testament criticism is to dis¬ 
 tinguish between the teaching of Jesus and the 
 teaching in regard to Christ in the writings of 
 the earliest disciples. The line of division is 
 comparatively simple. The three Synoptic Gos¬ 
 pels, though in places they are coloured by the 
 medium through which the biography they 
 embody passed before it was written down in 
 the present form, yet certainly do contain a 
 good, and on the whole trustworthy, account of 
 the teaching of Jesus. The views of the early 
 disciples in regard to the Founder also come to us 
 from three sources, which are, ranged in order of 
 date, the Epistles of St Paul, the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, and the Fourth Gospel. This Gospel 
 is no doubt the crux of the situation, the storm- 
 centre of theological controversy. It is im¬ 
 possible here to discuss the various views which 
 may be taken of it; I can only briefly state that 
 on which, as I am convinced, criticism is steadily 
 settling. There are in this Gospel reminiscences of 
 
THE PERSON OF CHRIST IN GOSPELS 157 
 
 actual events in the life of the Saviour, reminis¬ 
 cences which may go back to some actual com¬ 
 panion, and not impossibly to John the son of 
 Zebedee, whom tradition takes to Ephesus. In 
 the narrative of the last days there may be a 
 good deal of actual history. But the historic 
 element in the Gospel is completely overlaid with 
 elements which are not historic. The personality 
 whom it brings before us, however grand and 
 remarkable, is not one who could ever have 
 actually walked the earth. In the main the 
 book is a series of parables, sometimes with and 
 sometimes without a historic nucleus, tending 
 to exalt the eternal Son of God, the spiritual 
 life of the Church. We have a series of phrases, 
 sublime indeed, but not in the manner of the 
 Jesus of the Synoptists, such as “ I am the bread 
 of life,” “ I am the light of the world,” “ I am 
 the resurrection and the life.” And around these 
 phrases is built a structure of narrative, of 
 exposition and of exhortation. It is not possible 
 to take either the sayings or the commentaries as 
 coming from the historic Jesus, though we may 
 well regard them as given to the Church by the 
 Spirit of Christ which dwelt in it. 
 
 When, then, we inquire what was the teaching 
 of Jesus in regard to his own person, we find 
 that it is of the simplest description, and in the 
 fullest sense practical, having to do, not with 
 thought, but with conduct. Doing the will of 
 
158 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 God is set forth by Jesus as the ultimate good, 
 as the end after whieh all men should strive, and 
 the end towards which his own life was utterly 
 devoted. The three theses on which he dwells 
 with constant iteration are the fatherhood of God, 
 the brotherhood of man, and the duty of bringing 
 in on earth the divine kingdom, in which the will 
 of God shall be fully done. But at present only 
 one point in the teaching concerns us ; what 
 did Jesus teach as to his own nature, and his 
 relation to God ? There is only one passage in 
 the Synoptists where he makes a claim such as 
 those of which the Fourth Gospel is full, what 
 one may call a theological claim. “ All things 
 have been delivered unto me of my Father : and 
 no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither 
 doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he 
 to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.”^ 
 This passage stands by itself, and biblical com¬ 
 mentators have observed that it is in close accord 
 with the teaching of the Fourth Evangelist. 
 It seems quite clear that it belongs to the period 
 after the crucifixion, and represents not the 
 teaching of Jesus, but the teaching of the disciples 
 about Jesus. The last verse of Matthew, ‘‘ baptiz¬ 
 ing them in the name of the Father, and of the 
 Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” can be clearly 
 shown to be an anachronism, because we have 
 in Acts many records of baptisms, and in none 
 
 ^ Matt. xi. 27. 
 
THE PERSON OF CHRIST IN GOSPELS 159 
 
 of them is the formula which Matthew represents 
 as dictated by their risen Lord to the Apostles 
 ever used. We may, therefore, fairly say that 
 we have no knowledge of any metaphysical 
 teaching of Jesus himself as to his relation to 
 God and the world of spirit. 
 
 After the numerous writings on the Eschatology 
 of the Gospels which have appeared since the 
 beginning of this century, it seems to me difficult 
 to doubt that Jesus expected an immediate 
 coming of the kingdom of heaven.^ Strange 
 events, he thought, were about to take place in 
 the world, and the divine kingdom to come in 
 by a sudden revelation of God from heaven. 
 It seems probable, though this is less clear, that 
 he thought of himself as chief actor in this 
 revelation, as coming with an angelic army to 
 set up the kingdom on earth. From the point 
 of view of this book, such an illusion (for that 
 it was an illusion cannot be denied) does not 
 seriously diminish our veneration for the Saviour. 
 In a high and spiritual sense it was true that 
 there was approaching a great change and a new 
 revelation of God to man, and it was true that 
 it was to arise out of his own life and death. 
 
 I 
 
 Only the clouds of the Jewish atmosphere did 
 
 1 See espeeially Mark xiv. 25, 62. I think that the greater 
 part of the diseourse in Mark is not authentie. It is harder 
 to dispute the authentieity of phrases whieh oeeur in a 
 dispersed way in the narrative. 
 
160 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 in a measure cause him to misinterpret the 
 inner revelation, largely in consequence of the 
 value which all pious Jews at the time attributed to 
 the eschatological writings which were circulating 
 among them. 
 
 In any case it seems to me beyond question 
 that Schweitzer and his adherents have gone 
 much too far, in regarding eschatology as the 
 basis of the teaching of Jesus. There are in the 
 Synoptics remarkable passages which seem to 
 set forth another view. ‘‘ The kingdom of 
 heaven cometh not with observation : neither 
 shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for lo the 
 kingdom of God is within (or in the midst of) 
 you.” And many parables, such as that of the 
 leaven and that of the mustard seed, seem to 
 imply not a sudden interruption of history, but 
 a historic process gradually working. Whether 
 the two views were accepted by the Saviour, 
 one in one part of his life, the other in another 
 part, or whether they lay side by side in the 
 human consciousness of the Saviour, is a question 
 of the greatest difficulty, probably a question 
 which is insoluble. But what is clear, is that the 
 belief in a cataclysm is not primary, does not 
 completely condition the whole teaching of Jesus, 
 but is a separate or extraneous element, which is 
 not dominant. What is dominant is the practical 
 working sense of the all-importance of the 
 spiritual substratum of life, the sense of religious 
 
THE PERSON OF CHRIST IN GOSPELS 161 
 
 values. The roots of his teaching were far 
 deeper, going into the whole spiritual ground of 
 life and the profound relations between God 
 and man. When by the end of the first century 
 of our era the hope of a sudden catastrophe, and 
 of a reign of the saints on earth began to decay, 
 it left the sublime teaching of the Saviour in the 
 main uninjured. It only needed re-setting : and 
 this it has needed from time to time through the 
 ages. The setting has to be renewed, but the 
 jewels retain their form and their lustre. In fact, 
 the doctrine of the Kingdom and the teaching 
 as to conduct were two sides of one overwhelming 
 conviction of the spiritual basis of life, and of the 
 transitoriness of what is visible. It is this con¬ 
 viction in the mind of the Saviour, and its 
 embodiment in his life, which are the source of 
 the Christian inspiration. The end of the world 
 did not come ; and the explicit maxims of conduct 
 which Jesus expressed have to be modified and 
 interpreted before they can be acted on in any 
 settled and continuous civic life. They are 
 taken literally only by a few, whom we may call, 
 as we please, saints or fanatics. But from the 
 divine source whence came these maxims of 
 conduct, there have flowed into the Church 
 continually fresh revelations dominated and 
 inspired by the Spirit of the Founder. 
 
 In the Gospels the life of Jesus is broidered 
 
 with a tissue of miracle. In our days almost all 
 
 II 
 
162 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 theologians allow that miracles need not be 
 accepted as literal history, but must be divided 
 into classes. That Jesus exercised remarkable 
 powers of healing is allowed by all. And the 
 modern development, especially furthered by 
 experiences of the war, of faith-healing, and 
 psychiatry, has furnished such near parallels ^ to 
 the cures recorded by the Synoptists that complete 
 scepticism in regard to the latter is hardly justified. 
 The few miracles of another class in our records 
 are no doubt based on tradition mingled with mis¬ 
 understanding. Their value as evidence for the 
 supernatural nature of the Founder of Christianity 
 would be dwelt on by few authorities. 
 
 Such a view of the human life of the Saviour 
 as is here implied is very usual among Christians 
 at present. It was greatly furthered by the 
 appearance in the last generation of Ecce Homo ! 
 a work of undoubted genius, which on its first 
 appearance was regarded by extreme Evangelicals 
 as “ vomited out of the mouth of Hell,” but is 
 now cited with appreciation in many pulpits. 
 Recently we have had a work of similar character. 
 Dr Glover’s Jesus of History, which has not only 
 been accepted as a text-book by the Christian 
 Student Movement, but has been commended to the 
 Church in a Preface by the Archbishop of Canter¬ 
 bury. What further need have we of witnesses ? 
 
 ^ See especially an excellent little work, Miracles and the 
 New Psychology, by E. R. Micklem. 
 
THE PERSON OF CHRIST IN GOSPELS 163 
 
 Shortly before the great war Dr Sanday caused 
 considerable disturbance in the theological world 
 by advocating a new and remarkable view as to 
 the divine nature of Christ.^ He sums up his 
 doctrine thus : “ The proper seat or locus of all 
 divine indwelling, or divine action upon the 
 human squI, is the subliminal consciousness.” 
 ‘‘ The same or the corresponding subliminal 
 consciousness is the proper seat or locus of the 
 Deity of the incarnate Christ.” That there is 
 truth in this view is scarcely to be denied. As we 
 have seen in the chapter on Inspiration, this is 
 closely connected with the unconscious : but I 
 have maintained that we should call the source 
 of the revelation which thus comes rather super- 
 liminal than subliminal. And it must be added 
 that the view of Dr Sanday, though true, is not 
 the whole truth, since there is an inspiration of 
 the character, of the whole being of man, as well 
 as of his more impersonal side. Inspiration may 
 come to a man so impersonally as to have little 
 to do with the human medium; it may find an 
 utterance through him when he is in an un¬ 
 conscious state of ecstasy or in a half-conscious 
 state of dreaming. But when it is intertwined 
 with action and produces results in the character 
 the case is different. And man does not in 
 fact consist of independent parts ; but is a whole. 
 In Jesus, teaching, action, and character are so 
 1 Christologies Ancient and Modern, 1910. 
 
164 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 intertwined that they cannot be separated even 
 in thought. In him the conscious and the 
 unconscious were not two, but one Christ. 
 
 The Person of Christ among the Early 
 
 Disciples 
 
 Jesus had no sooner passed away from the 
 sight of the Apostles than they were filled with 
 an overwhelming conviction that their Master, 
 though not visible, was present with them in 
 spirit, giving them constant help, and a power 
 which neither devil nor man could resist, a 
 wisdom which confounded all opponents, and a 
 peace and joy which raised them to another level 
 of being. At first they were content merely to 
 recognise the fact, and to say that the Jesus who 
 had been crucified had been raised by God and 
 exalted to be a Saviour for all mankind, so that 
 in faithful reliance upon Him all men could be 
 saved from sin and made partakers of a life 
 which was eternal. This is the gist of the speech 
 attributed to St Peter in Acts, on the day of 
 Pentecost. And to simple and unlearned men 
 such as were the Apostles, it was the most natural 
 view to take. It simply put together the obvious 
 facts of everyday experience, without any attempt 
 to explain them or to form a rational creed. 
 
 But it is clear that such a state of mind could 
 not continue. All men must reflect on experience, 
 and make some effort to understand it; and as 
 
CHRIST AMONG THE EARLY DISCIPLES 165 
 
 men of greater intellect and better acquaintance 
 with Greek philosophy joined the society, the 
 ball of speculative metaphysics was set rolling, 
 and has rolled on even to our day, every generation 
 of Christians, if they did not accept the authorised 
 dicta of authority, trying to think out the root- 
 problems of Christianity; or even if they did 
 accept the received formulae, trying to attach to 
 them a fresh meaning, taken from the current 
 philosophy of the time. 
 
 It is clear that Matthew and Luke held what 
 must be called a monadic view of their Master’s 
 person. They thought that the Jesus who still 
 dwelt in the memory of some of those for whom 
 they wrote came into being at a definite time, 
 in the reign of Augustus Caesar, taught and 
 wrought for a few months in Galilee and Judea, 
 was put to death, and after death was raised up 
 by the power of God, and was soon to return, 
 as the same person whom they had seen or 
 heard of in the flesh, to establish upon earth the 
 reign of the saints. Of any previous existence 
 of their Master they say nothing. Thus the 
 personality of their Lord, however exalted and 
 inspired by a close communion with God, was of 
 the same kind as the personalities of ordinary 
 men, until he was exalted after death to be a 
 prince and a saviour. But as the society grew, 
 this view was found to be inadequate. 
 
 St Paul’s explanation is that Jesus was a 
 
166 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 great spiritual power, a sort of subordinate deity, 
 who for the sake of man abandoned his heavenly 
 state and came down to live the life of a peasant, 
 and to die the death of a felon on earth, in order 
 that by such sufferings he might redeem mankind 
 and do away with the disastrous consequences 
 of the sin of Adam. After the crucifixion Christ 
 resumed his place at the right hand of God, 
 whence he could sympathise with and succour 
 all who called on his name with faith, giving 
 them a share in his own supernatural power and 
 life. 
 
 The view of the Fourth Evangelist, an Ephesian 
 disciple of St Paul, though it has a superficial 
 likeness to St Paul’s, is really in many ways very 
 different. It is far less genuinely Jewish, and 
 far more transfused with that Greek or, rather, 
 Hellenistic culture of which Ephesus was one 
 of the chief seats. The writer was the first and 
 the greatest of Christian Mystics, and his view, 
 or some imitation or translation of it, has been 
 throughout the history of Christianity the belief 
 of the noblest and most exalted souls. No 
 document ever written by man has been more 
 misunderstood and traduced than the Fourth 
 Gospel. The hero of the Gospel is not the 
 historic Jesus, save to some degree in the narrative 
 of the Passion, but the Christ of the experience of 
 the Church after the Apostolic age. The dialectic 
 method of the writer is to show how the utterances 
 
CHRIST AMONG THE EARLY DISCIPLES 167 
 
 of the ideal Christ, or the inspirations of the 
 eternal Christ were, and are, misunderstood and 
 perverted by the blindness and materialism of 
 the Jewish hearers, who again are not the Jews 
 of Jerusalem, but all those who were by nature 
 ineapable of grasping the truth. This polemic 
 has been commonly misunderstood, and in all 
 ages of the Church the same blindness and 
 materialism has in many quarters persisted, so 
 as to misinterpret the writer, to turn his symbols 
 into facts, his poetry into prose, his lofty and 
 spiritualist idealism into hard creeds and 
 materialist conceptions. 
 
 Most people know how, in the Johannine 
 dialogues, the lofty sentences put in the mouth 
 of Christ are misinterpreted by the hearers. They 
 know that, when he speaks of the water of life, 
 the Samaritan woman thinks that he means 
 drinking-water, and when he speaks of being 
 born again, Nicodemus asks how a man when he 
 is old can be born of his mother a second time. 
 But most people fail to see how this method of 
 dialectic prevails in other parts of the teaching. 
 When the Saviour says, “lam the bread of life,” 
 the literalists think, like the Samaritan woman, 
 of bread to eat, disregarding the explanatory 
 verses, “ He that cometh to me shall not hunger, 
 and he that believeth on me shall not thirst.” 
 “ My meat is to do the will of him that sent me.” 
 They carry on the line of the supposed Jews, 
 
168 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 misunderstanding spiritual truth as the assertion 
 of physical fact, degrading and materialising not 
 less than the Samaritan woman herself. 
 
 It seems to me quite impossible that if the 
 Evangelist had taken literally the phrase, “ This 
 is my body,” he should have in his account of the 
 Last Supper said not a word as to the partaking 
 of bread and wine as a sacrificial meal, but 
 should instead dwell on the washing of the 
 Apostles’ feet. 
 
 In one of the sublimest passages of the Fourth 
 Gospel the writer transposes, so to speak, from 
 the literal and historic into the mystic tense, 
 the expectation then prevalent among the disciples 
 of a speedy second coming of their Lord. 
 
 When Jesus journeys to Bethany, on hearing 
 of the death of Lazarus, Martha, who represents 
 the unspiritual and commonplace type of mind, 
 says to him, “ If thou hadst been here, my 
 brother had not died.” Jesus replies to her, 
 ‘‘ Thy brother shall rise again,” and she, taking 
 the phrase in the manner of the woman of Samaria, 
 literally and without insight, says, “ I know that 
 he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last 
 day.” And Jesus, as in other passages in the 
 Gospel, at once turns her thought from the 
 literal to the spiritual sense, “ I am the resurrec¬ 
 tion, and the life : he that believeth on me, 
 though he die, yet shall he live : and whosoever 
 liveth and believeth on me shall never die.” The 
 
CHRIST AMONG THE EARLY DISCIPLES 169 
 
 mere death of the body, he implies, must happen 
 to all : but to those who have laid hold on 
 eternal life, death is a merely unimportant 
 ineident, which can have no hold on the life of 
 the spirit. The phrase of Jesus is familiar to us 
 all from its constant use in the burial service ; 
 but how small a proportion of those who listen 
 to the utterance in the most trying of all crises, 
 when our beloved are taken from us, takes it in 
 the higher sense. 
 
 The Johannine Jesus calls himself the “ Son of 
 God.” In the Synoptic tradition this does not 
 occur, save in the context already cited. But in 
 the time after the crucifixion the phrase was at 
 once taken by a party in the Church in a literal 
 and materialist sense, whence arose the tale of 
 the Virgin Birth at Bethlehem. But the Fourth 
 Evangelist, to whom such materialism was ab¬ 
 horrent, could not accept that interpretation, 
 but gives one of his own. Jesus, he says,^ is 
 the Son of God, because God consecrated him 
 and sent him into the world : it was this divine 
 consecration that constituted sonship. In other 
 passages the writer goes somewhat further. In 
 his proem he identifies Jesus with the Word or 
 Reason in accordance with which God created 
 the world. Obviously, I cannot here discuss the 
 full meaning of this view, which was based on a 
 Jewish modification of the Platonic philosophy, 
 
 ^ John X. 36. 
 
170 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 and has a near parallel in the writings of Philo, 
 who, however, had probably never heard of Jesus. 
 In after days it was expanded and modified by 
 Christian philosophers, such as Justin, who main¬ 
 tained that all the great men of past history who 
 had lived in accordance with reason or the logos 
 were followers of Christ, even though they had 
 never heard of Jesus. 
 
 In the wonderful last chapters of the Gospel, 
 Jesus is spoken of as telling his followers that he 
 had been with the Father before the world came 
 into being, that his life had been one of constant 
 communion with God, that he was about to 
 return to God, but that he would come again 
 to the disciples in spiritual presence to dwell in 
 them, as they should dwell in him, and bring 
 the immanent deity to dwell in them. Closely 
 mingled with this line of teaching there is another, 
 which on the surface is scarcely to be reconciled 
 with it, that Jesus would go to prepare a place 
 in which to receive his followers ; and that his 
 place on earth should be taken by the Divine 
 Spirit, the Paraclete. The fact is that, in 
 attempting to translate into articulate thought 
 the Christian experience, the Evangelist has 
 embodied it in two ways, and has not thought it 
 necessary to reconcile those ways one to another. 
 In the same way St Paul speaks of God and 
 the Spirit of God, Christ and the Spirit of Christ, 
 in a way quite baffling to the theologians who 
 
CHRIST AMONG THE EARLY DISCIPLES 171 
 
 want to form a consistent metaphysical form 
 of creed. Into all these intricate byways of 
 thought I need not enter. ^ I have only to 
 consider the general orientation of St Paul and 
 the Fourth Evangelist in regard to the exalted 
 Christ. St Paul does not address prayer to 
 Christ, but to the God and Father whom Christ 
 revealed. He regards it as elear that in eonse- 
 quence of the life and death of Christ the way of 
 prayer to God is made smooth, and the appeal 
 to the power of God made efficacious. He 
 assumes that a ehange of orientation in the 
 world of spirit had really taken plaee, and that 
 God had been really and objectively brought 
 near to man. 
 
 When the writers of whom I speak try to 
 express this fact in doctrine, the doctrine takes 
 one of two courses. Sometimes they speak of 
 Christ as a great High Priest and Mediator, who 
 presents the prayers of Christians at the throne 
 of the Father, which is the line specially taken 
 by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
 Sometimes—though this is a later development— 
 they speak of Christ as partaker of the nature of 
 the Godhead. From this beginning the elaborate 
 metaphysical doctrine of the Trinity takes its 
 rise. The formulators of that doctrine no doubt 
 
 1 I have dealt more fully with the matter in two little 
 works, The Religious Experience of St Paul and The Ephesian 
 Gospel. 
 
172 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 regarded it as an expression in words of high and 
 objective truth. But the modern mind can 
 regard it only as an expression of relative truth, 
 an attempt to enclose in human formulae the 
 results of the spiritual life and the actual experience 
 of the Church. 
 
