A REPORT OF THE EXERCISES AT THE 
 
 OPENING OF 
 
 ALEXANDER COMMENCEMENT HALL, 
 
 PRESENTED TO PRINCETON COLLEGE 
 
 BY MRS. CHARLES B. ALEXANDER. 
 
 BACCALAUREATE SERMON PREACHED BE- 
 FORE THE CLASS OF 1894 OF PRINCETON 
 COLLEGE, ON SUNDAY, JUNE TENTH, 
 1894, BY THE REV. FRANCIS LANDEY 
 PATTON, D.D., LL.D., PRESIDENT OF THE 
 COLLEGE. 
 
 PRINTED BY REQUEST OF THE MEMBERS 
 OF THE CLASS. 
 
ALEXANDER COMMENCEMENT HALL. 
 
STENOGRAPHIC REPORT 
 
 OF THE EXERCISES AT THE 
 
 OPENING OF 
 
 ALEXANDER COMMENCEMENT HALL, 
 
 PRESENTED TO PRINCETON COLLEGE BY 
 
 MRS. CHARLES B. ALEXANDER, 
 
 ON SATURDAY, JUNE NINTH, 1894. 
 
 The Rev. Francis Landey Patton, D. D., LL. D., 
 President of the College, presided. 
 
 The members of the Board of Trustees of the Col- 
 lege, the Rev. James McCosh, D. D., LL. D., the late 
 President of the College, the Dean and members 
 of the Faculty, instructors and other officers of 
 the College, occupied seats upon the rostrum near 
 the President. Many distinguished visitors were 
 present, among them the Hon. Seth Low, LL. D., 
 President of Columbia College, Ethelbert D. War- 
 field, LL. D., President of Lafayette College, and 
 members of the Governing Boards and Faculties of 
 Harvard, Yale, Columbia and other Universities and 
 Colleges. The members of the Senior Class, in caps 
 and gowns, occupied the central part of the main 
 floor of the hall, while the galleries were filled with 
 the members of other College classes and their friends. 
 
The Rev. William Henry Green, D. D., LL. D., 
 offered the prayer of dedication as follows: "Accept, 
 O Lord, this building, now opened for the first time, 
 erected with an earnest desire of promoting true 
 learning and sincere piety and of furthering the best 
 interests of this College. Vouchsafe the accomplish- 
 ment of the ends of its establishment, we beseech 
 thee, O Lord. May this structure abide through 
 long years as a memorial of the beneficence of the 
 liberal donor, keeping in ever fresh memory the hon- 
 ored name she bears. 
 
 "While the beauty of its form and of its adorn- 
 ment tends to refine and elevate the taste, while the 
 accommodation here afforded for the public exercises 
 of the College is of the most distinguished char- 
 acter, and while the example of beneficence here 
 shown forth is upon the most liberal scale, we im- 
 plore thee, O Lord, graciously to smile upon all that 
 shall be done in this hall, at this season and in all fu- 
 ture seasons, to train the mind, to discipline the facul- 
 ties, to strengthen the powers of young men, to fit 
 them for higher and more effective usefulness in life. 
 From this hall may there go forth, year by year, suc- 
 cessive generations of well-trained, thoroughly dis- 
 ciplined, well-equipped, right-spirited young men to 
 do good service in the various avocations in which 
 they may engage and in the positions to which they 
 may severally be called, all of which we ask in the 
 name and for the sake of our Divine Redeemer and 
 
5 
 
 Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and dominion 
 for ever and ever. Amen." 
 
 President Patton then said : 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen. This is a glad day for us 
 all. We are glad that it is so bright a day. The 
 sky, however, is a little overcast. I refer, not so 
 much to the visible heavens, but to the conditions 
 under which we meet. We hoped, as one of the 
 most enhancing elements of our pleasure to-day, 
 to have Mrs. Charles Alexander with us. Circum- 
 stances over which she has no control have made 
 this impossible. What Mr. Alexander would have 
 said in Mrs. Alexander's behalf, if he had been with 
 us, will be read by Col. McCook. 
 
 I received, a day or two ago, a telegram from Mrs. 
 Alexander which I will read, and which I am sure you 
 will appreciate. It is dated at Thompson Falls, Mon- 
 tana, June 6th, and is as follows : 
 
 " Dr. Patton, President of Princeton College. 
 
 " We are indefinitely detained by floods. The rail- 
 road is washed out on both sides of us. We cannot 
 begin to express our deep disappointment at not be- 
 ing with you on the 9th. We hope Alexander Com- 
 mencement Hall will be constantly used and most 
 useful to the College. Col. McCook, acting for me, 
 will present the Hall to the Trustees. Three cheers 
 for Princeton." 
 
 (Signed) Harriet C. Alexander. 
 
(The members of the Senior Class, occupying seats 
 upon the main floor of the hall and the other classes 
 in the gallery, stood up and gave the Princeton 
 cheer for Mrs. Alexander.) 
 
 In presenting the hall to the Trustees of the Col- 
 lege, in Mrs. Alexander's name, Mr. McCook said : 
 
 Mr. President and Mc7itbers of the Board of Tr^tstees. 
 
 In his Inaugural Address, President Patton spoke 
 in anticipation of a time when the faculties, and grad- 
 uates, and students of the University might pass in 
 procession into a hall worthy of such a gathering. 
 It was in order that this idea might in some degree 
 be realized, that this building was begun. I have 
 now the honor of giving it to the College in Mrs. 
 Charles Alexander's name. [Applause.] In speak- 
 ing for Mrs. Alexander, I would express to you, Mr. 
 President, and to the trustees and faculty, her thanks, 
 for your encouragement and for the cordial interest 
 which you have taken in the fulfillment of her pur- 
 pose. Thanks are due especially to the architect, Mr. 
 Potter, of whose good taste and ability you have suf- 
 ficient proof. 
 
 This hall is both a gift and a memorial. It is a gift 
 to a noble and enduring institution. It is a tribute 
 to Princeton College, to the students who give it life 
 and energy, to the graduates who have done it honor, 
 to the officers who have been faithful to its great tra- 
 ditions, to the learning which in Princeton has always 
 
found a home. May I not say that it is in a pecuHar 
 sense a tribute to its President, whose words were 
 the inspiration of the idea [cheers], and whose work 
 for both rehgion and learning- have been a cause of 
 admiration, and a motive to generosity in the mind 
 of the giver. 
 
 It is Mrs. Alexander's hope that this hall may al- 
 ways be a centre of University activity. Here, as the 
 years go by, graduates will take leave of their col- 
 lege. Here the friends of science, and of letters, and 
 of the arts may assemble. Here also will doubtless 
 be heard the voices of those who return from various 
 fields after harvests of inquiry and discovery. It is 
 not a temple of religion, but in a very real sense it is 
 dedicated to the cause of truth. And it is the desire 
 of the giver that nothing shall find welcome here but 
 that which is in conformity to the will of Him who is 
 the Truth Incarnate. 
 
 This hall is also a memorial. And I shall perhaps 
 be pardoned if I add that this is signified by the 
 name. There have been other generations of Alex- 
 anders whose memorials, more enduring than stone, 
 have already been seen in the works and lives of 
 men. There is a monument to them, which they 
 share with others, in the Princeton School of Theol- 
 ogy, with which they were once identified. And 
 there are humbler reminders of them hard by, in this 
 their place of burial. It is in honor of them, as well 
 as an honor to this hall, that the memory of former 
 
generations who were faithful to the academic Hfe of 
 Princeton is thus perpetuated. 
 
 Upon behalf of Mrs. Charles Alexander, with her 
 best wishes and hopes for all that Princeton is, and 
 for all that Princeton will yet be, I present to the 
 Trustees of this College, the Alexander Commence- 
 ment Hall. [Continued Applause.] 
 
 V 
 
 In receiving the hall. President Patton spoke as 
 follows : 
 
 In the name and on behalf of the trustees of 
 the College of New Jersey and with feelings of 
 gratitude for which I have no equivalent in words, 
 I accept this superb gift, which Mrs. Charles Alex- 
 ander has made to the college over which I have the 
 honor to preside. 
 
 To the friends who during the past six years have 
 helped me in my work and have seconded my efforts 
 to build up this institution, I owe a debt of gratitude 
 which I can never repay. Their kindly help has 
 sustained me in many an hour of discouragement and 
 has lightened many a burden. I wish to express my 
 obHgations to them all to-day, the living and the dead. 
 
