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 BR 126 .N3 M37 1881 
 Matheson, George, 1842-1906 
 Natural elements of revealec 
 theology 
 
NATURAL ELEMENTS OF 
 REVEALED THEOLOGY 
 
 W\)t aSaixtr lecture for 1881 
 
 BY THE 
 
 EEV. GEOEGE MATHESON, D.D. 
 
 MINISTER OF INNELLAN 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET 
 
 1881 
 
MORRISON AND GIBB, EDINBURGH, 
 PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE. 
 
Excerpt from the Deed of Trust by James Baird, Esq., 
 in favour of the Trustees of the l Baird Trust.' 
 
 ' Whereas, at the Meeting of the General Assembly of the Church 
 of Scotland, held in May 1872, I declared my intention to found a 
 Lectureship, to be called ' ' The Baird Lecture, " for the illustration 
 and the defence of the vital truths hereinbefore referred to, as well 
 as for the promotion of Christian knowledge and Christian work 
 generally, and for the exposure and refutation of all error and 
 unbelief, under which foundation the Reverend Robert Jamieson, 
 D.D., lately Moderator of the General Assembly, was to be the first 
 Lecturer, and that for the spring of the year 1873 : Therefore, and 
 for the endowment of the said Lectureship, I appoint my said 
 Trustees to hold an annual sum of £220 out of the revenue of the 
 funds under their charge for the purposes of said Lectureship ; 
 and I direct that the following shall be the conditions and terms 
 on which my said Trustees shall carry out my foundation of said 
 Lectureship : — 
 
 ' 1. The Lecturer shall be a minister of the foresaid Church of 
 Scotland who shall have served the cure of a parish for not less than 
 five years, or a minister of any other of the Scottish Presbyterian 
 Churches who shall have served as pastor of a congregation for a 
 similar period in his own church ; and in making the appointment, 
 care shall be taken by the Trustees to choose a man of piety, ability, 
 and learning, and who is approved and reputed sound in all the 
 essentials of Christian truth, as set forth in the statement herein- 
 before written of what is meant by sound religious principles. 
 
 ' 2. The Lecturer shall be appointed annually in the month of 
 April by my said Trustees, and the appointment shall be made at 
 a meeting of the Trustees to be called for the purpose, and held 
 in Glasgow. 
 
 ' 3. The Lecturer shall deliver a course of not less than Six 
 Lectures on any subject of Theology, Christian Evidences, Chris- 
 tian Work, Christian Missions, Church Government, and Church 
 Organizations, or on such subject relative thereto as the Trustees 
 shall from year to year fix in concert with the Lecturer. 
 
iv Excerpt from Deed of Trust. 
 
 ' 4. The Lectures shall be duly advertised to the satisfaction of 
 the Trustees, at the cost of the Lecturer, and shall be delivered 
 publicly at any time during the months of January and February in 
 each year, in Glasgow, and also, if required, in such other one of the 
 Scottish University towns as may from time to time be appointed by 
 the Trustees. 
 
 ' 5. The Lectures of each year shall be published, if possible, 
 before the meeting of the next General Assembly, or at latest within 
 six months of the date when the last of the course shall have been 
 delivered. Such publication to be carried out at the sight and to 
 the satisfaction of the Trustees, but by the Lecturer at his own cost 
 and risk, and to the extent of not less than 750 copies, of which 
 there shall be deposited, free, two copies in the Library of each of 
 the Universities of Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and St. Andrews, 
 two copies in the Library of the General Assembly of the Church of 
 Scotland, and one copy in each of the Theological Libraries connected 
 with the said Universities, and twenty copies shall be put at the dis- 
 posal of the Trustees. The price of publication to be regulated by 
 the Trustees in concert with the Lecturer. ' 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 If we offered this book to the public as an exhaustive 
 work on a vast subject, it would justly be deemed 
 slight and superficial. We do not so offer it. We 
 have simply complied with a request to deliver an 
 instituted course of lectures, and we publish them 
 in obedience to the law. The aim of these pages 
 is not to trace a historical development. It is 
 rather to look at Christianity as a completed whole, 
 and to analyse it, as far as it will admit of analysis, 
 into its component pre-Christian parts. In tracing 
 the connection of these parts, we have sought no 
 order of time. We have not tried to show that 
 one ancient system has grown out of another, but 
 that the need which one neglects has been appro- 
 priated by another. The unity we have sought to 
 exhibit is not a unity reached by historical reactions, 
 but the unity of a common idea, which must 
 ultimately enfold all the isolated fragments, how- 
 ever scattered in time and space. We are far 
 from having satisfied our own ideal of what ought 
 
vi Preface. 
 
 to have been done ; yet, inadequate as our effort 
 has been, it has cost us much reading and more 
 thought. The authors to whom we have been 
 mainly indebted are those to whom reference is 
 made in the Appendix. 
 
 G. M. 
 Innellan. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 LECTURE II. 
 LECTURE III. 
 LECTURE IV. 
 LECTURE V.- 
 
 -CHRISTIANITY AND NATURE, . 
 
 -THE FIRST PRE-CHRISTIAN PROBLEM, . 
 
 -THE SECOND PRE-CHRISTIAN PROBLEM, 
 
 -THE THIRD PRE-CHRISTIAN PROBLEM, 
 
 -NATURAL THEOLOGY IN THE LIGHT OF REVELA- 
 TION, .... 
 
 LECTURE VI. — IMMORTALITY IN THE LIGHT OF REVELATION, 
 
 I'AGE 
 
 1 
 
 30 
 60 
 94 
 
 132 
 168 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE I., 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 201 
 
 NOTE II., 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 207 
 
 NOTE III. , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 212 
 
 NOTE IV., 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 219 
 
 NOTE V., 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 220 
 
 NOTE VI., 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 226 
 
 NOTE VII., 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 231 
 
 NOTE VIII., 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 232 
 
 NOTE IX., 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 236 
 
 NOTE X., 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 237 
 
 NOTE XL, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 243 
 
 NOTE XII., 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 247 
 
 NOTE XIII., 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 250 
 
 NOTE XIV., 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 256 
 
Vlll 
 
 NOTE XV. , 
 NOTE XVI., 
 NOTE XVII., 
 NOTE XVIII. 
 NOTE XIX. , 
 NOTE XX. , 
 NOTE XXL, 
 
 Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 261 
 
 264 
 266 
 270 
 276 
 279 
 286 
 
NATURAL ELEMENTS OF REVEALED 
 THEOLOGY. 
 
 LECTUEE I. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND NATURE. 
 
 /~\UR design in these lectures is to ascertain to 
 " what extent the doctrines of revealed religion 
 have a basis in the natural instincts of the human 
 mind. 1 There are two classes of men with whom 
 their title will find little sympathy, — those who 
 deny the possibility of uniting, and those who deny 
 the possibility of distinguishing, the natural and the 
 revealed. The former class is represented by the 
 Ultramontanist, the latter by the extreme Eationalist. 
 The Ultramontanist regards faith as the antithesis of 
 reason ; he practically says, in the spirit of Tertullian, 
 1 1 believe, because it is impossible.' The elements 
 of supernatural religion derive to him their value 
 
 1 The phrase ' revealed religion ' takes for granted that it has 
 somewhere a contact with nature. 
 
2 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 from the fact that they are ^natural, that they are 
 not only beyond the range of natural discovery, but 
 beyond the reach of natural appreciation even when 
 discovered. To him, therefore, the attitude of revela- 
 tion towards nature is and can only be an attitude of 
 antagonism ; the new law exists by the abrogation of 
 the old. The Rationalist, on the other hand, ap- 
 proaches the subject from precisely the opposite side. 
 To him nature is everything ; and by nature, of course, 
 he understands that special system of laws in which 
 at present he has his being. He is perfectly willing 
 to regard Christianity as the very highest evolution 
 of the human consciousness ; but then he must be 
 allowed to regard it as an evolution. He will con- 
 cede to it all imaginable attributes of greatness ; but 
 lie insists that in return it will consent to take its 
 place as only the latest flower of the seed of humanity, 
 that it will agree to assign its perfections not to the 
 introduction of any new principle, but simply and 
 entirely to the natural growth and development of 
 the unaided powers and faculties of the human mind. 
 To him, also, there is an antagonism between the fact 
 of nature and the idea of revelation. The only differ- 
 ence between him and the Ultraniontanist is this, 
 that while the Ultramontanist makes revelation an 
 unattainable fact, he contents himself with making it 
 an unrealizable idea. 
 
 Xow, the moment we have stated these alternatives, 
 we become conscious that we have not exhausted the 
 
Christianity and Nature. 3 
 
 question that even from the standpoint of human 
 reason there is conceivable a third and intermediate 
 supposition. What if that which we call the flower 
 of humanity should in reality be its root ? what if 
 that which we designate its climax should be really 
 the principle which underlies all creation ? When we 
 have traced the development of the visible creation 
 from its lowest germ-cell to its culmination in the 
 highest man, we have by no means settled the ques- 
 tion of the natural and the supernatural. Should we 
 even succeed in determining the number and order 
 of those links of gradation by which nature has 
 climbed to humanity, — should we be able, without a 
 break, to point to that succession of steps by which 
 the lowest form of organic life has mounted into the 
 highest form of developed manhood, — the question, so 
 far from being solved, will be only started in a new 
 aspect. For what is the question at issue between 
 the natural and the supernatural ? It is not whether 
 we are able to trace a series of unbroken links unit- 
 ing the life of the lowliest to the life of the loftiest 
 being ; it is whether, in the procession from the 
 lowliest to the loftiest being, the force of nature has 
 been adequate to act alone. Let it be demonstrated 
 beyond a doubt that Christianity, humanity, spirit- 
 uality, and all the types of perfect existence, have 
 come to us through the medium of nature, we shall 
 still be compelled to ask, Have they come to us by 
 the force of nature ? Is it not clear, on the lowest 
 
4 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 computation, that there is at least another solution 
 possible ? The impelling force may have been that 
 very Christianity, that very humanity, that very 
 spirituality, whose production we are trying to 
 account for. The climax of a great book is probably 
 its last chapter ; yet it is almost certain that that 
 which is last in mechanical execution will be first in 
 the thought of the artist. The end of an author's 
 book is the thought which prompts its beginning, the 
 motive of its existence, the force which impels its 
 continuance. The idea is evolved through pen and 
 ink and paper, but it is not evolved by pen and ink 
 and paper ; these are only the conditions which the 
 idea employs to manifest itself. Evolution means a 
 rolling out. To prove that the spirit of Christianity 
 has been rolled out of nature is not enough to destroy 
 the supernatural ; you must prove that the spirit of 
 Christianity was not originally rolled into nature. 
 The moment you have conceded the possibility of a 
 force behind the germ-cell propelling it forward on 
 its upward march, and directing the conditions under 
 which it may expand, you have at one and the same 
 instant separated and united the natural and the 
 supernatural, and have found a common meeting- 
 place fur the idea of a gradual evolution and the 
 older thought of an immediate, direct creation. 
 
 It will be seen that these remarks are chiefly 
 applicable to the spirit of the nineteenth century, but 
 the principle which underlies them is applicable to 
 
Christianity and Nature. 5 
 
 all centuries. To find the truth of this, let us go 
 back from the standpoint of modern civilisation to 
 the dawn of Christian thought, and let us ask with 
 what eye did opening Christianity itself contemplate 
 the relation of the natural and the supernatural ? 
 The epistles of Paul reveal no traces of a knowledge 
 of the difference between evolutionism and creationism. 
 But evolutionism and creationism were not the catch- 
 words of the first Christian century ; the corresponding 
 expressions of that century were the terms ' law ' and 
 ' grace.' The question between law and grace was in 
 Paul's time precisely what the question between 
 evolution and creation is in ours : it was whether a 
 man could be developed into righteousness by the 
 natural use of his own moral powers, or whether he 
 required the creative influence of a new and a higher 
 life ? The Jew was in the position of a moral 
 evolutionist : he thought he could work out his own 
 salvation, and perfect his own character. Paul and 
 the representatives of Gentile Christianity were in 
 the position of creationists : they did not believe that 
 human nature possessed in its own right any such 
 power, and they called upon helpless humanity to 
 evoke the aid of a life above its own. But we want 
 to point out that while Paul and the followers of his 
 school emphasized the necessity of a divine grace, 
 they never dreamed of regarding that grace as the 
 antithesis of nature ; they regarded it only as the 
 antithesis of a violated nature, of a nature which had 
 
6 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 broken its legitimate limits, and required to be re- 
 strained by law. It never seemed to Paul that the 
 new element of inspiration which he desired for the 
 world was an element foreign to the human soul : 
 he believed it, on the contrary, to be foreign to that 
 which was itself unnatural to the human soul, though 
 it had taken captive a portion of its being. Grace, 
 the Pauline name for the supernatural, was the 
 antithesis not of humanity but of sin. It came to 
 restore humanity by destroying sin; to re-establish 
 the first harmony between the nature of man and the 
 nature of God, by the reconstruction in a higher form 
 of that Adam who was in the image of God. It 
 came not to awaken a sense of mystery, but to trans- 
 form the sense of mystery into an intuitive know- 
 ledge whereby the spirit of man should become 
 recipient of a region of thought which hitherto had 
 been to him an undiscovered land. 
 
 Paul, then, as the representative of New Testament 
 Christology, may be said to occupy a middle position 
 between the Ultramontanist and the Rationalist ; he 
 takes something from both, and rejects the exclusive, 
 element in each. He holds with the Ultramontanist 
 that there is a life higher than nature ; but he holds 
 at the same time with the Rationalist, that no life 
 can enter the human soul which does not act through 
 its natural powers. In opposition to the Ultra- 
 montanist, he declares that the things of the spirit 
 may be spiritually discerned; in opposition to the 
 
Christianity and Nature. 7 
 
 Rationalist, he maintains that the human spirit may 
 discern impressions which the human spirit could 
 never have created. ' The peace of God which 
 passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and 
 minds/ is one of the many passages in which he 
 expresses at once the transcendence and the imma- 
 nence of the supernatural. On the one hand, it is 
 above the reach of human discovery ; it passeth all 
 understanding, its origin is lost in the mists of a 
 region into which the human eye cannot soar. On 
 the other hand, the moment it has touched the earth 
 it becomes a part of the earth, enters into union with 
 the natural laws of our mental constitution, becomes 
 the guardian of our heart and of our mind ; it ceases 
 to be supernatural to that soul within which it dwells. 
 1 To know the love of Christ, which passeth know- 
 ledge,' is another of these moral paradoxes which 
 distinguish Christianity from all other religions, and 
 which of all religions Christianity alone can vindicate. 
 A love whose source is essentially outside of nature, 
 and incapable of being reached by nature, is declared 
 to be able to reveal itself to the natural mind. It 
 passeth knowledge, it is beyond the discovery of the 
 human faculties ; but it has the power to discover 
 itself to these faculties, and the instant it has dis- 
 covered itself it becomes an object of natural know- 
 ledge. Nothing can be more clear than Paul's view 
 of the relation between nature and the supernatural. 
 He tells us in the most unqualified terms, that if we 
 
8 Natural Elements of Revealed Tlieology. 
 
 start from the standpoint of natural reason, we shall 
 never by our own efforts scale the heights of Chris- 
 tianity : ' The natural man receiveth not the things 
 of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, for 
 they are spiritually discerned.' Yet Paul will not on 
 that account admit that nature is the antithesis of 
 the supernatural : he says that, though the natural 
 man cannot reach up to the things of the Spirit, the 
 spiritual man can reach down to the things of nature. 
 The less cannot comprehend the greater, but the 
 greater includes the less. ' He that is spiritual 
 judge th all things.' Nature is lower than the super- 
 natural, and therefore it cannot attain it ; the super- 
 natural is higher than nature, and therefore it has 
 the power to assimilate it. The mirror would lie for 
 ever in darkness if no light were brought within its 
 range ; bring the sunshine into contact with the 
 mirror, and in an instant the mirror will become the 
 other half of the sunshine, its second self, transformed 
 into its own image from glory to glory. One would 
 almost think that such a simile was passing through 
 the mind of the Gentile apostle when he thus ex- 
 pressed the marriage of the natural and the revealed : 
 ' God, who commanded the light to shine out of 
 darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to oive the lkdit 
 of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of 
 Jesus Christ.' 
 
 y AVe shall now be able in some measure to estimate 
 the attitude of Christianity with regard to the two 
 
Christianity and Nature. 9 
 
 extremes of Eationalism and Ultramontanism. They 
 are both adverse to the idea of revelation. Perhaps, 
 if we were disposed to make a choice, we should say 
 that Ultramontanism is the more adverse. Strictly 
 speaking, the Rationalist only holds that revelation is 
 unnecessary ; the Ultramontanist practically declares 
 that revelation is impossible. We say practically, for 
 no man would in words so vehemently repudiate such 
 an assertion. The Ultramontanist professes to be, of 
 all men, the man who reverences most the thought of 
 revelation, because he professes to be the member of 
 a Church to which has been specially committed the 
 custody of the divine mysteries. But it is just here 
 that the weak point of the Ultramontanist lies : he 
 identifies the custody of mysteries with the reverence 
 of revelation. The two things, so far from being 
 identical, are mutually exclusive. Eevelation is not 
 mystery ; it is the mystery made manifest. It means 
 literally the drawing back of a veil. The act of 
 drawing back the veil is the supernatural part of the 
 process ; it is too high to be touched by the human 
 hand, and therefore its removal demands the agency 
 of another hand. Yet no sooner is the veil with- 
 drawn than the mystery vanishes. The human spirit 
 recognises the vision not as a new vision, but as 
 that for which unconsciously it has been waiting all 
 along. It bounds to meet it as the normal fulfilment 
 of its destiny. It sees in it not merely the com- 
 pletion of its being, but the only thing by which its 
 
1 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 being could ever be completed, and it wonders that 
 in all its prophetic instincts it had never conjured up 
 the nature of the coming rest. 
 
 All this is involved in Paul's view of revelation. 
 It would have been well if apologetic literature had 
 uniformly rested itself on this Pauline basis. We 
 cannot help thinking that many of our greatest 
 treatises in Protestant apologetics have weakened 
 their permanent value, by admitting that Ultra- 
 montane element which the Gentile apostle is so 
 careful to exclude. 1 Perhaps in some respects the 
 greatest work in polemical theology which the 
 eighteenth century produced is Butler's Analogy of 
 Religion. Yet it is not too much to say that the 
 value of Butler's work would have been much more 
 lasting if its plan had been based on the Pauline 
 method. So far as it goes it is admirable ; but it 
 does not go very far, not certainly beyond the limits 
 of the century which gave it birth. That century 
 was occupied, not so much in proving that Chris- 
 tianity was true, as in showing that its opponents had 
 failed to prove that it was false. Butler accordingly 
 has caught the spirit of his age. His leading design 
 is to show, not so much that Christianity is adapted 
 to the natural instincts of the human mind, as that 
 there is nothing in Christianity which is calculated 
 to shock these instincts. It is true that in his work 
 we occasionally meet with positive adaptations, but 
 
 1 Appendix, Note 1. 
 
Christianity and Nature. 1 1 
 
 we feel involuntarily that these are incidental to the 
 plan. The main drift of that plan is to demonstrate 
 that there are no absurdities in the Christian doctrines, 
 and this is effected by the demonstration that every 
 difficulty in the realm of theology is paralleled by a 
 corresponding difficulty in the realm of nature. Such 
 a scheme is perfectly legitimate ; and where, as here, it 
 is executed with consummate ability, it cannot fail to 
 be useful. But for the nineteenth century, at least, 
 it is no longer useful as an analogy of religion. 
 When we speak popularly of Butler's analogy between 
 natural and revealed religion, we describe his work 
 by a name which, from the view of our age, is a 
 misnomer. It would be more correct to call it 
 Butler's analogy between the points which are un- 
 revealed 1 in theology and the points which are 
 ?mrevealed in nature. He attempts to establish, 
 and he has eminently succeeded in establishing, the 
 existence of equal difficulties ; but the existence of 
 equal difficulties can no more make a positive religion 
 than the existence of two negatives can make an 
 affirmative. His work amply answered the require- 
 ment of his age, which was rather the putting down 
 of an old kingdom than the establishment of a new 
 one, but it no longer fully answers the requirement 
 of ours. Our age is everywhere in search of a science 
 of comparative religion ; and by comparative religion 
 
 1 Every Christian doctrine has points be) r ond experience, which we 
 trust through those within experience (John iii. 12). 
 
1 2 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 it means not the discovery of equal difficulties in 
 different modes of worship, but the discovery of points 
 of agreement between separate forms of faith. It 
 seeks especially between the realm of nature and 
 the sphere of revelation to find a common bond of 
 sympathy. It is not content with knowing that the 
 realm of nature presents equal barriers to belief with 
 the sphere of revelation ; it wants to know that 
 revelation is in the highest sense natural to the 
 highest type of humanity. It will accept from the 
 lower nature any premonitions however unconscious, 
 any foreshadowings however faint, which it can give 
 of its coining emancipation ; but at the very least it 
 claims that when the revelation itself shall appear, it 
 shall appear not as a mystery, not as an element 
 which is foreign to humanity, but as the completion 
 of a broken harmony, a manifestation of the truth, 
 ' commending itself to every man's consciousness in 
 the sight of God.' 
 
 Now it is worth while observing that this view of 
 the subject, which is thoroughly Pauline, is at the 
 same time thoroughly in harmony with the best ages 
 of Christendom. It has received the support not 
 only of the most sober Protestantism, but of the 
 palmiest clays of the Catholic Church. It was the 
 doctrine of the Lutheran divines of the eighteenth 
 century ; * it was the doctrine of the most refined and 
 cultured stage of the mediaeval world. 2 Eemote as it 
 
 1 Appendix, Note 2. 2 Appendix, Xote 3. 
 
Christianity and Nature. 13 
 
 is from the spirit of Ultramontanism, it is essentially 
 the spirit of an older Catholicism. From the days 
 of Augustine, it was the view of the Catholic world 
 that however faith might be opposed to reason in the 
 natural man, it became one with reason in the 
 spiritual man ; that however unable the unregenerate 
 soul might be to appreciate supernatural truth, the 
 spirit in the moment of its regeneration was able to 
 naturalize that truth, to find a place for it in the 
 economy of nature, and a ground for it in the con- 
 stitution of the human soul. ' Faith precedes the 
 intellect,' was the maxim of that early Catholic 
 world : ' believe first, and you will know afterwards.' 
 The harmony of faith and reason is thus not a 
 doctrine of French illuminism nor of German tran- 
 scendentalism. It is not in any sense the product of 
 modern thought. It is the sober, grave, and reverent 
 utterance of days when human thought did not con- 
 sider itself free, when men held themselves bound 
 beyond all things to abide by the standards of out- 
 ward authority, and when a departure from these 
 standards would itself have precluded the examination 
 of any theory. If, then, in these ages of comparative 
 bondage, — if, in the heart of a Church which has always 
 been jealous of the unaided pretensions of human 
 reason, — there has yet been admitted the possibility 
 that the supernatural may unite with nature, the spirit 
 of Protestantism in its turn need not fear to prosecute 
 still further that study which the medievalist has 
 
14 Natural Elements of Ecxealecl Theology. 
 
 begun, and to trace more deeply that harmony which 
 the Catholic world has acknowledged. 
 
 The question, then, which lies before us is this : Is 
 the Christian revelation the complement of human 
 nature ? Looking at the subject from the vantage 
 ground of the Christian standpoint, are we able to 
 say that Christianity has given to nature the very 
 thing she needed ? Are we able to recognise in the 
 higher revelation the one element which was wanted 
 to perfect the lower, the one thought whose absence 
 made the natural system incomplete, the one note 
 whose silence caused a jarring in the natural harmony ? 
 That is the question we have to consider, and it is an 
 all-important question ; upon the answer to it will 
 depend the relation of the natural to the revealed. 
 If it be decided that we have found in Christianity 
 the element which supplies the special need of 
 nature, we shall be driven irresistibly to the con- 
 clusion that Christianity is not the antithesis of 
 nature ; that which supplies the need of another 
 cannot be its antithesis. Can we discover in Chris- 
 tianity this completing power ? Let us not mis- 
 understand the question. It is nut whether a human 
 soul, previous to receiving the revelation, can point 
 to those special wants in its nature which such a 
 revelation would supply. The subject of need is a 
 very subtle one. It is not when a man's necessity is 
 deepest that he is in general most conscious of it. A 
 man's need is never so deep as when he has become 
 
Christianity and Nature. 15 
 
 so habituated to his condition as to be incapable of 
 conceiving its converse. The child who has grown 
 up amidst the pollution of an impure physical 
 atmosphere, will no doubt be subjected to daily dis- 
 comforts, but they will be nameless discomforts ; it 
 will be unable to put its hand upon the secret of its 
 own unrest. To reveal that secret to the child, you 
 must first bring it out of the atmosphere which is 
 physically impure ; you must transport it into the 
 fresh air, into the green fields, into the free sunshine. 
 It can only learn the reason of its former restraints 
 by beholding the aspects of unrestrained nature, can 
 only consciously loathe the physically impure by 
 consciously partaking of physical purity. The moral 
 and intellectual worlds follow the same law. The 
 most sinful man is the least sensitive to moral 
 corruption, the most ignorant man is the least 
 conscious of intellectual incapacity. The truth is, 
 that in all departments of life it is only when we 
 taste the good fruit of the tree of knowledge that we 
 really learn the taste of the evil fruit ; the reception 
 of the higher life is necessary to reveal to us the 
 inadequacy of the lower. 1 We repeat, then, if we 
 would trace the adaptation of Christianity to the 
 natural instincts of the human mind, w r e must view 
 that adaptation not from the valley but from the 
 mountain. The test of all adaptation is the supply 
 of need, but it frequently happens that a need cannot 
 
 1 This may partially explain the slow progress of modern missions. 
 
1 6 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 definitely be named until the moment of its supply. 
 It will argue nothing against the inadequacy of un- 
 aided nature, although men in a state of nature should 
 be unable to put their hand upon the special wants 
 which make their lives defective. It is consistent with 
 all analogy that the higher life should be the true 
 revealer of the lower, and that the contrast of the 
 supplied deficiency should first give to the deficiency 
 a local habitation and a name. It is from the high 
 and pure atmosphere of a Christian consciousness, or, 
 in other words, from the high and pure atmosphere of 
 a completed nature, that we shall best be able to discern 
 the comparative lowliness and meanness of that life 
 of human incompleteness which we dignify by the 
 name of natural. 
 
 But there is another preliminary question of vast 
 importance. We have seen that, in tracing the 
 adaptations of Christian theology to the natural in- 
 stincts of the mind, we must look at the subject 
 from the height of Christianity itself. But if Chris- 
 tianity is to be the standard of comparison, what is 
 to be the object of comparison ? Where are we to 
 seek for the natural instincts of the mind ? Shall 
 Ave <xo to those doctrines which have received the 
 name of natural theology ? It has been frequently 
 averred by the deist, that if a man possesses natural 
 theology he needs nothing more. But there is a 
 question which lies behind this : Is the science 
 which is popularly called natural theology the un- 
 
Christianity and Ndture l 17 
 
 aided product of nature ? So far from being so, we 
 are convinced that in its present form it is simply 
 Christianity with the figure of Christ left out. It 
 is very easy for the modern deist to construct a 
 system which shall almost meet all the wants of the 
 case. He can tell of a loving Father whose only 
 care is for the welfare of His creatures, of a divine 
 government whose leading aim is the promotion and 
 the continuance of happiness, of a providence vast 
 enough to embrace the universe, and minute enough 
 to comprehend the grain of sand. He can point to 
 the prospect of an endless life, to the infinite possi- 
 bilities of a human soul, and to that line of moral 
 conduct which can render these possibilities infinitely 
 good. He can refer to all this, and ask with com- 
 placency if it does not unitedly constitute a religion 
 in whose faith a man might be content to live and 
 die. And assuredly, if the soul has arrived at the 
 conviction of such a faith, it has little left to be 
 desired. But how has it arrived at such a convic- 
 tion ? A loving Father, a universe in reconciliation 
 with God, a divine government of universal benevo- 
 lence, the prospect of enjoying that government in the 
 ages of an endless future, and the present power of 
 living a life of high and disinterested morality, — these 
 are startling privileges to claim from the unaided 
 light of nature. It is significant that the men who 
 have formed such sublime systems have been moderns. 
 They may have professed to reject the Christian 
 
18 Natural Elements of Revealed Thcoloyy. 
 
 light, but they have enjoyed it before rejecting it ; 
 and at no time can they reject that Christian atmo- 
 sphere in which willingly or unwillingly they live 
 and move and have their being. Perhaps the father 
 of English deism is Lord Herbert of Cherbury, though 
 his deism is of a very lofty type. 1 He has formulated 
 five propositions, which he thinks would be sufficient 
 to constitute the articles of a universal religion, — 
 that there is a God, that God is to be worshipped, 
 that the elements of His worship are piety and 
 morality, that we must repent of sin and cease from 
 it, and that there is a future state of rewards and 
 punishments. Four of these propositions would be 
 admitted by every Christian in the same sense in 
 which they are accepted by Lord Herbert of Cher- 
 bury, but this is not the sense in which they would 
 be understood by a purely natural theologian. To 
 find the purely natural theologian, we must go 
 back to a time before the Christian advent. The 
 theology of the modern deist is not the theology of 
 the ancient deist. Their God is different, the worship 
 of their God is different, the piety and morality which 
 constitute that worship are different, the rewards and 
 punishments which mark the presence or absence of 
 piety and morality are in their nature essentially 
 different. JSTay, it is not too much to say that even 
 that article in which Lord Herbert puts personal 
 penitence in the place of the expiation of wrong, has 
 
 1 Appendix, Note 4. 
 
Christianity and Nature. 19 
 
 taken rise in his mind from the breath of a Christian 
 atmosphere. A man who has been born into a world 
 where the sense of reconciliation is already an accom- 
 plished fact, who has been taught almost from his 
 infancy to look upon God as a Father reconciled to 
 His children, who has learned as the leading doctrine 
 of his creed to contemplate the work of expiation as 
 something in which personally he has no participa- 
 tion, is in a very different position from the man who 
 has been born into a world where the power of evil 
 seems almost equal to the divine power. We shall 
 in the course of these lectures have ample reason to 
 see how strongly the religious opinions of a great 
 part of that ancient world took their rise from this 
 very sense of the unconquerable power of sin, and 
 we may be sure that this portion of heathendom at 
 least would not have made it a doctrine of natural 
 theology, that the only atonement is personal peni- 
 tence. In the meantime, we have evidence sufficient 
 from individual consciousness to show that the 
 thoughts of God, of immortality, of reward and punish- 
 ment, of divine worship, and of the piety and 
 morality which make worship acceptable, have in 
 their process of transmission from the old world to 
 the new retained little more than their name. 
 
 If, then, we would see the unassisted light of nature, 
 Ave must go back to an earlier day, the day before 
 the advent of the Cross. If we would know to what 
 extent Christianity is adapted to the actual needs of 
 
20 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 men, we must see those needs unaided by the light 
 of Christianity. If we would learn what amount of 
 religion the world can derive from pure nature, we 
 must take our stand beside nature at the time when 
 she stood alone. Is there any possession which the 
 pre-Christian world held to the same extent as the 
 Christian world now holds it ? There is one, and a 
 very important one — external nature itself. If what 
 we now call natural theology be derived from external 
 nature, it ought to have the same form in the mind 
 of a heathen as in the mind of a Christian, for its 
 presumed outward source is one of the few things 
 which have remained unchanged. The universe 
 which the modern Englishman beholds, in so far as 
 it is an object of perception, is the same universe 
 which was beheld by the ancient Greek and Egyp- 
 tian. But you will observe that the qualifying 
 clause here introduced is one of vast importance, so 
 vast that it practically negatives the whole state- 
 ment. For it so happens that the visible universe 
 is far more an object of thought than an object of 
 perception. Nature is partly a fountain and partly 
 a mirror, bat it is more a mirror than a fountain. 
 It is comparatively a small part of our impressions 
 which we actually get from nature ; the greater part 
 of them are given to nature by the mind itself. We 
 get from the visible universe chiefly what we have 
 lent to that universe ; we clothe it in the forms of 
 our own thought, and paint it in the colours of our 
 
Christianity and Nature. 21 
 
 own imagining. Nature is what we are ; it weeps 
 when we are sorrowful, it rejoices when we are glad. 
 What is more to the purpose is the fact that it is 
 orderly when we are orderly. The conception of 
 law, whether it be scientific or moral law, is essen- 
 tially a spiritual conception. Men who live in a 
 state of spontaneity, invest nature with their own 
 caprices ; men who have not yet become a law to 
 themselves, will look in vain in the material universe 
 for any trace of a moral lawgiver. Every change in 
 the mind is a change in our thought of nature ; 
 every change in our thought of nature is a new 
 outlet into natural theology. The creation ' groaneth 
 and travaileth ' when the spirit of man is in bondage ; 
 the creation emerges ' into glorious liberty ' when the 
 spirit of man is emancipated. It is universally con- 
 ceded that when Christianity came, there came such 
 a change to the human mind. If so, the mental 
 state which preceded that change, and not the so- 
 called science of natural theology, must in these 
 lectures be the object of comparison. We must 
 endeavour to see what were the intellectual religious 
 needs of the old pre-Christian world. We must try 
 to transport ourselves back into the region of unaided 
 nature, and must seek, if possible, to enter into in- 
 tellectual sympathy with a state of things which has 
 passed away. We must try to put ourselves in the 
 place of men whose theology was in the strictest 
 sense natural, and must endeavour, from a survey of 
 
22 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 their religious opinions and speculations, to determine 
 with some probability the religious wants which gave 
 rise to them. 
 
 In pursuance of this plan, we make no pretence 
 to any erudite research. We shall make use of no 
 facts which are not thoroughly recognised and familiar 
 to the average mind. Our aim, indeed, is not so 
 much to state the facts, as to attempt a generalisation 
 of those facts which are already admitted. We wish 
 to arrive not so much at a knowledge of pre-Christian 
 systems, as at a knowledge of the religious needs 
 which prompted these systems. Our aim will be 
 best served by considering the problems involved in 
 the religious theories of antiquity, and this in turn 
 will be best effected by viewing these theories not 
 singly, but in pairs or in triplets. It is through the 
 medium of comparison that modern knowledge chiefly 
 grows. Men have ceased to study any object in 
 itself; they seek to arrive at the knowledge of itself 
 by tracing its relation to other objects. In every 
 secular sphere there has sprung up a comparative 
 science. We have a comparative anatomy, a compara- 
 tive physiology, a comparative grammar ; the modern 
 idea of evolution itself is built upon a comparison of 
 all the sciences. It is impossible for theology to 
 stand still ; if it would become a modern science, it 
 must fall in with the stream. If we would give to 
 the religious thought of man that value which we 
 assign to his secular speculations, we must allow his 
 
Christianity and Nature. 23 
 
 religious thought to have a sphere as wide as his 
 secular speculations. We must not limit the idea 
 of religion to any special time, or place, or creed ; 
 we must admit all times and places and creeds to be 
 in their own way and in their own season the mani- 
 festations of that idea. We must refuse to consider 
 the supernatural as incapable of comparison with 
 the natural, we must seek in the natural itself for 
 the elements of a universal religion. In the mutual 
 antagonisms of ancient creeds we shall find a common 
 need, which one common element is waiting to supply ; 
 and the need and the reconciling element will be 
 most clearly recognised when we place the opposing 
 systems in one view side by side. 
 
 In following out this course, we have been at some 
 loss what to do with Judaism. On the one hand, it 
 is not a completed revelation ; on the other hand, it 
 is accepted by Christianity as something more than 
 the unaided light of nature. It is pre-Christian in 
 time, yet it does not profess to be wholly pre-Chris- 
 tian in thought ; it is ever pointing forward to that 
 state of which it is the precursor. We cannot regard 
 it as an integral part of the Christian revelation, 
 whose light in some measure is made visible by its 
 removal. But it would be equally unscientific, if 
 we accept a supernatural element in Christianity, to 
 treat as a pure product of nature the religion which 
 Christianity itself declares to be its divinely com- 
 missioned forerunner. Under these circumstances, we 
 
24 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 have determined in tins inquiry to ignore Judaism 
 altogether, wherever Judaism gives an independent 
 testimony, and only to bring it into view when its 
 testimony is in unison with the judgment of antiquity. 
 We shall seek to consider it not in those aspects in 
 which it differs from the opinions of heathendom, 
 but only in those in which it happens to coincide 
 with them ; and we shall thus be under no necessity 
 of interrupting our continuous search for the problems 
 and the needs of unaided nature. 
 
 Now it seems to us that the religious thoughts of 
 the pre-Christian world may all be summed up under 
 three great problems, to which they were designed 
 to find an answer, — What is God ? What is His 
 relation to humanity ? Is His glory consistent with 
 the existence of moral evil ? These are, in our view, 
 the great religious speculations of antiquity, and we 
 shall have to consider each of them in turn. We 
 shall have to see not only the evidence for the 
 existence of such problems, but the mental need 
 which each of them implied, and we shall then have 
 to examine to what extent these mental needs have 
 been supplied by the doctrines of Christianity. We 
 shall find that the w T ant underlying each problem 
 is in point of fact met by a Christian doctrine, — the 
 first by the belief in the Trinity ; the second by the 
 tenet of Incarnation ; and the third by the faith in 
 Atonement. When we have arrived at this adapta- 
 tion, we shall be in a position to enter on the further 
 
Christianity and Nature. 25 
 
 inquiry, to what extent the doctrines of revelation 
 have modified the doctrines of natural theology. For 
 let it be remembered that we no longer hold with 
 the divines of last century the existence side by side 
 of two separate religions, the one natural, and the 
 other revealed. We hold that there is now a revealed 
 religion, and that there was once a natural religion, 
 but that the revealed has incorporated the natural, 
 and deprived it of its separate aspect. ' When that 
 which is perfect is come, that which is in part is 
 done away.' We say the revealed has incorporated 
 the natural, not destroyed it. To hold the light of 
 revelation to be the extinction of the light of nature, 
 is to deny the capacity of revelation to supply the 
 needs of nature. We are not anxious in these 
 lectures to make out a bad case for the natural 
 instincts of the human mind, nor are we desirous, 
 with Mr. Hardwick, to emphasize the points of 
 contrast between the old world and the new. The 
 superiority which we claim for Christianity is not 
 only one which renders unnecessary, but one which 
 even excludes, such a mode of treatment. Incorpora- 
 tion is a greater proof of superior height in a spiritual 
 world than mere transcendence ; and the highest 
 triumph of the spiritually greater is that it includes 
 the less. It is our design, therefore, to present the 
 light of nature at its best. We shall ignore its 
 lower or incipient manifestations. We shall not seek 
 the illustration of its problems in the worship of the 
 
26 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 fetich, or even in that early form of belief which, in 
 the Contemporary Revieio for November 1878, Max 
 Mtiller discusses under the name of ' Henotheism.' 
 If we would adequately represent the needs of nature, 
 we must try to see nature at its highest. Nor shall 
 Christianity suffer by such a process ; it will not 
 only keep its new light, but, in addition, it will gather 
 in the old, and in the act of ingathering the old shall 
 become the new. 
 
 For it is worth inquiring, before closing this intro- 
 duction, What is that relation which Christianity 
 itself professes to hold to the systems of heathendom ? 
 There will recur to most people that remarkable 
 passage in the first chapter of Romans, in which it 
 seems to be decidedly hostile. But what is the 
 ground of Paul's hostility ? Is it that men living 
 under the light of nature were following the natural 
 religious instincts of their own minds ? The cause 
 of his anger is entirely the contrary. He complains 
 that the Gentile worshippers had departed from those 
 primitive instincts whereby the invisible things of 
 God had in measure been revealed to them ; that 
 they had abandoned that instinctive morality whereby 
 they who were without the law had been a law 
 unto themselves. His charge against them is, that 
 they - did not like to retain God in their know- 
 ledge ; ' and by God he means the being whom the 
 light of nature reveals. He tells them that they had 
 changed the truth of that God into a lie, inasmuch as 
 
Christianity and Nature. 27 
 
 they had changed His incorruptible glory ' into an 
 image made like to corruptible man.' What is the 
 lie which Paul here condemns ? It is the belief that 
 God shares in the vices of humanity. Men in the 
 Roman empire came to think vice manly ; and what 
 a man thinks manly, he will soon come to think 
 godly. They attributed to their gods the imperfec- 
 tions they found in themselves, they deified their own 
 corruptions, they made an apotheosis of their own 
 strifes and jealousies. It could not be contended 
 that such a worship expressed one of the needs of 
 nature ; its leading characteristic was its mmatural- 
 ness, and it was on that ground that Paul repudiated 
 it. He resisted it in the interest of nature, and 
 in the interest of the light of nature ; and nowhere is 
 he really so friendly to the pre-Christian world, as in 
 those very words where he seems to be most adverse. 
 He desires to expunge from natural worship all that 
 is unnatural, in order that the adaptation of nature 
 to the supernatural may be clearly and unqualifiedly 
 revealed. 
 
 It is in this adaptation that Paul finds the high- 
 est glory of historical Christianity. ' By Him all 
 things consist,' are the words in which he expresses 
 his sense of the glory of Christ's place in history. 
 'Consist' literally means 'stand together.' Paul says 
 that in Christ the world stands together, that apart 
 from Christ the world is reduced to fragments ; He 
 is the bond that unites the lives of men, and the 
 
23 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 central truth that reconciles the systems of men. In 
 this utterance Paul has touched at once the strength 
 and the weakness of the heathen systems, — their 
 capacity for union with Christ, and their fleeting and 
 fragmentary character apart from Christ. For it can- 
 not be denied that, looked at from the purely natural 
 side, the religious creeds of the ancient world impress 
 the mind with sadness. The sadness does not arise 
 from a sense of their falseness, but from a perception 
 of their fleetingness: they seem to exist only in 
 order that they may vanish. We see each of the 
 great religions of antiquity becoming in turn the 
 predominant religion of the world, and all eventually 
 subsiding into the form without the soul. We find 
 the heathen world at the period of Christ's birth 
 practically in a state of religious negation, having 
 weighed all her creeds in the balance and found them 
 all wanting. We are naturally disposed to ask if all 
 these past ages have been lost ? Have the specula- 
 tions of the human mind been an utter failure ? have 
 the ages of human development been so many ages 
 of waste ? That question has been answered by 
 Christianity. Christianity, Paul says, has begun its 
 redemptive work by redeeming the systems of the 
 past. Here the fragmentary and evanescent specula- 
 tions of the natural mind stand together in unity ; 
 they are justified by Christ. The new light vindi- 
 cates the old, and reveals new beauties in the old. 
 The religious creeds of the ancient world lose their 
 
Christianity and Nature. 29 
 
 aspect of isolation and mutual contradiction ; they 
 seem to be the facts of one great science of religion, to 
 whose progress and development they have uncon- 
 sciously been ministering. Christianity has opened a 
 universal temple. It has made the voices of nature 
 one voice. It has made the religions of nature one 
 religion, of which itself is the completion and the 
 crown. It has broken down that wall of demarcation 
 which so long divided the systems of men, for in 
 satisfying the needs of each it has reconciled the 
 claims of all. 
 
LECTUEE II. 
 
 THE FIRST FEE-CHRISTIAN FROBLEM. 
 
 "II7E come now to consider the first of those 
 "* problems which we professed to find under- 
 lying the pre-Christian systems, — we mean the first 
 in order of thought, for we assign to those problems 
 no chronological order. Some systems contain all of 
 them contemporaneously. We begin with that which 
 is the fundamental question of all questionings, What 
 is God ? From the very dawn of religious history 
 we find the natural instincts of the human mind in 
 conflict with that problem. At the dawn of religious 
 history, men are naturally apt to look without rather 
 than within. The facts of life, and therefore the 
 facts of religion, are not all before them : they see 
 chiefly the material side, the spiritual is compara- 
 tively unrevealed. The question, What is God ? is 
 therefore first asked of external nature, and we must 
 look for such an answer as external nature is com- 
 petent to give. 
 
 It seems to us, however, that a modern religious 
 thinker is very apt to form an erroneous anticipation 
 
The First Pre-Christian Problem. 31 
 
 of what that answer ought to be. He expects to 
 find the early percipient of nature inferring the 
 existence of a being who dwells beyond it, in whose 
 thought it was designed, and by whose hand it was 
 fashioned. Paley says that a man looking for the 
 first time upon a watch, would conclude that there 
 must have been a watchmaker. Hume, on the other 
 hand, would have denied such a conclusion. He 
 would have said that the man, if he had never seen a 
 self-acting product, would have formed no opinion on 
 the subject, since we only infer that things are made 
 from having seen like things made. Here are two 
 modern views on a matter very pertinent to the 
 present question. Let the object be, not the watch, 
 but the universe, and the principle will be the same. 
 Now it seems to us that a 'primitive man would have 
 taken a view distinctively different from either of 
 these. He would not infer that the watch must 
 have had a maker, but he would conclude that it 
 must be living. He would certainly recognise the 
 necessity of a cause for the manifestation of force 
 which he saw before him, but he would probably 
 seek the cause not out of the object, but within it, 
 would infer that the force which he beheld in the 
 instrument was the life-force of its being. It was 
 precisely so that the primitive mind looked at nature, 
 whether in its general aspect or in its isolated details. 
 In the incipient stages of natural life, the objects of 
 nature were probably only seen in isolation, and each 
 
32 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 on different occasions may have become in turn the 
 object of worship. But what enabled the primitive 
 mind to worship any natural object, was not the 
 practical ignorance of the argument from causality ; 
 it was simply the belief that the watch was living. 
 It was the conviction that the cause of the mechanism 
 which it beheld lay in a life of its own, in a force 
 inherent in its being, in a power which issued from 
 within. As the knowledge of nature deepened, the 
 sense of natural unity would deepen ; the forms of 
 the external world would cease to be isolated forms, 
 and would seem to be only the manifestations of one 
 common law. But even then it would never occur 
 to the natural mind to look for the cause of this law 
 in a life outside of itself; the watch would be greatly 
 enlarged, but it would still be contemplated as living, 
 and as the source of its own movements. Here, 
 accordingly, is the first form of natural religion, the 
 earliest answer with which we are acquainted to the 
 problem, What is God ? The answer is consistent 
 with the natural instincts of the human mind. The 
 first object it beholds is nature, and from nature 
 its first impressions are derived ; the first aspect of 
 nature is one of voluntary life, and its own voluntary 
 life is viewed as the cause of its being. 
 
 The earliest form of rational religion, then, is 
 nature-worship. It would be wrong to characterize 
 it as either a sensuous or a spiritual worship. It 
 proceeds from the predominance of the external, and 
 
The First Pre-Christian Problem. 33 
 
 in so far it is materialistic ; yet the external itself is 
 not contemplated as a pure materialism, but as the 
 expression of an inward life. Nature is in fact the 
 ancient substitute for Fatherhood ; it is by definition 
 that which begets, brings forth, produces. It was to 
 the old world the embryo of what divine Father- 
 hood is to the new. Men reverenced it as the great 
 parent of their common humanity. They did not 
 comprehend it, but they felt that at one time it 
 comprehended them. It did not evoke their love, as 
 it was not supposed to manifest love ; but it elicited 
 their respect, their fear, their wonder, their worship. 
 They saw in it the mysterious source of their origin, 
 which, even when they had seen it, remained mys- 
 terious still, and they bowed down before a presence 
 which was at once so intimately near and so widely 
 unintelligible to their own. 
 