 The experience which St Paul tried to express 
 in doctrine, and the Fourth Evangelist threw 
 into the form of a biography, was the continuous 
 divine inspiration of the Christian Church. This 
 inspiration abode in those at Jerusalem, and 
 went with them in their missionary journeys, 
 working within in peace and redemption, in 
 freedom from sin and a glorious joy and peace 
 which were not like those of the world around ; 
 and working without in strange signs and wonders, 
 in the confounding and silencing of all who 
 opposed, and the conversion of multitudes to 
 the faith. Both St Paul and the Evangelist 
 were quite convinced that the inspiration of the 
 society was something quite new in the history 
 of the world, and quite different from anything 
 to be found outside the Church. But the view 
 of St Paul, who had been brought up by Rabbis 
 in pre-Christian days, and was only converted 
 in middle life, was largely different from that 
 of the Evangelist who wrote in a great Hellenistic 
 city for the second generation of Christians. 
 To St Paul the faith of Christ was the religion of 
 Israel, exalted and spiritualised, free from its 
 
CHRIST IN HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 173 
 
 outward and legal wrappings, transmuted by a 
 new divine influence. And the view of the 
 writer of Hebrews was not dissimilar. All his 
 heroes are heroes of the Old Testament, and he 
 draws abundant parallels, alike in history and 
 rites, between the faith of Israel and Christianity. 
 The Fourth Evangelist moves in a different 
 atmosphere. To him the Jews are the stupid and 
 bitter opponents of the Faith. And the Faith 
 is such as will commend itself to every one who 
 is a son of light and a lover of spiritual truth. 
 “ Every one that is of the truth heareth my 
 voice,” says his Jesus. Christ, he writes, “ is the 
 light that lighteth every man that cometh into 
 the world.” He does not put Socrates and 
 Plato with Moses and the prophets among the 
 precursors of Christianity ; such cosmopolitanism 
 as that implies had to wait for Justin and Clement; 
 but he himself owes almost as much to the 
 Greeks as to the Jews, though his Hellenism has 
 passed through the medium of the Jews of the 
 Dispersion. 
 
 Christ in History and Experience 
 
 Certainly the transition is abrupt, if we pass 
 directly from the New Testament to the twentieth 
 century. But clearly I cannot attempt to trace 
 even the outline of the continuous thought of the 
 Church in regard to her Founder. We must at 
 once come to the question how the continued 
 
174 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 life of the Church, the union of Christians with 
 their unseen Head, can be justified in the light of a 
 spiritual interpretation of the Universe. Have 
 such sayings as that Christ is the Head and the 
 Church the body united to him, that Christ 
 lives, and the believer lives in him, a real and 
 intelligible meaning ? As I have elsewhere ob¬ 
 served, the Christian Church is built upon Jesus 
 Christ, upon the hyphen which connects Jesus 
 with Christ, the human and historic Jesus with 
 the exalted and mystic Christ. That hyphen 
 stands for a gap which has been in all ages over¬ 
 leaped by the faith and the practical necessities 
 of the Church. But is it possible to construct 
 across the gap a bridge of reason to satisfy those 
 who dare not make a leap ? or at all events to 
 prove to those who are ready to make the leap 
 that the gap is not an impassable abyss ? In 
 our days the justification of the hyphen cannot 
 come from any a priori or metaphysical reasoning : 
 the day of the validity of such reasoning passed 
 away with the rise of the Kantian philosophy. 
 Since the days of Kant, those who have not read 
 his works, or perhaps who even have not heard 
 of them, proceed on different paths of thought 
 from those in vogue before he wrote. The mental 
 atmosphere has been changed. Of course, I do not 
 mean that the whole change is due to a single 
 thinker. It is a great world process, which only 
 culminated and became articulate in Hume and 
 
CHRIST IN HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 175 
 
 Kant; and the roots of which lie in the attitude 
 of the modern world in regard to thought. 
 
 Our proofs must be derived from two classes 
 of facts ; not, of course, from the facts of physical 
 science, which help only in method and mental 
 tone, but from the facts of history on the one 
 side and psychology on the other. 
 
 The relevant fact of history is that from the 
 time of the teaching of Jesus, and more especially 
 from the time of his death on the cross, a new 
 spirit and tendency came into the world. It 
 was not the spirit of the Jewish prophets. Lofty 
 and noble as was their religion, it belonged only 
 to the Jewish race, and the body in whom it was 
 most fully incorporated, the Pharisees, were the 
 most bitter opponents of Jesus, and the sternest 
 persecutors of his followers. But between the 
 death of the Founder and the preaching of his 
 immediate followers, we find a complete change 
 of conditions which history must try to account 
 for. We have no satisfactory consecutive account 
 of the events of those years, for the early chapters 
 of Acts are, from the point of view of scientific 
 history, extremely defective. But we can trace 
 dimly a course of events without equal in the 
 history of the world. We find the disciples, who 
 at the time of their Master’s death were panic- 
 stricken and given over to despair, suddenly with 
 a high courage proclaiming that he was not dead, 
 but with and among them, that God had highly 
 
176 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 exalted him, and that they derived from him a 
 power which was irresistible over the souls and 
 even the bodies of men ; and further, that by 
 faith in him all men could shake off the trammels 
 of an evil condition and become partakers of 
 eternal life. 
 
 Not long after this, the Epistles of St Paul, 
 some of the most trustworthy and authentic of 
 the documents of the ancient world, mirror to 
 us the character and spirit of the writer, and 
 show us how in his life there came a crisis parallel 
 to that which had recently taken place in the 
 Jewish world. A crucial moment in the rise of 
 Christianity occurred when in the consciousness 
 of Paul, or perhaps rather in the unconscious 
 levels of his spirit, there took place a marvellous 
 change, and he passed from the religion of Israel 
 to the religion of Christ. A flood of spiritual 
 influence had been rising and rising at the door of 
 his heart, but he kept the door rigidly closed : 
 then suddenly the door gave way; and his 
 whole being was flooded with a sudden inspiration, 
 which never thereafter failed him, but led him 
 onward through a life of complete self-devotion 
 and a career of missionary enterprise to martyr¬ 
 dom at Rome, and an immortal position among 
 the saints and founders of the Church. 
 
 I do not see any reasonable way of accounting 
 for these startling phenomena save by the 
 recognition of a great and sudden change in the 
 
CHRIST IN HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 177 
 
 conditions of the spiritual ground of being. The 
 nature of inspiration was modified ; and a fresh 
 series of divine ideas was in process of taking 
 form in the world, taking form, no doubt, through 
 the human agency of preaching and psychical 
 dominance, but arising out of the ocean depths 
 of spiritual being. For it is to be observed that 
 the religion preached by the first Apostles and 
 St Paul was the religion of their Master, only in 
 some degree modified by the changed conditions. 
 If we take the theology and ethics of Paul, item 
 by item, we shall find that it is in its most im¬ 
 portant features a working out of the Gospel 
 of the Synoptists.^ Only in one respect does it 
 completely differ from the earlier doctrine in 
 that it centres not in the fatherhood of God and 
 the righteousness of the divine will, but in the 
 revelation of God in Christ, to whom every 
 believer was united in a spiritual relationship, 
 and who had by his death and resurrection 
 redeemed him from the powers of evil. 
 
 In the course of human events, as in the course 
 of nature, no event can take place without a 
 cause ; and I know not how the phenomena of 
 early Christianity can be accounted for, except 
 on the hypothesis of a fresh turn, a new orientation 
 of the spiritual power which is at the heart of 
 the world of life and humanity. 
 
 1 For an expansion of these sentences, I may be allowed 
 to refer to my Religious Experience of St Paul. 
 
 12 
 
178 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 And whereas Christianity has, in the succeeding 
 ages, suffered from every kind of corruption, of 
 materialism and degradation, yet it has always 
 from time to time shown a marvellous power of 
 renewing its youth, of freshly embodying one 
 side or another of the early teaching, of attacking 
 and overthrowing some hindrance which stood 
 in its way. Like the phoenix, it is ever turning 
 back from fossilisation or decay, and it draws 
 from an unseen source the power to dominate the 
 world, or at least that part of the world which 
 consists of the children of light. 
 
 The kingdom of God becomes the Church of 
 Christ. Its advent is in a sense cataclysmic : 
 but the cataclysm does not, as the whole Jewish 
 nation had expected, come visibly and materially, 
 but works from the consciousness of the human 
 race outward. 
 
 In such a view as this there is nothing in¬ 
 consistent with historic method and principle. 
 For history shows that the revelation of the 
 divine ideas has not been an uniform and regular 
 process, but one which has had crises, times of 
 higher inspiration which have cut into the more 
 ordinary process of enlightenment. Into the 
 general soul, as often into the souls of individuals, 
 there has come a sudden flooding by spiritual 
 power. In the case of individuals we call it 
 conversion ; in the case of nations or of great 
 societies we hardly know what to call it, but 
 
CHRIST IN HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 179 
 
 we recognise its existence, and we see its per¬ 
 manent effects in the world. Such a change 
 came notably in the sixth century b.c., when in 
 Greece poetry and art came into being, and the 
 world of culture set out on its great career. 
 Such a change came over Israel when in the time of 
 Cyrus the Persian the people returned to rebuild 
 Jerusalem, and became far more than before a 
 people of unique consciousness of God. Such a 
 time was the sixteenth century of our era, when 
 all the forces which were to mould and control 
 the development of modern society came into 
 being, or started on a new career, the era of the 
 Reformation, of the purification of the Roman 
 Church, of the revival of Greek letters and art. 
 The era of the rise of Christianity was the greatest 
 of all human crises, as we recognise every time 
 we date a letter from the Christian era. But it 
 has not in history stood quite alone. Its summit 
 overtops that of other heights of the same range ; 
 but they are of similar formation. 
 
 Such periods were not really so isolated as they 
 may seem to a student of history. They were led 
 up to by a series of efforts, and a combination of 
 conditions. On the preparation of the world for 
 Christianity great books have been written, and 
 still greater might well be written. It is sufficient 
 here to say that at no period and in no place 
 could the rising faith have found circumstances 
 so favourable for its spread and growth. And 
 
180 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 those who believe in the spiritual basis of history 
 will recognise that the outward preparation and 
 the inward inspiration belong together in what 
 we may venture to call the divine purpose. 
 
 And when the stage was thus prepared, there 
 came on it the great and unique Protagonist. It 
 is through exalted personalities that the divine 
 ideas become concentrated and reflected on 
 mankind. The divine logos or word is revealed 
 by prophet and by saint; and Jesus Christ so 
 far excelled all the prophets that the Fourth 
 Evangelist was justifled in regarding him as in a 
 new sense the Son of God, as the logos incarnate. 
 A new way was opened between the Spirit and 
 man ; and by that way a new inspiration poured 
 into the human world. The great Incarnation 
 took place, and in its wake followed the Incarna¬ 
 tion in the Apostles and saints who continued 
 on earth the life of the Founder. 
 
 In the explanation of the Incarnation, Greek 
 philosophy found a great fleld for centuries. 
 None of the explanations which were reached by 
 the thinkers of the Church is flnal or objectively 
 perfect. And we, too, may well spend our best 
 powers in the search for an explanation which 
 will suit the conditions of modern thought. 
 But whatever we may think of the explanations, 
 the facts to be explained remain. 
 
 It is clear that the appeal to history will not 
 convert a doubter to faith in Christ. If a man 
 
CHRIST IN HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 181 
 
 have that faith, he will defend it on grounds of 
 history ; if he be of an intellectual temper he 
 will find the need of historic justification pressing. 
 But the appeal which will rouse the emotions 
 and stir the will must derive from another source 
 than history. That source is obviously experi¬ 
 ence, spiritual experience of aid given in the 
 inner life, of sin resisted and peace attained. 
 All through the history of Christianity faith has 
 been based on such experience, “ They looked 
 unto him and were lightened, and their faces 
 were not ashamed.” The reality of spiritual aid 
 amid the trials and difficulties of life is the solid 
 basis of religion ; and unless it were a solid basis 
 religion would vanish from the earth. The 
 Christian experience is the root alike of the 
 Christian religion and the Christian Church. 
 
 And the Christian is often indisposed to discuss 
 the roots of his faith in experience. He is 
 content to say, ‘‘ Whereas I was blind, now I see.” 
 His life had been poor and shrivelled ; by faith 
 in Christ it has become rich and free. He has 
 found a Saviour and has been saved from sin, 
 from the assaults of evil powers, from his own 
 baser nature. 
 
 But from our present point of view this is not 
 enough. We are considering whether Christian 
 faith has a logical justification ; and it is no 
 reply to intellectual difficulties to say that the 
 thing works. 
 
182 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 It seems to me that St Paul, in a memorable 
 phrase, has pointed out the true justification of 
 the Christ-worship which in his day was coming 
 into the Church. Even though we have known 
 Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know 
 we him so no more.” ^ The eternal Christ is the 
 immortal reality, of which the human Jesus was 
 the reflection in the visible world. It was the 
 eternal Christ who was the inspiration of the 
 Church. It was the eternal Christ who appeared 
 to Paul on the way, and sent him with changed 
 heart on his great mission. It is the eternal 
 Christ who is the life of the Church and its 
 perpetual head. 
 
 There has been in the Church, and especially in 
 the modern Protestant branches of the Church, a 
 great deal of that Jesus worship which has tended 
 to place Christ after the flesh in the seat of the 
 Eternal. It has resulted in strange aberrations, 
 such as the notion that Jesus in the cradle was 
 at the same time on the throne of the Universe, 
 that God died on the cross, that all through his 
 mortal life Jesus was conscious of superhuman 
 powers. It is embodied in many of our hymns, 
 and inspires some of our litanies. But it is a 
 view which becomes utterly impossible to anyone 
 with a historic sense, even if he has not been 
 educated in historic method. For no one can 
 read the Synoptic Gospels with even moderate 
 
 1 2 Cor. V. 16. 
 
CHRIST IN HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 183 
 
 attention and intelligence, without seeing that 
 they portray a marvellous being indeed, but one 
 who lived as a man among men, whose knowledge 
 was limited, who felt the human feelings of 
 indignation, depression to the verge of despair, 
 exultation, love, and hostility. Jesus was tempted 
 on all points as we are, though without yielding. 
 He spent nights in prayer to God : he felt that 
 his own will had to be suppressed, in order to 
 be in harmony with the divine will. 
 
 At the same time, the historic Jesus appears 
 to have been in a clear sense unique. His 
 teaching was loftier and more spiritual than was 
 ever uttered by man. Elsewhere I have spoken 
 of it as pure spiritual oxygen, with no admixture 
 of the nitrogen which abounds in the teaching of 
 Plato, of Epictetus, of the greatest of non- 
 Christian writers. His will was always on the 
 side of God, even when he said, “Not my will, but 
 thine, be done.” The greater the saintliness of 
 any among his followers the more he has realised 
 the unapproachable superiority of the Master. 
 So in the case of ordinary uncritical believers 
 there is little fear of too absolute a devotion or 
 too exalted a worship of the Saviour even in his 
 historic revelation. Yet the higher Christian 
 view is always that of St Paul. Now henceforth 
 we must know Christ not after the flesh but 
 after the Spirit. 
 
 What became of the body of Jesus we do not 
 
184 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 know, and never can know : nor need we curiously 
 inquire. His personality made on his disciples 
 an impression which raised them to a new level 
 of being, and through them the reverberations 
 of it have echoed from man to man throughout 
 history. And the impression has been fixed and 
 preserved through the ages by the biographies 
 which some of those nearest to him were inspired 
 to commit first to the disciples and then to 
 writing. It is for the succeeding ages a great 
 gain that there is not one biography only, which 
 might have become, like the Koran, a guide 
 regarded as infallible, to limit the thought of 
 the Church, and to restrain it within rigid 
 boundaries. In the three Synoptic Gospels the 
 human element is obvious to every serious 
 student; we see the great original variously 
 reflected in different minds, so that we now 
 cannot be certain of the objective truth of the 
 records, but recover a liberty to go behind them 
 by pious imagination. We are obliged, by the 
 nature of our evidence, to form beyond and 
 behind the records the ideal humanity of the 
 Saviour. And we gain also glimpses of the 
 divine spirit which was behind the humanity ; 
 and which, after the death on the cross, was 
 revealed more and more to the inspired conscious¬ 
 ness of the society. The Fourth Evangelist had 
 a clearer view of this indwelling power. From 
 the modern point of view, dominated by a 
 
THE ETERNAL CHRIST 
 
 185 
 
 scientific view of history, it may be regarded as 
 a misfortune that he tried to construct an actual 
 biography dictated by it, just as, from the 
 historic point of view, we should wish a more 
 accurate and objective narrative from the Synop- 
 tists. But there is deep meaning in the saying 
 that the folly of God is wiser than man ; and it 
 is very reasonable to think that if the Evangelists 
 had been by some miracle raised out of the 
 unscientific views of history which prevailed in 
 their time, the spiritual loss to the Church would 
 have outweighed the material gain. 
 
 The Eternal Christ 
 
 The eternal Christ, the ever-living word of 
 God, who spoke by the prophets of Judaea and 
 the moralists of Greece, was revealed through 
 the veil of the flesh by the teaching and the 
 suffering of Jesus, but was also gradually revealed 
 in the Christian society. As the Fourth Evan¬ 
 gelist teaches, it was expedient for the Church 
 that Jesus should depart in the flesh, in order 
 that the Spirit of God should come to dwell in 
 the society. The Evangelist saw that those who 
 should believe without seeing were on a higher 
 level than those who had seen; that the invisible 
 ruler would become even more fully the Head of 
 the society than Jesus had been when alive; 
 that the great work of the Founder was not 
 his teaching, nor even his suffering, but the new 
 
186 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 orientation of the divine in relation to the human 
 whieh is summed up in the word Incarnation. 
 That the Evangelist had wholly inadequate 
 notions as to history, though it shows him to 
 have been quite unscientific, does not really 
 interfere with the splendour of the revelation 
 which he had to give to the world. 
 
 Looking at modern movements from this 
 point of view, they change their character. We 
 have to judge them not according to the flesh, 
 but according to the Spirit. The movement of 
 the German critics and the English literalists 
 “ back to Jesus ” is from the point of view of 
 historic science fully justified, and from the 
 ethical point of view of great advantage, though 
 liable to produce aberrations. At the same time 
 we see that the strong dislike which many earnest 
 Christians feel, for views which they consider 
 Unitarian, rests upon a real religious foundation, 
 though it is based also on misapprehension. For 
 if Christ is to be the centre of Christian worship, 
 it must be the divine Christ or the purely divine 
 in the historic Jesus. Not understanding the 
 distinction, which the Church has ever insisted 
 upon, between the human and the divine in 
 Jesus, they have taken Jesus as wholly divine, 
 and free from human limitations. By so doing 
 they have preserved certain spiritual values, 
 but unfortunately they have taken up a position 
 in a house built on the sand, and in no condition 
 
THE ETERNAL CHRIST 187 
 
 to resist the winds and the waves of historic 
 criticism. 
 
 To divide the life of Christ into three successive 
 periods—first, pre-existence, then a life in the 
 world, then a period of exaltation—is only possible 
 to those who accept the monadic view of person¬ 
 ality, and regard time as a condition of the 
 existence of the eternal. Such was not the view, 
 according to the New Testament, of Jesus him¬ 
 self, or of the earlier preachers who thought that 
 Jesus came into being at the nativity. It does 
 not give us a really divine and eternal Christ, 
 but a lofty angel who humbled himself, as we 
 have it in the sublime poem of Milton, and 
 generally in Arianism. We have indications of 
 such a view in the literature of the second genera¬ 
 tion of Christians. They were feeling their way 
 towards an explanation of the inspiration of the 
 Christian Society, and such a view naturally 
 presented itself to them. But it is not really 
 the bottom of the belief of either St Paul or the 
 Fourth Evangelist. Paul is devoted to the service 
 not of Christ after the flesh, but of Christ after 
 the Spirit. The Fourth Evangelist says that 
 Christ is the light that lightens every man who 
 comes into the world. 
 
 We can only reach the higher and more funda¬ 
 mental teaching of early Christianity by taking 
 another view. As the eternal Christ is the side 
 of God turned towards the world, God in relation 
 
188 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 to man, so the human Jesus was an embodiment 
 under the forms of space and time of the eternal 
 Christ, and not under the forms of space and 
 time only, but under local and temporary condi¬ 
 tions, Jewish racial feelings, a very limited 
 knowledge of the facts of nature and history, a 
 body subject to weariness and suffering, a soul 
 subject to moods of exultation and depression. 
 Only in the will, and in close dependence on 
 divine help, was Jesus a full exponent of the 
 divine. But that consecration of the will did 
 certainly enable him to see further into the ideas 
 of God and the nature of human life than anyone 
 has seen before or since. He could be mistaken, 
 as he himself confessed, as to the time and 
 manner of the coming of the divine kingdom. 
 He could bitterly feel the treachery of his nearest 
 friends. He could even for a moment shrink from 
 coming suffering. But it was only for a moment; 
 and the saying, “ Not my will, but thy will,” is 
 the most memorable saying of all time, and the 
 greatest crisis in the whole history of the human 
 race. 
 