 I wish, however, to express my special gratitude, 
 this morning, to the noble woman who has given us 
 the Hall at whose opening we are assembled. I thank 
 her in behalf of the trustees. I thank her in behalf 
 of the faculty. I thank her in behalf of the alumni. 
 I thank her in behalf of the undergraduates, for this 
 
splendid contribution to the development of our uni- 
 versity life. 
 
 It would have added to the gratification which we all 
 feel at this moment, if she could have been here to re- 
 ceive the ovation which we are ready to give her, but 
 I may say in her absence, what perhaps I could not 
 have been permitted to say in her presence. I wish 
 to pay my tribute of respect and admiration for Mrs. 
 Alexander, who has learned that there is no better use 
 for wealth than that of employing it in the service of 
 truth, and that the cause of truth is nowhere more 
 likely to be served, than in the equipment of a great 
 university, and who, accordingly, in the exercise of 
 an unostentatious liberality, has given us this beauti- 
 ful building. 
 
 That the gift was characterized by simplicity you 
 may know when I tell you that a simple note — as 
 simple as an informal invitation to dinner — is all that 
 we have ever had to indicate Mrs. Alexander's gener- 
 ous intention, and that it was only when we saw the 
 building rise in its stately proportions before our 
 eyes, that we knew the scope of her purpose. 
 
 That the building is beautiful I need not say ; it 
 speaks for itself. I congratulate our friend, Mr. Pot- 
 ter, on the success of his undertaking, and I am very 
 sure he has a right to feel pleasure in his work, and 
 so say about it, what the Great Architect said of his 
 own, that it is very good. [Laughter and applause.] 
 
 It gratifies me to know that this building, which is 
 
lO 
 
 to be the centre of our academic life, is to be called 
 " Alexander Hall," for no name is more clearly iden- 
 tified with the name and fame of Princeton than that 
 of Alexander. [Applause.] We naturally turn to the 
 older generation, and speak especially of those who 
 are famous in fields of literature. I cannot help 
 thinking and speaking of Dr. Archibald Alexander, 
 the sagacious, saintly man, who was the first profes- 
 sor of theology in Princeton Seminary, the discerner 
 of men, the interpreter of conscience, the analyst of 
 religious experience, who as professor, preacher and 
 author, was guide and counsellor of generations of 
 clergymen : and of Dr. Joseph Addison Alexander, 
 the linguist, scholar, man of erudition, man of letters, 
 poet, exegete and preacher, who, though he died 
 young, was the foremost man in his church: and of Dr. 
 James W. Alexander, the man of broad scholarship, 
 elegatit culture, and the pulpit orator, who, as a profes- 
 sor of both of our Princeton institutions, as well as 
 pastor of a large city church, laid his best gifts upon 
 the altar of Christian truth and service. [Applause.] 
 
 These men, I say, belong to the past ; they sleep in 
 that hallowed spot that contains the dust of so many 
 of the great men of our church and nation ; but there 
 are others of that same generation who are still serv- 
 ing the church and the college, ahd who will, as we 
 all hope, continue to serve them for a long time to 
 come. [Applause.] 
 
 I run the risk of rebuke for what I am about to say, 
 
1 1 
 
 but I could not forgive myself if I did not say what 
 is in my heart at this moment, respecting the devo- 
 tion of one who has found time amid the engrossing 
 cares of a large legal practice, through many years, 
 to serve this college as a faithful and devoted trustee. 
 I refer to Mr. Henry M. Alexander. [Continued ap- 
 plause.] He has been to me a wise counsellor and a 
 true friend, and I am glad to have this opportunity 
 of expressing my gratitude to him and my high ap- 
 preciation of his services. I am sure that if he has 
 pleasure to-day in seeing this beautiful building, it 
 is not simply in the fact that his own son's wife is 
 the giver, but also in the fact that his dearly beloved 
 alma mater is the recipient. 
 
 There is, I am glad to say, in the younger genera- 
 tion of Alexanders, no lack of those who are worthily 
 representing this distinguished name in the pulpit, at 
 the bar, in the practice of medicine, in the professor's 
 chair, in business; and who, so far as my knowledge 
 of them goes, have carried with them into all the 
 walks of life that grace of style, that facility and 
 felicity of expression that seems to belong to them 
 all as their inheritance. 
 
 I cannot mention them by name, but there is not 
 one who better deserves to be mentioned than Mr. 
 Charles B. Alexander himself, whose work in his pro- 
 fession covers the wide field of advocate, counsellor, 
 and author. [Applause.] 
 
 Long may the Alexander family remain identified 
 
12 
 
 with Princeton, and may the day be far distant when 
 there shall be no one to enter this building, as a mem- 
 ber of this university, who can share with it the glory 
 of its name. [Applause.] 
 
 I feel flattered with the suggestion that this build- 
 ing is, in any way, connected with the hope that I 
 expressed in my inaugural address. I do not pretend 
 to disguise the fact that I feel a special sense of pro- 
 prietorship in three of the buildings that have been 
 erected on the campus during my administration, of 
 which this is one, and that I feel specially proud of 
 being able to claim the donors as my personal friends. 
 I am particularly pleased at having this building re- 
 ferred to as the fulfillment of a prophecy, because, if 
 I remember right, I uttered other prophecies at the 
 same time [laughter and applause], and I cannot help 
 indulging the hope that other friends will continue 
 what Mrs. Alexander has begun in the way of pro- 
 phetic fulfillment [laughter], and that the cycle may 
 be so short that, having as a young man dreamed 
 dreams, I may, without waiting to be an old man, see 
 visions of the coming glories of Princeton. [Applause.] 
 
 This building stands to-day as the centre of our 
 university life, and is an invitation to us and to our 
 generous benefactors to go on toward the completion 
 of our university equipment. It represents the syn- 
 thesis of culture in what it is and in what it is to con- 
 tain and the purpose it is meant to subserve. 
 
 Upon this platform will be represented, in increas- 
 
13 
 
 ing numbers and by men of brightening fame, the 
 various fields of inquiry in philosophy, literature, and 
 science. Before us, year by year, as we shall do this 
 year, we shall bring together, for the last time, the 
 men whom we are to send forth as our contribution 
 to the intellectual and moral forces of the world. 
 We shall meet here from year to year to listen to the 
 best that can be said, by men who have a right to 
 speak with authority, in the departments in which 
 they have won renown. 
 
 Back to this temple of learning, generation after 
 generation, the students of this college shall come, 
 from time to time, to relight the lamp of learning at 
 the fires that burn upon this altar ; and arm in arm 
 together, walking around its cloisters, shall wake the 
 memories of the past and recount the stories of the 
 friendships of former days. 
 
 This building shall be not only a synthesis of cul- 
 ture, but in the mind of the generous giver and in the 
 minds of the members of the corporation which ac- 
 cepts it, it shall stand also as a symbol of the union 
 of culture and religion. All truth leads up to Kim 
 who is the way, the truth, and the life. All earnest 
 study, reverently undertaken, must, in the end, bring 
 us closer to God. 
 
 We do not profess, in this institution, to embark 
 upon an ocean of discovery without chart or compass. 
 We believe in God and we believe also, in Christ. And 
 so, my friends, as we opened the exercises this morn- 
 
ing by invoking the blessing of the Almighty, let 
 us rise and close them, with bowed heads, while 
 our ex-president, venerable and best beloved, pro- 
 nounces upon us the apostolic benediction. 
 
 The Rev. James McCosh, D. D., LL. D., then pro- 
 nounced the apostolic benediction, which brought the 
 proceedings to a close. 
 
 Resolution Adopted by the Graduating Class of 
 
 Princeton College, on Commencement Day, 
 
 June Thirteenth, 1894. 
 
 Whereas, The Commencement of 1894 has been 
 made memorable by the use, for the first time, of 
 Alexander Hall ; and 
 
 Whereas, The gift of this magnificent building to 
 the College by Mrs. Charles B. Alexander has given 
 a new interest to all the exercises of Commencement 
 week ; therefore, be it 
 
 Resolved, That the members of the Class of 1894 
 heartily join in the general expression of thanks to 
 Mrs. Alexander, for her great benefaction to the Col- 
 lege, and especially for her liberality and kind con- 
 sideration in causing the memorial inscription of the 
 Class of 1894 to be placed over the main entrance to 
 the Commencement Hall. 
 