 Now there have been two great waves of nature- 
 worship, marking respectively its flow and its ebb : 
 the first is represented by India, 1 the second is re- 
 vealed in Greece. The difference between them has 
 been eloquently expressed by Max Mtiller. He 
 points out how the Indian mind, in its contact with 
 nature, is habitually sad; how. the Greek mind, in the 
 same contact, is habitually joyous. The Indian seems 
 to be crushed beneath the admiration of that which 
 he worships ; the Greek seems, by reason of his ad- 
 miration, to rise into equality with the object of his 
 
 1 Appendix, Note 5. 
 C 
 
34 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 worship. The difference is in miniature very much 
 the same distinction which Mr. Buckle draws between 
 Europe and Asia in general, when he tells us that in 
 the former man has power over nature, that in the 
 latter nature has power over man. But the question 
 is, how are we to account for this difference ? Shall 
 we explain it by the contrary aspects of nature her- 
 self ? Such an explanation has been sometimes 
 attempted. We are told that in India the mani- 
 festation of nature is on so vast a scale, that the 
 individual mind is overwhelmed by the spectacle. 
 The eye is appalled by the vision of gigantic 
 mountains, and boundless plains, and trackless forests. 
 Beneath the burning rays of tropic suns, and beside 
 the course of rivers which seem to wander without 
 end, the individual man feels himself a fragment of 
 creation, and is compelled to merge his being in the 
 life of the mighty whole. In Greece, on the other 
 hand, man is confronted by the other side of nature. 
 He meets it not in its majesty, but in its gentleness ; 
 not in its gigantic grandeur, but in its persuasive 
 softness. He sees it in an aspect level to his own 
 capacity, and the sense of equality deprives him of 
 the sense of fear. His worship ceases to be an awe- 
 struck devotion, it becomes a pleasant amusement. 
 His religion loses its mystic aspect, it becomes the 
 poetry of his life. He sports amid the visible forms 
 of the material universe, because the forms of that 
 universe are adapted to his own finite being ; he 
 
The First Pre-Christian Problem. 35 
 
 plays with physical nature, because physical nature 
 has ceased to overshadow him. The visible world 
 has assumed to the Greek a garb that hides its 
 superior power, and the Greek, beguiled by the dis- 
 guise, forgets the distance that divides him from the 
 mystery of nature. 
 
 Now we must admit the geographical facts on 
 which this theory is based. There is unquestionably 
 the difference here indicated between the aspect of 
 the Indian universe and the aspect of the Greek 
 universe. The real question is, Is the theory the 
 legitimate conclusion from the facts ? Do we find, 
 as a matter of experience, that the perception of 
 vastness and majestic grandeur has a tendency to 
 dwarf the individual mind ? The answer of expe- 
 rience must be, it depends on the character of the 
 individual mind which beholds the spectacle. If the 
 mind be in an incipient or infantile stage, the vastness 
 of nature will overwhelm it ; if the mind be in a 
 state of enlargement and civilisation, the vastness of 
 its material surroundings will add to the largeness 
 of its ideas. Nowhere is physical nature represented 
 on a vaster scale than on the American continent, 
 yet this exhibition has produced on the American 
 continent precisely the opposite effect which it pro- 
 duced on the Indian mind : it has served to enlarge 
 the sense of individuality, and has stimulated the 
 intellect to a life of bold and ambitious enterprise. 
 The literature of America has largely taken its tone 
 
3 6 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 from its geographical circumstances, and that tone 
 has been the reverse of Indian : it has expressed, not 
 the sense of depression, but the joy of national 
 confidence. Occasionally, indeed, we meet with an 
 exception which only serves to prove the rule. 
 Perhaps the most notable instance which American 
 literature affords of a vast territorial extent creating 
 individual sadness, is that of Longfellow's 'Evangeline.' 
 In this poem we are called to contemplate the affec- 
 tion of the individual heart baffled by the vastness 
 of the Transatlantic continent, wandering over plain 
 and mountain in the vain search for its object, and 
 prevented from reaching that object by the very 
 absence of boundaries. Such a conception serves 
 chiefly to illustrate how the geographical features of 
 America might have impressed the national mind, if 
 that mind had itself been less enlarged and developed ; 
 and the fact that it does not constitute the prevail- 
 ing tone of its literature, must strongly w r eaken our 
 belief in the necessarily depressing influence of the 
 majesty of nature. 
 
 The truth is, we do not need to go so far to find 
 the explanation of the difference between India and 
 Greece ; we shall go too far in search of it if we 
 overlook the development of the mind itself. The 
 incipient mind is nearer to the physical than to the 
 spiritual, and therefore, in its stage of incipiency, it 
 is weaker than nature. So long as the human soul 
 views itself as a mere physical force, it views itself 
 
The First Pre-Christian Problem. 37 
 
 as a mere fragment of nature ; and the part must 
 inevitably be lost in the whole. But if the mind 
 should awaken to the conviction that there is within 
 it a force different from and inexplicable by the 
 physical, its attitude to external nature will imme- 
 diately be changed. It will no longer be a part of 
 the outward creation, which can only conceive the 
 infinitude of that creation by conceiving itself as lost 
 in it. It will stand upon an outside platform, and 
 look upon the visible universe with an independent 
 eye. It will cease in its own view to be the servant 
 of nature; it will aspire first to be its companion, 
 and ultimately to be its superior. 
 
 Such is the mental difference which is expressed 
 in the Indian and the Grecian world. The mind of 
 India exhibited the stage of the natural man ; and 
 because a natural man is a weaker force than a 
 natural universe, it sank into nothingness beneath the 
 contemplation of nature. The mind of Greece had 
 reached that stage which Hegel calls the adoles- 
 cence of humanity. It had arrived at the period of 
 self-consciousness, when the desire of personal inde- 
 pendence becomes the ruling impulse of the life ; 
 and, through the very strength of that desire, it had 
 found that there dwelt within it a force which could 
 not be reduced into any of the powers of nature, — a 
 force which, if not higher than the natural, was at 
 least essentially different from it, and rendered by its 
 difference incapable of absorption in it. Hence that 
 
38 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 universe, which to the Indian was a source of fear, 
 became to the Greek a source of joy. He seemed 
 already in anticipation to feel himself its superior. 
 He had a prophetic conviction of his own possibili- 
 ties, and the prophecy made him bold ; the mystery 
 of nature faded before the mystery of mind, and the 
 reverence for nature was eclipsed by the reverence 
 for the human spirit. 
 
 Thus far, then, the problem of heathendom was 
 unsolved. There was a need in the human soul 
 which visible nature had failed to satisfy. It had 
 satisfied the first craving of humanity — the desire of 
 the mind to explain its own origin ; it had filled up 
 that craving with a conception which stood to the 
 old world in the place of divine Fatherhood. But, as 
 the spirit of man became self-conscious, there arose 
 within it a desire to know something more than its 
 origin ; it wanted an explanation not merely of its 
 beginning, but of its continuance. It asked the mean- 
 ing of those mighty powers which it felt within it ; 
 it was no longer content to inquire whence they came, 
 it wanted to know what they were. The greatness 
 of the human soul was itself a present mystery ; the 
 continued existence of that soul demanded a divine 
 influence as strongly as did its origination. Man 
 was now driven to the second stage of the problem. 
 The soul of the Greek had found a new ideal in the 
 beauty of its own nature ; and what a man's ideal is, 
 his religion soon must be. The moment visible 
 
The First Pre-Christian Problem. 39 
 
 nature ceased to be the most beautiful of objects, 
 the life of nature ceased to be the type of God ; the 
 moment the human mind was contemplated as the 
 grandest thing in the universe, the power of mind 
 became the type of God. It was Greece which made 
 the transition from the natural to the spiritual thought 
 of the divine. It was here that first nature had 
 revealed her inadequacy to meet the religious wants 
 of the spirit of man ; it was here that first the spirit 
 of man revealed its power to furnish a contribution 
 to the human thought of God. 
 
 The transition at which we have now arrived is 
 the passage from nature-worship into Platonism, — from 
 the deifying of the life of nature, to the deifying of 
 the power of mind. In this new form of religion 
 God is contemplated no longer as the source of 
 natural life, but as the essence of supersensuous 
 thought. There is still recognised, indeed, a great 
 life of nature, or soul of the natural universe, by 
 which rude matter is fashioned into form, and through 
 which the transient form is vivified and kept alive. 
 But this life of nature is no longer identical with 
 God ; it is an inferior intelligence which God has 
 made vicegerent of the material universe, and which 
 He has placed over that universe with the express 
 purpose of keeping it out of His reach. For be it 
 remembered that to the mind of the Platonist matter 
 has not only ceased to be divine, it has become the 
 antithesis of the divine, the obstacle to its influence, 
 
40 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 the hindrance to its working. When Greece under- 
 went a reaction against nature-worship, it underwent 
 a reaction against nature itself. It would have been 
 quite competent for the Platonist to hold the insuffi- 
 ciency of nature to represent God, and yet to retain 
 nature as a symbol of the invisible thought of God. 
 This the Platonist did not do. When he abandoned 
 the worship of material forces, he abandoned all 
 fellowship with these forces. He broke away from 
 the forms of the surrounding universe, and strove to 
 fix his gaze upon a universe which was unseen and 
 eternal. God was thought. He was not the water, 
 as Thales said ; or the air, as Anaximenes said ; or the 
 fire, as Heraclitus said : He was the soul within all 
 souls, the thought behind all thoughts, the mind at 
 the basis of all minds. To come near to God, there- 
 fore, was to fly within oneself. It was to with- 
 draw the eye from the vision of vanishing scenes, to 
 curtain the ear from the impression of perishable 
 sounds, to cleanse the mind from the conception of 
 earthly images, to steel the heart to the influence of 
 mundane affections. It was to transplant the soul 
 into a world of abstract contemplation, where the 
 reign of sense would end and the reign of spirit 
 would begin, where reason would be undisturbed by 
 the motives of the outer man, and where the will 
 would be unswayed by the temptations of the earthly 
 life. 
 
 It need not be said that such a system provided a 
 
The First Pre-Christian Problem. 41 
 
 thorough cure for nature-worship ; unfortunately the 
 cure became itself a disease. When the Platonist 
 abandoned the worship of nature he abandoned the 
 love of nature, and when he abandoned the love of 
 nature he practically gave up all love. If it be 
 sinful to give the heart to that which has a material 
 form, it is sinful to give the heart to any human 
 soul; for every human soul is bounded on one side 
 by the world of nature. The Platonist did not shrink 
 from the conclusion. He boldly affirmed that all 
 human affections belonged to the outer or sensuous 
 man, and that whatever encouraged these affections 
 should be hunted down and crucified. He proposed 
 a new object for human love, corresponding to the 
 new world which he had opened for humanity. He 
 declared that the object of man's admiration should 
 be, not the individual, but the qualities of the indi- 
 vidual ; not virtuous men, but virtues themselves. 
 Man should love that which is universal ; and indi- 
 viduals were not universal, they were the fleeting, 
 vanishing forms of a sensuous world. Yet there was 
 in them a universal element which might be made 
 strong enough to conquer the sensuous form, — a power 
 of divine contemplation which was itself the shadow 
 of God. This universal element was the true object 
 of human love. All that belonged to the individual 
 as an individual was sensuous, and therefore perish- 
 able ; that alone which the individual shared in 
 common with humanity was eternal, and worthy to 
 
42 Natural Elements of Revealed Tluology. 
 
 be loved. Beautiful things were fading, and there- 
 fore were not for the heart of man ; but the idea of 
 beauty which they symbolized was imperishable and 
 incorruptible. The idea and not the thing must be 
 the treasure of the soul, — the virtue and not the 
 virtuous, the beauty and not the beautiful, the purity 
 and not the pure. 
 
 Such was that strange form of sentiment which 
 has come down to us by the name of Platonic love. 
 The meaning of the phrase, indeed, is popularly mis- 
 understood by those who use it. The popular view 
 of Platonic love is the substitution of friendship for 
 romantic affection ; in Plato's view, it was the substi- 
 tution of love of the thought for love of the thinker. 
 It is of course from Plato's standpoint that the 
 subject must be viewed. Viewed from that stand- 
 point, the idea which most powerfully impresses us is 
 the utter lovelessness of the religious system which 
 had supplanted nature-worship. The supplanting of 
 nature-worship was in itself an advantage, but the 
 object which had been placed in its room did not 
 fill the blank in the human soul. In driving that 
 soul from the world without, Platonism simply drove 
 it within upon itself, proposed to substitute the con- 
 templation of self for the contemplation of nature. 
 In doing so, it in one sense gave more, in another 
 sense less, to the worshipper. It gave more, inas- 
 much as the soul is in itself a grander object than 
 nature ; it gave less, because, in forbidding man to 
 
The First Pre-Christian Problem. 43 
 
 look without, it imprisoned him in a selfish solitude. 
 In prohibiting the heart to extend its perceptions 
 beyond the range of its own meditations, Platonism 
 practically destroyed the heart's possibility of joy. 
 It compelled it to dwell alone, to feed upon itself, to 
 prey upon its own vacancy. It trampled upon one 
 of the deepest instincts of religious worship, and in 
 trampling upon it it aw T akened it from its lethargy. 
 That instinct was the need of divine companionship 
 or religious communion. The element of divine 
 companionship or communion is necessary to any 
 perfect system of religion, yet this was the element 
 which of all others had hitherto received the least 
 prominence. Even nature-worship had failed to yield 
 anything more than a partial fellowship to the human 
 soul. We have seen that, in relation to the spirit of 
 man, nature had assumed two contrary attitudes : in 
 Asia it had been man's superior, in Europe it had 
 begun to be his inferior. Either of these attitudes 
 was prejudicial to divine communion. Companion- 
 ship demands as its preliminary requisite, that there 
 shall exist between its objects an equality of nature. 
 There may be any amount of inequality in degree ; 
 the child may hold communion with the man, in 
 spite of the difference of their development, but that 
 is because the child and the man stand on the same 
 plane of being, they have the level of a common 
 humanity. Different intelligences cannot commune 
 from the standpoint of their difference. It matters 
 
•44 Natural Elements of Revealed Tlieology. 
 
 not whether the difference lie in superiority or 
 inferiority, if it amount to an essential separation it 
 excludes communion ; the angel in the heavens and 
 the beast in the field are alike and for the same 
 reason debarred from the communion of the human 
 soul. Nature in the thought of her worshippers 
 passed from one extreme to another, but in each 
 extreme she failed to reach man's ideal of fellowship. 
 To the Indian she was too great ; to the Greek she 
 was too insignificant; from both she was divided by 
 the want of a common platform of being. In neither 
 phase did man find in her a possible source of com- 
 panionship : in her earlier aspect, fear precluded love ; 
 in her later, the sense of human superiority precluded 
 that respect and reverence without which love cannot 
 be. Platonism, in casting nature aside, had simply 
 by a finishing stroke completed and endorsed a long 
 course of mental development, in which man had 
 found himself too great to find solace in the com- 
 panionship of nature, but Platonism had in so doing 
 made the solitude complete. It had for the first 
 time isolated the idea of religion even from the 
 semblance of outward communion, had driven the 
 spirit of man within its own depths, and had left it 
 to solve the problem alone. It was clear that in 
 such a solitude the problem could not be solved. 
 One vital element was wanting for its solution. 
 When the mind of man inquired, What is God ? it 
 was not in search of a mere abstraction : it was 
 
The First Pre-Christian Problem. 45 
 
 seeking a manifestation. It was striving to find, not 
 simply a logical definition of God, but a visible re- 
 presentation of God, — something which it could see 
 and hear and touch without degrading its object and 
 degrading itself, something which would supply an 
 outward image whose worship would be yet no 
 idolatry. It was in search of that very element 
 which Platonism has striven to exclude from the 
 divine, — materialism; and it was in search of it just 
 in order that it might find the one thing which could 
 make its religious worship a joy, — the sense of divine 
 companionship, the voice of communion with God. 
 
 It was this need in the heart of humanity which 
 led to the rise of that singular phase of mythology, 
 wherein the great men of earth were given a place 
 amongst the gods. It does not seem to us that such 
 a phase of religious thought could have emanated 
 from a very early stage of religious experience. 1 It 
 exhibits a dawning conviction that, in addition to the 
 life of nature and the power of mind, there was a 
 third source in which it might be expedient to seek 
 for God, — the glory of humanity. But a perception 
 of the glory of humanity must of necessity be a 
 comparatively late stage in the process of man's 
 development. We have seen that the human spirit 
 is originally depressed by its contact with nature, and 
 incapacitated by its fears from gathering within itself 
 the rich stores which nature has spread around it. 
 
 1 Appendix, Note 6. 
 
46 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 We have seen that the process of transition from fear 
 to confidence was not a rapid one, that it required 
 the transmutation from an Asiatic into a European 
 culture. Yet, until the soul had conquered its over- 
 mastering fear of nature, it is difficult to see how it 
 could realise the glory of humanity. In point of 
 fact, it is chiefly in the Western mythology that the 
 new phase of religious life is to be found ; it is when 
 man has conquered nature that he begins to deify 
 himself. He does so in some measure for self-defence. 
 In losing nature-worship he has lost the worship of 
 an outward power, and he dreads to find himself 
 alone. To fill the blank, he weaves out of himself a 
 new religious world. He selects the best specimens 
 of humanity with which he is acquainted, and raises 
 them in his thoughts up to the level of the gods. 
 He becomes heir for the first time to something 
 which, in imagination at least, is a real communion 
 with the divine, for he finds himself confronted by 
 forms which even their divinity deprives not of a 
 human likeness, and his worship grows tinged with 
 that sympathy which may be the harbinger, and is 
 always the preliminary requisite of love. 
 
 It is true that when the ancient world selected the 
 best specimens of its humanity to lift into the dignity 
 of the gods, it was not in a condition to select wisely. 
 It chose those mortals whom it believed to be the 
 best, and its choice fell for the most part upon the 
 physically strongest ; its Pantheon was filled rather 
 
The First Pre-Christian Problem. 47 
 
 with the brave than with the good. Yet we must 
 not do injustice to these first efforts at the glorifica- 
 tion of humanity. Let us remember wherein lay 
 the special need of that ancient world. The only 
 semblance it had ever known of an outward divine 
 communion had been the worship of external nature, 
 and the death of that worship had left a blank. Is it 
 surprising that, in its attempts to fill up the blank, 
 the old world should have sought in humanity for 
 those attributes and those elements which reminded 
 it most powerfully of the worship it had lost ? Is it 
 surprising that, in its efforts to construct a new 
 thought of God, it should have availed itself of those 
 materials which it had seen as components of the old ? 
 Nature had been known to it chiefly in its properties 
 of physical strength. There were men who seemed 
 to manifest the same properties, who appeared to be 
 gifted with these very elements of physical force 
 which had commanded in the past the reverence of 
 humanity. In these men the majesty of nature 
 seemed to live again, and the divinity of nature to rise 
 anew. Humanity itself took that place which the 
 external universe had occupied. Man worshipped the 
 physical, but the physical illuminated by intelligence 
 and made accessible by human intelligence. He saw 
 strength exhibited in his own likeness, and in that 
 connection strength became to him an object of human 
 sympathy ; he found a worship of communion in the 
 glory of his brother man. 
 
48 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 Let us now gather up those religious needs which 
 we have found in the history of the ancient world, 
 remembering at the same time that this ancient 
 world represents the natural and unaided instincts of 
 humanity. We have seen that these religious needs 
 were three in number. There was, first, a sense of 
 dependence to be explained ; there was, secondly, a 
 sense of greatness to be accounted for ; and there was, 
 thirdly, a sense of solitude to be appeased. We have 
 seen that the three phases of ancient worship were 
 in reality the attempts to answer respectively each of 
 these requirements. Man in India felt himself to 
 be dependent ; the Indian religion supplied him with 
 an origin, by referring his being to the great life of 
 nature, — the begetting or fatherly principle. Man 
 in Platonism felt himself to be great ; Platonism 
 furnished him with a reason for his greatness, by 
 revealing a universal soul within his individual soul. 
 Man in the Western mythology felt himself to be 
 alone ; mythology broke his solitude, by lifting up to 
 the level of divinity these sharers of his own nature, 
 who were believed to be the noblest ; he found com- 
 panionship in the glorification of humanity. Here, 
 then, following the process of human need, we arrive 
 at a threefold thought of God reached by the natural 
 theologian, that is, by the religious world which lived 
 before the Cross. We find the thought of a fatherly 
 or begetting principle from which humanity emanated, 
 the thought of a divine Spirit in which humanity 
 
The First Pre-Christian Problem. 49 
 
 lives and moves and has its beinj?, and the thought 
 of a human form which humanity can give to the 
 divine, and through which it can commune with the 
 divine. The originating principle or Fatherhood, the 
 divine Spirit in man, and the human form in God, 
 constitute collectively the answer of the ancient world 
 to the first problem of heathendom. 
 
 Is this answer complete or satisfactory ? Does it 
 supply those needs of the natural mind which called 
 it into being ? if not, wherein consists its short- 
 coming ? Such is the question we have now to 
 consider, and it does not appear one of great difficulty. 
 We have said that by tracing the needs of human 
 nature we arrive at a threefold thought of God, but 
 it is we who arrive at it. It is easy, from a retrospect 
 of Christian experience, to look back upon the phases 
 of the old world and find in them a harmony. Let 
 us remember that it is Christian experience which 
 has given them their harmony. As long as these 
 phases are seen in the light of the old world itself, 
 they are seen in a state of conflict ; they are not 
 three in one, but three in discord. They do not 
 constitute one united thought of God, they do not 
 form the elements of a single religion. That which 
 becomes in Christianity a threefold thought of the 
 divine nature, exists in heathendom as three opposite 
 views of the divine nature. As long as we remain 
 within the circle of heathen religions, these views 
 indeed are mutually exclusive, and of this a moment's 
 
 D 
 
5 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 reflection will suffice to convince us. The Indian 
 beheld in the life of universal nature a begetting 
 principle, which to that extent corresponded to the 
 idea of Fatherhood, but it was a Fatherhood which 
 expressly excluded the idea of Sonship. Nature was 
 so infinite that it swallowed up the finite. It left 
 no room for the energies of the individual ; even the 
 so-called incarnations of the nature-God of India 
 never lifted from its depression the finite being of 
 man. The Platonist beheld in the intellectual 
 capacities of the human soul the evidence of a divine 
 Spirit in which it lived and moved, but the divine 
 Spirit of Platonism was alike a revolt from the 
 creative principle of India, and from the finite long- 
 ings of the popular mind. It was at variance both 
 with the Fatherhood and the Sonship, for it main- 
 tained the eternity of matter, and it denied the right 
 of individual experience. The mythologies of the 
 West were a protest of the popular mind against 
 a God whose only attribute was infinitude. They 
 expressed the determination of the soul to find an 
 object of living, personal communion, clothed in its 
 own humanity, and represented in its own form. But 
 the very reaction towards finitude carried the mytho- 
 logies of the West too far. It led them to deify in 
 humanity that which was furthest removed from 
 spirituality and nearest to the physical life. They 
 worshipped the strong, the brave, the physically 
 powerful; they measured a mortal's claim to divinity 
 
The First Pre-Christian Problem. 51 
 
 by the prowess of his feats in arms. In so doing 
 they forgot at once the fatherly principle of the 
 Indian and the spiritual principle of the Platonist. 
 Thus the religious instincts of the old world had 
 gathered together elements which they could not 
 unite, — elements which, if blended into unity, would 
 have indeed constituted a majestic and all-embracing 
 thought of God, but which in their isolated and 
 separate worship left the idea of the divine as far as 
 ever from the grasp of a united humanity. It was 
 reserved for another and a higher power than the 
 old world possessed, to find the bridge over that gulf 
 which divided the pre-Christian conceptions of God, 
 and to combine the three forms of heathen religion 
 into a form which, while including infinitely more, 
 was large enough to comprehend these lowliest 
 speculations. 
 
 That power was Christianity, and that form in 
 which it united the speculations of antiquity was the 
 doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity 
 encountered directly the first problem of heathendom, 
 and in encountering the problem it embraced all sides 
 of the question. It took account of those needs of 
 humanity which had produced the three phases of 
 early religious thought, and it strove to give expres- 
 sion to each while recognising the claims of all. It 
 took up the three answers which the old world had 
 given to the question, What is God ? — the answer of 
 the Indian, the answer of the Platonist, the answer 
 
5 2 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 of the worshippers of human deities, — and it sought 
 to combine these answers into one great responsive 
 utterance which made the three conceptions a three- 
 fold thought of one God ; it declared Him to be at 
 one and the same moment the Father, the Son, and 
 the Spirit. He was the begetting principle which 
 the Indian had sought, the human form which the 
 popular mythology had sought, the divine life in 
 humanity which the mind of the Platonist had 
 sought ; but inasmuch as He was all united, He was 
 in each case more than any of these conceptions 
 involved. He was not merely the begetting principle 
 of India, for He was the Spirit at the same time that 
 He was the Father ; Fatherhood, by its union with 
 Spirit, had ceased to be a mere life of nature, and had 
 become a living intelligence. He was not simply 
 the human form of the popular mythology, for the 
 form, too, had been associated with an infinite Spirit, 
 which placed the glory of human nature in something 
 higher than its physical strength. Nor yet was He 
 merely the divine Spirit whom* the Platonist adored 
 as the source of human intelligence, for He was the 
 Spirit united to the form. The divine life of the 
 Platonist had been rendered cold by its divorce from 
 natural life and humanity, had lost its beauty by 
 being dissociated from man. Christianity restored 
 their union, and restored it in a form which hitherto 
 it had never known. The Spirit of God was no 
 longer that mere life of nature which the Indian had 
 
The First Pre-Christian Problem. 53 
 
 worshipped, yet He was a life which in embracing 
 humanity comprehended nature too. He revealed in 
 the human soul possibilities of infinite greatness, yet 
 He revealed these possibilities not in a region of 
 abstract speculation, but in the common walks and 
 aims of everyday life, in the meanest duties of the 
 passing hour, in the labours of the hand and the 
 affections of the heart, in the struggles and the cares 
 of a finite existence ; the Spirit was united to the 
 Son, and therefore religion was made harmonious 
 with the pursuits of individual life. Such was the 
 Christian Trinity, — the reconciliation of those elements 
 which the heathen world had divided. Their union 
 enhanced the greatness of each, by giving to each 
 some attribute of the other. The ideas of Father- 
 hood, of Sonship, of Spirituality, rose into new 
 grandeur, when they emerged out of their mutual 
 antagonism, and God answered in one thought the 
 needs of a united humanity, in 'the Father of an 
 infinite majesty ; His honourable, true, and only Son ; 
 also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter/ 
 
 It may seem that in the treatment of this 
 question we have gone somewhat out of our way to 
 find a solution lying at the door. It may be asked 
 why, in considering the adaptations of nature to the 
 doctrine of the Trinity, we have not simply availed 
 ourselves of those direct parallels to the Trinity 
 which are presented by heathen systems ? It must 
 indeed be confessed that those seeming parallels are 
 
5 4 Natural Elements of Revealed Tlieology. 
 
 numerous enough. There is scarcely a religion of 
 antiquity which does not contain something that 
 reads like an anticipation of the triune God. Even 
 the rigid unity of China was unahle to escape the 
 tendency to triplicity. It found that material nature 
 could not at all times be contemplated as one. It 
 recognised in the material framework an element of 
 power and an element of receptivity, and to meet the 
 different characters of these it separated the one life 
 of nature into two lives. India was constrained to 
 see a threefold process in nature, and to indicate it 
 by the respective names of Brahma, Vishnu, and 
 Shiva. Parsism, which ultimately became a dualism, 
 was at first in all probability the worship of a triple 
 power, which eventually divided itself into two 
 opposing powers. Platonism, notwithstanding its 
 abstract and introspective tendency, was unable to 
 contemplate the divine thought as an absolute unity, 
 but was compelled to give different names to what 
 seemed to be its different phases. Thus on every 
 side we find the tendency of the pre-Christian world 
 towards the three rather than the one. Why do we 
 not take this tendency as itself the indication that 
 nature is adapted for the Christian doctrine ? why do 
 we not accept the ancient parallels as proofs of the 
 essential harmony between the light of reason and 
 the light of revelation ? 
 
 The reason is, that we hold the adaptations of 
 nature to be the needs of nature. We believe the 
 
The First Pre-Christian Problem. 55 
 
 harmony between the natural and the revealed is 
 best seen in the defects of the natural, and in the 
 supply of these defects by the revealed. We have 
 therefore tried to trace the needs of humanity, and 
 to ground upon these needs the doctrine of the 
 Trinity. It will be found, however, that the seeming 
 historical parallels to that doctrine have not grown 
 out of the needs of nature, but have, on the contrary, 
 proceeded from its supplies. These so-called trinities 
 were framed from actual observation of the pheno- 
 mena of nature and of mind. They were simply a 
 catalogue or generalisation of natural and mental 
 experiences. When the Indian observed the birth, 
 growth, and decay of animal and vegetable forms, or 
 when he looked at the course of one of his own vast 
 rivers in its beginning, in its widening, and at last 
 in its mingling with the sea, he came to associate 
 the entire life of nature with this process of advent, 
 expansion, and disappearance ; and he expressed this 
 process by the terms Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. 
 When the Flatonist turned his eye inward on the 
 constitution of his own mind, and when he observed 
 that in this mental constitution there was a region of 
 sense, a region of understanding, and a region of will, 
 he felt that any system of religion which identified 
 God with thought must inevitably take account of 
 these different spiritual experiences. He therefore 
 assigned to the deity a threefold sphere of existence, 
 according as he manifested himself as the source of 
 
5 6 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 abstract being, as the soul of the intellectual uni- 
 verse, or as the life of the natural universe. In one 
 sense the Platonist is nearer than the Indian to the 
 conception of a triune God, inasmuch as he starts 
 not from the world of matter, but from the world of 
 mind. Yet even in this mental atmosphere the 
 Platonist has not succeeded in realizing his three 
 divine manifestations in one harmonious thought; 
 on the contrary, each manifestation of Plato's God is 
 for the time exclusive of every other. There can be 
 no meeting here of the Father, the Son, and the 
 Spirit. As the source of abstract being, God is not 
 the soul of the intellectual universe, for a soul is not 
 an abstraction, but a concrete spiritual existence. As 
 the soul of the intellectual universe, the God of 
 Plato is not the life of the natural world, for the 
 natural world in the system of Plato is ever the 
 antagonist of the world of intellect. It is not, there- 
 fore, in individual historic parallels, however similar 
 in appearance, that we must seek the adaptation of 
 the light of nature to the revealed doctrine of the 
 Christian Trinity. The more we examine these, the 
 more shall we be convinced that they stand upon 
 another plane, depend on other principles, and owe 
 their existence to other motives. If we would dis- 
 cover the true point of union between the light of 
 nature and this doctrine of revelation, we must seek 
 in nature for the need of such a doctrine ; and if we 
 should find in the natural struggles of the religious 
 
The First Pre-Christian Problem. 57 
 
 intellect the demand for a view of God which shall 
 embrace the diverse in the one, we shall have reached 
 a more satisfactory evidence of adaptation than could 
 be supplied by a thousand instances of mere verbal 
 parallelism. 
 
 We have recognised three distinct needs in the 
 religious consciousness of the early world, — a sense 
 of dependence, a sense of solitude, and a sense of 
 greatness, — and we have found these needs to have 
 been satisfied in the doctrine of the Christian Trinity. 
 We have been confirmed in this view, by observing 
 that in the history of early Christianity there was a 
 tendency to give peculiar prominence to one of the 
 divine persons. It seems to us that in this period 
 of Church history the prominence was given to the 
 Father, the Son, or the Spirit, according as the age 
 was dominated by one or other of the needs here 
 specified. At the beginning of the Christian era, 
 men felt the same sense of dependence which they 
 had felt in their first contact with nature. They 
 were in the presence of something new. They were 
 surrounded by manifestations hitherto unseen, and as 
 yet unintelligible. They beheld the rising of another 
 sun before which the sun of the old world was fading 
 away. They felt themselves to be in a region of 
 prodigies, and in the presence of the marvellous 
 their individual life again realized its nothingness. 
 They naturally directed their eyes to the cause of 
 these new phenomena, — the begetting principle, the 
 
58 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 creative Father. By and by there came a change. 
 The novelty passed away, and the sense of wonder 
 faded. Men became accustomed to the Christian 
 atmosphere, and breathed it as their native air. The 
 prodigies ceased, the marvels melted into laws, and 
 the supernatural entered into union with the natural. 
 Man, deserted by the outward miracle, felt his re- 
 ligious solitude, and recognised his need of a human 
 companionship ; the contemplation of the Father 
 began to wane, and the contemplation of the Son 
 began. At last the organization of the Church was 
 completed, and the Christian religion assumed the 
 form of a great secular power. Man, in the very 
 exercise of his worship, experienced a sense of empire, 
 and found it necessary to account for his conscious- 
 ness of greatness. Then began pre-eminently the 
 age of the Spirit, or rather that age which men 
 assigned to the Spirit; the Papacy became the organ 
 of a theocratic power, and the empire of the hierarchy 
 was referred to the inspiration of the breath of 
 Pentecost. Thus each age, in the effort to emphasize 
 and to answer its own special need, gave prominence 
 to that aspect of the Godhead which seemed best to 
 meet its requirement. Yet it is not necessary nor is 
 it desirable that the Christian consciousness should 
 thus be divided. A fully - developed Christianity 
 will find the best satisfaction for all its needs, not in 
 separating the divine manifestations, but in reaching 
 that common element which is manifested in alL 
 
The First Pre-Christian Problem. 59 
 
 The Father by a kindred Spirit recognising Himself 
 in the Son, and the Son by a kindred Spirit recog- 
 nising Himself in the Father, are aspects which, 
 taken together, constitute the harmony of love. In 
 the definition of the divine nature as love, we reach 
 the common element which pervades the triune life 
 of God, and in reaching it we attain in a single 
 thought the united answer to the three needs of 
 heathendom. The sense of dependence is answered 
 here : the individual is pointed to the source of his 
 sustenance, while yet in the process his individuality 
 is not depressed but ennobled. The sense of solitude 
 is answered here : man finds in his religion a source 
 of human companionship, for the very idea of love 
 necessitates that equality of nature without which 
 there can be no communion. Finally, the sense of 
 greatness is answered here : man reaches an explana- 
 tion of those elements of grandeur which his nature 
 still retains, when he recognises that even in the ruin 
 and decay of his moral being he exists as an object 
 of solicitude to the heart of infinite love. 
 
LECTUEE III. 
 
 THE SECOND PRE-CHRISTIAN PROBLEM. 
 
 HHHE second problem of the pre-Christian world 
 -*- was, What is God's relation to humanity ? 
 If the first question was, What is God ? the second 
 practically was, What is providence ? What is God's 
 interest in the affairs of men ? Now it will be found 
 that from the standpoint of nature there are three 
 conceivable ways in which the subject of God's 
 relation to humanity may be regarded : He may be 
 looked upon as the power beyond man, as the King 
 over man, or as the essence pervading man. The 
 pre-Christian world affords examples of each of these ; 
 and we propose following the order not of chronology, 
 but of thought, to select representative specimens. 
 The three views of divine providence here indicated 
 may perhaps be best described by the words Deistic, 
 Theistic, and Pantheistic. 1 Deism in its extreme 
 form contemplates the Supreme Being simply in His 
 supremacy; it looks upon Him only as the power 
 beyond the world, and refuses to allow Him any 
 1 Appendix, Note 7. 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. 61 
 
 interest in the world's government and history ; it 
 solves the problem by denying that there is any 
 relation between the mundane and the supramundane. 
 Theism in its natural form also starts from the 
 conception of divine supremacy, but it contemplates 
 the divine supremacy as something which is exerted 
 over the world ; God is not merely a supramundane 
 power, but the sovereign of a kingdom of which 
 human beings are the subjects, and therefore by the 
 very fact of His supremacy interested in the govern- 
 ment of this world. Pantheism contemplates God 
 not as the power beyond the soul, nor as the power 
 over the soul, but as the power OF the soul, — the 
 great comprehensive life in which the life of 
 humanity lives and moves and has its being. The 
 ancient world, in its seeking after God, adopted one 
 or other of these views ; a few prominent examples 
 will suffice to illustrate this. 
 
 We begin with that ancient theory of providence 
 which regarded God simply as the power beyond 
 humanity, — in other words, which denied that there 
 was a providence. Its most prominent representative 
 was Epicurus. With his actual system of cosmogony 
 we have here no' concern ; he held, as is well known, 
 that the world was produced by a concourse of 
 material atoms which themselves existed from 
 eternity. But what we have here to observe is the 
 fact that, in giving utterance to such a theory, 
 Epicurus was not actuated by any opposition to the 
 
6 2 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 supernatural ; nay, paradoxical as it may seem, it 
 might from a certain point of view even be said that 
 he was led to construct his theory by an ill-directed 
 reverence for the supernatural. Neither he nor his 
 great spiritual descendant Lucretius ever attempted 
 to deny the existence of superior beings ; what they 
 said was that these beings were superior, and there- 
 fore incapable of mingling in earthly affairs. The 
 deism of their creed consisted in this, that they 
 attached a rigid sense to the thought of the super- 
 natural. They regarded the supernatural as that 
 which was absolutely beyond the reach of the 
 natural, so that the divine could no more stretch 
 down to the human than the human could stretch up 
 to the divine. There was an impassable barrier of 
 distance between gods and men, and it was precisely 
 this barrier of distance which made the one men and 
 the other gods. If we inquire still further in what 
 the distance consisted, we shall find a remarkable 
 illustration of the fact that a man forms his idea of 
 God after his own image. The Epicurean philosophy 
 had especially directed its efforts to find a preventa- 
 tive of the cares of life ; to the Epicurean, as to the 
 Stoic, care was the great bugbear of existence, and 
 the life without care was the ideal life. To him, 
 therefore, the gods were those beings who were dis- 
 tinguished from all others by their absence of care. 
 It was impossible they could be so distinguished if 
 they were permitted to touch the contagion of the 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. 63 
 
 human atmosphere. It was necessary they should 
 dwell alone, in a region too far remote to be reached 
 by the sighs and groans and tears of humanity. 
 Their divinity could only be preserved by the pre- 
 servation of their equanimity, and their equanimity 
 must be broken by the participation in human 
 struggles. It was to keep them from such a fate 
 that Epicurus enclosed them in a paradise to which 
 the knowledge of earth was forbidden, and which the 
 earth on its part was forbidden to know. Epi- 
 cureanism is the most thoroughgoing expression of 
 paganism which the pagan world itself reveals. 
 Nowhere is the force of nature so terribly natural ; 
 nowhere is the antithesis so grimly marked between 
 the old world and the new. Here the popular 
 instincts of the pagan mind speak out unreservedly. 
 The social life of paganism was engrossed in the 
 worship of power, or rather in the worship of that 
 species of power which resides in the physically 
 strong and in the outwardly untrammelled. That 
 strength which could shake off the burdens of others 
 was the object which man most admired in man : 
 was it not inevitable that it should also be the 
 object which man most desired in God ? His 
 divinity became the apotheosis of that ideal of glory 
 which he had marked out for himself. Of all the 
 aspects of paganism, this of Epicurus is to the 
 believer in Christianity the most difficult to compre- 
 hend, because it idealizes a kind of power which to 
 
64 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 the believer in Christianity no longer represents the 
 greatest force in the universe. Men who have 
 breathed the atmosphere of the writer to the 
 Hebrews, have felt with him that the inability to 
 be touched with the feeling of human infirmities is 
 an absence rather than an indication of power ; that 
 to be able to be touched with these infirmities 
 implies a strength that is divine. Yet we must not 
 thrust our ideal on the mind of the ancient world ; 
 we must view its religious aspirations from the level 
 of its own capacities. In its social aspect paganism 
 did not pretend to be unselfish : its aim was the 
 strength, the beauty, the culture of the individual 
 mind ; each man lived to himself, and each man died 
 to himself. Nor did Epicurus believe that in 
 assigning the same qualities to the gods he was 
 instituting a religion ; on the contrary, it was just 
 because he felt compelled to assign them these 
 qualities that he held religion to be impossible. 
 Whatever may be said against his creed, it must 
 always'be said in its favour that it was thoroughly 
 honest, and perfectly consistent with its premisses. If 
 the pagan world had possessed no life but its life of 
 pleasure, Epicurus would have supplied all its needs. 
 But then beneath its paganism this world had a life 
 of humanity, which reminded it not only that it was 
 mortal, but that it was suffering. Epicureanism 
 became weak when measured by its own standard. 
 The individual did not lose his cares by making his 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. 65 
 
 own individuality the sole object of his contempla- 
 tion ; he simply chose one set of cares in exchange 
 for another. It is impossible for human life to avoid 
 sacrifice ; the selfish man lives in some aspects a 
 more sacrificial life than the unselfish, and there is 
 no species of care more hard to endure than that 
 which is engendered by self - contemplation. The 
 Epicurean, wherever he may be, will at all times find 
 this to his cost. The life of humanity is inseparable 
 from the cares of humanity. If anything can lift 
 humanity out of its cares, it must be contact with 
 some higher life. Is there such a contact ? That is 
 the great problem of the divine providence. The 
 Epicurean answered in the negative, and by so an- 
 swering he destroyed the hope of his own Epicurean 
 philosophy, whose desire and aim was the search 
 for human happiness. The needs of human nature 
 have in all ages proved too strong to suffer any wide- 
 spread prevalence of so sweeping a religious negation. 
 We come, therefore, to the second of those pro- 
 vidential theories in which the pre-Christian world 
 figured to itself the relation of the divine to the 
 human ; it may be called the theocratic or kingly 
 theory. Like the Epicurean view, it starts from the 
 attribute of divine power, but it contemplates that 
 power as exerted over humanity. God's relation to 
 the world is viewed as one of sovereignty : He is the 
 King, and we are the subjects. It is singular how 
 tliis notion of the sacredness of kinghood has per- 
 
6 6 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 vaded religious systems in other respects the reverse 
 of theistic. The religion of Confucius, though it 
 was the worship of an impersonal, if not a material 
 principle, was essentially a state religion, in which 
 the Chinese emperor was conceived to be a special 
 organ of the divine power. The religion of pagan 
 Rome was in its highest development the worship of 
 imperialism : the emperor was to the pagan Eoman 
 an exaggerated form of what the pope was to the 
 most Catholic of medievalists. The religion of Plato 
 was perhaps nearer to Pantheism than to Theism, yet 
 it laid strong hold of the thought of divine kinghood ; 
 its republic was really an empire in which the 
 stronger minds were to dominate the weaker, and 
 God was the universal mind which in comprehending 
 dominated all. Higher still in the rank of theistic 
 religions stands the creed of the early Parsees, ere yet 
 that creed had been saddened by too keen a perception 
 of the conflict of human life. Parsism, in the doctrine 
 of Zoroaster, is a worship hardly distinguishable from 
 the purest Theism, — the reverence of a God of moral 
 beauty, the symbol of whose perfection is the light of 
 heaven ; He is the sovereign of a kingdom of light, 
 the supreme ruler of a government of order. But 
 nowhere does the theocratic idea obtain so powerful 
 a mastery as in the worship of Judaism. We have 
 not assumed in these lectures that Judaism forms a 
 phase of the natural faith of humanity, but we have 
 promised to adduce its testimony when it is in 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. G7 
 
 harmony with the natural faith of humanity. The 
 theistic creed of Judaism emphasizes with tremendous 
 force the craving of human nature for a God in 
 relation to itself. Starting as it does from the per- 
 ception of man's natural anarchy, it carries to the 
 utmost verge the desire for a kinoj over the world. 
 The title which it reverences above all others is the 
 title of king ; heaven itself is represented to its view 
 under the aspect of a kingdom. It feels that what 
 the soul wants above everything else is order, govern- 
 ment, law. It sees in life a scene of disorder, mis- 
 government, lawlessness ; and it feels that its object 
 of worship must be one who can put these things 
 right by possession of the opposite qualities. There- 
 fore its God is its king, its judge, its lawgiver. He 
 dwells in the high and holy place, but His eyes 
 behold, his eyelids try, the children of men. 
 His throne is in heaven, but it is prepared for 
 judgment. His elevation is not the lofty seat of 
 Epicurean indifference ; it is the eminence from 
 whose height He can survey all. His attitude 
 towards the world is that of perpetual command, a 
 command from which there can be no appeal. He 
 speaks, and the earth trembles ; He utters His voice, 
 and the hills shake. Nature and man are alike His 
 messengers. Not only is there no room for a rival, 
 but there is no room for a second. The Jew sees 
 nothing but the theocracy, he has no place in the 
 world for second causes. Whatever befalls, whether 
 
68 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 of good or ill, he immediately and without hesitation 
 refers to the King of kings. If the path of life is 
 strewn with flowers, it is the hand of God that strews 
 them ; if the journey of life is beset with thorns, it is 
 the hand of God that plants them. In the season 
 of national disaster, in the hour of personal danger, 
 there is no admission for the conception of accident 
 or chance or contingency. The Jew looks the cloud 
 in the face, and says, ' Shall evil be in a city, and the 
 Lord hath not done it ? ' To him the personal God 
 has all the force of the pantheistic God. He feels 
 himself impelled by a resistless decree. He dares 
 not look back to question it ; it has for him no 
 reason beyond the fact of its existence. It consti- 
 tutes in one breath his weakness and his strength ; 
 it makes him nothing, and it makes him all. He 
 ceases to have any will ; he becomes the instrument 
 of a divine will ; but the very sense of his instru- 
 mentality makes him wondrously strong. It leads 
 him to battle against overpowering numbers, it 
 ensures him victory with insignificant resources. He 
 becomes great by reason of his humility, he grows 
 terrible through his fear of God. 
 
 Such is the spirit of the Jewish theocracy, essen- 
 tially a spirit of inspiration. Theism appears here 
 not simply as a creed, but as a life-power. As a 
 mere matter of history, the belief in God is to the 
 Jew a more potent secular force than the belief in 
 worldly principles is to the worldling. Are we then 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. 69 
 
 able to rest here ? Have we found in this Theism 
 our highest ideal of that relation which should sub- 
 sist beween the human and the divine ? In what- 
 ever light we view the worship of Judaism, we shall 
 be forced to give a negative answer. Christianity 
 accepts Judaism as its forerunner, yet Christianity 
 professes to supply a missing link in the Judaic 
 relation between God and man. What is that link ? 
 In one sense, the weak point of the relationship is 
 the very rigidness of the chain that binds them. 
 Judaism contemplates God simply as a king. It 
 views Him constantly in His superintendence, but it 
 is the superintendence of power : He speaks to His 
 creatures only as the lawgiver. It is plain that 
 such a government, by its very absoluteness, tends to 
 divorce God from man. The very conception of law 
 implies estrangement ; where everything is regulated 
 by law, there must be an utter absence of spontaneous 
 harmony. The desideratum in the Jewish worship is 
 a sense of sympathy on the part of the worshipper ; 
 and a sense of sympathy cannot exist where there is 
 not a perception of equality. Place God at the 
 summit of the chain, and man at the foot of it, and 
 however rigidly you may connect the intermediate 
 links, you have practically severed the human and 
 the divine ; you can only unite them by maintaining 
 that man is immediately linked with God. Judaism 
 bound God to man by a most rigid relation, but it 
 was the relation of law : God stood at one end of the 
 
7 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 universe, man stood at the other. The medium 
 which connected them was not the divine life, but 
 the divine command. The command pushed the 
 creature from without, it could not impel him from 
 within. He was the perpetual subject of divine law, 
 he had never once been subject to the influence of 
 divine will. There was demanded, by the heart of 
 humanity, another form of relationship. Judaism 
 answered the problem of providence on the divine 
 side, it did not touch it on the human side ; it 
 vindicated the majesty of God, but it did not meet 
 the claim to the liberty of man. 
 
