PRINCETON. N. J. 1 Part of the ADDISON ALEXAXDER LIBRART ^ wbieli was pii'st nted hy %. Messus. n. I,, an;) a. Stuabt. (| "bX ^51 9 9 Tm3 C 3 6 1 8^^^^'* Candlish, Robert Smith, 180( -1873. Examination of Mr. Maurice'! thpoToairal essavs Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/cletails/examinationofmrmOOcand EXAMINATION OP MR MAURICE'S THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. EDINEUKGH : PRINTED BT J. A. EiLLANTYHE, PAVt's WORK, EXAMINATION MR MAURICE'S THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. BY ROBERT S. CANDLISH, D.I). LONDON : JAMES NISBET AND CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. MDCCCLIV. PREFATORY NOTE. I HAVE endeavoured to make my examination in- telligible without its being necessary for the reader to refer to the Essays. Of course, one familiar with the Essays, or having them at hand, may be able to shew that I have not always succeeded in this at- tempt. I have used liberties of abridgment in quoting the author's words ; but I can say that I have done so, only with a view of compression, and with a sin- cere desire rather to encumber my own book than to misrepresent the book which I was examining. 1 have no right to plead haste as an apology for error ; and I have no wish to do so, in so far as the essential merits of the questions at issue are concerned. I may be allowed, however, to suggest, in palliation of the manner in which I have executed VI TBEFATOEY NOTE. mj task, that I am not an Englishman trained to the nice use of the English tongue, — nor an English theologian, familiar "with England's academic habits and modes of thought. My object will be thoroughly gained if I stir up one English thinker and doer to consider very seriously in what direction the tide of English theology appears in certain quarters to be running. I would have him to ask, also, by what practical measures, as well as by what deeper cur- rent of divine thought and feeling, that tendency is to be met. Edinburgh, 5th April, 1854. CONTENTS. PAOB INTRODUCTORY LECTURE, . . . . 1 PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. Preface to the Second Edition of the Essays ; Plan of THE Proposed Examination, .... 49 CHAPTER I. THE SOURCE OF THEOLOGY ;— IN THE NATURE OF GOU, WHICH IS LOVE, AND THE NECESSITY OF MAN, WHICH IS SIN. Essay I.— On Charity, . . . . .")9 II.— On Sin, ...... 75 viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER II. THE GROUNDS OR ORIGINAL ELEMENTS OF THEOLOGY AS A REMBDLiL SYSTEM. PAOE Essay III.— On The Evil Spirit, .... 103 IV.— On THE Sense of Righteousness in Men, and THEIR Discovert of a Redeemer, . 136 CHAPTER III. the remedy provided— the person and work of the redeemer— his person. Essay V.— On the Son of God, .... 162 VI.— The Incarnation, . . . .181 CHAPTER IV. THE remedy provided— the PERSON AND WORK OF THE REDEEMER— HIS WORK. Essay VII. — On the Atonement, .... 205 CHAPTER V. THE REMEDY PROVIDED— THE PERSON AND WORK OF THE REDEEMER^HIS WORK. Essay VIII.— The Resurrection of the Son of God from Death, The Grave, and Hell, . 234: CONTENT?. CHAPTER VI. THE REMEDY APPLIED. PAGE Essay IX.— Ox Justification by Faith, . . . 27C X.— On Regeneration, .... 289 CHAPTER VII. THE EXALTATION OF THE REDEEMER TO THE OFFICE OF RULER AND JUDGE. Essay XI.— On the Ascension of Christ, . . .319 XII.— On THE Judgment Day, . . . 343 CHAPTER VIII. THE SUBJECTTION OF THE CHURCH TO DIVINE GUIDANCE. Essay XIII.— On Inspiration, .... 363 XIV. — On the Personality and Teaching ok the Holy Spirit, .... 393 XV.— On the Unity of the Church, . . 405 CHAPTER IX. the doctrine of the trinity. Ess.vY XVI.— On the Trinity in Unity, . . . 420 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. THE FUTURE STATE. PAOB Concluding Essay.— Eternal Life and Eternal Death, 443 CHAPTER XI. Concluding OBSERVAnoNs, 472 EXAMIMTION MR MAURICE'S THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. INTEODUCTOEY LECTUEE. (Delivered in London, February 21, 1854.) I PEOPOSE to myself the task of giving you some idea of the contents of this book, and of their bearing npon questions which are most deeply interesting to men individually, and to society — questions involving the present power and ultimate issues of tlie Gospel of Christ. This is my single and exclusive object. I do not pretend to have mastered the other writings of this author ; and I shall probably make little use even of such knowledge of them as I happen to possess. Neither do I venture to discuss the influences and tendencies which this book may be regarded as representing or advancing. I make no attempt towards a bird's-eye view of the literature and theology of the age. I intend to deal with this one work. And I am inclined to think, that if I shall succeed in dealing with it as I would wish to do, I may render more service to the cause of A /V 2 STATE OF THE QUESTION. truth, than if I were to inquire and speculate and form a theory to account for its appearance, or to anticipate its effects. Doubtless, its appearance is a phenomenon which may turn out to be a great fact, significant of many antecedents, pregnant with many consequences. But I do not enter upon any vague and wide inquiry regarding its probable origin and possible results. I take the product as I find it. And I mean to try if English minds, so far as I have access to them, cannot estimate its practical value, apart from all personal regard for its author ; — and apart also fi-om all abstract and mystical philosophising about its relation to the present conditions of human knowledge, or to the pro- gressive development of human thought and feeling. To give some unity to my remarks, which must necessarily be miscellaneous if they are to touch the varied topics of the book, I may be allowed to indicate, at the outset, what seems to me the real matter at issue, the vital and essential question raised. It is this, — Does God deal judicially with his intelligent creatures ? Does he try and judge, to the effect of acquitting or condemning, the persons of men — you, my brother, personally, and me? I may, perhaps, best raise the question, if I advert to a letter from Mr Mam'ice to a private fr'iend, published at Mr ilamice's request by Dr Jelf, in his pamphlet stating the grounds for his pro- cedure against Mr Maurice before the Coimcil of King's College, London. I had not my attention called to that THE author's starting-point. 3 letter until I had completed my analysis of the Essays. But it seems to me to farnish a key to the Essays, which, on many accounts, is to be regarded as important. The Letter was written in November 1849, several years before the Essays Avere published ; but the theory developed in the Essays is contained in the Letter, and the process of thouglit and feeling through which the theory was constructed, is in a very interesting manner laid open. Let it be observed, that the Letter is written in reply to a question regarding the duration of future punishment. The Essays are written with a view to persuade Unitarians, and especially those of the recent and more spiritual school, that, instead of repudiating, they ought to welcome the Anglican Creed and Articles, as the real expression of that life which they are panting for, and their best defence against counterfeits and exaggerations. It is evident, indeed, that the Letter is the germ of the Essays. The author deems it a point of honour to produce it in that character, in so far as the doctrine of a future state is concerned. No injustice, therefore, is done by making a notice of the Letter an introduction to the consideration of the Essays. This is the rather desirable, because in the Letter, as has been said, he means " to tell his coiTespondent something of the processes of thought through which he had himself passed while endeavouring to arrive at the trath" (p. 3). 1. " I was brought up," he tells his correspondent, in the belief of universal restitution. I was taught 4 REPUDIATION OF UNIVERSALISM. that the idea of eternal punishment could not consist with the goodness and mercy of God" (p. 3). But he explains how, when " he came to think and feel for him- self, the views he had learned respecting sin " did not seem to " accord with his experience of it, or with the facts whicli lie saw in the world." He shrunk also from what shocked his intellect and conscience, as being " a feeble notion of the divine perfections, one which re- presented <7oot?-?iaiMre bf^ the highest of them." And he disliked the distortions of the text of kScripture" fre- quently in use, such as making "eternal" signify different things when applied to punishment and to life respectively. Thus three strong cords drew him out of the pit of old vulgar Universalism : a sense of sin ; an apprehension of the divine perfections ; reverence of the Scripture. Sin, in himself and in the world around him, was not to be made light of; the perfections of God were not to be resolved into mere good-nature ; Scripture was not to be set aside, or twisted so as to mean anything or nothing. These were not, he acknowledges, very deep, vital convictions." But they were honest opinions as far as they went." And they made him " despise the Universalist and Unitarian theories as weak." " I do not know," he adds, " that I found anything at all better" (p. 4), He passes at once, accordingly, to the reconstruction of his own belief, de novo ; which was, it would seem, a work or process altogether personal to himself : " I can say, I did not receive this of man. SIN, GOD, SCRIPTUKE. 5 neither was I taught it" (p. 5). Of course, no one is necessarily the worse for having to elaborate his own views and impressions of divine truth for himself, under the gTiidance of the Spirit of God, out of the materials furnished by the Word of God, and by his own conscious- ness and experience. And if, upon his emancipation from the lowest depths of Universalist latitudinarianism, the inquirer had gone on in earnest to follow out the three lines of thought which had been the means of his rescue, — sin, within and without, — the perfections of God, — the authority of Scripture ; — keeping all the three distinct and parallel ; — he would have been in the right way. There might have been as " great confusion and dark- ness " as that through which, he says, he got " every glimpse" of what has ultimately satisfied and settled his mind ; perhaps more, a great deal more. But the subject, — man, the sinner; the object, — God, the all- perfect ; the medium, — a real and actual communication from God to man, precisely such as one man makes to another ; — these three primary facts ; — the sin of man, the perfection of God, the word of God to man ; — ac- cepted as first principles, and drawn forth in humble, loving reverence of soul to their proper issues ; — must have led to a theology, with far more in it of the element of a real transaction between us and our Maker than the author is prepared to admit. 2. The origin of his positive faith, following upon the destruction of the coldly negative belief in which he was 6 (JOD — GOOD-NATURE OR SOVEREIGNTY. brouglit up, is described by him tlms : — " When I began in earnest to seek God for myself, the feeling that I needed a deliverer from an overwhelming weight of selfishness was the predominant one in my mind. Then I found it more and more impossible to trust in any being who did not hate selfishness, and who did not desire to raise his creatures out of it. Such a Being was alto- gether different from the mere image of good-nature I had seen among Universalists. He was also very diffe- rent firom the mere Sovereign whom I heard of amongst Calvinists, and who it seemed to me was worshipped by a great portion of the religious world. But I thought he was just that Being who was exhibited in the cross of Jesus Christ. If I might believe his words, ' He that hath seen me hath seen the Father ; ' if in his death the whole wisdom and power of God did shine forth, there was one to whom I might fly fi-om the demon of self, there was one who could break his bonds asunder. This was and is the gi-ound of my faith" (p. 4). It will be observed, that in the author's transition state, the only two ideas of the Supreme Being present to his mind were, — that of the Universalists, who bow before a mere image of good-nature — and that of the Calvinists, and a great portion of the religious world, who, as he represents the matter, worship a mere Sove- reign. Further, it will be observed that the predomi- nant feeling in his mind respecting himself was, that he needed to be delivered from an overwhelming weight GOD — RECKONING WITH MAN JUDICIALLY. 7 of selfishness. And, finally, since he cannot trust in any being who does not hate selfishness and desire to raise his creatures out of it, he welcomes the Being who is exhibited in tlie cross of Jesus Christ — especially be- lieving his words, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father " — as one to whom he may fly from the demon of self, who can break his bonds asunder. There is truth in all these experiences. An earnest man cannot reve- rence either a mere image of good-nature, or a mere sovereign. He is crushed under the weight of selfish- ness, bound by the demon of self. But, in the first place, is there no conception of God, but eitlier Infinite Good-nature or Infinite Sovereignty, that haunts an awakened conscience ? Is there no sense of a holy eye reading me through and through, — of the righteous arm of a Lawgiver and Judge holding me fast? Then, secondly, when my broken heart smites me for my sel- fishness,— my miserable selfishness, that will not spare Bathsheba in its lust, nor Uriah in its meanness, — my deplorable selfishness, that makes my very worship of God and my kindness to my fellows nothing else than disguised self-seeking, — I cannot feel that I have got to the root of the evil, until I hear the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and calling me out of my hiding-place among the trees of the garden. When, — feeling that he is reckoning with me for my disobedience, and feeling also instinctively that it is not in mere -wrath, — I have the effrontery to say. She, thy 8 • THE STARTING-POINT IN THEOLOGY. gift, led me to sin ; and when, — not smitten down for mj monstrous ingratitude and lieartlessness, I see him still waiting to be gracious ; — that makes me know my sel- fishness. And now, thirdly, the Being whom I must have to deliver me — whom I cannot do without — is that same Being, — holy, righteous, waiting to be gracious, — who must reckon with me for my sin, — whom I would have to reckon with me for my sin, — whom I could not love or trust if he did not reckon with me, in most rigor- ous justice, for my sin ; — who, pointing to the Son of his love, tells me that he beareth my sin in his own body on the cross, and slays the enmity thereby. I have thought it fair to take the author's own ac- count of the origin and rise of his theology as he gives it in this Letter, instead of forming a theory on the sub- ject out of the Essays ; although I may say that the theory which I was inclined to form, to account for the Essays, before I carefully read the Letter, was very much the same as the explanation which I have been consider- ing. And before passing on, I desire to fix one thought in your minds. It is always important to know the starting-point of one who proposes for our acceptance a theology, or a view of divine truth, avowedly — and if not exclusively, at least most intimately, based upon and bound up with his own experience. This is necessary if we would do jus- tice, either to him or to ourselves. It is not, of course, so necessary when a man professes simply to illustrate SLEIERMACIIER — COLERIDGE. 9 an old and well-defined system, to place its relative parts in fresh and original lights, and bring out its harmony with the facts of his own life and consciousness, or of man's life and consciousness generally. Even in such a case it may be useful and interesting. But when one comes to us with a new system, — and still more, when he comes to us with a systematic repudiation of system, — to give us his own reading of divinity and humanity, as if he were surveying a hitherto unmapped continent, — then it becomes a matter of the highest importance to ascertain, if possible, his point of view from the outset ; that we may fairly estimate the probable efl'ect of his speculations on himself, as well as the influence which they ought to exert over us. For instance, take Sleier- macher in Germany. Those who know his history and writings better than I do, tell us that to the last his Mo- ravian training and deep Moravian piety continued to steep his whole nature in an intensely spiritual warmth, and leaven his compositions with an energetic, spiritual life. Hence it might happen that opinions and tenden- cies might be comparatively harmless in his mind, — nay, might be so blended with his old Moravianism as to be not only neutralised, but, as if by some chemical affinity, absorbed, — which, nevertheless, Avhen transferred to minds otherwise constituted and otherwise trained, might become the germs of the coldest Rationalism. Or take our own Coleridge. He began at the very opposite ex- treme from the German thinker ; and was led on in a 10 THE author's starting-point. path which, probably, none else ever trod, — through almost unparalleled conflicts and exercises of soul, — to such a profound insight into the guilt and misery of sin, and the glorious mystery of the divine government and nature, as must have been eminently blessed to himself, and must ever furnish materials of most interesting study to all inquiring students, whether of man's nature or of God's. But the height which a man may reach as he toils his perilous way from the lowest depth up the steep and rough ascent, though most profitable for him- self, may be unsafe for one whose position, given to him, is higher still. I may thus be tempted, — with neither heart so ardent to aspire nor foot so firm to persevere, — to meet the adventurous pilgiim where he is — not resting, but cut off in the very heart of his struggling upward. And I may make it a matter of silly boasting that I can stand at ease where such a one as Coleridge, still press- ing on, fell. Equally unsafe may it be for me, — alas ! with but little of Moravian devotion, and, it may be, too little also of Moravian discipline, — to think that I occiipy ground high enough, when I am on the level of that subtle idealistic philosophy, which one wont to soar aloft on eagle's wings into the atmosphere around the throne, and bound by cords of love inseparable to Him who sits upon the throne, might, if not without peril, yet almost with impunity, make his scientific, because it was not his spiritual, standing-point. These remarks apply in some measure to Mr Maurice; with one qualification. GOD IS LOVE. 11 however, which is noted here, not invidiously, but as a necessary caution : that whereas he begins at a level far nearer that at which Coleridge began than that at which Sleiermacher began, — the level of low Univer- salism, not high Moravianism, — he does not appear to have pushed his inquiries so far as Coleridge did, into man's sinfiil nature and the Almighty's moral govern- ment. In particular, in his very first statement of the experience which originated his theology, as well as throughout the whole of his subsequent exposition of his theology, there is an entire omission of the fact of guilt, as a real fact in om* history, and a fact with which a righteous God must deal, I may return again to the Letter. But it may be proper, before proceeding further, to submit an outline of what these Essays teach. This I scruple not to do in my own words, briefly but boldly, being prepared to verify what I say in full detail. 