 The nature of the divinity of Jesus Christ 
 naturally attracted those in the early centuries of 
 our era who had been brought up on Greek 
 philosophy ; and later it furnished the Schoolmen 
 with innumerable texts for their finely-wrought 
 theories ; but it does not greatly interest the 
 modern mind. What is of far greater moment 
 
THE ETERNAL CHRIST 
 
 189 
 
 in our times is the true interpretation of the 
 doctrines of the Incarnation and the Atonement, 
 which have been at the basis of Christianity as 
 received in Protestant countries. To those who 
 think with the present writer, the doctrine of the 
 Incarnation is fundamental. But it is a process 
 which has always been going on. From the 
 earliest historic times the divine ideas and 
 impulses have been gradually moulding the world 
 and making it a revelation of the divine order. 
 In the life of Jesus the process took a new and a 
 nobler form, and it has been continued down to 
 our own days by the Christian society. To 
 follow the divine ideas, to surrender one’s own 
 will to the will of God, to try to remould the 
 world by the help of that will has been in all 
 ages the purpose of Christianity. In a measure 
 it has also been the purpose of every noble 
 endeavour, whether within or without the Church ; 
 but the Christian inspiration has been of a special 
 character, never separated from contact with 
 the life of Jesus on earth, and striving ever to 
 baptize into the life of the Eternal Christ all 
 human activities and endeavours. 
 
 The doctrine of the Atonement also, greatly as 
 it has been degraded and materialised in some 
 bodies of Christians, has yet an inner meaning for 
 all time. The external fact of the Crucifixion 
 was combined with the internal fact of the total 
 surrender of the will of Jesus. And on these 
 
190 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 realities has been based the doctrine of the 
 Atonement, which has played a great part in 
 the history of Protestant Christianity. It seems 
 to us unfortunate that, when he formulated the 
 doctrine, St Paul made the Atonement of Christ 
 correlative to the Fall of Adam. As by the 
 sin of Adam all fell, so by the self-devotion of 
 Christ the consequences of that primal sin were 
 done away, and man was reconciled to God. 
 St Paul regarded the sin and the self-sacrifice as 
 events of history, and so they were generally 
 accepted until the scientific notion of history 
 prevailed. Then it was recognised that the tale 
 of the Garden of Eden and the fall of man was 
 not historic, but a piece of mythology, to which 
 parallels exist in the cosmogonies of other eastern 
 races. Yet, quite inconsistently, the Atonement 
 was still in many quarters regarded as an event 
 in history. The breach between God and man 
 was regarded as mythical, but the filling of that 
 breach was accepted as historical. This is a 
 view which it is impossible to maintain. But if 
 we remove both events from the field of history 
 to the realm of religious experience, and make 
 them stand for the natural revolt of man against 
 divine control, and the submission of man to that 
 control by the action of the Spirit of Christ in 
 the heart, we may still preserve their essence in a 
 form not liable to the attack of historic criticism. 
 
 The literal acceptance of the Pauline doctrine 
 
THE ETERNAL CHRIST 
 
 191 
 
 of the Atonement has been a great part of that 
 worship of the historic Jesus, which has been, 
 beyond all denial, to many the way of salvation, 
 an enthusiasm to raise them from a life of sin 
 and selfishness to a place in the divine kingdom. 
 But it is not the highest form of Christianity, 
 nor that which has attracted the finer spirits. 
 It is the Eternal Christ, dimly seen, through the 
 veil of the life of the historic Jesus, which has 
 been the inspiration of the Church, and which 
 has enabled her often to renew her youth after 
 ages of decay and convention. 
 
 And since Christ lives on, not only in heaven, 
 but on earth, those of his followers who live in 
 his life and repeat his self-devotion may also 
 well be said to carry on and complete the process 
 of the Atonement. As early as the prophesies of 
 Isaiah we find the germs of the doctrine that 
 the self-surrender of the good tends to the redemp¬ 
 tion of mankind from the power of evil. It is a 
 great law of the spiritual world, and a law which 
 becomes far more intelligible if we accept the 
 view of the nature of spirit advocated in the 
 present work. St Paul thought that his own 
 sufferings tended to supplement the sufferings of 
 Christ; and the same holds good of the saints of 
 all ages. Consciously or unconsciously, we all 
 depend for any victory over sin or any advance 
 in the divine life, both on the free grace of God 
 and on the results of the self-denial and self- 
 
192 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 dedication of an innumerable host of our pre¬ 
 decessors, who by treading the ways of self- 
 sacrifice have made them far smoother and easier 
 for our feet. 
 
 All this becomes clear if we try to work out the 
 lines of Christian doctrine according to the methods 
 of modern psychology. And we are bound to 
 do this so far as we can. The teaching of the 
 Gospels is that we are bound to love God not 
 only with the heart and will, but also with the 
 mind or intelligence {dianoia), and the mind of 
 the Church has worked steadily on the problems 
 of Christology at all periods, first in the age of 
 the great Greek Fathers, second in the age of 
 Scholasticism, and third, since Kant and Schleier- 
 macher, on the lines of mental science. But the 
 minds of most men are not mapped out in an 
 orderly way. They are not like a photograph, 
 or even a carefully painted landscape, but a 
 vague scheme of lights and shades, of colours 
 blended into a general effect. Very often an 
 inference, which to a logical reasoner will seem 
 evident, will appear to them to be offensive, or 
 to be near to blasphemy. So it is, and so it must 
 be. Strong feeling, and above all personal loyalty, 
 will cut across the paths of thought and distort 
 them. The Athanasian Creed says that whoso¬ 
 ever will be saved must thus think of the Trinity. 
 All that a modern theologian can say is, he that 
 will think in harmony with fact and experience 
 
THE ETERNAL CHRIST 
 
 193 
 
 must thus think of the Trinity. Those who do 
 not care for accuracy of thought have no need 
 to take up the subject at all. 
 
 In the narrative of the Temptation, Jesus is 
 represented as meeting the monstrous claim to 
 worship set forth by the Tempter with the words, 
 “ Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him 
 only shalt thou serve.” It was an adoption, or 
 rather an adaptation, of a fundamental phrase in 
 the religion of Israel. But it has a meaning for 
 modern days. For we may fairly say that in so far 
 as the worship of the Eternal Christ is a worship 
 of God, it is justified. But in so far as it is a 
 worship of what was temporary and racial in 
 Jesus, it is excluded by the Master himself. To 
 many of the saints of the Church there has been 
 vouchsafed what they confidently believed to be 
 spiritual communion with their exalted Master. 
 Some have even seen him in a vision, or heard 
 words from him. Herein they may claim to 
 follow in the steps of St Paul. But with St Paul 
 they will say that it is Christ in the spirit, and 
 not Christ after the flesh, whom they have known. 
 
 In the history of Christian doctrine we con¬ 
 stantly find the divine ideas imperfectly embodied, 
 mixed with temporary elements, coloured by the 
 mists of time. Thus it has been with the idea of 
 Christ. Some of these temporary elements we 
 have learned to recognise, and to discern their 
 
 limitations; to others most of us still cling. 
 
 13 
 
194 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 The notion of the great white throne before which 
 all nations are called to receive judgment has, 
 considered as an anticipation of historic event, 
 almost passed from our minds. When we read 
 the sublime chapter in Matthew in which the 
 last judgment is described, and even when we 
 read St Paul’s account of the general rising from 
 the dead and what follows, we easily realise that 
 these descriptions cover much illusion, that the 
 final judgment is individual, not universal; and 
 even that it is not confined to the moment of 
 death, but is working at every stage of life. But 
 our disillusion on some points need not make us 
 sceptical as to the great reality of the divine 
 judgment of life and human responsibility. 
 
 In the same way for most refiective people, the 
 phrase of St Paul, when he speaks of his desire 
 to depart and to be with Christ, does not seem 
 one to be taken quite literally. They do not 
 expect literally, when freed from the body, to 
 come into the presence of a sublimated human 
 Jesus. But they hope to pass into a state in 
 which, in some way which we cannot define, the 
 communion of their spirits with the spiritual and 
 eternal Christ will become closer and more inti¬ 
 mate. Their hope is based less upon the letter of 
 Scripture than on the spiritual experience of life. 
 To those who are able and who prefer to cling to 
 what is illusion, no harm will come; but the illusion 
 is only the husk, the other the grain in the husk. 
 
THE ETERNAL CHRIST 
 
 195 
 
 Many earnest Christians have a strong dislike 
 to Unitarian teaehing : and their instinet is right, 
 though it usually hides mueh eonfusion of thought. 
 In a sense, every Christian is a Unitarian. None 
 of the early disciples would have hesitated to 
 repeat the creed of Israel, “ God is one.” And 
 the Nicene Creed is quite as explicit, “ I believe in 
 one God . . . and in his son Jesus Christ, our 
 Lord.” “ But,” most churchmen will say, “ we 
 believe also in the divinity of Jesus Christ.” The 
 difference between the really Unitarian religions, 
 Judaism and Islam, and Christianity, lies in this, 
 that the latter, in addition to the doctrine of the 
 divine unity, preaches also the doctrine of the 
 Incarnation. That is precisely the doctrine which 
 I have ventured to try in these pages to place on a 
 reasonable and defensible basis. 
 
 To me the whole question of Christology 
 presents itself partly as one of fact and experience, 
 and partly as one of theory or the explanation of 
 fact. The facts are three : (I) the life and person¬ 
 ality of Jesus Christ, which is a historic question, 
 and can only be approached by historic methods; 
 (2) the growth and inspiration of the early 
 Church, which also we have to study in historic 
 documents; (3) the present relation of the Spirit 
 of Christ to Christians, which is a matter of 
 observation and experience;—(3) is the most im¬ 
 portant, and must needs affect the study of the 
 other two, for history apart from experience and 
 
196 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 the beliefs based on it is a mere eolourless 
 abstraetion. 
 
 How the facts of Christian experience may be 
 explained so as to produce a reasonable Christology 
 is a less important matter. Less important, but 
 by no means unimportant, but important rather 
 from the point of view of intellect than from that 
 of practical life. The course of speculation on the 
 subject I have, in the merest outline, sketched; 
 and have suggested an explanation of my own, 
 which seems to me suited to our intellectual 
 environment. But the intellectual environment 
 of various men is various ; and I have no doubt 
 that my explanation will only appeal to those 
 more or less like-minded with myself. I have 
 no pretension to set up an explanation objective 
 or final; but only one relatively satisfactory. 
 Nor, in fact, can an absolute doctrine on the 
 subject be expressed in human words, since, as 
 Bacon pointed out long ago, words cannot 
 match the subtlety of things. 
 
 A formula enclosed in words and imposed by 
 authority may, when it was settled, have been 
 of great value in checking aberrations and pre¬ 
 venting Christian ideas from being dissipated. 
 But in time such formulae are apt to become in 
 part dead branches of the tree of knowledge. On 
 the other hand, a flow of inspiration, an experience 
 repeated in the great minds of successive genera¬ 
 tions, is like a branch which is full of sap, and is 
 
THE ETERNAL CHRIST 
 
 197 
 
 always, as the seasons recur, putting forth fresh 
 leaves and flowers. 
 
 It may be said, if such is the case, it were 
 better to have no creeds at all. But this view 
 overlooks some important considerations. If the 
 Church repeated no creeds, she might lose sight 
 of important questions in regard to her Founder, 
 might suffer from want of continuity, might 
 leave to individuals, many of whom would be 
 uneducated and many perverted, the task of 
 forming creeds on their own account. This 
 would end in anarchy and general scepticism. 
 A creed, even if it is imperfect, even if some 
 clauses of it are quite out of date, may serve a 
 very useful purpose by giving each generation 
 something to start from, some venerable historic 
 formula, of which Christians will accept all they 
 can. It will be a curb on the licence of specula¬ 
 tion, and hold it within bounds. 
 
 What is essential is that the creed should not 
 be regarded as infallible, or as imposed by an 
 authority which will not allow it to be discussed, 
 but as a historic document, which represents and 
 partakes of the inspiration of a great age, but 
 which in every successive age requires fresh 
 comment and interpretation. In a word, we may 
 regard its authority in the same light in which we 
 have come to regard the authority of Scripture. 
 The great majority of English Christians regard 
 the Bible as inspired, and as an invaluable guide 
 
198 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 of life ; but few regard it as infallible, or put 
 it as a whole on a pedestal beyond the reach of 
 criticism. It is thus that, until the Church has 
 so far attained to unity that she can venture 
 to put forth a new creed, we may well use the 
 formulae of Nicaea and Chalcedon. The Church 
 of England does not put the creeds on a lower 
 level than Scripture, but bases their claim entirely 
 on their conformity to Scripture. Even the 
 Roman Church, as I understand, does not at all 
 exalt the authority of the creeds above that of 
 Scripture. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 The great doctrines of Christianity have in the 
 past often been so much involved with Greek 
 metaphysics that they have taken unreal and 
 arbitrary forms, so completely dependent on the 
 accepted philosophy of the age that we now find 
 it difficult to assign any satisfactory meaning 
 to them. The so-called Athanasian Creed, for 
 example, is a mere piling up of contradictories 
 which can convey to us little meaning, and it has 
 become a very unsatisfactory subject of study, 
 save from a purely historic point of view. But 
 these doctrines often have an ethical side, a 
 bearing on the practical life of the Church which 
 has endeared them to the Christian spirit. And 
 in that case it is nearly always possible, from the 
 modern and scientific point of view, to find for 
 them some justification, to discover the facts of 
 human nature, and of the spiritual world which 
 constituted their practical value. They cannot 
 always by any means be taken as an expression 
 of eternal and objective truth ; but they can be 
 shown to have at least true aspects. 
 
 I propose to consider in this light in the present 
 
 199 
 
200 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 chapter the doctrine of the Divine Spirit, as in the 
 last chapter the doctrine of the Eternal Christ. 
 As I have maintained in the last chapter, in 
 the early Church these two doctrines were 
 alternative, or perhaps mutually complementary, 
 attempts to explain the same phenomenon, the 
 sudden flooding of the world, at the beginning of 
 our era, with a new light from above. The two 
 doctrines appealed each to a somewhat different 
 kind of mind and spirit. And in our days also 
 the two doctrines are in a great degree alternative : 
 it is not easy to imagine a spiritual consciousness 
 in which they both find a full place. Either may 
 be a divine light to lead to salvation. 
 
 But there is from the historic and philosophic 
 point of view, if not from the side of practice and 
 conduct, a decided difference between the two 
 views. The doctrine of the Eternal Christ could 
 only have arisen after the human life of the 
 Saviour had passed, and belonged exclusively 
 to the Christian society. The doctrine of the 
 Divine Spirit was long before that time accepted 
 by the Jewish people. It grew with the spiritual 
 growth of the people. And it was certainly 
 accepted by the Saviour himself, and is repeatedly 
 mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels. 
 
 I should mention, but I need hardly more than 
 mention, the two occasions on which in the New 
 Testament the Holy Spirit is spoken of as 
 appearing in visible form. When Jesus was 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 201 
 
 baptised by John the Baptist it is stated in Mark 
 and Matthew that he saw the Spirit in the form 
 of a dove deseending upon him. Luke charaeter- 
 istically omits the words which suggests a mere 
 vision, and writes, “ The Holy Ghost descended 
 in a bodily form, as a dove, upon him.” The 
 Fourth Evangelist transfers the vision to John, 
 and adds that the Spirit abode upon Jesus. We 
 have evidently here the germ of the view adopted 
 by some parties in the Chureh, that the inearna- 
 tion began, not before the birth of Jesus, but at 
 his baptism, a view which developed into what 
 was called the Adoptionist Christology. 
 
 On the day of Pentecost, when the Apostles were 
 gathered together, there was a sound as of a 
 mighty wind, and cloven tongues of fire settled 
 upon eaeh of them. It would be a vain task to 
 try to ascertain what particular facts or appear¬ 
 ances gave birth to these tales. And it is quite 
 unnecessary to do so, since throughout the Gospels 
 the Holy Spirit is spoken of, not as a separate 
 being, but as a divine impulse or influenee which 
 dwelt first in the Master and later in the disciples. 
 
 In the Gospel of Luke ^ we read, “If ye then, 
 being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your 
 children : how much more shall your Heavenly 
 Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him.” 
 
 In the parallel passage in Matthew the phrase 
 ends somewhat differently, “ How much more 
 
 ^ xi. 13. 
 
202 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 shall your Father which is in heaven give good 
 things to them that ask him.” It is needless to 
 enquire which of these phrases gives us the very 
 words of our Lord ; or whether, as seems very 
 probable, both were used by him on different 
 occasions; for the words in Luke undoubtedly be¬ 
 long to the very essence of the earliest Christianity. 
 That God is accessible to man, and that the Spirit 
 of God speaks and acts in and through man, is 
 one of those primary teachings without which the 
 doctrine of Christ would lose all meaning, and 
 human life all divine consecration. 
 
 Among the disciples, shortly after their Lord 
 had gone up, the term Holy Spirit acquired a 
 somewhat more definite meaning, being used to 
 indicate the divine inspiration which belonged 
 specially to the members of the society, which 
 guided their councils, which accompanied their 
 missionary journeys from city to city, giving 
 them power of speech and a faculty to cure 
 diseases and expel evil spirits. But the Divine 
 Spirit did not even then in their belief begin his 
 working in the world after the Master had 
 departed. In old time the Spirit had spoken 
 through the Prophets and guided the rulers of 
 Israel, only entering on a clearer and stronger 
 revelation of the things of God when God had 
 sent his Son unto the world to teach and to 
 redeem it. 
 
 I have to speak in the first instance of the 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 203 
 
 imparting of the Divine Spirit in relation to 
 individuals ; later I will say something of it in 
 relation to the Christian Church. We may all 
 allow that in the assembly or communion of 
 Christians the Spirit will be more clearly mani¬ 
 fested than to individuals. Yet it is as individuals, 
 and as individuals only, that men can feel in 
 their hearts the stress of divine inspiration, and 
 through individuals it must pass to the society. 
 
 St James, the most purely Jewish of all the 
 writers of the New Testament, writes : ‘‘ Every 
 good gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, 
 and comes down from the Father of lights.” And 
 no one can be familiar with the Jewish Scriptures 
 without knowing that this quite accords with 
 their teaching. In the beginning, when earth 
 was a chaos, the Spirit of God moved on the face 
 of the waters, setting in motion those vital forces 
 which brought into existence the beautiful visible 
 world. This naturally reminds us of the almost 
 identical saying of the Greek Anaxagoras, that 
 it was reason or purpose which brought the 
 orderly world out of chaos. In the earlier books 
 of the Bible we read that it was the Spirit of 
 God which gave Bezalel, the son of Uri, wisdom 
 and skill to devise cunning works in gold and silver, 
 and in the cutting of wood, and in all manner of 
 workmanship: that it was the Spirit of God 
 which gave Samson a strength which was more 
 than human : that it was the Spirit of God 
 
204 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 which gave courage and military skill to Joshua, 
 the son of Nun, that he might vanquish the 
 peoples of Canaan. We are at a higher and less 
 primitive level when we read how God gave to 
 Solomon the spirit of wisdom, so that he excelled 
 all who preceded and all who came after him. 
 But a still loftier tone is to be found in some of 
 the Psalms, as when the poet writes : ‘‘ Cast me 
 not away from thy presence, and take not thy 
 Holy Spirit from me.” And the consummation 
 is reached in a passage of Isaiah, The Spirit of 
 the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath 
 anointed me to preach good tidings unto the 
 meek, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and 
 the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” 
 Every one will remember how this proclamation 
 was taken for a text by our Lord, when he began 
 to proclaim his mission : it is a glorious bond to 
 bind together the Old and the New Testament, 
 and probably every great reformer and preacher 
 in the whole history of Christianity has felt that 
 he might venture to think that in a far less degree, 
 yet in a real sense, he could apply the sacred 
 words to his own mission. 
 
 Thus there is, beginning with the documents of 
 the Jewish Scriptures, passing on into Christianity, 
 and continued in the history of the Christian 
 Church, what one may venture to call a progres¬ 
 sive or evolutional doctrine of the Divine Spirit, 
 and of the working of the Spirit among men. 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 205 
 
 In the life of Charles Darwin there is a passage 
 interesting in this connection. He has recorded 
 that when he was a boy he was a swift runner, 
 and at the time he attributed this swiftness of 
 foot to the direct help of God. In later life this 
 seemed to him fanciful; and so no doubt it 
 would appear to most people. Nevertheless, 
 there is a sense in which his boyish faith was 
 truer to fact and experience than his later 
 scepticism. If every good gift is from above, 
 suppleness in the limbs may be helped by an 
 inner motion of the Spirit. We do not at all 
 know the limits of the working of what is within 
 upon the bodily powers. It was natural that 
 when his life was wholly given to the investigation 
 of the orderly sequences of nature, Darwin 
 should have become obtuse to the powers of the 
 Spirit. Another confession of his puts this in a 
 clear light. He says that in later life he lost the 
 power of appreciating poetry, so that even the 
 plays of Shakespeare did not appeal to him. 
 That also is a not unnatural tendency in one 
 whom we may call a fanatic of science. But in 
 this case fewer people would think his change of 
 nature one for the better, for nearly all of us 
 regard the appreciation of poetry not as a limita¬ 
 tion but as an extension of life. Those who do a 
 great work in the world often in the course of 
 their strenuous career become stunted on some 
 sides of their nature, suffer from some kind of 
 
206 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 intellectual or moral atrophy. So, without in the 
 least blaming Darwin, we may well hold that his 
 boyish belief in divine aid was anything but a 
 mere delusion. 
 