 It was this human side of the problem, this 
 necessity for an immediate intercourse between the 
 soul and the object of its worship, which originated 
 the third mode of relationship, by which it was 
 attempted to explain the working of God in the 
 world. Epicurean Deism divorced . altogether the 
 divine from the human, Judaic Theism united them 
 only as the subject is united to the sovereign ; men 
 sought a form of union which should join them in 
 their essence, which should furnish that basis of 
 equality on which might be built a sympathetic 
 worship. If the representative religion of ancient 
 Deism is the creed of Epicurus, if the highest form of 
 pre-Christian Theism is the religion of the Jews, the 
 representative of this third tendency is the philo- 
 sophically developed faith of India. We have seen 
 that the religion of India was originally occupied 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. 71 
 
 with the problem, What is God ? and that it found 
 Him in the cosrnical life of the universe. Its second 
 stage was the problem we are now considering. 
 When it passed from its perceptive into its reflective 
 period, it set itself to inquire, What connection this 
 cosrnical life of the universe bore to the lives of 
 individual men \ In answering this question, the 
 Indian mind was guided by an opposite motive to that 
 which actuated the Jew. The Jew was in search 
 of a superintending sovereign, the Indian was in search 
 of a uniting or equalizing medium. Accordingly 
 the Indian was imperatively driven to such a view 
 of individual life as would annul its distinction 
 from the divine life. Was there any theory by 
 which it could be held that the personal life of man 
 was, even in its nothingness, a portion ol the cosrnical 
 life of God ? There was such a theory. Was not 
 this world the dream of God ? were not the stages 
 of earthly existence but the thoughts which flitted 
 through the sleep of the divine Spirit ? The moment 
 God begins to create, He begins to sleep ; His creation 
 is itself an illusion of sleep, a dream. When Ho 
 passes into what we call the world of reality, He 
 passes into His own world of unreality ; He sleeps, 
 He dreams, and His dream is the life of all that is. 
 It lives only in His imagining, it breathes only in 
 His vision. What the dramatist said in metaphor, 
 the Indian said in sober fact, ' We are such stuff as 
 dreams are made of.' Our being was but the sleeping 
 
72 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 life of God; in itself it was nothingness, delusion, 
 vanity, and it was destined to vanish when the 
 divine Spirit should awake. There is nothing which 
 so impresses the Indian as this intrinsic delusiveness, 
 this vanity of individual existence. When he tries to 
 contemplate himself outside the life of God, he is 
 obliged to desert the simile of the dream, but he still 
 seeks for such a simile as will remind him of his 
 nothingness. His favourite metaphor is derived from 
 the waters of the ocean. The personal being of man 
 is but a few drops of spray which have been cast up 
 accidentally by some mighty sea, and have fallen as 
 it were into a bottle. Here they are enclosed for a 
 time, they are held in captivity, they are prevented 
 from going back to their native element of boundless- 
 ness. At last at death the bottle is broken, and the 
 drops mingle again with the ocean; the individual is lost 
 in the universal, man is obliterated in the life of God. 
 In this Indian metaphor our modern interest 
 attaches to the point which was least interesting to 
 the ancient world. We are anxious to know, not so 
 much what becomes of the drops, as what becomes of 
 the bottle. The bottle is in this case the element of 
 reality, because it is the cause of individuality. We 
 are naturally curious to learn how it has been broken, 
 and if there are any fragments which remain, and if 
 there are none, how so complete an annihilation 
 could have been accomplished ? This is precisely what 
 the Indian religion does not tell us. Approaching 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. 73 
 
 the problem from different sides, and prompted to 
 its solution by different motives, the Indian and the 
 Jew have arrived at the same goal, — the depression 
 of the individual consciousness. The God of Judaism 
 was too far away, but His was the transcendence of 
 imperial power, beneath which the personal life of 
 man was compelled to be voiceless. The God of 
 Brahminism was so near, that He was inseparable 
 from the being of the personal life, but His was a 
 nearness which absorbed all existence into its own 
 atmosphere, and made it impossible for the individual 
 to retain any personal life. In his . efforts to exalt 
 the God of the theocracy, the Jew depressed the 
 existence of the creature ; in his efforts to find a unity 
 between the human and the divine, the Indian totally 
 obliterated that existence. Was there any view of 
 God which could at one and the same moment pre- 
 serve both His farness and His nearness ? Was there 
 any theory of the divine relation to the universe 
 which would enable man to contemplate God as his 
 king, and which yet at the same time would enable 
 him to view God as in union with his soul ? Was 
 there any imaginable process by which the contempla- 
 tion of God's kinghood would bring Him really near 
 to the sympathies of the individual life, and by which 
 the contemplation of His oneness with humanity 
 would exalt Him in human thought to the dignity of 
 a king ? This was the question which constituted the 
 providential problem of the ancient world, and this 
 
74 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 was the question which the ancient world did not 
 succeed in answering. It had all the elements of an 
 answer, but it wanted the link to bind them. It 
 failed to find that thought which could unite the 
 seemingly opposite thoughts of transcendence and 
 equality, of power over man and sympathy with man. 
 With either of these elements wanting, no theory of 
 providence could be complete, and no view of pro- 
 vidence could be satisfactory. A God who was no 
 king could be no power ; a God who was all king- 
 hood could be no help. Man's intellect and man's in- 
 capacity alike demanded a superintending intelligence ; 
 man's heart not less strongly demanded an intelligence 
 which was not so much superintending as for the time 
 commensurate with his own, an intelligence which 
 could think for him because it could think with him, 
 and which could provide what was good for man 
 because it knew what was in man. 
 
 Xow there was one idea which, had it been found 
 by the ancient world, would have reconciled into 
 beautiful harmony these extremes of human thought. 
 There was awaiting the world in the future a common 
 element in which the two opposing elements of far- 
 ness and nearness should become one, in which the 
 idea of transcendence was to suggest the thought of 
 sympathy, and in which the thought of sympathetic 
 nearness was to suggest the idea of transcendence. 
 That common element was the conception of head- 
 ship. As long as the conception of the theocracy 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. 75 
 
 expressed itself merely in the thought of a system 
 of political government, there was in its picture of 
 providence a necessary discrepancy between the idea 
 of law and the idea of love : God was simply the 
 ruler, and the ruler exists only in his distinction 
 from the subject. But there is clearly another species 
 of government than the political one, — a government 
 which finds its expression not in the construction of 
 a state, but in the organism of a body, whose king- 
 hood is headship, and whose subjection is member- 
 ship. The moment we have exchanged the name of 
 king for the title of head, we have exchanged a whole 
 train of associations for another and an opposite 
 train. The moment we contemplate humanity as 
 an organism of which God is the head, we have 
 given to the kinghood of God a contrary significance 
 to that which we give to the kinghood of men. For 
 let us but consider what is implied in that sove- 
 reignty which the head of a body exercises over its 
 members. It certainly indicates a superior power ; 
 but how is that power attained ? by becoming the 
 servant of all. The head is always king of the 
 members, but it is their king because it is their 
 minister. It is their servant both in what it takes 
 from them, and in what it gives to them. It may 
 be said to take from them all their possible sufferings. 
 Whatever impressions of pain are encountered by 
 the members become immediately the impressions of 
 the head, are carried up to the centre of the bodily 
 
76 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 government. The head becomes heir to all the 
 suffering of every member, whatever it may be, and 
 whenever it may occur. If the human body were 
 conceived as perpetually growing, and if in its growth 
 it were regarded as continually evolving new mem- 
 bers, the principle would be still the same, — every 
 new member in the very moment of its evolution 
 would make the head the heir to all the imperfections 
 it possessed, and to all the pains it might encounter. 1 
 But the other side of the picture is not less true : if 
 the head becomes heir to the burdens of every 
 member, every member becomes heir to the power of 
 the head; this is a distinct law in the constitution of 
 each human body. There are descending as well as 
 ascending nerves in the human frame ; the head has 
 to serve the body not only by getting, but by giving. 
 It has not merely to receive the impressions which 
 are communicated to any part of the physical struc- 
 ture ; it has to send down to the part thus affected 
 a portion of its own motive power. If the hand is 
 burned, the head feels the pain ; but it is the head 
 which gives to the hand the power to withdraw 
 itself from the fire. Here is a double service which 
 the centre of human life has to perform : it has to 
 minister to the body at once by sharing its sufferings 
 and by imparting its own strength. It is king over 
 the body just in proportion as it fulfils these offices ; 
 
 1 Hence Paul assumes that generic expiation does not exhaust 
 divine suffering (Col. i. 24). 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. 77 
 
 its power to rule is its power to minister, its theocracy 
 is its sympathy, its kinghood is its ability to bear. 
 
 Now let us suppose that such a conception had 
 entered the mind of the ancient world, — let us sup- 
 pose it had conceived the idea that every man if 
 he desired it could enter into the same relation with 
 God as the member of a human body bears to the 
 head of that body, — would not the result have been a 
 complete reconciliation of its providential difficulties ? 
 These seemingly opposite ideas which heathendom 
 vainly strove to amalgamate, would have been found 
 not only capable of amalgamation, but involving a 
 necessity to union. The sovereignty of God would 
 have ceased to be contradictory to the human interest 
 of God ; the power of His sovereignty over man 
 would have been seen to be proportionate to the 
 power of His interest in man ; and the heathen world 
 would have felt what the Christian world subse- 
 quently felt, that God ' ought to suffer that He might 
 enter into His glory.' Yet this possibility of a king- 
 hood arising out of a divine participation in human 
 weakness, is precisely that thought which is distinc- 
 tive of the Christian religion. Perfection through 
 suffering is an idea which essentially belongs to the 
 dispensation of the Cross. The nearest approach which 
 the pre-Christian world can make to it is the hope 
 of perfection in spite of suffering, the possibility that 
 a man may suffer and yet be strong. It is in the 
 doctrine of the divine headship that Christianity 
 
78 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 expresses at once the power and the reasonableness 
 of this thought; here it vindicates the majesty of 
 God, and yet identifies that majesty with the bearing 
 of the cross. As a mere matter of history, it is to 
 Christianity we must look for the solution of the 
 heathen problem, the missing link which joins its 
 difficulties. 1 It is where the second person of the 
 Christian Trinity, who is all along contemplated as 
 the human archetype, takes upon Himself the head- 
 ship of humanity, that for the first time in the history 
 of religion we are able to say, ' Heaven and earth are 
 met together.' 
 
 Let us now proceed to unfold this new thought. 
 Paul declares that Christ is the head of the 
 Church, that is to say, the head of all who ever 
 have desired or who ever shall desire to be united 
 to God. We wish in these lectures to avoid 
 all questions of particularism and universalism, and 
 therefore we shall seek to employ a formula which 
 may find acceptance with both parties. We shall 
 say, then, that in the doctrine of the New Testa- 
 ment Christ is the potential head of all humanity, 
 implying thereby that the power resides within Him 
 of embracing an infinite membership. Now it is 
 plain on the very surface that there must have been 
 a time at which this union was begun in history. 
 Even conceding that ideally it existed for ever in the 
 thought of God, we shall still be obliged to ask at 
 
 1 Appendix, Xote 8. 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. 79 
 
 what period this divine thought became historical ? 
 Can we point to a time in the earthly life of the Son 
 of man when He began to recognise Himself not 
 merely as an individual man, but as the head of a 
 human organism, comprehending already a few mem- 
 bers, and destined to comprehend myriads ? Here 
 we are confronted by two schools of evangelical 
 opinion, which perhaps find their most prominent 
 representatives in Luther and Calvin. In the view 
 of Luther, Christ became the historical head of the 
 Church only by the act of resurrection ; His headship 
 was the result of His exaltation. In the view of 
 Calvin, Christ was the historical head of the Church 
 previous to His crucifixion, and suffered crucifixion 
 in that capacity ; His headship was a part of His 
 humiliation. We have no hesitation whatever in 
 preferring the view of Calvin, and in taking it as 
 the standpoint from which to compare Christian 
 theology with pre-Christian religion. Nevertheless 
 we must remark that if the evidence pointed in 
 favour of the Lutheran doctrine, it would in no 
 degree invalidate the specific argument of this lecture. 
 Our position is simply this : We believe the answer 
 to the second problem of antiquity to be the Chris- 
 tian doctrine of the incarnation, we believe the 
 Christian incarnation to be not an act but a process, 
 and we believe the completing stage of that process 
 to be the headship of Christ over the Church. If 
 it should be found that this headship only becomes 
 
8 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 a fact of history when the Son of man rises from 
 the dead, we should simply conclude that the process 
 of incarnation only finds its completion in the fact 
 of resurrection. Incarnation is in our view a com- 
 pleted fact the moment the divine headship is a 
 historical reality. We believe that as a historical 
 reality it preceded, the sacrificial death of the Son 
 of man, and we shall endeavour, with the reverence 
 which befits so great a subject, and at the same time 
 with the respect which is due to those who hold a 
 contrary opinion, to indicate the line of thought which 
 has led us to this conclusion. 
 
 The incarnation of Christ is, we believe, designed 
 to be represented not as an act but as a process ; and 
 this fact, if fact it be, separates it essentially and 
 generically from all heathen incarnations whatsoever. 
 We are popularly in the habit of supposing that the 
 Son of God has become Son of man in the infant 
 dawn of Bethlehem ; in reality, this dawn of Beth- 
 lehem is but a stage towards incarnation, and if we 
 have read St. Paul aright, it is not the first stage. 
 That apostle distinctly indicates that before the Son 
 of God could begin to be filled with humanity, He 
 had to be divested of something which distanced Him 
 from humanity ; 1 he expresses this in no qualified 
 terms when he says, ' He emptied Himself.' Incar- 
 nation in the Pauline view begins with a species of 
 
 1 For the questions touching Christ's humiliation, see Professor 
 Brace's Cunningham Lecture on the 'Humiliation of Christ.' 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. 81 
 
 death. The Son of God, in His passage from heaven 
 to earth, experiences that process of impoverishment 
 which is supposed by believers in immortality to 
 precede the passage from earth to heaven. What 
 was that process of impoverishment ? Are we in a 
 position to trace it ? Shall we say with some of the 
 modern Germans, that He emptied His omnipotence 
 into a human power, His omniscience into a human 
 knowledge, His immensity into a human form, His 
 eternity into a human lifetime ? Perhaps we are 
 not qualified to say this ? We are not entitled to 
 go further than to affirm that He emptied Himself of 
 that which made union with humanity impossible ; 
 and we cannot assume that such a union was rendered 
 impossible by the possession of infinite power and 
 infinite knowledge. We shall not, therefore, seek to 
 penetrate beyond the simplicity of the Pauline state- 
 ment. That statement extends not beyond the asser- 
 tion that incarnation implied death as its forerunner ; 
 it makes that assertion, and it rests there. It tells 
 us that to become man, the Son of God had to cease 
 to be something else, but what that something is it 
 does not inquire ; it says that He emptied Himself of 
 His glory, but it does not define His glory. All that 
 we can gather from the remarkable passage in which 
 it occurs, is the impression of a great struggle towards 
 the possibility of incarnation. 1 We seem to be con- 
 fronted by a descending ladder of humiliations. At 
 
 1 Appendix, Note 9. 
 F 
 
82 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 its summit stands One in the form of God; at its 
 base stands One under the shadow of death in its 
 meanest and most revolting aspect. Between the 
 extremes there has to be interposed a new nature ; 
 the form of God must be eclipsed by the form of 
 man. The assumption of the new nature demands 
 the expulsion of all antagonisms in the old, and the 
 expulsion of such antagonisms is the emptying out of 
 His glory ; the elements of empire have to be replaced 
 by the elements of ministration, the form of God has 
 to become the servant's form. 
 
 When we pass from this supersensuous process to 
 the Christ of the actual world, we find the positive 
 side of that for which there had been a negative pre- 
 paration. The emptying has been completed, and 
 the replenishing has to begin ; the elements of the 
 old glory have been expelled, and the elements of the 
 new life have to be implanted. These elements are 
 implanted one by one. The goal of the human 
 Christ is not merely to be a man, but to be the uni- 
 versal man, — the potential head of humanity ; only 
 in the reaching of that goal can His incarnation be 
 accomplished. In preparation for this mission, He 
 must fill all the phases of humanity, each in turn 
 and each in perfection. He must be the perfect 
 child, that He may be the head of all childhood ; 
 the perfect youth, that He may be the head of 
 all youth ; the perfect man, that He may be the 
 head of all manhood. His humanity grows like all 
 
TJie Second Pre-Christian Problem. 83 
 
 humanity, but it stands alone in the fact that each 
 stage of its development is in itself completely 
 rounded. His childhood is not a supernatural child- 
 hood, — in other words, He is not a man at the same 
 moment that He is a child, — yet His tender years repre- 
 sent in full perfection those qualities whose partial 
 manifestation attract us to the childhood of ordinary 
 humanity. His youth is not a supernatural youth ; it 
 grows in wisdom and in knowledge, yet it represents 
 in full perfection the qualities whose 'partial mani- 
 festation makes the spectacle of youth beautiful in 
 the lives of common men. Into the history of that 
 growth itself we are scarcely permitted to penetrate ; 
 a veil rests over the early life of the human Jesus. So 
 far as we can see behind the veil, it would seem that 
 in the mental growth of the Son of man the God-con- 
 sciousness preceded the man-consciousness : or, to ex- 
 press it less in German and more in English, it would 
 seem that His thoughts toward God came earlier 
 into play than His thoughts toward man. On the one 
 occasion in which we are permitted to get a glimpse 
 of the maturing life, we find that life pervaded and 
 absorbed by the solemnity of its divine relationship. 
 The heavenly vision for a time hides the earthly one, 
 and there is a tone almost of surprise in the accents 
 in which the child in the temple questions the right 
 of any claim to compete with that of divine mediation : 
 • Wist ye not that I should be about my Father's 
 business ? ' At last, at the baptism on the banks of 
 
84 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 Jordan, we seem to have reached the culmination of 
 this earlier consciousness. In the opened heavens, 
 and the descending dove-like Spirit, and the voice out 
 of the cloud proclaiming the beloved Son in whom the 
 Father is well pleased, the heavenly vision which has 
 illumined His childhood and His youth reaches its 
 highest blaze of glory, and His human consciousness 
 of God attains its highest point of fulness. 
 
 And now, although there is no direct statement 
 of the fact, we are made aware, as we pursue the 
 narrative, that we have entered on a new phase of 
 it. Hitherto we have been in companionship almost 
 exclusively with the Son of God; we are now to 
 walk side by side with One who is becoming increas- 
 ingly the Son of man. As the narrative advances, 
 that humbler name takes increasing precedence of 
 the loftier one. We see the Christ pressing forward 
 to meet that human relationship which has hitherto 
 remained in abeyance. He abandons the contem- 
 plation of the temple, He abandons the mystic vision 
 on the banks of Jordan, He abandons the solitary 
 struggle in the wilderness for a life which is essen- 
 tially human. He plunges into the great ocean of 
 humanity, and wrestles with its waves. His earthly 
 history becomes a life of almost incessant action : He 
 heals the sick, He cleanses the leper, He seeks and 
 saves the lost. The heart of humanity is touched by 
 a presence so intensely yet so divinely human. He 
 gathers around Him a little band of followers, humble 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. 85 
 
 and unlearned, but strong in the ardour of their devo- 
 tion. The condition which He demands of them is 
 faith ; He asks before all things, and as the requisite 
 to all things, an implicit trust in His own person. 
 Their faith deepens as the journey advances. The 
 Master and His disciples are ever drawing nearer 
 one another, and each is bringing to the other a dif- 
 ferent gift: He is coming to them with a crown, 
 they are coming to Him with a cross; when the 
 union is complete, the cross and the crown will meet 
 together. 
 
 That union is complete at the last supper ; there 
 the Son of God becomes, in the highest sense, the Son 
 of man, enters on the final stage of His historical 
 union with humanity. At this hour He has ceased 
 to view Himself as an isolated individual ; He has 
 become the head of an organism, — an organism which 
 historically comprehends as yet only His little band 
 of primitive members, but which is destined to expand 
 into vast dimensions. 1 He feels Himself to be the 
 potential head of all humanity ; that, so far as He is 
 concerned, He has strength sufficient to impart to all ; 
 that if the power of His life be limited, it is limited 
 by man. He expresses this sense of vital union by 
 a striking figure : He distributes the elements of bread 
 and wine as the symbols of His broken body and His 
 outpoured blood. He exhibits His sense of organic 
 
 1 The rudiments of a completed body are already hidden in the 
 germ. Comp. Col. ii. 10. 
 
8 6 Natural Elements of Revealed, Theology. 
 
 nearness by a not less striking ceremony : He washes 
 with His own hands the feet of His disciples, — a type 
 of the new power which the head was to impart to 
 the members, and then He breaks into the utterance 
 of triumph : c Now is the Son of man glorified, and 
 God is glorified in Him.' He is conscious of a new 
 phase in His mission, — a phase which has brought 
 the divine organically nearer to the human, which 
 has bridged the physical inequality, which has made 
 the two one. His last supper is the counterpart of 
 His baptism ; on the banks of Jordan He had seen in 
 its full strength His alliance with the divine; at the 
 last supper He beholds in its full strength His alli- 
 ance with the human. Heaven and earth have now 
 met together, the supernatural has united itself to 
 the natural, and the divine headship has become the 
 human glory. In that remarkable discourse which 
 follows the solemn communion, the thought of that 
 communion is reflected from beginning to end. Never 
 for a moment does the Son of man lose sight of 
 the perfected relationship between the head and the 
 members ; it underlies every utterance of His closing 
 charge. It is assumed throughout that all which is 
 His, is henceforth the property of His disciples, that 
 the partnership is too close between them to admit 
 of separate possessions. He bequeaths to them His 
 own peace, He communicates to them His own joy, 
 He declares that where He is there they must be also. 
 He tells them that their relation to Him is henceforth 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. 87 
 
 that of the branches to the vine, that they have no 
 life apart from Him, that He has no life unshared by 
 them ; He no longer asks them to come to Him, He 
 entreats them to abide in Him. Here is the true 
 beginning of the New Testament kingdom of God. 
 There has begun for the world a new theocracy, — a 
 theocracy in which God is more than ever before 
 revealed as the Sovereign of humanity, but it is a 
 sovereignty which is purchased by the most intimate 
 union with humanity, a union which makes it possible 
 that God should suffer when man suffers. This 
 striking combination of what the world would call 
 opposites, rises into its full grandeur before the judg- 
 ment-seat of Pilate. Here, in explicit terms, the 
 Son of man claims the title of king, and claims it at 
 the very hour when, to the world's eye, He seems 
 most unkingly. Yet He claims it not in spite of His 
 humiliation, but by reason of His humiliation. So 
 far from admitting that His kinghood is tarnished or 
 impugned by His aspect of intense humanity, He 
 declares that all along this union with humanity was 
 contemplated as the road to His theocratic power : 
 1 To this end was I born, and for this cause came I 
 into the world, that I should bear witness unto the 
 truth.' His kinghood, He says, lies in His service of 
 truth, in His power to be a martyr to truth. The 
 theocracy has revived by stooping. The empire of 
 God over man, which had been forgotten in the divine 
 distance, becomes manifest in the divine nearness, and 
 
88 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 in bearing the body of humanity He bears the sceptre 
 of the soul. 
 
 It will be seen that this view of the incarnation 
 brings this doctrine to the very borders of that other 
 truth which forms the centre of the Christian system, 
 — the doctrine of atonement. It seems to us, indeed, 
 that the different works which compose the mission 
 of the Son of man cannot be separated from each 
 other by a spatial measurement, — in other words, can- 
 not be distinguished by being respectively referred to 
 separate acts of Jesus. It will not, for example, do 
 to say that one historical incident exhibits Him as a 
 revelation, another as an incarnation, and a third as 
 an atonement. We believe it will be found that 
 every historical act of the Son of man illustrates at 
 one and the same time every part of His mission. 
 We speak of Him as an example, as a revealer, and 
 as an atoner, yet He is the three in one. There is 
 an atonement in His revelation, there is a revelation 
 in His atonement, there is an example in both. There 
 is, indeed, a very close connection between the com- 
 pleted doctrine of incarnation and the opening doctrine 
 of the atonement. The completed incarnation is in 
 our view Christ's headship over His Church. This 
 truth is known in theology by the name of the 
 1 Mystical Union.' It is called mystical, because it 
 is a union impalpable to sense. No man has ever 
 seen that mysterious process by which the Son of 
 man has become the head of a human organism. 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. 89 
 
 Myriads have felt, as an accomplished fact, their 
 membership in the divine body, but no one has pro- 
 fessed to understand by what method it has been 
 accomplished. Yet, be it observed, that if this 
 doctrine is mystical in itself, it takes away the mys- 
 ticism from everything else ; the moment we have 
 accepted this mystery, we have solved all others. If 
 we shall consent to receive this doctrine as the state- 
 ment of an accomplished fact, we shall find in it the 
 key to every subsequent enigma in the scheme of 
 Christian theology ; if we do not consent so to receive 
 it, we shall be forced to regard the entire scheme of 
 Christian theology as outside the range of human 
 consciousness, and therefore unnatural. The doctrine 
 of atonement especially will be found to receive great 
 part of its solution in the recognition of the mystical 
 union. No theologian would be justified in attempt- 
 ing a scientific exposition of the reconciling work of 
 Christ, who did not assume as the basis of that work, 
 the fact of the mystical union. If he refused to 
 accept this as a basis, he may indeed believe in the 
 efficacy of an atonement, but he will believe in its 
 efficacy not on principles of science, but on principles 
 of unquestioning faith. Bat although it is impossible 
 to treat scientifically the doctrine of atonement with- 
 out considering this completed form of the doctrine 
 of incarnation, it cannot be said that the converse is 
 true ; it is quite possible to treat the incarnate head- 
 ship of Christ without any reference to the fact of 
 
9 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 atonement. We have hitherto considered this divine 
 headship altogether in its providential aspect. We 
 have said that in this final form of the Christian 
 incarnation, whatever exists in the members is appro- 
 priated by the head, but we have not as yet assumed 
 that there is any sin in the members. We have 
 assumed that there is suffering, that there is fmitude, 
 that there is need of a providential and a theocratic 
 government, and we have found that these conditions 
 may be met in a headship which can bear the human 
 suffering, and communicate in exchange the divine 
 power. Yet we have no reason to say that all this 
 might not have been without any sin on the part of 
 the members. Man is finite as well as sinful ; might 
 not his fmitude have needed the divine support 
 even had his will remained pure ? There are not want- 
 ing in the writings of St. Paul certain indications of 
 the belief that the incarnation of the Son of man 
 was required not merely to redeem, but to complete 
 creation. He seems to imply that, apart altogether 
 from the question of sin, the divine ideal of humanity 
 was only wrought out in Christ ; the first Adam was 
 merely a living soul, the second was a quickening 
 spirit. If it be so, the great doctrine of the Christian 
 incarnation has a wider place in human history than 
 to be the supply of a historical emergency ; it becomes 
 the goal of human history itself, the ground on which 
 it was said, ' Let us make man.' It takes its rank 
 as the true seventh morning of creation, the Sabbath 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. 91 
 
 in which the divine thought rests in the joy of its 
 completed ideal, and pronounces it very good. It is 
 the realization of that of which the first Adam and 
 the primeval paradise are but the prophecy, — the 
 union of the image of man with the eternal life of 
 God. 
 
 All this, however, has been rendered an idle specu- 
 lation by the course of this world's history ; it is 
 bootless to inquire what might have been when we 
 see what actually is. Creation has not been suffered 
 to pursue its triumphant march. There is an evil in 
 the members of the human body deeper than physical 
 suffering, and more positive than individual fmitude. 
 It matters not how we attempt to explain it ; w 7 e are 
 compelled on every theory to acknowledge its baleful 
 presence. We may call it an effect, we may speak 
 of it as a disease, we may define it as the violation of 
 a divine law; all definitions and explanations must 
 alike presuppose its existence as a disorder in the 
 moral nature of the soul. Its origin is a mystery, its 
 essence is a mystery, the very laws of its working are 
 in great measure a mystery ; the one fact on which 
 nature and revelation agree is the fact that, however 
 it came and whatever it be, it exists as a portentous 
 reality, and a source of war in the universe. No 
 moral religion can ignore the fact of sin ; Christianity, 
 the most moral of all religions, can least consent to 
 ignore it. It is impossible that a faith which is 
 grounded specially on the ethical nature of man, 
 
92 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology, 
 
 should be content to exclude from its theocracy the 
 element which of all others is the greatest barrier to 
 man's ethical nature. Christianity demands that the 
 providence of God, or, which is the same thing, the 
 headship of God over humanity, shall find a place in 
 its great power for the repression and destruction of 
 this moral foe. It is because the Christian conscious- 
 ness makes this demand that the Christian system 
 has not stopped short with the doctrine of an incarna- 
 tion. It has recognised in the human soul a sense of 
 moral responsibility which lifts it outside the category 
 of a mere subject, and demands for it a higher mode 
 of relationship than that which subsists between the 
 sovereign and his slave ; he who is possessed of a 
 moral nature must be ruled by a moral power. "We 
 are now, therefore, naturally brought to consider that 
 doctrine of atonement which, as a matter of fact, is 
 the goal of the mystical union. Let it be understood 
 that we do not propose in these lectures to view 
 either this or any other doctrine in itself. Every 
 Christian truth has two sides ; it has one side point- 
 ing to God, and another side pointing to man. The 
 man who, on the divine side, shall solve the problems 
 of trinity, incarnation, and atonement, shall have 
 reached the theory of this universe. Ours is a 
 humbler aim. We do not attempt to explain the 
 absolute science of religion ; we seek to analyse into 
 its natural elements the religion which claims to be 
 absolute. We do not ask why, in the nature of God, 
 
The Second Pre-Christian Problem. 93 
 
 these things were bound to be ; we ask how their 
 being is adapted to the religious nature of man. Our 
 method proceeds rather on the Kantian than on the 
 Hegelian line ; we do not deny that there must be a 
 rhythm in the universe, nor even that it may be pos- 
 sible to detect its movement, but we here confine our- 
 selves exclusively to the immediate objects of human 
 consciousness. We seek at present only for such a 
 science of religion as it is possible to construct on the 
 historical needs of humanity, on the wants of the 
 human soul as they are revealed in human history. 
 We have seen that Christianity has met such needs 
 in its doctrine of a triune God, we have seen that it 
 has supplied such wants in its promulgation of an 
 incarnate headship ; we have yet to see what solution 
 it has to offer of the great problem of moral unrest. 
 
L E C T U E E IV. 
 
 THE THIRD PRE-CHRISTIAN PROBLEM. 
 
 TTTE have now arrived at the third of those great 
 "* questions which exercised the pre-Christian 
 mind, Is the glory of God consistent with the exist- 
 ence of moral evil ? — a question which brings us into 
 direct contact with the undisputed mystery of sin. 
 It cannot be uninteresting to know what the ancient 
 world thought on this subject. Sin is one of those 
 elements with which natural theology and revealed 
 theology are alike called to deal ; and before revealed 
 theology can enter upon this field, it demands that 
 the natural consciousness shall have felt the perplexity 
 of the problem. Christianity only professes to offer 
 rest on this question when the natural mind has been 
 awakened into an individual unrest, and therefore 
 here, more than anywhere else, the light of revelation 
 makes its appeal to a preliminary light of nature. 
 Accordingly it becomes important to inquire, What is 
 the testimony of this light of nature ? what are those 
 historical needs which require to exist in the soul ere 
 the fulness of that time can arrive when Christianity 
 shall encounter the problem of moral evil ? 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 95 
 
 Xow it seems to us that there have been four 
 phases in the pre-Christian consciousness of sin, the 
 highest being the union of the other three. They are 
 represented by the four forms of religion, — Buddhism, 
 Platonism, Parsism, and Judaism. Looking at these 
 rather in their logical than in their chronological 
 sequence, we begin with the creed of Buddhism. 1 
 The central truth in the doctrine of Buddha is the 
 recognition of the fact that there is a disorder in the 
 moral universe. So impressed is the Buddhist with 
 this fact, that it constitutes the foundation of his 
 whole system, and determines the character of his 
 whole teaching. He is convinced that in the nature 
 of things there is something radically wrong. If we 
 ask him to point to its source, his answer shows how 
 radical he believes the evil to be. He declares the 
 source of evil to be, not anything in existence, but 
 existence itself. The moral disorder of the universe 
 is the fact that it is no universe, but a series of 
 individual parts, each living for itself, each striving 
 with the other. Individual life is selfishness. The 
 moment a man has said, / think, I feel, / desire, that 
 instant he has separated himself from the great 
 bosom of humanity on which his life once lay ; he 
 has become an independent streamlet, whose course is 
 solitary, whose waters are bitterness. The birth of 
 every life breaks anew the infinite calm. It destroys 
 the equal brotherhood of death, it ushers the world 
 
 1 Appendix, Note 10. 
 
9 6 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 into a war of elements whose motive is self-love, and 
 whose goal is mutual extermination. Existence is 
 individualism, individualism is self-consciousness, self- 
 consciousness is selfishness, selfishness is desire, desire 
 is want, want is misery : these are the links of the 
 brazen chain which life weaves for her victims. 1 
 
 Amid all the extravagance of this wild pessimism, 
 Buddhism has flashed out one great truth — the identi- 
 fication of selfishness with moral misery ; the entire 
 ethical character of its philosophy is based upon this 
 recognition. But let us advance a step further. The 
 Buddhist cannot admit that this moral disorder is 
 purely a matter of thought. He holds distinctly that 
 whatever it was in its origin, it has become in its 
 development an actual essence, if not a physical sub- 
 stance. It would never have occurred to the Buddhist 
 to suppose for an instant that the moral disorder of 
 the human mind could be removed by any excess of 
 remorseful feeling, or by any exhibition of personal 
 penitence. It was the opinion of the Buddhist that 
 the moral disorder had long since become impersonal, 
 and could only be removed by the death of the 
 personality. He believed that the life of every man 
 left behind him an aggregate result of his moral 
 actions, — in other words, of his sinful actions. These 
 aggregate results of individual lives had by this time 
 accumulated into one great essence ; the Buddhist 
 
 1 This seems the natural chain, though the Buddhist philosophy- 
 adopts another. 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 97 
 
 called it Karma. It was to him no generalization, no 
 imagination, no mere expression of poetry ; it was an 
 actual substance, strictly speaking the only real sub- 
 stance in the universe. Karma was the only thing 
 in the individual which survived the individual ; all 
 else returned into its native nothingness ; this was too 
 strong to be conquered immediately even by death. 
 Karma, the accumulated result of sin, was that which 
 perpetuated a man, which carried his evil nature 
 into other souls, which denied him the joy of getting 
 back to that bosom of humanity where individual 
 life ceased for ever. There was no transmigration of 
 souls in Buddhism ; its second births were really new 
 births. When a man died, all that remained of him 
 was the Karma, — the accumulated fire which his own 
 passions had helped to kindle, — and in contact with 
 that lurid flame the torch of a new life was lighted. 
 The Buddhist would have said with Shakespeare, but 
 would have said without a metaphor, ' The evil that 
 men do, lives after them.' 
 
 Let us here pause for a moment to note a strange 
 feature in comparative theology. The Buddhist makes 
 the punishment of sin to be life ; the Jew holds it to 
 be death. The Buddhist regards sin as itself the 
 immortal principle, the thing which keeps the world 
 alive ; the Jew looks upon it as the hindrance to the 
 immortal principle, the element which prevents the 
 soul from entering into eternal life. It is a strange 
 contrast in the expression of human thought, yet we 
 
98 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 think the contrast lies chiefly in the expression. The 
 Buddhist and the Jew are morally agreed, — they are at 
 one in making the consequence of sin the most fear- 
 ful of all consequences ; they differ only as to what 
 consequence is the most fearful. To the Jew, the 
 most miserable thought in the world is the thought 
 of death ; with sin, therefore, he links the thought of 
 death. To the Buddhist, the most miserable idea in 
 the world is the idea of life ; with sin, therefore, he 
 links the idea of life. Life is to the Buddhist what 
 death is to the Jew, — the emblem of nothingness, 
 vanity, corruption. Death is to him the reality of 
 things, their normal state, their natural condition ; 
 life breaks the normal state, and ushers the world 
 into an existence which is an illusion, a dream, a 
 phantom of the night. The Buddhist, therefore, is 
 ideally the ally of the Jew, though in form of expres- 
 sion he is his opponent. He holds the moral disorder 
 of the universe to be the perpetuation of nothingness, 
 only he calls that nothingness by the name of life. 
 The sole question between them on this subject is, 
 whether life or death shall be esteemed the greater 
 evil, and it is not difficult to see that even the 
 pre-Christian world must here come round to the 
 standpoint of the Jew. Pessimism reacts against 
 itself, despair by its very nature cannot last for 
 ever, and we may shortly expect to find the ideal 
 of life enthroned where the ideal of death now 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 99 
 
 That consummation is readied in Platonism. 1 
 Platonism differs from Buddhism in its ideal of the 
 absolutely good. To Buddhism the absolutely good 
 thing is non-existence ; to Platonism it is fulness of 
 existence. The change in this ideal of happiness 
 produces a change in the relation between sin and 
 life. Buddhism had made sin the perpetuation of 
 life ; as long as the Karma endured, an element of 
 the old nature remained immortal ; the destruction of 
 sin alone could destroy the immortal principle. But 
 with Platonism the immortal principle was of all 
 things that most loved and reverenced, and the prin- 
 ciple of decay and death was of all things that most 
 hated and shunned. Hence, in the system of the 
 Platonist, the conception of moral evil was wedded to 
 the conception of materialism, because in the system 
 of the Platonist materialism was the symbol of death. 
 Matter to the Platonic philosopher was almost the 
 synonym for nothingness. It was a negative element, 
 a phantom, a species of illusion which had yet all the 
 power of a reality, which could mar the life of the 
 soul, which could oppose a barrier even to the infinite 
 soul. Wherever there was fulness of life there was 
 fulness of virtue ; wherever there was a diminution 
 of life there was the presence of moral evil. Wher- 
 ever matter obtained an empire, it brought a diminu- 
 tion of life, and brought therefore at the same time a 
 diminution of virtue. Matter had obtained an empire 
 1 Appendix, Note 11. 
 
100 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 over the soul of man, and that empire was the moral 
 fall of the soul. By its incorporation in the bodily 
 form, it lost sight of ' the imperial palace whence it 
 came,' and became the slave of a foreign master. 
 The foreign element which that incorporation thrust 
 upon it was corruption. To the Platonist the element 
 of physical corruption or death was so closely allied 
 with the element of moral corruption or sin, that it 
 is hard to say which he considered the effect and 
 which the cause ; we can say, however, with certainty, 
 that in his system sin was death ; and in making this 
 statement we have reached the second phase in the 
 pre-Christian consciousness of moral evil. Buddhism 
 had clearly discerned that there was a disorder in the 
 moral universe ; Platonism discerned that it was a 
 deadly disorder. In thus associating sin with death, 
 the Platonist was at one with the Jew ; nor would he 
 have found any contradiction in the alleged discre- 
 pancy between Genesis and geology. If he had been 
 told by the geologist that death existed in the world 
 previous to the historical date of the fall, his answer 
 would have been something like this : ' Undoubtedlv 
 it did ; death existed wherever matter existed ; it was 
 involved in the animal nature. Sin itself is simply 
 the nature of an animal, and therefore the death- 
 nature. It is no sin in the animal to possess that 
 nature ; corruption is the law of its being, and there- 
 fore we can impute to it no moral evil. But let a 
 new and higher life be superinduced upon the animal 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 101 
 
 life, let the spirit of humanity be breathed over the 
 beast of the field, and immediately the nature of the 
 animal will become antagonistic to the nature of the 
 man. That which was not sin in the beast of the 
 held, shall become sin in the life which is born from 
 above. When man gave way to his passions, he gave 
 way to the animal within him ; that which in itself 
 was not evil, became evil in him, and for this very 
 reason, that he received a nature which was not his 
 own. He became heir to a corruption which was not 
 meant for him. Death was all along the property of 
 the material universe ; man was not naturally material, 
 and therefore should have passed it by. But when his 
 spirit stooped to the forms of matter, he received their 
 portion, and that portion was death. He reaped the 
 corruption which he had sown ; he became heir to that 
 possession which was the inheritance of the animal life.' 
 That is the answer Plato would have given to 
 the alleged discrepancy between Genesis and geology 
 with regard to the connection of sin and death. It 
 will be seen that to Plato, as to Buddha, sin was 
 almost a physical existence ; it was contemplated 
 very much as an actual substance. Accordingly, to 
 Plato as to Buddha, sin was something which could 
 only be overcome by the crucifixion of the physical. 
 It never would have occurred to him that a man 
 could conquer sin by simply repenting of it : sin had 
 its ground in the physical nature ; it was a principle 
 of death, and therefore it must be eradicated by a 
 
102 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 process of death. If the individual would be puri- 
 fied, he must have his animal nature crucified ; must 
 cut off the right hand and pluck out the right eye in 
 which corruption dwelt, in order that he might enter 
 into life without the elements of death. His sin was 
 his selfishness, his selfishness was his animality, his 
 animality was his absence of immortality ; before he 
 could become immortal, it was imperative that his 
 self-life should die. In all this there was much in 
 which Platonism resembled Judaism, and perhaps 
 still more in which it anticipated Christianity. 
 There was, however, one thing still wanting to 
 complete those elements which compose the Christian 
 consciousness of sin. It had been seen that there 
 was a disorder in the moral universe, and it had been 
 seen that this disorder involved the fact of death, 
 but it had not yet been maintained that death was 
 to man the penalty of sin. It had been recognised 
 that man had become heir to a possession which 
 placed him at a physical distance from Gocl, but in 
 the systems we have hitherto considered we have 
 heard nothing of a moral distance from God. Yet 
 there was even now existing in the world a religious 
 system whose special characteristic was the very 
 element desiderated, — a system expressly based on the 
 perception of a moral separation between the human 
 ana the divine, and expressly directed towards the 
 solution of the problem how the impure soul of man 
 was to approach the burning purity of God. 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 103 
 
 That religious system was Parsism. 1 As we have 
 already said, Parsism probably began with the recog- 
 nition of the divine unity, but it was unable to 
 retain that belief. Its sense of the moral discre- 
 pancies which seem to prevail in the universe over- 
 mastered its sense of the unity of God. It was 
 unable to see how the government of a good God 
 could suffer the existence of so much that was not 
 good, and it came to the conclusion that there must 
 be two gods. This world could not be ruled by one 
 absolute principle of moral rectitude ; there must 
 clearly be a counteracting principle of evil sharing 
 the throne of the universe. There was a kingdom of 
 light, but there was a kingdom of darkness too, and 
 the darkness was at war with the light. God was 
 not sovereign of the world ; He was only sovereign 
 of the bright half of the world. But there was also 
 a dark half, and over that hemisphere there reigned 
 a power of darkness. The empire of the universe 
 was divided ; there was war between heaven and 
 earth. The power of darkness had obtained an 
 entrance into the heart of man, and the power of 
 light was struggling to regain the supremacy. The 
 Parsee saw that struggle embodied in the symbols 
 of visible nature. Nowhere is this symbolism so 
 strongly marked as in the Parsism of Egypt. Osiris 
 or the Sun-god is there the special object of worship ; 
 under the symbolism of visible light he represents 
 
 1 Appendix, Note 12. 
 
104 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 the light of absolute purity. But he has to struggle 
 with the principle of night, and at one time it seems 
 as if the night would prevail. In the setting of the 
 sun the Egyptian has symbolized the temporary ex- 
 tinction of purity : Osiris is slain by his rival, and 
 buried beneath the waves, while Isis, or the earth, 
 represents his disconsolate and widowed bride weep- 
 ing in the darkness. At last the kingdom of light 
 revives in the form of Horus, the son of Osiris, who 
 under the symbol of the new morning sun retrieves 
 the victory of purity, and drives back the power of 
 darkness within the limits of his legitimate dominion. 
 What we have to notice in all this is the new 
 element added to the conception of sin. It is no 
 longer a mere disorder, it is no longer simply a 
 principle of limitation, it is no longer even a mere 
 source of death ; it is an element of enmity between 
 the soul and God. Buddhism had emphasized it as a 
 disorder, Platonism had emphasized it as a source of 
 death ; it has here become something more, — a moral 
 separation between the human and the divine. It 
 dwells in a region apart from God, as wide apart as 
 light is from darkness. It cannot live side by side 
 with the light. Wherever the light enters, it must 
 die ; wherever it enters, the light must die. The two 
 existences are incompatible ; where the one is, the 
 other cannot be. Those souls which have more light 
 than darkness shall pass into a kingdom of light ; 
 those souls which have more darkness than light 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 105 
 
 shall pass into a kingdom of darkness ; and between 
 these kingdoms there is a great gulf fixed. Parsism 
 is the birth of conscience in the history of the re- 
 ligious world. Here for the first time sin becomes 
 a source of moral pain, man feels in sin his separa- 
 tion from the fountain of eternal light. It is no 
 more to him the simple loss of immortality ; it is the 
 loss of that which alone makes immortality worth 
 possessing, — the vision and fruition of God. 
 