1. Love, absolute and unconditional, is the whole nature of God. This love is not mere facile and imbecile good-will. It is compatible with indignation, anger, wrath : it implies wrath. " Wrath against that which is unlovely," is an essential attribute of it. The will of God, strong against the milovely, seeks to subdue and assimilate all other wills to his own nature, which is love. Thus God is love. 2. Sin is something different and distinct from crime to be checked by outward penalties, or habit to be 12 THE EVIL SPIRIT. extirpated by moral influences. The first of these is the legislative idea of sin ; the second, the ethical. Both are set aside; and instead of them there is sub- stituted what may be called the exclusively personal idea of sin. An unloving, an unlovely creature, finds himself, at some awful moment, alone with the great Being whose very nature is love — whose name is Father. An intense feeling of his being in a wrong state, himself the doer of wrong, himself the thinker of wrong, himself displeasing to his Father, and not right with his Father, seizes him. It is not a sense of his having transgressed a law and being justly liable to punishment. It is not a sense of his being under the power of an evil habit needing to be eradicated. It is the discovery that he is not Avhat he now sees that his Father is, and what he is now intimately conscious that his Father would have him to be. Thus the case is stated : the question is raised. We have the nature and will of God on the one hand, and the sin of man, in a certain view of it, on the other. How the case is to be met, how the question is to be solved, is next to be considered. For this end, — 3. The actual position of man is brought out in two lights. He finds himself in the presence, — not merely of external circumstances fitted to exert evil influences, with, perhaps, an inward susceptibility of receiving these influences, — but of an Evil Spirit. He has to contend with a personal enemy — the Spirit of selfish- THE REDEEMER^ THE SON OF GOD. 13 ness. And self being the plague of man, the Spirit of selfishness tyrannises over him, and must be overcome. But, on the other hand, man— and here Job is taken as the type — conscious of a righteousness deeper than his sin, and more entirely his own, although sin seems almost as if it were himself; — claiming also a sort of indefeasible right to be delivered from evil ; — has the explanation of this contradictory experience in the presence of a living Redeemer, who is with him, in him, the root of his being. This is Christ in every man. 4. The person and work of Christ are the subjects next in order ; his person as the Incarnate Son ; his work in the Atonement. On the subject of Christ's person, there are two Essays. In the first Essay, his divinity as the Son of God is asserted. It is asserted, however, chiefly to the effect of explaining, by means of it, the entire process of man's emancipation and deliver- ance. The Redeemer, who is with man and in man, as the root of his being, is discovered to be a Son, an actual Son of God, a strong Son of God. Owning him in that character as his Lord, man is free. The Incarnation, ac- cordingly, of which the second of the two Essays treats, is not a step towards the effecting of man's deliverance. It is such a manifestation of the divine perfection and the divine will, in human natm-e, as mankind have ever been desiderating; and such a combination and representation of all manhood's various properties as makes all men one. The value of it is, that it reveals 14 THE INCARNATION AND ATONEMENT. God, and unites men. It is not, however, so far as I can judge, essential to man's redemption. It is rather the fiill and complete exhibition of it. Men are still exhorted to recognise and own the Christ within, — the Eedeemer in them — the root of their being — the sti-ong Son of God. For anything I can see, the Redemption is really independent of the Incarnation. But, in fact, there is really no Redemption at all, in any fair sense of that term (Essays, p. 117, &c.) This appears plainly when the work of Christ is discussed ,• especially in the Essay on the Atonement, There Christ is represented as giving up self-will— that self-will which is the root of all evil in man. He is also said to suffer the wrath of God. But how ? Dwell- ing among men, he was content to endm-e all the effects and manifestations of that wrath against the unlovely, which is the essential attribute of love ; and would not have that wrath quenched till it had effected its full loving purpose. His sacrifice is the giving up of self- will. His endurance of punishment is his perfect will- ingness that the loving God's wrath against the unlovely should continue to work on among men, until all unloveliness disappears ; and that he, becom- ing one of them, should not be specially exempt. The idea of his expiating guilt by making himself a true and proper sacrifice of atonement, is in not very temperate language denounced ; and, in fact, neither the obedience which he renders, nor the cross which THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF MAN, 15 he bears, is, in any sense -vvliatever, the procuring cause of man's redemption (Essays, p. 141, &c.) Here I might almost close my summary. The essence of what this book teaches is iu the statements which I have laid before you. The remainder of the book, though the larger portion of it, is little more than the di"awing out of legitimate and necessary conse- quences. I must trace these, however, as rapidly as I can. And while I do so, I ask you to bear in mind two conclusions as to the author's teaching, which I think you will agree with me are fully established. The one respects the condition of man. The other respects the mind and will of God, as his manner of dealing with men is affected by the Incarnation and Atonement of Christ. 1. The condition of man is not the condition of a fallen being. I am not guilty and under condemnation. I am not depraved, having a nature radically corrupt — a heart alienated fi'om God. I am apt to be selfish ; I am selfish ; self is my plague. And being thus imlovely, I cannot but be miserable in the presence of the God of love. I have an oppressor, also — a tyrant : the Evil Spirit of selfishness, whose yoke I ought to shake off, but cannot. I have, however, with me, in me, waiting only to be owned, a Redeemer, a Redeemer living : a strong Son of God — one with that God of love who is my Father, as he is intimately one with me, the very root of my being. I see him becoming a man, the 16 THE EFFECT OF THE ATONEMENT, same as I am, and as all men are. As a man, he sacri- fices self-will, and consents to endure what I and all men have to endure — the punishment which the wrath of the God of love against the unlovely inflicts on the children of men, until its full loving purpose is effected. I find in him a representative man, as well as a strong Son of God. But alas ! I find in him no substitute — no vicarious Lamb of God. 2. The Avill of God is not only not changed by the Atonement — which of course is an impossibility — but it does not find in the Atonement any reason for a dif- ferent mode of dealing with man from that which, irre- spectively of the Atonement, might have been adopted as right and fitting. The wrath of God is not turned away fi'om any : it is not quenched. But, what ! some one says : would you really have it quenched ? That wrath against the unlovely, which is the essential attri- bute of all love worthy of the name, — would you have it quenched in the bosom of Him who is love, so long as anything unlovely anywhere or in any one remains ? No. But the object against which the wrath burns is not merely an abstraction ; it is a living person — myself, for example. And that wrath is not merely indignant or sorrowful dislike of what is unlovely in me on the part of a Father whose nature is love ; — but holy displeasure and righteous disapprobation on the part of One who, how- ever he may be disposed to feel and act towards me as a Father, is at all events my Euler and my Judge ; — THE WRATH OP GOD. 17 whose law I have broken and by whom I am con- demned. There is room here for his arranging that, through the gracious interposition of his own Son, meet- ing on my behalf the inviolable claims of justice, his wrath should be turned away from me ; — and if from me, from others also, willing to acquiesce in the arrange- ment. If a moral government according to law is con- ceivable, such a procedure is conceivable under it. Of course, even after such a procedure in oux favour, He whose love we thus experience will have more cause than ever to be angry with us for whatever in us is imlovely. And he may deal with us in various ways for the removal of it. But still the Atonement will have effected a real and decided change in our position, — in our relation to God. There is, in consequence of the Atonement, and our acceptance of it, an actual re- moval from us of the wrath and the condemnation under which we personally were before. But take the doctrine of this book, and there neither is, nor can be, any change whatever effected in the position of any man by virtue of the Atonement. All that Christ's endurance of the wrath of God, in the author's sense of that doctrine, can possibly do, is to bring out more vividly than ever the intensity of the dislike which the God of love has of the unlovely. This it does quite generally ; — giving to all men an affecting proof that punishment must con- tinue to be administered — that the wrath of the loving God cannot be quenched — till it has effected its loving B 18 THE PROSPECT OF DELIVERANCE. purpose. This is all that it does. As to everything else, it leaves men where they would have been with- out it. A momentous consequence follows. There is abso- lutely no security for any of the human race being ever beyond the reach of punishment ; there is no security for the wrath of God ever being quenched in the case of any. Let me hold by the opinion, that the Atonement effects a real change in the position of those who sub- mit to it ; that it brings them out of tlie position of con- demned criminals into the position of acquitted free-men, of adopted children — I can understand how, by a reno- vating process, and by a fatherly discipline continued here for a time, they are prepared for passing, ere long, into a world whence all that is unlovely is for ever excluded. But if I take up the author's view, I see nothing before any of us, even those of us who have owned a Son of God as freeing us from the yoke of the Evil Spirit, — those of us who have that knowledge of the Son which is eternal life, — except an indefinite pro- longation of our present experience. For when, or how, are we ever finally to get rid of that ugly plague of self, with which the unselfish and loving God cannot but be angry ? I confess when this result, not of the author's representation of the Atonement merely, but of his whole teaching in these Essays, began to flash upon my mind, I read almost with a shudder one of the fifteen conclusions relative to a future state to which he comes, THE ENDLESSNESS OF PUNISHMENT. 19 and which he recites as final, in tlie Letter abeady quoted. He says " he feels it his duty," among other things, " not to deny God a right of using punishments at any time or anywhere for the reformation of his creatures" (p. 8). It was not the apparent questioning of God's right to punish for other ends that startled me. But is it really meant, I asked myself, that there is never to be a time when, — that there is nowhere a place where, — the creatures of God are to be beyond the reach of punishment ; so reinstated in the favour of tlieir Father, and so restored to his likeness, that there shall be no occasion any more in their case for that which indicates his wrath against the unlovely, — nor indeed any possibility of it ? And calling to mind the complete system of these most systematic Essays, — for so they are, whatever the author may profess, — T could not but perceive that the very same views which hold out the prospect of ultimate deliverance from evil to all, abso- lutely preclude the certainty of complete deliverance for any. This may be more intelligible to you if I ask you to follow me while I hastily sketch the substance of the remaining Essays. It is not necessary to dwell on what the author says concerning the death and burial of Christ, his descent into hell, his resurrection and ascension, considered as parts of his mediatorial work, — his meritorious service and its reward. There is not much importance 20 THE DISAPPEARANCE OP CHRIST. attached to them in that view. In fact, the chief anxiety of the author is to take all these events out of the category of what might be regarded as special and peculiar to Christ, and to make them part and parcel of our common human experience. The value of them to us is, that the Ruler and Lord of our spirits, the deepest root of our being— a Son of God, a Son of man — has tasted the death which we are to die, lain in the grave where our remains are to lie, visited whatever abyss of hideous vacancy might haunt the uneasy soul, proved the uninterrupted life of the entire man, and become invisible that he may be always, and especially in the Eucharist, really present with us. In such a dis- cussion of these topics, much interesting sentiment could not but be expressed by such a writer. It must be ob- served, however, that there is not only no mention made of any offices to be executed by Christ in connexion with our redemption after his death, but everything of the sort is virtually excluded. There is nothing like a sacerdotal ministry carried on in heaven — nothing at all analogous to the ministry of the high priest within the veil, the presenting of the offered sacrifice, and the making of intercession in connexion with it. There is no exaltation to rule and authority for the following out of the ends of his sacrifice. His ascension from Mount Olivet would really seem to mean notliing more than his disappearance out of the sight of the disciples at Emmaus. One would suppose him to be personally, THE RESURRECTION — THE JUDGMENT. 21 in the body, as really on the earth, going in and out among us, as he was during the forty days that elapsed between his rising from the grave and his going up in the clouds to heaven. The use which is made of this idea for reconciling conflicting views of the Real Presence in the Eucharist is not a little ingenious ; — although it may be doubted whether the Romanist will part with his actual eating of the body and blood of Christ in the wafer, — or the Protestant with his feeding on Christ by faith, in the Spirit and through the word, — for the notion of the Beloved of his soul being at his very side, while yet he may not see his face, or hear his voice, or touch even the hem of his garment. But the more practical point for consideration at present, is the view given of these events in our Lord's history, as bearing upon the condition and prospects of men. It may be convenient here to depart a little from what might be the natural order ; and, indeed, this is rendered necessary by the circumstance, that what the author says of the Resurrection in the eighth Essay, is closely connected with his more formal exposition of the Judgment-day in the twelfth. The first thing, therefore, to be observed is, that there is no general resurrection, and no final judgment. I do not argue these great topics here, nor do I go into the details of the author's reasoning. Of course he retains the words Resurrection and .Judgment. But then he holds that every man's death is his resurrection. Death, 22 THE FUTURE IN PROSPECT. according to him, is not tlie separation of soul and body ; it is the entire man, soul and body together, rising out of the clay-cold form which we consign to the earth, not to be the seed and germ of a glorious body, but to be no more heard of for ever. Judgment, again, is not a trial, — a judicial process, — with a view to the pronouncing of final sentence, and the separating of men into two classes. It is merely an unveiling or uncovering, such as may be expected on our passing into a clearer light, disclosing and revealing to us, more and more, both God and ourselves. Now see how this fits into what I pointed out as an inevitable conclusion fi:om the author's doctrine of the Atonement. To all practical intents and purposes, the future state is to all alike absolutely nothing more than a continuation of the present. There is no day fixed, — nay, there is no prospect of a day, — when the most faithful followers of Christ shall be rewarded by their present chequered experience coming to an end ; and a new era coming in, to introduce a new condition of Ufe, with no more sorrow in it, and no more sin. Death is not such an era, nor the Resurrection, nor the Judgment. Nay, for anything I can see, when I come to undergo, and that for countless ages, the searching and relentless illumination of all above, around, within me, which awaits me as I shuffle oflf this mortal coil, never to be mine again, — I may have before me even an intenser, and stiU ever intenser, struggle, with that unlovely JUSTIFICATION. 23 selfishness whicli besets me now, — and a keener, far keener, sense of tlie wrath of my God against it ! Ah me ! is it really come to this ? Is my probation never to be ended ? Am I never to enter into the joy of my Lord ? Perhaps the author might taunt me, as apparently he taunts Dr Jelf, with wanting that kind of security for the bliss of heaven which we want for our earthly pos- sessions ; " adding the quiet irony, " No saint in heaven has that bliss in fee ; he never wishes so to have it ; he it holds by continual dependence on a righteous and loving Being." True. But, nevertheless, I long to hold it by the same kind of secui'ity by whicli my Saviour holds it : and what is more, my Saviour tells me that I shall. And now, with the Incarnation and Atonement in the past, on the one hand ; — and the Judgment on the other hand, in the future ; — the intermediate position of man may be ascertained. Two topics occm* here. Justi- fication and Eegeneration. As to Justification, it is scarcely necessary to say, after the sketch abeady submitted, that it has nothing in it of the nature of a forensic or judicial act. If there be nothing judicial in the Atonement, and nothing ju- dicial in the Judgment, manifestly there can be nothing judicial in Justification. If God, in the Atonement, reckons as a Judge with his Son, as standing in the room and stead of guilty criminals — if, in the Judgment, he reckons as a Judge with all men, calling them to 24 JUSTIFICATION — THE EESURRECTION OF CHRIST. account and passing sentence according to their works, — tlien there may be keeping and consistency in our teaching, that when God justifies, he summons the offender before him, and looking upon him as one by faith with his own righteous Son, acquits and accepts him accordingly. Such a view, however, though in strict accordance with the Lutheran and Pauline doctrine, is repugnant to the whole spirit of the theology of this book. According to that theology, Justification cannot denote the entrance — the introduc- tion— of a man into a new state, or a new relationship to the Supreme Being. It can be nothing more than the vindication or recognition of a state or relationship pre- viously existing. And so it is. The resurrection of Christ is the justification of himself as the Son of God. And it is also the justification of all men, as thereby declared and proved to be sons. It is so, ipso facto, apart from any assent or consent on our part at all. Now it is true that Luther, following his great master, Paul, does connect the resuiTection of Christ very closely with the justification of all who believe in him. The resurrection of Christ is his justification. In raising him from the dead the Father justifies him, — ac- knowledges him, not only as his Son, but as his righteous servant, who by the knowledge of him- self is to justify many. His resuiTection is the evidence of his meritorious obedience and vicarious sacrifice being accepted on behalf of the guilty. He EEGENEEATION. 