 Alike in the history of the Church, and in recent 
 writings, there may be seen two different con¬ 
 ceptions of the direct influence of the Divine 
 Spirit on men. According to one view it is 
 beneath consciousness, in the unconscious strata 
 of our being, that God especially works. This one 
 may call the mystic view. It holds that only 
 as a man throws aside personality, desire, purpose, 
 and lays his spirit passively bare to the higher 
 impulses which come from above, only then will 
 the Divine Spirit use him as an instrument, and 
 communicate to him the deep things of God. 
 This is expressed in innumerable passages of such 
 works as the Imitatio Christi and the Theologia 
 Germanica. 
 
 And this view is true, and based on the ex¬ 
 perience of many. But it is only one side of the 
 truth, and the other side is also very important. 
 The unconscious side of man is open not only 
 to Divine influences and inspirations, but also 
 to sinister and evil influences of a spiritual 
 character. Anyone who reads the lives of the 
 Saints will see how constantly they have had to 
 strive against evil suggestions surging up from 
 below. Their life was a continual struggle, which 
 sometimes still continued when in the opinion of 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 207 
 
 the world sainthood was attained. And it is 
 obvious to anyone who reads the New Testament, 
 that side by side with Divine inspiration, diabolic 
 inspiration besets men’s souls. The two kinds of 
 inspiration differ as heaven from hell; and yet 
 we know that saints have been hard put to it 
 sometimes to determine whether impulses which 
 came into their spirits were from above or from 
 below. And when Jesus himself was questioned 
 on this point the only test which he gave was a 
 practical one, “ Do men gather grapes of thorns, 
 or figs of thistles ? ” ‘‘Ye shall know them by 
 their fruits.” “ Beloved,” writes the Fourth 
 Evangelist, “ believe not every spirit, but try the 
 spirits whether they are of God.” 
 
 Thus, though no one who believes at all in 
 Divine inspiration can doubt that many of its 
 greatest expressions, in word and feeling and 
 deed, work through the unconscious, yet we are 
 compelled to treat what is thus originated with 
 extreme care, and it is healthy to regard it even 
 with some suspicion. 
 
 The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, that 
 monument of the good sense of the Church in 
 the second century, gives very sane directions as 
 to the way in which teachers who claim a personal 
 inspiration should be tested. “ Not every one,” 
 it says, “ that speaketh in the spirit is a prophet; 
 but only, if he have the behaviour of the Lord. 
 Whosoever saith in the spirit. Give me money or 
 
208 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 any other things, ye shall not hearken to him.” 
 It is clear that even thus early men false and 
 covetous had claimed to be prophets. Nor can 
 we set them aside as mere pretenders and hypo¬ 
 crites : probably most of them believed in their 
 mission ; but the sources of it in the unconscious 
 levels of the mind were contaminated with base 
 elements, desire of predominance or desire of gain. 
 
 In England and America in recent times we 
 have had an abundance of men who have claimed 
 inspiration, such as the notable Mr Harris, who 
 for a time dominated that fine spirit, Lawrence 
 Oliphant. But the tests of the Didache would 
 be fatal to nearly all of them. Few indeed of 
 them show the behaviour of the Lord. And 
 certainly, especially in America, they ask for 
 money. We hear of great fortunes being acquired 
 by the founders of religious societies. And in 
 countries where the acquisition of money is the 
 supreme test of success it is not unnatural that 
 the leaders who succeed in heaping it up should 
 be regarded as justified by that fact. But the 
 Didache is right after all. As Socrates knew well, 
 and as most high-minded men have seen ever 
 since, the acceptance of a reward in money for 
 spiritual advice, unless it be in the way of a 
 regular salary paid by some organised church, at 
 once degrades the character of that help. Those 
 who require fees for spiritual service have their 
 reward. Very different was the procedure of 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 209 
 
 St. Paul, who lived by his manual work, that 
 he might give the rest of his time freely to the 
 work of his ministry. In this feeling Socrates 
 and he are at one. 
 
 The majority of mankind, and I would venture 
 to say the vast majority of women, are more 
 under the influence of emotion than of reason. 
 And emotion arises out of, and primarily belongs 
 to, the unconscious strata of our being. Thus it 
 is usual, when communications of the Divine 
 Spirit are spoken of, to regard such communica¬ 
 tions as addressed primarily to the emotions. 
 In the phenomena of conversion, which have 
 specially been a subject of study by modern 
 psychology, emotion is the most prominent 
 feature. The sense of sin, the feeling of a 
 need of deliverance, the scorn of one’s own 
 righteousness, and an eager desire to throw 
 oneself on the eternal righteousness, such 
 emotions, sometimes leading in their intensity 
 to fainting and even to collapse, are familiar 
 to those who have studied religious revivals. 
 Such phenomena have accompanied the preach¬ 
 ing of Christianity from the earliest times, and 
 the first Christians were accustomed, as are 
 many in our day, to see in these paroxysms 
 of moral crisis the direct working of the Spirit of 
 God. The abnormal accompaniments of con¬ 
 version, the speaking in unknown tongues, faith- 
 healing, and the like, impressed them, as they 
 
210 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 impressed St Luke, because they were striking 
 and unusual; and it is a natural human tendency 
 to realise the working of God rather in the 
 abnormal than in the normal. But that working 
 may be discerned as well in the life of every day 
 as in the times of spiritual stress ; and when it 
 acts upon the conscious strata of a man, it acts 
 upon all the elements which compose it, touching 
 the part of it which is best into a new and higher 
 life, giving wisdom to the intelligence, high ideals 
 to the artist, an untiring energy of will to the 
 practical reformer. It takes man, as he is and 
 has become, and raises him to a higher power and 
 efficiency. It acts less upon the emotions and 
 the imagination, and more upon the intelligence 
 and the practical faculties. 
 
 It will at once be seen that the view of inspira¬ 
 tion last mentioned is also in accord with the old 
 Jewish usage, though the more mystic and external 
 kind of inspiration is perhaps more often men¬ 
 tioned in Jewish scripture. The sons of the 
 Prophets often showed the supernatural influence 
 in ecstatic utterances, and Saul when he met 
 them caught the infection. The nature of the 
 calling is made clear in the prophecy of Amos, 
 the herdsman of Tekoa : “I was no prophet, 
 neither was I a prophet’s son; but I was a 
 herdman, and a dresser of sycamore trees ; and 
 the Lord took me from following the flock, and 
 the Lord said unto me, Go, prophecy unto my 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 211 
 
 people Israel.” So Jeremiah says,^ “If I say 
 I will not make mention of him, nor speak any 
 more in his name, then there is in my heart as it 
 were a burning fire shut up in my bones ; and I 
 am weary with forbearing, and eannot eontain.” 
 But besides this emotional and eestatie kind of 
 inspiration we find also one whieh has closer 
 relationship to wisdom in thought and good sense 
 in action. As I have already observed, the war¬ 
 like skill of a Joshua and the wisdom of a Solomon 
 are in the Bible regarded as quite as much the 
 fruits of divine inspiration as the more passionate 
 utterances of the Prophets. The Jewish nation 
 was regarded as the subject of special divine 
 guidance, and the qualities in its leaders and 
 heroes whieh helped it towards its divinely 
 appointed goal were regarded as imparted by 
 the Spirit of God. This fact opens to us fresh 
 vistas, as to which more presently. 
 
 But the particular kind of inspiration on which 
 I wish specially now to insist is the divine illumina¬ 
 tion of the intellect. That there is a wisdom 
 which is bestowed from above is dwelt on largely 
 in both Psalms and Proverbs. The spirit of God 
 and the wisdom of God seem to some of the 
 writers to be the same. “ The Lord,” says the 
 author of Proverbs,^ “ giveth wisdom : he layeth 
 up sound wisdom for the upright.” “ Thou shalt 
 make me to know wisdom,” ^ writes the Psalmist. 
 
 ^ XX. 9. ^ ii. 6, 7. ® Ps. li. 6. 
 
212 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 “ If any man lack wisdom,” writes St James, 
 ‘‘ let him ask of God.” And he further defines 
 this wisdom : ‘‘ The wisdom that is from above 
 is first pure, then peaeeable, gentle, easy to be 
 intreated, full of merey and good fruits.” 
 
 Wisdom may be shown either in the eonduct of 
 life or in an eminently true and sane view of 
 realities. As regards practical conduct, it is 
 notable how sane and wise were some of the 
 mystie saints of the Middle Ages, sueh as Catharine 
 and Theresa. In the interesting life of Brother 
 Lawrence we find an exquisitely simple aceount 
 of the way in whieh, being naturally one of the 
 most awkward and unpraetieal of men, he found 
 a way to do the duties of life quite well by a con¬ 
 stant and complete reliance on prayer and on the 
 love of God. When a man or a woman is emptied 
 alike of self-seeking and of self-conseiousness, the 
 eyes are wonderfully cleared to see what is the 
 right thing to do. 
 
 When the wisdom is theoretic in matters of 
 science and thought, there is still a possibility of 
 aid from the Divine Spirit. That aid does not, 
 of course, give a student knowledge of matters 
 whieh he has not studied, or place an unlearned 
 man on the level of a learned man. It does not 
 inform us in matters whieh it is our business and 
 duty to find out for ourselves. But it helps in 
 some directions, provided we are ready on our 
 part to work with it. 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 213 
 
 I venture to suggest that the discovery of the 
 unconscious element in life, and of its import¬ 
 ance, may throw a new light not only on the 
 development of character and the sway of the 
 emotions, but even on the intellectual working of 
 the student and the search for truth by the man 
 of science. We are not, even in intelligence, so 
 isolated as we fancy ourselves. In actual re¬ 
 search and discovery a great part is played by 
 the unconscious. It has often happened to those 
 who research that the solutions which they had 
 vainly sought in days of toil have suddenly, in 
 a quiet moment, been found written out, so to 
 speak, in the tablets of the mind. In the same 
 way it has often happened that those who have 
 long sought in vain to decide which of the courses 
 of action open to them is the really wise and good 
 one, have suddenly seen clearly what is the only 
 wise and right course to pursue. In all these 
 cases the new decision comes from what has 
 taken place in the unconscious levels of person¬ 
 ality. And it is in these unconscious levels that 
 spiritual influence most usually acts, influence 
 whose course we cannot trace ; but when the 
 result is the discovery of new truth or the 
 revelation of a good and right course of action, 
 we naturally look upon such an influence as 
 coming from the super-conscious, as proceeding, 
 whether mediately or immediately, from the 
 Ruler of the spiritual world. 
 
214 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 There is an intellectual quality which is most 
 notable in the votaries of science, and which is 
 parallel to idealism in the poet and the artist, or 
 to high goodness in the social worker. This is 
 the quality called by Huxley the fanaticism of 
 veracity, which John Stuart Mill exhibited in a 
 high degree. It is not always appreciated, 
 indeed it is often in popular estimation regarded 
 as a kind of egotism : yet it has been of inestim¬ 
 able value in the progress of knowledge. 
 
 To set aside a favourite theory because it is 
 found to be in conflict with fact and reality may, 
 to a man who leads a keenly intellectual life, 
 need as much self-denial and self-mastery as the 
 giving up of a personal pleasure or desire when 
 it is seen to conflict with the general good. 
 To allow one’s views in history or politics to 
 be warped by unworthy prejudice or by self- 
 interest is a parallel proceeding to allowing one’s 
 own enjoyments to injure either one’s neighbours 
 or society in general. 
 
 St Paul, whose strong good sense is almost as 
 noteworthy as his spiritual enthusiasm, teaches 
 clearly that the intellect is as much subject to 
 divine inspiration as the emotions and heart. 
 There are, he says, diversities of gifts, but the 
 same spirit; diversities of working, but the same 
 God. To one Christian is given, by the Spirit, 
 the power to work healing or to speak with 
 tongues. But these more ecstatic revelations 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 215 
 
 St Paul puts very low down in the scale of attain¬ 
 ments. To others, he says, the Spirit gives faith. 
 But higher still he places the wisdom and the 
 knowledge imparted by the Spirit; these he 
 speaks of as the crown of the Christian calling.^ 
 I do not, of course, mean that in this passage 
 St Paul arranges the gifts of the Spirit in an 
 exact order of merit. But it is at least note¬ 
 worthy that when he is writing of these spiritual 
 gifts the first that comes to his mind is wisdom. 
 And the high rank which he assigns to wisdom 
 is no mere speculative opinion. In his life and 
 his letters nothing is more conspicuous than the 
 way in which he adapts his teaching to his 
 environment, allows for all the differences in 
 temperament and circumstances of his converts, 
 and tries to make the enthusiasm of their faith 
 work in harness. In one place he writes : “I 
 will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with 
 the understanding also ” ; and still more strongly, 
 “ In the church I had rather speak five words 
 with my understanding, that I might instruct 
 others also, than ten thousand words in (an 
 unknown) tongue! ” Even the working of 
 miracles, whether by himself or others, he places 
 at a lower level than the gift of divine wisdom. 
 
 St Paul in fact accepts, and baptizes into 
 Christ, the doctrine of the Old Testament in 
 regard to the working of the Spirit of God. And 
 
 1 1 Cor. xii. 8. 
 
216 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 the Fourth Evangelist, when he speaks of Jesus 
 Christ as the Logos, the reason or purpose of 
 God, likewise transposes the Jewish doctrine into 
 a Christian key ; but he thinks less of the Old 
 Testament than of the Jewish modification of 
 the doctrines of later Hellenism. 
 
 It was a splendid tradition, and never wholly 
 abandoned by the Church. The great intellectual 
 teachers of the Church, Clement of Alexandria, 
 Augustine, Jerome, were put high in the lists of 
 saints. And in the Middle Ages, St Thomas 
 Aquinas, the great thinker, who was in his time 
 attacked as a heretic, but who lived to baptize 
 Aristotle into Christ, is one of the chief of the 
 saints. But just as in his unconscious part man 
 is in danger of being misled by impulses from 
 below, so in his conscious work he may be attacked 
 by baser motives, the desire to please particular 
 people, inordinate love of paradox and novelty, 
 indolence, and many other messengers of Satan 
 which lie in wait to mislead the investigator. 
 
 Is such a man not inspired, in spite of all 
 shortcomings, by the light that lighteth every 
 man that comes into the world ? Would that we 
 could free ourselves from cant, and see things as 
 they truly are in their right proportions ! 
 
 I must not be misunderstood. It is not mere 
 ability, nor mere success and fame, which is the 
 basis of such wisdom, but humbleness, courage, 
 patience, a keen desire that the ways of God be 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 217 
 
 known, and the happiness of man furthered. And 
 these qualities may exist in any degree, from a 
 merely conventional tendency to a burning en¬ 
 thusiasm. And even in that form they do not 
 usually lead a man to objective and eternal truth; 
 but they lead him to a high degree of relative 
 truth, truth good for the time and country. 
 
 I think that there is no subject in the whole 
 range of Christian teaching which more needs 
 dwelling on than the relations of the Divine 
 Spirit to the intellect. The tendency of religious 
 movements in the last century, Methodism, the 
 Salvation Army, Quakerism, and of all the 
 religious sects which spring up like mushrooms 
 in England and America, has been to lay undue 
 stress on feeling and emotion. They have taught 
 that the sum of religion lies in a right attitude of 
 the heart to God, that purity of motive makes a 
 good man, that if anyone is ready to do the will 
 of God, he will not find much difficulty in ascer¬ 
 taining what that will is. This is undoubtedly an 
 important side of religion, and from the individual 
 point of view the most important side. The 
 right relation of the will to God leads to life and 
 peace. But on the social side of religion the 
 intelligence is quite as important as the will. 
 Moved by religious emotion, often by a strong 
 feeling of love and broth^hood, men are con¬ 
 stantly, through want of thought and a con¬ 
 sideration of the consequences of action, led into 
 
218 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 doing what is disastrous to society. They dwell 
 upon certain phrases in the teaching of early 
 Christianity, and pass by the correctives which, 
 as I have shown, are abundantly to be found in 
 the Bible. God does not love fools ; and it is 
 of the essence of folly to act upon mere impulse 
 without carefully considering the results of one’s 
 action. The indulgence of impulses of com¬ 
 passion without consideration is often the cause 
 of great misery : the momentary alleviation of 
 distress may be succeeded by far greater distress, 
 not to speak of the destruction of morale. 
 
 In a primitive state of society, especially in 
 one where a callous selfishness prevails, the 
 practice of kindness and charity is the highest 
 form of duty. But in a complicated, and in many 
 ways degenerate, polity like ours, these impulses 
 need to be kept under severe control, not quenched, 
 but disciplined, educated by the careful con¬ 
 sideration of consequences, as ascertained by 
 careful investigation. Often the only wise course 
 of conduct repels one by its seeming harshness. 
 In such cases there is a contest between good 
 sense and conscience on the one side, and our 
 feelings of love, of compassion, of humanity, on 
 the other. And religion, not merely popular 
 religion, but the highest exponents of religion 
 among us, usually take the side of emotion against 
 wisdom. We do not sufficiently realise that 
 wisdom, the divine logos, is as much a part of the 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 219 
 
 divine being as love. And if, probably as the 
 result of painful experiences, we determine to take 
 the side of the head rather than of the heart, we 
 feel pained and unhappy. It is a sad state of 
 things brought about by one-sided views of our 
 religious teachers, and only to be remedied by a 
 change in their outlook, a change which must 
 come sooner or later, if society is to be saved 
 from dissolution, but a change which most of us 
 will feel to be depressing and chilling. It will be 
 brought about by progress in science, both 
 natural and human, which will make us aware 
 that God rules by law ; and that we can only 
 live in the world which he has made by conforming 
 our impulses to the conditions which are imposed 
 upon us by the Divine Will. 
 
 However, St Paul sometimes speaks in another 
 key, and depreciates what he calls “ the wisdom 
 of the world ” in comparison with the foolishness 
 of the message of the Gospel. ‘‘ The world by 
 wisdom,” he writes, ‘‘ knew not God.” One sees 
 his meaning. Used as he was to the discussions 
 in the Greek agoras with Stoics, Epicureans, and 
 others, he grew impatient with their blindness to 
 some of the spiritual realities to which he was 
 intensely alive, with their smug conviction that 
 they understood all about good and evil, and 
 therefore had no need for purification by the 
 fire of religion. St Paul was convinced that, 
 as he had a purer faith, so he reached to a really 
 
220 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 higher phase of wisdom than that of Hellenistic 
 philosophy. As a Jew he would scarcely realise 
 to what extent the Platonic philosophy was 
 destined, when baptized into Christ, to enrich 
 the thought of the Church. 
 
 That is the point at which we have arrived. 
 The doctrine of the Divine Spirit has its roots in 
 very early prehistoric times. It was placed by 
 the Jewish religion on a far higher level. But it 
 yet needed a baptism into Christ before it could 
 become what it did become to the early Christian 
 Church, and to the Christian society at all times. 
 Schleiermacher thought that he could substitute 
 for the working of the Spirit in the Church what 
 he calls the Gemeingeist, the corporate feeling, 
 of that Church. But the point was that the 
 corporate feeling of the Church was permeated 
 and inspired by an incoming spiritual power, 
 arising from that new orientation of the spiritual 
 world consequent on the death of Christ, and 
 his rising again in the experience and in the 
 hearts of Christians, of which I have already 
 spoken. It was a new phase or aspect, a fuller 
 revelation of the Spirit of God, to which they 
 were witnesses. 
 
 That there should have been at a definite 
 period in the history of the world such a new 
 revelation is quite in accordance with what 
 geology and history alike reveal as to God’s way 
 of dealing with the world. Geological research 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 221 
 
 reveals to us long periods of little and gradual 
 change, when existing races of animals and 
 plants slowly developed and by degrees became 
 better accommodated to their surroundings. Then 
 from time to time there has been a crisis in which 
 there has been, not indeed a new and special 
 creation, nor a suspension of natural law, but a 
 marked quickening of the pace of evolution, 
 following probably on great changes of environ¬ 
 ment, the result of which has been the arising of 
 a new order. So it has been in the vast spaces 
 which preceded history. And so it has been, 
 perhaps in a somewhat less startling degree, at 
 certain crises in the few centuries which are all 
 about which history can tell us anything. It is 
 as if an iceberg which we had been looking at 
 were suddenly, not in defiance of the law of 
 gravity, but in consequence of its slow working 
 on unseen parts of the mass of ice, to turn over 
 and to show to us fresh forms. 
 