 Let us see now how far we have advanced under 
 the light of unaided nature. We have found, with 
 Buddhism, that there is a disorder in the moral uni- 
 verse ; we have found, with Platonism, that it is a 
 deadly disorder ; and we have found, with Parsism, 
 tli at it is a disorder involving enmity with God. We 
 are now to see all these exhibited in one system. 
 Hitherto we have beheld them separately ; they are 
 presently to appear as the property of a single religion. 
 That religion is Judaism. Judaism combines in one 
 faith the elements found distinctively in Buddhism, 
 Platonism, and Parsism. It says with the first that 
 sin is disorder, it says with the second that sin is 
 death, it says with the third that sin is enmity ; only 
 it places the third element between the first two. It 
 declares sin to be death because it is divine enmity. 
 Death with Judaism is the penalty of sin. ' In the 
 day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.' The 
 words of the primeval narrative do not indeed imply 
 that there was no death before the fall ; rather the 
 
106 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 contrary. 'Thou shalt surely die,' would have had 
 no meaning as a threat unless death had already 
 existed as a phenomenon. The idea is rather this : 
 If you choose the animal life, you will be punished 
 by receiving the animal portion. You see how al- 
 ready death reigns over the beast of the field ; if you 
 become like the beast of the field, it shall reign over 
 you. If you prefer passion to principle, sense to 
 reason, matter to spirit, self to God, you are sinking 
 by your own will into the nature of an animal, and 
 your reward shall assuredly be the inheritance of 
 that last stage of corruption which awaits all sensuous 
 things. The death with which man is threatened in 
 the Book of Genesis is not of necessity an arbitrary 
 punishment ; nevertheless to the mind of the Jew its 
 horror consists in the fact that it is a punishment. 
 It is to him not the less penal because it grows 
 naturally out of its antecedent sin, and because it is 
 penal it is to him terrible. Perhaps in no religious 
 system is death regarded with such horror as in 
 Judaism. It is impossible to read the Old Testament 
 without being impressed with the sharp antagonism 
 which to the mind of the Jew subsists between life 
 and death. In the systems of heathendom it fre- 
 quently seems as if the natural antagonism had been 
 forgotten. The Stoic succeeded in resigning himself 
 to the thought of death ; the Buddhist succeeded in 
 making death an object of desire. But with the Jew 
 there is no attempt at reconciliation. He recognises 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 107 
 
 in death the veritable king of terrors, and he makes 
 no effort to conceal the terror in which he holds him. 
 The psalms are full of the repulsion and loathing 
 with which he shrinks from this common fate of 
 humanity. The prayer in which Hezekiah begs for 
 life is almost abject in its character, and is in 
 strictest harmony with the spirit of the Jewish 
 nation. And yet we should do that nation a great 
 injustice were we to suppose that in its recoil from 
 death it was chiefly or even mainly influenced by the 
 motive of physical fear. Cowardice was at no time 
 a characteristic of the Jewish mind ; wherever it felt 
 the presence of the theocracy, it was ready to do all 
 and to dare all. But then in the hour of death it 
 missed the presence of the theocracy ; l it was a 
 moral and not a physical fear which made death 
 terrible to the Jew. He saw in it the sign of God's 
 anger, the frown gathering on the Father's brow, the 
 penalty received as the reward of his transgression. 
 The weakness which he felt in death was not the 
 feebleness of dissolving nature, — it was the weakness 
 which sprang from God-desertion. In bearing the 
 death-penalty he felt himself to be alone ; the spirit 
 of the theocracy had departed from him, and had left 
 him to reap the harvest which his life had sown, and 
 he was forced to cry out in his agony, ' Why art 
 Thou so far from helping me % ' We are putting no 
 
 1 Physical death was thus only the shadow of spiritual death, — 
 separation from God. 
 
108 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 strained meaning upon the Jewish consciousness of 
 death. We have only to appeal for confirmation to 
 the latest and the most indisputable testimony of 
 that national consciousness. Paul says in so many 
 words that the sting of death was sin. In that 
 saying he explains his subsequent utterance, where 
 lie declares that Christ has abolished death. Paul 
 knew well that in any physical sense Christ had not 
 abolished death ; he himself says expressly that 
 death is the last enemy which shall be conquered. 
 But to Paul the sting of death was not its physical 
 power, — it was its moral power, its power to afflict 
 the soul with a sense of separation from God ; take 
 away that, and Paul felt that every other horror had 
 from death been taken away. It was because he 
 saw in Christ a removal of the sin-penalty that he 
 could already say of death, ' grave, where is thy 
 victory ? ' On such a subject as this the testimony 
 of Paul is of pre-eminent weight. He was a Hebrew 
 of the Hebrews, and was originally permeated by the 
 spirit of Judaism. When, therefore, he says that the 
 sting of death was sin, he expresses the consciousness 
 of the Jewish nation. His words cast back a light 
 upon that nation's history. They show how a people 
 so brave, so unflinching, so resolute, could yet in 
 perfect consistency with their character shrink in 
 dismay from the prospect of death, for they reveal 
 that to this people the prospect of death was nothing 
 less than a vision of the averted face of God. 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 109 
 
 The light of nature had thus arrived at one 
 definite conception of moral evil. It had realized 
 the thought of sin as a state of divine enmity 
 involving separation from God, and bringing as its 
 consequence that penalty of death which best sym- 
 bolizes the soul's absence from the source of life. 
 Here, then, was a great gulf fixed between the human 
 and the divine; the question which remained was, 
 How was it to be bridged over ? Who should abide 
 in God's tabernacle ? who should dwell in His holy 
 hill ? Man felt his distance to be infinite ; but just 
 because he was capable of feeling that distance, he 
 was incapable of being satisfied with it. He sought 
 to stretch his hands across the chasm, and lie failed 
 to reach the goal. He cried out for some other 
 power which could reach further than his own. He 
 cast about to find some means of restoring the broken 
 communication between earth and heaven. There 
 occurred to his mind two possible methods by which 
 such a restoration might be effected. He tried them 
 both contemporaneously, but we shall look at them 
 each in turn ; the one was mediation, the other 
 sacrifice. 
 
 Mediation, viewed from the light of nature, is the 
 attempt to find an intermediate intelligence who shall 
 break the distance between God and man, and serve 
 as a channel through which the human may com- 
 municate with the divine. Wherever the ancient 
 world experienced the sense of distance between 
 
110 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 itself and God, whether that distance lay in an intel- 
 lectual or in a moral disability, it invariably strove 
 to bridge it by the interposition of another nature 
 between the nature of the highest and its own. In 
 every form of faith where we detect the presence of 
 dualism, — and there are few forms of ancient faith 
 where such a presence may not be detected, — we 
 always see the recognition of some third or uniting 
 principle. From the Schruti of ancient Parsism to 
 the Logos l of the Alexandrian Philo, we witness a 
 continuous stream of such efforts after mediation. 
 Judaism itself did not escape the tendency ; its sense 
 of sin was so strong, that it could not do otherwise 
 than experience the wideness of that moral gulf 
 which separated the soul from God, and under the 
 pressure of such an experience it was inevitable that 
 it should endeavour to find the source of divine 
 communion. To the popular mind of Judaism, the 
 angels of the Old Testament were invested with a 
 mediating influence which the Old Testament itself 
 did not allow them ; to the philosophic mind of 
 Judaism, the mediating influence attributed to the 
 angels was transferred to a single intelligence, which 
 was sometimes called the Word, and sometimes the 
 Wisdom of God. But neither the efforts of heathen- 
 dom nor the efforts of Judaism proved successful in 
 finding a road by which the soul could pass to God. 
 No system either of heathen or of Jewish mediation 
 
 J Appendix, Note 13. 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 1 1 1 
 
 ever obtained an enduring footing in the world, which 
 is itself a convincing proof that no system of heathen 
 or Jewish mediation ever achieved its object of 
 restoring divine communion to the soul of man. If 
 we ask, Whence this failure ? we shall not need to 
 wait long for an answer. The weak point in all 
 these efforts at mediation was this, they all sought 
 an intermediate intelligence. Now a moment's reflec- 
 tion will make it clear that no intermediate intelli- 
 gence can ever be a mediator between God and man. 
 The intelligence which would mediate between God 
 and man must partake the nature of both. An 
 intermediate intelligence would be one which was 
 neither human nor divine ; the intelligence desiderated 
 is one which shall be both human and divine. A 
 being who is neither human nor divine — an archangel 
 or seraph, for instance — is himself as much in need of 
 a mediator as is the human soul for which lie pro- 
 fesses to mediate ; his nature is different from that 
 of God, his nature is equally different from that of 
 man. What is wanted is a being whose nature shall 
 join the extremes, who shall unite in his own person 
 those two elements of the human and the divine 
 which apart from his person exist in intellectual 
 isolation and in moral opposition. Without such an 
 event as this, mediation is an impossibility, which is 
 only in other words to say that without Christianity 
 mediation is an impossibility. We may deny that 
 the Christian mediation has ever been accomplished, 
 
112 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 but we are forced to admit that if this has never 
 been accomplished, no other can. In this region it 
 is emphatically true that ' other foundation can no 
 man lay.' If the medium of union between God and 
 man contain not within itself the germs at once of the 
 divine and of the human, it will never touch the 
 objects which it proposes to bind into unity ; it will 
 leave the distance between them as wide and as 
 impassable as ever. 
 
 The second effort of the ancient world to restore 
 the communication between the soul and God is 
 sacrifice. Sacrifice is a more important attempt than 
 mediation. Mediation is only a general characteristic 
 of heathen religions ; sacrifice seems inseparable from 
 the very idea of heathen religion. Mediation has 
 often its origin in a purely intellectual need ; sacrifice 
 is essentially the fruit of a moral want in the soul. 
 It is the effort of man's moral nature to build a tower 
 which shall reach unto heaven, in order that its 
 separation from God may on one side at least be 
 covered. The idea of sacrifice unites the Gentile 
 with the Jew ; it is an element as universal as the 
 religious consciousness itself. We shall endeavour, in 
 our review of this element, to consider it simply in 
 those aspects in which it does unite the Gentile with 
 the Jew. We shall avoid all questions peculiar to 
 Jewish sacrifices, shall take no note of typology, shall 
 attempt no discussion of the Messianic import which 
 is supposed to underlie the Mosaic symbolism. Our 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 113 
 
 object in these lectures is to find the relation between 
 the natural and the revealed, and we are not at 
 liberty to take for granted that Judaism belongs 
 purely to the natural. It is in Judaism undoubtedly 
 that sacrifice assumes its most prominent and its 
 most developed aspect, but we must consider the 
 phenomenon in those points in which it is common to 
 Judaism with other religions. Looked at from this 
 cosmopolitan standpoint, it will be found that the 
 idea of sacrifice has expressed itself in three different 
 manifestations, which may be respectively indicated 
 by the terms thanksgiving, propitiation, and expiation. 
 In the absence of any authentic source of informa- 
 tion as to the historical evolution of the idea of 
 sacrifice, we are thrown very much back, in our 
 efforts to trace it, upon the natural intuitions of the 
 human mind. Under these circumstances it would 
 be folly to dogmatize ; we can only view the matter 
 from the side of probabilities. Considered, however, 
 from this side, we should say that the idea of sacrifice 
 would be developed in the human mind in the order 
 which we have here indicated ; and we shall proceed 
 as briefly as possible to enumerate the steps by which, 
 in our view, that order was evolved. Man's earliest 
 consciousness was, as we have seen, the sense of 
 dependence. His first perception of himself w T as the 
 perception of his own nothingness. He looked up to 
 these mighty forces of nature, which to him were the 
 highest symbols of the divine, and he felt how small, 
 
 H 
 
114 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 how insignificant, how mean in comparison was the 
 tiny force of his own personal life. What was this 
 amid the gigantic movements of the material universe ? 
 it was hut a still small voice, lost in the thunder, the 
 earthquake, and the fire. To man thus meditating, 
 the marvellous thought became the knowledge that, 
 small and insignificant as was his personal life, it was 
 yet suffered to exist. The forces of the material 
 universe did not crush it ; they passed by on the other 
 side, and suffered it to live through its little day. 
 Was not this a subject for gratitude ? Was it not 
 kind in these mighty forces to suffer the existence of 
 a life which had not an element of strength in common 
 with their own ? and if so, was it not fitting that such 
 kindness should be acknowledged ? Ought not the 
 powers of nature to be thanked for their forbearance 
 in sparing man ? Man thought so, and he proceeded 
 to act upon the thought. He tried to express his 
 thankfulness by offering something to the powers, by 
 giving up something of his own to make them richer ; 
 that instinct was the birth of sacrifice. It had its 
 natural root in the sense of dependence, and in the 
 gratitude awakened by the thought that man in spite 
 of his insignificance was yet allowed to be. It does 
 not seem to us that the consciousness of sin was 
 necessary to the birth of sacrifice. Man is a finite 
 being as well as a sinful being ; his helplessness lies 
 as much in his finitucle as in his- sinfulness, and he 
 must learn his finitude sooner than his sinfulness. 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 115 
 
 What more natural than that, ere ever there should 
 have opened within him the sense of his own de- 
 pravity, he should have striven to express his sense 
 of that infinite goodness which had prevented his 
 finite feebleness from being utterly extinguished in 
 death ? 
 
 But it was not possible that man's consciousness 
 could be arrested here. It was inevitable that in 
 process of time there should awake within him a 
 deeper moral knowledge than that of dependence on 
 God, — a sense of separation from God, a conscious- 
 ness of sin. It is not to be supposed, however, that 
 this consciousness of sin would spring up at once 
 into its highest development. Man's first perception 
 of a disturbance in his moral nature would be the 
 feeling not of having broken a divine law, but of 
 having inflicted a private injury on the divine Being, 
 or on those divine powers which in his view ruled 
 the universe. He would become conscious of having 
 done something which was an act of disobedience to 
 those mighty forces of nature on which he was 
 dependent ; he would feel that he had insulted the 
 gods, and that the gods must be actuated towards 
 him by motives of private resentment. How was 
 their vengeance to be averted ? how was he to escape 
 the consequences of their anger ? He must do some- 
 thing to appease that anger. He must give some- 
 thing to the gods as a mollifying gift to avert the 
 threatened displeasure and ward off the coining blow 
 
116 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 Here in the heathen world is the origin of the second 
 form of sacrifice ; thanksgiving has been followed by 
 propitiation. Man has not yet learned the horror 
 of sin, but he has learned the danger of offending a 
 sovereign power, and he has found the need of receiv- 
 ing forgiveness from that power. He cries out for 
 the remission of the penalty, he offers his sacrifice in 
 deprecation of the coming wrath. His highest con- 
 ception of pardon soars not as yet beyond the escape 
 from punishment. He asks no other forgiveness 
 than the passing by of the vengeance, desires no other 
 reconciliation than the refraining of the divine hand 
 to strike him down. This is all for which his sacri- 
 fice pleads ; it aims at propitiating the offended; and 
 when it has averted the vindictive blow, it has reached 
 its goal. 
 
 We advance a little further up the hill of moral 
 development, and this crude conception begins to 
 fade. It fades into something higher and purer ; 
 the desire for propitiation gives place to the desire 
 for expiation, which includes the former and a great 
 deal more. There dawns upon the heart of man the 
 conviction that sin is something deeper than an insult 
 to a private individual ; nay, that God Himself is 
 something deeper than a private individual ; that He 
 is not simply a person, but a character, — not merely a 
 king, but a lawgiver. The moment that conviction 
 dawns, there breaks upon the mind the moral con- 
 sciousness that no private forgiveness would suffice 
 
The Third Pro- Christian Problem. 117 
 
 for the soul of man. Man awakens to the knowledge 
 that the outward penalty is only the surface of his 
 trouble, that the remission of the outward penalty 
 would leave the depth of his unrest unstilled. He 
 finds for the first time that what he wants is not 
 simply forgiveness, but reconciliation ; not merely the 
 ^emission of a penalty, but a removal of the liability 
 to penally,— in other words, of guilt. The high-souled 
 child which is conscious of having offended an earthly 
 parent, will not be satisfied with being told that no 
 punishment will be exacted; it feels within itself 
 the liability to punishment— the guilt, the sense of 
 having done something wrong. It wants, not remis- 
 sion of penalty, at least not primarily ; what it wants 
 primarily is the remission of the guilt which ought 
 to bring penalty. It desires nothing less, and it will 
 be content with nothing less, than absolute restoration 
 to the heart of its parent. It asks the crucifixion of 
 the moral past, the blotting out from the memory of 
 its parent of that particular deed which has produced 
 the estrangement. There are certain moments when 
 the man experiences towards Heaven what the child 
 feels towards earthly relationships. Let us conceive 
 a possible case. You have, we shall say, culpably 
 taken away the life of a fellow-creature, and your 
 soul is filled with remorse. What would at such a 
 moment be your notion of restored comfort ? Would 
 it satisfy you to' know that God would remit your 
 punishment ? Assuredly not ; that would be simply 
 
118 Ncdural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 the forgiveness of a private individual. It would not 
 readjust the violated law, it would not bring back 
 the man you had slain; it would not restore joy to 
 the countenances of the bereaved. What you want 
 at such a time is not propitiation, but that which 
 includes and transcends it, — expiation. You want a 
 crucifixion of the moral past. You ask to be put in 
 the position which you occupied before the deed, to 
 be able to feel that the deed was never done by you, 
 that your hands are free from it, that your heart is 
 pure from it, that your life is untouched by it ; this, 
 and nothing less than this, will pacify your wounded 
 conscience. 
 
 Now, remember that in a conscience keenly quick- 
 ened the contemplation of sin in the abstract will 
 produce as profound an unrest ^s the contemplation 
 of a deed of murder produces in a conscience not 
 quickened beyond its natural limits. Keeping this 
 fact in view, you shall have found the key to the 
 origin of expiatory sacrifice. Men begin to offer 
 sacrifices of expiation when they want to blot out, not 
 merely the consequence of their transgression, but 
 their transgression itself; when they desire not simply 
 to be outwardly forgiven, but to be inwardly recon- 
 ciled ; when they wish not only to escape the punish- 
 ment they deserve, but to be liberated from the misery 
 of deserving it. The sacrifice whose object is expia- 
 tion differs from the sacrifice whose object is propitia- 
 tion in this, that its primary aim is not the provision 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 119 
 
 for the future, but the crucifixion of the moral past. 
 Judaism^ on its very threshold exalts the sacrifice of 
 expiation over the sacrifice of propitiation. Look- 
 ing at the narrative of Cain and Abel simply as a 
 narrative, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion 
 that in the mind of the narrator at least the sacri- 
 fice which contemplated the crucifixion of the past 
 was a higher and nobler kind of offering than the 
 sacrifice which contemplated merely the smoothing 
 of future consequences. Judaism throughout its 
 long history held fast by this distinction and by 
 this preference. As has been justly remarked by 
 Mr. Dale of Birmingham in the fifth of his admirable 
 lectures on the Atonement, it sought in its sacrifices 
 not to propitiate God, but to make propitiation to 
 God, — a difference of expression which clearly marks 
 the boundary line between propitiation and expiation. 
 The sacrifices of Judaism contemplated mainly not 
 the restoration of the soul to God's favour, but the 
 restitution by the soul of that which the soul had 
 unjustly taken away. It aimed at giving to the 
 divine an equivalent for that of which it had been 
 deprived by the human ; and its object in that aim 
 was to undo the past, to blot out not merely the 
 memory, but the fact of separation from the divine, 
 and to be again with God as if there never had been 
 a moment of severance. 
 
 And it is equally clear that the attempt failed. 
 To the fact of its failure we have the testimony of 
 
120 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 Judaism itself, given at the end of its career, and 
 after it had exhausted every possible effort. The 
 writer to the Hebrews expressly declares that the 
 Jewish attempts at sacrificial expiation could not 
 purify in things pertaining to the conscience. What 
 he means to say is simply this, — they could not blot 
 out the past. They could obviate civil penalties, 
 they could restore a man to his position with his 
 fellow-men, they could render it possible for him 
 to retain his membership in a visible theocracy ; but 
 they could not obliterate the deeds of yesterday. No 
 human mode of punishment, no human mode of 
 sacrifice, no human mode of restoration, can do this. 
 Even if a murderer could bring back his victim from 
 the grave, it would not obliterate his deed, it would 
 not destroy his liability to punishment. To destroy 
 that liability you must destroy the past; the con- 
 sciousness of the past is the handwriting which 
 remains against every man, and in the view of this 
 handwriting can no man living be justified. Is there 
 any conceivable method by which a man could escape 
 the testimony of the past ? There is one, and one 
 only. If a man were to become what Paul calls a 
 new creature, 1 by having his life taken up into a 
 larger life, a purer life, a diviner life, then, even on 
 natural principles, Paul is quite right in saying that 
 old things would pass away, and that all things would 
 become new. In this case the larger life would 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note 14. 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 121 
 
 inevitably appropriate your smaller one, would cease 
 to distinguish between your possessions and its own, 
 would claim your past as its past. But observe care- 
 fully how much that would involve on the part of 
 the large, divine life ; it could not crucify your past 
 without your past crucifying it. When the fresh 
 waters of the river run into the salt sea, the sea appro- 
 priates the river, but it can only appropriate it by 
 washing away its corruptions, and it can only wash 
 them away by taking them on itself. Even so, if a 
 divine life would enfold my personality, it must enfold 
 all that my personality contains, — my disorder, my 
 liability to divine enmity, my penalty of death. It 
 must take up the impurity of my nature into its own 
 pure nature, it must bear my sin and all that is 
 involved in my sin, it must become partaker of my 
 actual human experience. The supposition at whose 
 threshold we have arrived will be seen to enfold not 
 only a mighty mystery, but a mighty sacrifice, — a 
 sacrifice in comparison with which all the propitiatory 
 offerings of heathendom and all the expiatory offer- 
 ings of Judaism fade into insignificance. It will be 
 seen to imply nothing less than the great and fathom- 
 less doctrine expressed in these pregnant words : ' He 
 hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin.' * 
 It is here that Christianity steps upon the scene. 
 It says to the world, Such is the sacrifice which I offer 
 
 1 Remember we are here considering not what God requires, but 
 simply what man needs, — redemption's human ground. 
 
122 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 you. I offer to every man who will receive it the 
 membership in a new body, and the head of that 
 body shall be divine. To Him you can bring what 
 the river brings to the sea — all the corruption which 
 your life has gathered. The head will bear the sins 
 of the members, even though in bearing them away 
 He must suffer that penalty which is the consequence 
 of contact with them. Give Him your past, and He 
 will give you His past, His present, and His future. 
 Give Him your corruption, and even while it bears 
 Him down to death, there will issue from His divine 
 headship a stream of incorruptible life which shall 
 make you incorruptible. His death shall be your 
 quickening, His cross shall be your crown, His wounds 
 shall be your healing, His poverty shall be your 
 riches. He will give you His beauty in exchange 
 for your ashes, His joy in exchange for your mourn- 
 ing, His garment of praise in exchange for your 
 heaviness. He will take your earthliness, and you 
 will receive His heaven. On the bosom of the divine 
 life your past shall be cancelled, and you shall be 
 free, free to begin again with the standing of a little 
 child, without a retrospective experience of guilt to 
 impede your fresh chance of a bright future. 
 
 But you say, All this is a great mystery. Un- 
 doubtedly ; but wherein consists the mystery ? This 
 is a point on which we are liable to fall into much 
 confusion. The doctrine of atonement is universally 
 and rightly regarded as involving something which 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 123 
 
 transcends the human faculties; but what is that 
 something ? Is it the fact that men are sinners ? that 
 is pre-eminently a fact of nature, and it would be 
 impossible to deny it. Is it the fact that sin involves 
 certain penalties ? we see this exemplified in the life 
 of every day. Is it the statement that Christ has 
 borne the sin of the world with the penalties which 
 accompany it? even this is not a mystery, if we 
 assume something behind it. Assume that Christ is 
 the head of humanity, and the sin-bearing becomes a 
 necessity. The headship of Christ is the real mystery; 
 its mystery lies in the process by which it is accom- 
 plished — a process unseen by man, and therefore 
 incapable of representation to human experience. 
 But let that process once be conceded, let the head- 
 ship of Christ over humanity be once admitted, and 
 the doctrine of atonement, so far from being super- 
 natural, shall become the natural and the inevitable 
 consequence. Let us remember what it is to be the 
 head of an organism; as we said in the previous 
 lecture, it is to take whatever belongs to the members 
 of the body. Christ cannot become the head of 
 humanity without becoming the head of a body of 
 sin and death ; it would be a contradiction in terms 
 to be the one without being the other. The moment 
 we have given our assent to the doctrine of the 
 mystical union, we have given our assent to the 
 doctrine that a pure head has been attached to an 
 impure body. When we have reached this stage all 
 
124 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 mystery ceases. We can understand in kind though 
 not in degree the sufferings of the Son of man. We 
 can understand how, in bearing the impurities of 
 humanity, the divine head of the human organism 
 was bowed by anguish to the dust of death. 1 We 
 can understand the agony and bloody sweat of the 
 garden, when He cried, ' If it be possible, let this cup 
 pass from me.' We can understand even how, in the 
 intensity of that union which subsisted between the 
 head and the members, He should have been com- 
 pelled to feel the hiding of a Father's face, and to 
 express His sense of separation in the bitter cry, 
 { My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? ' 
 All this in the light of the divine headship over 
 humanity becomes clear. It is now, too, that we 
 understand the meaning of that expression, which 
 Christianity appropriates to itself, and which outside 
 of Christianity is a paradox, — 'a royal priesthood.' 
 Christianity alone could claim such a designation. In 
 all other religions the office of the priest was distinct 
 from the office of the king, even where these were 
 vested in the same person. Sacrifice was the anti- 
 thesis of royalty; the one was the type of humilia- 
 tion, the other was the mark of greatness. But here, 
 in this headship of Christ, the humility was the 
 greatness, and the greatness was the humility. He 
 was king over humanity, just because He bore the 
 sins of humanity ; He was never so crowned as when 
 
 1 Not by the mere pain of the physical cross. 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 125 
 
 He wore the crown of thorns. For the first time the 
 world had reached the thought of a divine sacrifice, 
 which is only another form of a royal priesthood. 
 Hitherto sacrifice had been purely human ; it had 
 expressed only the human soul's sense of the distance 
 between itself and the divine. Here was a divine 
 sacrifice, and a sacrifice which was founded not on 
 the distance, but on the nearness of the divine to 
 the human. It had its origin in the fact that God 
 had come so close to humanity as to make the experi- 
 ence of humanity His own experience, had entered 
 into so intimate a union with the sons of men, that 
 the moral burdens of the race became potentially His 
 burdens. The divinity of sacrifice was a new thought 
 in the world, and a thought which has perhaps gone 
 further than any other to make the world itself new. 
 It is to this more than to any other conception that 
 we are to ascribe the change in the human ideal of 
 greatness, the transition from the worship of material 
 force to the reverence of patience, meekness, and 
 charity. If we would ask why it is that the virtues 
 which the ancient world considered unmanly have 
 become to the modern world the noblest of all, we 
 shall find an adequate answer in the apotheosis of 
 sacrifice, the lifting of the sacrificial rite from the 
 sphere of the human into the atmosphere of the 
 divine. The moment you make sacrifice an attribute 
 of God, you make it a thing which ennobles man, and 
 which it is godlike in man to manifest. The doctrine 
 
126 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 of divine sacrifice has, even from the most secular 
 point of view and on the most secular principle of 
 interpretation, realized in history the meaning of the 
 words, ' I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto 
 me.' The majority of the human race are doubtless 
 still far enough from the practice of this life, but 
 it may be doubted if any son of humanity will now 
 venture to withhold his assent to its inherent power 
 and grandeur. It is universally admitted that the 
 life of sacrifice, wherever it is seen, is ennobling to 
 him who lives it, and worthy of all reverence from 
 mankind. Yet let us not forget that this sentiment, 
 familiar as it has become to the Christian conscious- 
 ness, is itself almost exclusively the product of that 
 consciousness. We shall look in vain for anything 
 exactly resembling it in the practice of pre-Christian 
 antiquity, because we shall look in vain for anything 
 exactly parallel to it in those religious creeds which 
 are the source of ancient practice. If the spirit of 
 sacrifice has become to the modern world an object of 
 permanent desire, if those who possess this spirit are 
 regarded no longer as the special sinners of humanity, 
 but as those who have begun to be emancipated from 
 the power of sin, it is only because the religious 
 belief of Christendom has enthroned at the heart of 
 the universe a being whose headship over humanity 
 is reached by bearing the sins and carrying the 
 sorrows of the human organism. It is because the 
 Son of God is held to be the sacrifice for the world, 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 127 
 
 that the world holds the life of sacrifice to be the 
 avenue to the divine. 
 
 And since we have here broached the subject of 
 Christian morality, this may be, perhaps, the fitting 
 place to make our transition to the final point of 
 inquiry with which the present question is concerned : 
 What is the connection between this mystery of 
 atonement and that other great mystery, — the doctrine 
 of regeneration ? Is there any natural bond of union 
 between them ? If there be, we may be sure that 
 in finding it we shall have found the link which 
 connects religious belief with religious practice. Now 
 it seems to us that in the New Testament system, 
 and especially in the Pauline form of thought, the 
 doctrine of regeneration grows directly and necessarily 
 out of the royal priesthood, in other words, out of 
 Christ's potential headship over humanity. It will 
 be remembered how we pointed out in the pre- 
 ceding lecture, that in the relation of every head to 
 every body there are two distinct movements. By 
 one of these movements the head receives its impres- 
 sions from the members, by the other the members 
 receive an influx of life from the head. It is impos- 
 sible that there can exist any organic relation in 
 which these two conditions are not both fulfilled. If 
 we admit an organic union between Christ and the 
 Church, we shall be constrained to recognise in that 
 union the presence of each of these processes. On 
 the one hand, we shall have to assign to the head the 
 
128 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 power of sacrifice, in other words, the power of bear- 
 ing the sins and sorrows of the members ; this side 
 of the union we have already been considering. But, 
 on the other hand, we shall be forced to recognise 
 what the members receive as well as what they give, 
 what the head communicates as well as what it bears. 
 The members give up their old life only that they 
 may obtain a new one ; they are emptied in order that 
 they may be replenished. Hence it is inevitable that 
 the work of the Spirit must begin just where the work 
 of the Cross is completed. The divine life which bears 
 the sin of the world must in the very act of bearing 
 it fill up the blank it has created. 
 
 What, then, is the first experience of this divine life 
 in the soul ? It is uniformly represented as a state of 
 struggle ; we might add, it has been uniformly felt to be 
 so. If there ever was a man who w r as partaker of this 
 life, it was Paul. From the moment when his old 
 nature was struck to the dust, until the hour when he 
 yielded up his life in martyrdom, his spiritual history 
 might be epitomized in his own brief but compre- 
 hensive testimony, 'I die daily'; the spirit of sacrifice 
 had become the law of his being. And yet it is not 
 less true, that from the moment when Saul of Tarsus 
 was transformed into Paul the apostle, a life of self- 
 conscious rectitude was transformed into a life con- 
 scious only of its own abasement. Saul of Tarsus felt 
 no struggle ; the spiritual being of Paul the apostle was 
 a struggle from beginning to end. It is after his con- 
 
The Third Pre-Christian Problem. 129 
 
 version that we hear of his inward conflicts, of the 
 law in his members warring against the law of his 
 mind, of the mutual antagonism between his flesh and 
 his spirit, of the body of sin and death from which he 
 longs to be delivered. Is there any rational mode of 
 accounting for such an experience ? Is it necessary 
 to view it as a paradox ? Looked at from the outside, 
 considered from a purely worldly standpoint, it cannot 
 be otherwise than paradoxical ; but within the circle of 
 Christian thought itself, it is not only a natural but 
 an inevitable thing. What explanation would Paul 
 have given of his own inward struggle ? He would 
 have said it was the only thing which could be reason- 
 ably looked for. He would have pointed to the fact 
 that the ravages of a disease are only felt when the con- 
 valescent life comes ; nay, he has expressed the same 
 thought in a yet stronger figure. He declares that the 
 members of Christ's body, like the members of a physi- 
 cal body, are in a state of death when separated from 
 the membership. He says that the human soul before 
 it enters into this membership is destitute of spiritual 
 life, and therefore destitute of the power to detect 
 even its own deaclness. It only learns the nature of 
 that death in which it has been lying, when it is 
 quickened by the pulsations of the new divine life 
 which flows from the new head of humanity, from 
 the royal priesthood of the Son of man. The birth of 
 its divine life is and must be a moment of awakening, 
 and therefore a moment of pain. The quickening 
 
130 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 into fresh vitality is a quickening into keener con- 
 sciousness. The eye is strengthened to detect the 
 presence of impurities, the ear is sharpened to discover 
 the absence of harmonies, the conscience is refined to 
 mark the magnitude of offences. Man learns his old 
 self when he gets a new self, reaches the vision of 
 his darkness in the first blaze of his spiritual light, 
 and finds the meaning and the horror of death in the 
 moment when his being is quickened into life eternal. 
 Perhaps it may be thought that in these remarks 
 we have somewhat transcended our province. It 
 may be thought that we have left the scientific ground 
 of the lecturer for the emotional ground of the 
 preacher. In reality it is not so. The experience of 
 an inward spiritual struggle is indeed an emotional 
 experience, but it is a fact, and therefore an object 
 for the investigation of theological science. The ex- 
 periences of the individual mind belong as much to 
 the sphere of the man of science as any phenomenon 
 of nature, or any event of history ; they are them- 
 selves phenomena of nature, they are themselves 
 events of history. The most rigid positivism can no 
 more disregard the religious impressions of the indi- 
 vidual soul, than it can disregard the revolutions of 
 day and night, or the motions of the planetary bodies. 
 It may deny that they have any objective validity, it 
 may refuse to accept their testimony as it refuses on 
 many points to accept the testimony of the senses, 
 but it cannot deny that whether true or false their 
 
The TJiird Pre-Christian Problem. 131 
 
 testimony is given. The quickened sense of sin which. 
 a spiritual man experiences is in itself a sober his- 
 torical fact, and, like the other facts of this universe, 
 it waits to receive its explanation from the researches 
 of the man of science. If this would be a sphere of 
 universal law, there must be found in its universality 
 a place for this religious phenomenon ; it can never 
 be unscientific or sentimental to attempt the discovery 
 of the law of spiritual sentiment. "We have dwelt 
 less upon the subject than its interest and its import- 
 ance demanded, but we have been guided in this, not 
 by the fear lest individual conviction should be an 
 unscientific theme, but by the fact that the experience 
 to which it points is limited in its operation. All 
 men can study religion as it is manifested on the page 
 of history ; only spiritualized men can study religion 
 as it is manifested in the individual soul. We have 
 therefore endeavoured to confine our range as much 
 as possible to the visible rather than to the invisible 
 facts, in order that we might base the science of Chris- 
 tianity upon principles which should be universally 
 recognised. The volume of past history is an open 
 book, which he who runneth may read ; and men can 
 register the experiences of others long before they have 
 learned to analyse their own. It is on this account, 
 and on this account alone, that we have looked at the 
 laws of religious life rather in their national than in 
 their individual manifestation ; to this point of histori- 
 cal observation we shall return in the next lecture. 
 
LECTUEE V. 
 
 NATURAL THEOLOGY IN THE LIGHT OF REVELATION. 
 
 WE have now arrived at what may be called 
 distinctively the Christian conception of God, 
 — the conception of a royal priesthood, or, in other 
 words, of an omnipotent love. The God of Chris- 
 tianity is essentially a love which can do all things, 
 which has infinite power to help, and infinite power 
 to bear. This royal priesthood constitutes the holi- 
 ness of God. The divine holiness in the Christian 
 system is not one of His attributes, — it is Himself, His 
 being, His personality, the source of all His attributes. 
 In reaching this definition of God, Christianity has, 
 as we have seen, entered into no antagonism with the 
 natural instincts of the religious life. We have found 
 that the Christian conception has answered the pro- 
 blems of the light of nature, and that, even in tran- 
 scending the limits of pre-Christian systems, it has 
 offered to those systems a common meeting-place in 
 itself. The light of Christianity has not destroyed 
 the light of nature ; it has simply absorbed it. 
 Nevertheless, now that we have reached the Christian 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation. 133 
 
 conception, we must allow it to reign, not only para- 
 mount, but alone. We can no longer have a God of 
 nature side by side with the God of Christianity ; the 
 God of Christianity must be our God of nature too. 
 It is inevitable, therefore, that in this process of 
 absorption something should be eliminated from our 
 old conception of God. We have seen that Chris- 
 tianity has answered the religious needs of man ; but 
 there is a question which remains, now that we have 
 reached Christianity, To what extent does the light of 
 the new religion modify our old views of the God of 
 nature ? The greater includes the less ; but before 
 including it, it must eliminate those elements which, 
 by reason of their excessive individualism, tend to pre- 
 vent incorporation. What elements has the Christian 
 thought of God refused to borrow from the light of 
 nature ? 
 
 Natural theology is popularly supposed to involve 
 three subjects of study, — the attributes of God, the 
 government of God, and the immortality of the soul. 
 We propose to consider to what extent each of these 
 has been affected by the advent of the Christian con- 
 ception ; in the present lecture we shall take up the 
 first two, and reserve for the succeeding lecture the 
 subject of immortality. 
 
 The three attributes of God, which are generally 
 regarded as pre-eminently natural, or cognisable by 
 the light of reason, are those of infinitude, eternity, 
 and immutability. Now, each of these so-called natural 
 
134 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 attributes has been subjected by Christianity to a 
 modifying process. Let us begin with the divine 
 attribute of infinitude. That God is infinite is a 
 truth of natural reason, a doctrine which comes from 
 the light of nature. But the question arises, What 
 meaning does the light of nature attach to the word 
 infinite ? The question can only be answered by 
 history, by a reference to the life of the world which 
 preceded the advent of Christianity. When we have 
 learned what the pre-Christian ages thought of God's 
 infinitude, we shall be in a position to judge to what 
 extent the Christian conception is a transcript of the 
 light of nature. Now it will be found that when 
 the pre-Christian world used the term infinite, it 
 meant one or other of two things, — either the nega- 
 tion of the finite, or the boundless multiplication of 
 the finite. The philosophical minds generally took 
 the former view. They understood by infinite that 
 which was opposite to the finite, and which excluded 
 all finite qualities. They declared that every finite 
 quality was a limit. When you say a man is good 
 you give him a finite quality, because you assign him 
 an attribute which separates him from some other 
 man. But an infinite being cannot be separated from 
 anything : every separation involves a boundary, and 
 every boundary is a limit, and every limit is an im- 
 perfection. Accordingly the ancient philosophers 
 said, You must not say that God is good, that God is 
 great, that God is holy. In so saying you are lower- 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation. 135 
 
 ing God ; you are giving Him the very qualities 
 which distinguish one being from another, and which 
 therefore shut out one being from the sphere of 
 another. Your God must be shut out from nothing. 
 He must include all beings and all things, and in 
 order to do this He must have no distinguishing, no 
 separating qualities of His own ; He must be infinite 
 in the sense of being non-finite. Such is the view of 
 infinitude which was adopted by the philosophers of 
 the ancient world, which prevails in the later or 
 Vedantic form of Brahminism, and in the theories of 
 the Eleatic school of Greece. We need not say that in 
 such a view there is no place for a union between the 
 infinite and the finite ; heaven and earth are eternally 
 separated, God remains for ever the opposite of man. 
 The infinite God of ancient philosophy cannot exist 
 along with the finite ; wherever He enters, the finite 
 flees before Him, or rather is extinguished in the 
 brightness of His glory. The creature loses his 
 creature-life, the individual surrenders his individu- 
 ality, man gives up his humanity in the presence of the 
 divine. Creature-life, individuality, and humanity 
 are all the opposites of the infinite, because they all 
 imply the possession of those qualities which dis- 
 tinguish one from another. It is necessary, therefore, 
 that they should die ; the separate drops must lose 
 their separateness in that great ocean of divinity 
 where all distinctions cease, and where all lives are 
 one. 
 
136 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 It is clear that, if this be the only natural view of 
 the subject, nature could have no place for Chris- 
 tianity. Christianity implies as its foundation the 
 possibility of a union between the infinite and the 
 finite, — a union in which both shall be one, while 
 yet neither shall be destroyed. But there is another 
 form in which the idea of infinitude was held by the 
 ancient world ; it was looked at by many, not as the 
 negation of finite forms, but as the boundless multi- 
 plication of them. A mile is a finite space ; conceive 
 the mile infinitely repeated in every possible spatial 
 direction, and you will describe the idea of infinite 
 space. On this view of material boundlessness the 
 popular mind of the ancient world eagerly fastened ; 
 it seemed the fitting symbol for the representation of 
 God's infinitude. The misfortune was that the sym- 
 bol was never reached, in the nature of things never 
 could be reached. You cannot represent infinite space 
 even to your imagination. Whatever you represent 
 to your imagination must have a figure, but whatever 
 has a figure must be finite. Everything which has 
 a shape is by that shape marked off, distinguished, 
 divided from other things, and in the very act of being 
 divided from them there is a limit imposed to its 
 sphere of being ; its figure is in fact a boundary-line 
 which says, 'Hitherto shalt thou go, and no farther.' 
 The moment you try to represent infinite space, you 
 are really making an effort to destroy the idea. Here, 
 again, it is clear that the light of nature could not 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation. 137 
 
 reach the union of the finite and the infinite. If the 
 infinite God be simply a being who is materially 
 boundless, I can only be united with Him by ceasing 
 myself to be, for as long as I remain I am a barrier 
 to His boundlessness ; in the very act of thinking of 
 Him I limit Him. If this God would be all in all, I 
 must cease to see myself as different from Him ; I 
 must become dead to self-consciousness, to all indi- 
 vidual consciousness ; I must myself become an atom 
 of the spatial infinite. 
 
 In each of these natural representations Chris- 
 tianity fails to find a meeting-place. There is no 
 possibility afforded by either of them for a union 
 between God and man. But have we exhausted the 
 resources of the light of nature ? Is there no element 
 which nature has itself neglected, and which awaits 
 its revelation by another light ? Yes, there is such 
 an element. There is a third conceivable view of 
 the infinite, natural yet neglected by nature ; it may 
 be regarded not as the negation of the finite, nor 
 yet as the material multiplication of the finite, but as 
 the spiritual intensifying of the finite. Love, says 
 the ancient philosophy, is a finite quality ; yes, says 
 Christianity, but it may be made an infinite quality. 1 
 Christianity has come to tell the soul that there is a 
 spiritual as well as a material boundlessness. Mate- 
 rial boundlessness is the power at one and the same 
 
 1 Hegel makes the essence of all thought the finding of self in 
 another. 
 
138 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 moment to occupy infinite space, but there may be a 
 spiritual boundlessness within the most limited sphere 
 of space. Christianity declares that God is a spirit. 
 The infinitude of God must therefore be the infini- 
 tude of a spirit, not of a mere extended substance. 
 An infinite spirit is a being who has infinite spiritu- 
 ality, or, in other words, who possesses in the most 
 intense possible degree the attributes and qualities 
 essential to a mind. But it is clearly conceivable 
 that all this might be reached within the limits of a 
 finite human form. There is no contradiction in the 
 conception of an infinite spirit being lodged in a frail 
 tabernacle of clay, dwelling with the sons of men, 
 submitting to the restraints and the limitations of 
 humanity. No straitened outward circumstances can 
 impose any barrier to such infinitude as this; nay, 
 it has been borne out by experience, that a man's 
 spiritual power is often called into fuller play by the 
 outward depression of his life. The most intense 
 spiritual lives have not unfrequently been those 
 which were not cast in pleasant places, whose inward 
 power has been evoked by outward feebleness, and 
 whose greatness of soul has been elicited by physical 
 adversity ; in cases such as these the external limits 
 have contributed to foster the spiritual boundlessness. 
 It is on this phase of humanity that Christianity has 
 fastened. It has proclaimed the possibility of a 
 union between the finite and the infinite ; it has 
 done more, it has professed to illustrate that union. 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation. 139 
 
 It has exhibited to the eye of the world the vision of 
 a boundless soul —a soul whose boundlessness consists 
 not in its freedom from material limitations, but in 
 its power to endure these limitations, and to endure 
 them unsullied to the end. It shows us a Man of 
 sorrows, afflicted, poor, despised and rejected of men, 
 having not where to lay His head, dwelling amidst 
 obscure conditions, and surrounded by the .most 
 adverse circumstances, yet in the very midst of these 
 experiences speaking as never man spake, thinking as 
 never man thought, living as never man lived, and 
 dying as never man died. It shows us a boundless 
 purity called out by a world's impurity, a perfect love 
 elicited by a world's lovelessness, an absolute self- 
 sacrifice evoked by the vision of that selfishness 
 which is the essence of human sin. It asks us to 
 contemplate Him as perfect through sufferings, as 
 reaching His crown by the very act of bearing His 
 cross, as attaining his resurrection glory by the ex- 
 perience of death. In this combination of opposites, 
 Christianity has reconciled those things which were 
 deemed irreconcilable. It has revealed the infinite 
 in union with the finite. It has taught us that 
 divine strength may be found in human weakness. 
 It has shown us, above all, that the noblest symbol 
 of God's infinitude is not the canopy of the starry 
 heavens, but the unfathomable possibilities of a 
 human soul. 
 
 The second of the divine attributes commonly 
 
140 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 claimed as natural is that of eternity. Here, too, 
 the light of nature led the ancient world to form 
 two opposite conceptions. To the popular mind the 
 eternity of God meant His endless duration, His 
 endurance throughout all ages. Now it is true we 
 cannot separate from a divine being the idea of an 
 endless duration ; a God who at any time shall cease 
 to be, is a contradiction in terms. But this endless 
 duration is not a divine attribute ; it is simply a 
 historical fact. When we speak of an attribute, we 
 mean a power, capacity, or susceptibility. When we 
 speak of God's eternity as an attribute, we must 
 mean not the fact of His endless duration, but the 
 principle which causes that fact to be ; the fountain 
 of God's eternity must lie not in the future, but in 
 the present. Accordingly the philosophic minds of 
 the old world sought a precisely opposite definition 
 of the eternity of God. Instead of making it 
 synonymous with endless duration, they strove to 
 eliminate from it the very idea of time. The eternity 
 of God they said meant the timelessness of God ; it 
 signified that the divine life had no relation whatever 
 to the ideas of past, present, and future ; that it dwelt 
 in a region from which all temporal conceptions must 
 be excluded. We know what a strong hold this 
 view obtained even on the Christian Church through 
 its contact with Neo-Platonism ; it fascinated the 
 mind of Augustine, it still fascinates the minds of 
 most philosophical divines. It seems to us, however, 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation. 141 
 
 tliat this view has the same objection from a Chris- 
 tian standpoint as we found in the Vedantic notion 
 of infinitude. A God who is essentially timeless can 
 never really be manifested in time, nay, can never 
 essentially be manifested at all ; manifestation is in 
 its nature a temporal act. If we would preserve as 
 a possible conception the union of the finite and the 
 infinite, we must seek for a definition of God's 
 eternity which shall be intermediate between the 
 two extremes, which shall neither make it identical 
 with duration on the one hand, nor synonymous with 
 timelessness on the other. 
 
 And here, again, let us ask if there is not an 
 element in the case which the light of nature has 
 left neglected ? Is there any element in the idea of 
 time to which man habitually gives no prominence ? 
 There is, and that is the life of the present. Man 
 never lives in the present ; his being is divided 
 between the past and the future, between the experi- 
 ence of retrospect and the experience of prospect. 
 He has practically never realized the meaning of the 
 Now. Yet this neglected point in the conception of 
 time is precisely that point on which Christianity 
 has based its view of the divine eternity. The 
 eternity of God in the Christian system is that 
 principle of immortal youth which makes his being 
 an everlasting Now. It is not that the idea of time 
 is excluded, but that the element of succession is 
 excluded ; the events of the world are beheld in the 
 
142 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 light of a perpetual present, the yesterday and the 
 to-morrow are parts of the to-day. Before Abraham 
 was, I am, expresses in a sentence the Christian con- 
 ception of the divine eternity. It is the eternity of a 
 perpetual abiding love, which holds all things in its 
 own abidingness, to whose keen power of realization 
 the past is present and the future already come, 
 which sees in reality what the poet sees in imagina- 
 tion, — the end in the beginning, and the beginning in 
 the end. Christianity might apply to the eternity 
 of God those words which it applies to the salvation 
 of the soul, ' Now is the accepted time.' 
 