25 was delivered for our oflPences, and was raised again for our justification. Still our justification, on the footing of his resuiTCction — and, as it were, in terms of it — is a new act. The pardoning mercy, — the free, justify- ing grace, — is here. But, personally and individually, every man for himself, we must come in, or be brought in. And as we stand before the righteous Judge — the loving Father, — ourselves guilty, but united by the Spirit through faith to Christ, — united to him as raised from the dead for his righteousness' sake, — we have acceptance in the Beloved. With Justification, Regeneration is intimately associ- ated. Upon any system this is trae. The view taken of Justification must always materially affect the idea formed of Regeneration. In the Essays there is an exact correspondence of the one to the other. Justification manifests a previously existing relationship ; Regenera- tion apprehends, or realises it. The notion of a change of nature is not admitted. It affords scope for what, upon another subject, might be relished as pleasant raillery, about a new nature being superadded to the old, and the like grotesque fancies. But the new birth, as implying a renovation of man's moral nature, — and espe- cially as implying that there is implanted in the heart a new seed, or principle, of godliness, — is unequivocally disowned. The name is retained, and the conversation with Nicodemus in the third chapter of the Gospel by John is expounded. But how? The second part of 26 REGENERATION AND REDEMPTION. the conversation, — which speaks of the love of God to the world, as manifested in the sending of his only- begotten Son, — is taken, not as the necessary supplement or complement of the first part, which speaks of the natui-e and necessity of the new birth, — but as the full expression of what it teaches. Doubtless the second portion of this discourse forms the supplement or comple- ment of the first part. The mistake lies in confounding or mixing up the two. The closing revelation made by our Lord to Nicodemus may be a key, — it is the key, — to his preliminary expostulation. But they must not be mixed up with one another. And the one must not be made the substitute for the other. Keep the two parts distinct, and they wonderfully fit into one another. There is a work of the Spirit within me, giving my faculties of thought, feeling, conscience, and, above all, my will, an entirely new direction, — Godward, to use a good old word, and heavenward. There is presented to me by the same Spirit, — in Christ, in the Son of man lifted up, — a manifestation of the love of God, far beyond mere good-nature — far beyond mere absolute love, with its attribute of wrath against the unlovely, — the manifestation of a love meeting the crisis of my guilt by the sacrifice of an only-begotten Son. They are separate; these two acts, or works. But they are simultaneous. Like the two gases under the electric spark, they meet. There is a flash of light ; — and then a calm, pm'e river of water of life, clear as THE CHURCH. 27 crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, — and making glad the city of God. But if you confound them, — or if you put the one for the other — you really make void both of them. There is no real change in my nature within me, if there is no real change in my relation without me. If the Gospel is to tell me, not that I must and that I may become Avhat I am not ; — but only that I ought to know what I aheady am ; — there can be no occasion for any radical renovation or revolution in my moral being. All that is needed is that I shall be informed and persuaded ; not that I must be converted, created anew. It is the call to accept a privilege never possessed, never possible, before; — a privilege which, however precious in itself, brings me too near to God, and places me too deeply under obligation to God to be agreeable to my suspici- ous and jealous soul ; — it is this, and this alone, which makes palpable the necessity of my being made " willing in the day of the Lord's power." Hitherto, following the Essays, I have spoken of Theology, or the Gospel of Christ, in its bearing upon men generally, simply as men to be redeemed, justified, regenerated ; or as being actually redeemed, justified, re- generated. But any one, even ordinarily acquainted with theological method, knows that there is another view to be taken of the Gospel. It is to be viewed as not merely meeting the wants of men, whether in the mass or individually, but as forming a society, based upon 28 INSPIRATION. certain principles and placed under certain rules, I refer, of course, to the doctrine of the Church, a topic far too wide for full consideration now ; on which, however, I must at least indicate what I take to he the teaching of this book. There are three Essays bearing on this subject : those on Inspiration, on the Personality and Teaching of the Holy Spirit, and on the Unity of the Church. The connexion of the three appears to be this : — The Churcli is informed by the teaching of Inspiration ; it is quickened by the indwelling of the Spirit ; and so, it is one. 1. Inspiration falls to be discussed in this connexion, as God's method of informing the Church — his manner of imparting knowledge. In this view, the Essay on Inspiration ought to have had for its title not Inspiration, but Revelation. That is the real question raised in it ; the question, I mean, — Is there, or is there not, given to the Church, an authoritative Revelation of the mind and will of God ? That is the question to be settled. Very much of what the author says about the inspi- ration of deep, earnest thinkers, — as well as also what he says about the inspiration of creative genius in poetry and art, — may be admitted as true. Rapt sages, seers, singers of every age and clime, have doubtless experi- enced, more or less consciously, the impulse and guid- ance of a power not their own ; — a power which we need not hesitate to identify, as Milton did, with the fire that kindled Isaiah's bosom and opened his burning lips. INSPIRATION VIEWED GENERALLY. 29 In the pencil that could make the canvas glow with na- ture's brightest radiance, or sink far back into nature's remotest shade, or start into nature's busiest and wildest life, or calmly rest in the peace of nature's beautiful and awful death ; — in the chisel that could evoke out of cold marble, in living power and chastest pm'ity, the ideals of nature's best and loveliest forms, till the dull matter all but speaks ; — need we scruple to recognise the traces of the same Spirit of God, the same wisdom of heart, with which the Lord filled the men who were to cut the stones and carve the work of the Tabernacle? By all means, let these and all other methods by which God may design to train his creatures to the love of the pure, the beautiful, the sublime, the holy, be appreciated and improved. Very possibly there is ground for charging the religious world, and religious men, with timidity and inconsistency in their attitude towards Greek and Roman lore, — towards Greek and Roman poetry and art ; — whether original, or revived and reproduced in modem efforts. There may have been too much vacillation be- tween undue sensitiveness and scrupulosity on the one hand, and a tame acquiescence in usage on the other, under shelter of an unheeded protest. Certainly in these days, the relation of Christianity to the products of science, taste, and genius, is a topic which cannot be evaded. And who so competent to deal with it as this author? — If only he would approach it with somewhat less of contempt for the not unnatural apprehensions and 30 INSPIRATION AS CONNECTED WITH REVELATION, difficulties of serious minds : — and I must add also, with somewhat more of a knowledge of real human nature, among the average of the women of England, I dare to say, as well as of its boys and men (Essays, p. 278). Still the question remains, Have we, — altogether dis- tinct from these means by which God may partly train and teach those who make a wise use from them, — Have we, distinct from them in kind, a Revelation ? Is the Bible an authoritative standard and rale of faith ? Does God in the Bible make a communication to us, — exactly as one of us might make a communication to another, — by messengers sent at sundry times, and com- missioned to speak in divers manners ? Nor are we here called to inquire into the nature of the inspiration gi-anted to one who has to convey a direct message fi-om God, as distinct from the divine help which a man may have in the use of the common materials of thought and speculation. We are not even called to inquire whether the inspiration of the Bible is plenary and verbal, or not. Let it be first settled that we have, in the Bible, a collection of actual messages and communications from God to us ; and we may then consider upon what principles they are to be interpreted. But the Bible is not, in these Essays, accepted as a re- velation, in the true and proper meaning of that word. It is indeed exalted to a high place, as being pre- eminently, and par excellence, the Book by means of which God discovers himself to us. It stands alone in EEVELATION A PREVIOUS QUESTION TO INSPIRATION. 31 that respect, and admits of no rival near its throne. Still the manner in which God discovers himself to ns in the Bible, through the writings of prophets and apostles, is really not essentially different from the manner in which he discovers himself through the writings of other gifted men. The difference is a difference of measiu'e or degree. I may take the liberty of warning you whom I now address, against the attempt too often made to confound together these two questions of the Inspiration of Scrip- ture, and its Divine authority. It is very easy to involve an inquirer in inextricable doubts as to the natui'e of the impulse or influence under which the authors of the Bible wrote ; and as to the extent to which it has secured the infallible accuracy of their thoughts, state- ments, and words. By a kind of sleight of hand, he is thus made to believe that it is the fact or doctrine of the Bible being an authoritative revelation of God's will which is thus embarrassed. No two things can be more distinct. Satisfy yourself upon the point of the Bible being a communication from God; given by him with authority. Then, and then only, are you prepared to ascertain, from the Bible itself, what its inspiration really is. And I may warn you also to beware of another con- troversial artifice, — a discreditable artifice, — which this author ought to have disdained. It is a precious old Puritan and Evangelical doctrine, that the same Spirit 32 THE DOUBLE OFFICE OF THE SPIRIT. who superintended the composition of the Bible, is given to the humble reader of the Bible, that he may understand, believe, and profit by it. Can it be a mere mistake and stupid blunder, which makes the author re- present these two ofl&ces as inconsistent? Are they not manifestly conspiring, not conflicting works ? Are they not most beautifully coincident ? The author laments the cruelty to which the younger members of evangelical families are subjected (Essays, 340, 341). They are told that they cannot apprehend the truth and meaning of the Bible without a special inspiration of the Spirit in themselves, which as yet they have not. And then they are sent to satisfy themselves, by the study of a cumbrous external evidence, as to a complicated and incredible theory about the Bible being, down to its minutest jot and tittle, the hand- writing of God, as directly and immediately as were the Ten Commandments on the tables of stone. What amount of injudicious training there may be in evangelical, as in other families, I cannot tell. But how stands the fact, as to the doctrine actually held by our fathers ; — as well as by us, who seek to teach it to our children ? There, we say ; there is the Bible. The Holy Ghost was in the writing of it all through ; he moved the holy men who spake in it; and he has left his own impress on every book, on every page of it. True, you cannot understand it without his teach- ing. He must himself give you understanding to under- SELF-EVIDENCING POWER OP THE TRUTH. 33 stand the Scriptures, and open your hearts to receive them. The Father promises to give the Holy Spirit to you if you ask him. Search, then, the Scriptures, as writings which the Holy Spirit has prepared for you. Pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit to be with you, and in you. Search and pray in faith. You will not have long to wait. The bright glory of God shining forth everj'where, as the pervading characteristic of all the Bible, in all its parts; and your hearts in you being made willing unreservedly to accept and to do the will of God ; — this glory of God in the Bible, and this own- ing of the will of God in youi- hearts, — these two meeting together; — you will know of a truth that the Bible is the Word of God, better and more surely than whole libraries of external evidences could teach you. I ask yom* pardon for what may look too much like preaching. It seemed the shortest way of meeting a misrepresentation, and giving an idea of the doctrine of the divine self-evidencing power of the Gospel, as bound up with the doctrine of the necessity of divine teaching to apprehend it. For further study of both, I send you to John Owen. It will be a sad day for our countiy's theology, if the massive thinking of the old Puritan Chancellor of Oxford shall ever be displaced by more modern methods of grappling with the errors of Soci- nianism and Infidelity. 2. To constitute the society which the Gospel is designed to form, not only is information by the teach- c 34 THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD. ing of Inspiration provided, — but quickening or life also, by the indwelling of the Spirit. And the issue is the one universal Church. Here let it suffice to say- that, practically, as between Evangelical divines and these Essays, the issue lies within small compass. Is the Church a society, whether visible or not, or partly visible and partly not, — is it a society distinct from the world, — distinct from the general mass of mankind ? Is the work of the Holy Spirit in forming the Chm'ch a work of personal dealing with individual persons, one by one — with a view to separate them, by a process of con- viction and conversion, from the world, — to change them from what they natm-ally are, — to make them a peculiar people ? The separation may not be outward : there may be no leaving of old societies — no joining of any new one. But it may be not the less real on that account. The doctrine of the Essays would seem to be, that under the influence of a universal presence of the Holy Spirit, convincing the world of sin, of righteous- ness, and of judgment, juster views of moral evil, of moral good, and of God's discrimination between the two, pervade society wherever Christianity prevails. Through the influence of that presence men are brought to know and feel, not what they need to be and may be, but what they already are — sons, justified, regene- rate. And as this process, not of conversion, but, as it were, of self-recognition, goes on, the Church is in course of being formed. In short, the Church is the world THE TRINITY IN UNITY. 35 acknowledging its position in Christ ;— it is mankind become alive to the apprehension and realisation of the actual and universal redemption of humanity. You perceive how completely and symmetrically the different parts of the author's theology in this book hang- together. Througliout, there is a careful and consistent disavowal of anything being really done by God. The whole resolves itself into mere discovery on the part of God ; outward or inward discovery as regards us ; or both ; but still discovery alone. This comes out very strikingly in what was the last Essay in the fu'st edition of the book — the Essay on the Trinity in Unity. That great mystery the author rightly holds to be the crowning and culminating point in theology ; the resting-place of the inquirer ; the home, as it were, of spiritual sacrifice and prayer. In one view, indeed, the doctrine of the Trinity may fitly be the beginning as well as the end of a right theological method. It will naturally be so, if there are separate acts or offices to be ascribed to the several Persons of the Godhead, and if these are to be considered as laying the foundation of spiritual experience. In that case, we can scarcely dispense with a dogmatic and formal statement of this truth, at the commencement of any summary we mean to give of God's ways of dealing with men. Even then, however, it will always be interesting to rise again, at the conclusion, into the high contemplation of the essential nature of God ; and the wondrous manner 36 DISTINCTION OF THE PERSONS. of his subsistence as Fatherj Son, and Holy Ghost. For thus the ultimate and united glory of whatever is accomplished by the Persons of the Trinity, considered apart from one another, may be ascribed to the one un- divided Godhead, in whose infinite wisdom and love the whole plan had its origin and rise. Tlie theology of these Essays admits easily of the postponement of this doctrine of the Trinity to the close. In truth, according to that theology, the doctrine is really the result or product of a process of induction ; opening up, one after another, the glorious Three in One. First, God is apprehended as being to us a Father. Next, it is felt that there must be one to be our champion^ — our deliverer from the Evil Spirit, — and that he must be the Son of that Father, — his Eternal Son. And then, there must be a Spirit, in whom the Father and the Son are one, — and who, proceeding from the Father and tlie Son, quickens men. As the Spirit of the Father, he quickens them to the confession that they are sons of God; and as the Spirit of the Son, to the confession that they are brethren. I shall not oflfer any remarks here on this exposition of the baptismal formula. I merely observe, in the first place, that the distinc- tion of the Persons in the Trinity is chiefly viewed as a distinction of relationship ; our belief in it being grounded on the original filial relationship in which we are supposed to stand, simply as creatures, to God as our Father ; a relationship for which, unless it be in WARNING AGAINST SABELLIANISM. 