BACCALAUREATE SERMON PREACHED BE- 
 FORE THE CLASS OF 1894 OF PRINCETON 
 COLLEGE. ON SUNDAY, JUNE TENTH, 
 1894, BY THE REV. FRANCIS LANDEY 
 PATTON, D.D., LL. D., PRESIDENT OF THE 
 COLLEGE. 
 
 PRINTED BY REQUEST OF THE MEMBERS 
 OF THE CLASS. 
 
BACCALAUREATE SERMON. 
 
 Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter 
 answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go ? thou hast the words of eternal life. 
 And we believe and are sure that thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. 
 — John vi. 67-9. 
 
 I can imagine that tliere was a look of sadness on our 
 Saviour's face as he turned to his disciples with the ques- 
 tion : "Will ye also go away?" It is hard to feel that 
 you are losing ground ; that confidence in you is waning ; 
 that the contagion of distrust has spread until it has 
 reached your most intimate friends, so that they receive 
 your words in discreet silence instead of responsive 
 approval, and if they keep their loyalty, do so by constant 
 defence of it and in the way of justification rather than 
 with enthusiasm. 
 
 Something of this sort had happened to Jesus. What he 
 said about giving men his flesh to eat and raising them 
 up at the last day was too much for the multitude. Given, 
 as they were, to supernaturalism, there w^as in this escha- 
 tological supernaturalism, to use Pfleiderer's phrase, some- 
 thing which, with their literal understanding of it, was too 
 gross for them to hear it without impatience. The hard 
 sayings which Jesus had uttered in their hearing, settled for 
 them the question of further companionship with him. 
 The doubts had been growing, I dare say, for skepticism 
 is not a sudden thing. But there comes a time, when the 
 
cumulative effect of little things which go to shake con- 
 fidence, is felt with overwhelming power; and so "from 
 that time," we read, " many of the disciples walked no 
 more with him." It was when he felt himself deserted by 
 the many, that he turned his sad eyes with earnest gaze 
 upon the few who still stood by him and asked : " Will 
 ye also go away ? " 
 
 I can imagine that there was an element of sad- 
 ness in the minds of the twelve disciples, too ; for these 
 sayings which had been hard to those who left the 
 Saviour were no less hard to them ; and there may have 
 been moments when they debated with themselves the 
 question whether they should go or stay. This penetrat- 
 ing interrogation, therefore, went home ; it formulated 
 vague feelings ; it was a revelation of inner life. It may 
 be that the thought of leaving Him had more than once 
 crossed their minds, but now the question was before 
 them in a form that could not be evaded. By one of 
 those lightning flashes of intuition Peter saw the full 
 meaning of the question. He realized that he was face 
 to face with a choice of alternatives. These things that 
 Jesus had said were a tax upon his faith, it is true, but 
 then his life had been broadened by companionship with 
 the Master. He had learned that there was something 
 more in life than mending fishing nets by the shore of 
 the Sea of Galilee. He had been delivered from the 
 humdrum of existence, and there was in his mind the 
 vision of a high ideal to be wrought for in this world, to 
 be completely realized in the world to come. To know 
 
19 
 
 Christ was to have life and to have it more abundantly. 
 To give up Christ was to give up the ideal. There was 
 no via media, and so, out from the depths of his heart 
 and in words as clear as light, there leaped the Apologia of 
 Christianity: " Lord to whom can we go. Thou hast the 
 words of eternal life." He might have clung doggedly to 
 Christ, refusing doubt and refusing to look for a cure of 
 doubt; refusing to reject the Saviour because he would 
 not give up eternal life : or he might have resigned him- 
 self to despair, refusing to continue in fellowship with 
 Jesus because his reason refused its acquiescence in the 
 hard things that Jesus taught. But he took neither 
 position. The moment he realized the crisis in his life 
 he understood that the way to keep the synthesis between 
 the hard things and the eternal life was through a super- 
 naturalism that, by including, would explain them both. 
 And so it came to pass that Peter's answer in its com- 
 pleteness is not that of a man who by sheer force of will 
 makes choice of desperate optimism because he will not 
 make choice of desperate pessimism, but of one who has 
 a reason for his choice. * Why should we go away ? 
 Why should we give up the eternal life, or forsake the 
 one who has declared it to us. We believe, we have 
 been believing all along, that thou art the Christ, the 
 son of the living God.' 
 
 I cannot help seeing here a picture of the religious 
 problem of to-day, As I watch the trend of religious 
 thought and see how fast we are approaching the point 
 where we must choose and where men must see that we 
 
20 
 
 must choose between out-and-out naturalism and out-and- 
 out supernaturalism it seems to me that the whole move- 
 ment is sketched for us in the text : the religious diffi- 
 culties, the defection of some, the doubts of others, the 
 sharp alternatives, and the true solution of the problem. 
 I am especially drawn toward this theme to-day, 
 because I am addressing those who are so soon to go 
 out from this College, and who because they have come 
 into contact with a broader culture cannot but by 
 reason of that contact have felt the force of some of the 
 criticisms to which their hereditary faith has been sub- 
 ected. You are in a position that enlists my deepest 
 sympathy. By your training, by reason of your broader 
 knowledge, by reason of the fact that you have grasped 
 the idea of the unity of the world, there are elements in 
 Christianity which strike you now as otherwise they 
 would not, as years ago they did not, as hard sayings. 
 And then you have perhaps come under the influence of 
 men who in their writings assume that it is all over with 
 Christianity, who plainly intimate that the "dear Lord 
 Jesus has had his day;" and the self-confident tone 
 which they assume, their very bravado of unbelief has 
 had its effect upon you, so that you falter, it may be, 
 where once you firmly trod. It is a gratifying fact 
 that so many of you are Christian men ; and of those 
 who are not professedly Christians, I suppose that there 
 are few, if indeed there are any, who have deliberately 
 chosen to walk no more with Jesus. There may be 
 some who make no disguise of their indifference or who 
 
21 
 
 even take pride in their skepticism. And their example, 
 added to other reasons which in some unformulated and 
 insidious way have been at work, is perhaps leading 
 some of you to regard your continued faith as a matter of 
 debate and doubt. I come then with tender feelings to 
 you, my brothers, this morning, to repeat the Saviour's 
 question and to ask : " Will ye also go away." 
 
 It is easy to generalize the situation. Here on the 
 one hand were certain supernaturalisms about eating the 
 Saviour's flesh and being raised from the dead at the last 
 day : and here on the other hand was the ethical ideal 
 of eternal life. It seemed as though the one made 
 needless demands upon faith while the other was a 
 priceless possession. It was the inseparability of the 
 two that proved embarrassing to the disciples and which 
 made Peter's decision so prompt. And to-day these 
 same elements, seemingly so conflicting, enter into the 
 essence of Christianity. We have in it a great system 
 of supernaturalism involving miracle, and comprising 
 theological statements regarding the Person of Christ, 
 the doctrine of the atonement and the future destiny of 
 souls : and we have a sublime morality which deals with 
 human conduct under great satisfying categories. To 
 be told that man is a child of God, that in spite of 
 failure, winning victory through struggle, he is to realize 
 his better self, that in the sacrifice of self and the culti- 
 vation of the social virtues man is to realize upon this 
 earth, in contrast to the selfishness that has claimed it, 
 the kingdom of God : how easy it is to hear that ; 
 
how hard to part with this idea once we have enter- 
 tained it ! And here is the doctrine of the miraculous 
 birth of Jesus, His divine claims, the story of His 
 death and resurrection, and the juristic and Jewish col- 
 oring which has been imparted, so men say, to thew 
 moral work of Jesus, and which has resulted in the 
 dogma of the atonement. How unethical we think it ; 
 and local ; and unsuited to the present age ! How 
 sharp the contrast between these two elements of 
 historic Christianity : the one so free from limitation, so 
 ideal, so rational, so independent of geography and the 
 Gregorian calendar ; the other so historic, and 
 dependent on the canons of historical criticism : the one 
 shining in its own light ; the other obliged to defend 
 itself against cavils and to listen to all who pick flaws in 
 the evidence. The old antithesis confronts us that con- 
 fronted the disciples. There are hard sayings that try 
 our faith and tempt us to walk no more with Jesus : and 
 there is the eternal life — ideal morality which we cannot 
 give up without turning our earthly existence into a 
 graveyard. Are these two elements of Christianity shut 
 up m one inseparable synthesis ? May we not give up 
 the theology and keep the ethics ? Or must the two 
 go together ? 
 