 The third of these divine attributes which the 
 unaided light of nature has professed to reach, is that 
 of immutability. Upon the subject of the change- 
 lessness of God w T e find the judgment of antiquity 
 uttering two opposing voices. To the popular mind, 
 to those worshippers who had not yet transcended 
 the stages of mythology, the changelessness of God 
 was almost lost sight of. The gods were more 
 than usually capricious men — fickle in attachments, 
 shifting in purposes, wavering in resolves. The 
 notion of a divine moral plan to which all the acts 
 of their deities must be conformed, was foreign to 
 the phases of ancient mythology. The attribute 
 which above all others they ignored, was the attri- 
 bute of immutability. And yet it is worth noting 
 that even the popular mind of antiquity was unable 
 altogether to ignore it; it was forced in spite of 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation. 143 
 
 itself to see in the manifestations of this universe 
 something more than a series of unconnected appari- 
 tions, to feel that behind the phenomenal there must 
 be something which was permanent, and that beneath 
 the shifting appearance there must be an abiding 
 law. The popular mind was constrained to account 
 for this impression, and in order to account for it, it 
 conceived the existence of a power behind the gods 
 which it called Fate, — a power blind in its working, 
 and unintelligent in its action, yet decreeing all 
 things from the beginning, and inexorably changeless 
 in the execution of those decrees. In this conception 
 of Fate even the mythological worshipper acknow- 
 ledged that there lay in this world an attribute of 
 immutability, though to him it was rather a fear than 
 a joy ; he could not worship it, but he made it the 
 power which controlled even the objects of his wor- 
 ship. Yet this same thought of immutability, which 
 to the popular mind of antiquity was a fear, became 
 to its philosophic mind a source of unfeigned delight. 
 Ancient philosophy fixed with peculiar veneration on 
 the idea of a changeless God. It went over to the 
 opposite extreme from the worshippers of the eastern 
 and western mythologies ; these had made their 
 divine being too fickle, this made Him too soulless. 
 In its reverence for the divine immutability, the 
 philosophy of the old world forgot the beauty of 
 spontaneity. It lost sight of the fact that changeless 
 unity is only one law of the universe, and that to 
 
144 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 render that law beautiful, it must be co-ordinated 
 with a principle of perpetual and infinite variety. In 
 forgetting this fact, it came to worship that which 
 was beneath worship, — a cold, impassive, passionless 
 power, whose chief glory consisted in its inability to 
 be moved, whose majesty was its unvaried sameness, 
 whose divinity was its capacity to be unaffected by 
 the pulsations of time. The state-religion of the 
 Chinese Confucius was actually based on this con- 
 ception, as was also the Brahminical contempt for all 
 the objects of finite contemplation. It pervaded the 
 very essence of the Platonic philosophy, it lay beneath 
 the rigidness of the Stoic morality, it affected more 
 or less every developed system of ancient faith. Yet 
 it is clear that such a view of God's immutability 
 must debar Him from all union with the mutable, in 
 other words, from all union with the finite ; such a 
 God could only unite with the finite by destroying 
 everything in it which constituted its separate exist- 
 ence. Christianity is based upon the possibility of 
 a real union between the human and the divine, 
 — a union in which the divine shall not be lost in 
 the human, and in which the human shall not be 
 swallowed up in the divine. Accordingly, Chris- 
 tianity cannot accept this definition of a changeless 
 God, any more than it can accept the mythological 
 notion of a God who is in perpetual change. It 
 wants some element which will unite what is good 
 in both, and reject what is pernicious in each ; it 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation. 145 
 
 must retain the spontaneity on the one hand, and 
 must keep unimpaired the changelessness on the 
 other. Its God must not be fickle, — He must be 
 an abiding principle; but neither must its God be 
 passionless, — it comes expressly to reveal the doctrine 
 of a divine passion. Between these extremes Chris- 
 tianity has steered. It has given to the world a 
 conception of divine immutability which is not only 
 consistent with an infinite variation in divine action, 
 but which may even be said to involve such a varia- 
 tion. The immutability which Christianity empha- 
 sizes, is the changelessness of love ; and a changeless 
 love, when exhibited towards a changeful object, must 
 be able to adapt itself to that object by an infinite 
 variety of acts, and an infinite selection of ways. 
 Christian immutability is not the changelessness of 
 action, but the changelessness of principle. It is 
 the power of divine love to remain stedfastly fixed 
 on its object, even while its object is perpetually 
 shifting its position ; to follow it in its wanderings, 
 to adapt itself to its every change of situation, to 
 meet it in all the varieties of its intensely varied 
 circumstances. If divine love would be immutable 
 in principle, it must be constantly changing in mani- 
 festation. The line of treatment which is demanded 
 by the child will no longer suit the man ; the one 
 purpose which enfolds both, can only retain its unity 
 by altering the form of its action. 
 
 And here, perhaps, is the fitting place to make our 
 
14G Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 transition from the divine attributes to the divine 
 government. If the immutability of God consists in 
 a changelessness of purpose, it becomes natural to 
 inquire, What is the purpose ? It is only another 
 form of asking on what plan God has constructed 
 this universe. We look at the matter here from a 
 purely comparative point of view. We have seen how 
 Christianity has modified the conclusions of natural 
 theology in relation to the divine attributes ; we have 
 now to see how Christianity has modified the con- 
 clusions of natural theology in relation to the divine 
 government or plan of God's providence. The first 
 question which here presents itself is the most general 
 one, — Is this world good or bad ? Is creation a scene 
 of happiness, or a scene of misery? — a path of sunshine, 
 or a vale of tears ? These are the two extremes of 
 the question between the optimist and the pessimist. 
 There are clearly intermediate views possible ; but in 
 the ancient world it does not seem as if any inter- 
 mediate view was entertained. If we study the life 
 of heathendom, that is to say, the light of unaided 
 nature, we shall be struck with the fact that men for 
 the most part looked at this world as a scene either 
 of irretrievable darkness or of unclouded brightness. 
 Throughout the systems of ancient philosophy, it must 
 be confessed that in general the dark view pre- 
 dominated. The Buddhist, as we have seen, was so 
 impressed with the vanity and nothingness of life, 
 that he regarded the most fortunate hour of every 
 
Natural Tlicology in the Light of Revelation. 147 
 
 man to be the hour of his death. It was in perfect 
 consistency with such a view that the Buddhist 
 refused to recognise in this universe the presence of 
 a supreme intelligent providence. The philosophic 
 Brahmin looked upon the world with an eye of equal 
 sadness, though he shrank from drawing so atheistic 
 a conclusion. The Parsee beheld in this seeming 
 unity of the visible world the presence of two oppos- 
 ing kingdoms, — the one of cloudless glory, the other 
 of blackest gloom ; but as the Parsee hoped for the 
 victory of the former, he is perhaps an exception to 
 the tendency of ancient philosophy. The Platonist, 
 on the whole, in so far as this earth is concerned, 
 must be regarded as a pessimist ; he looked upon 
 finite forms as the hindrance to infinite ideas, and 
 held the presence of matter to be adverse to the 
 power of spirit. The Stoic counselled men to keep 
 their feelings in abeyance ; but such a counsel could, 
 only have proceeded from one who believed the pains' 
 of life to be more potent than its joys. The Epicurean 
 directed his votaries to close their eyes to care ; but 
 men close their eyes to that which they are afraid 
 to face. We are disposed to think, with Pressense, 
 that Epicureanism was ' despair smiling.' On the 
 whole, the tendency of ancient philosophy points 
 very clearly in the direction that the present state of 
 things is the worst possible world. But when we 
 leave the domain of philosophy for the region of 
 mythology, we are plunged all at once into a pre- 
 
148 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 cisely opposite atmosphere. When we pass from the 
 speculative spirit of the East to the popular mind of 
 the West, we are confronted by a sudden change of 
 sentiment. The representative of the Western mytho- 
 logy is Greece, and Greece, in the sphere of its mytho- 
 logy, is the antithesis of Brahminism, of Buddhism, 
 even of its own Platonism. The popular Greek mind 
 saw in this universe the very opposite of that which 
 had been seen by the philosophers. To the philo- 
 sopher the world was a scene of unmitigated sadness ; 
 to the worshipper of the Greek mythology it was the 
 habitation of cloudless joy. It was to him the best 
 of possible worlds ; his very heaven was an earth in 
 the air. He could conceive nothing higher than the 
 system of things amid which he dwelt, or rather than 
 the things amid which he dwelt, for he saw in them 
 and sought in them no system. His optimistic esti- 
 mate of the world was not founded upon any convic- 
 tion that beneath its manifestations there was an 
 underlying plan of harmony ; it was the manifesta- 
 tions themselves in which the Greek gloried. He 
 did not care to look beneath the appearances of things ; 
 it cost too much trouble. He wanted a life of ease, 
 — a life which demanded no self-questionings, and 
 required no effort of thought. He did not wish to 
 search for the laws of this universe ; he wished to 
 enjoy the universe itself. He desired to feast his 
 eyes with the glory of the sunshine, to delight his 
 ears with the melody of sweet sounds, to inspire his 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation. 140 
 
 imagination with the beauty of surrounding forms. 
 His joy in nature was a child's joy, — careless, unre- 
 flective, spontaneous, the product of the passing hour. 
 Yet, such as it was, it led him to a glad view of the 
 universe. Philosophy had grown sad by thinking 
 beyond its depth, mythology became joyous by not 
 thinking at all. This creation was to the Greek the 
 highest type of a possible paradise. 
 
 Here, then, were two extreme views ; the one made 
 this world a mistake, the other made it a heaven. 
 What relation does the Christian conception bear to 
 these ? can those who receive that conception adopt 
 either of them ? There is one important point in 
 which the Christian estimate of this world is equally 
 opposed to both. For let it be observed that in both 
 of these ancient views there is one common assump- 
 tion ; each of them takes it for granted that the 
 creation is completed. Those who say it is the worst 
 possible world, and those who say it is the best pos- 
 sible world, are alike agreed in this, that it is some- 
 thing whose ideal has been already fulfilled. It is 
 precisely here that Christianity enters into conflict 
 with them, though the field of conflict proves to be a 
 field of reconciliation. Christianity denies that the 
 ideal of this world has been fulfilled. It maintains 
 that its plan is not yet accomplished, but is only passing 
 through a process of accomplishment. 'All things 
 work together for good.' In these striking words 
 Paul declares that the ideal of the world is only being 
 
150 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 worked out, in other words, that it is undergoing its 
 stages of development, from the lower to the higher, 
 from the less to the more. Paul would deprecate any 
 absolute statement either of optimism or of pessimism. 
 With the pessimist, he would deny that the absolute 
 good has come ; with the optimist, he would affirm 
 that creation is the heir to absolute good. He would 
 deem it unfair to open the book in the middle, and, 
 after reading a few pages, to pronounce it a tale of 
 sadness ; unfair to enter into the theatre when the 
 play is half done, and, after witnessing a few scenes, 
 to call it a tragedy. In his view, this is precisely 
 our position in the world. We begin to read the 
 book of life in the middle, we begin to witness the 
 drama of life when it is already half done. We have 
 never seen the opening, we shall never see the close ; 
 all we know is that there is something in progress 
 around us, that we are in the midst of a plot, that 
 we are ourselves the actors in a great plan. Paul 
 looks out upon the world, and he sees in it a world 
 of development; with that vision he is content. He 
 is content to be persuaded that there is in progress a 
 grand scheme of creation, which shall one day satisfy 
 all the hopes of the optimist, and he expresses his 
 undoubted conviction of the fact by making it a 
 matter not simply of faith, but of knowledge : l We 
 know that all things work for good.' 
 
 Yet it is worthy of remark that Paul reaches this 
 prospective optimism by quite a different route from 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation, 151 
 
 that over which the light of nature had travelled. 
 The men of the old world believed that this could 
 only be the best possible sphere of existence to those 
 who had succeeded in eliminating the painful circum- 
 stances of life. In Paul's view, the prospective joy 
 is to be reached not by eliminating any of life's cir- 
 cumstances, but by finding for all adverse things a 
 place in the development of humanity ; he does not 
 merely say that things work for good, but that they 
 work together. Christianity differs from all other 
 religions in this, that it is a reconciling religion ; it 
 causes to work together those things which the light 
 of nature had held apart. It destroys the opposition 
 between those objects which in the natural light can 
 only be seen as opposites. What experiences, for 
 example, are naturally more apart than joy and 
 sorrow ? Christianity finds between these a point 
 of union, — it reconciles the ideas of the cross and the 
 crown. What thoughts are naturally more separate 
 than those of strength and weakness ? Christianity 
 finds a meeting-place for these in the strength which 
 is perfected in weakness. What conceptions are 
 naturally more hostile than those of rest and work ? 
 Christianity finds for these a sphere of union and 
 co-operation in the rest which can strengthen a 
 man to work all things. In the Pauline view, the 
 creation reaches the goal of its development in a 
 manner analogous to that in which it is supposed to 
 reach it in the theories of modern science, — by dis- 
 
152 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 covering for every incident a place in the evolution 
 of universal law. 
 
 Let us now ask, What is the bond by which 
 Christianity proposes to unite these opposites ? Paul 
 says that the goal of human development is good. 
 Do we find in the New Testament any hint or indi- 
 cation of the nature of this good ? In the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews we have a very clear and definite one. 
 The writer of that epistle expressly declares that this 
 world exists for the sake of a moral ideal, that the 
 purpose which prompts creation is the historical 
 realization of a perfect personal life. ' Whom He 
 hath appointed heir of all things, for whom also He 
 made the ages.' The government of God is here 
 distinctly asserted to be a moral government; the 
 good towards which all things are working is good- 
 ness. Nor is it merely a vague Platonic goodness. 
 For the first time in the history of religion, the plan 
 of divine providence is seen pointing to a definite 
 moral goal. The world is declared to exist for the 
 .sake of purity, but the purity contemplated is the 
 purifying of the world itself. It is no longer the 
 emancipation of the life from its individual con- 
 ditions ; it is the sanctifying of the life in the very 
 sphere of its individuality. It is the Christ of 
 history that is the goal of creation, the sanctity of a 
 real historical being in a real historical scene. It is 
 the purity of a life in union with material limita- 
 tions, living within the narrow confines of the body, 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Beveled ion. 153 
 
 subject to the physical frailties of human nature, 
 nay, subject to these frailties in a more than ordinary 
 degree, yet in the very act and hour of His subjection 
 revealing a moral beauty of which the Platonist had 
 never dreamed. Such is declared to be the ideal for 
 which the world exists. It is towards its universal 
 realization that the whole creation moves. All 
 tilings work together, so that if possible that mind 
 which was in Him may be in every man, and that 
 the purity which was once historical may become 
 the essence of all human history ; for Him God has 
 ' made the ages.' 
 
 Let us see now if looked at from this height any 
 light is thrown upon the shades of human existence. 
 When we come to discern in Christ the moral 
 purpose and goal of God's government, do we find 
 any possible key to the solution of the great problem 
 of suffering ? or at least do we find any suggestion 
 which the light of nature fails to supply ? In con- 
 sidering this point, it may be well briefly to glance 
 at the efforts which the light of nature has made to 
 solve those enigmas of suffering which perplex the 
 natural view of the divine administration. The 
 natural theories by which men have attempted to 
 account for it may, we think, be reduced to three. 
 The first is that which has endeavoured to explain 
 suffering by the depreciation of the individual life ; 
 this has been the common tendency of the Eastern 
 pre-Christian world. Men suffered, it was said, 
 
154 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 because they were men, because they were only 
 finite beings, and therefore subject to individual 
 limitations. Individual life was itself vanity ; it was 
 a shadow, a dream, a delusion ; and it therefore bore 
 within itself the pain of unreality. Individuality 
 kept a man outside the life of God ; was it not fitting 
 that the life of God should be unconscious of his 
 sufferings ? It will be found that this view is prac- 
 tically the same as that which denies a special pro- 
 vidence. God is too great to be concerned in the 
 petty interests of the individual; His government 
 must be looked at on a large scale, — in its bearing on 
 the welfare of nations, and in its influence on the 
 progress of universal history. This was really the 
 thought of the Brahmin. His whole attention was 
 directed to the endlessly repeating circles through 
 which the ages of the universe were passing, and in 
 comparison with these circles the life of the indi- 
 vidual, with its burdens of grief and pain, appeared to 
 him a vapour. It may be doubted, however, if in a 
 Christian atmosphere this worship of a merely general 
 providence can ever be revived. In point of fact it 
 has not been revived ; even the English deists of 
 last century did not in general adopt it. The reason 
 is plain. It is almost impossible that an inhabitant 
 of modern Christian Europe, provided he acknowledge 
 the existence of a providence at all, should refuse to 
 admit its application to the humblest as well as to 
 the greatest events of life. For every inhabitant of 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation. 155 
 
 modern Europe is a dweller in a Christian atmo- 
 sphere, and is therefore bound to receive Christianity 
 as a fact ; he may reject it as a theology, he cannot 
 deny it as a historical phenomenon. But in admit- 
 ting this he must admit a great deal more. The 
 slightest study of the system of civilisation in which 
 he lives, will suffice to show him that this historical 
 phenomenon which he calls Christianity is the source 
 of all the other phenomena which he generalizes 
 under the name of European civilisation. He will 
 see that all the mighty forces which he distinguishes 
 as modern have received their first impulse from this 
 force, which in its beginning seemed so humble and 
 unobtrusive. He will perceive that there is scarcely 
 a department of modern life which has not been 
 coloured by this mellow Christian influence. He will 
 be forced to acknowledge that it has tinged litera- 
 ture, glorified art, refined manners, purified morals, 
 assuaged poverty, broken the power of slavery, and 
 given a new bent to politics by vindicating the rights 
 of man. And in acknowledging this, what does the 
 modern European confess ? Does he not admit, in 
 the very act of stating these things, that the general 
 providence which presides over the forces of sur- 
 rounding civilisation has evolved itself out of one 
 very special and very unlikely force, — a force whose 
 essence was the power to bear, and whose glory con- 
 sisted in the capacity it gave to suffer ? Suffering 
 can no longer be regarded as outside the range of 
 
156 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 providence. By him who recognises the working in 
 this universe of a divine intelligence, the power of 
 the Cross will be reverenced as a chief element in 
 its working. Whether he accept or reject the state- 
 ments of dogmatic Christianity, he will bow before 
 the majesty of practical Christianity ; he will cease 
 to limit the divine action to the thunder, the earth- 
 quake, and the fire, when he sees that these have 
 been awakened by the command of the still small 
 voice. 
 
 The second of the natural theories to account for 
 the existence of suffering is dualism, — the creed of 
 the Parsee. As we have seen, it recognises two 
 principles in the universe, one the source of all good, 
 the other the source of all evil, and it naturally 
 accounts for suffering by referring it to the action of 
 the latter. Of this theory we may say with even 
 greater confidence what we said of the foregoing, — 
 that it could no longer be held by the life of modern 
 Europe. The doctrine of a merely general providence 
 has been dispelled by a Christian atmosphere ; the 
 doctrine of two Gods has been dispelled by an addi- 
 tional modern influence, — the progress of science. 
 Science by its very nature tends to unity, and with 
 each century it has been making fresh strides towards 
 its goal. It has found a universal law according to 
 which the forces of nature work ; it professes to have 
 found, or to be on the road to finding, a universal 
 force in which the forces of nature inhere. Its 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation. 157 
 
 aims at the establishment of unity are of the most 
 startling character, and have by no means obtained 
 the acceptance of all, yet the very boldness with 
 which they are pressed shows conclusively the spirit 
 of the age. An age which seeks to embrace in one 
 law of evolution all the varieties of living species, an 
 age which aims at discovering a unity between the 
 life of the mollusc and the life of the man, is not 
 likely to fall into the error of conceding to the 
 phenomenon of suffering a separate origin from that 
 which it assigns to normal happiness. Whatever 
 explanation it attempts to give of the darker shades 
 of this human existence, we may be sure it will be 
 an explanation essentially different from that of the 
 Parsee, — an explanation which will aim at the recon- 
 ciliation of suffering with the existing order of things, 
 and will seek to find for it a place in the great plan 
 of this world's evolution. 
 
 The third theory by which the light of nature 
 attempts to account for the sorrows of life, is that 
 which regards suffering as a penal infliction, the 
 punishment of man's transgression. This view may 
 be regarded as that of the popular mind in all pre- 
 Christian ages ; it is also the dominating belief of the 
 Jewish people in that period of their history which is 
 most distinctively Judaic. Of all the views hitherto 
 considered, this is the best and the truest. The 
 truth which lies at the root of it is this, that wher- 
 ever there is sin there is suffering. It is difficult 
 
158 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 to conceive of any evil act which does not directly 
 or indirectly produce pain. It would be a curious 
 calculation to compute how much of the physical 
 suffering in a great city is capable of being traced 
 to some past evil in the lives of those who endure 
 it, or in the lives of those who have preceded them. 
 It seems to us that the result of such a computation 
 would be to leave a comparatively small number 
 unaccounted for by moral considerations. The con- 
 nection between sin and suffering is not necessarily 
 dissolved when a man repents of his evil way, nor 
 even when a new life has come to him. The man who 
 has wasted his constitution by intemperance will not 
 get back the vigour of his frame by turning into a 
 new path ; if he has sown the seeds of disease, they 
 will bear fruit even after the higher life has dawned. 
 Kant is profoundly right when he says that the new 
 man bears the punishment of the sins committed by 
 the old. 
 
 But while all this is undoubtedly true, it is not 
 the whole truth. It may be conceded that wherever 
 there is sin there is suffering ; is it equally true that 
 wherever there is suffering there is sin ? It may be 
 even conceded that the majority of physical suffer- 
 ings in man might directly or indirectly be traced to 
 some moral cause ; but in an inquiry such as this, 
 men are not really asking the origin of individual 
 sufferings, so much as the origin of suffering in the 
 abstract. If there remained in the world one solitary 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation. 159 
 
 instance of physical pain which was incapable of 
 being accounted for, that one instance would leave 
 the problem as far from solution as if no case of suf- 
 fering had ever received an explanation. It is the 
 abstract fact of sorrow which calls forth the inquiries 
 of the human mind, and that fact continues unsolved 
 as long as one sorrow continues a mystery. Now it 
 must be confessed that there are certain forms of suffer- 
 ing which are not the result of sin. The lower creation 
 is subject to pain ; perhaps this might be got over on 
 the Platonic view that the material or animal nature 
 is the essence of that which becomes sin in the man. 
 But let this pass ; when we ascend above sin, we rind 
 the presence of suffering equally as when we descend 
 beneath it. There are some burdens which a man 
 begins to bear only when he begins to master the 
 evil that exists within him. There are certain pains 
 which await him when he becomes good, and to 
 which he becomes heir just on account of his good- 
 ness. In a highly spiritual sense it may be said, 
 ' He that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.' 
 A bad man is blunted to the miseries of his fellow- 
 beings ; he is only conscious of his own. A man 
 who has received the new life loses much of his own 
 sorrow, but it must be confessed that in exchange for 
 it he is filled with a deeper sense of the sorrows of 
 those around him. It is impossible for him to refer 
 this new impression of pain to any personal act of 
 evil, nay, it is impossible for him not to see that it 
 
160 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 has arisen simply on account of the decline of evil 
 within him. As the sorrows of humanity press upon 
 his soul, he will feel what the author of the Book of 
 Job felt in the days of the later Judaism, — that there 
 are sufferings in human nature which are incapable 
 of being explained on the theory of penal infliction, 
 and which must seek their explanation in some other 
 and higher source than the natural depravity of 
 man. 
 
 We find, then, that the suggestions of nature on 
 this subject, even where they reach highest, do not 
 cover all the facts of the case. Let us see now 
 whether Christianity throws any fresh light upon 
 the question. First of all, we think it ought to be 
 admitted that Christianity does not throw nor attempt 
 to throw on the matter any retrospective light ; in other 
 words, it does not seek to explain the origin of suffer- 
 ing. It seems, indeed, to us that there is a thought 
 at the foundation of it, which, if accepted, would go 
 far to clear away the mist. It would seem as if the 
 possibility of suffering were involved in the Christian 
 definition of God. When it is said that God is love, 
 is it not implied that in the divine nature there must 
 be at least a capacity to bear ? There is indeed a 
 love which demands no such capacity ; the lower or 
 sensuous impulse wdiich man dignifies by that name, 
 is built chiefly on the desire of selfish appropriation. 
 But when love becomes a spiritual power, it seeketh 
 not its own ; it aims solely and entirely at the good 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation. 161 
 
 of its object, and is therefore potentially a state of 
 care. If it be a spiritual love, it will seek its object's 
 joy ; if it be an infinite spiritual love, it will seek its 
 joy through all contingencies. It will be compelled 
 to suffer when its object suffers. It will be forced by 
 its own strength, by its own infinitude, to follow the 
 being of its solicitude wherever he may go, and the 
 sorrows and falls of that being will inevitably become 
 its sorrows and its cares. It appears to us that such 
 a possibility is involved in the Christian definition 
 of God. In proclaiming Him to be a love which is 
 at once spiritual and infinite, Christianity seems to 
 have lifted the thought of suffering from the sphere 
 of the human into the region of the divine. We do 
 not, however, claim this as the Christian explanation 
 of the origin of pain ; it is rather a suggestion than 
 a direct doctrine of Christianity, and it is dangerous 
 to build upon suggestions. A direct statement is 
 universally understood, but that statement may sug- 
 gest to me a meaning which it does not bear to 
 you. We shall not, therefore, assign to Christianity 
 a doctrine which it does not formally claim. It 
 claims to enunciate no formal theory regarding the 
 origin of suffering in the abstract. It agrees with 
 Judaism in maintaining that wherever there is sin 
 there is sorrow, but it certainly does not imply that 
 there is no sorrow where there is no sin. There is a 
 deep suggestiveness in the beatitude, ' Blessed are 
 they that mourn,' and it is a suggestiveness that 
 
 L 
 
162 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 points in an opposite direction from Judaism. It 
 takes up the problem where the patriarch Job laid 
 it down, and it carries it out to its logical issue. It 
 recognises in human suffering elements which are not 
 referable to human sin, but which only begin to 
 work when sin has begun to die ; and it professes to 
 find for these elements a place in the divine ideal of 
 humanity, and a work in the glorifying of the human 
 soul. 
 
 Wherein consists this possible blessedness of suf- 
 fering ? How does Christianity support its assertion ? 
 As we have said, it makes no effort to explain the 
 origin of sorrow ; the task which it sets before itself 
 is not the explanation, but the redemption of the 
 past. It is in the future that Christianity seeks for 
 a solution of the great mystery, and it points clearly 
 to the direction in which such a solution may be 
 found. The idea which Christianity brings to bear 
 upon the mystery of suffering, is the thought that 
 suffering itself will in a higher form of existence lose 
 its character of sadness. To make its view quite 
 clear, let us try to illustrate the matter from another 
 department of study. It is well known and univer- 
 sally admitted that there are certain forms of animal 
 life in which there are to be found organs for which 
 no use has yet been discovered. But whenever we 
 ascend to the type of the species, whenever we come 
 to the comprehensive typical form which represents 
 that particular class of animal, we find that the very 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation. 163 
 
 same organs have become eminently useful. If, then, 
 the individual of any species exhibits a portion of 
 the body for which no use has been found, that 
 useless organ simply becomes a prophecy ; it is the 
 proof that this particular individual is not the type of 
 the species, that there is a higher form coming, and 
 that in the life of this higher form it must await the 
 explanation of that which is imperfect in its own. 
 Now it is precisely this thought which Christianity 
 applies to the phenomenon of suffering. To the 
 individual in his natural state, suffering betimes 
 appears a useless and even a hurtful susceptibility ; 
 in other words, considered as a purely individual 
 phenomenon, it is for the present not joyous but 
 grievous. 1 But Christianity says this only proves 
 that the nature of man has not yet arrived at its 
 typical form. It declares that when humanity shall 
 have reached that life which was all along the ideal 
 of its creation, the very same suffering which now 
 seems useless, shall become redemptive, and the same 
 sorrow which now is grievous, shall become the 
 source of a new and higher joy. It points to a 
 typical man, to a new Adam, to a second head of 
 creation, whom yet it declares to have been ideally 
 the first head, the ideal for whose realization God 
 made the ages. It tells us that in this second Adam 
 that suffering which in the first Adam was a penalty 
 and a pain, shall become its own remedy, shall open 
 
 1 Appendix, Note 15. 
 
164 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 up to mankind the avenue to a higher life, and as 
 the prefiguration and prophecy of this development it 
 points to the personal life of the second Adam Him- 
 self. In that life it shows us the divine power of 
 sorrow. The first Adam is perfect without suffering, 
 and when suffering comes he falls ; the second is 
 perfect through suffering, and greatest in His weakest 
 hour. The first Adam is strong amid flowers ; the 
 second is conqueror in the midst of thorns. The 
 first Adam is obedient through fear of death ; the 
 second becomes obedient even unto death. Nor does 
 the sorrow' of the typical man point only to an in- 
 crease of human power, it points not less emphatic- 
 ally to an increase of human joy. The Son of man 
 endures the cross and despises the shame, but He 
 does so for the joy that is set before Him. In Him 
 the world is introduced to a new thought, — the divine 
 joy of sacrifice, the glory of self-forgetfulness, the 
 certainty of finding the life which for another we 
 have consented to lose. Man is confronted by the 
 vision of a joy coming through that very process 
 which the selfish man considers the height of sorrow, 
 — the surrender of the individual will. He is startled 
 to find that the event which of all others is misery 
 to the natural heart, is blessedness to the life of the 
 typical man, that the crucifixion of self magnifies the 
 personal life and brings joy to the individual heart. 
 Christianity creates a new desire in the world, the 
 desire of that which the natural mind has in all asres 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation. 165 
 
 deprecated,— the power of giving up the human will 
 to the divine will, and of saying not with resignation 
 but with acquiescence, ' Thy will he done.' 
 
 In the light of this thought we are introduced to a 
 fresh view of creation. In a high and spiritual sense 
 we see that this world is indeed a scene of evolution 
 rising from the natural to the supernatural, from the 
 human to the divine. We see at the same time that 
 the supernatural, though last in manifestation, is ever 
 first in thought ; that the image of the divine, though 
 longest in appearing, is the form which all along 
 beckons creation onward. Is not this distinctly im- 
 plied in that remarkable utterance of the Apocalypse, 
 'The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world' ? 
 Is there not involved in these words the conception 
 of a grand plan of evolution, by which the world from 
 its very beginning is made to grow upwards towards 
 a type of sacrifice, towards a joy which is deeper than 
 the personal joy, and whose very life is purchased by 
 the crucifixion of personal interest. We are made to 
 understand that the sorrows of life in their deepest 
 root are no accident, or chance, or contingency, that 
 they are involved in the actual foundation of the 
 world in which we dwell, that they form the ground 
 plan of the stages through which we move, that they 
 constitute the gateway through which opens the great 
 road of human progress. We begin to see, dimly and 
 imperfectly it may be, yet with a clearness unknown 
 to the merely natural light, that the good for which 
 
166 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 all things are working together is the Son of man, the 
 typical man, the man perfect through suffering. That 
 which we call the revealed is seen to exist before the 
 natural, and that which we call the natural is seen 
 to exist only as the evolution of the revealed, for at 
 those foundations of the world which we term the 
 power of nature, there is already working that thought 
 which is to close the drama — the Lamb that is slain. 
 And here at last we have found the reconciliation 
 between the existence of an individual providence 
 and the existence of individual suffering. We have 
 seen how the Eastern mind was unable to reconcile 
 them. We have seen how, in its view, the sufferings 
 which pressed upon the individual life appeared a 
 barrier to the ingress of the divine life, and how the 
 only destiny for the human was to lose its humanity 
 in the divine. In the systems of Eastern philosophy, 
 the individual was absorbed in the universal. But 
 in this new system at which we have arrived, we 
 have reached the very opposite conclusion ; here, 
 paradoxical as it may seem, the universal is absorbed 
 in the individual. The circumstances of the natural 
 world are to be gathered up into the life of a typical 
 man, in whom their character is to be transfigured. 
 Every valley is to be exalted, every mountain is to be 
 brought low ; the crooked is to become straight, and 
 the rough places plain. It is not the abolition of the 
 old circumstances which is contemplated ; it is their 
 transfiguration, the change in their aspect, the trans- 
 
Natural Theology in the Light of Revelation. 167 
 
 formation of their character. What the natural world 
 calls joy is to be recognised as sorrow ; what the 
 natural world calls sorrow is to be recognised as joy. 
 Suffering, whatever were its origin, and whatever may 
 be its present tendency, is revealed as the possible 
 avenue to a bright future, and the possible gate to a 
 higher life. In the forecast light of that revelation, 
 the doctrine of an individual providence is vindicated 
 for all time. The sorrows which oppress the indi- 
 vidual life are seen oppressing it, not because its per- 
 sonality is despised, but because its personality is so 
 infinitely valued, they are preparing it for its union 
 with a higher type of humanity, more intensely per- 
 sonal and more fully human. The psalmist-poet of 
 Judea expresses thus his sense of the dignity of man : 
 ' Thou hast put all things under His feet.' The 
 writer to the Hebrews says that, looked at from the 
 natural side, it is scarcely so : ' We see not yet all 
 things subject unto Him.' But he declares that the 
 supernatural shall vindicate the dignity of the natural, 
 and reveal man's legitimate place in creation : ' We 
 see Jesus crowned with glory and honour that He 
 should taste death for every man.' In the sufferings 
 of the Son of man, the sufferings of individual men 
 are not the proof of a distant God, but the immanent 
 presence of the divine. 
 
LECTUEE VI. 
 
 IMMORTALITY IN THE LIGHT OF REVELATION. 1 
 
 IN the previous lecture we were engaged in con- 
 sidering some of those modifying influences 
 which the light of Christianity has exerted upon the 
 doctrines of natural theology. We proposed to take 
 up one by one its three recognised divisions, — the 
 divine attributes, the divine government, and the 
 immortality of the soul. We have now arrived at 
 the third of these. We have to consider to what 
 extent the light of Christianity has modified our old 
 conceptions of the soul's immortality. Before enter- 
 ing on such an inquiry, there is one circumstance 
 which arrests our attention on the very threshold. 
 The doctrine of immortality has been always claimed 
 as a doctrine of natural theology, and it is undoubtedly 
 found in nearly all natural religions. 2 Yet it must 
 be admitted that the belief in a future state is far 
 more directly connected with Christian theology than 
 
 1 We are here only called to treat the distinctively Christian 
 immortality — life in Christ. 
 
 2 See Appendix, Note 16. 
 
Immortality in the Light of Revelation. 169 
 
 with natural theology. Natural theology reveals God 
 and immortality ; Christian theology reveals God in 
 immortality, or, which is the same thing, immortality 
 in God. We can conceive the existence of a natural 
 theology in which the belief in a future state is not 
 included; we cannot for a moment conceive the 
 existence of the Christian religion apart from the 
 belief in immortality. The immortality which Chris- 
 tianity reveals is not a separate doctrine from the 
 God whom Christianity reveals ; it is itself the very 
 life of God, that eternal life which His contact with 
 the world communicates to the world. We shall 
 therefore be prepared to find that in approaching the 
 Christian atmosphere we are approaching a region 
 where the soul's immortal destiny becomes more 
 apparent, and where its hope of that destiny becomes 
 more strong, and we shall not be surprised to discover 
 that whatever modifying influence the new light 
 exerts upon the old, is an influence which removes 
 obstructions and renders the eye more clear. 
 
 Christianity nowhere professes to have proclaimed 
 for the first time the doctrine of a future state of 
 rewards and punishments ; indeed, by implication it 
 professes the contrary. When it says, ' In my Father's 
 house are many mansions ; if it were not so, I would 
 have told you/ it clearly makes an appeal to the 
 natural instincts of the human mind. It suggests 
 that these instincts had already pointed so persistently 
 and so unmistakeably to the existence of another life, 
 
1 7 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 that if there were no other life there would have been 
 demanded from heaven a distinct revelation to the 
 contrary; the parenthetical words would have abso- 
 lutely no meaning unless it were assumed that the 
 heart of man was already in possession of a great 
 hope for the future. The New Testament, in fact, 
 deals with the doctrine of immortality precisely as 
 the Old Testament had dealt with the doctrine of 
 God. The Old Testament does not begin by declar- 
 ing the divine existence, but by proclaiming the 
 divine action : ' In the beginning God created the 
 heavens and the earth.' So, in like manner, the new 
 dispensation does not formally enunciate the doctrine 
 that the soul will survive death ; it takes it for 
 granted that the light of nature has secured the belief 
 in that doctrine. Its aim is to build upon the ground 
 of nature, to reveal the responsibility which belongs 
 to an immortal, to show the influence which such a 
 hope should exert upon the secular life, to manifest 
 the power which such a destiny should confer upon 
 the individual actions. Christianity therefore con- 
 tents itself with homologating the conclusions of 
 antiquity as to the broad facts of immortality, reward, 
 and punishment. It professes in this respect to leave 
 uncontradicted the aspirations of the ancient Egyptian, 
 of the Parsee, of the Platonist, and even of the wor- 
 shippers of popular mythology, and it expresses its 
 acquiescence in the words, ' If it were not so, I would 
 have told you.' Nevertheless, while Christianity does 
 
Immortality in the Light of Revelation. 171 
 
 not claim to have enunciated the fact of immortality, 
 it does very strongly claim to have thrown fresh 
 light upon the nature of the fact ; so fresh is the 
 light which it professes to have brought, that it 
 declares itself to have ' abolished death.' Indeed, the 
 most superficial observer must see that, as a mere 
 matter of historical fact, the belief in a future state 
 exerts an influence over Christendom which it never 
 exerted over heathendom. 1 This itself indicates that 
 in Christianity the old thought of immortality has 
 in some way or other been renewed, transfigured, 
 glorified ; and we proceed briefly to consider what 
 are those new elements whose introduction into the 
 old thought has contributed so powerfully to make 
 immortality a power. 
 
 Now it seems to us that there are two tendencies 
 belonging to the old world's conception of immortality 
 which Christianity has expressly counteracted, and 
 that in the counteraction of these tendencies lies the 
 strength of the Christian doctrine, or what Paul 
 would term "the power of the resurrection.' And, 
 first, there is a general tendency throughout heathen- 
 dom to regard the immortality of the soul as some- 
 thing which consists in a change of physical conditions, 
 something which is brought to man by the hour and 
 the power of death. In the popular mythologies we 
 are not surprised to find this, because the men who 
 believe in mythology are necessarily in a sensuous 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note 17. 
 
172 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 condition ; their immortality is and can be nothing 
 but a change of locality, a transition from one house 
 into another. Sometimes it is a narrower house, 
 sometimes a wider and more splendid one, but in 
 every case it is simply a different degree of the same 
 existence. When we turn to Platonism, we find the 
 aspiration after a state higher than the physical ; 
 indeed, the weak point of the Platonic immortality is 
 just its undue depreciation of the physical. Never- 
 theless Platonism also looks to the physical as its 
 emancipator, — its hope is in death. It looks upon 
 the dissolution of the body as the liberation of the 
 soul. It believes the immortal life to be excluded 
 from the sphere of the sensuous and the temporal. 
 It can see no prospect for the spirit of man except in 
 that hour when the walls of his prison-house shall 
 crumble into dust, and leave his soul untrammelled by 
 the touch of time. But perhaps the heathen concep- 
 tion of immortality receives its strongest illustration 
 in that wide-spread doctrine of the East, — the trans- 
 migration of souls. It is founded on the very notion 
 that a change of physical conditions can of itself 
 bring a change of moral powers, that what a man has 
 failed to do in one earthly body may be accomplished 
 by him in another. Let us not imagine that the 
 doctrine of transmigration has no place in the light of 
 modern nature ; it has, on the contrary, a very dis- 
 tinct place in certain forms of thought which belong- 
 to Christian civilisation. The instinct which prompts 
 
Immortality in the Light of Revelation. 173 
 
 the belief in transmigration lies at the root of 
 asceticism. A man feels the claims of the spiritual 
 life to be too hard for him. He desires to be holy, 
 but he is confronted by opposing desires ; the tempta- 
 tions of the world strive against the promptings of 
 his inner nature. He believes that transmigration 
 would save him. Let him shut his eyes to the out- 
 ward scene, let him lose sight of the objects which 
 impede his heavenward aspirations, let him retire 
 within himself and limit his observations to his own 
 soul, and the spiritual life shall become to him a 
 possibility and a reality. The instinctive faith in 
 transmigration is not less clearly manifested in 
 aspects of modern life which are more frequent than 
 asceticism. It is seen in the tendency of men to 
 believe that, if they had simply a change of circum- 
 stances, they would create for themselves a great 
 pathway. It is seen in the prevalent notion that 
 each individual man would be happier if he had his 
 brother's cross instead of his own. It is seen, above 
 all, in the inclination of the restless mind to find rest 
 by simple locomotion, by change of locality, by transi- 
 tion from one scene into another, in illustration of 
 the Psalmist's ancient prayer, ' Oh that I had the 
 wings of a dove ! for then would I fly away and be 
 at rest.' All these are reproductions of belief in the 
 efficacy of transmigration. The transmigration of 
 souls points to the hope of a higher spiritual life by 
 a simple process of transition, by a mere change of 
 
174 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 locality, by no other medium than an outward altera- 
 tion of scene ; and it only differs from its modern 
 representatives in this, that the scene which it pro- 
 poses is more thoroughly new, and that the process 
 of transition is more thoroughly physical, — it is the 
 process of death. 
 
 Here, then, is a tendency common to the ancient 
 
 conceptions of immortality. The old world looks for 
 
 the soul's immortality to the change in its physical 
 
 conditions, and it finds that change summed up in the 
 
 hour of death ; death accordingly becomes to it the 
 
 harbinger of the spiritual life. Now, upon this view 
 
 of the subject Christianity has thrown a light which 
 
 is entirely new. The immortality which Christianity 
 
 reveals is not something which is brought by death at 
 
 all ; it is something which resists death, and which is 
 
 able to resist it because it exists before it. Christian 
 
 immortality is not a life which death brings into the 
 
 soul, it is a life which belongs to the soul, and which, 
 
 therefore, death is unable to destroy. The continuity of 
 
 life in this system is never for a moment broken. Death 
 
 introduces no pause in the march of human existence ; 
 
 it is simply jostled out of the way in its attempt to 
 
 oppose its march. The immortality exists within the 
 
 soul as its birthright, not merely outside the soul as 
 
 its destiny. It is not primarily a change of locality, 
 
 but an abiding state. It is no doubt unquestionable 
 
 that the Christian doctrine of immortality demands 
 
 for the soul a local habitation and a name. The 
 
Immortality in the Light of Revelation. 175 
 
 emphasis which it gives to the belief in human per- 
 sonality renders this inevitable ; a personal existence 
 which does not inhabit a locality is a contradiction in 
 terms. But none the less does Christianity hold that 
 no local circumstances whatsoever would of themselves 
 suffice to constitute a heaven. It refuses to admit 
 that any change of external conditions will be suffi- 
 cient to secure the future happiness of man. To 
 secure that happiness, it demands a new life for the 
 soul. It insists on the reception into human nature 
 of a principle of immortal youth which will invest any 
 locality with its own youth and joy. It seeks to 
 kindle in the human spirit a light which shall en- 
 lighten all things, and by whose inward brightness all 
 outward worlds shall be seen. This principle of life 
 and light is distinctively the Christian immortality, the 
 element which resists death, the element which secures 
 in any sphere the vision of beauty and the fruition of 
 prosperity. And what lends all the more power to 
 this doctrine, is the fact that it forms no isolated 
 Christian phenomenon ; it is in perfect harmony with 
 the whole plan of the system. Christianity proclaimed 
 to the world that the immortal principle w^as as neces- 
 sary for time as for eternity, ' Seek ye first the kingdom 
 of God and His righteousness, and all other things 
 shall be added unto you.' Its morality is expressly 
 based upon the doctrine that the life must lie behind 
 the act, and that the purity without can only be 
 reached by the purity within. The life which it 
 
176 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 brings into the world is designed primarily for the 
 world. It is sent as a help to the enjoyment of 
 earthly things, it is sent as a support in the endurance 
 of earthly calamities. Christianity does not admit 
 that the present any more than the future world 
 can be conquered from without. It would deny the 
 power of prosperous circumstances of themselves to 
 make a man prosperous, it would deny the power of 
 asceticism to render a man pure. To secure prosperity 
 and to secure purity, it requires the possession of that 
 inward abiding life which is in the highest sense its 
 own conception of immortality. 
 