 It was no wonder that, to the first disciples, 
 the working of the Divine Spirit in their midst 
 seemed something quite new and unprecedented, 
 something quite peculiar to their society and 
 hostile to the world about them. But we, looking 
 from a greater distance, and with more full 
 historic knowledge, can see that what took place 
 was a development on new lines of a known 
 power, and not the sudden advent of a power 
 wholly new. Some, indeed, of the writers of 
 
222 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 the New Testament had already discerned this : 
 the writer to the Hebrews when he observes that 
 God had revealed himself by the Prophets before 
 he revealed himself in his Son. And St Paul 
 at times seems to maintain that the divine 
 mission of the Church and the divine education 
 of Israel were really two parts of the same 
 process. That the inspiration of Plato and Zeno 
 and Aristotle was in fact another phase of the 
 process we, naturally, could not expect him to see. 
 
 The Fourth Evangelist well expresses the new 
 revelation of the Spirit when he writes : “ The 
 Spirit shall take of mine, and shall declare it 
 unto you.” Through the Spirit the main prin¬ 
 ciples of the teaching and the obedience of Jesus 
 were to be spread abroad in the world, the 
 realisation of the Fatherhood of God, the Brother¬ 
 hood of man, the dominance in the world of the 
 spiritual over the material, the duty of bringing 
 in the divine kingdom. These great principles, 
 by the urgency of the Divine Spirit, were to be 
 revealed to the minds of men, impressed upon 
 their hearts and made into their rule of action. 
 And whether we say that these results came 
 from the activity of the Spirit or from communion 
 with the Eternal Christ, seems to me not indeed 
 unimportant, but a matter decided by education 
 and temperament, according as the teaching of 
 the Third or the Fourth Evangelist most fully 
 impresses us. 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 223 
 
 But in the view of Schleiermacher as to the 
 Gemeingeist there is at all events thus much of 
 truth that, however much the gift of the Spirit 
 may impress individuals, it belongs primarily to 
 the community. But a development of this 
 point must be reserved to a later chapter. 
 
 The difficult question of personality which is 
 fundamental to this treatise is not in the present 
 connection important. For few Christians think 
 of the Divine Spirit as personal. In the Creeds 
 we read of him as a third personality, besides the 
 Father and the Son. But the belief in the case 
 of most people probably stops with the Creed. 
 He is not regarded, as by many Jesus Christ and 
 the Virgin Mother are regarded, as individual, but 
 rather as an aspect or influence of God. And as 
 we are concerned less with what men say they 
 believe, or think they believe, than with what 
 conduct shows them to believe, we need not 
 pursue the subject. 
 
 The dogma of the Trinity has become a sort of 
 shibboleth of orthodoxy, and is dragged in, in 
 most incongruous places in our services. For 
 example, it is repeated at the end of every Psalm, 
 apparently as an attempt to convert it from 
 Judaism to Christianity. This may be better 
 than attempts to amend the Psalms themselves, 
 but it is incongruous. The fact is, that the 
 dogma is a conventional and scholastic summary 
 of doctrines which have in themselves great 
 
224 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 value, but which gain little from being tied up 
 in a bundle. What these doctrines may in 
 reason be said to be, I have tried to set forth. 
 Others would no doubt set them forth differently. 
 
 We can hardly do better than come back to 
 the view expressed in Jeremy Taylor’s Eirenicon, 
 which is thus summed up by Professor Dowden : ^ 
 “We may amuse ourselves with essences and 
 hypostasies and personalities, distinctions without 
 difference, priority in coequalities, and unity -in 
 pluralities, and may be none the wiser. But the 
 good man who feels the power of the Father, he 
 to whom the Son is become wisdom, righteousness, 
 sanctification, and redemption, he in whose heart 
 the love of the Spirit of God is spread ; he, 
 though he understands nothing of what is un¬ 
 intelligible, alone understands the mystery of 
 the Holy Trinity.” 
 
 ^ Puritan and Anglican, p. 213. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 PERSONAL IMMORTALITY AND ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 I 
 
 Primitive Views 
 
 The ultimate element in our personality, the 
 “ spark of divine fire,” which is the active 
 element in our being, in the course of life grows 
 weary with contending against the obstacles 
 which clog it on all sides ; or else some sudden 
 catastrophe makes the body no longer sub¬ 
 servient to its impulses. Then comes the great 
 crisis which we call death. 
 
 We all know what becomes of the body at 
 death. It soon becomes corrupt, and loses all 
 form. Finally, it is resolved into elements which 
 may enter into the life of fresh beings, animal or 
 vegetable. The early Christians believed in the 
 resurrection, not only of the body, but of the 
 flesh, that is, in the reconstitution of the material 
 frame. But of course this notion involves 
 enormous difficulties, and it is probably extinct 
 among those who reflect.^ St Paul’s doctrine of 
 
 1 Mr H. D. A. Major’s vigorous work, A Resurrection of 
 Relics, shows clearly how completely this belief has died 
 away in the minds of religious leaders. 
 
 225 
 
 15 
 
226 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 the transformation of the material body into a 
 spiritual body stands on a very different footing, 
 and is still widely accepted. It is a theory in¬ 
 tended to explain the survival of the personality 
 in which a great proportion of mankind has 
 believed in the past and still believes. 
 
 On this problem the whole question of per¬ 
 sonal immortality, or the future life of the indi¬ 
 vidual, hinges. I am speaking at present not of 
 the theories of philosophers, but of the beliefs of 
 mankind in general—anyone who hopes to live 
 beyond the grave thinks precisely of his person¬ 
 ality as persisting, with its memory, its loves 
 and hatreds, its formed habits of thought and 
 action, its aspirations and energies. Apart from 
 the longing for a continuation of the personal 
 life, the question of immortality would only 
 interest a few of the more refined and intellectual. 
 There is no possibility of saving the body. But 
 every man as far back in history as we can trace 
 mankind, and as far as we can observe in all 
 regions of the world, is interested, so far as he 
 rises above the mere daily battle for existence, 
 in the continued existence of his personality after 
 death. Sometimes he merely accepts, without 
 thinking, the views on the subject current in his 
 circle or his Church. Sometimes he vigorously 
 rejects the notion of a future life. Sometimes 
 he takes refuge in a settled agnosticism. But 
 the interest of mankind in the matter is really 
 
PRIMITIVE VIEWS 
 
 227 
 
 SO keen, that any religious teacher who professes 
 to have new light on the matter gains an immense 
 and an eager audience. And any person who 
 professes as a medium to have intercourse with 
 the souls of the departed is besieged by inquirers, 
 who only fall away when they are convinced 
 that the supposed new light is only an ignis 
 fatuus. 
 
 The primitive religions of the world have 
 usually maintained that personality survives 
 death. But the survival which they teach is by 
 no means an attractive one; it consists of a 
 colourless and uninteresting reflection or repe¬ 
 tition of the old life. The hunter still hunts ; 
 the agriculturalist still ploughs his fields ; the 
 great chiefs still exercise lordship in the realm of 
 shades ; but it is all done in an unreal fashion. 
 No one would prefer such an existence to the 
 vigorous and stirring life of the present. It is a 
 sort of pis aller, better than nothing. Besides 
 this, however inconsistently, the more notable 
 dead were identified with the spirits of the earth 
 and the underworld, who frequently intervened 
 in the daily events of life, and whom it was 
 necessary to propitiate with sacrifice and rite. 
 Communion with the dead became the task or 
 the privilege of a special class of sorcerers or 
 medicine-men, who by the aid of such office 
 became very powerful persons in the tribe. 
 
 The primitive notions of paganism survived 
 
228 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 in Europe down to the last century in the respect 
 or fear which the country people have felt for 
 wizard or witch, who were in touch either with 
 the dead or with spirits, and who were powerful 
 to harm or on occasion to help those with whom 
 they had contact. And no sooner had these 
 superstitions died down than their place was 
 taken by other mediators or mediums who made 
 a business of establishing communication with 
 the departed. 
 
 The phenomena of spiritism, of the modern 
 attempt, through the agency of certain sensi¬ 
 tive mediums, to come into contact with the 
 departed, have revealed to us many hitherto 
 unappreciated facts as regards both matter and 
 mind. Thought transference, and the direct 
 influence, apart from physical communication, 
 of one person on another seems to be proved 
 by an enormous induction. And it cannot be 
 doubted, further, that certain sensitive persons, 
 when in a state of trance, have access to mines 
 of knowledge which lie outside the horizon of 
 their conscious lives. There is in these experi¬ 
 ences much which is very hard to explain ; and 
 the explanation of which may greatly affect our 
 outlook on the universe. 
 
 From the point of view of psychology and of 
 religion, I think that the beliefs of spiritists have 
 been perverted by what may be called the 
 monadic theory of personality,—the view that if 
 
PRIMITIVE VIEWS 
 
 229 
 
 the spirit survives death it will survive with the 
 features of the present life unchanged, with the 
 experiences and knowledge of the present life 
 still current. The influences, whatever they be, 
 which come into contact with, and express them¬ 
 selves through, the mediums, seem above all 
 things anxious to establish their identity with 
 beings who have lived on the earth in the past. 
 Any information they give as to the world beyond 
 the grave is of the most superficial and flimsy 
 description. Whence these communications 
 come is at present an unsolved problem. But 
 their source, whatever it be, is a purely mundane 
 one. 
 
 In fact, the nature of the communicators in 
 spiritist circles is dominated by the views current 
 in those circles. Sometimes they are person¬ 
 alities who have lived, or are supposed to have 
 lived, on earth; sometimes they are tricky and 
 untrustworthy earth-spirits; sometimes, accord¬ 
 ing to their own confession, they are evil spirits 
 on the watch to deceive and destroy those who 
 trust in them. The communications themselves 
 are almost never of really ethical character, 
 tending to stimulate the souls of survivors and 
 help them in the battle of life. They have no 
 relation to the course of conduct, severe, self- 
 denying, aspiring : but rather foster a flabby 
 and unreal sentimentality. In essence they are 
 of the same class as the communications made in 
 
230 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 past days by witches and necromancers. And 
 one remembers that on such communications 
 through history war has been made by every 
 religion worthy of the name. In the Jewish code 
 we find the command, “ Thou shalt not suffer a 
 witch to live.” Necromancy and magic put out 
 all their force against the rising power of Christi¬ 
 anity. And in the great revival of Christianity 
 in the sixteenth century, magic and witchery arose 
 like dark shadows cast by the light of the sun. 
 
 There are certain things which are made elear, 
 alike by the history of the belief in a future life 
 and the experiences of modern spiritualism. 
 Personal survival of death is not easily thought 
 of apart from continuance of consciousness and 
 memory. A conseiousness which has forgotten 
 its past is not intelligible. And consciousness 
 with memory has been regarded as implying a 
 body of some kind. Early Christianity intensely 
 believed in the resurrection of the body, either 
 in cruder or in more refined form. St Paul 
 taught the transformation of the earthly body 
 at the resurrection into a spiritual body, though 
 he evades the question what the spiritual body 
 will be like. “ God giveth it a body as it has 
 pleased him.” The modern schools believe in 
 something scarcely more definite, a rarified or 
 astral body, to be in reference to human senses 
 very much like the old physical body, but devoid 
 of its coarser properties, and holding a new 
 
PRIMITIVE VIEWS 
 
 231 
 
 relation to space. That such a body is immortal, 
 or the instrument of an immortal personality, is 
 not necessarily implied. But it is implied that 
 it survives bodily death, and continues beyond 
 the grave many functions for which the physical 
 body had been necessary,—memory, thought, 
 affection. 
 
 For this notion of a non-material body, re¬ 
 ligion in India usually substitutes the notion of 
 metempsychosis, or the transference of the soul- 
 into another body, human or animal, accom¬ 
 panied by its karma, or the fruit of past lives. 
 Only after many such transferences does the soul 
 wear out, or attain to that neutral and uncon¬ 
 scious state called in Buddhism, nirvana. The 
 strong point of this teaching is that it suggests 
 ways in which all good or evil deeds done in the 
 body may be rewarded or punished by the very 
 nature of the transfer into happy or unhappy 
 circumstances. The weak point of it is, that it 
 cannot in any satisfactory way establish by 
 evidence the continuity of consciousness from 
 one embodiment to another. The tales of the 
 sages, who have known in what bodily form they 
 dwelt before they attained to their later form, 
 are quite unconvincing. Therefore the teaching 
 has to be taken on faith, a faith in a natural law 
 of spirit which cannot be proved. Yet it is 
 held, we are told, quite without doubt, by the 
 masses of the people in such countries as India. 
 
232 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 II 
 
 Modern Popular Views 
 
 The experiences of the late war, with its 
 slaughter of thousands of our best and most 
 energetic young men, has naturally led survivors 
 to think much of the state of the departed. In 
 some instances it seems to have caused a rever¬ 
 sion to very primitive notions of survival. I 
 have heard of a Bishop speaking as a pagan might 
 speak of the playing-fields of heaven. Many 
 have betaken themselves to the spiritist mediums ; 
 and some may have found real satisfaction in that 
 quarter. The members of various religious bodies 
 have sought satisfaction in the doctrines in 
 regard to the future life current in those bodies. 
 
 But the mediaeval teaching as to heaven, hell, 
 and purgatory is undoubtedly among us in a 
 greatly enfeebled condition. How far the Roman 
 Church may be able to procure in the mass 
 of her members a real belief in the mediaeval 
 doctrine, I cannot venture to say. But outside 
 the Roman communion there has been going on 
 for a long time a continuous weakening in that 
 doctrine. Belief in purgatory disappeared at 
 the Reformation, because with the doctrine of 
 purgatory some of the worst abuses of the domi¬ 
 nant Church had been associated. Among the 
 Protestants of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries the terrific alternative of heaven and 
 
MODERN POPULAR VIEWS 
 
 233 
 
 hell stood waiting at the doors of the future life. 
 So long as they were really believed in, one 
 could not imagine a more stringent stimulus to 
 virtue or a more deterrent hindrance to vice 
 and infidelity. But as the primitive sternness 
 of Calvinism died down, the places of future 
 reward and punishment were taken less seriously. 
 Within the memory of some of us, to deny the 
 eternity of punishment was to risk persecution 
 for heresy. In an interesting recent biography, 
 that of Rev. C. Hargrove, we read that it was 
 his growing disbelief in this tenet which made him 
 abandon the Church of Rome, of which other¬ 
 wise he was a contented votary. But now one 
 scarcely ever hears, in sermons or books, any 
 advocacy of the doctrine of eternal punishment. 
 Perhaps in places the doctrine of corrective or 
 temporary punishment is substituted, that is to 
 say, the doctrine of purgatory is revived. But 
 it must be evident to every observer that the 
 question of future punishment is kept as far as 
 possible out of sight. When the life beyond the 
 grave is spoken of, it is almost always spoken of 
 as one of great happiness. In a word, the whole 
 Christian doctrine of the future life has been 
 merged in groundless imaginations, and flooded 
 by unreal sentiment. There is very little real 
 belief at the basis of it. A milk-and-water 
 doctrine that at death all except the desperately 
 bad are carried by angels to heaven, and that an 
 
234 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 all-loving Deity takes no aeconnt of their good 
 or evil deeds, but pardons all indiseriminately, 
 is so utterly at variance with the facts of the 
 present life, and with all the principles of mor¬ 
 ality, that it can have no real value, and is 
 quite unfit to provide armour to the soul in times 
 of danger and stress. 
 
 The fact is, that no one has been able to sketch 
 any kind of future life for the individual, the 
 prospect of which, if it be extended to infinity, 
 will attract a reasonable man. Our ancestors 
 spoke of the heavenly life as one long Sabbath, 
 but we, who find that a too quiet Sunday begins 
 to be oppressive, smile at the phrase. But those 
 who have tried to substitute other imaginations 
 have fared no better. Young men and women, 
 in the ardour of first love, speak of that love as 
 one that will last for ever. Very often it cools 
 or evaporates in a few years or weeks. Men and 
 women who have experienced the happiness 
 which comes from works of active benevolence, 
 are apt to think that an eternity of such work 
 will be satisfactory. But no kind of individual 
 existence known to us would last very long 
 without becoming oppressive. The fable of 
 Tithonus, who acquired immortality, and soon 
 began to envy those who were mortal, has deep 
 meaning. People who are growing elderly will 
 easily appreciate it. 
 
 I am acquainted with one learned and very 
 
EARLIEST CHRISTIAN VIEWS 
 
 235 
 
 intellectual man, who thinks that an eternity 
 may well be spent in the constant acquisition of 
 fresh knowledge, in diving deeper and deeper into 
 the laws of the physical world and the history of 
 mankind. Probably many exceptional men would 
 mention some activity, mental or practical, of 
 which they think they could never be wearied. 
 I knew a young poet who held that much of the 
 happiness of the future life would come from the 
 acting of the plays of Shakespeare. But evidently 
 such fancies as these are nothing but illusion. 
 
 The flimsiness of the popular beliefs as to 
 the future life, combined with the restless and 
 pleasure-loving character of modern society, has 
 tended more and more to thrust the whole ques¬ 
 tion of the survival of death into the background. 
 While only a few would explicitly deny its possi¬ 
 bility, the many think of it as little as they can, 
 except perhaps when they know that they are in¬ 
 volved with a mortal disease or when they live a life 
 of constant danger. They throw themselves with 
 energy into the current of the present, into the 
 relations of the family, into duty or amusement, 
 and try to disregard the dark shadow which, as 
 they are dimly aware, looms in the background. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Earliest Christian Views 
 
 When we compare the teaching of the New 
 Testament in regard to the future life with that 
 
236 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 of other religions, we are struck with its indis¬ 
 tinctness. In some of the religions of the Far 
 East we find most detailed accounts of the realm 
 beyond the grave, with its pleasures and its 
 tortures. Much of this imagery seems to have 
 filtered through into the beliefs of the mystic 
 sects of Greece and Rome. The Elysian fields 
 or the Islands of the Blest for the good, the 
 punishments of Tartarus for the wicked, were 
 quite familiar to the imagination of the ancient 
 world. They are enshrined for us in the great 
 poems of Homer and Virgil. At Delphi they 
 were represented to the eyes of pilgrims in a 
 greatly softened and refined form in the paint¬ 
 ings of Polygnotus. They were probably set 
 forth in dramatic form to the votaries of Demeter 
 at Eleusis. The Koran contains detailed accounts 
 of the torments of hell reserved for the wicked, 
 the covetous, and those who charge the Koran 
 with falsehood; while sensuous pictures are 
 drawn of the delights and rewards of the faithful, 
 and especially of those who die in battle for the 
 faith. 
 
 Of all this there is nothing in the earliest 
 Christian documents. There are parables such 
 as that of Dives and Lazarus and of the sheep 
 and the goats before the throne, but no descrip¬ 
 tions of the future life. Even St Paul con¬ 
 cludes his argument for the future life with the 
 words : “ When this corruptible shall have put on 
 
EARLIEST CHRISTIAN VIEWS 
 
 237 
 
 incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on 
 immortality, then shall come to pass the saying 
 that is written. Death is swallowed up in vic¬ 
 tory.” And in the other passage in regard to 
 the future life in 1 Thessalonians he sums up, 
 ‘‘ And so shall we ever be with the Lord.” The 
 Apocalypse, of course, gives us more detail, but 
 it is a work which was with great difficulty 
 admitted to the canon of Scripture, and does not 
 represent the earliest'teaching. 
 
 When a leading question as to the future life 
 was put to Jesus, ‘‘ Lord, are they few that be 
 saved ? ” he turned it aside in a very character¬ 
 istic way in a practical direction, “ Strive to 
 enter in by the narrow door.” There is, how¬ 
 ever, in the Gospels one passage of considerable 
 importance on the matter. 
 
 Modernists cannot cite the reported sayings of 
 Jesus as quite conclusive in matters like these. 
 They know too well how easily the words of the 
 great Master might be corrupted in transmission 
 or distorted by events in the history of the early 
 Church. And even when we seem to reach 
 actual utterances of the Saviour, we know that 
 they were not uninfluenced by the conditions 
 and the mental outlook of the time. It would 
 be fatal to take them as infallible, or as finally 
 settling vexed questions. So it is ; and no wise 
 man would wish that it should be otherwise; 
 for in the shadow of any infallibility man becomes 
 
238 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 a mere parasite, and begins at once to degenerate. 
 Yet for all Christians the sayings of their Master 
 will have a weight far greater than that of any 
 utterance of any disciple of his. 
 
 There is a saying of Jesus in regard to the 
 future life which has the strongest objective 
 claim on our reverence. For it occurs in closely 
 similar words in all the Synoptic Gospels. Few, 
 indeed, of the recorded words of the Master have 
 so strong a claim to be regarded as authentic. 
 The Sadducees thought that they had contrived 
 a trap for Jesus, discovered a puzzle which he 
 could not solve, in their question as to the woman 
 who had had seven husbands. ‘‘ In the resur¬ 
 rection whose wife shall she be of the seven, for 
 they all had her to wife ? ” The answer is clear 
 and final, ‘‘ In the resurrection they neither 
 marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as 
 angels in heaven. But as touching the resur¬ 
 rection of the dead, have ye not read that which 
 was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the 
 God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the 
 God of Jacob ? God is not the God of the 
 dead, but of the living.” There is here, as in 
 many of the sayings of Jesus, something belong¬ 
 ing to the time and the state of mind at the time, 
 yet its fundamental truth is but emphasised by 
 modern discovery. 
 