37 some very vague and figurative sense, I find no warrant, either in reason, or in conscience, or in Scripture; and secondly, that while no distinct ofiices or works are ascribed to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost — while there is no distribution among them of the parts of any real and actual transaction — it may in the long run be found not a little difficult to guard any such representation of the Trinity, — based upon an almost exclusively subjective foundation, — from lapsing into Sabellianism ; — and so becoming a mere threefold ex- hibition or manifestation of the one Person, the Father. I come now to the concluding Essay, in which one would almost think that the author manifests some little irritation. He is like a man who has travelled a long road, with infinite pains, all the day ; and who, as weary night closes, and he catches a glimpse of the hospitable mansion of rest, finds a heavy gate flung unceremoniously in his face, or a strong bar suddenly let fall across his path. But really he need not be so impatient. He might have foreseen this result all the time. And, in fact, he has had an eye to it. His previous Essays have thoroughly demolished the ground on which, — I say not the doctrine of unending retribution, — but any doctrine of retribution at all, can stand. Hence, I really am not very careful to join issue with him on the subject of this last Essay. My issue with him would be, or rather has already been, on a higher and wider theme ; the natm^e and character of the moral 38 LAW AND JUDGMENT. government of God. I stand for the authority of God as Judge, in the plain English meaning of the word judge. I stand for the authority of his law, and its sanctions ; apart from which I see no hope for earth, no security against heaven itself becoming as hell. A theology without law, — law in the condemnation, — law in the atonement,— law in the justification, — law in the judgment, — is to me like the universal return of chaos and old Night. But a few brief remarks may be allowed upon the Essay in question. As to the word " eternal," of which the author makes so much in his correspondence with Dr Jelf — as well as in the concluding Essay in the second edition of his book, manifestly arising out of that correspondence, — I confess myself to have been not a little puzzled at first to make out what the exact bearing of his somewhat subtle criticism was meant to be. I am inclined to think, however, that it is, after all, a mare's nest he has found. He will not hear of " eternal" signifying endless duration. Eternity is not endless time. It is some- thing positive. I believe he is substantially right. But I suspect that when any person or thing comes to have associated with him, or with it, the attribute of eternity, it will be extremely difficult to make out that endless duration is not necessarily implied. I will try to ex- plain my meaning in one or two brief propositions. I. The words " eternal" and " eternity" do not denote merely negative ideas : they are not negations of time. THE WORD " ETERNAL." 39 but assertions or affirmations of what is independent of time. Infinity or immensity, in spite of the negative form of the word, is not a negation of limited extension, hut the assertion or affirmation of wliat is independent of limited extension, as eternity is of limited duration. Time, or limited duration, is in eternity as limited extension is in immensity. But no multiplication of limited dm-ations — no prolonging of time either way, will make eternity : as, in like manner, no multiplication of limited extensions will make immensity. Call them laws of thought or real existences, as you please ; or say that by necessary laws of thought — -by the unalterable constitution of om* mental nature, they imply eternal and infinite being. At all events they are positive, absolute realities — not notions reached by merely adding together an indefinite number of limited durations and limited extensions, or by imagining the removal of the limits on either side. II. Whatever the word eternal qualifies, it removes altogether out of the category or region of time. What- ever is thus qualified, although it exists in time, is not any longer subject to the conditions, or within the measures, of time. It does not grow, by progression or prolongation, from time on to eternity. It leaps, or is carried at a bound, clear out of time into eternity. When it is said, " He that believeth in the Son of God hath eternal life," the life which he has is still in time, for he who has it is in time. But the eternity of it is 40 THE ETERNAL GENERATION OF THE SON. not merely a lengthening out of the time. It may be called a quality, or it may be said to denote the quality, of the life spoken of. More properly speaking, it indicates what we may venture to call the region, or sphere, or essential nature of that life, as belonging to the category of the absolute, the fixed ; — and not to the category of the relative, the mutable. The eternal life, therefore, which man, believing in the Son of God, receives, or has, is a life as fixed and absolute, as remote from the vicissitudes and as much beyond the measures of time, as is the life of God. III. This life is in the Son ; and he is the Eternal Son, eternally begotten. In his correspondence with Dr Jelf, the author more than once refers to the use which he has been accustomed to make, in his public teaching, of the idea of eternity, on which his suggestions re- specting punishment depend," as a conclusive argument against Arianism. " In speaking of the doctrine of Arius, I have again and again explained to my pupils, that his errors arose from his mixing time with relations which had nothing to do with time." {Grounds, &c., by Dr Jelf, p. 19.) Again, speaking of Athanasius, he says : " He felt that Arius, in attributing notions de- rived from time to the only-begotten Son, w"as, in fact, bringing back the old divided Pagan worship." Athana- sius " asserted the eternal generation of the Son, not as a dry dogma, but as a living principle, in which eveiy child and peasant was interested — certainly not under- ETERNAL LIFE. 41 standing eternal to mean endless^ (Letter to Dr Jelf, p. 9.) The meaning would seem to be that, by calling the generation of the Son eternal, the relation implied in it was lifted above all notions derived from time ; — and all inquiry as to the date of it consequently silenced, IV. But whatever is the force and value of the word "eternal" when it qualifies the generation of the Son, as an argument against the Arians, — exactly the same is its force and value, when it qualifies the life which a man believing in the Son receives, as an argument against the very idea of a date, or an end, or a change. Let the author be consistent with himself. He meets Anus, who assigns a beginning to the existence of the Son, by means of the word " eternal." Of course I know he does not mean that the word " eternal," as applied to the Son, denotes merely — without beginning. It does not meet tlie Arian heresy du-ectly. But what I ask is. Does it meet that heresy really and hond fide ? If so, it must be because when eternity is predicated of the Son, or of the generation of the Son, — whatever else is to be under- stood, or whatever more, — it must, at all events, by im- plication deny that there was or could be any commence- ment of the Sonship. And so, when eternal life is given, it is life possessed of a quality or character to which the limits and laws of time do not apply. But, nevertheless, or rather on that veiy account, the possi- bility- of change or end is excluded. V. Now, I challenge the same principle of interpreta- 42 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. tion precisely for tlie opposite expressions — eternal death, eternal punishment, eternal fire. Eternity has a Son for the Father. Eternity has a life for those to whom the Son gives life in the knowledge of himself. Eternity has a death, a punishment, a fire, for those whom the Judge shall condemn. And whatever that punish- ment or fii-e may be, — whatever stripes, whatever horror of destruction from the presence of the Lord, — there must attach to whatever of evil has the character or stamp of eternity affixed to it, in connexion with whatever persons may have it as their portion, the very same independence of the accidents of time — the very same exclusion of the possibility of change or end — which belongs to the Son as eternally begotten of the Father ; and to the life which consists in the knowledge of the Son, and is, therefore, like the Son, eternal. The plain truth is this : it is the author himself who should be the object of his own metaphysical scorn. It is the autlior himself who is for introducing the idea of time, with its changes, into the unbroken oneness of eternity. Grant that eternity is the very being of God. Then I hold, that whatever He marks out in his word as eternal, has in it the same quality of endurance with the being of God. And it will be very difficult to make Scripture say anything else than that the exercise of penal severity — the infliction of righteous retribution — has upon it this mark of God's own eternity. But metaphysical subtleties, as well as minute and EXPULSION FROM OFFICE. 43 critical word- catching, may well be dispensed with, when so awful a theme is before us. They are especi- ally out of place when they can serve no other pm'pose than that of clouding and obscuring what the author must know is the real point at issue. On several accounts, I may be allowed to express my regret on account of the treatment which this book and its author have received. I have no right to sit in judg- ment on the proceedings of ecclesiastical or academic authorities in England, but I may form and express an opinion ; and I have no hesitation in saying that I regard the summary ejection of Mr Maurice from his offices in King's College as a calamity. Mr Maurice, in one of his letters to Dr Jelf, refers to some " Scotch Calvinists, heavily bowed with the yoke of the Westminster Con- fession," who " are turning to our forms, as witnesses of a Gospel to mankind which they are hindered from preaching" (p. 16). It is just possible that a recent case in Brighton may have been in his eye. I would only say, whether that be so or not, that if any process for censure, or deprivation of office, against Mr ]\Iaurice had been conducted as that process was conducted, — and as we are accustomed to see such processes con- ducted in Scotland ; — with some delay, yet with full publicity ; with all the regular formality of a carefully- drawn indictment, an examination of witnesses, and the fullest hearing of parties ; — considering the man, the church, the cause concerned ; — unspeakable good might 44 BENEFITS OF A TRIAL. have 1)6611 eflfected ; a most valuable testimony for truth might have been borne ; and an exposure made, not of one isolated error, but of a systematic form of false doc- trine,— such as England might have been the better for ages hence. For I must, with all deference to Principals, venture to make another remark. How any theologian could bring himself to discuss and condemn — or even to discuss — what Mr Maurice says on the subject of future punishment, at the very close of his book, and almost by way of a mere appendix,* otherwise than in con- nexion with his whole previous teaching throughout all tlie Essays, passes my comprehension. I have not done so. I do not intend to do so. I recall your minds in a sentence or two to the actual state of the question, and leave you with a single observation thereafter. What is our position here and now? on this earth, and for the space of some threescore and ten years which we have to spend on the earth ? Are we un- fallen creatures, — not guilty, depraved, condemned; — tor- mented, no doubt, with a plague of self within, and sadly vexed and oppressed by an Evil Spirit of selfishness tyrannising over us ; — but still having near us and in us, as the root of our being, a Righteousness, a Redeeemer, a strong Son of God, who has sounded the depths of all * This remark applies particularly to the first edition of the Essays, which alone Dr Jelf had before him, and in which the subject of the future state is not considered in a separate Essay at all, but occupies merely a few pages at the end of the Essay on the Trinity. SUMMARY OF THE QUESTION. 45 oiir experiences; — and also a Spirit coming forth from the Father and the Son, to shew us that we are all sons of God, and are all brethren ? Is this our present state ? And have we in prospect hefore us indefinite time, beyond death, in which, under a clearer light of dis- covery and revelation, the awful problem of God's will prevailing over ours, or our will resisting God's, may work out somehow its solution, — the loving Father's wrath against the unlovely burning on, in respect of all of us, and not quenched till its loving pm-pose is fulfilled ? Or are we a race of respited criminals, over whom the righteous sentence of the holy and righteous God is suspended, that a dispensation of mercy may run its appointed and limited course ? If this last view of our present state is the true one (and Scripture must be read backwards or written over again, — nay, the univer- sal conscience of mankind must be annihilated, — if it is not), then how sad a thing is it to let any vague and general reasonings of ours, about what we think should be the ultimate issues of things, interfere with the urgent work of persuading the guilty criminals, whose respite is so precarious, rather to embrace the offered mercy than remain under the old condemnation, aggra- vated as it must be by the fresh guilt of the rejected amnesty and mercy! Shew me one hint in all the Bible of any offer of grace, or any opportunity of sal- vation, beyond the limits of this present life, and I wiU try to calculate chances for myself and my fellow- 46 SOURCES OF THE THEOLOGY OF THE ESSAYS. sinners. But if you cannot, stand aside, and I also will stand aside. Let us be still. And let God himself proclaim on Sinai the threatenings of law, and fill the air roxmd Bethlehem with the soft song of peace. Above all, let him, in tlie cross of his own Son, reveal the inevitable certainty of retribution — the unsearchable riches of grace. My closing observation is a practical one. I had in- tended to trace slightly the author's views, as developed in this book, to some of the sources whence they might have been, if they have not been, derived. There is little or nothing that is really new in them. Mr Maurice can- not be called an original writer as to matter, though his manner and style are fresh. He is not, probably, much acquainted with the literatui'e of Protestant theology. If he is, it is the worse for his candom- ; for in that case his misrepresentations are inexcusable. He writes as if the field had never been gone over before, and as if he was making discoveries ; never indicating any know- ledge of the fact, that all his reasonings against the current orthodox and evangelical doctrines have been anticipated and answered over and over again. I might shew the coincidence of his views as to the inward light with those of Barclay and the Friends ; the extent of his obligation to Edward Irving and Thomas Erskine for his ideas of the Incarnation and Atonement ; and the agreement of his opinions, on all the leading points of Christian doctrine, with those of ordinary Unitarians ; STATE OF THE HEATHEN AND THE MASSES. 4T with these two exceptions : that, under whatever limi- tations, they admit a resurrection, a judgment, and a future state of rewards and punishments 5 whilst on the other hand, with whatever explanations, he asserts strongly the doctrine of the Trinity. But to return to my concluding remark ; — The heavy Aveight upon every thinking man's mind in connexion with this whole subject, is the sad and seemingly hopeless state of the vast multitudes, not in heathen lands only, but at our very doors, to whom there seems actually to be no opportunity given for escaping the wrath to come. How that weight should lie less oppressively on my mind if I embrace the author's view, than if I hold by the common belief of Christendom, I cannot understand; — unless I have a far clearer revelation than he can give me, of a more favourable condition of things, when life's fitful fever is over. Nor can I see any reason why men seeking to persuade their fellows to embrace an offered means of escape from coming judgment, should be more violent or more ecstatic than those who have to tell them that they are in a wrong state, and that that state, while it lasts, is hell. But this I say, — If any man accepts the Gospel as a message of mercy for himself, and rejoices in his escape from liability to condemnation, and his present possession of eternal life in the know- ledge of the Son of God, — he lies under an obligation not to be measured, to go everywhere among his 48 OBLIGATION OF CHRISTIANS. fellows, that, knowing the terror of the Lord, he may persuade men. I say, moreover, that it will be foul guilt in him if he is not the foremost in every good work for rescuing society from ignorance, poverty, and crime. And I say, finally, that he has a weapon of power which none else can wield, when he has to tell of an all-sufficient Atonement, a free Justification, a full Salvation. I call upon the Evangelical Churches everywhere to arise and to do their duty in these perilous times. God expects it at their hands. Awake, awake ; put on thy sti-ength, O Zion ; put on thy beautiful garments, 0 Jerusalem. Shake thy- self from the dust ; arise and sit down, 0 Jerusalem ; loose the bands of thy neck, 0 captive daughter of Zion !" PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION OF THE ESSAYS ; PLAN OF THE PROPOSED EXAMINATION. The Introductory Lecture on the Essays is the result of the exammation of them, to which attention is now sohcited. It is all the more necessary, on that account, to explain the principle upon which the examination was conducted. With that view, it may be right to submit a few remarks upon the Preface to the second edition of the Essays, prepared when the task of examining them was first undertaken. And, at the same time, it may be convenient to embrace the oppor- tunity of indicating generally the plan, or method, of the examination itself. Due allowance being made for the in-itation natu- rally caused by some not perhaps very liberal or candid criticisms on the Essays, as first published, there are traces of temper, and instances of unfairness, in this pre- face to the second edition, which, as affecting the author's impartiality and competency, deserve a passing notice. Referring to a remark by a reviewer of the New Uni- tarian school, that " few writers ever do radically over- turn any mature system of belief," the author says — " To overturn radically a mature system of belief is the very last object of my ambition" (p. 11). So he speaks D 50 A MATURE SYSTEM OF BELIEF. at the very outset. It is very difficult to perceive how this disavowal is to be understood, consistently with the unequivocal identification, in this very preface, of what is well known as the Evangelical system, and the vehement protest against it which is over and over again repeated. " There are some Unitarians," he adds, and some Trinitarians also, who are not very mature in their convictions — not very settled in their belief — who have tried systems and are not content with them. To such I addressed myself. By some of these I have been understood." A "mature system of belief" is the matter in question ; it is an evasion of it to speak merely of men being " not very matm-e in their convictions, not very settled in their belief." Doubtless, the author does apply himself to persons of that class ; and whatever may be the object of his ambition, the fact is, that, in dealing with them, he does aim at overtm-ning a ma- ture system of belief. His whole work is an effort to get the ordinary Orthodox system, as held by the gene- ral body of Trinitarians, entirely out of the way, that he may propose what he considers a more satisfactory rest- ing-place for those who have tried systems, and are not content with them. That he should succeed in radically overturning the belief of persons intelligently mature and settled in their convictions with regard to that sys- tem, may be neither his expectation nor his desire. Such persons, especially if they have made a full and fair trial of it, will easily detect the author's distorted OPPOSITION TO THE BELIEF OF CHRISTENDOM. 