 We have here already trenched upon the second 
 tendency of heathendom ; it is indeed necessarily in- 
 volved in the other. If immortality be brought to 
 the soul only by that change of physical conditions 
 we call death, it follows that as long as man continues 
 in the body his immortality is something in the future, 
 not a possession but a hope. If, therefore, the first 
 tendency of heathendom was its physical association 
 of the idea of immortality, its second was the refer- 
 ence of that idea to a state of things not present but 
 to come. The two tendencies are clearly separable 
 in thought ; the removal of the former would not 
 necessarily remove the latter. I may cease to regard 
 immortality as something which is brought by death, 
 and may yet still continue to regard it as something 
 which belongs purely to the future. In point of fact, 
 this second tendency of the ancient world has lingered 
 
Immortality in the Light of Revelation. 177 
 
 longer than the first. Christendom no longer attaches 
 so much credit to the moral power of physical death ; 
 it no longer regards matter as something which in its 
 nature is opposed to spirit, and which requires to be 
 rooted out ere the power of spirit can become para- 
 mount. But the popular mind of Christendom still 
 clings to the notion that its immortality is something 
 which awaits it, still adheres to the belief that the 
 life which is to render it imperishable is a life which 
 is to be given it in some far and unknown future. 
 Here is a survival of old culture, the relic of a time 
 and of a faith which has gone by. It has incorporated 
 itself so closely with the new civilisation, that we have 
 almost come to persuade ourselves of its being a part 
 of that civilisation. We speak of the soul's immortal 
 state as the hereafter, the future, the world to come. 
 We regard the consequences of a man's sin as they will 
 affect him here and hereafter, — a division which might 
 be quite accurate if these words did not represent to 
 us two totally unconnected states of being. In some 
 instances we find men indulging the belief that the 
 sanctions of the moral law lie entirely in this here- 
 after, that the present world goes for nothing in relation 
 to reward and punishment, and that when the future 
 comes it will begin its work by undoing the present and 
 the past. We have called this a survival of ancient 
 culture ; with Christianity itself it has no other con- 
 nection than that of contemporaneous existence. The 
 conception which Christianity has introduced into the 
 
 M 
 
178. Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 doctrine of immortality is not so much that of a here- 
 after as that of an eternity. The expression ' future 
 state/ so familiar in the popular intercourse of men, 
 scarcely represents the Christian idea of the soul's 
 deathless character ; it is rather represented by the 
 phrase, ' the higher life.' The revelation of the 
 Christian immortality is not simply the revelation of 
 a life which is to come ; it is the proclamation of a 
 life which is eternal, and which, therefore, is a present 
 possibility. Eternity is not a state excluded from 
 time ; time is itself a portion of eternity, it is simply 
 the name we give to the fragment of eternal existence 
 which is bounded by our earthly years. The life of 
 eternity in the Christian sense is round about time 
 and within time ; it does not need a future condition 
 of things to bring it nearer. Men speak of 'going 
 to heaven ;' the expression invariably used by the New 
 Testament is ' the kingdom of heaven coming to us.' 
 The difference between popular language and scrip- 
 tural language marks the difference between the 
 Christian culture and that old pagan culture which 
 has been incorporated with it. The heaven and the 
 hell of antiquity were worlds to come ; the heaven 
 and the hell of Christianity are in the first instance 
 present atmospheres. There are declared to be already 
 in the moral world two atmospheres of life, both of 
 which are capable of resisting the assault of death. 
 One of these is that in which the natural soul already 
 dwells. The man of sin and selfishness is declared by 
 
Immortality in the Light of Revelation. 179 
 
 Christianity to be now in the state called hell, and the 
 sole question is how he is to be delivered from it : ' This 
 is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, 
 and men have loved the darkness rather than the light, 
 because their deeds were evil.' In this remarkable 
 passage the condemnation of sin is said to be a present 
 fact, and the hell which it involves is declared to 
 consist in the desire of that which is undesirable, in 
 the love of that which is unlovely. But Christianity 
 proclaims the existence of another and a higher atmo- 
 sphere. It declares that there has come to the human 
 organism a new and a divine Head, and that from this 
 new source there is flowing down into all the members 
 of the body a life that shall never die, His own eternal 
 life. None the less is it a life which permeates time 
 and begins in time. Every man who is in union with 
 the divine Head is declared in the most unequivocal 
 language to be already in possession of immortality, 
 of eternity, of the state popularly called future : ' This 
 is life eternal, to know Thee.' ' He that hath the Son 
 hath life.' ' Hereby we know that we have passed 
 from death unto life.' ' Ye are dead, and your life is hid 
 with Christ in God.' ' I am the resurrection and the 
 life ; he that believeth in me shall never die.' ' There 
 are some standing here who shall not taste of death 
 until they see the kingdom of God come with power.' 
 These are amongst some of the most striking utter- 
 ances of what may be called the Christian paradox of 
 the doctrine of immortality. But perhaps there is one 
 
180 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 more striking than any of these ; we mean that form 
 of expression so familiar in the Pauline epistles, which 
 declares the human soul to be already partaker of 
 Christ's resurrection. There is something almost 
 startling in that utterance of Paul to the Colossians : 
 ' If then ye are risen with Christ, seek the things 
 which are above.' Paul is so sure of the fact, that he 
 does not even make it the main clause of the sentence; 
 he assumes it as something which could never be 
 doubted, and his chief care is directed to the establish- 
 ment of that which follows from it. And yet what is 
 the fact which is here so interwoven with the Christian 
 consciousness ? It is not merely the promise of 
 immortality, it is not simply a vision of that life 
 which is possible for the human soul, — it is the recog- 
 nition of an actual process of resurrection through 
 which the followers of Christ are even now passing. 
 Paul declares that what in the light of nature was a 
 hope for the future, has become in the light of Christ 
 an experience of the past, a fact already accomplished, 
 a drama whose main act is done : ' Ye are risen.' Can 
 we enter into the thought of the apostle ? Had he a 
 thought in his mind, or do his words express no more 
 than a rhetorical rhapsody ? So far from being rhetori- 
 cal, they were to him the enunciation of a syllogism. 
 Why does Paul say that if Christ is risen we are 
 risen ? it is because he takes for granted that Christ 
 is the Head of the body, and that those who follow 
 Him are members of His body. The primrose is 
 
Immortality in the Light of Revelation. 181 
 
 more than the prophecy of the summer, it is the 
 head of the rising year ; when it appears above the 
 ground, the summer is potentially risen. Christ was 
 to Paul the primrose of humanity, the Head of the 
 human body. When the Son of man appeared above 
 the dust of death, the vision came to £aul as a resur- 
 rection of the entire year. He saw in it more than a 
 promise. To him the union between the Head and 
 the members was so close, so deep, so intimate, that 
 the rising of the one must of necessity mean the rising 
 of the other. It is in the light of this thought alone 
 that we are able to explain a fact which, from the 
 mere standpoint of natural observation, must ever be 
 a matter of surprise, — we mean the joyousness of the 
 first Church of Christendom. It is perhaps not too 
 much to say that the brightest period in the history 
 of Christianity is the period in which, from the worldly 
 side, its fortunes seem the darkest. We feel instinc- 
 tively that the Church of the apostolic epistles is a 
 Church of exuberant joy, at the very moment when we 
 know historically that it is a community oppressed 
 and afflicted, despised and rejected of men. Sur- 
 rounded by adverse influences on every side, op- 
 posed on the one hand by the soil of its nativity, 
 and on the other by the power of the empire, com- 
 posed of members drawn chiefly from the lowest social 
 strata, comparatively few in number and unmistakeably 
 weak in personal weight, the Christian Church at this 
 very moment reveals a spectacle of boundless con- 
 
182 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 fidence, which it is hard to discover in the history of 
 her prosperous years. But when we look into the 
 epistles themselves, the ground of the mystery vanishes. 
 We see that the confidence arose from the belief that 
 the Church was a membership, that those who consti- 
 tuted it were the component parts of a living body, 
 and that the Head of that body was already lifted from 
 the grave. The primrose was up, and therefore the 
 summer had potentially come. The first-fruits of the 
 new season had appeared above the soil, and therefore 
 its remaining product was potentially risen. Christen- 
 dom claimed a vital union with its Head, and therefore 
 it claimed already to be in possession of His immor- 
 tality, to be partaker of His resurrection, to be recipient 
 of His eternal life, to be raised together with Him. 
 
 Such, then, is the Christian conception of im- 
 mortality, as distinguished from the merely natural 
 conception. We must now inquire if the Christian 
 conception contributes anything to the light of 
 reason ? Does it supply any missing link in the 
 order of nature ? does it suggest a pathway through 
 any difficulty, which the order of nature has failed 
 to reveal ? It seems to us that it does, and we 
 proceed to indicate one or two of the methods by 
 which it achieves this end. No man denies that 
 the light of nature, however little it may prove, has 
 much to suggest on the subject of immortality, but 
 it suggests some difficulties too. For one thing, it is 
 evident that, so far as the five senses are concerned 
 
Immortality in the Light of Revelation. 183 
 
 there is at death an interruption to the bond of 
 human brotherhood. The light of nature is forced 
 to recognise that all the immortality to which she 
 can point is one which passes beyond her own light ; 
 she sees but the portal of an unknown country. As 
 long as a man remains in this world, he is linked 
 with an iron chain, perhaps we should say with a 
 golden chain, to the brotherhood of humanity. He 
 has received an inheritance from the past, he will 
 bequeath an inheritance to the future ; and his life in 
 every moment of the present is so influenced by the 
 lives of others, that he can no more subsist alone, 
 than a planet could continue to shine if its comrades 
 were swept away. There is a law of moral gravi- 
 tation which binds the living to the living and as 
 long as life lasts that law endures. But when death 
 comes we seem to see a change. The golden chain 
 is to all appearance broken. We can perceive no 
 link of connection between the immortal life and the 
 mundane life. The man who yesterday was bone 
 of our bone and flesh of our flesh, appears to have 
 burst away from the bond of human brotherhood, and 
 to have passed into a region where the human exists 
 no more. We cannot help thinking that it was a 
 reaction against this feeling which contributed to 
 suggest the belief in the doctrine of transmigration. 
 Men wanted to think of their brother man as not 
 wholly separated from the chain of human continuity, 
 and therefore they fondly imagined that he had 
 
184 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 passed into some other earthly form. Yet even 
 transmigration did not fill the blank. So far as the 
 living were concerned, the bond of brotherhood was 
 as much broken as if the dead had left the earth, 
 for the new form was in reality a new life, and never 
 conveyed to the beholder any suggestion of the old. 
 Nature proved powerless even to hint at the bridging 
 of the chasm which death seemed to leave between 
 the living and the departed. 
 
 But here Christianity steps in, and proclaims to 
 the world a doctrine which, if accepted, would be 
 indeed the missing link of nature, which, so far from 
 destroying the natural hope of immortality, would 
 supply the weak point in the natural hope, and 
 bring it nearer to natural reason. It declares that 
 the followers of Christ have a bond of humanity that 
 can never be broken either by death or by life. It 
 says the tie which binds the human family is a 
 divine relationship, — we are members of a body whose 
 Head is already risen. The pure human soul, the 
 soul which reveals God's ideal of humanity, can never 
 by any process be separated from its environment. 
 Go where it may, whether in this world or in other 
 worlds, it can never travel beyond the limits of that 
 great chain which binds it, for it is a chain whose 
 topmost link rests upon no contingency, but upon 
 one who is the absolute Head of the whole circle of 
 creation. In passing into that sphere which the 
 light of nature calls unknown, it cannot pass beyond 
 
 & 
 
Immortality in the Light of Revelation. 185 
 
 the pale of humanity, for the unknown region has 
 itself been filled and sublimated by the presence and 
 the headship of the Son of man. Such is the thought 
 which Christianity has superinduced upon the light 
 of nature. We need not say that where it is received 
 it opens up vistas of perspective to which the light 
 of nature is a stranger. 1 It suggests a possible link 
 of association by which the soul may resume its 
 human memories. It reveals a central thought 
 which can keep alive in the spirit of man in any 
 world the continuity of his sense of responsibility. 
 Above all, it supplies the key to that doctrine so 
 prominent in the Anglican Church, — the communion 
 of saints, — a doctrine which annuls the distinction 
 between the dead and the living, and enables the 
 soul on earth to hold communion with the spirits 
 that have passed beyond it. Christianity lifts human 
 nature from its local and temporary station, and sets 
 it potentially on the throne of the universe ; it makes 
 its empire co-extensive with the circle of creation. 
 
 But there is a second difficulty suggested by the 
 light of nature, — it refers to the embodiment of the 
 dead. ' Not that we would be unclothed, but clothed 
 upon,' is the aspiration of the Gentile apostle. It is 
 an aspiration which comes from the very depth of 
 his human nature, and on that account he is not 
 afraid to express it ; he feels that nothing which is 
 natural to humanity can be antagonistic to revelation, 
 
 1 Appendix, Note 18. 
 
186 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 The clothing of the soul is indeed the hard point in 
 nature. No man in the world doubts an immortality 
 of some kind, not even the materialist ; it is impos- 
 sible to conceive the annihilation of an existing sub- 
 stance. Nature reveals perpetual change, but no 
 destruction ; old forms pass away to make room for 
 new forms, yet the elements of the old are taken up 
 into the new. Nevertheless it is just here that 
 nature fails to satisfy the soul's immortal instinct, for 
 it happens that the form or embodiment is the very 
 thing which the soul desires to keep. Its greatest 
 dread of death has ever been the fear of being 
 unclothed. It knows that without its clothing it 
 would be without its personality, would become a 
 vague mysterious essence, living an undefined exist- 
 ence, and inhabiting a region which must ever be 
 inaccessible to every finite thought. The dearest 
 thing to the natural soul has always been its person- 
 ality ; and it is just because death has threatened to 
 rob it of this, that death to the natural soul has 
 generally been dark and dreadful. To the popular 
 mind of Greece, and to the popular mind of Judea, 
 death was associated with a peculiar repulsiveness, 
 and it was so for precisely the same reason ; alike to 
 the Greek and to the Jew, death was a diminution 
 of personality. The spirits of the departed became 
 shadows, they ceased to be substantial forms ; they 
 passed into a world which was almost equivalent to 
 a land of dreams, where the spirits of men became 
 
Immortality in the Light of Bei elation. 187 
 
 void of emotion, of impulse, almost of consciousness. 
 No doubt the later stages of Judaism arrived at a 
 brighter hope, in the prospect of a final resurrection 
 in which the spirit should resume its form, but even 
 here there was something wanting to satisfy the 
 thirst for immortality. A final resurrection could 
 guarantee the soul for the far future, but what 
 of the long intermediate ages ? Was death to be 
 a temporary suspension of intelligence ? Was the 
 spirit of man to pass into a sleep of centuries, from 
 which it was only to be wakened by the trumpet of 
 the judgment day ? That was the question which 
 Judaism could not solve, and which Christianity 
 itself would fail to solve, if it had no other hope 
 than that of a final resurrection. But Christianity 
 has something more to bring. The immortality 
 which it proclaims to the world is not simply a 
 reproduction of the immortality of Judaism ; l if it 
 has accepted from Judaism its doctrine of a final re- 
 surrection, it has added to it another doctrine which 
 is all its own, — a doctrine which provides not merely 
 for the interests of the far future, but offers an im- 
 mediate refuge from the present horrors of the grave. 
 That doctrine is the human membership in the 
 body of Christ. When the apostle says we are 
 members of His body, he intends to give expression 
 to a fact whose truth is not limited to the present 
 
 1 Paul calls death sleep, but probably only to describe its appear- 
 ance to the spectator. 
 
188 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 scene of existence. He declares that death will not 
 be able to unclothe him, and he assigns a reason 
 for his declaration, which, if founded on historical 
 reality, must be thoroughly satisfactory : ' We know 
 that if the house of this tabernacle be dissolved, we 
 have a building of God, a house not made with 
 hands, eternal in the heavens.' When he speaks of 
 being clothed upon by his house which is from 
 heaven, he is alluding to the fact that he is already 
 potentially partaker in the resurrection body of the 
 Son of man. He means to indicate that death 
 cannot disembody his soul, cannot deprive his spirit 
 of a dwelling-place, cannot send him out as a vague 
 abstraction into a world of equally vague abstrac- 
 tions. He maintains that such a catastrophe is no 
 longer possible ; that he is in possession of another 
 body, independent of the frail and perishable earthly 
 one ; that he is already the member of a divine 
 organism which is not subject to decay, and that in 
 union with this organism, his soul, even at the 
 moment of death, shall find a habitation. If we ask 
 in what mode Paul conceived this embodiment of 
 the. soul at death to be effected, the question is one 
 which cannot and ought not to be answered with 
 dogmatism ; he has 'nowhere formally stated his view 
 of the material connection between the resurrection 
 body of Christ and the individual embodiment of the 
 departed soul. It seems to us, however, that the 
 thought in his mind was this : There have been two 
 
Immortality m the Light of Revelation. 189 
 
 heads to humanity, — a first and a second Adam. As 
 a matter of fact, all the natural bodies of human 
 beings which now exist in the world have been 
 evolutions from the one body of the first Adam ; 
 they are but the multiplication through long ages of 
 the primal substance of humanity. 1 Even so in the 
 second and higher Adam there is a body which is 
 capable of an endless multiplication, of an infinite 
 series of partitions. By a spiritual generation, whose 
 method to us is as yet unknown, the body of the 
 second Adam shall be subjected to a process ana- 
 logous to that of the first, and shall reproduce its 
 own image in a multitude of newborn lives. 2 Such 
 we believe to be the view of Paul, but we do not 
 press the point. He has not definitely formulated 
 his view, and therefore he has left a margin for 
 human imagination. But upon the general fact 
 there can, we think, be no doubt. It seems evident 
 that in the membership of the soul in Christ's risen 
 body the apostle of the Gentiles saw more than a 
 strength for the present hour; he saw in it a hope 
 for the future, and a hope precisely in that place 
 which nature had left a blank. He beheld in it the 
 assurance that he would not require to wait unclothed 
 till the dawning of a final resurrection morning, that 
 in the immediate hour of death there was provided 
 
 1 In Paul's view, which is that of Genesis, all humanity ultimately 
 springs from a single form. 
 
 2 Is not the participation in Christ's resurrection body fore- 
 shadowed in the distribution of the sacramental elements .' 
 
190 Natural Elements of Revealed Tlieology. 
 
 for his spirit a local habitation, and that the con- 
 tinuity of his earthly being would be preserved in a 
 human form. 
 
 We come now to a third point on which the light 
 of nature has left something to be explained ; it 
 differs from the two foregoing in being ethical rather 
 than speculative. It has been frequently urged by 
 the deist, reasoning from the principles of pure 
 nature, that the belief in a future state lowers the 
 value of a man's moral action. It has been said 
 that a man who does good in order that he may gain 
 heaven, or refrains from evil in order that he may 
 avoid hell, is morally in a lower position than the 
 man who does good simply because he loves good, 
 and refrains from evil simply because he hates evil. 
 And, indeed, we confess that if we had no other 
 standard than the deistic, — in other words, than that 
 which is called the purely natural, — we should our- 
 selves be shut up to this conclusion. If immortality 
 be solely in the future, if it be a life which lias no 
 reference whatever to this present life, if, in short, it 
 lias no connection with our moral actions beyond the 
 promise of a future reward offered for their success- 
 ful performance, it would seem to follow that lie 
 who could perform them without the promise of the 
 reward would be a spiritually higher being than he 
 who required such an incentive. But the moment 
 we have assimilated the Christian atmosphere, we 
 are forced to abandon the deistic standpoint. That 
 
Immortality in the Light of Revelation. 191 
 
 atmosphere, as we have seen, ushers us into a new 
 conception of immortality, a conception in which it 
 is no longer merely future, but intensely present and 
 immediately active. The immortality which Chris- 
 tianity reveals, is not so much the motive for which 
 a man works, as the motive power by which he works. 
 It is not so much the hope in a far future, which by 
 its incentive of coming glory beckons him on, as the 
 strength of a present life, which by the impulse it 
 imparts to his heart and to his hand enables him to 
 renew his earthly days. In such an immortality as 
 this there is no selfishness. It is no longer a state 
 which is foreign to the moral nature of man ; it is 
 itself his moral nature sublimated, enriched, glorified. 
 It is a more complete experience of the inward power 
 of holiness, a more perfect realization of the incom- 
 parable charms of virtue. The man who is holy 
 through the power of the Christian immortality, is 
 holy through the love of holiness, pure through the 
 power of purity, good through the vital strength of 
 the very life of goodness. 1 
 
 But the link which of all others has been supplied 
 to the chain of nature by the Christian conception of 
 immortality, is the infinite value of a human soul. 
 We have already in the course of these lectures had 
 occasion to mark how the exclusive contemplation of 
 external nature has tended to weaken individual hope. 
 There are times when we gaze into the vast expanse 
 
 1 Appendix, Note 19. 
 
192 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 of the heavens, and come back to ourselves almost 
 in despair, uttering the refrain of the old Psalmist's 
 words: 'What is man that Thou art mindful of him?' 
 It is, indeed, only in the awakening of our moral con- 
 sciousness that we are able to combat such a thought ; 
 it is only when we recognise the infinite claims of 
 conscience that we are able to master the crushing 
 sense of this physical infinitude. Yet even Judaism 
 could not reach a clear light of immortality; however 
 perfect was its sense of God's law, it had a deep 
 sense of man's inability to fulfil it. In the course of 
 time there had appeared no life which could suggest 
 to the human soul the spectacle of moral infinitude, 
 because there had appeared no life in which humanity 
 had failed to detect a flaw. That life came with 
 Christianity. Explain the phenomenon as we may, 
 adopt what theory we please of the person of its 
 founder, the fact remains undisputable, that Chris- 
 tianity has bequeathed to the world the portrait of 
 an unblemished personality. The mythical theory, 
 even could it prove itself, would be powerless to 
 shake this vital fact. If we were forced to believe 
 that humanity, by a stupendous miracle, had ex- 
 cogitated out of its own depths the moral portraiture 
 of the Son of man, the conclusion would still remain 
 untouched, that it had excogitated a perfect portraiture, 
 and that in giving to the world this picture it had 
 revealed the infinite value of a human soul. For 
 tins is, after all, the crowning evidence which the 
 
Immortality in the Light of Revelation. 193 
 
 New Testament gives of man's immortality. If we 
 were asked to lay our hand on that aspect of the 
 Son of man which most of all suggests the undying 
 character of human nature, we should point not to 
 His promise of the many mansions, not to the mani- 
 festation of His power to arrest the march of death, 
 not even to the full completion of that power in the 
 fact of His own resurrection, but to that which 
 underlies all these things, — the sinless humanity, the 
 unsullied moral being. It is here that first and 
 foremost we catch, as from the heights of Pisgah, a 
 glimpse of the promised land. It is here that for 
 the first time in the world's history there is suggested 
 to the spirit of man the thought of its own infinite 
 possibility, and the direction in which that possibility 
 will be found. Within the limits of a human form 
 conscience asserts the limitlessness of its empire, the 
 infinitude of its claim, the unconditioned splendour 
 of its goal. We learn that in the moral sphere we 
 have a surer word of prophecy than in either the 
 sphere of the physical or the region of the intel- 
 lectual life. We learn that the power which can 
 say so imperatively 'Thou shalt,' 'Thou shalt not,' has 
 already transcended the limitations of the seen and 
 temporal. Above all, we learn that the command 
 is no delusion. We see its requirement fulfilled 
 in a spotless human soul, and in that fulfilment we 
 see our hope of immortality. In the vision of 
 the sinless humanity, we feel that already we are in 
 
194 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 communion with the things which are unseen and 
 eternal. 
 
 Such is the Christian demonstration of the soul's 
 immortality, — the vision of the moral dignity of man. 
 Nearly nineteen centuries have passed since that 
 vision was first given to the world, but at the end 
 of them it may still be said that its power is not 
 dimmed, nor its natural strength abated. We have 
 passed, indeed, into a totally different intellectual 
 atmosphere from that which witnessed the dawn of 
 Christianity, and to many it seems as if the old 
 belief in human dignity must surrender to the new 
 conditions in which man dwells. Science has taken 
 the place of the spontaneous contemplation of nature, 
 and the latest researches of science appear on a first 
 view to point to the humbling of human intelligence. 
 We have entered into a world where the scientific 
 watchword is evolution, where the scientific aim is 
 the reduction of all things to the unity of a common 
 origin. We are told that man must now be content 
 to accept that life which is in him as a possession 
 which he shares in common with the beast of the 
 field, differing indeed in the intensity of its degree, 
 but essentially the same in kind. We are told that 
 the life which animates the world is but one exist- 
 ence variously developed, ' sleeping in the plant, 
 dreaming in the animal, waking in the man.' That 
 this common origin of life has been established as a 
 demonstrable fact, science itself does not hold : that 
 
Immortality in the Light of Revelation. 195 
 
 it ever will be so established, we for our part do not 
 believe. But in the face of modern fears we would 
 simply ask, If it should be proved to be true, what 
 then ? We might well return as an answer the 
 testimony of one of its most competent and distin- 
 guished supporters. In the conclusion of that long 
 and able article on evolution which he has written 
 for the UncyclojKedia Britannica in conjunction with 
 Professor Huxley, Mr. Sully has not scrupled to 
 point out how easily the modern view of evolution 
 lends itself to the old belief that all things exist for 
 the sake of man. 1 And, indeed, a moment's reflection 
 must show that lie has spoken truly. If evolution 
 be true, if Darwinism be the law of creation, science 
 lias given back to man with her left hand what she 
 has taken away with her right. She has placed him 
 at the head of the earthly creation, at the climax of 
 this world's development, so far as that development 
 has yet advanced. To him all things tend. Science 
 does not say that they tend voluntarily ; she professes 
 to ignore the question of final causes, but none the 
 less does she maintain that the course of the history 
 of creation has been an onward and upward march 
 towards the formation of a human soul. That human 
 soul can thus not only look down from an eminence 
 on the stages which have preceded it, but can see 
 in those stages the servants and ministrants that 
 have, consciously or unconsciously, prepared its way. 
 
 1 Appendix, Note 20. 
 
196 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 This is much ; but science, if rightly interpreted, has 
 even more to tell. What is the principle of the 
 Darwinian law ? it is the survival of the strongest, 
 the power of certain forms to outlast other forms. 
 Yet what is the principle of survival but another 
 name for the principle of immortality ? that which 
 lives longest is that which has most of the immortal 
 in it. Here, then, by the admission of its own 
 advocates, is the end of evolution, — the development 
 of the immortal or surviving element. And what by 
 the same admission has been hitherto the surviving 
 element, what is that force of nature which reveals 
 itself in this world as superior to all other forces ? 
 It is the spirit of man. Man is the latest product of 
 nature, because he is the strongest product of nature ; 
 and he is the strongest product, because within him 
 there is most of life and least of death. All things 
 have been tending towards his immortality, and that 
 by which he differs from the series of preceding 
 gradations is just the possession of that immortal 
 principle which these gradations have evolved. 
 
 Such is the legitimate conclusion which a believer 
 in Christianity would be entitled to draw from the 
 doctrines of modern science, if these doctrines were 
 proved to be established facts. The hope of immor- 
 tality would not be destroyed, would not even be 
 weakened; it would simply be shifted into a new 
 channel. As it is, the proof of these doctrines remains 
 still in abeyance, and religion can afford to await the 
 
Immortality in the Light of Revelation. 197 
 
 issue without fear. Meantime it seems to us that Chris- 
 tianity would do well to make her apologetic strong- 
 hold that principle of survival which is exhibited in 
 herself. If man has been the most immortal force 
 in nature, Christianity has been the most immortal 
 force in man. She has shown her power of survival 
 by her power not only to outlive successive stages 
 of culture, but to enfold these, while they existed, 
 within her own atmosphere. We do not measure 
 the survival of Christianity by the geographical 
 extent of its dominions : the religions of the East 
 have frequently enjoyed a wider domain. We do 
 not measure it by the number of its votaries : Buddh- 
 ism has in this respect far excelled it. We do not 
 measure it by the actual duration of its earthly years : 
 most of the Eastern forms of worship have laid claim 
 to a longer antiquity. But comparatively small as 
 is the number of its votaries, and comparatively 
 short as has been the duration of its years, Christianity 
 has shown within its sphere a power of survival 
 which no other religion can claim. The religions of 
 the East have stretched over wide geographical areas, 
 and endured without change through the course of 
 many centuries ; but over all that space, and through 
 all that time, there has been prevailing only one form 
 of culture. The East is constitutionally moveless, 
 inert, stagnant ; is it not in keeping with its character 
 that its forms of faith should be moveless, inert, and 
 stagnant too ? But Christianity has been cast into a 
 
198 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 world of change. The scene of its development has 
 been the ever - fruitful and the ever - varying soil 
 of Europe. It has passed through a multitude of 
 vicissitudes, political, social, and moral. It has lived 
 longer in nineteen centuries than Brahmanism has 
 done in three millenniums ; its power of survival has 
 been manifested by its universal power to adapt and 
 assimilate. It has seen and survived not merely 
 different, but contrary stages of civilisation. It began 
 amid the fires of imperial persecution, yet it was not 
 consumed. It passed next into the enjoyment of 
 imperial power, yet it has outlived the perilous 
 prosperity. It next became a theocratic priesthood, 
 but it has survived the debasement of its mediaeval 
 corruptions. It was called by and by to experience 
 the conflict of its faith with a new heaven and a new 
 earth : the Ptolemaic gave place to the Copernican 
 system of astronomy, and the Christian dignity of 
 man threatened to vanish like a dream. But it has 
 not vanished : it has survived the change, and found in 
 it the starting-point for a new march of mind. If 
 ever there was a force which has seemed to hold the 
 secret of immortality, that force has been Christianity. 
 Its power has never lain in the resistance, but always 
 in the appropriation, of surrounding influences ; and 
 analogy would lead us to conclude that the source of 
 its strength in the past shall be the source of its 
 strength for the future. If we were asked by a 
 struggling mind of the nineteenth century what 
 
Immortality in the Light of Revelation. 199 
 
 should be his religious attitude in relation to the 
 current speculations, we should answer, If you are 
 in doubt about Christianity, do with it in the mean- 
 time as science does with her own theories. The 
 man of modern science out of a few preliminary 
 probabilities constructs a grand hypothesis of Dar- 
 winian evolution, and he assumes that hypothesis to 
 be true until the facts shall prove it to be false. 1 
 He applies it as a key to the lock of the universe ; 
 and wherever the key suits the lock, he comes into 
 possession of a fresh argument. Christianity also 
 has its preliminary probabilities. It comes to us 
 with the antecedent prestige of having opened the 
 doors of many universes, of having proved the fitting 
 key to unlock the treasures of successive civilisations. 
 Shall we suspend our faith in Christianity until the 
 speculations of the nineteenth century shall have 
 endorsed its truth ? Not so. Rather shall we go out 
 to meet the existing culture, and apply once more to 
 the lock that key which has fitted so many doors. 
 We will not wait for the new culture to interpret 
 Christianity ; we shall bring Christianity to interpret 
 the new culture. We shall give it at the least a 
 hypothetical assent, that hypothetical assent which 
 science claims for her theories ; and we shall try its 
 power by that standard which has hitherto been 
 unfailing. — its strength to survive the mutable, and 
 its capacity to blend with universal life. 
 
 1 Appendix, Note 21. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Note 1, Page 10. 
 
 IT is well known that the apologists of last century 
 did not give prominent emphasis to what are 
 distinctively called the doctrines of grace. They 
 employed against the deist his own rationalistic 
 weapons, and they confined themselves to the sphere 
 where such weapons would be available. Perhaps 
 the error of these apologists consisted in too much 
 narrowing the rational sphere of theology. Their 
 apologetic neglect of the evangelical element in 
 Christianity did not originate in any doubt of the 
 truth and efficacy of that element ; it originated in 
 the belief that, true and efficacious as it was, it was 
 yet incapable of being reached by the natural powers 
 of the human mind, that it inhabited a region into 
 which the consciousness of man could not directly 
 penetrate, but which it could only approach through 
 the intervention of a foreign power. The distinctive 
 truths of Christianity were regarded as supernatural 
 not merely in their origin but in their nature ; and as 
 
202 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 they were incapable of being understood by the 
 reason of him who subscribed them, they were in- 
 capable of being applied to the reason of him who 
 denied them. It was thus an ultramontane tendency 
 which led the apologists of the last age to confine 
 their attacks on deism to the proof of miracles, the 
 verification of prophecy, and the exhibition of the 
 utility and value of Christian morals. The tendency 
 has survived in some of the best apologists of our 
 own century. In the article ' Christianity ' which he 
 wrote for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, and which has 
 since appeared in another form, Dr. Chalmers has 
 not hesitated to base the main strength of Chris- 
 tianity on its external evidence. He says there are 
 two ways in which we may judge of the truth of a 
 statement, — by testing the credibility of the message, 
 and by testing the credibility of the messenger. In 
 the case of Christianity, he regards the former course- 
 as no longer open to the inquirer. We cannot 
 determine the truth of Christianity by the credibility 
 of its message, for that message is by supposition 
 beyond the reach of our faculties : man cannot 
 know the mind of God, and therefore he is not in 
 a position to judge whether the revelation of God is 
 in congruity with His own mind. In a question of 
 Christian evidence, reason has only one function ; it 
 cannot sit in judgment on the divine will : all it can 
 do is to determine whether that will has been 
 revealed. There has come to the world what 
 
Appendix. 203 
 
 purports to be a message from God ; if it be a 
 message from God, it cannot be judged in itself; the 
 only task within the province of reason is to decide 
 by external evidence whether the messengers are men 
 whose testimony is to be believed. 
 
 Such, then, according to Chalmers, is the mission 
 of the natural mind in relation to revealed truth : it 
 has to judge, not whether the will of God is con- 
 gruous with nature, but whether the will of God has 
 been historically revealed ; and if on this point it 
 should reach an affirmative conclusion, it has to bow 
 implicitly to the supernatural authority of the 
 mandate. Now, if it be so, it seems to us a mis- 
 nomer to speak, as we commonly do, of the will of 
 God being revealed ; we ought to say simply that it 
 has been declared. The revelation of a will is some- 
 thing more than its mere announcement ; if it be 
 nothing more, then Judaism had already a perfect 
 revelation. What makes Christianity in this respect 
 superior to Judaism, is just the fact that what was 
 formerly announced has now been explained. Eevela- 
 tion, if it be anything, must be a clearing up ; and 
 whatever is cleared up is brought into congruity with 
 the human understanding. Christianity professes to 
 be a revelation, and therefore its highest evidence 
 must be the credibility of its own message. Yet 
 this fact, so far from weakening the credibility or the 
 authority of the messenger, is precisely that which 
 constitutes the ground of his authority, for in Chris- 
 
204 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 tianity the messenger is Himself the message, the 
 revealer is Himself the object of revelation, and the 
 belief in Him who speaks is at the same time the 
 assent to the thing which is spoken. The credibility 
 of the message is made one with the credibility of 
 the messenger in the utterance, ' I am the truth.' 
 
 The view of Dr. Chalmers is strongly prefigured 
 in that portion of Bishop Butler's work which deals 
 with the doctrine of atonement. He has adopted 
 the common division of Christ's work into the three 
 offices of the prophet, the priest, and the king 
 {Analogy, part II. chap. v. p. 131, Barnes' edition, 
 1859). He finds no difficulty in recognising a 
 natural basis for the first and third of these : Christ 
 the prophet and Christ the king may be paralleled 
 in the government of nature. But when he comes 
 to consider the divine priesthood, he is inclined to 
 regard it as occupying a different plane : he is dis- 
 posed to treat it as for the most part mysterious, and 
 requiring to be judged of through another than the 
 natural medium. Now this is perhaps the part of 
 Butler's work which will find least acceptance with 
 modern thought. The tendency of the nineteenth 
 century, in every department of study, has been to 
 reach that unity which underlies the distinctions of 
 things, and theology has not escaped its influence. 
 The theologian of our day will naturally be disposed 
 to view the three offices of Christ's work as he is 
 tending to view the two natures of Christ's person. 
 
Appendix. 205 
 
 The most evangelical thought in Germany has of late 
 years been seeking to discover the unity of the God- 
 man. Recognising a distinction between the divine 
 and the human in Christ, it is unwilling to admit 
 that the distinction amounts to a spatial separation. 
 It would demur any longer to say that as man He 
 slept in the ship, and that as God He stilled the 
 waves ; it seeks to realise that He is divine where 
 He is human, and that He is human where He is 
 divine. Perhaps we might illustrate its position by 
 a phenomenon of the human mind. Man has a 
 power of imagination, and he has also a power of 
 memory, yet there is no single act of imagination 
 which does not involve memory, and there is no 
 single act of memory which does not involve 
 imagination, understanding by that word the power 
 to represent an idea. Even so the theological 
 thought of the nineteenth century is seeking more 
 and more, in every act of the Master, to find the unity 
 underlying the distinctions of His person, to see the 
 Son of man in the Son of God. Working upon the 
 lines of this tendency, we have endeavoured in the 
 third and fourth lectures to find the same unity 
 underlying the kingly and priestly offices of the 
 Redeemer, have sought to show that His power is 
 not the antithesis of His sacrifice, that He is king 
 where He is priest, and that He is priest where He 
 is king. If such a conclusion were attained, its effect 
 would be to bring within the range of natural ex- 
 
206 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 perience a much larger portion of the doctrine of 
 atonement than can be admitted by the system of 
 the analogy. 
 
 It is quite true, indeed, what Butler says, that we 
 are not judges of the efficacy of the atonement 
 antecedently to revelation (ibid. p. 133). In accord- 
 ance with this view, we have pointed out in the first 
 lecture that the deepest need is only definitely 
 recognised in the moment of its supply. But while 
 we admit that we are not judges of the efficacy 
 of this doctrine antecedently to revelation, we hold 
 that after revelation we are judges of it in a natural 
 and not in a supernatural manner. The doctrine of 
 atonement professes to make its appeal to human 
 love, and it professes to ground that appeal upon the 
 manifestation of an antecedent divine love : ' We love 
 Him because He first loved us.' If the love which 
 is called forth be natural, the manifestation of love 
 which has called it forth must be natural too. It 
 can only influence human nature where it touches 
 human nature. Doubtless there must lie behind it 
 a region of mysteries unexpressed and inexpressible, 
 but it is not that region which appeals to the love of 
 man. The soul which finds rest in a vision of the 
 redeeming work, finds rest in that part of the work 
 which has come within the range of its human ex- 
 perience ; it yields up its nature to the operation of 
 the new life, because it already beholds in that life a 
 condescension to the limits of its nature. 
 
Appendix. 207 
 
 Note 2, Page 12. 
 
 Tn calling the theology of Christian Wolf and his 
 school * the most sober Protestantism/ we have in- 
 tended to describe the fact that it occupies an 
 intermediate position between the preceding super- 
 naturalism and the subsequent negative rationalism. 
 Previous to the rise of that theology, the Lutheran 
 Church had relapsed into a position somewhat 
 analogous to the Ultramontanism which preceded the 
 Reformation. The Reformation contained what is 
 called a material and a formal principle, the former 
 being justification by faith, and the latter the means 
 of grace. It was thus an honest attempt to unite 
 those human and divine elements which had been 
 separated by the later medievalism. But, as Dorner 
 points out, it was not long before the Reformation 
 itself abolished the union it had accomplished. The 
 two elements which had been united acjain became 
 separated, and the first century of the Reformation 
 did not pass until its followers were found ranged in 
 two opposing camps. One party held by the pre- 
 eminence of the material principle. They adopted 
 justification by faith as the watchword of Protestant 
 freedom, and held it as the safeguard of the individual 
 against absorption in the life of the Church. Another 
 party stood fast by the formal principle — the creeds 
 and confessions of Protestantism. They were not so 
 
208 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 much impressed with the human as with the divine 
 element in the new movement. They did not attach 
 so much importance to faith as to the faith, did not 
 place so much value on the freedom to choose a 
 new creed as on the efficacy and the persistence of 
 the creed which had been chosen. The progressive 
 and conservative elements of the Reformation were 
 really a debate on the question to what extent the 
 human mind was a judge of the divine revelation. 
 The controversies of Major and Amsdorf, of Strigel 
 and Flaccius, of Osiander and Chemnitz, were in 
 reality controversies to determine how far the divine 
 communication was natural, and how far it was alien 
 to the human soul. It was to meet these divergent 
 views, it was to restore if possible the broken 
 harmony of the Reformation, that there was drawn 
 up in 1575 that form of confession known as the 
 Formula of Concord. It is not our province here to 
 enumerate the points of that document ; the student 
 will find them ably indicated in Shedd's History of 
 Doctrines, vol. ii. pp. 154-168, and Dorner's History 
 of Protestant Theology, German edition, pp. 320-329. 
 We have only to point out here that the Formula of 
 Concord, however abortive in its efforts, was a sincere 
 and laudable attempt to restore the first days of 
 Protestantism, and to bring back the spirit of the 
 Reformation to its original reconciliatory bias. 
 
 Yet, to say that the Formula of Concord proved 
 abortive, is to say too little ; it became itself the 
 
Appendix. 209 
 
 cause of a new divorce between the human and the 
 divine element. The document ultimately proved 
 retrogressive, and the point in which its regress 
 became apparent was the doctrine of atonement. 
 Lutheranism had been much engrossed by the 
 question whether the efficacy of Christ's atoning 
 work consisted in His passive or in His active obedi- 
 ence, whether it lay in His endurance of suffering 
 or in His power to keep the law ? The Formula of 
 Concord decided in favour of His active obedience, 
 but it did so in such a way as might help to recon- 
 cile the controversy. It held that the efficacy of the 
 ^Redeemer's work lay in His keeping of the law, but 
 it virtually went on to say that this keeping of the 
 law was itself a species of suffering, as it was some- 
 thing which Christ, from His divine nature, did not 
 need to do. The result of such a decision must be 
 evident: it was the same result which Eitschl has 
 pointed out as following the theology of Anselm 
 {History of the Doctrine of Satisfaction). If the 
 divine nature of Christ makes His keeping of the 
 law a work of supererogation, there is interposed a 
 natural gulf between divinity and morality. A God 
 who is out of law is in the worst sense of the word 
 a supernatural God ; if He be not united to man in 
 the essence of his moral consciousness, He can have 
 no point of union with man anywhere. Accordingly, 
 from the publication of the Formula of Concord, we 
 find that the Lutheran Church went more and more 
 
 o 
 
210 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 back to the position of the later medievalism. The 
 next hundred years of its history may be regarded 
 as distinctively the dogmatic age of Protestantism. 
 Faith was superseded by the faith, the form took 
 precedence of the spirit, and the outward authority 
 of the Bible usurped the place of that higher and 
 deeper authority which it claims to exert over the 
 human soul. 
 
 The Wolf! an theology of the eighteenth century 
 was the second great attempt of Lutheranism to 
 restore the balance between the human and the 
 divine. Its way had been prepared by the philo- 
 sophies of Spinoza and Leibnitz, which, different in 
 other respects, were agreed on the paramount claims 
 of reason. The school of Wolf simply translated into 
 theology the tendency which had already appeared in 
 philosophy. It strove to reconcile the claims of the 
 natural and the supernatural. It gave to revelation 
 the priority in time ; the human understanding could 
 not discover the truth of God ; God must Himself 
 reveal it. Nevertheless, when a man accepted the 
 revelation, it ceased to be beyond his understanding ; 
 it became an object of reason, and was made capable 
 of human demonstration. Many divines have looked 
 askance at this Wolfian movement ; they have re- 
 garded it as the originating cause, as it is admittedly 
 the historical precursor, of those systems of negative 
 Bationalism which denied revelation altogether. Nor 
 are we indisposed to admit the logical sequence ; it 
 
Appendix. 211 
 
 is in truth not difficult to trace. The power to 
 demonstrate a doctrine by reason was practically 
 made the test of the reception of divine revelation. 
 When a man came to find that certain doctrines 
 resisted all his efforts at demonstration, the alternative 
 was forced upon him either of sacrificing the revela- 
 tion or of sacrificing his spiritual estimate of himself. 
 Self-love generally turned the scale in favour of the 
 former course. When a doctrine refused to submit 
 to the forms of the understanding, the theologian 
 solaced himself with the hope that perhaps after all 
 it might not be in the Bible. What a man wishes 
 to find, he generally succeeds in finding. Negative 
 Eationalism was not a sudden growth ; it was the 
 gradual modification and ultimate elimination of 
 those points in Christian theology which reason found 
 itself unable to rationalize. The truth is, the Wolfian 
 theology very narrowly missed hitting on a great 
 principle. If it had substituted for the terms reason 
 and understanding the Pauline word ' consciousness/ 
 it would have expressed the true relation between 
 the natural and the revealed. A revelation must 
 appeal to human consciousness ; and any doctrine 
 which does not at some point touch the human con- 
 sciousness, however true it may be in itself, is not a 
 revelation to man. If, therefore, the Wolfian theo- 
 logy had simply declared that when a man accepts 
 revelation he accepts something which he can verify 
 by conscious experience, it would have assumed a 
 
212 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 thoroughly Pauline position. But a thing may he an 
 object of consciousness which is not an object of 
 reason. Consciousness is a wider word than reason ; 
 it comprehends many spheres into which the logical 
 understanding cannot penetrate. We may know what 
 we cannot explain, we can feel what we do not 
 understand ; and to limit the field of knowledge to 
 the region of the understanding, is at once to narrow 
 and to lower the possibilities of the human soul. 
 
 Nevertheless, when all has been said, we must 
 admit that in intention the Wolfian theology was 
 pure. If it became the logical source of negative 
 nationalism, it did so against its will, and ought not 
 to be charged with the moral consequences which 
 flowed from it. It meant well to the interests of 
 Protestantism. It designed to bring back the Pro- 
 testant spirit, while yet it preserved the claims of 
 dogmatic truth ; and it strove to afford some scope to 
 the researches of natural reason, while yet it retained 
 inviolate the supernatural authority of revelation. 
 
 Note 3, Page 1 2. 
 
 The history of the relation of the natural to the 
 supernatural in the pre-Reformation ages is a subject 
 not free from difficulty. Reuss thinks that the 
 earliest use of the word ' faith ' in the apostolic 
 Church was its employment to denote, not a tran- 
 scendental faculty, but a simple hope in the mercy of 
 
Appendix. 213 
 
 God. In his view, it was something which pointed 
 not to the acquisition of present knowledge, but to 
 the prospect of future salvation (History of Christian 
 Theology in the Apostolic Age, vol. i. page 420, trans- 
 lated by Annie Hardwood). Eeuss, however, treats 
 the Epistle of James as the embodiment of the earliest 
 Christian thought. He is undoubtedly right in find- 
 ing in this epistle the use of the word ' faith ' here 
 indicated; but whether the epistle itself can be regarded 
 as the earliest dogmatic expression of Christian truth, 
 is a point by no means settled, and by no means to be 
 easily settled ; it is perfectly possible that the Pauline 
 may be the earlier view. In the system of Paul, 
 faith is not simply a hope in the future, but a source 
 of present knowledge. Yet even here we should 
 not be disposed to call it a transcendental source of 
 knowledge. Paul opposes faith to sight, but never 
 to reason or to the natural consciousness ; and we 
 have sufficiently exhibited in the text his tendency 
 to seek a harmony between the human and the 
 divine. 
 
 When we pass to the patristic period, we find 
 that the Christian fathers are on both sides of this 
 question. On the one hand, they admit a harmony 
 on many points between the religion of Christ and 
 the religions which preceded Christ. Tertullian, 
 though essentially an empirical mind, bases the proof 
 of God on the human consciousness. Justin Martyr 
 is willing to allow to Socrates the name of Christian. 
 
214 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 The Eastern Church in general is built upon what 
 Neander calls a world - appropriating tendency, a 
 tendency to seek and to incorporate all that is good 
 in mundane systems. In the view of some, Plato 
 was the heathen counterpart of Moses, the school- 
 master who was to do for the Gentiles what the 
 lawgiver did for the Jews — bring them to Christ. 
 Although the Eastern Church was disposed to make 
 the receptive organ of divine revelation in some sense 
 a transcendental faculty, it did not regard it as tran- 
 scendental in the sense of being superhuman ; it was 
 something which belonged to the original constitution 
 of humanity, and which only transcended humanity 
 in its fallen and sinful state (see Hagenbach's History 
 of Doctrines). But it is just here that there emerges 
 the other side of the question. When we look closely, 
 we find that if the fathers allowed to heathen systems 
 any element of truth, they did not allow it on the 
 ground of what would now be called a science of 
 religion, but simply on the ground of an original 
 divine revelation of which the heathen nations, even 
 in their debasement, retained some fragmentary 
 memories. The early patristic theology thus ab- 
 stracted with its left hand what it had conceded to 
 heathen humanity with its right, and practically 
 assumed the position of antagonism to a science of 
 religion. 
 
 As we advance in the course of ecclesiastical history, 
 we are confronted by a strange problem. On the one 
 
Appendix. 215 
 
 hand, we find a growing intellectual tendency to 
 approximate towards those forms of thought associated 
 with the names of Plato and Aristotle ; on the other 
 hand, we find an increasing moral distance between 
 the sympathies of Christianity and heathendom. The 
 contradiction may be strikingly illustrated by one 
 distinguished example, that of Augustine. No Chris- 
 tian writer has been more largely indebted to the 
 results of heathen speculation, no theologian shows 
 more evident traces of a tendency to blend the system 
 of Christianity with the best fruits of pagan culture. 
 The philosophic side of Augustine's theology, which 
 is the side most valuable to a student, is in great 
 measure the OTaftinGj of Platonism into the Christian 
 vine. And yet this same Augustine, who finds so 
 much to borrow from the intellectual treasures of 
 heathendom, is of all men the most averse to the 
 person of the heathens themselves, of all men the 
 most despondent as to their ultimate possibilities and 
 future destiny. He seems unwilling even to allow 
 them the possession of natural gifts and graces ; he 
 declares that their virtues are only splendid vices. 
 Is there any conceivable method in which we can 
 account for this seeming inconsistency in the mind of 
 a man who is perhaps even yet the greatest of system- 
 atic theologians ? It seems to us that the explanation 
 lies in the distinction drawn by the fathers between 
 the image and the likeness of God (see Hodge's System- 
 atic Theology, vol. ii. p. 96), — a distinction begun by 
 
216 Natural Elements of Revealed Tlieology. 
 
 Tertullian, more distinctly defined by Augustine, and 
 culminated by medievalism. It was held that the 
 image of God in which man was made, was the power 
 of intellectual perception, that the likeness of God 
 was the power of moral assimilation. When man fell 
 from his state of purity, he lost the likeness but not 
 the image ; the likeness or moral element was super- 
 natural, the image or rational element was natural. 
 If we approach the subject with this distinction in 
 view, we shall not find it difficult to explain how 
 at one and the same moment the fathers could be 
 affected towards heathendom by an influence of at- 
 traction and repulsion. We shall understand how, at 
 the very moment when they regarded it as deprived 
 of that divine likeness which they held to be super- 
 natural, they should have sought in it for the remains 
 of that divine image to which they still assigned a 
 place in the natural creation, and should have accepted 
 the pagan approximations to truth as the evidences of 
 an original revelation which man at first received 
 from the creative breath of God. 
 