 I know how words that I have spoken from this pulpit 
 have been regarded. I know that I have been criticised 
 because I put the dogma-side of Christianity with an 
 emphasis that left the impression that I underrated the 
 life-side of Christianity. I know how in doing this I 
 
23 
 
 have been regarded as narrow and illiberal ; how, in the 
 judgment of some, all such modes of presenting Chris- 
 tians are anachronisms. Yet it would be a mistake if one 
 should think that I undervalue the ethical side of religion. 
 Christianity is in order to life, higher life, broader life, 
 purer life, eternal life. But I am nevertheless con. 
 strained to feel that Peter spoke for all time when he 
 uttered the words of the text. Apostasy from Christ is 
 the disruption of morality. Christ cannot be divided ; we 
 must accept Him as a theologian if we keep him as a 
 moralist. When, therefore, we are speaking in behalf of 
 the high supernaturalism of orthodox Christianity, it 
 must be understood that we are at the same time making 
 the strongest plea for every da^ morality. 
 
 To many this will seem like an extreme statement. 
 Many w^ill feel that there is surely some middle ground, 
 and they will doubtless feel justified in maintaining their 
 belief in the possibility of this mediating position by the 
 actual position occupied by representative thinkers of the 
 day. They will say : Does not Weiss stand here, and 
 Kaftan here, and Pfleiderer here, and Caird here, and 
 Green here, and Spencer here, and Bosanquet here ? As 
 a matter of fact, are there not innumerable positions that 
 lie between the strong supernaturalism of orthodox 
 Christianity and the destruction of obligatory morality ? 
 This, however, is not a proper way to judge. We must 
 consider not where men are actually found, but what 
 logical right they have to be where they are found ; and 
 how long they can be expected to occupy the positions 
 
24 
 
 they maintain. It is no answer to him who sees the flood 
 advancing that the men and women in the villages that 
 lie below it and in its path are without concern. The 
 question is, how long they can stay so. 
 
 It would not have been strange if men with a logic 
 less resolute than Peter's had felt that he had been 
 precipitate in thus shutting them up to this choice of 
 alternatives. A little reflection, it might have been said, 
 would have suggested another answer than the one that 
 Peter gave. ' Might we not abandon the hard sayings 
 without leaving Christ ? This gross supernaturalism to 
 be sure, we do not accept, but we are loyal to the Master. 
 His theology does not carry our reason, but we must cling 
 to His doctrine of eternal life.' They might have met the 
 Savior's questions with a prompt avowal of devotion, 
 while maintaining a discreet silence as to their theologi- 
 cal skepticism. Or they might have said, ' The truths 
 of reason are independent of the conditions under which 
 they find expression, and though we recognize the fact 
 that it was Jesus who first enunciated these high ideals 
 which bring into such wonderful consonance the impulses 
 of religion and morality, we are nevertheless not to be 
 hampered in our acceptance of the universal truth by 
 any difficulty we may experience in accepting the claims 
 which the expounder of that truth may make in his own 
 behalf. We may go away from Jesus, but we shall carry 
 with us wherever we may go the words of eternal life.' It 
 would have been possible for men to give either of these 
 
25 
 
 answers to the question which Jesus addressed to his dis- 
 ciples rather than the one that Peter gave. Men are giving 
 these answers to-day. To present the forms in which 
 these answers are given would be, in great measure, 
 to write a contemporary history of the Philosophy 
 of Religion. 
 
 The most familiar form of the minimising theology is 
 perhaps the one which finds expression in the popular 
 depreciation of the Pauline literature. It is very com- 
 mon for men to wish that we might hear more of Christ 
 and less of Paul. They would have us choose our texts 
 more frequently from the Gospels and less frequently 
 from the Epistles. It is not that they deny the truth of 
 what Paul says, but that they feel that so much of what 
 he says is abstract, hard to comprehend, and remote from 
 the practical requirements of life. With the men to 
 whom I refer, this disposition to put Paul in the back- 
 ground does not indicate theological eclecticism so much 
 as a change of theological perspective. Paul is too full 
 of transcendental statements about the Divine nature, and 
 seems too much at home in the intimacies of the Divine 
 purpose for them to be much profited by w^hat he says. 
 They wish a simpler Christianity that will tell them how 
 to bear the burdens and fight the battles of life and not 
 perplex them so much about the plan of salvation. 
 But, as I have said, these men do not dream of disputing 
 the inspiration of Paul. They are not aware of the 
 questions that critics raise regarding him. How much 
 Paul's theology came by heredity through the Pharisees 
 
26 
 
 and how much it came by education through Philo; how 
 far his thought was Hebraistic and how far it was 
 Hellenistic they do not know nor care. Of the idealized 
 Christ of the Epistles in contrast with the concrete per- 
 sonality of the Synoptists, they have not heard. Of the 
 human Christ as universalized by St. Paul and the divine 
 Christ as personalized by St. John, they do not know, 
 nor do they know anything of the attempts that men 
 have made to go through the New Testament and explain 
 away its supernaturalism by the theory of tendency, 
 or to eliminate its distinctive doctrines by means of He- 
 gelian generalizations. They somehow think that they 
 get nearer to Christ in the Gospels, and when, in earnest, 
 fervent words of affection, they speak of Jesus as though 
 he were somehow placed in sharp antithesis to Paul, they 
 do" not know how closely they are in accord with those 
 who have used the weapons of critical learning in the 
 creation of this antithesis in order that they might 
 thereby break down the supernatural claims of Jesus. 
 And yet men ought to see without much argument that 
 if the Bible is the Word of God, if Paul spoke by 
 revelation it is impossible to effect the change in values 
 which they propose. For the Christ of Christianity is to 
 a very large degree the Pauline Christ. To depreciate 
 Paul's theology is to depreciate Paul's estimate of 
 Christ. Christ is not an idea in Paul's theology, he is 
 a Person. His theology centres in the crucified and 
 risen Christ. With Paul, Christ is the image of God, 
 the fulness of the Godhead in the flesh. With Paul, it is 
 
27 
 
 Christ who is the propitiation for our sins, it is Christ in 
 whose likeness we are to live and through whom life and 
 immortality have been brought to light. It is not as 
 easy as we may suppose to make the sharp distinction 
 between our faith which rests on Christ's teachinor and 
 our faith which rests on Paul's teaching. For while it 
 is true that we have in the Gospels what Christ teaches 
 about eternal life, we have in the Epistles what Paul 
 teaches about Christ. And what we believe about 
 Christ has not a little to do with the value we attach 
 to what Christ teaches. Our idea of Christ is made up 
 in part of what the Evangelists give us and in part of 
 what Paul gives us, and upon the assumption that the 
 New Testament is a rule of faith and a revelation from 
 God, there is no ground for the discrimination that assigns 
 an inferior place to the Epistles and the first place to the 
 Gospels. It is clear that we cannot give up Paul in 
 order to keep Christ if we owe our knowledge of Christ 
 to Paul, and we believe that Paul spoke by revelation 
 of God. 
 
 But I am well aware that a more consistent demand 
 for the abandonment of the Pauline theology may be 
 made by those who do not take this high view regarding 
 Paul's inspiration. Men of this sort can quite consist- 
 ently say, 'We reject the theology .of St. Paul, and refuse 
 to give our acquiescence alike to his theological con- 
 struction of the person of Christ and the theological 
 inferences that he draws from it. We appreciate the 
 ethical maxims that Paul uttered, and as embodying uni- 
 
28 
 
 versal ideas we retain them in our reconstructed theology ; 
 but his theory of justification, and his doctrine of the 
 atonement, including his conception of the Christ we 
 refuse to be bound by : and emancipated from the thral- 
 dom of this Jewish and juristic theology, delivered from 
 the yoke of Pharisaic metaphysics, we feel all the more 
 loyal to the Jesus of he Evangelists. 
 