51 representations, and will consequently be little moved from their calm faith in the Righteousness and Atone- ment of the Son of God. But there is a class of men who think they ' try the spirits whether they be of God/ when in a rare moment of seriousness they consult a book or two ; — or when they make a kind of desperate attempt to be convinced at all hazards of some extreme opinion, — recoiling forthwith into incredulity. They will welcome the author's assiu-ance about not overturning a mature system of belief; they will make their own use of it. They will find in it a convenient apology for casting away their faith in what they have been taught to consider the essential doctrines of the Gospel, and persuading others to do the same ; with a plausible profession, all the while, of the utmost reluctance to ap- pear as the subverters of the established opinions of re- ligious men. It would be far more candid on the part of this author to avow, that he means directly to assail the common well-understood creed of Orthodox and Evangelical Christendom. Speaking still of the review of his Essays in the Unitarian Journal, he says: ''It undertakes to expose the feebleness of my analysis and the unsatisfactoriness of my logic." " Very likely," he replies, " it may have succeeded. But the question at issue between us is not that at all, not whether they are good reasoners and I am a bad one, but what gospel they have to bring to mankind, what light they have to throw on the question- 52 CRITERION OP A MESSAGE FROM GOD. ings of the human spirit, what they can shew has been done for the deliverance of our race and its members, what hope they can give us of that which shall yet be done. On that issue I am willing to put their creed and mine" (p. xii.) With all deference it is submitted that to ascertain this, — to know what I have to com- municate as divine truth to mankind,— from whatever sources of information may be open to me, — good reason- ing is indispensable, and feeble analysis and unsatisfac- tory logic are disqualifications. But the main thing to be observed here is, that apparently, the criterion of a message from God is made to be the measure in which, or the extent to which, it satisfies man's inquiries and ministers to his hope. So also, speaking of the common orthodox system which he is opposing, he pays a somewhat suspicious compliment to the parties liolding it : — " I admire un- speakably those who can believe in the love of God and can love their brethren, in spite of the opinion which they seem to cherish, that he has doomed them to destruction. I am sm-e that their faith is as much purer and stronger than mine, as it is than their own system." And then he adds ; " But if that system does prevent me from believing that which God's Word, the Gospel of Christ, the witness of my own conscience, the miseries and necessities of the universe, compel me to believe, I must throw it off" (xxvi. xxvii.) Is it meant that these are different kinds of evi- POPULAR THEOEY OF THE GOSPEL. 53 dence — whose conspii-ing forces have power to compel belief? Am I to associate with the Word of God and the Gospel of Christ, and apparently place on the same level with them as grounds of conviction, the witness of my own conscience, and the miseries and necessities of the universe ? This last is certainly a very large and wide measure of truth. I am to test a doctrine proposed for my acceptance by the miseries and necessities of the universe ; — that is, evidently, by my own notion of what the universe requires. For this, it would seem that one must really be as God, knowing good and evil. Invidious, and sometimes offensive representations of the opinions of his opponents disfigure the pages of the preface. The passage just quoted is perhaps a specimen ; but there are other instances. Is it ignorance, or a satirical vein, that makes the author speak of the popular theory" as " gratifying to all the instincts of religious men," because according to it " the Gospel is only a scheme for saving them fi-om the ruin which God decreed for the universe when Adam sinned"? (p. xx.) Is there a courteous sarcasm in the allegation that they to whom we of " the popular theoiy " preach the Gospel " understand us to say that God has sent his Son into the world, not to save it, but to con- demn it"? (p. XX.) Is the writer so ill-read in theology as to believe his own words when he alleges, that the explanations of Christ's sacrifice usually given are " such as a heathen would use to defend the sacrifices 54 THE ATONEMENT. which he offers to a malignant power"? (p. xxiv.) Or does he think that it is in good taste coolly to represent the divines with whom he is contrasting himself as those who " say" — not merely who are considered by him as virtually holding, but who themselves " say — that the doctrines of tlae Atonement, of the Resurrection, and of the Judgment, can only be received in connexion with certain metaphysical, legal, or commercial explanations "? (p. XXV.) These and similar remarks are spots on the surface of that charity which the work and its author claim as pre-eminently their own, and with respect to which it can scarcely be said that it vaunteth not itself Tliey are quite in keeping with his manner of writing in the Essays upon these subjects; but as thus thrust ultrone- ously into the new preface, they indicate an increasing feeling of bitterness and anger which it is by no means pleasant to observe. There are one or two other instances also, either of the want of an exact acquaintance with the views of his opponents, or of the want of a scrupulous accuracy in stating them, which are fitted to leave a painful im- pression on the mind. In speaking of the changes in the Essay on the Atonement, and " one omission " which he has " made with very great reluctance," he seems to have some reason to complain of an imfair construction put upon his quotation, in his first edition, of the collect for the THE GOSPEL OFFER. 55 Sunday before Easter. It may be incorrect to say that he " appealed to this collect, because he regarded Christ's death not as a sacrifice, but simply as an example " (pp. xxii. xxiii.) But on the other hand, is it quite fair or correct in him to adopt the words — a sacrifice which takes away sin, — a sacrifice, satisfaction, and oblation for the sins of the whole world," — as expressive of his own view and that, too, without warning or expla- nation ; — when he cannot but be aware that the com- mon usage of language, and the unquestionable phrase- ology of theological writers, assign to them a very different meaning from that in which he himself employs them ? Nor is it possible to read without regret the passage in which he refers to the Bishop of Natal, Dr Colenso. Not content with claiming that prelate as holding, along with himself, " the conviction that we are living in a world which God loves, and which Christ has re- deemed " (pp. xxix. XXX.) — he thinks it needful to stig- matise the evangelical men from whom he differs, by an antithesis more witty than wise, as " those who think that the world is not redeemed, that God's love is limited to a few." There may be differences among the parties alluded to, in regard to their manner of stating, and trying to solve, various difficult questions connected with the carrying out of the plan of mercy among a guilty and rebellious race. But the author surely can- not believe that any one of them would acquiesce in 56 PUNISHMENT. those propositions which he coolly puts forward as an off-hand summary of their belief. The author sometimes mistakes — or misstates — the exact point at issue between himself and those who are supposed to complain of him. " It has been supposed," he says, " that I have argued for some mitigated notion of future punishment, as more consistent with the mercy of God than the ordinary one." " The ordinary doctrine " is one which " to him seems full of the most miserable mitigations and indulgencies for evil." And he adds, " I plead for the love of God which resists sin, and triumphs over it, not for a mercy which relaxes the penalty of it " (p. xxvi.) The distortion and abuse of " the ordinary doctrine " may, for the present, pass. But the very contrast which he draws in this last sentence, with not a little of what he feels to be just pride, may indicate,— what will afterwards more fully appear, — that the real " supposition," or allegation, with which he has to deal, is not that he " has argued for some mitigated notion of future punishment," but- that his view of the Gospel excludes, and he himself denies, future punishment altogether, in the true and proper sense of the term punishment, as that term is used alike in theology and in common Ufe. There are some other matters in this preface on which a remark or two might be made, especially in connexion with the subject of Inspiration and the doctrine of the PLAN OF THE ESSAYS. 57 Atonement. But the opportunity for considering them will afterwards occur in the progress of the inquiry which it is proposed now to institute into the teaching of this book. For the purpose of the following examination, the Essays may conveniently he grouped in classes, accord- ing to an arrangement of the topics of theology common among divines ; — which indeed the author virtually follows in the most orderly manner. In the first two Essays the source of theology on the part of God, and the source of it also on the part of man, are pointed out. In the third and fourth, the condition of man is exhibited as capable of remedy ; hiasmuch as on the one hand, the Evil Power that tyrannises over him is foreign to himself, and on the other hand, the protest against evil in his own bosom is not only ineradicated and ineradicable, but is identified with a present living Redeemer. The fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth Essays describe the person and work of the Redeemer. The ninth and tenth Essays trace the process of personal salvation, or emancipation. In the eleventh and twelfth, we are asked to consider what the Redeemer is now doing, and what he has yet to do, in his ascension-state and in his work of judgment. In the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, the condition of the Church under the teaching of the divine Word and Spirit is sketched ; and the principle of the Church's 58 PLAN OF EXAMINATION. unity is unfolded. The sixteenth reaches the culminating point of the Trinity in Unity. The concluding Essay, the seventeenth, contemplates the future state. Thus there are these several and successive topics discussed in their order: — The First J The sowce of Theology ; — in the nature of God, which is love, and in the necessity of man, which is sin (Essays i. ii.) The Second, The possibility of a Remedial Theology ; — the power of evil being foreign to man, and the protest against evil being inherent in man — being his living Redeemer (iii. iv.) The Third, The Remedy provided ; — in the person (v. vi.) and work (vii. viii.) of the Son of God. The Fourth, The Remedy applied ; — in the justifica- tion and regeneration of men (ix. x.) The Fifth, The exaltation of the Redeemer to the office of Ruler and Judge (xi. xii.) The Sixth, The subjection of the Church to divine guidance ; — Inspiration, — the personality and teaching of the Holy Spirit, — the Unity of the Church (xiii. xiv. xv.) The Seventh, The Trinity in Unity (xvi.) Conclusion, Eternal Life and Eternal Death (xvii.) CHAPTER I. THE SOURCE OF THEOLOGY ;— IN THE NATURE OP GOD, WHICH 18 LOVE, AND THE NECESSITY OF MAN, WHICH IS SIN. ESSAYS I. AND II. ESSAY I.— ON CHARITY. The subject of this Essay is the character of God. It is as a guide or index to the character of God that the apostle Paul's praise of charity is introduced, and is made, not only the theme of the present Essay, but the key-note of the whole treatise. Carrying out the in- tentions of a deceased " Lady, once a member of the Society of Friends," who had desired that " some book especially addressed to Unitarians " should be prepared by him, the author thought that " a series of Discourses which had occurred to him as suitable for his own con- gregation, in the interval between Quinquagesima Sun- day and Trinity Sunday, might embrace all the topics " which he would wish to bring under their notice (Ad- vertisement, pp. vii. viii.) He accordingly threw the Discourses into the form of Essays ; following very much the order in which the leading truths of the Gospel are exhibited in the services of the Church of 60 CHARITY— QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY. England from the beginning of the season of Lent onwards to Trinity Sunday. To this arrangement he refers in his first Essay. Having directed attention to the stress which all men of all parties are now laying upon charity, and which, he thinks, should " incline a writer of this day to begin his moral or theological dis- courses from charity, at whatever point he may ulti- mately arrive," — as a similar motive " led one of the Reformers to speak first of faith," — he appeals to " the doctors of the first ages, and of the middle ages," who " continually put forth the Divine Charity as the ground upon which all things in heaven and earth rest, as the centre round which they revolve." And he adds ; — " What is more to the purpose, the compilers of our Prayer-book, living at the very time when faith was the watchword of all parties, thought it wise to introduce the season of Lent with a prayer and an epistle, which declare that the tongues of men and of angels, the giving all our goods to feed the poor, the giving our bodies to be burnt, finally, the faith which removes mountains, without charity, are nothing. This alone was to be the ground of all calls to repentance, conver- sion, humiliation, self-restraint ; this was to unfold gradually the mystery of the Passion, and of the Re- surrection, the mystery of Justification by faith, of the New Life, of Christ's Ascension and Priesthood, of the descent of the Spirit, of the Unity of the Church. This was to be the induction into the deepest mystery of all. ARRANGEMENT OF PRAYER-BOOK. 61 the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (pp. 6,7). It is not for a stranger to comment upon a view of the Church of England Prayer-book given by a clergyman. But when so much importance is attached to the selection of the Epistle of Quinquagesima Sunday, as introductory not only to Lent, but to all the Church's high days from Lent to Trinity Sunday, — one can scarcely help asking if Septuagesima Sunday, and Sexagesima Sunday, have not as direct a reference to Lent as Quinquagesima Sun- day ? Moreover, do not the very names of these three Sundays prove that whatever principle may have guided the compilers of the Prayer-book in fixing ap- propriate services for them, it must have been a principle applicable exclusively to the seven weeks of Lent and Easter, ending on Easter Sunday, and not reaching beyond it ? Still further, if the Epistles and other devotions for these three Sundays, Septuagesima, Sexa- gesima, Quinquagesima, — be considered as preparatory to the contrition of Lent and the joy of Easter, — and nothing more, — may not a reason be found for dwelling upon the high standard of Christian responsibility and duty, at least as satisfactory as the assumption that the compilers of the Prayer-book meant the Epistle for the Sunday before Ash-Wednesday to be the starting-point of all its subsequent theology, including the Passion, the Eesurrection, Pentecost, the Trinity ? • This, however, is a matter of compai-atively little 62 THE CHARITY OF 1 COK. XIII. consequence. A more serious consideration is that by making the human character, however excellent, — and indeed one single excellent featiire of that character, — the suggestive type, the mould, according to which our conceptions of the divine character are to be formed, we run the risk of these conceptions being limited, jDartial, one-sided. Even as a description of consummate Chris- tian virtue, the commendation of charity is incomplete ; other graces must be blended with it to constitute the perfect man in Christ. It is not a natural or direct method to overlook the express statements on the sub- ject of the divine nature and government of which Scripture is full, to isolate a single element of human goodness however beautiful and beautifully delineated, and to resolve all the perfection of the Ruler of the uni- verse into that. The danger seems to be all the greater, if there is to be no definition of charity, — no analysis of the apostolic account of it, — no comparison of that ac- count with other scriptural representations ; — if all criti- cism or inquiry of that sort is to be resented as narrowing in an intolerable manner the scope and sense of the divine word; — if, in fact, the love signalised in the thirteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians is to be regarded as of that wide and comprehensive sort which shall gather up into itself all those aspirations towards a better mutual understanding, and a larger common brotherhood, of which men's hearts are vaguely consci- ous. Even if that chapter were taken alone and sepa- ALLEGED INCONSISTENCY OF PAUL. 63 ratelj, a careful examination of the qualities ascribed to charity might bring out a view of that excellence, as belonging first to man, and then in an infinite degree to God, more pointed and precise than any of these aspira- tions,— than all of them together. Still it would be necessarily an imperfect view of what the moral Gov- ernor of the world is. It is even more unsatisfactory, according to the author's manner of handling the pass- age, and drawing forth from it the idea of the character of God. This will appear more clearly when the Essay is examined somewhat more in detail. The opening sentence gives a portion of the noble verses in which charity is exalted above the best gifts, — the gifts most to be coveted. " St Paul says, Though I have all faith^ so that I could remove mountains^ and have not charity^ I am nothing (p. 1). Those with whom the author deals are supposed to hail this as a " confession" on the part of Paul " how poor all those dogmas are on which he dwells elsewhere with so much of theological refinement ; faith, which he told the Romans and Galatians, was necessary and able to save men from ruin, shrinks here to its proper dimen- sions, and in comparison of another excellence is pro- nounced to be good for nothing." They rejoice in " what seems to them a splendid inconsistency in sup- port of a principle which it is the great work of our age to proclaim," leaving it to " divines to defend the apostle's consistency if they can" (p. 1). 64 LOVE AND FAITH. At one time, the author intimates, he would have accepted the challenge. He would have said ; " The charity which the apostle describes is not the least that tolerance of opinions, that disposition to fraternize with all characters and creeds, which you take it to be. His nomenclature is spiritual and divine, yours human and earthly. If you could look into the real signification of this chapter, you would not find that you liked it much better than what he says of faith elsewhere" (p. 2). He abandons " this language " now, as " impertinent and unchristian." And perhaps there is no harm in his doing so, not so much for that reason, as because the language is not particularly intelligible. It would have been but fair, however, to the apostle to explain, that the faith which he contrasts with charity in writing to the Corinthians, is not the faith which he commends in writing to the Romans and Galatians : and that the charity of the one epistle is the love by which faith is represented as working, in the others. It would have been well also if the author had said, whether or not he agrees in the sentiments supposed to be uttered by the advocates of charity as against faith. At all events, he repudiates the answer which he might once have given. 1. It may "silence an objector," he says. But it is equivalent to " telling him that the Bible means some- thing altogether different from that which it appears to mean," and this again is equivalent to a denial of its inspiration and divine truth. " I must suppose," he INSPIRED LANGUAGE. 