 Augustine may be regarded as the point of transi- 
 tion to medievalism. It is from him that medieval- 
 ism derives its celebrated dictum, ' Faith precedes the 
 intellect.' There are, however, two opposite ways in 
 which this dictum may be read. It may be under- 
 stood to mean that because faith comes before reason, 
 faith is more important than reason ; or it may be 
 taken to signify that as reason comes after faith, reason 
 
Appendix. 217 
 
 is the goal of faith, and faith only the schoolmaster to 
 prepare for the goal. In point of fact, both of these 
 views were adopted by different phases of the medieval 
 mind. The Catholicism of the eleventh and twelfth 
 centuries was really divided into what now would be 
 called a narrow and a broad Church. On the one 
 side were the men who emphasized the precedence of 
 faith ; on the other side were the minds who exalted 
 the claims of reason as the goal and completion of 
 faith. The former was the more Eomanising view, 
 and the view which tended most to resist the progress 
 of speculation ; yet the latter might plausibly claim to 
 represent the true conservative spirit, for it could 
 point to a very clear foreshadowing of itself in the 
 theological tenets of the school of Alexandria. These 
 were the parties which, in counterbalancing each other, 
 helped to balance the mediaeval world, and contributed 
 to preserve the golden mean between the sluggishness 
 of inaction and the recklessness of revolutionary 
 anarchy. 
 
 Morell has divided the religious history of heathen- 
 ism into three epochs. The first period is that in 
 which faith takes the pre-eminence over reason, ex- 
 tending from the days of Augustine to the age of 
 Anselm. Then begins the second period, or the 
 attempt to harmonize the dicta of faith with the con- 
 clusions of reason ; this is the distinctively scholastic 
 age. Lastly, we have the separation of faith and 
 reason into two different spheres, — a separation carried 
 
218 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 to such an extent by the latest medievalism, that 
 in some cases it was held that a thing might be 
 philosophically true and theologically false (Morell's 
 Philosophy of Religion). We must point out, however, 
 that this final stage of mediaeval supernaturalism had 
 really its germ in the theology of Anselm. Anselm's 
 theory of the atonement, while it was an attempt to 
 harmonize the conclusions of faith and reason, had 
 precisely the same effect upon the subsequent period 
 as we have seen the Formula of Concord to have exerted 
 upon the succeeding age of Protestantism, and it had 
 that effect for precisely the same reason, — it placed 
 God outside of law. Man was a debtor both to God's 
 honour and to God's justice. The divine honour 
 demanded the existence of a perfectly good man. But 
 even should a perfectly good man be able to exist, 
 the debt would still be unpaid ; something must be 
 done to expiate the fact that the honour of God had 
 been so long unsatisfied. Accordingly the perfectly 
 good man must do more than is expected of him ; he 
 must perform a work of supererogation, in order to 
 satisfy God's justice as well as His honour. That 
 work of supererogation is found in the fact of Christ's 
 divine nature, which puts Him naturally above law, 
 and makes the keeping of the law on his part a pure 
 act of grace {Cur Deus Homo). With reference to 
 this view, we have already subscribed to the opinion 
 of Eitschl (see Note 2): a divine nature whose divinity 
 consists in being above the sphere of law, and to 
 
Appendix. 219 
 
 whom the observance of law is a work of supereroga- 
 tion, cannot be regarded in any other light than as a 
 God who is supernatural in the sense of being un- 
 natural. The theology of Anselm thus proved the 
 unconscious means of preparing the way for that 
 divorce of reason and faith which culminated in the 
 mediaeval age, and produced the reaction of the 
 Eeformation. 
 
 Note 4, Fage 18. 
 
 The work of Lord Herbert from which the five 
 points are taken, is the treatise Be Veritate. For the 
 publication of that work he has assigned a very 
 remarkable reason. We quote the passage simply to 
 show that the God of Lord Herbert of Cherbury was 
 an immanent God, capable of special, even of super- 
 natural, communion with His creatures, and therefore 
 very far indeed removed from the extreme develop- 
 ment of deism : — 
 
 1 Being doubtful in my chamber, one fine day in 
 summer, my casement being open towards the south, 
 the sun shining clear, and no wind stirring, I took my 
 book De Veritate in my hands, and kneeling on my 
 knees, devoutly said these words : " Thou eternal 
 God, author of this light which now shines upon me, 
 and giver of all inward illuminations, I do beseech 
 Thee of Thy infinite goodness to pardon a greater 
 request than a sinner ought to make. I am not 
 
220 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 satisfied enough whether I shall publish this book. If 
 it be for Thy glory, I beseech Thee give me some 
 sign from heaven ; if not, I shall suppress it." I had no 
 sooner spoke these words, but a loud though yet gentle 
 noise came forth from the heavens, for it was like 
 nothing on earth, which did so cheer and comfort me, 
 that I took my petition as granted, and that I had 
 the sign I demanded ; whereupon also I resolved to 
 print my book. This, how strange soever it may 
 seem, I protest before the eternal God is true ; neither 
 am I in any way superstitiously deceived herein, since 
 I did not only clearly hear the noise, but in the 
 serenest sky I ever saw, being without all cloud, did, 
 to my thinking, see the place from whence it came.' 
 
 Note 5, Page 33. 
 
 The ultimate authorities for the religion of India 
 are the Vedas. The name is derived from a root 
 signifying ' to know,' and is the same as that which 
 reappears in the Greek and German verbs expressing 
 knowledge, and in the Latin word videre, ' to see.' 
 The Vedas consist of two parts, one earlier, the other 
 later ; the former is known by the name of Mantras, 
 the latter by that of Brahmanas. The Mantras, or 
 earlier portion, are poetical compositions consisting of 
 a series of hymns and prayers. The word is derived 
 from the root man, ' think ; ' and the idea evidently 
 is, that the best road to the thought or knowledge of 
 
Appendix. 221 
 
 God is that feeling of dependence implied in praise 
 and prayer. We find here, on the threshold, a cor- 
 roboration of the view taken in the text, that the 
 earliest forms of Indian religion are those in which 
 the spirit of man is impressed with its own nothing- 
 ness, and that the earliest religious search of the 
 Indian mind is the search for that principle of 
 fatherhood which explains the origin of things. 
 With reference to the Mantras, see Colebrook's 
 Miscellaneous Essays, vol. i. p. 308, and Miiller's 
 Ancient Sanscrit Literature, p. 343. 
 
 The Brahmanas are the prose portion. They are 
 to the Mantras in some measure what the law is to 
 the prophets in the Old Testament. They give 
 regulations for the times and ways of observing the 
 ritual, and seek to explain the origin of the rites 
 themselves, constituting in this latter respect the 
 germ of philosophic Brahminism. At the same time, 
 it is worthy of remark that even in this germ of 
 philosophic consciousness the sense of dependence 
 still remains. It is nowhere more clearly seen than 
 in the fact that the early Indian worship is unable 
 to reach a moral standpoint. The rules which it 
 observes are observed mechanically, and without any 
 apparent perception that there is right in the nature 
 of things. The moral consciousness, indeed, seems 
 to have been untouched by the religious forms of 
 this period, — a proof that man had not realized his 
 superiority to the forces of nature. In support of 
 
222 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 this statement, we quote the opinion of one who will 
 not be suspected of religious narrowness or a want 
 of intellectual sympathy with pre-Christian forms of 
 faith. Professor Wilson says: 'Entire dependence 
 upon Krishna, or any other favourite deity, not only 
 obviates the necessity of virtue, but it sanctifies vice. 
 Conduct is wholly immaterial. It matters not how 
 atrocious a sinner a man may be, if he paints his 
 face, his breast, his arms with certain sectarial 
 marks, or, which is better, if he brands his skin 
 permanently with them with a hot iron stamp ; if he 
 is constantly chanting hymns in honour of Vishnu, 
 or, what is equally efficacious, if he spends hours in 
 the simple reiteration of his name or names ; if he 
 die with the word Hari, or Rama, or Krishna on his 
 lips, and the thought of him in his mind, he may 
 have lived a monster of iniquity, — he is certain of 
 heaven ' {Essays and Lectures chiefly on the Religioih 
 of the Hindus, vol. ii. p. 75, ed. London, 1862). 
 
 We do not wonder at such a picture. What 
 Hegel says of China is also true of India, — where 
 subjectivity is sunk, morality can only be discerned 
 under the form of mechanical obedience to law. 
 With Hegel, China and India are alike in this, that 
 they both exhibit a state of the human soul in 
 which man has not discovered the distinctive reality 
 of his being as a force apart from nature, although 
 in the case of India he recognises a progress towards 
 this goal, and finds man emerging into the broken 
 
Appendix. 223 
 
 and partial consciousness exhibited in a dream (see 
 Hegel's Philosophy of History). It is not, of course, 
 implied that this absence of the moral consciousness 
 involves an absence of natural culture. On the 
 contrary, it is manifest, from a study of the early 
 Indian hymns, that the same men who were so 
 dormant to the realities of the moral world, had 
 acquired a very considerable knowledge of the 
 practical arts of life (see Wilson's Rigveda). Nor is 
 this wonderful. These men were in a state of 
 sensuousness. Their minds were absorbed by the 
 study of the external, and it is not surprising that 
 they should have derived from that study some 
 acquaintance with the powers and processes of the 
 physical universe, and some facility in applying 
 them to the practical wants of every day. The 
 principle of fatherhood which they worshipped was, 
 as we have seen in the text, the life underlvin^ the 
 objects of nature. At first that life was perceived as 
 if it were broken up into many lives. In the earlier 
 Vedas the objects of nature receive a separate 
 worship, and each forms a distinct god. Agni is 
 the fire of the sun, or lightning. Indra is the bright 
 firmament. The Maruts are the winds. Surya is 
 the sun. Ushas is the dawn. And as the object 
 on which the eye of reverence fastens is material, 
 the benefit expected from its worship is material 
 also. Men have not yet learned to appreciate the 
 value of a moral consciousness at peace with itself, 
 
224 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 because they have not yet been awakened to the 
 presence of a moral consciousness at all ; they can 
 only ask for what they know, and as yet they only 
 know the advantage of being in harmony with life in 
 its outward surroundings. 
 
 When we come to the Brahmanas, we find that 
 the Indian worship has, in two respects, undergone a 
 change from the aspect it exhibited in the poems. 
 We see, for one thing, that the qualities ascribed to 
 the gods begin to partake more of a moral character, 
 — a fact which certainly indicates a dawning sense 
 of superiority to the objects of physical nature. Not 
 less clearly marked is the tendency towards the 
 recognition of a gradation of rank in the celestial 
 hierarchy. This fact points to the increasing desire 
 of the human mind for one object of worship who 
 shall be supreme over all others. It is probably 
 from this idea of the celestial gradation that we are 
 to date the origin of caste. There is no trace of 
 this institution in the earliest books (see Wilson's 
 lligveda), and its omission seems to us another proof 
 that the first Indian consciousness was that of abso- 
 lute dependence ; when man begins to separate his 
 species into ranks, his sense of dependence is no 
 longer absolute. The institution of caste marks a 
 growing sense of importance, and the same sense of 
 importance must be allowed to be implied in the 
 attempt to regulate the rank of the gods. 
 
 In the Upanishads the tendency becomes yet 
 
Appendix. 225 
 
 more marked towards unity of worship, for here the 
 objects of nature begin to be represented rather as 
 different symbols of the creative life than as them- 
 selves separate and independent deities, and this 
 forms the real transition to Brahmanism proper. 
 The essential idea of Brahmanism, at least in its 
 earliest and purest period, is the identifying of 
 creation with divine manifestation. We shall have 
 occasion hereafter to recognise a later form ; but the 
 original idea of Brahmanism assuredly is, that out 
 of the void the Lord of all manifests Himself, and 
 that His manifestation is the natural universe. The 
 universe is the birth of God in time. The process 
 is effected through the medium of a golden egg, in 
 which the temporal form of the divine life is pro- 
 duced. At the end of a definite time, the divine 
 life, by a mere act of thought, cuts the egg asunder 
 into two halves, and by the partition forms the dis- 
 tinction between the earth and sky (see Muir's 
 Original Sanscrit Texts, vol. iv. p. 31). The division 
 of nature into the earth and sky illustrates a very 
 prevalent tendency of the Eastern mind to seek in 
 the universe for both a paternal and a maternal 
 principle, — for a masculine or active element, and a 
 feminine or receptive element. Even the rigid unity 
 embodied in the religion of the Chinese Confucius is 
 forced in some measure to give way before this 
 desire to find a twofold principle in the origination 
 of the universe ; and here, as in Brahmanism, we 
 
 p 
 
226 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 behold the impersonal life splitting itself asunder 
 into two separate existences, one constituting the 
 heavens, the other the earth, — one forming the male, 
 the other the female element of creation (see Hard- 
 wick's Christ and other Masters, 2d ed. vol. ii. p. 30). 
 From all this it is made manifest that the earliest 
 search for God is the search for a principle of father- 
 hood. Man's first consciousness beinsj a sense of 
 dependence, he is forced to seek an origin for him- 
 self, and to name the object on which he depends. 
 He finds that object in the life of nature, and he sees 
 in the life of nature at once the fatherhood and the 
 motherhood of the universe, the principle of action 
 and the principle of receptivity, the power which 
 gives and the power which receives. 
 
 Note 6, Page 45. 
 
 When we say that apotheosis, or the lifting of men 
 up to the level of gods, does not, in our opinion, 
 mark a very early stage of religious consciousness, 
 we may seem to be at variance with so eminent an 
 authority as Mr. Tyler, who places the germ of the 
 doctrine in the tendency of savages to worship the 
 souls of their ancestors {Primitive Culture). This 
 indiscriminate ancestral worship, indeed, is by no 
 means limited to savages. Eeal or fancied reference 
 to it has been found in the Old Testament (see that 
 curious book, Faber's Many Mansions in the House 
 
Appendix. 227 
 
 of the Father, p. 55). It is, at all events, indis- 
 putable that it forms a constituent element in the 
 worship of China. We must again point out, how- 
 ever, what we have stated in the text, that our aim 
 is not to consider the religious nature of man in its 
 germ, but rather in the full strength of its natural 
 development. There is one great difference between 
 this early ancestral worship and the subsequent 
 doctrine of apotheosis. The former does not really 
 proceed from a sense of the glory of humanity, nor 
 even from a desire to glorify it ; it is the product at 
 once of human impotence and of human selfishness. 
 The ancestral dead are supposed to fight the battles 
 of their descendants, to contend for their ri slits in 
 war, and to revenge the injuries inflicted by their 
 enemies. We were struck by a remark reported to 
 have been made by Principal Fairbairn of Bradford, 
 in his second course of lectures on the Science of 
 Religion, delivered at Edinburgh in 1880. In 
 speaking of the ancestral worship of China, he said 
 that the nation which was most solicitous about the 
 immortality of its ancestors was the nation which of 
 all others cared least for its own. The statement 
 is certainly true, and it is also highly suggestive : 
 it shows that a nation which worships its ancestors 
 is not necessarily on that account in the enjoyment 
 of an elevated sense of human dignity. In truth, 
 this indiscriminate worship of ancestors proceeds 
 from a different moral source to that which origin- 
 
228 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 ates apotheosis : the former springs from the con- 
 sciousness of dependence, the latter from the growth 
 of human ambition. 
 
 The view we have taken in the text is in substan- 
 tial agreement with that of Dorner. He recognises 
 two kinds of incarnation in the pre-Christian world. 
 In one of these, the lives of men are the manifestations 
 of God ; in the other, the life of the gods is a sublima- 
 tion or apotheosis of the lives of men. He places the 
 former in the East, the latter in the West, and there- 
 fore he virtually assigns to the latter a later origin. 
 As representatives of the idea of incarnation, he 
 prefers the Eastern manifestations to the Western 
 apotheosis, yet he finds that the East failed to reach 
 that idea after which it was groping ; its manifestations 
 of God in men were transient and evanescent, and 
 w T ere forced to end in the absorption of the individual. 
 On the other hand, the doctrine of apotheosis, if it 
 escaped the shadowy character of an Eastern mani- 
 festation, was equally far from realizing the Christian 
 standard of incarnation, for the men whom it exalted 
 into gods were circumscribed by their rival interests, 
 by their nationality, and by the principle of fate which 
 lay behind them {History of the Development of the 
 Doctrine of Christ's Person, Introduction). 
 
 In excluding the idea of apotheosis altogether from 
 the East, Dorner may seem to have overlooked that 
 very remarkable phenomenon of Eastern religious life 
 which appears in the later Brahmanism. Brahmanism 
 
Appendix. 229 
 
 consists of two great philosophic epochs, which are 
 known respectively as the Vedanta and the Sankhya 
 system. The Vedanta system is that which we have 
 already described as Brahmanism proper ; in it both 
 nature and humanity are the manifestations of a 
 divine life. The Sankhya system may be roughly 
 described as a direct reversal of the process ; in it the 
 divine life is the result of a development in the lives 
 of nature and humanity. It is curious to observe 
 how, in these respective systems, the two great forms 
 of modern evolution are anticipated, — the one regarding 
 the growth of this world as a process of the life of 
 God, the other looking upon it as a process self- 
 directed, though leading, it may be, to infinite issues. 
 The Sankhya system makes matter the origin of all 
 things, only it allows to matter an element of volition, 
 which in process of time developes into the force of a 
 divine intelligence. Yet we can hardly regard this 
 as a representation of apotheosis ; it is rather an 
 apotheosis of nature than an apotheosis of humanity. 
 If humanity is lifted up to the divine level, it is only 
 so elevated as a part of nature. Man is but a frag- 
 ment of the great physical whole ; he has no inde- 
 pendent being, he has no distinct individuality ; and 
 if he rises into the rank of a divine incarnation, it is 
 only because he has first been absorbed in the mighty 
 forces of the physical universe. 
 
 Thus far, then, the evidence is in favour of a 
 Western origin of apotheosis. Gibbon practically takes 
 
230 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 the same view, when he places the beginnings of this 
 tendency in the worship of Alexander and his suc- 
 cessors by Asiatic Greece {Decline and Fall of the 
 Roman Empire, chap. iii.). We are disposed, indeed, 
 to think that here, for the first time, the doctrine of 
 human apotheosis takes a definite shape. There are 
 certainly much earlier indications of its existence ; but 
 hitherto the heroes who are made divine are either 
 fabulous or semi-fabulous, and one great secret of 
 their apotheosis is their distance in the mists of 
 antiquity. Here the heroes are flesh and blood, — men 
 whose forms and whose failings are familiar to their 
 fellow-men. As a general rule, it may be affirmed 
 that the doctrine of apotheosis exhibits a constant 
 development from the ideal to the real. It has its 
 origin in the worship of imaginary human beings, 
 such beings as humanity would like to be able to call 
 real. It passes next into the intermediate phase 
 between history and fable, and heightens with ima- 
 ginary colouring those forms and acts of men which 
 have really some foundation in fact. It then reaches 
 the stage of the actual worship of humanity, and lifts 
 into the rank of gods those who still survive in the 
 memory of the living. Lastly, it pays divine honours 
 to the living themselves, and in the reverence for 
 Eoman imperialism arrives at the final goal of earthly 
 realism. From all this we conclude that the doctrine 
 of apotheosis, however early may have been its 
 beginnings, only reaches its definite and normal stage 
 
Appendix. 231 
 
 of development in the period which followed the pro- 
 mulgation of the philosophy of Plato. 
 
 Note 7, Page 60. 
 
 The deistic, theistic, and pantheistic relations to 
 the universe will all be found in Christianity ; that is 
 to say, if we take up different parts of the Christian 
 system, and consider each in isolation from the other, 
 we shall find prominence given to one or other of 
 these elements. Of course, in point of fact, no such 
 separation is possible, but it is possible to make it in 
 thought. There are three categories under which the 
 divine life may be contemplated, — the will of God, 
 the kingdom of God, and the Spirit of God. Take 
 these in separation from one another, and you will 
 find that they suggest respectively the deistic, theistic, 
 and pantheistic relation. The will of God, if con- 
 sidered in isolation from all other modes of His 
 nature, will suggest the idea simply of a supramun- 
 dane power, whose essence consists in its exaltation 
 above all the relations of things ; this is really the 
 view of Deism. The kingdom of God, if considered 
 in isolation from all other modes of His being, will 
 suggest essentially the element of law, the conception 
 of a deity whose main prerogative is His sovereignty 
 over the lives of His creatures ; this is the distinctive 
 standpoint of Theism. The Spirit of God, if con- 
 sidered in isolation from all other modes of His work- 
 
232 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 ing, will suggest the presence of a divine power 
 within the soul, and of a divine life inseparable from 
 that order of life which subsists throughout the 
 universe ; this is essentially the standpoint of Pan- 
 theism. In point of fact, Christianity does not isolate 
 these conceptions ; it unites them into one consistent 
 whole, and by the exhibition of their union it proves 
 that they are not contradictory conceptions, but 
 phases of human thought which only need a larger 
 thought to join them. It reveals to us a Being of 
 omnipotent power, whose will is untrammelled by the 
 conditions of earth and time. It reveals to us a 
 Being of universal sovereignty, who has consented, as 
 the King of the universe, to enter into earthly and 
 temporal relations. It reveals to us a Being who has 
 Himself become a portion of that world which He 
 governs, and who, in the presence of an all-diffusive 
 Spirit, has caused all spheres of thought to live, and 
 move, and have their being in Him. Christianity has 
 thus here, as ever, conquered the systems of nature, 
 not by rejection, but by incorporation ; and has solved 
 the discrepancies of the natural reason, by gathering 
 its seemingly opposite conclusions into one great 
 scheme of concord and harmony. 
 
 Note 8, Page 78. 
 
 The idea of membership in a divine body, though 
 not met with outside the Christian age, is indeed 
 
Appendix. 233 
 
 found in that age outside the Christian circle ; we 
 meet with it among the later Stoics. The early 
 Church was much exercised to explain the many re- 
 semblances between the teaching of Christianity and 
 the teaching of the contemporaneous philosophy, and 
 it endeavoured to account for the similarity by the 
 supposition that the leaders of the great philosophic 
 schools had been accidentally brought within the 
 range of Christian intercourse. Philo was supposed 
 to have come into contact with Peter, Seneca to have 
 been brought into companionship with Paul (Keim, 
 Jem von Nazara, vol. i. p. 277, T. T. F. L.). The 
 view, as Keim points out, is of course untenable ; nor 
 is the modern spirit anxious to retain it. We are no 
 longer eager to find an origin for every natural good 
 in the historical manifestation of Christianity ; rather 
 do we expect to find that the light which lighteth 
 every man shall have communicated to diverse 
 systems something of its own unity. Christianity 
 claims to be the light of the world previous to its 
 historical manifestation ; and if its claim be well 
 founded, we need not be surprised to discover that 
 at the time of its appearance there was a common 
 life in the air. Gibbon should have added a sixth 
 secondary cause for the propagation of Christianity, 
 — the comparative culture of the Gentile nations. 
 The heathendom of that day was much nearer to the 
 divine life than the heathendom of ours, and on that 
 account it was much nearer to the reception and 
 
234 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 appreciation of that truth which appeals to all that 
 is highest in human nature. 
 
 Nevertheless a little reflection will make it evident 
 that the idea of divine membership entertained by 
 the later Stoics, is essentially different from that idea 
 which was diffused by Christianity. The whole 
 question centres round one point, — What is that body 
 in which the membership is constituted ? Now the 
 general standpoint of the later Stoicism may be indi- 
 cated in one word — Hylozoism ; that is to say, the 
 belief that the material universe is to the divine life 
 what the body is to the soul. Matter is regarded as 
 the embodiment of God. The divine embodiment is 
 thus not a human organism ; it is the entire frame- 
 work of physical nature. To have a membership in 
 the divine body is simply to be a part of the uni- 
 versal framework. Men have undoubtedly such a 
 membership, but they have it, not because they are 
 men, but because they possess material forms, and 
 they share it in common with all the objects of 
 nature. Human beings in this system are members 
 of the divine body as parts of that stupendous 
 physical whole which itself constitutes the embodi- 
 ment. The Christian conception is in one respect 
 the reverse. Here humanity is the primary organism, 
 and nature obtains a share in the organic life simply 
 through its contact with humanity. This thought 
 seems clearly implied by Paul, when he declares that 
 in the redemption of the human soul the creation 
 
Appendix. 235 
 
 itself shall be delivered from the bondage of cor- 
 ruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. 
 The physical universe is here made to play a sub- 
 ordinate part in the process : it no longer constitutes 
 the whole of which humanity is a fragment ; it is 
 itself the fragment of which humanity is the whole, 
 and its entire hope of emancipation lies in the 
 emancipation of the human organism. Christianity 
 is thus different in its standpoint from the philosophy 
 which was contemporaneous with its birth. In our 
 opinion, the student of Scripture who wants to find 
 a secular parallel to the Christian idea of divine 
 membership, will discover a more effectual one in the 
 philosophy of Auguste Comte than in the system of 
 the later Stoics, for with Comte humanity is itself 
 an organism. It is true he wrote unconsciously 
 under the influence of a Christian atmosphere, yet we 
 cannot but deem it a significant circumstance, that 
 the pioneer of modern positive science should have 
 seen fit to incorporate with his system a travesty 
 of that conception which belongs essentially to the 
 Pauline theology. 
 
 While, however, we thus disclaim any real parallel 
 between Paulinism and later Stoicism, we willingly 
 bear our testimony to the high intellectual aspirations 
 which the philosophy of the later Stoics in many 
 parts exhibits, and to the sincere and fervent piety 
 which in some instances, and pre-eminently in the 
 case of Epictetus, the lives of its disciples have 
 
236 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 evinced. The student will find a very clear and a 
 very popular account of the leaders of that philo- 
 sophy in Canon Farrar's Seekers after God. 
 
 Note 9, Page 81. 
 
 The passage is of course Phil. ii. 6-8. The student 
 of Scripture who carefully considers that passage 
 will find in it, as it seems to us, what from the 
 human side may be called an anti-climax, a ladder 
 of divine humiliations, descending from the great to 
 the less, from the less to the little. It begins with 
 the form of God, the pre-existent glory of the Son of 
 man. It then proceeds to exhibit that process of 
 kenosis by which the divine life emptied out its 
 glory. The first descending step of His humiliation 
 is the assumption. of a servant's form, by which, per- 
 haps, the apostle means to refer to that angelic 
 ministration or mediation in the Old Testament, of 
 which the second person of the Trinity is made by 
 Christian theology the most prominent agent. Then 
 we have the transition to a yet lower step : He 
 passes from the likeness of the ministrant angel to the 
 likeness of the human. Comiug down further still, we 
 find Him not only assuming the likeness but the fashion 
 of humanity, adapting Himself to the shifting modes 
 through which an individual existence is bound to 
 pass. But the humiliation is not yet completed : He 
 not only assumes the fleeting stages of life, but He 
 
Appendix. 237 
 
 assumes each stage in its lowest sphere : ' He humbled 
 Himself.' The crowning form of this humbling is 
 His submission to the laws of humanity : ' He became 
 obedient ; ' the crowning form of His obedience is its 
 endurance c unto death ; ' the crowning proof of His 
 power to endure death is His submission to it in its 
 meanest guise, ' even the death of the cross.' Here 
 is a ladder of condescensions stretching down from 
 heaven to earth, — the form of God, the form of a 
 servant, the likeness of a man, the fashion of a man, 
 the humility of a man, the obedience of a man, the 
 obedience unto death, the death of the cross. We 
 have in the text taken this ladder of humiliations as 
 expressing unitedly the completed fact of incarnation. 
 We have looked upon the incarnation as a gradual 
 historical process, by which the Son of God became 
 ever increasingly the Son of man, added stage by 
 stage to the spheres of His human consciousness, and 
 thereby added step by step to the ladder of His 
 humiliation, until at last His human consciousness 
 was crowned in His utmost humility, — His obedience 
 unto the cross. 
 
 Note 10, Page 95. 
 
 The pessimism of Buddha ought not to be viewed as 
 an isolated phenomenon, occupying a unique place in 
 history ; it was in great measure a reaction against 
 the immediately preceding stage of Indian life, and 
 
238 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 as such it is easily reducible to a natural law of 
 human development. There would have been no 
 Buddhism had there not been a preceding Sankhya 
 system. Buddhism has the same relation to the 
 Sankhya system which the French Revolution has to 
 the age of Louis xvl, — the relation of reactionary 
 revolt. The Sankhya system had within it three 
 elements against which Buddhism was the reaction, — 
 a principle of self-life, a materialistic idea of God, 
 and a mundane conception of immortality. Its 
 principle of self-life found expression in the reverence 
 for caste ; in this the pride of the individual asserted 
 itself in the worst form. To the idea of caste Buddh- 
 ism opposed the thought of a universal brother- 
 hood, and in this respect it occupied a somewhat 
 analogous position to that which the Lutheran move- 
 ment afterwards exhibited in its struggle with the 
 Boman hierarchy. The God of the Sankhya system 
 was, as we have seen, little better than a material 
 principle, — a certain power of volition which was 
 supposed to reside in elemental nature. To this God 
 the Buddhist opposed Atheism. He was unable to 
 see the use of a deity who was devoid of intelligence, 
 and incapable of conscious sympathy ; and as he was 
 not himself yet capable of framing a more spiritual 
 conception, he very naturally fell back upon negation, 
 and refused to recognise a God whom he could not 
 esteem. The immortality of the Sankhya system 
 was but the transmigration from one mundane sphere 
 
Appendix. 239 
 
 into another, repeated through an endless succession 
 of births and deaths. Of these future spheres of 
 existence the Buddhist naturally judged by the 
 present sphere. He had found the present scene to 
 be governed by a principle of self-life, and he had 
 found the principle of self-life to be something which 
 made existence valueless. Was it not inevitable he 
 should come to the conclusion that the immortality 
 of the soul ought not to the good man to be an 
 object of desire, and that the consummation most 
 ' devoutly to be wished ' was the end of all things. 
 Buddhism was thus on every side a system of re- 
 action. Every system of reaction is in one aspect 
 pessimistic, — it regards the state of things against 
 which it rebels as the representation of the worst 
 possible world. The peculiarity of the Buddhist 
 pessimism lies in this, that it had no new state to 
 propose as a substitute for the old one. Unlike the 
 general tendency of revolutions, it did not seek to 
 dethrone an ancient empire that it might set up a 
 new republic ; its aim ended with the act of de- 
 thronement. It was convinced that the rei<niin£ 
 government was bad, but it had no better form of 
 government to suggest in its room ; it felt that its 
 mission would be accomplished when the former 
 things had been swept away. 
 
 Our knowledge of Buddhism dates chiefly from 
 modern times ; previous to the publication of 
 Burnouf's introduction to its history, the facts 
 
240 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 regarding it were very little known. The word 
 Buddhist is derived from Buclh, ' to know/ and is 
 defined by Wilson, 'he to whom truth is known/ 
 Wilson leans to the belief that Buddha is not the 
 name of a real historical man, but the designation of 
 a school of thought, — a view, however, in which he 
 is not supported by the majority of Orientalists. 
 That much of the history of Buddha is mythical 
 and legendary, needs no demonstration, but the fact 
 remains that the Buddhist religion centres round a 
 personality. Almost in contradiction to its antagon- 
 ism to individualism, the Buddhist has identified his 
 religious aspiration with the aspiration to reach the 
 life of one whom he believes to have actually lived 
 on earth ; and it is highly unlikely that, had there 
 been no historical ground for this assumption, he 
 would have so far departed from his natural philo- 
 sophic tendency as to have deliberately invented 
 the idea. In so far as it centres round a person, 
 Buddhism is of all ancient religions that which 
 comes nearest to Christianity. Buddha, indeed, is 
 himself recognised as an incarnation. It must, how- 
 ever, always be remembered that what is called an 
 incarnation is here really an elevation of being. It 
 is not that descent of God into humanity which the 
 Christian religion proclaims, it is rather the ascent 
 into humanity of an inferior material principle. It 
 is, so to speak, a process of God-creation, by which 
 matter becomes conscious, intelligent, divine; whereby 
 
Appendix. 241 
 
 the blind element of will, which the later Brahmanism 
 has located in physical nature, passes into an element 
 of personality, and ripens into the attributes of 
 divinity. 
 
 The goal of the Buddhist pessimism is Nirvana. 
 The word is derived from Nir, 'out,' and Vana, 
 1 blown.' It is commonly taken to signify the ex- 
 tinction of the soul. Max Miiller, indeed, and a few 
 Orientalists, have taken another view. Miiller makes 
 Nirvana the name for that state of rest which the 
 purified soul is to enjoy when emancipated from its 
 earthly transmigrations, a place where the winds 
 never blow and the storms never roar. There is this 
 much in favour of the supposition, that men during 
 life are sometimes said to have already entered the 
 Nirvana — a fact which seems inconsistent with the 
 notion that Nirvana is annihilation ; this language, 
 however, must be interpreted figuratively. No doubt, 
 if the Buddhist could have conceived any higher 
 form of life than the sensuous and selfish one in 
 which he dwelt, he would have welcomed it as the 
 true rest of the soul ; we cannot believe that he 
 loved annihilation for its own sake. But he thought 
 annihilation better than the present state, and he 
 knew of no state higher than the present. There 
 seems to be a strong analogy between his denial of 
 immortality and his denial of God. It is generally 
 believed that the creed of the Buddhist was Atheism. 
 This view is prominently advanced by Saint-Hilaire 
 
 Q 
 
242 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 (Le Bouddha et sa Religion). They did not, he says, 
 so much deny that there was a God, as take for 
 granted that there was none. Professor Flint, on the 
 other hand, while he admits that Buddhism logic- 
 ally led to Atheism, denies that practically it had no 
 divine worship (Anti-Theistic Theories). In favour of 
 this view, there is the undoubted fact that Buddha is 
 himself an incarnation. Hegel is here, as everywhere 
 else, thoroughly characteristic, making as it were a 
 creed out of the negation of worship. Buddhism, in 
 his system, represents humanity arriving at the 
 consciousness of its own divinity, and on that 
 account rejecting alike the natural or material and 
 the supernatural or supramundane objects of wor- 
 ship (Philosophy of History). Miiller regards the 
 Buddhist Atheism as simply a reaction against the 
 belief in those divinities whom the Indian mind had 
 outgrown {Contemporary Review, November 1878). 
 In this last view appears the analogy between the 
 Buddhist denial of God and the Buddhist denial of 
 the future life. Both denials are built upon the fact 
 that the intelligence of the Indian mind has out- 
 grown its past ideals. It has got beyond its former 
 objects of worship, and it has become dissatisfied 
 with its present objects of pursuit ; but as it has 
 not yet found a fitting substitute for these, it is 
 obliged to content itself with simply sweeping them 
 away. 
 
 See Hardy's Manual of Buddhism, Saint-Hilaire's 
 
Appendix. 243 
 
 Le Bouddlia et set Religion, Harchvick's Christ and 
 other Masters, Hegel's Philosophy of History, Flint's 
 Anti-Theistic TJieories, and the little book of Dr. 
 Marcus Dods, Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ. 
 
 Note 11, Page 99. 
 
 The crowning merit of Platonism as an ethical system, 
 is the connection which it seeks to establish between 
 individual virtue and social well-being. Virtue in 
 this system is made the foundation of the very exist- 
 ence of society (see Republic, Book 1, translated by 
 Davis and Vaughan). Hence, as Baron Bunsen says, 
 the republic of Plato is a church rather than a state. 
 In this government, as in the Jewish theocracy and 
 in the conception of the earthly kingdom of Christ, 
 the secular is made to depend on the sacred, the life 
 of the community subsists by obedience to the divine 
 life. Virtue is by its very nature a source of social 
 union, vice is by its very nature an element of social 
 disorganization. Vice is disintegration. It is that 
 process by which the individual retires within him- 
 self, in order to live for himself. Disintegration is 
 death ; it only takes place when the bond of life 
 which united the members has been withdrawn. In 
 the system of Plato sin is thus almost identified with 
 death. It is not surprising that the speculative 
 fathers of the second century should have fastened 
 eagerly on this analogy between the conclusions of 
 
244 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 heathen philosophy and the doctrine of the Old 
 Testament. In the Eastern Church there is observed 
 a constant tendency to explain the story of the fall 
 after a Platonic manner. Adam is the principle of 
 reason, which in itself is strong and godlike. Eve is 
 the principle of sense- affection, which diverts the 
 power of reason from its legitimate sphere. Eeason, 
 by yielding to sense, loses its divine strength, and 
 becomes the slave of the material element (see 
 Clemens Alex., Stromata, 174). In accordance with 
 the same spirit, Origen treats the narrative of the fall 
 as allegorical. Men have sinned in a previous state 
 of existence, and in this life they are punished for 
 that sin. The punishment consists in incorporation. 
 As a retribution for their misdeeds in the pre-existent 
 state, men are clothed in human bodies, and are thus 
 imprisoned and fettered ; it is this which the Book of 
 Genesis intends to portray, through the allegorical 
 statement that when our first parents lost their 
 innocence God clothed them in coats of skin. 
 According to this view of Origen, matter is thus 
 the penalty of sin ; it is not so much in itself the 
 principle of evil, as the inevitable consequence which 
 flows from the principle of evil. However abortive 
 these attempts may have been to find an absolute 
 unity of thought between the Dialogues of Plato and 
 the Book of Genesis, it must certainly be esteemed 
 a matter worthy of consideration, that a historical 
 narrative, professedly so early in time, and unmis- 
 
Appendix. 245 
 
 takeably so primitive in style, should yet have been 
 deemed susceptible of a union with the highest and 
 grandest results of heathen speculation. 
 
 But of all the fathers the most Platonic is 
 Augustine. His Platonism was the result partly of 
 nature and partly of education ; and the strongest 
 proof of the hold it had over him, is the fact that 
 even his conversion to Christianity could not shake 
 it off. Unlike Origen, he goes to the root of the 
 matter. He is not so much in search of sin's 
 consequence, as of sin itself. He wants to find out 
 the source of that moral evil which he believes to 
 be a greater punishment than all its consequences. 
 In making this search, his mind instinctively travels 
 on Platonic lines of thought. Plato had placed the 
 principle of evil in matter, and he had regarded 
 matter itself as the element of death or negation ; 
 sin was here virtually made a negative element. 
 Augustine adopted this view, but added to it a 
 thought which Christianized it. Death is in the 
 first instance negation ; it is simply the withdrawal 
 of life, the absence of that which made the being 
 think and move. But no sooner is the life with- 
 drawn, than death becomes a positive element ; cor- 
 ruption sets in when vitality departs. The negative 
 state passes into a positive process, which reveals its 
 character by the disintegration of the body. Sin, 
 like physical death, is in the first instance a nega- 
 tive state ; it is simply the separation of the soul 
 
24G Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 from that life of God which constituted its source of 
 virtue. But the instant the separation is complete, 
 sin ceases to be a negative state ; it becomes, like 
 physical death, a positive source of corruption. The 
 man who has ceased to be good, — in other words, who 
 has separated himself from the life and power of 
 virtue, — becomes thenceforth the victim of a new life 
 and of a new power. On this account Augustine 
 would distinguish between negation and privation. 
 Negation is the absence of that which never belonged 
 to an object ; privation is the absence of that which 
 did belong to an object, but which it has lost. A 
 stone and a corpse are both in a state of death, but 
 they are not both dead in the same way ; to the 
 former death is negation — to the latter, privation. 
 The stone wants that which it never had ; the corpse 
 wants that which it ought to have. Augustine there- 
 fore would say not so much that sin is a state of 
 negation, as that it is a state of privation. Privation 
 always involves a positive element ; it is something 
 foreign to the object, and therefore it introduces into 
 its nature a discordant power. Sin, by separating 
 man from God, has exposed man to the influence of 
 a life of corruption, of dismemberment, of decay. 
 
 It will be evident, then, that the theological 
 student cannot master the patristic literature with- 
 out having in the process acquired some knowledge 
 of the Platonic spirit. At one period of his life 
 Augustine studied the Scriptures as a preparation for 
 
Appendix. 247 
 
 Platonism ; a course somewhat analogous might still 
 be recommended to the student of philosophy. If 
 he would understand Platonism, he cannot do better 
 than begin with it in those aspects in which it is 
 most contiguous to the Christian consciousness, and 
 he will best find those aspects by an intelligent 
 perusal of the works of the Eastern fathers. If, 
 however, he is desirous to approach the subject from 
 a purely philosophical point of view, we would 
 recommend him to consult Professor Jowett's trans- 
 lation of Plato's Dialogues, Archer Butler's History of 
 Greek Philosophy, vol. ii., and Grote's Plato and the 
 other Companions of Socrates. 
 
 Note 12, Page 103. 
 
 Hegel's view of the historical development of 
 Parsism seems to be this. There are three periods 
 in its history. The first comprehends the worship of 
 the Zend people ; it is that phase of the religious 
 life of man in which the human spirit awakens to the 
 sharp separation between good and evil, under the 
 symbols of light and darkness. The second stage is 
 the Chaldaean worship, in which the spiritual separa- 
 tion is corrupted into a sensuous or physical one, 
 and men cease to regard the light as merely symbolic, 
 but reverence it as itself the essence of purity. The 
 last stage is that in which an attempt is made to 
 reconcile the principle of light and the principle of 
 
248 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 darkness, illustrated by the worship of the dead 
 Adonis in Syria, and by the reverence for the weep- 
 ing Isis in Egypt {Philosophy of History). 
 
 Parsism is thus a dualism, yet there is clearly a 
 development in its dualism. The evil principle of its 
 later stage is more powerful than the evil principle of 
 its first period. It is not difficult to see that, at the 
 time when the religion first breaks upon our view, 
 Ormuzd has the pre-eminence over Ahriman, and evil 
 is rather the disturbance to the reign of goodness than 
 any positive power to initiate a new reign. Nay, it 
 is evident that even this partial dualism was itself 
 the outgrowth of an original unity. There is every 
 reason to believe that the two principles of Parsism 
 were at first one principle, the separation of an imper- 
 sonal essence which was supposed to underlie the 
 universe. Parsism, in fact, seems to have been only 
 another phase of that development which took its 
 rise from Brahmanism. We have seen how the 
 original unity of the philosophic worship of India 
 broke up into the popular recognition of two distinct 
 principles, the one male and the other female. We 
 see here a precisely analogous process, with this one 
 difference, that the essence which in Brahmanism was 
 separated into a male and female principle, was 
 separated in Parsism into a good and bad principle. 
 AVho does not see that the germ of the latter is already 
 given in the former ? The male element is recognised 
 as the better, because the stronger power; and it 
 
Appendix. 249 
 
 requires no prophet to predict that the principles 
 which as yet differ only in degrees of excellence, shall 
 eventually come to be separated by that line of 
 demarcation which divides good from evil. 
 
 In Egypt we see both the earlier and later form,— 
 the former in Isis, the latter in Seth. Isis represents 
 the female principle of nature ; she is the bride of 
 the sun-god Osiris, and weeps when he goes down. 
 Seth represents what may be called the dark shade of 
 nature ; he is conceived as the principle of darkness, 
 and therefore as the antagonist of light and purity. 
 Here, in the same nation, in the same religion, and at 
 the same time, we find existing side by side two 
 phases of civilisation, the one representing the culture 
 of the hour, the other the survival of an older cul- 
 ture. It is impossible, however, to close our eyes to 
 the fact that Egypt is ever striving to outleap both 
 civilisations, to surmount the antagonisms of nature, 
 and to reach again the unity of all things. In the 
 true spirit of Parsism, she is indeed impressed with 
 the belief that nature is in struggle, but, in addition 
 to this belief, there is an underlying hope that the 
 struggle will not be eternal. This hope is powerfully 
 evinced in the successive phases of Egyptian develop- 
 ment, by which the nation passes from the worship of 
 the star to the worship of the animal, and from the 
 worship of the animal to the adoration of that 
 mysterious Sphynx, which adds to the animal life 
 the incipient life of humanity. In that development 
 
250 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 we see the deliberate tendency of the Egyptian mind 
 to vanquish the dualisms of the universe, and restore 
 it to its primitive oneness. The animal life first 
 obtains its legitimate ascendency over material things, 
 even where that materialism is represented by the 
 glory of the starry heavens. At last there begins to 
 dawn the conviction of the legitimate empire of a 
 human soul; the animal life itself ceases to enjoy 
 the highest adoration, and the time is already pre- 
 figured when humanity itself shall awake into the 
 sense of a divine enthusiasm, and the consciousness 
 of a divine mission. 
 
 Note 13, Page 110. 
 
 It has been a frequent subject of dispute whether 
 the Logos of Philo is to be regarded as personal or 
 impersonal. Dorner holds decidedly the latter view. 
 While admitting, as every one must admit, the strong 
 parallelism between the attributes he applies to his 
 principle of mediation, and the attributes which the 
 Fourth Gospel applies to the divine word, he still 
 regards the use of such expressions in Philo as merely 
 figurative and symbolical. He recognises four senses 
 in which Philo makes use of the word Logos. He 
 sometimes employs it to designate a divine power 
 or faculty, sometimes to mark the divine power or 
 faculty in the act of constructing the idea of the 
 world, sometimes to describe the completion of the 
 
Appendix. 251 
 
 ideal world in the thought of God, and sometimes to 
 indicate the process of transition by which the ideal 
 world passes into the actual (see Dorner's History of 
 the Development of the Doctrine of Christ's Person, 
 Introcl pp. 26-42, 2d edit., Stuttgart 1845). Dr. 
 Abbot, on the other hand, seems rather to lean 
 towards the view that the Logos of Philo contained a 
 personal element (see article ' Gospels,' Encyc. Brit.). 
 So we think does Keim (Jesu von Nazara, vol. i. p. 
 287, T.T.F.L.). It seems to us, indeed, that the two 
 views are not necessarily opposite. The distinction 
 between the personal and the impersonal is less 
 distinctly marked in ancient than in modern times. 
 In the Platonic type of thought especially, it is very 
 difficult to draw the line between an idea and a 
 person, and for this reason, that every idea is a 
 potential person, and every person is a concealed 
 idea. In the Platonic philosophy, the beings who 
 are now flesh and blood were originally ideal essences, 
 and will only fulfil their destiny by becoming ideal 
 essences again. Platonism here simply gives expres- 
 sion to a tendency which has already been implied in 
 the previous systems of the East. The divine life of 
 Brahmanism is both personal and impersonal, but it 
 is impersonal before it becomes personal; and it will 
 be impersonal after it has ceased to be personal. The 
 divine principle of the Sankhya system is essentially, 
 as we have seen, the apotheosis of Materialism, or, in 
 other words, the elevation into a divine personality of 
 
252 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 that which originally is devoid of personality. The 
 founder of the Buddhist religion is himself regarded 
 as a divine incarnation, although the religion which 
 he has founded is, strictly speaking, atheistic; the 
 reason is that, in accordance with the Eastern mode 
 of thought, it is perfectly conceivable that a divine 
 personality may arise from the combination and 
 growth of elements which in their origin do not 
 transcend the limits of inanimate nature. Brute 
 matter is here a potential fetich, something which 
 may in the process of time and development give 
 birth to a being who shall be worthy of religious 
 reverence. From all this it is clear that the question 
 whether a divine being is personal or impersonal, 
 loses in ancient philosophy much of its point and 
 significance. It will in general be perfectly possible 
 to maintain, and to maintain successfully, either the 
 one or the other side of the question. In dealing 
 with such a subject in ancient philosophy, the crucial 
 point of inquiry perhaps would be, not whether any 
 particular deity were personal or impersonal, but 
 whether its personality or its impersonality were the 
 earliest manifestation. Christian apologists have 
 been afraid to allow that into Philo's conception 
 there could have entered the personal element ; it 
 has seemed to them that such an admission would 
 destroy the distinction between his Logos and the 
 Logos of Christianity. It would not destroy that 
 distinction. However personal the Logos of Philo 
 
Appendix, 253 
 
 may be, he must still always be an ideal person ; no 
 place has yet been found for him in the order and 
 the development of history. The Logos of Chris- 
 tianity, on the other hand, is not simply personal, but 
 professedly historical. That profession, indeed, is one 
 of the things to be established ; it cannot at the out- 
 set be taken for granted. Yet it is from the outset 
 an undeniable fact that Christianity has secured for 
 itself a place in the very centre of this world's 
 historical movement. Looked at even from the most 
 secular side, and estimated even by the lowest com- 
 putation, it has become one of the greatest forces in 
 the development of the human mind, and one of the 
 strongest factors in the social and political life of 
 modern Europe. In this respect alone it occupies, 
 and must ever continue to occupy, a position essen- 
 tially different from that which is held by the ideal 
 speculations of Philo. Even were it conceded that 
 the Logos of Philo stood on the same ideal level 
 with the Logos of Christianity, the fact would still 
 remain, that while the former has proved an idea and 
 nothing more, the latter has proved an idea which 
 has diverted the stream of the ages. 
 