 It is easy when we are under the spell of a fascinating 
 writer to be made to think that after all theology was 
 only an incident in the Pauline thought ; that through 
 the accident of birth and heredity to be sure he gave a 
 Jewish and theological coloring to his profound ethical 
 conceptions, but that at heart he was a moralist. So 
 regarding Paul it is natural to suppose that he is chiefly 
 valuable to us for what he said in regard to great ethical 
 ideas. He had read the Hellenistic philosophy to some 
 purpose, it is supposed by those who entertain this view 
 of his work, and had reached great generalizations on 
 moral and religious philosophy. His doctrine of the 
 new birth was the dying of the old selfish life and the 
 beginning of the new effort to realize the better self. 
 His doctrine of the atonement was a mechanical way of 
 stating the great law of self-sacrifice, and his recognition 
 of the brotherhood of Christians, an anticipation of the 
 modern doctrine of social tissue. I confess it is hard to 
 reconcile the antinomies in St. Paul when I read the criti- 
 cisms of our religious philosophers. It is difficult to say 
 whether we shall take him as a Jew who distorted the 
 simple gospel of the kingdom and forced it into the 
 
29 
 
 mould of Pharisaic theology, or as a philosopher who in 
 advance of Hegel and with a degree of liberality quite 
 creditable to him avowed the great principle of self-reali- 
 zation that runs through all Hegelian ethics or ontology. 
 This at least is very plain. If Paul spoke by revelation 
 his theology and his ethics go together, and his doctrine 
 of Christ as I have said is a large part of his theology. 
 If he did not speak by revelation, his speculations of 
 course have a place in the history of opinion but it 
 seems to me a waste of time to be showing how closely 
 they followed the Hegelian rubrics. 
 
 The Hegelians now pay Paul the compliment of 
 claiming him ; and their great doctrine of Spirit struggling 
 for realization or expression in nature finds its finest inter- 
 pretation in the eighth chapter of The Romans, "The 
 whole creation groaneth and travailfeth in pain together 
 until now." It is not denied that we may be helped 
 in our interpretation of scripture by some of the great 
 ideas of the Hegelian philosophy. I have great respect for 
 the generalizations that underlie or are fairly deducible 
 from Paul's concrete theological statements, but one is 
 false to history as well as false to the requirements of 
 language when he seeks to evaporate these theological 
 statements into Hegelian abstractions. That Paul ad- 
 vanced great ethical ideas is doubtless true : the doctrine 
 of sacrifice ; the schism on our ethical nature and the 
 striving of the higher against the lower ; the doctrine of 
 the organic life of humanity. But these are inferences 
 from his theology or are inseparably woven into its tex- 
 
30 
 
 ture. If the one was dependent upon the other it was 
 not the ethic that begat the theology, but the theology 
 that begat the ethic. But though we should succeed in 
 reducing the area of Pauline thought that is deemed 
 worthy consideration to a few ethical maxims, we should 
 not have eliminated the problem of theology from the 
 inquiry concerning Christ. For if the portrait of Jesus 
 in the Gospels is to be trusted, we are to believe that 
 Jesus taught theology as well as morals. And what he 
 taught about himself and his mission is so distinct that 
 no one who accepts the Gospels has the slightest reason 
 for rejecting the Epistles. What we find in the Epistles 
 is only a logical expression of what we find in the gos- 
 pels. What Paul taught explicitly Jesus taught im- 
 plicitly. The antithesis between the hard saying and 
 eternal life, between theology and ethic goes back to the 
 place where we found it — goes back, that is to say, to the 
 Gospel story ; and it is only by mutilating the Synoptists 
 and denying the credibility of the Fourth Gospel that 
 men can ever succeed in making the historic Christ a 
 moralist who made no claims to supernaturalism. 
 
 There is, I know, a mediating position between anti- 
 supernaturalism and the Pauline theology, and its most 
 prominent exponents are in the Ritschlian school. With 
 great beauty of reasoning Kaftan tells us that the king- 
 dom of God as given in the Gospels is the only satisfy- 
 ing ideal of human life. The moral history of mankind 
 reaches its climax there. Our life is and must remain a 
 torso unless it can reach out into the supra-mundane 
 
31 
 
 sphere. Our moral relations and our moral -ideals must 
 relate themselves to our faith in God if they are to con- 
 tinue to be commanding. The history of humanity 
 shows nothing to compare in sweep, in beauty, and 
 grandeur of thought with this ethical ideal presented in 
 the Christian doctrine of the kingdom of God : an ideal 
 involving mutual self-sacrifice of loving service in union 
 with faith in God and under promise and with the pros- 
 pect of perfect life in the world to come. We shall not 
 willingly give up the words of eternal life in which this 
 ideal is embodied. And yet these words are not intu- 
 itions. However reasonable, they did not originate in 
 human reason. They are a revelation. They must rest 
 on revelation to be commanding. As Kaftan says : "All 
 depends on the fact that in that faith we have to do not 
 merely with an idea, with a thought, but with a historic- 
 al reality ; the historical person of Jesus Christ. His 
 relation to God has been essentially different from what 
 is seen in the case of all other men ; he is the Son who 
 knows the Father, through the knowledge of whom 
 all men are meant to come and can come to the knowl- 
 edg^e of God. This fact is the foundation of Christian 
 faith and Christian hope." This idea of the eternal life 
 then, is mediated to us through Jesus, and Jesus is a 
 revelation of God. How do we assure ourselves of 
 this ? Shall we say that the fellowship in this truth 
 which Christians share is born of the Spirit ? Shall we 
 seek an easy road of subjective certitude which will 
 make us independent of history and criticism, of miracle 
 
32 
 
 and scientific objection to miracles ? Will the mysticism 
 which appeals to the Holy Ghost, and is recklessly inde- 
 pendent of history save us from the necessity of answer- 
 ing the question whether the advent of Jesus interrupted 
 the natural sequence of events ? I am glad to see that, 
 though the Ritschlians are prone to overdo the subjec- 
 tive side of religion, Kaftan shows that we cannot 
 escape from the necessity of defending the supernatural- 
 ism of Christ on historic grounds. This is the strength 
 and the weakness of his position. For it is useless to 
 decry dogma if it is admitted that the historic Christ 
 was in some sense supernatural and as such was a revela- 
 tion of God. For the impulse to ask in what sense he 
 was supernatural is irresistible : and the answer to this 
 qnestion, if there is material for an answer, is a dogma. 
 The story of the New Testament is either fact or fiction. 
 The admission of the supernatural in the life of Jesus 
 takes away every reason that can be urged against ortho- 
 dox Christianity. And while Ritschlian theology may 
 make a useful protest against extreme anti-supernatural- 
 ism, it is an untenable position ; and those who occupy 
 it will be forced by the inevitable logic of tendency to 
 go forward or go backward. 
 
 The real question in religion is not. How much super- 
 naturalism is there in Christianity ? but. Is there any ? 
 The difficulty which men feel is not that the evidences of 
 Christianity are insufficient ; but that no amount of 
 evidence in their judgment can suffice to prove a mir- 
 acle. The real question is whether the advent of Jesus 
 
33 
 
 marks a break in the historic continuity of the race ; or 
 whether he was just a human being like other human 
 beings of his day. Let us not conceal the meaning and 
 importance of this question by resorting to the euphe- 
 mistic language of philosophy. It does not help matters 
 to say that the Divine Spirit was present in Jesus as 
 He was in no other man, and therefore that Jesus was 
 divine; that God realized and revealed Himself in Jesus 
 as He has done in no other man, and therefore 
 that Jesus was a unique and exceptional personality. 
 For those who say this say also that God is revealing 
 Himself in man at all times ; that manhood in its 
 essence is simply this, that the Divine Spirit is dwelling 
 in and giving expression to Himself in our bodily 
 organisms. So that all it comes to when in this way we 
 say that Jesus was divine is that Jesus was a better man, 
 just as Shakespeare was a greater man than we are. 
 The latest writer on the anti-supernaturalistic side, I 
 mean Dr. Mcintosh, states his position without reserve : 
 '' We must take Jesus to have been by nature and to 
 have remained from first to last a member pure and 
 simple of the human family ; a link of the human chain 
 just as any of ourselves are, having all the properties 
 of human nature but those of no other." This is 
 Pfleiderer's position, and I cannot see that the position 
 taken by Edward Caird in his " Evolution of Religion " 
 is a whit different. 
 
 You will agree with me, I think, that you are 
 confronted with a great question when you study our 
 
34 
 
 text in the light of current discussion. The hard 
 saying of Christianity is not this miracle or that ; but 
 it is miracle. Can we give up miracle and cling 
 to Christ ? Think of what Jesus is when the super- 
 natural is eliminated ! There is no atonement, no 
 doctrine of forgiveness, nothing supernatural in the 
 structure or contents of the Old Testament ; nothing 
 supernatural in the New. Jesus is a man, He was 
 born, he lived and died ; He was pure-minded but not 
 sinless; He had high ideals but no exceptional au- 
 thority for enunciating them. He believed in God and 
 the immortality of the soul, and He founded a society 
 based on the practice of self-sacrifice and the indul- 
 gence of the hope of immortality. He made mistakes 
 about Himself and arrogated to himself a place in the 
 scale of being which He did not possess, and 
 claimed a degree of homage to which he was not 
 entitled. 
 