65 adds, " tliat inspired language is tlie most inclusive and compreliensive of all language ; that divine truth lies beneath all the imperfect forms of truth which men have perceived, — sustaining them, not contradicting them." (Pp. 2, 3.) Revelation, according to him, coming in con- tact with a particular temper or hahit in a man, a country or an age, finds in the temper or habit, whatever it may be, some partial affinity to itself. Under the in- fluence of that temper or habit, men may " fix upon a certain aspect of the Revelation," while another side of it is for them lying in shadow." They thus " treat it in the most sincere and natural way, accepting what in their state of mind they can most practically appre- hend and use." And a teacher having strong " faith in God's revelation," and a " clear conviction that God has his own way of guiding his creatures," might " be con- tent that they shoidd not, for the present, try to bring " the side that is for them lying in shadow " within the range of their vision." " At all events he would feel that his work was clearly marked out for him," — that work being " to an-ive at the unknown through that which is perceived, however partially," and not to quench the light by which any men are walking." (P. 4.) Now if all this means merely, on the one hand, that the Bible is to be understood according to the ordinary import of the language which it employs ; and on the other hand, that whatever amount of truth may be found in a man's convictions is to be taken advantage of, as E 66 MEANING OF THE BIBLE. common ground, in dealing with him on behalf of Reve- lation ; — it is of com-se a correct statement, although it is little to the pm'pose. But there is a germ of ambi- guity, if not of error, in these somewhat vague observa- tions. If 1 tell a man whose only notion of charity or love is the notion of mere good-will, for example, — that this is not the charity or love of which Paid speaks, — am I therefore telling him that the Bible means some- thing different from what it appears to mean? The question is not what the Bible appears to mean to a man fastening upon an isolated word, or sentence, and inter- preting it according to some idea of his own, or of the age : but what it means to one who reads it, as he would read any other book, studying the connexion in which the word or sentence occurs, and endeavouring in the ordinary . way to ascertain what idea the writer intended to convey. i Nor will it do to ride off upon some transcendental theory of inspiration, as if it imparted to the language used a certain character of universality or compre- hensiveness ; making it, chameleon-like, assume the hue and colour of the minds with which it meets ; or mak- ing it assimilate and harmonise the imperfect forms of truth which men express in still more imperfect forms of words. Inspired language is to be regarded as having a definite meaning not less than uninspired language, and is to be read and studied accordingly. If any think that they do homage to inspired language by elevating it into a region where the common laws of VARIOUS IDEAS OF CHARITY. 67 criticism and interpretation, applicable to all other lan- guage, may not reach it, they are in reality betraying it with a kiss ; unconsciously perhaps, and unintentionally, but yet effectually. We are asked to take the word " charity," or love, as used by Paul, for the very symbol and standard of our theology. And at the same time we are gravely warned against putting upon the word any definite meaning, and rather recommended, as it would almost seem, to avoid " looking into the real signification of the chapter " containing it ; although that, after all, is the only possible method of arriving at a knowledge of the divine truth which the term " charity," as used by Paul, under the inspiration of the Spirit, was really designed to teach. This is surely a large demand on our implicit faith. 2. It is so all the rather for the admissions which are made as to the spurious character of much of the charity now in vogue. " Artificial, fantastical, morbid," — nay " compatible with a vast amount of uncharitableness," — much of all that is felt and said and practised in this age is allowed to be. One would tliink that this is a good reason for seeking some surer starting-point for our theology than the word " charity," as found in an isolated verse, or half a verse, of the Apostle Paul, and interpreted by the " temper or habit " of the age. But the author has an ingenious " point " here, which he suggests for consideration. It is true," he says, " that each school has its own notion of charity, that the defi- 68 A RIGHTEOUS MAN A GOOD MAN, nitions of it are unlike, that the limitations of it are various and capricious." But " the point to be con- sidered is, whether all these diversities, subsisting under a common name, do not prove, more than anything else, the tendency of the time in which they are found, — the direction in which our thoughts are all moving." (P. 5.) Certainly they may prove this. But they prove also that in obeying that tendency, and moving in that direction, we are very much at sea. And surely they do not prove that we are so much at one in om- ideas of what the charity we talk about and long for really is, as to be warranted in making these ideas the measure of the charity which " inspired language " praises ; and dispensing with the light which a fair examination of that language might shed upon the subject. It may be quite true that in these days, " portraits of dry, hard, cold-hearted men, who have in them, possi- bly, a sense of justice and right, are sm-e to produce a revolting, as from something profoundly and essentially evil, even in spectators who can look upon great crimi- nals with half-admiration, as gigantic and heroical." No doubt, these are the stock characters of cheap novels and minor theatres, — the fit successors of the stern and upright father or husband, and the gay and generous libertine, who used to entertain our ancestors. Certainly " dry, hard, cold-hearted men," are anything but ami- able, even though they have " a sense of justice and right." But an age which revolts from such characters. FAITH APPREHENDING AND REPRODUCING LOVE. 69 as from something profoundly and essentially evil, and looks in preference on great criminals with half-admira- tion, is not precisely the best fitted for deciding, from its own sense and consciousness, and without examination of the passage, whether the charity of the thirteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians be inclusive, or exclusive, of that " sense of justice and right " which, it seems, will not rescue a " dry, hard, cold-hearted man " from the fate of being regarded as less tolerable than a " gigantic and heroical " villain. If the meaning of the term be first ascertained, there can be no objection to our " beginning our moral or theological discourses from charity," and ending them also in charity. "The divine charity" is to be "put forth as the ground upon which all things in heaven and earth rest, as the centre round which they revolve." (P. 6.) Not only " the doctors of the first ages and of the middle ages," but the Reformers also, rightly un- derstood, held this view. They did not, as the author thinks, " speak first on faith." Still less did they do so for the reason he gives, " because all men, whether Romanists or Anti-Romanists, acknowledged the neces- sity of it." They spoke first on love ; and on faith as apprehending and reproducing love ; apprehending love in God ; reproducing love in man. Charity — " the divine charity," — is a good portal through which to enter into the christian temple. And it is true that " human charity is the image and couutei-part of the 70 IMPATIENCE OF DOGMAS AND DISTINCTIONS. divine." From human charity, therefore, we may rise to a conception of the divine. But in order to this, we must know what human charity is, — the human charity which is worthy to be the image and counterpart of the divine. And sm'ely it is safer to take our knowledge of this human charity, — especially since so much is to be made of it, — from the Word of God fairly interpreted as all spoken and written words ought to be, than from the temper and tendency of any age, — least of all an age admitted to have the name, indeed, very much in its mouth, but to be very much in the dark as to the thing. 3. Nor is the author's case the better for a further admission that it is an age impatient of " dogmas ; " and in haste to grasp some union of parties in which all barriers, theological, nay, it would seem sometimes, moral also, shall be thrown down." This "impatience of distinctions, of the distinction between Right and Wrong, as well as of that between Truth and False- hood " — is seen to be " the greatest peril of this age," and felt to be a " temptation " against which, for our- selves and others, it is our " highest duty " to " watch." " In performance of it," he denounces the glorification of private judgment," by which he understands the notion that we may think what we like to think ; that there is no standard to which om- thoughts should be conformed : that they fix their own standard." " Who," he asks, " can toil to find^" that which, on this sup- position, he can make ? " (Pp. 8, 9.) A shrewd question, CHARITY, TRUTH, JUSTICE, HOLINESS. 71 and a sharp one ! If any man can be discovered who holds and glorifies this notion of private judgment, he may deal with it. Equally with this so-called private judgment,- — or rather as virtually identical with it, — " the dogmatical authority of the Church " is denounced. The confusion is only worse confounded. But if we start from the belief, — charity is the ground and centre of the universe, God is charity " — om- theology becomes at once distinct and comprehensive. Be it so. Let us start from that belief, if by charity we mean what Paul means in the thirteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians. In that view, the belief in question may be subdivided into several beliefs. For example ; — truth is the ground and centre of the imiverse — God is truth. Justice is the ground and centre of the universe — God is justice. Holiness is the ground and centre of the universe — God is holiness. If charity is allowed to stand alone in tlie expression of the belief from which we start, it is because it is inclu- sive of these other attributes. If it is not to be so under- stood, we must refuse to start from a belief essentially defective and one-sided. This is the vital point of the First Essay. That theology should be regarded not as a collection of our theories about God, but as a declaration of his will and his acts toward us," — that its articles ought to be viewed in a light fitted to bring " the divine love and human life into conjunction, the one being no longer a 72 DIVINE UNITY, DIVINE LOVE. "ban-en tenet or sentiment, the other a hopeless struggle," — these are important and seasonable observations. (Pp. 10, 11.) To acquaint himself with God and be at peace, is the highest study and happiness of man. And beyond all question, the belief that God is love lies at the root of all divine knowledge, and embraces the sum of all. But the painful doubt in which this Essay leaves us regards the natm-e of that charity, or love, into which the entire divine character is resolved, and from which all theology is to be elaborated : — a painful doubt in- deed, and one which almost passes, before the Essay closes, into still more painful certainty. The author, appealing, as he usually does in all his Essays, to those with a view to whose benefit they were composed, acknowledges, in the strongest terms, his obligation to ^' two classes of Unitarians." The first class consists of Unitarians of the old school, who " repudiate" the Trinitarian " Articles absolutely," and " protest against them." With reference to that class, he observes, " I am not ashamed to say that the vehement denunciations of what they suppose to be the general faith of Christendom, which I have heard firom Unitarians, — denunciations of it as cruel, immoral, in- consistent with any full and honest acknowledgment of the Divine Unity, still more of the Divine love, — have been eminently useful to me. I receive them as bless- ings from God, for which I ought to give him continual thanks." Not, he explains, " because the hearing of OLD SCHOOL UNITARIANS — THE NATURE OF GOD. 73 these charges has set me upon refuting them," — but " because great portions of these charges have seemed to me well-founded ; because I have been compelled to confess that the evidence for them is irresistible." And that evidence, he adds, does not merely refer to some secondary or subordinate point." " It does not touch those secret things which belong to the Lord, but the heart of that Revelation which he has made to us and to om- children." These protests" have taught him to say to himself, " Take away the love of God, and you take away everything." They have " m-ged him to believe that God is actually love;" and "to dread any representation of him which is at variance with this ; to shrink from attributing to him any acts which would be unlovely in man." (Pp. 11-14.) If there be mean- ing in so unqualified an acknowledgment of obligation, and force in the appeal grounded upon it, — it must be because the view of the divine character with which the author sets out is the same as that of those Unitarians who " vehemently denounce what they suppose to be the general faith of Christendom ; " and further, because the standard by which he is to try what " acts may be at- tributed to God," even in his character of ruler, is their opinion of what would be unlovely in man. On any other supposition, his pleading with them is insincere, or at least, irrelevant. The other class of Unitarians to whom he addresses himself compose " the modern school." They " be- 74 NEW SCHOOL UNITARIANS — THE WORD OF GOD. ing less strong in condemnation of the thoughts and language of books written by Trinitarians, and avowing a sympathy with some of the accounts which they have given of their own inward conflicts, nevertheless hate orthodoxy with a perfect hatred, affirming it to be the stifler of all honest convictions and of all moral growth." From these he has learned that " if we are resting on any formulas, even the best," or " on the divinest book that was ever written by God for the teaching of man- kind, and not on the living God himself, our founda- tion will be found sandy." (P. 13.) The reference to the Bible here is inappropriate and unmeaning, unless we are to understand that he substantially agrees with the Unitarians of the modern school, not only in their opinion of formulas, but in then- opinion also of the Word of God. It is true that the author does not intend to soothe either of these classes of Unitarians with idle compli- ment. He is anxious to raise them to a higher platform of religious attainment than they now occupy. Placing his foot on what he has in common with them, he would bring them on, and bring them up, to have something better in common with him. To the first class he says — Work out your own idea of the character of God, — your own belief that God is love, — and you will find that it forces you to admit that God has done and is doing more for mankind than you at present seem to think. To the second he says, — Granted that human WHAT IS SIN ? 75 formulas and divine books are but shells and husks ; — only treat them fairly as such ; and they may yield to you better food and better kernels than you have yet got out of them. In particular, you will find in and under them, not a certain religious sentiment — a tend- ency, that is, a bias or aspiration of soul towards some- thing," but " a Person," " the Deliverer and Head of mankind." This is true. But it is not the less true, on the other hand, that the probable success, and indeed the very significancy and common sense, of this bene- volent attempt, turn upon its being an admitted fact — on his part, — that he liolds with Unitarians of the old school on the subject of the divine character, and with Unitarians of the new school on the subject of the Divine Word. ESSAY II.— ON SIN. What is Sin ? — Clergymen," it seems, are apt " to take it for granted that their congi-egations understand what they mean when they speak of Sin." And they are advised to " attend more to the doubts and objec- tions of others," which " might assist in clearing and deepening their own thoughts." (P. 18.) What these others have to say is in substance this : — We know of crimes, or overt acts, to be " checked by direct penalties." We know of habits, or tendencies, 76 THEOLOGICAL ANSWER., leading to these crimes, to be " extirpated by some moral influences." For the first, we have our legisla- tion ; for the second, our ethics. But you theologians bring in a tertium quid^ — a third notion, — which we can refer to neither head. You speak of Sin. And you say it is committed against God. You thus represent God as wanting something for his own use and honour, — craving services and sacrifices as due to him." Is not doing justice and mercy to the fellow-creatures among whom he has placed us, the thing which he re- quires and which pleases him? If not, where would you stop?" The worst heathen notions of propitiation rush in ; and " the name or word ' Christianity' has no charm to keep them off." " But if once we admit good feeling and good doing towards our neighbour to be the essence and fulfilment of God's commandments, why are not the ethical and legal conceptions of evil sufficient ? What room is there for any other?" (Pp. 18, 19.) To all this, the author represents the ordinary theo- logical answer to be to the following effect (p. 20) ; first^ that " the commandments speak of a duty towards God as well as a duty towards our neighbour ; " secondly ^ that " there is no reason why he from whom we receive all things, should not demand something in return, and that a priori we could not the least tell whether he would or not ;" tliirdly^ that " if he did, it would be reasonable to expect that he would enforce very heavy punishments upon our failui-e, especially if it might have been avoided; " SUM OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 77 fourthly, that " those punishments may Ibe infinite, — at all events that we can have no reason to allege why they should not be ;" and fftMy, that " if we have any authority for supposing they will be so, we ought to do anything rather than incur so tremendous a risk." Such is the view which he evidently means to attri- bute to the theologians from whom he separates himself. If he does not intend it to be taken as his version of the current Evangelical doctrine regarding Sin, — if it is a mere caricatm-e of some extreme opinion, — it is out of place, as well as out of taste. He plainly wishes it to be received as the account which theologians give of the "third notion," which the objectors complain of as being " thrust upon them," and as being " one which they can refer to the head neither of legislation nor of ethics." It is sm-ely unnecessary to point out the unfairness of such a representation. Has the author read the sum- mary of the Ten Commandments given by our Lord himself? Who are they by whom " we have been told, perhaps," that for anything we know God may be an hard master, and that upon a calculation of risks and chances, it may upon the whole be safest to act towards him as if he were ? By whom is it maintained that our duty to God is founded on his gifts to us, and is a sort of mercenary return or requital which he exacts for these gifts? To whom does the author venture to impute the offensive, if not blasphemous, opinion, that God resents our withholding of the service which he 78 DUTY TO GOD — ITS NATURE AND OBLIGATION. claims, as a personal injury to himself, or enforces the rendering of that service bj heavy, — possibly infinite, — punishments, like a tyrant, merely for his own sake, and because the service is his right ? He can scarcely fail to know that, according to the concurrent doctrine of the theologians on whom he is reflecting, the duty which God requires of man is made to rest on a far higher ground, and is itself of a far higher nature, than he has indicated. ' My so7i, give me thy keart^ is the claim which God asserts. Obedience firom the heart is due to him simply as our ]\Iaker, our Ruler, our Lord. And the necessity of punishment, strictly so called, in case of disobedience, arises not out of such considerations as are put into the mouth of the parties to whom the author is opposed, but out of the essential character of God, as holy, just, and true, and the essential natm'e of that moral government which, as the righteous Lawgiver and Judge, he exercises over his reasonable and responsible creatures. The author would not probably admit these ■views, even as thus stated, to be coiTCct. But it is, at any rate, thus that they are to be correctly stated ; and when thus correctly stated, it will be found that they cannot be quite so easily disposed of as the extrava- gance which he adroitly substitutes in their place. To return, however, to his own line of thought. — Of course, " there is a horror and heart-shrinking from the doctrine that we are to serve God because we are ignorant of his nature and character " — as also " from ETHICAL AND LEGAL DOCTRINES. 