 In this case the local and temporary element in 
 the teaching of our Lord may be easily discerned. 
 
EARLIEST CHRISTIAN VIEWS 
 
 239 
 
 We have of late learned, from the writings of great 
 critics, to think that Jesus, like his contempor¬ 
 aries, was looking for an actual reign of God on 
 earth in the near future. He seems to have 
 thought that great national convulsions were 
 near at hand, that nation would rise against 
 nation and kingdom against kingdom, that there 
 were coming terrible catastrophes, out of which 
 would emerge a new theocracy and a reign of the 
 saints on earth. In the books of Daniel and 
 Enoch, and other writings of the Hellenistic age, 
 this succession of events was portrayed in grand 
 and sublime imagery ; and the anticipation of it 
 had become a part of the mental furniture of 
 every pious Israelite. 
 
 It was also generally believed that pious 
 Israelites who had passed away would arise from 
 the grave in their bodies to take a part in the 
 future kingdom. Whether Jesus fully shared 
 this belief, or how far he accepted it, it is im¬ 
 possible to be sure. What is clear is that his 
 teaching as to the future life does not in any way 
 depend upon it. Whether we think of the 
 woman who had seven husbands as living again 
 in a spiritual kingdom on earth, or in a realm 
 above the skies, does not really affect the scope 
 of the passage. 
 
 “ They marry not, nor are given in marriage.” 
 It is a stern saying, and those who regard the 
 future life as a continuation of the present, with 
 
240 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 its domestic relations and friendships unchanged, 
 must take account of it. It certainly does not 
 agree with the view either of primitive religion 
 or of modern popular sentiment. 
 
 The last sentence of the saying of Jesus has 
 also profound meaning: ‘‘ God is not the God of 
 the dead, but of the living.” Those who have 
 passed away in some sense yet live in and to God. 
 The phrase is not explained. There is a saying 
 like it in the book of Wisdom, “ The souls of 
 the righteous are in the hand of God.” What 
 the words mean cannot be easily set forth : 
 yet Christians will feel that they have a deep 
 significance. 
 
 IV 
 
 Philosophic Views 
 
 Certain analogies taken from the life of nature 
 have been brought forward as indicating a per¬ 
 sonal immortality. Indeed, the perpetual hope¬ 
 fulness of nature, the way in which the grain 
 springs from the seed (an analogy pressed by St 
 Paul), the revival in every spring of the plants 
 which had died down to their roots, are full of 
 hopeful suggestion. Another equally striking 
 analogy has been often put forth. Some of the 
 ephemeral insects, such as dragon-flies, spend in 
 their larval state as water-grubs months or years 
 at the bottom of a pond. Then on a sunny day 
 
PHILOSOPHIC VIEWS 
 
 241 
 
 they rise to the surface of the water, their skin 
 splits, and there emerges a beautiful winged 
 creature which has hardly any likeness to the 
 larva. Does not this give us a hint that men 
 also may rise at death into a new and undreamed 
 of life ? Yes, it gives us a hint, but no more. 
 For the May-fly, for all its beauty, lives but a 
 day or two, and spends that time only in propa¬ 
 gation and the laying of eggs. It is a suggestion 
 of the marvellous originality and variety in 
 nature, but the analogy to human life is not 
 close. 
 
 It is certain, though it is not always recognised, 
 that in our everyday life we have foretastes of 
 death. Every time we give up our consciousness 
 at the sweet approach of sleep, our life comes to 
 an end, to be placed in the hands of God, and 
 restored to us after an interval. And those who 
 before an operation submit to take an anaesthetic, 
 in a more deliberate manner give up life in the 
 hope of eventually receiving it back in fuller 
 measure. These are really acts of faith. We 
 can never know when we go to sleep that we 
 shall wake again ; we can never know that our 
 heart will not stop under the anaesthetic. Yet we 
 go boldly forward, relying on our experience of 
 the past, and our belief in the reign of law in the 
 universe. It is a small venture of faith, while 
 death, when—as is not usual—it is consciously 
 expected, is a great venture of faith. 
 
 16 
 
242 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 I may venture on another analogy. What 
 seems a blank sheet of paper, which is really 
 inscribed with invisible ink, may, on being heated, 
 suddenly become an important and purposeful 
 document. So it is not beyond imagination that 
 the stress of death may develop into activity 
 faculties which before were latent. But, of course, 
 this is only a suggestion, not an argument. 
 
 The argument for the future life which phil¬ 
 osophers have most frequently cited and on which 
 they have specially relied, is the incomplete 
 nature of the world of experience, when regarded 
 from the ethical point of view. It is true that 
 there is in the world a tendency towards the 
 reward of virtue and the punishment of vice ; 
 but this tendency is constantly frustrated by the 
 wickedness of men or by what seems the accident 
 of events. In few lives can we see the corre¬ 
 spondence between goodness and happiness at all 
 perfect or complete. On the contrary, the good 
 seem constantly to be the sufferers, and the hard 
 and consistent self-seekers to be at least out¬ 
 wardly successful and prosperous. The problem 
 is as old as the Book of Job and the beginnings 
 of Greek philosophy. It has been the tendency 
 of all enthusiastic religion to assert that the 
 imperfect justice visible in the world will be 
 corrected in a future life, in which the correspond¬ 
 ence between goodness and happiness will be 
 established by a divine judge. The happiness 
 
PHILOSOPHIC VIEWS 
 
 243 
 
 and the misery in this future state will depend 
 directly upon the goodness or the badness of the 
 life in the world. 
 
 The imagery of the day of judgment has varied 
 from school to school of religion, and from time 
 to time. The most sublime vision of it, that in 
 the 25th chapter of Matthew, the vision of the 
 throne of glory, and of the separation of the 
 sheep from the goats, is on the face of it a parable, 
 as is indeed quite obvious from the substitution 
 of sheep and goats for human beings. Some of 
 that imagery tends to fade as times go on ; and 
 the vivid and cataclysmic form of the judgment 
 may be seen to be something of an illusion. 
 But that there is a judgment of souls, that there 
 are before every soul future rewards and punish¬ 
 ments, has been the persistent belief of the 
 Church, and not of Christians only, but of all 
 who take life seriously. 
 
 This argument may be put in another and less 
 crude form. The life in the flesh may well be 
 regarded as a moral training whereby the soul, 
 if it sets itself on the side of right, is educated into 
 nobleness and beauty. And this moral noble¬ 
 ness and beauty are the highest and most worthy 
 productions which come into our experience. If 
 this progress towards what is better ceases 
 suddenly at death, what a waste of splendid 
 powers, what a want of continuity in the scheme 
 of existence ! Everywhere in the world we see 
 
244 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 continuity, evolution ; things do not cease to be, 
 but go on existing under changed conditions. 
 But in this case there would be a hopeless cata¬ 
 clysm, for of course the fact that the elements of 
 the body continue in new combinations would 
 not at all constitute continuity in the higher life. 
 Nor would the mere survival of a personality in the 
 influence which it exercises on children or friends, 
 or by writings, be a survival of the soul in any 
 personal sense. 
 
 Arguments such as these have been current in 
 all the great schools of moral philosophy since 
 the time of Plato. And they are still brought 
 forward by some of the best of our philosophers. 
 If they are less prominent and perhaps less 
 accounted of in our days, the reason lies rather 
 in the hurry and rush of our time, which often 
 excludes serious thought of any kind, and in the 
 materialism which naturally results from the 
 physical conveniences of the age, than in any 
 diminution of value in the arguments them¬ 
 selves. But it is possible, from the activist or 
 pragmatist point of view, which is accepted in the 
 present work, to bring to them a considerable 
 reinforcement. In that view it is maintained 
 that speculative thought can never reach results 
 of permanent and objective validity, that 
 thought is not the real basis of belief. Belief 
 comes from within, from the motions of the 
 unconscious and the results of action. Such 
 
PHILOSOPHIC VIEWS 
 
 245 
 
 motions give birth to thought on the one side 
 and to emotion on the other ; and the will rather 
 than the intelligence decides to follow them or to 
 reject them. It is from an inner impulse that 
 men believe in a life beyond the grave. The 
 scenery of that life is coloured by the intellectual 
 conditions of the time ; and mythologists in a 
 more primitive age, and philosophers in a more 
 self-conscious age, try to mould schemes, mytho- 
 logic, poetic, or intellectual, which will accord 
 with the inward prompting, 
 f Thus the really fundamental question in regard 
 to the belief in a future life is whether the urging 
 which gives rise to that belief is from above or 
 from below, whether it is in accord with the law 
 of our being and with the will of God, or whether 
 it is a hindrance, tending to delay the acceptance 
 of the divine ideas and to degrade the life of 
 nations. Here the only test is that given by the 
 Saviour, “ By their fruits ye shall know them ; 
 If any man is ready to do the will of God, he shall 
 know of the teaching whether it is of God.” 
 
 Regarding in this light the history of the belief 
 in immortality we cannot hesitate to find that, 
 mixed as it has been in all ages with superstition 
 and baseness, yet on the whole it has tended in 
 unbounded measure to the raising of the level 
 of life. In a belief in the continued existence of 
 the ancestor lie the roots alike of religion and of 
 social progress. We may see this especially in 
 
246 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 the records of the ancient Egyptians, whose feel¬ 
 ing of responsibility to the gods, whose convic¬ 
 tion of a judgment to come in the world of shades, 
 tended very greatly to moralise the people, to 
 moderate the cruelty and rapacity of the rulers, 
 and to furnish to the ruled a consolation amid 
 their heavy toils. In Greece the Mysteries of 
 Eleusis greatly tended to moralise the life at 
 Athens, as we see from the testimony of poets 
 and philosophers. And when what was best in 
 all the religions of the ancient world was merged 
 in Christianity, no feature of the Christian faith 
 was clearer than the belief in a future life. At 
 the first it was in a measure eclipsed by the Jewish 
 hope of a terrestrial millennium ; but this was 
 but the scaffold which protected the rising temple 
 of faith, and it soon fell away. 
 
 If there be in the scheme of the world such 
 things as moral good and moral evil, clearly the 
 belief in immortality must be on the side of the 
 good. Thousands have been sustained amid 
 struggles and sufferings undergone for the good of 
 mankind by the hope of a better and heavenly life. 
 Thousands have been scared from evil which 
 strongly attracted them by the fear of future 
 punishment. The reverse has not happened. 
 We cannot imagine a man deliberately setting 
 himself on the side of evil because he hoped for 
 future reward, or avoiding the life of virtue for 
 fear of being hereafter punished for pursuing it. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC VIEWS 
 
 247 
 
 Of course, there may be mistakes and short¬ 
 sightedness. Men may think that courses which 
 prove in the end to lead to evil are in the line of 
 the divine will, or that actions really tending to 
 the betterment of life are against that will. But 
 such cases are the exception and not the rule, 
 unless men’s life on the earth is dominated by 
 the powers of evil. 
 
 Modern materialism, no doubt, would put in a 
 plea on the other side. It would say that the 
 hope of immortality, by transferring the centre 
 of men’s aspirations from the present to the future 
 life, has done harm, and inclined men to put up 
 with faulty social arrangements and physical 
 discomfort in the world. It would declare that 
 the belief in a future life has been used by the 
 classes in possession of power and wealth to 
 pacify as with an opiate the uneasy stirring of 
 the toilers. 
 
 So stands the controversy in our days : Chris¬ 
 tianity and the Spirit on one side, on the other 
 materialist socialism, culminating in the Bol¬ 
 shevism of the ruling clique in Russia. The 
 controversy will never be decided by logic and 
 reasoning, but will have to be fought out, not 
 necessarily with arms, but by the impact of 
 spirit against spirit and society against society. 
 The weaknesses and crimes of the Christians in 
 the past have so deeply weighted them that they 
 will not win without a severe struggle ; but that 
 
248 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 they will in the end win seems to be proved, not 
 only for those who believe in a righteous God 
 and the dominanee of spirit, but also for all who 
 take to heart the lessons to be derived from the 
 struggles of the past. 
 
 Considerations like those above eited, though 
 they may eonfirm a man’s belief in the survival 
 of personality, are not the basis of that belief. It 
 is at bottom based on a feeling of value, the pro¬ 
 found eonvietion that though each of us is like 
 a mote in the sunbeam compared with the world 
 of spirit and the ruler of it, yet each of us has 
 something to give which God is not unwilling to 
 take, and something to keep which is of untold 
 value. The personality, the soul, is not to be 
 compared with material things, with riches or 
 houses or even the physical beauty of the body ; 
 but is in character infinite. That infinite value 
 should imply infinite duration is not to be proved 
 logically, is perhaps illusive ; but that does not 
 prevent the rise of a certainty that there is in 
 each of us that which is a treasure of great value, 
 which will not accept death as an end, but has a 
 profound disbelief in it. 
 
 Most thoughtful people have, at some time in 
 their lives, usually in moments of crisis, had a 
 consciousness of a certain duality. They have 
 seen the course of their life flowing on, as one 
 sees a river from a height; and have been aware 
 of a supreme duty in regard to that course. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC VIEWS 
 
 249 
 
 They have felt the law of their being as urging 
 them to take this or that action, not as a ques¬ 
 tion of expediency or inexpediency, or of better 
 and worse, but as necessary to the preservation 
 of their honour, to the saving of their souls. No 
 other conviction could have given to martyrs the 
 courage to face torture and death. For, looked 
 at with the unimagining eyes of the superficial 
 self, death must be the worst of all calamities. 
 Yet, as Bacon well remarked, a man has in him 
 many tendencies stronger in fact than the love 
 of life. Love, pride, contempt, even desire of 
 fame, will make a man meet easily and in con¬ 
 fidence the prospect of wounds and of death ; 
 and even feel as if no other course were possible. 
 
 But the mass of mankind are not introspective ; 
 and few, probably, are consciously aware at 
 moments of crisis of the motives which really 
 sway them. To take a concrete case. In 1914, 
 when there was a sudden and imperative demand 
 for soldiers for the Great War, tens of thousands 
 of volunteers came forward at once, abandoning 
 all prospect of material good, leaving wife and 
 child, and careers to which they had been strongly 
 attached, ready to face any peril and a hundred 
 forms of death. Many of them, when rejected 
 as medically unfit, and so provided with an 
 honourable excuse for retirement, could not rest, 
 but tried again and again, by contrivance, some¬ 
 times even by fraud, to gain a place in the ranks 
 
250 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 of fighters. A great many of these eager volun¬ 
 teers, if they had been questioned as to their 
 motives, would have given a very inadequate 
 reply. ‘‘ I could not rest,” “ I was obliged to 
 do my bit,” ‘‘I could not hold back when others 
 came forward.” Such explanations as these, 
 rather than any reasoned view of duty to country 
 or eagerness for the triumph of justice in the 
 world, would commonly be forthcoming. What 
 they would really mean, would be that there was 
 a sub-conscious urging which a man might not 
 fully understand, but which he could not resist 
 without losing all self-respect. 
 
 That there is something to save, and that its 
 saving is of unmeasured importance, is thus the 
 real belief, not only of the reflective, or of 
 professed Christians, but of every one who takes 
 life seriously. 
 
 But when we come to the more definite ques¬ 
 tion, What is the exact nature of that in us which 
 survives death, and what kind of life lies before 
 it ? we are at once involved in the greatest diffi¬ 
 culties. We have already seen how much of 
 unreason and illusion there is in the minds of 
 most men. And I am not aware that the best 
 intelligences have in this matter succeeded much 
 better than those of the ordinary type. We soon 
 reach the limits of valid human thought, and the 
 void beyond it will not support the feet of 
 reasoning or the wings of imagination. 
 
ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 251 
 
 It seems to me that a really religious view of 
 the future life is that of those who think of it as 
 not our business, but in the hands of a wise and 
 kind Father, whose help and inspiration in the 
 past leads us to be confident that he will at death 
 give us what is best for us. Whatever the future 
 may be, it will not be beyond divine control 
 and disposing. 
 
 When we turn to the early records of Chris¬ 
 tianity, we find in St Luke two notable records 
 of the acceptance of death. The last words of 
 Jesus were, according to this authority, ‘‘ Father, 
 into thy hands I commend my spirit.” Almost 
 the last words of Stephen were: ‘‘ Lord Jesus, 
 receive my spirit.” That, surely, is the typical 
 attitude of the Christian in the presence of death. 
 Any definite or confident attitude in such presence 
 must be based, for those who do not accept an 
 infallible Church, on the Christian experience of 
 life. 
 
 V 
 
 Eternal Life 
 
 It must be remembered that thus far I have 
 been speaking only of personal immortality, the 
 survival of death by the individual. But in 
 some parts of the New Testament, and especially 
 in the Fourth or Spiritual Gospel, a way is shown 
 for the attainment of an immortality of a less 
 personal kind. We may call it the way of 
 
252 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Christian mysticism. Mysticism is a characteristic 
 of the higher faith in all religions, and was widely 
 accepted, rather by the few than the many, at 
 the time of the rise of Christianity. And as 
 Christianity baptized into Christ, and raised to a 
 nobler level, all that was best in the current 
 religion of the age, it naturally also trans¬ 
 formed the existing mysticism, which at the 
 time had many forms, some higher and some 
 lower. 
 
 In the Fourth Gospel the writer, in his usual 
 method, places in contrast the ordinary material¬ 
 istic view of the people, which here as elsewhere 
 he calls the view of “ the Jews,” and his Master’s 
 higher teaching.^ “ If a man keep my word, he 
 shall never see death,” says Jesus. The Jews, 
 as in the parallel cases, take the words in the 
 popular sense: ‘‘ Abraham is dead,” they reply, 
 “ and the prophets.” How then, they imply, 
 can your followers escape the common fate ? 
 Jesus does not in this context explain the nature 
 of the death and the life which he means, but in 
 other passages he does so abundantly. They 
 have no relation to the world of sense and of 
 time, but only to the world of spirit. 
 
 Eternal life, as spoken of in the Bible, and 
 especially in the Fourth Gospel, is very different 
 from mere continued personal existence. It 
 implies the rising above the temporary, the 
 
 ^ John viii. 51. 
 
ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 253 
 
 subordination of the personality to a higher and 
 purer life. Naturally it is a process very hard to 
 describe, since all our language must be taken 
 from the world of sense and of mundane activi¬ 
 ties. But it is suggested in a hundred ways by 
 the fine spirits who have already in the present 
 life brought themselves into accord with the life 
 of the spirit which is eternal, that is, which escapes 
 the limits of space and time and reaches below the 
 very roots of personality. 
 
 Some men, even in their lifetime, seem to have 
 attained to the almost complete merging of self 
 in the higher life. Thus St Paul says that the 
 believer is dead, and his life hidden with Christ in 
 God: that he himself no longer lives, but Christ 
 lives in him. Such language is echoed by a long 
 line of Christian mystics. In another place St 
 Paul says, ‘‘ If ye live unto the flesh, ye shall die; 
 but if ye through the spirit do mortify the deeds 
 of the flesh, ye shall live.” It is evident that the 
 life of which the Apostle speaks is very different 
 from the continued existence of the individual. 
 He states a great law of the higher life, that the 
 personality which is dominated by the desires of 
 the body, naturally dies with the body; but the 
 personality which lives in the spirit need not 
 fear the death of the body, but partakes of the 
 deathlessness of the spirit. 
 
 The Fourth Evangelist writes : “ This is eternal 
 life, that they may know thee the only true God, 
 
254 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” This 
 seems as true as any mere verbal statement can 
 be in regard to so vast and undefinable a thing as 
 eternal life. But, of course, the word know is not 
 used primarily in any mere intelleetual sense. 
 To know intelleetually or seientifieally is a great 
 matter, but to build life upon the knowledge is 
 the one really important thing. To know God 
 is to realise the nature of spirit, and to feel our 
 duty to promote the will and purpose of God in 
 creation. To know Jesus Christ is to beeome 
 part of the earthly body of Christ, and to promote 
 his kingdom on earth. To realise the com¬ 
 munion of saints is to feel that we work not 
 alone but as part of a great realm of spirits, 
 inearnate and otherwise, with whom we are in 
 some kind of communion, who help us in the 
 spiritual way, and are with us reaching forward 
 towards the life whieh is eternal. 
 
 It is evident that, writing on so great a theme 
 as Eternal Life, whieh has been spoken of by the 
 greatest Christians in all ages, all that I can 
 venture to do is to define the relation of the 
 belief to those activist principles which lie at 
 the foundation of this little work. I must not 
 attempt description, but confine myself to the 
 psychological point of view. 
 