 Can we be said to follow Jesus if we entertain these 
 opinions respecting him ? We may accept his teachings 
 of eternal life perhaps, and in his union of morality and 
 religion we may see the highest ideal of humanity. But 
 it is because these ideas commend themselves to us that 
 we adopt them not because he taught them. The mes- 
 sage authenticates the Master. The Master adds no 
 value to the message. He no longer speaks as one hav- 
 ing authority. We may call ourselves Christians still, 
 but it is only as we may call ourselves Lutherans or 
 Calvinists or Wesleyans. We only use the founder's 
 
35 
 
 name as a shorthand way of indicating the tenets with 
 which his ministry was identified. Surely it is not in 
 the old sense of believing in Christ in which we were 
 trained, that we are believers in Christ now if Christ has 
 become simply a member of the human family. Are 
 we now in the last analysis forced to choose between 
 the acceptance of miracles and the rejection of Christ ? 
 Were these men not right after all, who,, when they 
 could not accept the hard saying, walked no more with 
 Jesus ? Does it not come to this, in our own day, that 
 we must choose between accepting miracles and aban- 
 doning Christ ? Is there any question so important 
 then, or fraught with greater consequences than this, 
 Will ye also go away ? Must you hold to the uniformity 
 of nature in a form that makes a single miracle impossi- 
 ble ? Must your naturalism be without a single excep- 
 tion ? Are the facts of the physical world so articulated 
 that the Incarnation is an antecedent impossibility ? So 
 some have felt, and because they have felt so, they have 
 parted company with the Saviour whom they learned to 
 worship in their childhood. How is it with you, my 
 friend, for you too have learned the story of the Saviour 
 through the gentle ministry of a mother's love, and you 
 have been brought in later years perhaps to look upon 
 this world as a great machine ? Is there a necessary 
 antagonism between the teachings of the mother at 
 whose knee you knelt in your childhood, and that 
 other mother from whose side you are going out so 
 soon ? I feel so sorry for those who feel that the 
 
. 36 
 
 breach with early faith is inevitable, and in whose ears 
 the clock has struck the hour when they shall walk no 
 more with Jesus. That doubt is spreading ; that great 
 names are enlisted on the side of those who cannot 
 bear the hard saying of Christianity, does not reconcile 
 me to the defection. It only makes me fear. And 
 when I remember how the charm of fascinating style 
 is lent to the service of unbelief, and how in alluring 
 phrase and captivating argument a plausible and elevated 
 morality is presented us as a substitute for the Christian 
 faith in which we were trained, I wonder what the effect 
 will be ; and so when I look into your faces to-day, 
 my brothers of the senior class, and for the last time 
 address you from this pulpit, I cannot help asking, not 
 in curiosity, but in solicitude, not to suggest the doubt, 
 but, if possible, to prompt the better reply. Will ye also 
 go away ? 
 
 We cannot give up the supernatural in Christianity, 
 for this is the outcome of it all, without giving up 
 Christ. May we not give up Christ, however, without 
 giving up eternal life ? I know that some think that 
 there is a place in the world for a non-miraculous 
 Christianity. Perhaps there is, though I have not been 
 able to find it. Such a Christianity, however, will need 
 no schemes of missionary enterprise, and will really 
 be able to dispense with an ordained ministry. So 
 that it seems to me there was an element of 
 inconsistency in the fervid article that recently ap- 
 peared in your own Literary Magazine which con- 
 ceded the sacred character of the minister's calling, 
 
37 
 
 and pitied those who, as the result of some supposed 
 arrest of intellectual development, are about to enter 
 that calling in the full belief of the truth of traditional 
 Christianity. I can understand, though I do not sym- 
 pathise with those who desire a religion consisting of 
 immutable truths that are independent of the conditions 
 of time and space, that are true everywhere and at all 
 times, that appeal to us by their inherent reasonableness, 
 that do not ask us to ransack literature two thousand years 
 old, and that are not tied to the incidents of stage and 
 scenery, and actors and audience that make up the drama 
 of Calvary. They want, that is to say, a religion within 
 the limits of the pure reason, as Kant would say. How 
 religion must shrivel and be dwarfed in its proportions 
 before we can reduce it to those limits we may learn from 
 Kant himself, and even Kant kept more than he had 
 any logical right to keep, when he kept the doctrine of 
 immortality. Peter w^as right. The history of opinion 
 verifies his words. To give up Christ is to give up eternal 
 life. Now Christ's doctrine of eternal life is not simply 
 that of the immortality of the soul, though of course, it 
 included that ; and when we think of it we must not 
 think of Sheol or Hades or Orcus, that it is to say, the 
 idea that we are to lay stress upon, is not that of some 
 place oi posi moi^iemQxistQncQ.. The eternal life begins in 
 this life and continues for ever. It involves quality of 
 existence as well as duration of existence. It is an 
 expression that stands for the continuous development 
 of our ethical and religious nature. And the time 
 
38 
 
 element in it is significant inasmuch as it is 
 an assurance that we are destined to an end- 
 less career as moral beings. We may use it, there- 
 fore, as a symbol of our ethical development. Our 
 Saviour's ethics moreover were very different from the 
 ethics of the heathen world. He did not sacrifice 
 the individual to the State as Plato did, nor by making him 
 a citizen of the world loosen his local attachments as the 
 Stoics did. He did not, like Aristotle, make the good con- 
 sist in the avoidance of extremes ; nor, like Epicurus, in 
 the enjoyment of pleasure. He made the individual and 
 the organism mutually subservient to each other. It 
 was through society that the individual was to be aided 
 in his moral growth ; it was through men of strong 
 moral convictions that society was to be regenerated. 
 Christ took the individual out of the crowd and made 
 him feel the priceless value of the soul. He laid stress 
 on personality and the inner life. He set God before 
 men as their ideal, and told them to be perfect as the 
 Father in Heavien is perfect. Old virtues that went to 
 make the State strong were not discarded, but new vir- 
 tues were born under the influence of a theology that 
 taught men to believe in the pitying eye and tender love 
 of that Father in Heaven. The ideal was higher, but 
 mercy was broader. Sin was branded as never before, 
 but the penitent sinner was forgiven. It was the paradox 
 of Christianity which moralists to-day do not always 
 understand, though they have lived under the influence of 
 the gospel, that it makes the conscience more sensitive. 
 
39 
 
 and, at the same time, the heart more tender ; and that 
 we can sometimes best conserve morality by forgiving 
 the breaches of morality. The eternal life was morality 
 — it was religion. It was the service of man in the 
 service of God. It was the service of God through the 
 service of man. The world had never seen the like of 
 this before. We may well hesitate before we give up these 
 words of eternal life. But can we keep them ? Can we 
 even be sure of immortality when we cease to believe 
 that Christ speaks with authority. We may hope that the 
 doctrine is true, we may argue about it as Plato did, and 
 Mendelsohn and Kant ; or, we may hand it over for 
 investigation to the Society for Psychic Research. Mr. 
 Myers thinks that the latter course is the proper one. 
 " The time," he says, " for a priori chains of argument, 
 for the subjective pronouncements of leading minds, for 
 amateurish talk and pious opinion, has passed away ; the 
 question of the survival of man is a branch of experi- 
 mental psychology." I hope our psychologists appre- 
 ciate their responsibilities now that the fate of all our 
 pleasing hopes and longings after immortality is to sealed 
 in their laboratories. Of course, we shall be told that 
 our moral nature demands immortality ; that is to say,, 
 given the one, the other follows. True ; but which is 
 the given and which is the other ? 
 
 But Jesus was a theist. Though not a supernatural 
 teacher, he was a teacher of belief in the supernatural. 
 He taught men to believe in God. His religion was a 
 theology, as, indeed, all religion must be. In spite of 
 
40 
 
 Mr. de Gallienne's dislike of theology, and his assertion 
 that we " have accomplished the inestimable separation 
 of theology and religion," I think it will be found that 
 even "the religion of a literary man " must have some 
 theology in it. In this I agree with Dr. Martineau. 
 We cannot eliminate God and keep religion. We can- 
 not define religion as persistent admiration and have the 
 word religion keep any significance, for that admiration 
 may be the admiration of a fine picture, a fine dog or a 
 fine day. It may be the admiration of the true, beau- 
 tiful and good, but it may also be admiration of the 
 false, hideous and bad. We may or may not live by 
 admiration, as Wordsworth says, but we ean have no 
 religion without God. It is not a question whether we 
 shall have any theology in our religion, but how much ? 
 and that depends on how much we know about God. 
 I confess that we know very little about Him if we cut 
 loose from Him who has declared Him. It is, indeed, a 
 question whether we will even keep God as an article of 
 our faith. 
 