79 the doctrine that we are to serve him because, upon a fair calculation, it appears likely that this course will answer better than the opposite course, or that tliat will involve us in ruin." Certainly the man is right who says, " I cannot be religious on these terms,- — it is my religion to repudiate them." (P. 20.) Such a man, the author seems to think, " may not prize tlie command- ments very highly." Perhaps he means that in the judgment of the theologians whom he is opposing, such a man would be set down as one who did not prize the commandments very highly. He cannot intend seriously to assert that a man does not prize highly both the law and the gospel when "he feels that by duty to God Moses meant something wholly and generically different from this " — from service upon the terms which he him- self repudiates : and when he " is sure that Christ did not come into the world to tell men that they cannot know anything of their Father in heaven; or that he is to be served for hire, or through dread of what he will do to them." (P. 21.) But now, this monstrum horrendum of the theologians being disposed of, what is our friend, with his " direct penalties for checking crimes," and his "moral influences for extirpating habits," to do '? He is to " keep his ethical or his legal doctrine, if he really has some grasp of it, not exchange it for any which has a greater show and savour of divinity." But he is "conjured not to bar his soul against the entrance of another conviction, 80 CONVICTION OF SIN. if it should come at any time with a very mighty power, because he is afi-aid that he is receiving some old tenet of theology which he has dreaded and hated." (P. 21.) Tlie passage in which the entrance of tliis other con- viction into the soul is described is one of rare elo- quence,— the eloquence of deep and true feeling. I am first confronted, face to face, with my own " dark self" Here am I, doing a wrong act, thinking a wrong thought ; the wrong act, — the wrong thought is mine ; " evil lies not in some accidents, but in me." There " comes a sense of Eternity, dark, unfathomable, hope- less." ^' That Eternity stands face to face with me ; it looks like anything but a picture ; it presents itself to me as the hardest driest reality. There are no images of tortm-e and death. What matter tchere, if I he still the same ? — this question will be the torture ; all death lies in that." " When once a man arrives at this con- viction," the author goes on to say, " he is no more in the circle of outward acts, outward rules, outward punishments ; he is no more in the circle of tendencies, inclinations, habits, and the discipline which is appro- priate to them. He has come unawares into a more inward circle, — a very close, narrow, dismal one, in which he cannot rest, out of which he must emerge." This he can do only " when he begins to say, ' I have sinned against some Being, — not against society merely, not against my own nature merely, but against another to whom I was bound.' And the emancipation will not GUILT, ENMITY. 81 be complete till lie is able to say, — giving the words their full and natural meaning, ' Father, I have sinned against thee.' " (Pp. 22, 23.) Here then are two parties. Here am I myself, doing wrong, thinking wrong. Here am I, not merely liable to evil as an accident, but having evil in me. Here am I, an evil thing, — an evil being, — with eternity around me. And here also is the Being against whom I have sinned, the Being to whom I was bound, the Being to whom I say, Father, This is death. This also is life. One shrinks from breaking in upon the stillness of so solemn an interview with any questions. But it is necessary, as before, to ask if this vivid representation of sin is intended to be inclusive, or exclusive, of the ideas of legislation and of ethics with which the Essay opens'? When in the view of eternity I meet, face to face, the Being, the Father, against whom I have sinned, — what is it that I am conscious of? Is it crime deserving punishment ? Is it habit, — a habit of thinking and feeling, needing to be somehow thoroughly changed? If not, what is it ? In the presence of this Being, this Father, am I a criminal? am I a prodigal? Am I both ? — or either ? If not, what am I ? There is nothing in the author's account of conviction of sin which expressly denies that a sense of criminality, and a sense of estrangement or enmity, are parts or elements of that conviction. Manifestly, however, he means to transfer the question of what sin is, away F 82 LAW AND ETHICS IN OUR EELATION TO GOD. from the level ground of human legislation and human ethics, into some higher region of thought and feeling. And so far, he is right. Theology, or the knowledge of God, unquestionably opens a new sphere to the mind and heart of man. But is it not a sphere in which the radical and essential principles, both of legislation and of ethics, are as applicable and operative as in the lower sphere of man's walk among his fellows ? I discover Grod. He summons me to meet him. He summons me to meet him as a Father, — as my Father, — having a father's love to me. And I have sinned against him. Have I no feeling that I deserve punish- ment,— that I am guilty? Have I no impression of my having displeased and offended him? Have I no grief on account of my habit of suspicion, or of dread, or of dislike, towards him? I do not get rid of legisla- tion or of ethics when I come to own, under a sense of eternity, my relation to the Supreme. On the con- trary, I then first reach the heart both of legislation and of ethics. I find myself face to face Avith the everlasting God, — myself alone with him alone. I see him as a Father, entitled to all a father's honour, full of all a father's affection. In my apostasy from him, I recognise a crime, — the crime of crimes, — the crime of which all other crimes are but faint types. In my disaffection towards him, I feel a habit, — habit the most inveterate as well as the most inexcusable, — habit which a divine power and divine influences alone can extirpate. CRIME TO BE PUNISHED— HABIT TO BE RENEWED. 83 Even if it turn out, after all, that doing justice and mercy to my fellow-creatures " is the thing which he requires, — that " good feeling and good doing towards my neighbour is the essence and fulfilment of God's commandments," — still, I must now feel that I owe these duties not to men only, but to God. They may constitute the whole of what I owe to God. At all events, it is to God that I owe them. And when con- viction of sin seizes me, — and I meet God, as my Father, under it, — he may deal with me exclusively about my ill-will toward my brethren. But must he not deal with me about it as sin against himself? And can I feel that he does so, without feeling also, that it is a crime to be punished— that it is also a habit to be eradicated ? In every view, conviction of sin against God our Father, if it is really genuine and in the truest sense natural, must be the same in kind with conviction of sin against om* brethren of mankind. It must have in it, therefore, both a sense of ill-desert, and a sense of ill- affection. Whatever else it may be, surely sin is both crime and habit. To be convinced of sin, is to be convinced of crime deserving pimishmcnt, and of habit needing to be revolutionised. In the presence of my Father in heaven, with my "dark self" haunting me, and dark eternity facing me, I am deeply conscious of guilt lying upon me, and evil dwelling in me. And I am so all the rather, because in him whom I call 84 FEEE TRADE IN SriRITUAL QUACKERY. Father I recognise not only a being whose very name is Love, but a sovereign Lawgiver and righteous Judge. The inadequacy of the author's representation of sin will appear more clearly, perhaps, from a survey of the remaining portion of this Essay. In reply to a suggestion that the experience which he has been describing, — the " dark sense of conti'adiction " into which a man is brought when he is " confronted with himself" and made to " see a dark image of Self, behind him, before him, beneath him," — may after all be " the idiosyncracy of a few strange inexplicable tem- peraments,"— with which busy men in a busy world have little sympathy, — the author rightly pronoxmces it to be " that which besets us all." (Pp. 24, 25.) " That sense of a sin intricately, inseparably interwoven with the very fibres of their being, of a sin which they cannot get rid of without destroying themselves, does haunt those very men who you say take no account of it." And it lays them open to all deceits and impostures," — to influences of all sorts, religious, philosophical, lite- rary • for " the preachers of religion have not a monopoly of these influences at this time ; here, as elsewhere, there is unrestricted competition ; Mormonists, Animal Mag- netists, Rappists, take their turn with us, and often work their charms more effectually than we work om-s." From this free trade in quackery, the author would pro- tect us, by laying open the real nature and right remedy of the disorder to which it appeals. TWILIGHT— METHOBIST PREACHING. 85 " Men are dwelling in twilight ; " and therefore " all ghosts of the past, all phantoms of the future, walk by them." The question is, how they can come out of the twilight." And the answer apparently is this : — " The darkness which is blended with the light must, in some way, be shewn to be in deadly contrast with it, — the opposites must be seen one against the other." (P. 26). This is illustrated by a reference to the success of the first Methodist movement. " Think of any sermon of a Methodist preacher which roused the heart of a Kings- wood collier, or of a dry, hard, formal man, or of a con- tented, self-righteous boaster of his religion, in the last century. You will say the orator talked of an infinite punishment which God might inflict on them if they continued disobedient. He may have talked of that, but he would have talked till doomsday if he had not spoken another language too, which interpreted this, and into which the conscience rapidly translated it." What the orator really talked of was — the wrath of God revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and un- righteousness of men, and the mercy of God also revealed from heaven in the gospel of his grace. He told collier, formalist, self-righteous boaster,- — all alike, — that they were guilty and needed pardon, — that they were corrupt and needed renovation, — that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, — to give liimself a ransom for them. He exhorted them to flee from the wrath to come, and lay hold on eternal life. But take the author's 86 TWILIGHT DISPELLED. representation of the orator's talk, — that which he puts into the mouth of those with whom he is reasoning. What the preacher might say of future punishment is interpreted by " another language," into which the conscience rapidly translated it." And what is that other lang-uage ? " He spoke of an infinite Sin : he spoke of an infinite Love ; he spoke of that which was true then, whatever might become true hereafter. He said, ' Thou art in a wrong state : hell is about thee. God would bring thee into a right state ; he would save thee out of that hell.' The man believed the words ; something within him told him they were true, and that for the first time he had heard truth, seen truth, been himself true." There may have been "vanities and confusions afterwards, coming to him fi-om his own dreams or the crudities of his teachers." But " this was not a delusion — could not be. He had escaped fi'om the twilight : he had seen the opposite forms of light and darkness no longer miserably confused together. Good was all good ; evil was all evil : there was war in hea- ven and earth between them ; in him, even in him, where the battle had been fiercest, the odds against good greatest, good had gotten the victory. He had a right to believe that the morning stars were singing together at the news of it ; otherwise, why was there such music in his, the Kingswood collier's, heart ? " (Pp. 26, 27.) Even at the risk of marring such harmony of the spheres — such melody in the heart, — the view of the SEPARATION OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 87 gospel here given must be cliaracterised as strange and novel ; especially strange and novel to be propounded by one professing adherence to primitive Christianity and admiration of early Methodism. If it were neces- sary to pronounce a full and final judgment upon it at this stage of the inquiry, a rigid examination, first of its meaning, and secondly of its merits, would be indis- pensable. For that end, the really fine poetry into which the author makes the conscience of the Kings- wood collier rapidly translate the preaching of his orator, must be re-translated, more slowly, into plain prose. In particular, let the idea of sin, — the sin of man, — which is implied in it, be specially noticed. The blending of . light and darkness, — the confounding together of good and evil, — is our sin : the separation of them is our sal- vation. Or rather, perhaps, ihe mixture and confusion of light and darkness — of good and evil, — is the " wrong state " in which we are ; and the extrication of the light from the darkness, — the good from the evil, — with the accompanying assurance that even where the odds against good were the greatest, good has gotten the victory, — this is the " right state into which God would bring us." Our " wrong state " is twilight, — the blend- ing of light and darkness. It is suspense between good and evil ; — it is good and evil held, as it were, in solu- tion. To rectify our state, — to constitute the right State into which God would bring us, — what is needed is an illumination which will make darkness flee before 88 DISCOVERY OF DAKKNESS — OF EVIL. the light ; — a precipitate which will cause the evil and the good to part company and take ojDposite forms, as the solution in which they were combined is dissolved, and its antagonist elements come out from one another, wide as the poles asunder. Now it is unquestionably true that this blending of light and darkness, — this confounding of good and evil, — is one of the most marked and characteristic features of cm* " wrong state." Isaiah seems to indicate this when he says : — ' Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil ; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness ; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.' It is trae, also, that if we are to be " brought into a right state," an indispensable step, if not the first step, is our being made to see and discern, to apprehend and feel, the difference between light and darkness, — between good and evil. In the chaos of my moral dis- order and disorganisation ; the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters — the waves and billows of God which have gone over me ; God says, ' Let there be light.' He sees the light, that it is good. He divides the light from the darkness, — the good light from the evil darkness. ' I consent unto the law that it is good ; ' ' I delight in the law of God after the inward man ; ' — here is the light, which is good. And it makes the dark- ness visible — palpable; — 'evil is present with me;' ' the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin.' The light, which is good, discovers and renders more DELIVEEANCE FROM EVIL. 89 intense and thick the darkness, which is evil. But this searching, discriminating process, though essential to my emancipation, is not itself my emancipation. My ap- prehension of the light, — the good, — opens up to me a new sight, and imparts to me a new sense, of the dark- ness,— the evil. It is twilight no longer. Light and darkness are not now blended. Good and evil are not now confounded. Is this enough? Am I delivered? Am I emancipate and free ? Far from it. The dark- ness, in contrast with the light, is only the more thickened into darkness which can be felt. The evil, rejected — condemned — by the good, is more and more to me a body of death, from which, ' who shall deliver me ? ' I must sound the depth of the darkness which the light exposes : I must know the secret power of the evil which the good condemns. I find that secret power m the fact that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing, that sin dwelleth in me ; in the fact also that I am guilty, that I lie under the sentence which guilt righteously deserves. Nor is there any liberty for me until I am enabled to perceive how ^ there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.' This was the preaching of the Methodists from the first. It is so still. Of course it is a testimony to all alike, whether openly wicked, or hard and dry formalists, not only that they may be punished hereafter, but that they are now in a wrong state. It is a testimony also 90 CONDITION OF MAN AS A SINNER. that God would bring them into a right state. It severs, moreover, light and darkness, — good and evil, — thoroughly and for ever. But it answers, more cate- gorically than the author is inclined to answer, the question, — wherein does the darkness, — wherein does the evil, — consist? It specifies guilt and enmity, — guilt before God, enmity against God, — as the elements of this darkness, this evil. It proclaims loudly that no mere discovery of the darkness as distinct from the light, — of the evil as separated from the good, — will meet the case ; such discovery can only aggravate the helpless and hopeless misery of the man in whom, and over whom, the darkness — the evil — reigns. The preaching in question announces as the source of light — of good — a definite procedure on the part of God, for expiating the guilt and overcoming the enmity. And through that procedure it proclaims that even in him in whom the odds against the good are the greatest, the good may get the victory. It is very important to observe thus early in the ex- amination of these Essays, the author's view of the condition of man, as a sinner. He is in a wrong state, because he does not rightly know the state in which, if he would but see it, he actually is, and consequently is not true to himself, or to it. What is wrong about him is righted, not by any act or work of God altering his con- dition, but by his being made to see what he really is. He is brought into a right state by illumination merely, not by redemption and regeneration, in the plain popular ILLUMINATION, 91 and tlieological meaning of these terms. That upon any view of man's case illumination is necessaiy, all of course must admit. There must be a clearing up of the dim mist and haze which has settled thick upon our range of spiritual vision : the twilight must be chased away before the rising of the Sun of righteousness ; and the eye must be purged, and the senses exercised, to discern both good and evil. But the question is, — What does this illumination disclose ? What discovery does it make to me of my position and standing as a subject of the moral government of God, — of my character or habit of mind as an intelligent creature of God, bound to love, honour, and obey him with all my heart ? According to the author, the extrication of the good out of its confusion with the evil, is not only a preliminary to the good in me getting the victory, through my acquiescence in God's way of dealing with the evil ; it is in itself alone the cause of the victory ; or rather it is the manifestation of the victory as already got. In the dark twilight, I fight as one that beateth the air, in a mingled crowd of fair friends and ugly foes, whose forms and features I cannot discriminate, and in whose promiscuous riot I am apt to be overcome. But the day dawns ; the shadows flee away : and lo ! I find myself, — the good in me, — conqueror in the strife and master of the field. Evidently the author's view is inconsistent with the idea of there being any radical and essential disorder or de- rangement in man's relation to God, and in the state of 92 EIGHTEOUSNESS, PARDON, RENEWAL. his affections towards God, such as needs to be not merely discovered, but remedied and rectified. And therefore it is not siu'prising that he finds no room in his theology, for any mention of the Fall, or any esti- mate of its consequences. The early triumphs of Methodist preaching were notoriously based upon appeals to the conscience. The " orator" spoke to men as criminals; guilty, condemned, depraved. Their own hearts confessed the charge to be true. The Holy Spirit convinced them. They were told that God in love had given his Son to die in their stead, and was giving his Spirit to make them new creatm-es in his Son. They believed that there was a righteous pardon for their deep guilt, and a complete renewal for their impm^e and imholy natm'e, in Christ presented to them in the gospel. And this faith was their victory. So the first Methodists succeeded. And if their descendants, and other modern preachers, have failed in comparison with them, — whatever else may be the cause, — it cannot be their having dwelt too much or too articulately on the guilt which lies on men, and the moral corruption which characterises them, as a race of intelligent creatures, fallen and depraved. But the author thinks he can explain this comparative failui'e on om- part, in effecting the "processes" which were common in the first days of Methodism. We " fancy," it seems, " that the mere machinery, whether earthly or divine, which they put in motion, was the MACHINERY — : EARTHLY OR DIVINE. 