 The Creed says : “I look for—or hope for—the 
 life of the world to come.” But whereas the 
 continuance of personality after death can never 
 
ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 255 
 
 be more than a hope, eternal life in the spirit 
 may be a matter of experience and certainty. 
 In fact, it has been such to a multitude of men in 
 the past. In so far as in thought and in action 
 we aim at some end which we desire, we may 
 succeed or we may fail, but in any case we attain 
 only a gratification which belongs to the person¬ 
 ality, and which is liable to all the disillusions 
 and disappointments which belong to the per¬ 
 sonal life. But in so far as we merge our personal 
 wishes and hopes in the divine will, caring only 
 for the coming of the Kingdom, for the spread of 
 truth and goodness and beauty in the world, and 
 beyond the world in the realm of spirit, in so far 
 we are not liable to disillusion. It is true that 
 our particular plans may fail, and our particular 
 purposes may be frustrated, but alike the general 
 history of the world and our own experience of 
 life, show that in the long run there is a general 
 drift towards the better. If we believe in God 
 at all, we must believe that the will of God will 
 in the long run make its way. And by uniting 
 our own wills with that of God, we make our 
 final happiness certain. Our little schemes and 
 systems break down ; but we are quite ready to 
 believe that this failure is due to their faults and 
 imperfections ; and that if there is any good in 
 them, their working will be carried on by others. 
 We are like the runners in a torch-race, as 
 Lucretius put it, who pass on the torch from one 
 
256 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 to another in the certainty that the last runner 
 will reach the goal. Thus eternal life in the 
 spirit is a necessary corollary, if we believe, in 
 the first place, in law in the moral world, and in 
 the second place, in the final triumph of good. 
 
 The gradual approach to the divine is a pro¬ 
 cess which we may all in some measure realise. 
 In a few exceptional natures it may go on until 
 the individuality is obscured and all but merged 
 in the life which is spiritual and eternal. This is 
 the great teaching of the higher mysticism, which 
 belongs to all religion. Such merging was sought 
 by Greek philosophers by the way of thought 
 and contemplation. It is sought by the Buddhists 
 through asceticism and the conquest of personal 
 feeling of pleasure or pain. It may be sought in 
 modern days by the votaries of science who 
 recognise what Bergson calls revolution creatrice, 
 who have an intense inner sympathy with the 
 power which lies behind evolution, and has been 
 all through history gradually moulding the visible 
 into the likeness of the divine ideas or forms 
 which have always existed in the divine thought ; 
 and which in spite of all retrogression and opposi¬ 
 tion are gradually taking form in the world. 
 
 All these ways of approach to the eternal life 
 are open to Christians. But the Christian has 
 also open to him a more excellent way. The 
 incarnation of God in Christ, the pouring out of 
 the Holy Spirit on the followers of Christ in the 
 
ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 257 
 
 early age of Christianity, the formation in the 
 Christian Church of a body of believers who 
 through the ages carry on the life of Christ in 
 the world, — all these make possible, and in 
 some degree actual, a higher form of mysticism. 
 Christian mysticism has never yet, save in the 
 person of the Founder, reached any final or per¬ 
 fect development; but in the past many Chris¬ 
 tians have approached the highest type. 
 
 In spite of the weaknesses of individual Chris¬ 
 tians, Christian mysticism is a special type. The 
 point on which it stands contrasted with the 
 mysticism of the Buddhist, is that it does not 
 make war on and try to destroy the human will. 
 In Christ there was a human as well as a divine 
 will, as is most evidently shown in the last 
 
 prayer, ‘‘ Not my will, but thine, be done.” The 
 human will has to subordinate itself to the divine, 
 it has to stand resolutely on the side of the 
 
 divine will against the world, but it does not 
 
 cease to exist. 
 
 Some recent writers have greatly perplexed 
 
 themselves, and even given way to despair, 
 
 because they think it demonstrated by science 
 
 that within measurable time the heat of our 
 
 globe will fail and life will come to an end on it. 
 
 Such overstrained anxieties seem to me out of 
 
 place. We cannot so fully grasp the future as 
 
 to be sure that the predictions of the astro- 
 
 are to be trusted. Einstein seems to 
 
 17 
 
 nomers 
 
258 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 have shown that they have yet much to learn. 
 And even if they have rightly foreseen the in¬ 
 evitable end of the world, there lies above and 
 beyond it the world of spirit, and processes begun 
 on this earth may be carried on elsewhere. The 
 experience of life in this world may make it 
 possible for the Creative Spirit to develop life 
 and goodness more easily and rapidly on some 
 other planet. Our globe floats in an ocean of 
 spirit; at present a fascinating drama of history 
 is being worked out on it. But other acts of the 
 drama may take place in other worlds. A 
 generation which communicates by wireless tele¬ 
 graph with distant countries need not despair of 
 communicating thought to other worlds. And 
 the ways of spirit are much more subtle than 
 those of electricity. To the spirit the vast spaces 
 which separate world from world do not exist. 
 It seems to me perfectly possible that the great 
 crises of history, the sudden turning of the general 
 consciousness of men on earth in new directions, 
 may be connected with spiritual storms in other 
 worlds. This is, of course, all matter of possi¬ 
 bility and conjecture, but no one can reasonably 
 declare it impossible. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 
 
 The Collective Consciousness of the 
 
 Church 
 
 In this section we have to deal with the Church 
 as the Community of saints. It is in regard 
 to the nature and the value of the Christian 
 Community that we find the widest difference be¬ 
 tween individual Christians and between different 
 branches of the Church, differences so profound 
 that they constitute a great barrier to any 
 scheme for the reuniting of Christendom. In 
 England and America a multitude of Christians, 
 good and highly religious men, approach the 
 Faith from a merely personal standpoint, attaining 
 to a personal relationship to God in Christ, but 
 looking on Churches, and indeed on all the 
 outward phenomena of religion, as merely destined 
 to help individuals towards a higher and more 
 continuous realisation of God. At the other 
 extreme the Roman Church subordinates com¬ 
 pletely the individual to the society ; it is for 
 the organised society to dictate creeds and 
 principles of conduct, and for the members of the 
 Church merely to obey. So we have continual 
 
 269 
 
260 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 cross-currents, many members of the Roman 
 Church constantly rebelling against ordinances 
 which offend the conscience and lapsing from 
 loyalty, and many Protestants falling into despair 
 of individual religion and seeking a haven of rest 
 in a Church which has no doubt of its own 
 infallibility, and is willing, on condition of 
 obedience, to undertake the whole responsibility 
 of the saving of the souls of its votaries. 
 
 It seems to me that modern psychology, with 
 its insistence on the existence in every organised 
 society of a group-mind, which is more than the 
 sum of the minds of individuals of the group, 
 has thrown fresh light on this whole question.^ 
 It has furnished an observational or scientific 
 basis for the doctrine of a Church. It clearly 
 distinguishes between a crowd and an organised 
 society. In the former there is an intensification 
 of emotion, a sensibility which may be influenced 
 to great effect by a skilled orator ; but there can 
 scarcely be said to be a common intelligence or 
 a common conscience. Rather, great waves of 
 feeling and passion sweep away alike the minds 
 and the consciences of individuals, so that the 
 crowd becomes a terrible, but a blind, almost an 
 insane, force. On the other hand, in organised 
 groups and societies there is what may be regarded 
 as a corporate consciousness, in some ways like 
 
 ^ See especially W. M^Dougall, Elements of Social Psy¬ 
 chology and The Group Mind. 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHURCH 261 
 
 the consciousness of an individual, but wider and 
 more enduring, having distinct traits in morals, 
 manners, and intelligence. 
 
 It is thus with nations. Mere blood and 
 descent do not make a nation, though of course 
 inherited tendencies go for much. The English 
 people is in many ways very homogeneous, 
 though in race it is very mixed, consisting of 
 elements Celtic, Saxon, Danish, Flemish, Jewish, 
 and what not ? with a strong substratum of 
 primitive and pre-Celtic inhabitants. The Scot¬ 
 tish nation is now fairly homogeneous, though it 
 consists of two sections, the Gaelic or Highland 
 and the Saxon or Lowland. The Welsh people 
 is homogeneous, though the mass of it is racially 
 pre-Celtic, consisting of very primitive elements. 
 The French nation is homogeneous, though it 
 consists of Gaul and Frank, Breton and Gascon. 
 And political history does not by itself make a 
 nation. Though England and south Ireland 
 have been long politically united, they do not 
 together make a nation; nor do south and 
 north Ireland make a nation, though they are 
 enclosed in one small island. Austria has never 
 been a nation, though its political history has 
 been important and consistent. 
 
 The course of political history, and above all 
 identity of institutions, a common language and 
 literature, common religious beliefs, gradually 
 mould a congeries of tribes into a nation, which 
 
262 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 speaks through its great men, its poets, and 
 orators and men of action, and which acquires 
 what is often called, in what is scarcely a meta¬ 
 phor, a soul. And this soul dominates the 
 conscious and still more the unconscious life of 
 all the individuals of the nation, so that clear¬ 
 sighted statesmen can often judge what course 
 the popular feeling of a nation will take under 
 definite conditions. 
 
 Within the nation, which is held together by 
 a definite political constitution, and which has 
 visible limitations of territory, we have in modern 
 days a number of societies, consisting of voluntary 
 associates, and held together not so much by 
 organisation as by ideas. No one can enumerate 
 them, for they are innumerable, and spring up 
 like mushrooms on every side. There are learned 
 academies belonging to nations and universities, 
 whose basis is the love of learning and research. 
 Then all the different branches of science and 
 learning are represented by voluntary societies, 
 the members of which are united in a common 
 admiration and pursuit, the Classical Association, 
 the Entomological Society, the Psychical Society, 
 and a host of others. Or they are organised with 
 a view to practical results, as the College of 
 Surgeons, the Royal Academy of Art, the Institute 
 of Architects, and the like. All of these useful 
 institutions may be said in a sense to have a 
 soul, to represent a side of human thought or 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHURCH 263 
 
 practice; and many of them have devoted 
 officials, who may be said almost to sink their 
 own personalities in that of the society to which 
 they belong. 
 
 I need speak of but one class of these societies, 
 the class devoted to religion. In the ancient 
 world religion belonged to the state. We may 
 say almost indifferently that the gods belonged to 
 the state, or that the state belonged to the gods. 
 In each organised community there were tradi¬ 
 tional rites and observances with which the well¬ 
 being of the state was supposed to be bound up, 
 and which could not with impunity be neglected. 
 Patriotism and the service of the national deities 
 were bound so closely together as to be in¬ 
 separable ; the king or the magistrate was the 
 priest; and his personal character and private 
 opinions were of no importance, so long as he 
 carried through the religious ceremonials of the 
 state with scrupulous exactness. The Roman 
 Emperor was ex officio Pontifex Maximus of the 
 Roman state, though he was often a complete 
 sceptic in religious matters. Sometimes, how¬ 
 ever, the order was reversed, as in some states in 
 Asia Minor, where, instead of the king being 
 priest, the priest was king; his sacred character 
 overshadowing and absorbing his civic and mili¬ 
 tary functions. A very remarkable and excep¬ 
 tional form of religious rule or theocracy was 
 that which prevailed in Israel before the nation 
 
264 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 copied its neighbours in instituting kingship. 
 Here the prophet was judge of the nation. By 
 the direct inspiration of Jehovah, as every one 
 believed, one prophet after another, sometimes 
 even prophets of the female sex, arose, and, if 
 they succeeded in repelling the foes of Israel, 
 seem to have exercised considerable power for a 
 time. In the lives of Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha, 
 we see a picture of the clashing between the 
 old prophetic dominance and the new military 
 kingship, which seems to have been forced on the 
 nation by external attacks. 
 
 Then, in the gradual decay of the religion of 
 the state, most prominently in Greece, we trace 
 the rise of voluntary religious societies. Their 
 outstanding feature was their independence of 
 the state. Men did not belong to them by birth, 
 but from choice. Their ultimate ruler was some 
 spiritual being or deified ancestor, for no clear 
 line was drawn between these. Under him the 
 society was ruled by a class of priests, who pro¬ 
 fessed to declare his will, which was revealed 
 either in sacred books treasured by the priests, or 
 by continued inspiration mostly imparted to 
 the latter when they were in a condition of trance 
 or of sacred ecstasy. The society no doubt 
 externalised its inspiration, regarded it as coming 
 from a spiritual patron, Mithras, or Sabazius, or 
 Isis; and of these the priests sometimes had 
 visions. There was an almost unlimited possi- 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHURCH 265 
 
 bility of intellectual error in these externalisations. 
 Mithras was the sublimated sun, Isis an ancient 
 Egyptian goddess, Sabazius a Phrygian deity of 
 the low’er world. And even the priests called 
 their divine patrons by many names, and had 
 very vague notions as to their real being. 
 
 Those who wish to gain some insight into the 
 character of the mystic religions of later Greece 
 should read the latter part of the Golden Ass or 
 Matamorphoses of Apuleius, a writer of the 
 Antonine age. In the eleventh book he gives a 
 most vivid and instructive picture of the cult 
 of the great goddess of nature, whom he regards 
 as embodied in the moon, and best worshipped 
 under the name of Isis. The character of her 
 priests, the mystic devotion of her votaries, the 
 prayers by which she was approached, the 
 ceremonies in which she was revealed, the crown¬ 
 ing vision in which, in a supremely beautiful 
 form, she sometimes showed herself to favoured 
 followers, are there set forth in a way which, 
 once realised, can scarcely be forgotten. 
 
 In the light of modern social psychology these 
 cults change their aspect. No doubt each of 
 them represented some power or energy of the 
 spiritual world working in the sub-consciousness 
 of their representatives on earth, and in the 
 society dominated by those representatives. The 
 Jews, with their extreme and intolerant mono¬ 
 theism, would say that they were nothing at all. 
 
266 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 mere delusions. But that was not the usual 
 view of the early Christians, who were convinced 
 that they were demons, evil spiritual powers who 
 swayed their votaries, and led them to perdition. 
 To them the heathen gods were not, as they 
 were to the strict Jews, dumb and useless 
 idols, but spiritual powers who resisted the light 
 and inspiration of Christianity, and urged their 
 disciples into the conflict with the spirit which 
 worked in the Church. I think that modern 
 science and investigation would agree rather 
 with the Christian than with the Jewish view. 
 These powers were something above and beyond 
 the personalities of the pagans, real powers 
 working in their sub-consciousness. 
 
 St Paul, with an inconsistency by no means un¬ 
 usual in him, takes up sometimes the one view, 
 sometimes the other. The pagan deities, he 
 sometimes says, are nothing at all, dumb and 
 inanimate idols. But in other places he says 
 that those who sacrificed to them sacrificed to 
 devils, and not to God. Generally speaking, in 
 the whole early age of Christianity diabolic 
 inspiration was as fully believed in as divine 
 inspiration. As the inspiration of Moses had 
 grappled with and overthrown the enchantments 
 of the magicians of Egypt, so the Christian 
 inspiration was ready to attack and destroy the 
 spiritual forces of paganism. That way of regard¬ 
 ing things has fallen out of modern Christianity, 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHURCH 267 
 
 which has mostly reverted to the cruder Jewish 
 view. But the experience of life has, I think, 
 tended to bring us baek to it. If there be a 
 spiritual inspiration which leads men to good, 
 there are also parallel inspirations which lead men 
 to evil. In Reformation times, the conflict between 
 Christianity and magic repeated the early confliet 
 between Christianity and the pagan societies. 
 
 We know so little about Mithraism and the other 
 mystic faiths which competed with early Christi¬ 
 anity, that we are scarcely able to estimate their 
 moral qualities. The true Christian way is to 
 judge them by their fruits ; and we do not know 
 with any exaetness what those fruits were. But 
 it is scarcely possible to doubt that as a whole 
 they were on an immeasurably lower level than 
 Christianity : and that the contest between 
 Christianity and them was one between light 
 and darkness. To pagan observers of the time, 
 Christianity seemed to be one of the many 
 mystic cults ; and so it was in many external 
 points. But it only resembled the rest as a 
 beautiful flower resembles a worthless weed, 
 which may belong to the same botanical genus. 
 I am speaking, of course, of the Christianity of 
 the post-apostolic age ; the Christianity of the 
 origins was regarded as a mere heretical Jewish 
 sect, as we learn from many passages in Acts : 
 but when it took root outside Judea, in such 
 Hellenistic cities as Ephesus, or Antioch, or 
 
I 
 
 268 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Alexandria, it soon changed its external form, 
 and adapted itself to the Hellenistic world. 
 
 Christianity in the early Roman Empire was 
 in some ways parallel to the religions of Isis and 
 Sabazius. It had a class of priests who repre¬ 
 sented in it the influence of the Founder. It had 
 sacred books or oracles, both in the Jewish 
 Scriptures and in the writings of the New Testa¬ 
 ment. It had sacred rites of initiation and 
 communion, which were kept as far as possible 
 from heathen observation. But above all, it 
 stood in an intimate relation to an unseen 
 spiritual power, which worked in the com¬ 
 munity of believers by inspiration, and some¬ 
 times by vision or miracle, or ecstatic utterance. 
 
 It is this continuous inspiration, continuous 
 through all countries, and through all ages, 
 which is the life and soul of the Catholic Church, 
 the Communion of Saints. In the New Testa¬ 
 ment it is sometimes spoken of as the Spirit of 
 Christ, or the Eternal Christ; and sometimes as 
 the Holy Spirit of God. When Schleiermacher 
 spoke of it as the Gemeingeist or common spirit 
 of the Church, he was partly right and partly 
 wrong. He was right in so far as the inspiration 
 belongs primarily to the Church as a whole, and 
 only secondarily to individual members of it. 
 But perhaps he too completely regarded it as the 
 mere resultant of the tendencies of Christians. 
 It was more than that; something added to it 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHURCH 269 
 
 by an inspiration from the world of spirit, a 
 great spiritual power which lived in the Church, 
 as a spirit lives in a human body in constant 
 connection with the infinite ocean of spirit. 
 
 Christian thought has to consider and define 
 the relations which the spirit in the Church 
 bears to the historic Jesus, to the infinite Divine 
 Father, and to the Divine Spirit which works 
 through history on human society. This has in 
 effect been the subject of previous chapters. 
 
 What also is necessarv is to consider how this 
 
 «/ 
 
 divine influence works in the history of the 
 Church, in the three realms of knowledge, of 
 emotion, and of will; how it becomes embodied 
 in creeds, in ritual, and ceremony, and in out¬ 
 ward organisation. Those who think that the 
 external in life works on and moulds the internal, 
 will begin with organisation, regarding that as 
 the essential in Christianity, and will set it 
 down as the business of the officers of a Church 
 whose organisation is the direct result of divine 
 command to determine both the beliefs and the 
 ritual of the Church. This tends to materialism. 
 I think that, on the contrary, the working is from 
 the internal outwards, that doctrine, ceremony, 
 and even organisation are the fruit of inner 
 impulse, the result of the activity of divine 
 ideas, working first in the unconscious strata of 
 man’s being, then in his conscious life, then in 
 the world of matter and experience. 
 
270 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 It is in this way that I have treated the history 
 of the Church in my Exploratio Evangelica. But 
 since, even in a large work, I could only speak of 
 these vast subjects in mere outline, it is clear 
 that it would be a hopeless task to try to investi¬ 
 gate them here in a much smaller book. It is to 
 the Exploratio that I must direct those who are 
 interested in seeing whither the course of religious 
 thought which I have here followed works out in 
 Christian history. In a more popular work. The 
 Growth of Christianity, I have treated the same 
 subject more slightly, with stronger light and shade. 
 
 Since, however, I cannot expect the reader to 
 break off at this point, and to turn to my previous 
 books, and as most readers will not have read, 
 or at all events will not remember the course 
 taken in them, I will add here a brief summary 
 of the argument of the earlier chapters of it 
 — the Exploratio — chapters in which I find 
 nothing of importance to alter. This summary 
 is taken from Chapter XL of the work in question. 
 In Chapters II, III, and IV the psychology of 
 religious belief is briefly set forth. The basis of 
 religion is experience, in particular the experience 
 of sin and its removal, and of the answer to 
 prayer. On such experiences must be based, in 
 the first place, an intense conviction of a Power 
 within which works for righteousness ; and in the 
 second place, all assertions as to the divine 
 attributes. By the same mental process which 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHURCH 271 
 
 discloses to us other selves in the world, we 
 reach the assertion of an objective Deity who is 
 good, who answers prayer, and whose being 
 includes personality. 
 
 Chapters V and VI dwell on the truth that 
 religious doctrine, being thus reached through 
 experience and not by reasoning, must not be 
 used as a basis for speculative construction. 
 The truths of religion are not speculatively 
 valid : their validity is universally subjective 
 and practically objective. Religious metaphysics 
 leads to insoluble contradictions ; yet intellectual 
 illusion may, like other forms of illusion, lead to 
 happiness in life. But the only religion which 
 can be secured against scepticism is relative 
 religion, religion as revealed to man, and as 
 adapted to a human environment. 
 
 Chapters VII and VIII trace in the field of 
 history the working of the same phenomena 
 which previous chapters had considered in relation 
 to individual experience. History, like conduct, 
 reveals a Power working for righteousness. The 
 activities of this Power we choose to designate 
 by the phrase “ divine ideas ” ; but it must be 
 understood that the word ‘‘ idea ” here signifies 
 a working impulse, not a mental concept.^ The 
 
 1 The likeness of this view to those of Newman in his 
 Grammar of Assent, and even to those of Bergson, is obvious. 
 But I must be allowed to point out that it was written before 
 the publication of Bergson’s system. 
 