 The Logos of Philo has, however, one great claim 
 on the interest of the theological student ; it may be 
 said to be the earliest attempt on record to construct 
 a science of religion. In accordance with the spirit 
 of such an attempt, it proceeds on a basis of eclecti- 
 cism. Philo lived in an atmosphere of two intel- 
 
254 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology, 
 
 lectual extremes. He had to contend, on the one 
 hand, with the distant God of Judaism, so distant as 
 to preclude any real communication. He had to 
 struggle, on the other, with the near gods of Greece, 
 so near as to prevent any reverence from entering the 
 heart of the worshipper. Between these extremes he 
 attempted a compromise. He held as decidedly as 
 any Jew that God was incapable of communicating 
 Himself. The God of Philo is the Jehovah of the 
 later Judaism, who to the idea of a spatial distance 
 has added the conception of an intellectual gulf of 
 separation ; He is a God whose nature is so essen- 
 tially different from the human, that no representation 
 of Him can be <nven to a human soul. Yet, incon- 
 sistent as it may seem, Philo has been unwilling to 
 stop here ; he has been attracted towards that very 
 element of Hellenism which is naturally so alien to 
 the Jewish conception. In defiance of his funda- 
 mental idea of God, he has sought to establish a 
 bridge of communication between the infinite and the 
 finite, to find a point of union in which the divine 
 thought may meet with the human' thought ; this 
 medium of communication is the Logos. 
 
 The term Logos literally means that which is 
 spoken, and subsequently it comes to mean all those 
 powers of the mind of which rational speech is the 
 manifestation. The Logos, or ' word,' is thus the 
 medium by which one mind reveals itself to another. 
 Probably the ancient philosophers had in view the 
 
Appendix. 255 
 
 fact that a word is the most direct and perfect mode 
 of revelation which can subsist between two beings. 
 Both the look and the action are liable to misinter- 
 pretation, but the word can only deceive when the 
 man who speaks it wills to deceive, — in other words, 
 when he refuses to make it a medium for revealing 
 truth. A word, then, even between man and man, is 
 the surest medium of revelation, and so was taken to 
 represent the most direct intercourse which man could 
 have with God. But there are distinguishable two 
 stages in the existence of a word. A word exists at 
 the moment in which it is spoken ; but, as Tertullian 
 points out, it has had an existence previous to that. 
 As nearly as we can remember, his expression is this : 
 ' That which thou thinkest becometh a word in thee.' 
 He means to say that we can only think in words ; 
 that no thought can arise in the mind without being 
 immediately associated with the name which is com- 
 monly applied to it. It is only by marking this 
 human analogy that we shall be able to appreciate 
 the patristic distinction between the outer and the 
 inner Logos. In the first period of dogmatic theology, 
 Christ was viewed rather as the spoken than as the 
 speaking word ; in other words, He was contemplated 
 more in His earthly relations than in His state of 
 pre-existence. Towards the close of the second cen- 
 tury, however, and particularly with Clemens Alex- 
 andrinus, we find a reaction from this external view. 
 The word from this time is more frequently contem- 
 
256 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 plated as it existed in the thought of God previous 
 to having received any outward utterance. In this 
 inner sense the word is really equivalent to the 
 thought or reason of God ; it is the form in which 
 the divine mind represents to itself that revelation 
 which it is about to make to the world. The fore- 
 shadowing of this inner and outer Logos will certainly 
 be found in the conception of the Alexandrian Philo ; 
 it is really implied in the distinction pointed out by 
 Dorner between the word as a divine faculty and the 
 word as a process of creation. 
 
 Note 14, Page 120. 
 
 The passage we have quoted from St. Paul is one 
 of the many scriptural utterances in which Chris- 
 tianity seems to make an approach to the pantheistic 
 standpoint. To say that a man becomes a new 
 creature, appears tantamount to saying that he has 
 lost his old individuality. A little further on in 
 the text we have used an illustration which may 
 seem to confirm such an impression ; w T e have com- 
 pared the incorporation of the individual in Christ, to 
 the submergence of the river in the sea. Now it is 
 quite true that when the river flows into the sea 
 it loses its corruptions, but it is also true that in 
 the very act of losing its corruptions it ceases to be a 
 river ; its individuality passes away, its form vanishes, 
 it becomes one with the ocean. It is clear that in 
 
Appendix. 257 
 
 the use of this illustration we have not intended to 
 suggest any such analogy, but have simply designed 
 to convey an image of the process by which the 
 corruptions of the individual soul may be washed 
 away by its union with a new and higher life. Where 
 the analogy breaks down, is precisely in that point in 
 which the material differs from the spiritual. When 
 one material object is incorporated with another 
 material object, it thereby loses its individuality ; the 
 river by its submergence in the sea becomes the sea. 
 But it is far otherwise with the world of mind. 
 When a weak soul surrenders itself to the love, to 
 the influence, and to the life of a strong soul, it may 
 be said to gain its individuality, to receive into its 
 nature a fresh influx of power. This is manifestly 
 the thought which Christianity has in view in such 
 expressions as : 'He that loveth his life shall lose it ; 
 he that hateth his life shall keep it unto life eternal.' 
 The idea evidently is, that the spiritual absorption 
 which Christianity effects is one by which new force 
 and energy are given to the individual soul. It is 
 perhaps on this account that the metaphor of the 
 river and the ocean is not the metaphor employed by 
 Scripture to describe the union of the soul with 
 Christ. It figures largely in our modern hymnals ; 
 it has been expressed with great beauty by Keble, 
 where he speaks of losing himself in the ocean of 
 God's love ; but it is not the favoured simile of 
 Scripture. The favoured Scripture simile is that of 
 
 R 
 
258 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 the head and the members of a human body. The 
 idea in the mind of Paul seems to have been that of 
 transferring into a new body a hand which had been 
 stained with crime. The problem in his contemplation 
 appears to have been, how to express the fact of the 
 soul's liberation from its past corruption, without in 
 the very act of that expression destroying the person- 
 ality of the soul itself. The river running into the 
 ocean would have satisfied the first condition, but 
 would have failed to meet the second ; it would have 
 symbolized the washing away of corruption, but would 
 have seemed to purchase that boon at the price of 
 individual annihilation. The figure of a human body 
 presented itself to St. Paul in a more favourable light ; 
 it appeared to meet both requirements. The hand 
 stained with crime, if grafted into the membership of 
 a new body, would lose at once its past association 
 and its past character, while yet at the same time it 
 would retain its individual form, and keep the stamp 
 of its personality. This we believe to have been the 
 process of reasoning which led the Christian apostle 
 to make choice of that figure which has since become 
 the inalienable property of the Christian conscious- 
 ness. It must be confessed that, of all the metaphors 
 which have been employed to describe the fact of 
 redemption, it is the most comprehensive and the 
 most expressive, covering the largest ground, and 
 admitting within its boundaries the greatest number 
 of divergent views. 
 
Appendix. 259 
 
 In this figure, then, of the head and the members, 
 if on one side we see an apparent approach of Chris- 
 tianity towards the pantheistic standpoint, we are 
 confronted on the other by an altogether contrary 
 attitude. At the moment when it seems to touch 
 the threshold of Pantheism, Christianity, here as ever, 
 draws back and asserts the claims of the individual 
 life. The sin-laden soul is taken up to be incor- 
 porated in a pure personality, but in the process of 
 incorporation its substance is not destroyed ; it retains 
 its individuality as a member of the new body. 
 Perhaps, indeed, this is the place to indicate what 
 seems to us to be the crucial and final point of 
 difference between Christian Pantheism and other 
 kinds of Pantheism. The idea underlying all pre- 
 Christian pantheistic forms is the belief that the soul 
 at death will regain that union with the divine life 
 of which its birth into the world has deprived it. 
 The life of this world is looked upon as an interrup- 
 tion and a disturbance of the divine life, and the end 
 of this world's life is regarded as the restitution of 
 all things; the individual returns to the bosom of 
 God by that act of death which is supposed to deprive 
 him of his individuality. Now the Christian notion 
 of union with God is diametrically opposed to this. 
 This union is not something which requires to wait 
 until the soul shall be separated from the body ; it is 
 a process which must be initiated while the soul is 
 united to the body. In Christianity, as in Pantheism, 
 
2 G Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 a man may be said to be united to God, as where 
 Paul strikingly affirms : ' Ye are dead, and your life 
 is hid with Christ in God.' But the point to be 
 remarked here is that Paul is applying this language 
 to living men, men still in the earthly body, and still 
 actively engaged in the earthly life. It is clear, 
 therefore, on the surface, that in his view the absorp- 
 tion of the soul in God is not a process incompatible 
 with the soul's retention of its human embodiment 
 and earthly occupation. The Pauline thought is, that 
 men in the very act of performing their earthly call- 
 ings may be leading a hidden life, which is as great 
 a secret to the eye of the outward world as is the life 
 beyond death. The hidden lives of these men, the 
 apostle declares to be in precisely the same relation 
 to the world as the lives of the departed dead ; it 
 sees them not, it knows them not. They are already 
 members of a new commonwealth, citizens of a new 
 country, inhabitants of a new sphere. Yet these men 
 have not lost their earthly personality, not even their 
 earthly name. At the very moment when their 
 inner life is hidden, their outer life is manifest to the 
 eyes of all, and receives a more powerful manifestation 
 from the new and unseen well-spring. This is a deatli 
 in the midst of life, and a life in the midst of death. 
 It is a surrender of the soul to God which does not 
 destroy the soul, a Pantheism which enhances the 
 individual, an entrance into heaven which opens a 
 more direct door to earth. 
 
Appendix. 261 
 
 Note 15, Page 163. 
 
 It ought not to be overlooked that, considered even 
 as an individual phenomenon, — in other words, viewed 
 even in its relation to the purely animal wants, — there 
 lias been found for physical pain a great and unmis- 
 takeable use in the economy of this world. It has been 
 found to serve the purpose of a signboard of warning. 
 The popular notion is, that the reason why fire is 
 hurtful to a human body, is its power to torture it 
 with physical pain. The truth is, the physical tor- 
 ture is a warning that the fire possesses a destructive 
 property. If we could imagine a man deprived of 
 the sense of pain, as he may be deprived of some of 
 the other senses, he would not thereby be rendered 
 less vulnerable than other men ; in reality he would 
 be more vulnerable. The difference between him and 
 other men would be, that while they possessed a 
 monitor to warn them of danger, he was left in such 
 a position that any member of his body might be 
 subjected to a process of injury without his being able 
 to perceive it until too late for remedy. The fire 
 would burn whether we felt it or not ; the feeling is 
 the messenger that warns us to avoid the peril. 
 
 It may seem strange that we have not assigned to 
 this theory a place amongst those attempts to explain 
 suffering which we have examined in this lecture. 
 Our reason for the omission was that this view appeared 
 
262 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 to us simply a modification of that theory which 
 accounted for suffering by making it the penalty of a 
 violated law. The only difference between them is that 
 while the theory in the text contemplates suffering 
 as the penalty of a violated moral law, the view here 
 exhibited contemplates it as the penalty of a violated 
 natural one. There is, of course, the additional fact 
 that in this latter view the penalty is regarded not as 
 an end, but as the means to an end. If the hand is 
 brought into contact with the fire, it is scorched, and 
 the scorching is the penalty of attempting to combine 
 elements which do not admit of union. But it is at 
 the same time more than a penalty: it is a warning; it 
 tells the man that he will consult his own comfort by 
 avoiding contact with that element for the future. 
 With these modifications, however, the view under 
 consideration must be regarded as essentially the 
 same in principle as that which occupies the third 
 place in the theories of the text. 
 
 A more important question is, What is the precise 
 value of this theory ? does it solve the mystery of 
 pain? does it go any way in solving it ? That it goes 
 some way is indisputable. We are continually made 
 aware that without it we would stand in greater 
 jeopardy every hour; that life would be more dangerous, 
 and that death would be more imminent. All this 
 we must concede, and in the concession we virtually 
 find for pain a place in the natural economy of provi- 
 dence, as the beacon which warns the mariner to avoid 
 
Appmdix. 263 
 
 danger. But it is one thing to find a place for a 
 theory, it is another thing to say that a theory has 
 solved a problem. This view of suffering goes some 
 way, but it leaves an immense way untraversed. It 
 accounts for many cases, but it leaves a vast number 
 of cases unaccounted for. It becomes less applicable 
 the further we ascend in the scale of being, and the 
 more we advance from the natural into the moral 
 sphere. The instinct of the animal is self-preservation, 
 and the presence of pain assuredly helps that instinct, 
 — it enables the animal to avoid danger. But it cannot 
 be said that the instinct of the moral being is self- 
 preservation, nor can it be affirmed that it is always 
 the duty of the moral being to avoid danger; there 
 are many instances in which the contrary may be 
 maintained. In Christian ethics, although it is dis- 
 tinctly held that the individual gains himself by 
 losing himself, it is not less distinctly asserted that 
 the gain of himself must not be his object, that his 
 immediate object must be the good of some other 
 being, and that his self-preservation must be reached 
 in the very act of self-forgetfulness. In the view of 
 such a principle as this, it cannot with any propriety 
 be said that the avoidance of danger is to the moral 
 man a paramount duty. He must be prepared first 
 and foremost to seek the welfare of humanity, and 
 experience has amply proved that to seek the welfare 
 of humanity is not to tread a path of roses. It is 
 essentially a strait gate and a narrow way, a road 
 
264 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 beset with difficulties, a journey strewn with thorns. 
 Humanity in the mass is not anxious for its true 
 welfare ; and for him who seeks to deliver it, it not 
 uncommonly prepares a crown of thorns. The moral 
 benefactor of mankind has in all ages been subjected 
 to a species of martyrdom, and he has in general 
 undertaken his mission in the full consciousness that 
 such a fate awaits him. If the consciousness of such 
 a fate induced him to avoid his mission, he would 
 thereby sink in the moral scale. Experience warns 
 him of his danger, but it is no longer his duty to 
 avoid the danger, for he is no longer meeting the 
 world simply in the attitude of a physical being, he is 
 encountering it as a moral power. It is plain, there- 
 fore, that in this region the theory breaks down, or, 
 to speak more correctly, ceases to be applicable. It 
 is plain that in its room there must from this point 
 be substituted another and in some respects a contrary 
 theory, — a theory which will lift suffering up to a 
 higher platform, and give to the element of sacrifice 
 a distinct and positive place in the development of 
 humanity. 
 
 Note 16, Page 168. 
 
 It has often appeared a strange circumstance that 
 Mosaism, which professes to differ from surrounding 
 religions as the supernatural from the natural, should 
 seem to want what nearly all natural religions have, — 
 
Ajypendix. 265 
 
 a doctrine of immortality. This, indeed, is the very 
 point which Bishop Warburton has made the basis of 
 his elaborate apologetic work. He maintains that the 
 doctrine of immortality is entirely absent from Mosaism, 
 and he asserts that this proves the divine legation of 
 Moses. A nation living without any hope of a future 
 state, in the midst of nations enjoying such a hope, is 
 found to exhibit a moral purity which these are unable 
 to reach, and this itself furnishes a testimony to the 
 God-given mission of her lawgiver (Warburton's 
 Divine Legation). 
 
 Dr. Mozley, however, will not accept the funda- 
 mental premiss of Warburton (see his Essays, vol. ii. 
 p. 169). He will not admit that even in the distinc- 
 tively Mosaic period men were left without a certain 
 notion of immortality. He maintains that wherever 
 there is a true belief in God, there must be to some 
 extent the belief in a future state. To believe in 
 God, he says, is to be related to God; and to be related 
 to God is to be in connection with something which 
 is above the mutations of time, and incapable of decay. 
 He finds, accordingly, that the Mosaic belief in God 
 served to its votaries as a revelation of immortality, 
 and must be taken by us as supplying the place of 
 any distinct doctrine on the subject in this part of 
 the Old Testament. He admits, indeed, a distinction 
 between the Jewish and the heathen view of im- 
 mortality : the latter had an image of the future, the 
 former only a notion of it. But while in this respect 
 
2 6 G Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 the heathen vision was more clear, it was decidedly 
 less deep. The Jew had no image of immortality, 
 because his conception of immortality was anchored 
 to the conception of Him of whom he was forbidden 
 to make a graven image or likeness ; and if it was 
 thereby deprived of its influence over the poetic 
 imagination, it received a stronger and a more per- 
 manent hold on the instincts of the religious life ; 
 the Judaic belief in immortality was the Judaic faith 
 in God. 
 
 Note 17, Page 171. 
 
 The immortality of the soul in the pre-Christian 
 world was not a doctrine of practical religion. There 
 are two things which we ought carefully to distin- 
 guish, — the power of the belief in immortality, and 
 the power of immortality itself ; the latter necessarily 
 includes the former, yet the former may exist without 
 the latter. The latter is distinctively a Christian pos- 
 session. The pre-Christian nations felt the power 
 of believing in immortality ; the Christians felt the 
 power of an impelling immortal life. We have 
 admitted that the mere belief in immortality confers 
 a species of power, but it is quite a different species 
 from that which is conferred by the spirit of Christi- 
 anity. The belief that there is a life beyond the 
 grave must be a source of comfort to every weary 
 and wounded heart, and the sense of comfort is in 
 
Appendix. 2 G 7 
 
 itself a power of calmness to the soul. But if this 
 be nothing more than the belief in something future, 
 — if it be simply the hope in a world which is to 
 come, — the very calmness which it brings will keep 
 the soul from the practical work of life ; it will be a 
 power of quiescence, not of action. In point of fact, 
 this is what we find in the pre-Christian world, at 
 least in those parts of it not sunk in the sensuous 
 enjoyments of the hour. The future was everything ; 
 and, except as a preparation for the future, the present 
 went for nothing. Hence the tendency of pre- 
 Christian philosophy was to subordinate practice to 
 knowledge, and to assign to the calm of contempla- 
 tion a higher place of eminence than to uprightness 
 of outward action. The Eastern mind, in particular, 
 tended towards lethargy in all that concerned the pro- 
 gress of the world's practical interests ; and although 
 the future which that mind contemplated was rather 
 a future of personal absorption than of personal 
 glorification, the picture of the coming absorption 
 was more vividly realized in the imagination than the 
 images of actual things. 
 
 Now, when Christianity came into the world, it 
 came to reverse this state of matters. It proclaimed 
 the new doctrine, — new at least in the circle of 
 religious thought, — that the all-important time was 
 not the future, but the present. It proclaimed that 
 the doctrine of immortality, w T h ether it w r ere held 
 in the form of a personal absorption or a personal 
 
268 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 glorification, was now to enter upon a fresh stage, — 
 that it was no longer to be the belief in a power to 
 come, but the vision and fruition of a power which 
 had already come. It told mankind that it was 
 possible to make the best of both worlds, though in 
 a very different sense from that in which the saying 
 is commonly used. It said that this world might be 
 transformed into the other world, might catch a 
 breath of the higher atmosphere, might kindle with 
 the light of purer skies. The hope which Christi- 
 anity proclaimed was not simply the hope of days in 
 heaven, it was the possibility of days of heaven upon 
 earth ; and in the proclamation of that prospect it 
 lifted the doctrine of immortality from a belief into 
 a power. What, for example, does Paul mean when 
 he says, ' That we may know Him, and the power of 
 His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings '? 
 Does he mean by the power of His resurrection, 
 simply the comfort which such a belief yields ? In 
 part doubtless he does, but that is the smallest part 
 of his meaning. When he speaks of Christ's suffer- 
 ings, he does not emphasize merely the belief in His 
 sufferings, but the fellowship with them ; that is to 
 him the power of Christ's sufferings. So, in like 
 manner, when he speaks in the same connection of 
 Christ's resurrection, he must be understood to refer 
 to the power which a human soul receives from being 
 participant in that resurrection, from being already 
 partaker of the spirit which in the Son of man had con- 
 
Appendix. 269 
 
 quered death, from having an evidence of immortality 
 in the consciousness of being ' risen with Christ.' 
 
 When, therefore, Gibbon attributes to the doctrine 
 of immortality a very great influence in the pro- 
 pagation of Christianity, we agree with him ; but it 
 is an altogether different question whether we can 
 agree with him in making that influence a second- 
 ary cause {Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 
 chap. 15). Our view of this subject must be de- 
 termined by the meaning we attach to the word 
 immortality. If we take it in the old natural or 
 pre-Christian sense, — that is to say, if we simply 
 understand it as conveying the idea of a future life, — 
 its influence in the propagation of Christianity was 
 undoubtedly a secondary one, for in this respect it 
 does not constitute a distinctive feature of Chris- 
 tianity ; it is something which the Christian possesses 
 in common with the heathen. But if we take the 
 word immortality in its distinctively Christian sense, 
 if we understand it as implying not merely the pro- 
 clamation of a future state, but the present entrance 
 into a higher life, or, in other words, the communica- 
 tion to the world of a higher spirit, we shall reach a 
 more satisfactory explanation of the power wielded 
 by this doctrine in the gospel system. In this case, 
 however, we shall no longer be able, with Gibbon, to 
 call it a secondary cause; we shall be obliged to 
 acknowledge that it has been the manifestation of a 
 directly divine influence, and shall be compelled to 
 
270 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 refer its triumphs to the immediate action of a 
 celestial life. 
 
 Note 18, Page 185. 
 
 Amongst the vistas of perspective opened up by the 
 doctrine of a risen Head of humanity, may perhaps 
 be reckoned the suggestion of a rational basis for 
 the efficacy of prayer. The exaltation of the Head 
 of humanity establishes a medium of sympathy 
 between the life of man and the central life of the 
 universe. Now it is clear that the preliminary 
 requisite for all prayer is just the establishment of 
 such a sympathetic medium. The first difficulty of 
 prayer which the mind of the inquirer has to en- 
 counter, lies in the seeming gulf of distance between 
 the human and the divine ; there are other, and, 
 from a scientific point of view, more important diffi- 
 culties, but in order of time this is the first. We 
 want to know how a power so vast, so stupendous, 
 so incapable of being measured by the soul, can yet 
 be capable of answering its prayers. The answer to 
 a man's prayer implies a knowledge of what the 
 man needs, and a knowledge of what the man needs 
 implies a sympathy with human nature itself. Where 
 is the key to such a sympathy to be found ? it clearly 
 can only be found in the assumption of an incarna- 
 tion, that is to say, in the belief that the power at 
 the head of the universe is also the Head of humanity. 
 
Appendix. 271 
 
 In point of fact, it will be seen that wherever the 
 unaided light of nature has appropriated a God who 
 is the hearer and the answerer of prayer, it has only 
 appropriated Him by unconsciously assuming that 
 very doctrine of incarnation which Christianity makes 
 the conscious and deliberate basis of its system. In 
 the doctrine of a risen Head of humanity, man is 
 brought into actual and immediate contact with the 
 universal central life, the fountain from which all 
 blessings admittedly flow ; and a chain of communica- 
 tion is established between human need and divine 
 power, which removes the preliminary obstacle to the 
 possibility of prayer. 
 
 If we pass from the preliminary obstacle to the 
 subsequent difficulties of the subject, we shall find 
 that the doctrine of a risen Head of humanity 
 supplies at least some important suggestions for the 
 solution of the vexed question. For one thing, it 
 by supposition puts the petitioner in immediate 
 contact with the topmost link in the chain of law. 
 It enables him to ask an answer to prayer, not in 
 violation of the laws of nature, but through the laws 
 of nature, for it professes to put him in sympathy 
 with the fountain of all law. In relation to spiritual 
 blessings the influence of the doctrine is still more 
 direct. The mind of man is placed in immediate 
 communion with a divine humanity, which is sup- 
 posed to be the recipient of its human weakness, and 
 the imparter to it in turn of its own divine strength ; 
 
272 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 the realization of such a thought would alone be 
 sufficient to establish the efficacy of prayer. Nor 
 does the suggestiveness of the risen headship end 
 here. What a vast number of our prayers depend 
 for their answer on the minds of others ! — when we 
 ask for anything temporal, we nearly always ask for 
 something which directly or indirectly depends on 
 the actions of our fellow-men. Now it is here that 
 the force of the risen headship comes in. If you 
 accept that doctrine, you have accepted the belief in 
 the existence of a common medium which is uniting 
 your mind to the mind of your brother man. You 
 have recognised the presence of an element to which 
 you are both joined, and which, because you are 
 joined to it, is able to join you to one another. You 
 have entered into a thought by which you can 
 understand how an influence may be brought to 
 bear upon the heart of your brother, tending to the 
 course of action which your petition has desired. 
 There is a remarkable passage in one of Emerson's 
 essays, which seems to us to have a striking bearing 
 on this point. We cannot at present put our hands 
 upon the reference, but what he says is somewhat to 
 this effect : ' If you are anxious to come into contact 
 with some special human being, you need have no 
 disquietude on the matter ; if there be in your heart 
 a real sympathy with him, you may be sure that the 
 element which is in him is in you, and will bring 
 him to you.' This is a very bad rendering of a 
 
Appendix. 273 
 
 thought which its author expresses with his wonted 
 epigrammatic power. Our first impression in reading 
 the sentiment was a feeling of surprise that the 
 doctrines of Pantheism could be made to minister so 
 much comfort to a human soul ; indeed, it seemed as 
 if here the power of providence were more forcibly 
 represented than in the systems commonly called 
 orthodox. But when we came to consider the 
 matter, we found that the view here enunciated, 
 however available it might be to the Pantheist, was 
 in reality an essential part of the Christian con- 
 sciousness. We found that it was directly involved 
 in that doctrine of the headship of Christ which 
 forms the very root of the Pauline theology. No 
 Pantheism can more perfectly explain the possibility 
 of union between kindred minds than can this 
 doctrine of the divine headship. If two minds are 
 united to the same centre, it is clear, to begin with, 
 that they must be united to that centre by reason of 
 a common element. If the centre to which they are 
 united be in itself a source of power, it is further 
 clear that it can perfect that union of which, by 
 supposition, the elements already exist. The vista 
 of perspective which such a view presents is com- 
 mensurate with the drama of human history. Christ, 
 in the Pauline theology, is not only the Head of the 
 Church but the Head of the state ; nay, the state is 
 ideally, though in a very different sense from that of 
 Hildebrand, only one department of the great ecclesi- 
 
274 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 astical kingdom ; the saints are to judge the world. 
 There is therefore a scientific basis for the prayer, 
 'Thy kingdom come.' It is built upon the con- 
 viction that nations, like individuals, are attached to 
 a common Head, and therefore potentially in con- 
 nection with one another, — a connection which sooner 
 or later must make itself felt in the world, and which 
 is no more capable of dissolution than is that divinely 
 human headship which is the source of its being. 
 
 Thus far, then, the doctrine of a risen Head of 
 humanity must be viewed as a contribution to the 
 natural view of prayer, as supplying a scientific 
 basis to that which in the light of nature is a simple 
 instinct or aspiration. There is another direction, 
 however, in which this doctrine affects the natural 
 view of prayer, and in which it affects it rather by 
 way of modification than by way of confirmation. 
 The light of nature — that is to say, the religious 
 consciousness of the pre-Christian world — does not 
 attach any condition to the efficacy of prayer; it 
 thinks of the Supreme Being as being satisfied with 
 the petition simply because it is a petition, and not 
 from any respect to its character and contents. But 
 the Christian doctrine of the risen headship limits the 
 range of a man's petitions, — it makes it no longer 
 possible for him to believe that God will answer 
 every desire of the soul merely because the soul puts 
 its desire into words. When a man realizes himself 
 as a member of the risen body of Christ, he no 
 
Appendix. 275 
 
 longer feels himself at liberty to pray without 
 reference to the wants and desires of others; his 
 unity with Christ has made him one with humanity, 
 and the interests of humanity must henceforth be 
 appropriated as his own interests. The Christian 
 sense of the petition, ' Thy will be done,' is a new 
 and a modifying factor in the idea of prayer. The 
 Christian sense of that petition is not simply the 
 Mohammedan sense, in which the soul resigns itself 
 to the inevitable will of an irresistible power; it is 
 not so much resignation as acquiescence. It implies 
 that the soul, in becoming a member of a divine 
 organism, has ceased even to desire its own pleasure 
 at the expense of the universal good, or, to speak 
 more correctly, has ceased to admit that such a state 
 of things would be a pleasure. It has found its 
 personal joy in the universal joy, its personal 
 advantage in the welfare of the whole. To purchase 
 that joy, to secure that advantage, it is willing to 
 surrender its own will, to give up its own life, to 
 part with those things which it once deemed the 
 essence of its existence. Its prayer, ' Thy will be 
 done,' is really a sacrificial act. It is that process of 
 personal surrender by which it realizes itself as only 
 one member of a great divine life, whose being and well- 
 being must consist in the closeness of its union with 
 that life, and which has found, by experience, that the 
 closeness of this union depends on the intensity and 
 the reality with which the soul abandons its selfishness. 
 
2 76 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 Note 19, Page 191. 
 
 The answer to this deistic objection has been 
 indirectly given in Note 17, where we have endea- 
 voured to point out what constitutes the distinctive 
 power of the Christian doctrine of immortality. 
 There is a remarkable expression in Heb. vii. 1 6 : 
 ' The power of an endless life.' The point of the 
 phrase lies in the word ' endless.' 1 It is not simply 
 said to be a future life ; that which is endless must, 
 strictly speaking, be present as well as future. We 
 sometimes use the expression 'the endless sea;' what 
 we mean to convey by such a phrase is not the 
 notion that the sea is spatially infinite, but the idea 
 that it is practically unbeginning, — that we cannot 
 point to any region of the globe, and say, This is the 
 commencement of the ocean. Strictly speaking, an 
 endless life is a life to which we cannot imagine a 
 limit. That which begins to be is not philosophic- 
 ally endless ; we can see an end to it retrospectively, 
 though we may not be able to find one prospectively. 
 The idea of Christianity is that the Christian becomes 
 recipient of a life which, however new it may be to 
 him, has been of old for ever, the life which con- 
 stitutes the essential immortality of God. To say, 
 therefore, that such a life is endless, is to say far 
 
 1 The Greek word literally means indissoluble, incapable of being 
 broken up. 
 
ix. 277 
 
 more than that it is prospectively unending; it is 
 really to affirm that we are unable even in thought 
 to conceive the moment when it was not, or the 
 possibility that it should cease to be. If this view 
 of the subject be accepted, the power of an endless 
 life will mean in Christian morals something very 
 different from the power exercised over the will by 
 the alternatives of future happiness or future misery. 
 That these alternatives do exercise a power, is beyond 
 all dispute ; nay, we are disposed to think that there 
 is a period in every man's religious consciousness 
 when they exercise the only power. There is a time 
 in the religious life of man when in all sincerity he 
 puts the question, ' What shall we have who have left 
 all and followed Thee % ' and when he can only be 
 satisfied with the promise of 'houses, and brethren, 
 and sisters, and wife, and children, and lands.' This 
 is the stage of life in which immortality is only a 
 motive. But then this is only a preliminary stage. 
 It is not the final form of the soul's administration ; 
 it is merely a provisional government, intended to 
 prevent disorder until such an administration can be 
 formed. The final form of the soul's government is 
 one in which immortality is not simply a reigning 
 motive, but a dynamically motive -power. We may 
 make our meaning quite clear by an illustration. 
 A man's physical life may be said to be the power 
 which moves his arm, and it may, in a dynamical 
 sense, be called his motive-power, but it is quite 
 
278 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 different from his motive. He may have a thousand 
 motives for moving his arm; strictly speaking, he has 
 only one motive-power — the force of the physical 
 life which lies within it. Let us apply this to the 
 Christian conception of immortality. A life has 
 come into the world, bringing to the soul, and 
 perhaps even to the body, of man a force stronger 
 than the physical. This new life is professedly the 
 breath of a higher atmosphere, a spark of that vital 
 principle which animates celestial spirits ; it is, in 
 short, immortality itself. To say, therefore, that a 
 soul is animated by this principle, is very different 
 from merely saying that it is urged on to action by 
 the hope of a future state. That hope and a thousand 
 others have doubtless a share in stimulating its pro- 
 gress, but this is not a hope at all ; it is that which 
 makes hope a possibility, it is the spirit of a new 
 life, the sense of rejuvenescence, the glow of a vital 
 warmth, which, by diffusing itself afresh over the 
 whole man, makes him a new man, fills him with 
 higher susceptibilities, inspires him to nobler aims. 
 Hope, even in its grandest form, lies in advance of 
 the life ; the Christian power of immortality lies 
 already behind the life, and impels it forward on its 
 way. It is not itself a motive, but it is the source 
 of all motives, the reason for all high flights of fancy, 
 the cause of all lofty impulse, the ground of all pure 
 emotion, and, above all, the fountain from which flows 
 the stream of all unselfish enthusiasm. 
 
Appendix. 279 
 
 Note 20, Page 195. 
 
 When we speak of one thing existing for the sake of 
 another, we stand on the borders of that much-vexed 
 question, — the doctrine of final causes. It has been 
 too hastily assumed by some men of science, that the 
 doctrine of final causes has been excluded from the 
 sphere of physics. It seems to us, indeed, that the 
 modern system of scientific investigation has not 
 extruded the fact, but simply the old form of teleology. 
 It has deserted final cause in one aspect only to take 
 it up in another. The life of nature in modern 
 science exhibits a perpetual struggle of tendencies • 
 Matthew Arnold calls God Himself a stream of ten- 
 dencies. But a tendency is the leaning of an object 
 towards some particular end of its being, and the end 
 of an object's being is the final cause of its exist- 
 ence. The forms of animated nature struggle towards 
 the realization of a special type : is there anything 
 unscientific in the assertion that the attainment of 
 this type is the final cause of their being ? It will 
 not be maintained by any man of science that its 
 attainment is an accident, for science is professedly 
 the elimination of accident. It will be admitted by 
 all to be the result of law ; it will be held by some 
 to be the result of a law of life by which the type 
 has actually evolved itself from its embryonic exist- 
 ence in the germ. If it be so, why should it be 
 
280 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 unscientific to say that the type is the final cause of 
 the germ's being ? 
 
 But here we are met by the great objection. We 
 are told that nature must ultimately rest upon a law, 
 and not on a purpose. Final cause demands a 
 purpose, and purposes in nature are unscientific ; the 
 ultimate source of all things must be sought in the 
 presence of an underlying principle or law. But now, 
 with reference to this scientific view, we would ask 
 if the theist does not also hold by the necessity of a 
 principle behind all things, behind even the teleological 
 purpose. Does not a purpose in point of fact always 
 presuppose the existence of a previous state of being ? 
 A human purpose, taken in the abstract, is simply a 
 man's determination to follow out the existing law of 
 his nature. When a man says, I intend to live for 
 myself, he expresses, in the popular opinion, a purpose 
 which makes him selfish ; in truth he does not, he only 
 expresses a purpose which proves him to be already 
 selfish, — gives utterance to the existing bent of his 
 nature. The end of every man's will is nothing more 
 than the realization of himself, and his will or purpose 
 will be good or bad according as the law of his being 
 is good or bad (see Bradley's Ethical Studies). Even 
 the youth's choice of a profession, if it be an unbiassed 
 choice, is simply the objectifying of that ideal which 
 has hitherto constituted his estimate of happiness, 
 and a man's ideal will always be found to be the 
 measure of his previous attainments. If we ascend 
 
Appendix. 281 
 
 into the sphere of theology, we are forced to retain 
 the same line of thought. Every theist attributes 
 a purpose to God ; but no theist will deny that there 
 is a principle or law lying behind the purpose, and, 
 in a logical sense, existing before it. The purpose 
 which the theist attributes to his deity is not an 
 arbitrary one, but one which grows out of an already 
 existing divine nature. The God of Descartes, 
 indeed, is a beinsj who lias no reason for His acts 
 beyond the fact that He wills them ; but just on this 
 account the God of Descartes is only half theistic. 
 True Theism must postulate behind every purpose a 
 principle in the divine nature which dictated the 
 purpose, must find in the background of every act of 
 God a reason in the eternal nature of things which 
 made that act the fitting and necessary product of 
 supreme benevolence and wisdom. The only difference 
 between the scientist and the theist is this, that while 
 the former seeks the ultimate law of nature in the 
 world of physics, the latter expects to find it in the 
 constitution of an infinite mind. 
 
 The question, then, between the evolutionist and 
 the theologian narrows itself down into this issue, — 
 Is the primal force of the universe of the nature of 
 matter or of mind ? This is the question which Dr. 
 Martineau has so ably and so zealously laboured to 
 answer. We gather up some points of his defence 
 of spiritualism from occasional papers in the Contem- 
 porary Review. He says that the two crucial elements 
 
282 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 in the scientific doctrine of evolution are the unity 
 of force and the principle of natural selection. 
 Beginning with the former, he maintains that if 
 there be only one force in the universe, it must be a 
 force which, by its nature, is capable of comprehend- 
 ing all the others, and that the only force of such a 
 capacity with which we are acquainted is mind. He 
 points out that the very idea of force is essentially a 
 mental conception. Our only notion of power is that 
 which we derive from the perception of our own 
 energy. We feel within ourselves a determination of 
 the will to carry out a certain line of action, and we 
 are conscious of exerting force in the accomplishment 
 of our determination. We attribute to the changes 
 in nature that element of causative energy which we 
 have felt within ourselves. If we had not previously 
 felt it within ourselves, it could not have been sug- 
 gested by the transmutations of nature ; these would 
 have passed before the eye as changes and nothing 
 more ; we would have been quite unable to say that 
 the one was caused by the other. Dr. Martineau 
 would certainly have agreed with Hume in resisting 
 the opinion of Locke, that the idea of power can be 
 reached by reflecting on the mere material changes 
 which are observed by the external senses. If sensa- 
 tion and the reflection on sensation be the only 
 sources of our knowledge, Hume is logically right in 
 saying that we have no idea of power. But as it is 
 patent to Dr. Martineau and to all other men that 
 
Appendix. 283 
 
 we have an idea of power, that writer is equally 
 logical in rejecting the fundamental premiss of the 
 sensational theory. He perceives certain changes in 
 the world of nature, and he associates these changes 
 with the idea of force or power ; but it is all the time 
 quite clear to him that his idea of force or power is 
 not derived from the changes in nature, but imported 
 into them by the mind itself, — that if there were not 
 within himself the notion of active will, all the trans- 
 mutations of the universe put together would never 
 bring him one step nearer to the realization of the 
 thought of one object being the cause of another. 
 Force is a conception of the mind, and we have no 
 conception of it outside the mind ; it is therefore 
 unphilosophical to conclude that our idea of force 
 can have been evolved by subtle combinations of 
 matter. 
 
 When Dr. Martineau conies to the subject of 
 natural selection, he finds that in this also there is 
 involved the idea of mind. The law of natural selec- 
 tion is the principle that the best or fittest shall 
 survive. This presupposes two things, — that there 
 is a best, and that with a view to realize it there is a 
 tendency to competition, both of which are of the 
 nature of mind. We would add, both of which are 
 of the nature of teleology. The existence of a 
 standard of comparison is itself the existence of an 
 end towards which life is supposed naturally to lead ; 
 the existence of a spirit of competition is itself the 
 
284 Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. 
 
 recognition of that end as that which makes life 
 worth possessing. The idea of a better and a best 
 would be impossible, unless there were already sup- 
 posed to exist an ultimate good, which is the object 
 of life's attainment ; better and best are degrees of 
 approximation, and approximation means the drawing 
 near to something. That something to which they 
 draw near either actually is or is conceived to be the 
 end of life, the thing which makes life desirable, the 
 condition which renders existence worthy to be lived. 
 The principle of natural selection, therefore, seems to 
 us to imply and to presuppose an anterior principle 
 of teleology, the fashioning of nature after a certain 
 type of excellence, towards whose realisation and 
 illustration it is the province of nature perpetually 
 to strive. 
 
 From such a standpoint as this there would be no 
 difficulty in holding the doctrine of evolution con- 
 sistently with the belief that man is the final cause of 
 the earthly creation ; for in the doctrine of evolution, 
 as here exhibited, the completed whole is already 
 implicitly involved in the incipient germ-cell. An 
 interesting question here occurs. If man be in this 
 sense the final cause of this earthly system, will the 
 doctrine of evolution deprive his moral intuitions of 
 all their value ? This subject has been very ably 
 treated by Dr. Martineau, and his conclusion is 
 somewhat to this effect. We have certain intuitions 
 of God and immortality which the scientific evolu- 
 
Appendix. 
 
 285 
 
 tionist pronounces of no authority, because they are 
 only the offspring of natural development. But in 
 reality this does not weaken their authority at all. 
 How do we measure the value or determine the func- 
 tion of a clock % Not assuredly by the rude efforts 
 of medii-evalism to estimate time, but by the latest 
 modern developments in the art of clockmaking. So, 
 in like manner, if we are asked to tell the function 
 of nature, to estimate its worth, to determine its final 
 cause, we shall not be justified in looking only at its 
 beginnings. We only really know what nature is 
 when we have seen its latest product, when we have 
 followed it out to its furthest limit of development. 
 It matters not how far removed the end is from the 
 beginning, it matters not how many intermediate 
 links lie between the beginning and the end; the 
 beginning only gets its meaning from our vision of 
 the end. Man has intuitions of God and immor- 
 tality. The man of science tells us that these are 
 the result of evolution, that they are the latest 
 development of a germ-cell. Be it so; then they 
 are the function of the germ-cell, the final cause of 
 the lowest product of nature, and it would not be 
 unscientific to say that, looked at from this point of 
 view, the lowest product of nature exists for the sake 
 of God and immortality. 
 
 We have presented in a somewhat paraphrased form 
 the reasoning of Dr. Martineau on this important 
 subject, and we have only to add the testimony of a 
 
286 Natural Elements of Revealed Tlicoloyy. 
 
 writer not less acute and not less unprejudiced by 
 anti-scientific bias. Mr. F. H. Bradley, after declar- 
 ing himself a believer in the doctrine of evolution, 
 maintains that to preserve that belief it is necessary 
 to preserve teleology ; and finds that the very notion 
 of evolution must perish unless we postulate the 
 thought of one underlying substance holding already 
 in its beginning the prophecy of its development and 
 end {Ethical Studies, p. 173, note). Let us take this 
 opportunity, though it is somewhat irrelevant to the 
 present topic, of recommending this admirable book 
 to the perusal of all philosophical students. It is 
 professedly occupied more with the moral than with 
 the religious sphere, yet it powerfully suggests to the 
 mind how easily the conclusions of the most tran- 
 scendental philosophy yield themselves into harmony 
 with the evangelical doctrine of membership in a 
 divine life. 
 
 Xote 21, Page 199. 
 
 The fact that modern science has found it necessary 
 or expedient to start upon its work of investigation 
 with a hypothetical conclusion already reached, is in 
 some points of view a very significant fact. It shows 
 that, by the admission of modern science itself, the 
 imagination can no longer be excluded from the 
 sphere of scientific investigation. There was a time 
 when it seemed as if the region of poetry and the 
 
Appendix. 287 
 
 region of science must for ever remain with a great 
 gulf fixed between them, and when, in consequence, 
 it was held that the prevalence of the one would 
 be the destruction of the other. The result was, that 
 for a long time poetry and science looked upon each 
 other in the light of natural antagonists; and as in 
 all religion there necessarily lurks a strong poetic 
 element, religion came to share in the feeling of 
 antagonism. It looked upon the advance of science 
 with a jealous concern, and felt that every fresh 
 discovery in the mechanical sphere was a new nail 
 driven into the coffin of its primitive intuitions. 
 Eeligion may now, however, congratulate itself upon 
 a changed attitude of science towards the sphere of 
 the imagination. Poetry, banished from many of its 
 former haunts, has found an asylum in the home of 
 its old enemy. Mr. Darwin himself is not afraid to 
 admit that his system of evolution is as yet only a 
 hypothesis, and the admission is certainly suggestive. 
 The hypothesis in question, whether it be true or 
 false, is assuredly one which demands a very vivid 
 imagination in him who conceives it. If it be 
 admissible to investigate the facts of nature with a 
 foregone imaginative theory in our minds, why should 
 it not be admissible to make that theory a theological 
 one ? We do not blame the man of science for 
 entering on his task with a hypothesis already in the 
 mind. Science always works with a professed end 
 in view, — the discovery of a principle of unity. We 
 
288 Natural Elements of Bev ceded Theology. 
 
 do not think it strange or unnatural that a vision of 
 this end should prefigure itself at the beginning ; we 
 only claim the same privilege for the studies of the 
 theologian. The theologian has the same end as the 
 man of science. He too seeks a principle of unity 
 in the world of nature and in all worlds ; he too 
 aims at the reduction of all things to one common 
 law. The principle of unity which he seeks is 
 doubtless a different principle from that sought by 
 the man of science, but it is not, therefore, of neces- 
 sity a principle contrary to the man of science. The 
 theological solution, if it be a real one, must be one 
 which shall conquer not by excluding the results of 
 research in other departments, but by finding within 
 itself a legitimate place for these. All we would ask 
 is, that to the theologian, as to the man of science, 
 there should be accorded the privilege of imagining 
 at the beginning the completion of his work, of 
 coming to his task with an image already in his 
 mind of a possible and hypothetical goal to which 
 his footsteps may be led as the final result of his 
 labours. 
 
 MORRISON AND GTBB, EDINBURGH, 
 
 PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE. 
 
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