 I should be the last man to say that a man cannot 
 remain a theist after he abandons Christianity. I be- 
 lieve in rational theism. I believe that theism is the 
 logical prius of Christianity, and though there never 
 had been a Christian religion there would have been 
 religion and a belief in God or in gods, which religion 
 implies. I know, too, that men have broken with 
 the Christian religion and have not given up faith in 
 God. Pfleiderer is a theist ; Fiske is a theist, and thinks 
 
41 
 
 that Spencer is a theist. T. H. Green claimed to be a 
 tlieist, and Edward Caird, I think, is trying to be a 
 theist. I will not be too exacting either in my defini- 
 tions, and should certainly be sorry to commit the 
 fault which I condemn in others, of branding men as 
 Pantheists who fail to give to God the full quota of 
 attributes which I ascribe to him. 
 
 And yet the question is not whether theism has a 
 rational basis, but whether the dominating philosophy 
 which leads men to give up the supernatural in 
 Christ is not likely to end in their giving up the super- 
 natural altogether ? It may be easier for some men to 
 believe in God after they get rid of miracle and He no 
 longer stands in the way of uniformity. Epicurus did 
 not mind believing in the gods after he found that 
 they were harmless. But really is not this hostility to 
 miracle, deny it though men may, in its last analysis 
 the outcome of a philosophy which denies the numerical 
 distinction between the creature and the Creator ? 
 
 Remember, you pass the same mile-posts in which- 
 ever direction you are traveling; but the direction 
 alters their significance immensely. I have great faith 
 in the logic of tendency, and so great hope that the 
 man who believes in God will believe also in Jesus ; and 
 great fear that he who gives up Christ will by-and-by 
 give up God. And I also believe in the reinforcing 
 effect of historic Christianity as an argument for theism ; 
 for while faith in God is a postulate of Christianity, 
 the facts of Christianity constitute a strong argumnte 
 
42 
 
 for belief in God. There is no reasoning in a circle 
 in this : the trains of argument start independently from 
 both termini, and pass each other on the road. 
 
 If the numerical distinction between God and the 
 world is broken down we lose our theism ; and so far 
 as theism is concerned it m.atters not whether it be done 
 in the terms of mind or matter. The succession may 
 read, Parmenides, Spinoza, Hegel, Caird ; or it may read, 
 Democritus, Lucretius, Biichner, Spencer ; the outcome 
 so far as religious faith is concerned, is very much the 
 same. The interest in modern spiritualistic philosophy 
 lies greatly in the fact that it is the half-way house 
 between materialism and theism. It is the place where 
 wayworn thirsty, travelers, moving in opposite directions, 
 meet and refresh themselves. Our attitude towards much 
 of the poetry and the philosophy which deal with mind 
 in nature, must depend upon the direction in which it 
 is supposed to point, just as the same degree of vitality, 
 the same pulse-beat, the same temperature, in a case of 
 illness, may fill your heart with gratitude or make it 
 feel like lead, as it may signify waning strength or 
 reviving energy. And when to-day I hear men who 
 have been trained in the traditions of Christian faith, 
 talk of the Divine Spirit striving for expression in 
 the life of man, and explain the strong utterances of 
 scripture regarding sin as only metaphorical statements 
 of the struggle between the higher and the lower 
 elements in our being, I know that the moment is a 
 serious one, and that I am standing at the death-bed 
 of religion. 
 
43 
 
 With faith in God and immortality gone, how many 
 of the words of eternal life are left ? We shall be told 
 that we have the same earthly life of relationships ; the 
 same theatre for the exercise of the moral virtues that 
 we ever had ; the same arena for the cultivation of 
 charity and the outflow of benevolence ; and that 
 having parted with the hope of the future life we shall 
 be able to make all the more of this. Instead of the 
 consolations of religion we shall have the consolations 
 of philosophy ; and men will console us for our loss 
 of consolation. It is true that religion once made the 
 dying bed soft as downy pillows are, but then in doing 
 this it only was delivering us from the terrors that it had 
 first inspired. Quanhtm religio potuit suadere ^italorum : 
 so Lucretius said long ago, and Cotter Morrison is 
 saying it to-day. We have lost our dream of eternal life 
 but it may not be such a loss after all. We may, in fact, 
 be all the better without it as Mr. Caird seems to think. 
 But it will be found that religion and morality are as 
 inseparable as religion and theology; and when we give 
 up God we are in a fair way to give up morality also. 
 Some of our naturalistic moralists like Gyzicki are at 
 great pains to assure us that morality is safe even though 
 religion is no more ; and some, like Mr. Bosanquet, still 
 speak of the civilization of Christendom and intimate 
 that we shall have use for the institutions of Christianity 
 as schools of ethical training after Christianity has been 
 abandoned. I do not think that the prospects of 
 atheistic Christianity are bright. The earthquake that 
 
44 
 
 overthrows the Church will overthrow the hall of ethical 
 culture as well. Morality is a great chapter in the 
 history of man ; it is proper enough to study it and 
 explain it ; but the fate of the ten commandments may 
 be involved in the explanation. This is the history as it 
 is taught by the evolution ethic. We have developed 
 the moral life and the moral law ; we have gone out of 
 Fetichism into Polytheism and out of Polytheism into 
 Monotheism ; we have established God's throne in 
 the heavens and have come to believe that 
 His kingdom ruleth over all. But we have devel- 
 oped the belief that all this antecedent belief was 
 illusion : what then is the legitimate effect of this latest 
 phase of evolution ? Talk as we may, the virtues 
 that have made our Christian civilization, have been 
 fed on faith in God and belief in immortality. 
 Men have feared God ; they have had respect for 
 His law ; their consciences have been educated in 
 the belief that this is right and that is wrong ; 
 and they have gone through life under the domin- 
 ating sense of moral obligation. And with all 
 these incentives to virtue, see the unsuccessful strug- 
 gles that men make with appetite. See the piti- 
 able weakness they exhibit in the presence of temp- 
 tation. But when they have dethroned God, when 
 they have broken both tables of the law in pieces, 
 when they have fallen down before the golden calf 
 of self-indulgence, what is to restrain appetite or 
 to hold them back from wrong doing? Will men 
 
45 
 
 be chaste because it is good for social tissue for 
 them to be ; or honest because honesty makes for the 
 greatest happiness of the greatest number ; or truth- 
 ful because the higher nature points that way and 
 the veracious man is more surely on the road to 
 self-realization ? No. If morality is conduct to which 
 the individual is expected to conform, we need 
 all the help we can get in the development of 
 moral behavior. We need an ideal, and neither 
 form of the evolutionist ethic can give us one. 
 That the race of men is improving is no satisfac- 
 tion to me if I know that all the possibilities of 
 existence, so far as I am concerned, are confined 
 to a life of three score years and ten. Morality 
 is personal ; responsibility is personal ; the ideal 
 must be personal ; self-realization, to mean anything for 
 me, must mean the development of my perfection 
 in a perpetuated personality. We need a morality, 
 moreover, that has content, that is, which has com- 
 mandment, which can say, this is right and that is 
 wrong. But the ethic of evolution has only one 
 commandments. It may say. Realize your higher na- 
 ture, or it may say. Seek the healthful well being 
 of society ; but beyond that it has nothing to say, 
 and it ends in telling the individual to do as he 
 pleases. We need obligation, the categorical im- 
 perative, that is to say. It is useless to say that 
 we have it whatever the explanation may be ; for 
 the evo\utionist's explanation explains it away. I 
 