272 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 divine ideas work first on the will then on the 
 intellect and aesthetic faculties, leading to desire, 
 to doctrine, to art, and to organisation. The 
 determination of the working ideas as good, 
 temporary, and bad, is a matter of the utmost 
 difficulty; we can only venture to say that 
 ideas which lead to the destruction of society are 
 bad, those which tend to the preservation of 
 society must contain good elements. 
 
 Chapters IX and X contain the germs of those 
 that follow. We try to trace the ways in which 
 the ideas are intellectually embodied in the 
 world. In primitive times they are commonly 
 embodied in myth, being usually aetiological in 
 character. Ethical impulses give rise to myth 
 in accordance with national character, and the 
 fittest myths survive. The myth is purely in¬ 
 definite, without relation to time ; as the age of 
 myths passes away, three outgrowths take its 
 place, related to time—past, present, and future. 
 In relation to the past, the ideas are embodied 
 in ethical history, into which myth passes by 
 imperceptible gradations. In relation to the 
 future, the ideas are embodied in prophecy, 
 which is of quite a different character from 
 modern scientific prediction. In relation to the 
 present, the myths are embodied in parable; 
 and then in doctrine, which is a statement of 
 relative truth in regard to the supersensual 
 world. 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHURCH 273 
 
 *¥ 
 
 With Chapter XI we pass from general prineiples 
 to the origins of Christianity, and apply to them 
 the philosophie and historic views already set 
 forth. 
 
 This seems to me a true summary of the 
 history of the Church. 
 
 More recently two able theologians, Dr A. J. 
 Carlyle and Dr Vernon Bartlet, have gone over 
 much the same ground with far more learning 
 and in greater detail in their Christianity in 
 History, But in fact this way of treating the 
 history of the Church has in recent times become 
 more and more usual, and is the method of a 
 large proportion of our theologians. All that I 
 have tried to do is to give articulate expression 
 to a tendency of the modern intelligence. 
 
 It is obvious that, in speaking of the Church, 
 I am not meaning to confine the term to any 
 particular branch of it. JJhi Christus ibi Ecclesia. 
 The Articles define the Church as “ a congregation 
 of faithful men in the which the pure Word of 
 God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly 
 administered.” The various Churches of Christen¬ 
 dom, Eastern, Roman, and Reformed, each em¬ 
 body some side of the Christian inspiration, and, 
 alas ! all mix that inspiration with much that is 
 unworthy and impure. In my opinion any 
 outward and visible union between them is 
 almost impossible; and it may even be doubted 
 
 whether it is desirable, for varieties of organisa- 
 
 18 
 
274 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 tion and ritual suit various countries and tempera¬ 
 ments. An outwardly united Church, as we see 
 from the history of the Middle Ages, is in great 
 danger of degeneration ; the various organisations 
 in it keep the blood flowing. Intercourse and 
 combination for Christian purposes between 
 branches of the Church is much to be desired : the 
 rule of the whole by any curia or committee is 
 hardly to be wished for. The unity of what is 
 Christlike in all the visible Churches in one 
 invisible Church is far more in accord with the 
 spirit of the Founder. 
 
 The Communion of Saints 
 
 An aspect of the Catholic Church which calls 
 for special notice here is that in which it includes 
 not only the living members of the Church, but 
 also the members who have passed away. ‘‘ The 
 saints on earth and all the dead but one 
 communion make.” 
 
 To many the phrase of the Creed, “ I believe 
 in the communion of saints,” has a special and an 
 important meaning. They think of the saints 
 not as all the departed, but as those who have 
 attained to a high rank in the divine kingdom. 
 And they like to think of such as always near to 
 help and to encourage, to lead in the direction of 
 heaven, and to frustrate the powers of evil, 
 which are always ready to take advantage of 
 unguarded moments. They feel that God is 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS 
 
 275 
 
 high and not always easy of approach, and think 
 that even Christ has more sympathy with the 
 exalted moods of the spirit than with the conduct 
 and the needs of every day. They have a longing 
 for more intimate and less exalted spiritual 
 guides. This need has been in times past met 
 by the belief which has been general in the 
 Church either in special guardian angels, or in 
 saints who have been canonised by the Church, 
 and who have served as intermediaries between 
 men and God. 
 
 Many theologians, especially in England, would 
 regard the subject as one which did not need 
 treatment. They would regard the desire as a 
 perversion of pure Christianity ; and the means 
 for meeting it as merely superstitious. The 
 abuses which sprang up in mediaeval Europe in 
 connection with the veneration of saints were 
 so patent, that the great Reformers struck at 
 the custom some of their hardest blows, and 
 destroyed it root and branch in many places. 
 Yet it had embodied for ages a real phase of the 
 personal religion of the people, and tended not 
 only to the virtue, but even more fully to the 
 happiness of many. And we find in the lives 
 of many who do not belong to Catholicism, 
 Renan for example, a conviction of the constant 
 presence and aid of departed members of their 
 family. In a work like the present it will not 
 answer to throw aside the features of Christianity 
 
276 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 which have led to abuse. Our business is rather 
 to consider what human needs lay at the root 
 of that particular phase of Christian experience, 
 and whether those needs may be satisfactorily met. 
 
 When we consider the veneration of saints in 
 the mediaeval and in the modern Roman Church 
 from the purely historic and rationalist side, we 
 are repelled. We observe that many of the 
 saints of the Calendar, and even of the saints 
 to whom worship has been especially addressed, 
 either never lived at all, or at all events are not 
 shown by history to have exhibited in their lives 
 such high virtue and spiritual attainments as to 
 merit an exalted position in the realm of spirits. 
 Examples can easily be cited. Saint George, the 
 patron saint of England, is of uncertain origin, 
 and cannot be called a historic character. Saint 
 Denys, the patron saint of France, is in much 
 the same position, as indeed are many of the 
 saints in most repute in mediaeval Europe. 
 
 In the veneration of saints as accepted in the 
 mediaeval Church, and as continued in the 
 Church of Rome, there are two special difficulties. 
 
 The first arises from the fact that the test of 
 sainthood was the performance of miracles, either 
 by the saint in his lifetime or by bis remains 
 when dead. This is a purely external test; 
 and one of a singularly unfortunate kind. The 
 miracles, or at all events those for which there 
 is the best evidence, were mostly miracles of 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS 
 
 277 
 
 healing. And we now know enough of faith¬ 
 healing and the working of suggestion to know 
 that such phenomena, though real, are of a 
 subjective character, and cannot be used as 
 objective proofs of the sainthood, the virtue or 
 even the existence of the person to whose agency 
 they are attributed. In ancient and mediaeval 
 times, as we know, evil spirits were credited with 
 powers to work miracles, though lesser powers 
 than those of the great Christians. And in 
 modern days, faith-healing has been, and is, 
 constantly exercised by people who have no 
 claim to saintliness, and are even of very doubtful 
 character. They do not usually pretend that 
 it is their goodness, or their close relation to the 
 world of spirit, which enables them to work 
 these remarkable cures : sometimes they have 
 no theory as to the source of their power, they 
 only know by experience that it exists. And 
 when we come to the miracles wrought not by a 
 living influence, but by the dead bodies of saints, 
 we fall to a still lower level. A multitude of 
 instances might be cited in which the body or 
 relic which wrought the miracle was not that of a 
 saint at all, but a corpse found in the catacombs 
 of Rome, and quite unidentified. There is no 
 history more full of imposture and of greed 
 than the history of the trade in relics, about 
 which many papers, both instructive and amusing, 
 have been written. Alleged miracles, or even 
 
278 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 miracles supported by what looks like respectable 
 testimony, have little evidential influence on the 
 modern mind. Such works as Dr E. Abbott’s 
 elaborate examination of the miracles attributed 
 to St. Thomas at Canterbury, are irresistible in 
 their proof that miracles of faith-healing were 
 not outside the order of nature, and that there 
 is no adequate testimony for miracles of a less 
 ambiguous kind. 
 
 The second point on which the mediaeval saint- 
 worship is unsatisfactory is the kind of excellence 
 which belonged to those who were canonised. 
 The tales told of them in the great Bollandist 
 collection, not only in the majority of cases rest 
 on little historic evidence, but they do not to a 
 modern mind exhibit the highest virtues. To be 
 willing to be martyred for one’s belief is doubtless 
 a proof of sincerity ; but it does not prove either 
 moral greatness or intellectual eminence, or even 
 orthodoxy. Very often the martyrdom was by 
 no means voluntary. And virginity, which is 
 one of the commonest titles to merit in female 
 saints, is not in itself a virtue, though of course 
 under certain circumstances its acceptance in 
 preference to the married life might have been 
 the result of spiritual fervour. Any modern 
 writer on ethics, whether Christian or agnostic, 
 whether Catholic or Protestant, would draw up a 
 very different list of historic saints from that which 
 has the authority of the Church. 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS 
 
 279 
 
 Auguste Comte, in his Positivist Calendar, 
 drew up a list of saints, after whom he proposed 
 to name the days and the months of the year. 
 And whatever objeetions may be raised to some 
 of his nominations, his list is ineomparably 
 superior to that of the Roman Church. It 
 includes nearly all the great personalities of the 
 world’s history, rulers and poets, religious leaders 
 and discoverers, men of science and social re¬ 
 formers. The great difference between the two 
 lists, however, is that one has behind it the 
 authority of the Western Church, while the other 
 is a mere intellectual construction, in which 
 every one feels at liberty to make alterations and 
 amendments. 
 
 But when we turn from spurious history and 
 miracles of suggestion to the psychology of 
 saint-worship, we enter a very different field. 
 ‘‘ They looked unto him and were lightened, and 
 their faces were not ashamed,” may be said of 
 multitudes who have drawn from the supposed 
 help and mediation of saints a fund of energy and 
 of happiness. The votary would, of course, 
 not be content with this statement; but would 
 say that he derived not only help and inward 
 strength, but also success in undertakings, and 
 the miraculous removal of difficulties. But here 
 we enter a region where verification is difficult, 
 and both affirmation and negation are so swayed 
 by subjective elements that final decision is not 
 
280 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 possible. The world of spirit is a vast and little 
 explored region ; and some phases or aspects of 
 it are more accessible to some men, and other 
 phases or aspects to other men. A saint, whether 
 he ever lived in the world or not, may by the 
 recognition of a church or a monastic society, 
 become a reservoir of spiritual influence, accessible 
 to faith. In the same way many even sceptical 
 people, whose nearest and dearest have passed 
 into the world of spirit, have been aware of a 
 new and protective influence, touching their 
 lives at many points, sometimes acting in the 
 sub-conscious region, sometimes even rising into 
 consciousness. It would be rash to say that such 
 experiences are baseless. But it is very safe to say 
 that they must be received with caution, and not 
 allowed to override the working of a man’s best 
 intelligence and will. Nor can they be used in 
 an objective way to prove the present exaltation 
 of the supposed source of inspiration. 
 
 The votaries of the saints will appeal to 
 spiritual experience with the same confidence as 
 will the earnest worshippers of Christ. They 
 will speak of instance after instance in which 
 an appeal to a spiritual patron has been answered. 
 Often, indeed, the appeal has been for some 
 worldly help or advantage ; and the claim is that 
 it has been granted. But often a higher tone is 
 used. Those who have adopted the monastic 
 life, in particular, have often felt within them a 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS 
 
 281 
 
 power not of this world, which they have attributed 
 to the working of some inspiring Power from 
 without them, and have associated with some 
 historic saint or martyr, who seems to have found 
 in them a new life upon earth. 
 
 It is possible to brush all this inward life 
 aside as the fruit of mere superstition and delusion. 
 But such cavalier procedure is not justified, 
 since undoubtedly facts of experience are at the 
 basis of it. And so long as the votary keeps his 
 assertions within the bounds of his experience, 
 it is not easy, nor is it usually desirable, to argue 
 him out of his beliefs. But when we turn from 
 mere subjective experience to life in the world, 
 and the facts of conduct, it is evident that a 
 searching criticism is necessary to give inner 
 experience its due and proper place in the scheme 
 of the universe. Two tests have to be applied. 
 First there is the test of history, and second 
 there is the test of results, of fruits. 
 
 I have already considered the historic test. 
 The moment it is applied we see a vast difference 
 between faith in Christ on the one hand, and 
 faith in subordinate Christian personalities on 
 the other. We have seen that on broad historic 
 grounds faith in the risen and exalted Christ can 
 be fully defended. It lay at the very roots of 
 the rising Church, and has never in the history 
 of the Christian faith wholly died away. As to 
 the saints, few, indeed, of those who have been 
 
282 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 dearest to societies and coteries have been 
 among the great figures of historic Christianity. 
 St Paul indignantly reproves those who would 
 exalt Peter, or Apollos, or himself into the heads 
 or oracles of societies. The patron saints of the 
 coteries have usually been persons of whose 
 history little is known, and that little is often 
 not greatly in their favour. Thus there is a 
 deep and impassable abyss between the historic 
 grounds of the faith in Christ and the historic 
 grounds of all other forms of personal worship 
 in Christianity. 
 
 The second test, that of practical fruits, the 
 ethical test, is the one which is set forth fully, 
 and enforced by a multitude of appeals, in the 
 Gospels themselves. Surely there is no need to 
 cite passages. ‘‘ By their fruits ye shall know 
 them.” “ Not every one that saith unto me. 
 Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father 
 which is in heaven.” “ He that heareth my 
 words, and doeth them not, I will liken him to a 
 foolish man, who built his house on the sand.” 
 And not only is this the authorised test for 
 Christians, but it is the test which the common- 
 sense of mankind in all ages has insisted in 
 applying. Men try the spirits to see whether 
 they lead to good or to evil, and thereby judge 
 of the reality of the inspiration. 
 
 There is no need to attack, or even to criticise. 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS 
 
 283 
 
 the consciousness which many eminent and 
 devout persons have had of spiritual aid received 
 from some saint of Christian history, or it may 
 be from some friend or relative of their own 
 who has passed from the visible world. If it 
 lead to a better life it is justified by fruits; very 
 seldom is it a source of corruption. What we 
 may fairly insist upon is that however valuable 
 such an influence may be to the individual, that 
 individual has no right to impose upon others 
 the belief in the inferences which he may draw 
 from the experience as to the supermundane 
 being of his saint. 
 
 If we set aside the merely historic claim of the 
 saints, and look at their communion in a broader 
 light, we shall see that it may in a sense be justified. 
 In the chapter which deals with the Eternal 
 Christ, I have tried to show that the mystic 
 form of the worship of Christ does not dwell so 
 much on the records of his life in the world, on 
 what St Paul calls “ Christ after the flesh,” as 
 on the divine element which lay beneath that 
 life and which is eternal. In the same way the 
 mystic view of the communion of saints does 
 not dwell so much on the events of their lives, 
 as to which we are seldom well informed, as on 
 the fact that so far as they were saints they 
 exhibited in the world a phase of the divine ; 
 they continued the obedience of Christ, and 
 filled up, as St Paul says, the measure of his 
 
284 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 sufferings. The Power whieh sustained and in¬ 
 spired them was an eternal power which is still 
 working in the world, and working more effectu¬ 
 ally because of the obedience with which they 
 accepted it, and the energy with which they 
 furthered its working. In this view Christ and 
 the saints make up an unity, an unity into 
 which every Christian may hope to be received, 
 so that he in turn may help forward the baptism 
 of the world into Christ.’ And so long as it is 
 the divine power working in saints, which is the 
 real object of worship, that worship is at least 
 innocent. 
 
 From this point of view we see a test to be 
 applied to the communion of men with the world 
 of spirits. If that communion is only with the 
 phenomenal life of the deceased in the visible 
 world, it is only according to the flesh, and is 
 subject not only to human fallibility, but also to 
 confusions of all kinds, and even deceptions by 
 unworthy spiritual agencies. But if it is with 
 the divine element in the deceased, it is in effect 
 with God, God as revealed in the spirits of men. 
 “ The souls of the righteous are in the hand of 
 God ” ; and every spiritual effort and achieve¬ 
 ment makes more accessible the stream of divine 
 influence which beats upon, works through, and 
 spiritualises the existing frame of the universe, 
 especially of the universe of human beings. 
 
 But the Church as the earthly body of Christ, 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS 
 
 285 
 
 as continuing on earth the obedience of Christ, 
 and as inheriting his relation to God, is a part 
 of the spiritual world which has a definite and 
 special character. To define the limits of the 
 Church on earth is impossible, since it is not a 
 mere organisation, but a spiritual communion, 
 which marks its nature. But this indefiniteness 
 does not prevent the Church from being in a 
 sense an unity. Of this unity the Fourth Gospel 
 is the great charter. 
 
 The ideal Christ of the Fourth Evangelist often 
 insists on the theme that what is true of himself 
 is true of his disciples also. He is the vine, they 
 are the branehes. As he is one with God, so 
 are they one with him. The works that he does, 
 they shall do also : nay, more, they shall do 
 even greater works, because his death will bring 
 God nearer to man, and increase the store of 
 divine influence working in the world. Thus the 
 effects which the divine obedience and suffering 
 of Christ work in the spiritual world, will be 
 supplemented and reinforced by every act of 
 obedience and every patient suffering endured 
 by the followers of Christ. Thus is God ever 
 drawn nearer to men, and the higher life of the 
 Church stands in intimate relations with the 
 whole spiritual powers of the universe. 
 
 Christians, however, use the word Communion 
 in a special, almost a technical, sense. By it 
 they mean the great central rite of Christianity, 
 
286 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 in which in a mystic sense they eat the flesh 
 and drink the blood of the Founder. And they 
 think, or one may say they know by experience, 
 that by that sacred feast they enter into the 
 Christian communion of saints. They enter con¬ 
 sciously into a four-fold relationship. First, with 
 all Christians in all lands and all Churches who 
 partake of the same rite, with whom they enter 
 into what may be called a blood-relationship, 
 and whom they accept as brothers and sisters in 
 the faith, putting away all sense of injury and 
 offence, longing only for a closer and more 
 intimate union. Second, with all Christians who 
 in past ages, from the earliest days of the faith, 
 have partaken of the communion, and been 
 lifted up and purified by it. Third, with the 
 exalted Head of the Church, with whom their 
 spirits come in contact, whose life upon earth 
 they try to continue, and to be part of the earthly 
 body of which Christ is the soul. And fourthly, 
 through Christ, with the infinite and eternal 
 Father, to do whose will in the world was the one 
 purpose of Jesus, whether in life or by death, 
 and who ever stands at the door of the heart of 
 every man who is born into the world, waiting 
 for admission, asking for love and confidence, 
 desiring co-operation in the practical life. 
 
 Thus the Christian rite of the Lord’s Supper is, 
 I do not say the necessary, but the usual means, 
 by which the communion of saints becomes a 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS 
 
 287 
 
 religious reality. Whether an individual prefers 
 a more frequent or a rarer participation in the 
 rite is a matter of habit and temperament. 
 There is nothing magical in its operation. Its 
 place is even taken in a great degree among 
 certain Christian bodies by other rites. Every 
 truly spiritual road leads to God. But the 
 Eucharist does, and has all through Christian 
 history, been the road most frequently trodden, 
 sometimes in a superstitious and materialist 
 spirit, sometimes in a mood of lofty aspiration. 
 It IS not for man to judge in such matters, but 
 for God who sees the heart. 
 
 If the view set forth in our first chapters be 
 accepted, there is a sense in which the doctrine 
 of the Communion of Saints may be accepted 
 without doing violence either to the principles of 
 scientific history or to the facts of experience. 
 If an individual life be regarded as like a gulf 
 of the sea, connected with the vast ocean, and 
 through that ocean with every other gulf and 
 bay in the world, we have an interesting analogy. 
 The gulfs may be of any size, small or great, 
 and they may be connected one with the other 
 in all sorts of relations. But all alike, as parts of 
 the ocean, they follow the attractive power of 
 sun and moon, rising and falling at intervals ; and 
 for their very being they depend upon the con¬ 
 nection with the water system of the globe. Yet 
 each gulf has a character of its own, which it 
 
288 PRACTICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 retains although the water in it, the fish and the 
 sea-plants, may be constantly changing. So the 
 lives of individuals are an embodiment under the 
 forms of space, time, and matter of some branch 
 or aspect of the spiritual world. The Church 
 consists of myriads of individual lives ; past and 
 present, if we consider them in relation to time 
 and history, but representing and reflecting 
 realities which are above time and space. As 
 these realities were more completely embodied in 
 individuals, so they may be less completely 
 embodied in those who love and admire such 
 individuals. In extreme cases, individuals may 
 become almost reincarnations of departed saints 
 and heroes, and live their lives over again amid 
 fresh surroundings ; but far more often it is only 
 in particular phases or aspects of the new lives 
 that the lives which have gone before are reflected. 
 Sometimes it is a continuous influence of person¬ 
 ality bequeathed by great saints and coming 
 down through a succession of followers ; some¬ 
 times it is a revived influence coming from the 
 thoughts and enthusiasms which they have com¬ 
 mitted to literature; sometimes the influence 
 may flow in other and sub-conscious ways. 
 
 PRINTED IN GREA,T BRITAIN BY NEILL AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH. 
 
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