46 
 
 confess that he has not yet succeeded in accounting 
 for the genesis of morality. Mr. Huxley, in his 
 Romanes lecture admits that the evolutionists have 
 been somewhat hasty here, — Ah, yes, I thank Mr. 
 Huxley for declaring unto us the parable of Jack 
 and the bean stalk. Evolution ethic leaves you no 
 obligatory morality. Why then should I be moral ? 
 It looks as though the bottom had dropped out of 
 morality. No God, no religion, no immortality, noth- 
 ing but this life and no obligatory morality in 
 it. This is the outcome of leaving Jesus. To 
 whom will you go ? We wish pure homes, honest 
 trade and the outflow of benevolent feeling. How 
 will we insure them ? Will the ethical phil- 
 osophers help you. You are welcome to all the 
 comfort you can find in them. Read Green and 
 Spencer and Sidgwick and Mackenzie. They will 
 not help you. Will you join the society for eth- 
 ical culture } The members of this society are seek- 
 ing to conserve morality now that they have destroyed 
 the basis of morality. They are doing what they can 
 to avert the disaster which their philosophy has precipi- 
 tated. Will men continue moral ? Yes, so long as the 
 flowers of Christian culture can live after the axe has 
 been laid at the root of the tree that bears them. Will 
 men continue moral ? Yes, so far as a policeman 
 can do duty for conscience. Will men continue 
 moral? Yes, so long as the social sanction operates 
 against immorality. Men are afraid of it. They 
 
47 
 
 lose more sleep now over a breach of etiquette 
 than they do ov^er a breach of the decalogue. But 
 the mortal sins of society are the venial sins of 
 the gospel, and the mortal sins of the gospel are 
 the venial sins of society. To whom will you go ? 
 Where will you find comfort, rest, and peace ? 
 Will you be absorbed in business, or in science, or 
 in art ? Will you buy your peace of mind by in- 
 venting schemes for constant employment ? There 
 is no escape for you, Life has lost its zest. The 
 springs of existence are poisoned. You will take 
 one more plunge into pleasure or you will sit 
 down in the dark shadow of despair. 
 
 Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many 
 
 a vanished face, 
 Many a planet by many a sun may roll with the dust 
 
 of a vanished race ; 
 Raving politics never at rest — as this poor earth's 
 
 pale history runs — 
 What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a 
 
 million million of suns ? 
 Stately purposes, valour in battle, glorious annals of 
 
 army and fleet, 
 Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause, 
 
 trumpets of victory, groans of defeat. 
 
 Love for the maiden crowned with marriage, no regrets 
 
 for aught that has been, 
 Household happiness, gracious children, debtless 
 
 competence, golden mean ; 
 
48 
 
 What is it all, if we all of us end but in being our own 
 
 corpse — coffins at last, 
 Swallow'd in vastness, lost in silence, drown'd in the 
 
 deeps of a meaningless Past ? 
 
 Perhaps I have been describing the inclined plane 
 down which some of you have slipped from faith 
 in God to loss of faith in man. Are there not 
 times, my friend, when your mind reacts against 
 this skepticism ? Having doubted faith, do you not 
 sometimes doubt your unbelief? Do you not some- 
 times find yourself saying : ' Though I have lost faith, 
 it may be that God is not dead. Though I have 
 given up immortality, it may be I cannot avoid it. 
 Though I dispute the claims of the commandments, 
 it may be they still bind me. Though I refuse to 
 believe in sin, it may be that I am a sinner still. 
 I have forsaken Him who gave me the words of 
 eternal life, but my mind is not at rest, and I know 
 not where to go.' But go on. It may be that Christ 
 has come from God ; that he is the propitiation for our 
 sins ; that he holds in his hands the gift of eternal 
 life, and that you have but to trust him to enter 
 into the full heritage of the kingdom of God. Give 
 faith a chance to-day, my friend. You have tried 
 a part of Peter's answer to the Saviour's question. 
 Try now the other part. You have tried to give up 
 the supernatural in Christ and cling to Christ, and 
 you find you cannot. You have tried to keep eter- 
 nal life after you have forsaken Christ, and you find 
 
49 
 
 it is impossible. See, then, if you do not find a 
 better theory of the world and a better philosophy 
 of life in Peter's bold avowal : " We believe that 
 Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God." 
 What follows then ? Then the same progressive idea 
 binds the Old and the New Testament together. There 
 is movement up to Christ ; there is movement on 
 from him. Jesus is the last of the Prophets, and the 
 first of the Evangelists. Then we pass by easy tran- 
 sition from the theology of Christ to that of Paul. 
 Then God and immortality take their old places as 
 postulates of our moral nature. Then we have the 
 moral government of God as the objective counter- 
 part of our moral nature and its metaphysical basis. 
 Then we have moral perfection as our ideal, and an 
 immortal life as the sphere of its realization. Then 
 the moral law has content. We find it in the Ten 
 Commandments. We find it in the great law of 
 love. We find it in the great Pauline doctrine of 
 Christian expediency. We can find it in the grow- 
 ing complications of life. New relations make new 
 duties ; for we interpret these new relations under 
 the rubric of the great Christian principle that the 
 world is a vicinage and all men are brothers. Reli- 
 gion will quicken conscience, political economy will 
 imform it, and morality will be progressive. 
 
 Then we shall feed the hungry, and clothe the naked 
 and pity the sorrowing ; but we shall not think that 
 we can abolish poverty or bring in a social millennium 
 
50 
 
 by agrarianism or State interference. Then the gospel 
 will make us altruistic, but we shall not abandon the 
 gospel for the sake of becoming altruistic. Then we 
 shall care for the bodies of men because we believe 
 they have souls to be saved ; but we shall not give 
 up the salvation of the soul to promote the comfort 
 of the body. Then we shall pray that the kingdom 
 of God may come ; but it will be the kingdom of 
 righteousness and peace, and not a kingdom of comfort 
 and plenty. It will be a kingdom that contemplates 
 the moral perfection and blessed immortality of a great 
 multitude who have come out of great tribulation ; and 
 not one that contemplates provision against hunger and 
 inclement weather for an army of men who are march- 
 ing in a vast procession to nonentity and death. Then 
 the old motives to moral life will assert themselves 
 once more. We may do duty out of sense of duty 
 and with reluctance ; or we may do it because we 
 love it, and spontaneously. The Bible appeals to more 
 motives than one. ' It appeals to love and to fear ; to 
 self-love and benevolence ; to gratitude and the law of 
 rio-ht. Then the feeble will find reinforcement in 
 the help of the Spirit and the Christian will get courage 
 to fight against sin. He feels strong in his weakness and 
 can do all things through Christ who stengthens him. 
 
 Then when he has done his best and finds he is an 
 unprofitable servant ; when he tries to do his best and 
 fails ; when he has promised and never performed ; when 
 appetite rules and temptations are too strong for him ; 
 
51 
 
 when friends desert him and conscience stings him ; 
 when hope dies and Hfe is a failure ; when in his agony 
 he cries : "Oh, God, what shall I do to be saved?" — 
 then that precious gospel of Christ will come to him 
 and say : ' Oh, you poor child of sin ; you have sinned ; 
 your sin is great, and the punishment may seem greater 
 than you can bear; but Christ Jesus came into the world 
 to save sinners. He came to save you. Go to Him in 
 this sad hour of your life and find peace in the blood of 
 His cross.' Then we understand the answer to those 
 who tell us that by this doctrine of forgiv^eness we make 
 it easy for men to sin. That is what they said to Paul. 
 But aside from the meanness of this suggestion, Paul 
 said, ' Nay, the Christian is a new creature — has a new 
 life ; how shall he that is dead to sin live any longer 
 therein ? ' 
 
 Then we can understand how the Christian who 
 follows his Master must be forgiving, must love, must 
 pity distress, must work for the uplifting of the 
 downcast and down-trodden. It is not because 
 philosophy has told him to be altruistic, or to seek 
 the greatest happiness of the greatest number, to study 
 what will promote the healthful perpetuity of social 
 tissue, or to realize his higher self. It is because God 
 has revealed himself in Christ, as tender and full of 
 compassion. It is because Christ died for us that we 
 ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. This 
 spirit of forgiveness and charity that is so' distinctively 
 Christian is the reflex effect of theology on morality. 
 
52 
 
 And so we find that the supernatural that we would 
 fain at the beginning have got rid of to save the 
 eternal life, is really a very important part of that 
 eternal life ; the theology that we would flee from in 
 order to save the ethic is part of the very marrow 
 of the ethic. Thus we see the comprehensiveness of the 
 gospel, the fulness of the blessing of the gospel of 
 Christ. Then we cease to wonder that Peter was so 
 prompt to say in answer to the questioning Redeemer: 
 " Lord to whom shall we go ; thou hast the words of 
 eternal life, and we believe and are sure that thou art 
 the Christ, the Son of the living God."