93 cause of them." " We do not tliorouglily understand or heartily believe that there is that war of Life and Death, of Good and Evil, now in every man's heart, as there was of old. Therefore we do not speak straightly and directly to both. We suppose men are to be shewn by arguments that they have sinned, and that God has a right to punish them. We do not say to them, You are under a law of love ; you know you are, and you are fighting with it.' " (P. 27.) Now, in the first place, what is this " mere machinery, whether earthly or divine?" The earthly machinery of Methodist arrangements and customs, one can under- stand. But what is the divine machinery alluded to ? Is it the divine plan for expiating guilt by the substitu- tion of the Eternal Son in the room of the guilty, — and for renewing the natm-e by the creative energy of the Holy Spirit ? Again, secondly, who refuses to recognise the inward struggle in every man's heart, and to address as directly as he can the conscience and the will — the principal parties in the strife ? But chiefly, in the third place, what do I really mean when I say to my fellow- men, as the author would have me to say, " You are under a law of love : you know you are, and you are fighting with it?" You are under a law of love. The moral law, — the law of the ten commandments, — the law whose sanction is a curse, or sentence of condemna- tion, upon all transgressors of it, — is a law of love. The Gospel, — the word of reconciliation, — the message of 94 LAAV — THE LAW OF LOVE. mercy, — is a law of love. You are under both ; under the one law, to be for ever lost ; under the other law, if you will but believe, to be saved. But neither of these is the law of love which the author has in his view. His law of love is like the law of gravitation ; — it is like one of the laws of extension in space, or proportion in numbers. It is that absolute love which is the very nature, and the whole nature, of God, — working itself out, — unfolding and developing itself along the stream of time. You are under it, as you are under the law that regulates the fall of a loose wall or a slanting tower. You are fighting with it, as you might fight with that other law, if you were to linger within reach of the impending ruin. But in either case, you have only to recognise the law, — the order of natm'e; — the law or order of material natm-e in the one case, the law or order of the divine nature in the other case ; — and imme- diately you are in a safe position, or in a safe direction. In a subsequent Essay the author refers, with a qualified commendation, to Combe's treatise on The Constitution of Man. The object of that treatise is to resolve all man's obligation and responsibility into what may be held to be implied in his subjection to physical laws. The author does not approve of that theory ; he thinks that man has elements in his composition which reach beyond mere physical laws. Man is under higher laws ; he is under a law of love. But after all, are not these laws of the same kind ? They are facts connected VIOLATION OF LAW. 95 with actual substances or subsistences near us, touching us, affecting us for weal or woe ; — facts which it concerns us to know and turn to account. Gravitation is thus a fact or law in the natui"e of matter ; love is a fact or law in the nature of God, To be fighting with either of these facts or laws, is to be mad and to be miserable. To be falling in with what is fact and law, is always wise and safe. Owning the fact or law of gTavitation in the nature of matter, I neither stumble on tlie rough road nor am crushed under toppling towers. Owning the fact or law of love in the natm-e of God, I cease to be a selfish, and become a loving, being. They are both of them laws, in the same sense ; and the violation of either of them is, in the same sense as the violation of the other, wrong. There may be a difference of degree ; the wrong of the one violation may be greater than that of the other ; to fight with the law of love in the nature of God may be stigmatised as sin ; to figlit with the law of gravitation in the nature of matter may be more mildly characterised as imprudence. Still it does not appear that, on the author's shewing, there is more room for legislative and moral government, properly so called, in our relation to God, than in our connexion with matter. Responsibility, guilt, condemnation, judgment, are as unmeaning terms in his theology as in the philosophy of Combe, When the philosophy of Combe on the subject of physical law satisfies the common sense of mankind, the theology of the author on the subject 96 SECULAR AXD SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE. of sin may possibly approve itself to tlieir con- science. In closing tliis Essay, the author returns apparently to the ideas of legislation and ethics with which he set out. " Benevolent men wish that the poor should know more of legislation and ethics and economy." By all means the author would have it so. Better " what is sincerely communicated to them of Economics or Physics " than insincere artificial theological teaching." At the same time, you must " point men to the deeper springs of humanity, from which both ethics and laws and economics must be fed, if they are to have any freshness or life." Otherwise, even with " Physical Science" along with them, they " may themselves con- tribute to the foundation of superstitions, if the man is not first called into life to receive them and to connect them with himself." We must " call forth the heart and conscience of men, so that being first able to see their Father in heaven truly, and themselves in their true re- lation to him, they may afterwards investigate the con- ditions under which they themselves, his children, exist, and the laws which govern all his works." (Pp. 27-29.) Here again the author's view comes out, — that men do not need to be brought into a new relation to God, but only to see in what relation they already actually are to him. Almost all that he says, however, on the subject of what is often called secular knowledge, is valuable and season- able. And so also, apparently, are the remarks which PREACHING ABOUT THE SOUL. 97 follow as to the increasing importance, in modem times, of social questions and social aspects of duty : — " Men are evidently more alive now to their social than to their individual wants ; they are therefore more awake to the evils which affect society, than to those which affect their own souls." (P. 29.) But he adds an observation not very intelligible : To him who merely, or mainly, preaches about the soul, this is a most discouraging circumstance." Why ? Is there anything anti-social in our endeavouring to enforce our Lord's question, ' What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul ? ' Or is the author's remark merely one of his pleasant off-hand hits against evange- lical preaching, not to be considered too curiously ? To preach about the soul is, perhaps, according to his idea of it, to tell a man that he is himself in a position in- volving both criminality and ruin, and that his first and most urgent concern is to be himself saved. This, one would think, was what Peter did when ' with many words he testified and exhorted, saying. Save yourselves from this untoward generation.' It is probable that he would say the same thing were he preaching now ; nor in thus preaching would he be greatly discouraged by the cir- cumstance that men in these days are so much alive and awake to the evils which affect society. Doubtless, he would recognise that circumstance, as the author does ; he would take advantage of it and turn it to the best ac- 98 EVANGELICAL EXCLUSIVENESS. count ; although he might not deal with it precisely as the author does. — How does the author deal with it ? " The sense of sin " is still a profound " sense of soli- tude." But it may " come to a man " most fully, " in all its painfulness and agony " when he recollects " how he has made himself alone, by not confessing that he was a brother, a son, a citizen." I believe," the author adds, " the conviction of that Sin may be brought home more mightily to our generation than it has been to any foiTTier one ; and that a time will come, when every family and every man will mourn apart, under a sense of the strife and divisions of the body politic which he has contributed to create and to perpetuate." The priest and the prophet will confess that they have been greater rebels against the law of love than the publican and the harlot, because they were sent into the world to testify of a Love for all, and a Kingdom for all, and they have been witnesses for separation, for exclusion, for themselves." (Pp. 29, 30.) Those " who merely, or mainly, preach about the soul," are evidently the parties here denounced. It would be vain to tell the author that they do testify of a love for all, and a kingdom for all ; for they say, ' God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have everlasting life ; ' and they warn hypocrites and unbelievers, as the Lord did, that ' the publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before them.' They presume to think that they FREE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL. 99 are thus witnesses, not for exclusion, but against it ; and that the message which they have to deliver is fitted, as it is intended, fii-st to reconcile men to God, and then to reconcile them to one another. Of course this does not satisfy the author. According to him, any doctrine which implies that men are called to come into a new state, — a new relation to God ; — and that those who do so come are on a different footing with God from that on which those who refuse to come are ; — however wide, unrestrict- ed, unreserved, universal and free, the call may be ; — is a doctrine of separation, — of selfishness. There will be other occasions for bringing this out more fully. For the present, it is more to the purpose to remark, that conviction of sin against the second great commandment of the law, which enjoins equal love of our neighbom*, — as well as conviction of sin against the first, which enjoins supreme love to God, — is really nothing more than our being made to see and feel that we have been going against a general law of being, — the law of love. There is still no acknowledgment whatever of guilt, criminality, corruption, — in connexion with rebellion against that law, — essentially different from what may be said to belong to rebellion against any other law of nature. There is room, indeed, for much difference in the measure of regret, sorrow, shame, compunction, with which I reflect upon my rebellion against different natu- ral laws ; according to their different degrees of import- ance in themselves ; or with reference to the parties with 100 NATURAL LAWS. whom they connect me. In this view, my grief for my rebellion against the law of love, which should bind me to my brethren, to my Father, will be far more poignant and penitential than my grief for having violated any lower and narrower law of sensient or intelligent being. But that is all. Law, in its truest and highest sense, as the exponent and the instrument of authoritative moral gov- ernment, is not admitted into the author's theory. Sin is not, with reference to that sense of it, the transgres- sion of the law. Unitarians of both schools are appealed to at the close of the Essay. Those " of the older school knew some- thing of transgression ; almost nothing of Sin. But the transgression was of a rule rather than of a law ; breaches of social etiquette and propriety, at most uncomely and unkind habits, seemed to compose all the evils they took account of, which did not appear in the shape of crimes." (P. 32.) Why does the author contrast "rule" and "law," — "the transgression of a rule" and "the transgression of a law?" A rule implies a ruler ; and the ti'ansgression of a rule is an offence with which the ruler may and must deal as one having authority; either judicially condemning and pronouncing sentence, or in the exercise of mercy remitting the sentence. The transgression of a law, as the author seems to accept the term, may entail sad consequences upon the transgressor; and expose him, if it be the law of love, to the wrath of Him who is love. LAWS — RULE — RULER — JUDGMENT. 101 This, however, may be altogether apart from any judicial reckoning with him, — any trial or condem- nation. Admit that the law of love is administered by God as a ruler, in precisely the same sense in which the law of the land is administered by its governors and judges ; and the author's system of divinity must be reconstructed from tlie beginning. The low tone and standard of the old-school Uni- tarian theology, in its estimate of duty and of sin, — as well as in its idea that relaxation of duty and allowance for sin constitute redemption, — cannot satisfy the author's tastes and tendencies. The old " sleepy talk " to " sleepy congregations," about " a God who was willing to forgive if men repented," — a sort of talk for which he takes just blame to the orthodox as well as the Unitarians, — will not now sufBce. " Try what repentance can. But what can it, if one cannot repent ? " There must be a revelation, or movement, on the part of God, — or both, — causing the repentance required. Nor is the author content to fall in with the vague and impersonal recognition of spiritual power, which Unitarians of the new school own. He asks the old school to carry out their acknowledged idea of God as a father; and the new school to confess, not influences merely, but a person. We have an enemy who tries to deprive us even of necessaries." (P. 32.) The necessaries are the essential elements of a right state and standing with God, as op- posed to the " religion, — apparently a graceful and refined 102 RELIGION NOT A LUXURY. one," — which might be aluxuiy if we could afford it." Upon this issue with the younger Unitarians the author is prepared to do battle. An enemy is trying to deprive us of necessaries ; and, unless you can teach us how to procui-e them in spite of him, I and my fellow-fighters must for the present let your religion alone." (P. 32.) Thus this Essay on Sin closes ; ushering in the Es- say on the Evil Spirit. The doctrine of the personality and power of the Evil Spirit is to explain the condition in which man is, as needing a Redeemer, and ready to welcome, in that character, a righteous Lord of his being — a Son of God. CHAPTEE II. THE GROUNDS OR ORIGINAL ELEMENTS OP THEOLOGY AS A REMEDIAL SYSTEM.— ESSAYS III. IV. ESSAY III.— ON THE EVIL SPIRIT. The third and fourtli Essays may be conveniently con- sidered in connexion with one another. They corre- spond and fit into one another. Two powers or persons are contending for the possession of man, — the Evil Spirit, — the living Redeemer. Both are near him, the one to be resisted — the other to be owned. Hence two elements of hope arise out of the twilight as it parts into darkness and light. There is a Prince of darkness whom I may defy ; because he is not my righteous Lord, but a usurping tyrant. There is an Angel of light, a Sun of righteousness, a living Redeemer, whom I may find closer to me than the Evil Spirit, — in me, — nigh me, — at my heart. Thus, upon a double view of it, — a view of it on both sides, — my case, as a sinner, is seen to admit of a remedy. The subject of the existence and agency of the Evil Spirit is treated of in connexion with the subject of 104 THE FALL OF MAN OMITTED. human depravity. It is not, however, brought in to account for that depravity historically, through any such transaction as the temptation of man in innocence and the ruin in which his compliance involved him. The Fall is not recognised at all in this Essay. The author takes man as he finds him, and contemplates his present relation to the Evil Spirit. It might seem only reasonable to inquire, in this discussion, whether there is any difference between what was man's position with reference to the Evil Spirit before the Fall, and what is his position now: — and if so, what the ditference is? The author avoids that inquiry. He simply views man as he is. Man sins : he violates the law of love ; of that love which is the very natiu-e of God. Is there any explanation to be given of this fact ? — any explana- tion which, without in the least justifying or making light of it, may nevertheless, by discovering an enemy who has done this, awaken a wholesome feeling of indignant resistance? Such is the practical use which the author would make of the doctrine concerning the Evil Spirit, as developed and applied in this Essay. That this is a legitimate use to make of that doctrine, and one fruitful of not a little both of encouragement and of reproof, — is readily admitted, and may be more fully illustrated as the examination of the Essay pro- ceeds. The more immediate point for consideration, however, is whether the doctrine, according to the author's view of it, really solves and satisfies the THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 105 experience witli regard to sin on which he brings it to bear ? It is to that point chiefly that attention must now be directed. The connexion in which the author introduces the doctrinej and the use which he means to make of it, may partly account for what otherwise seems somewhat strange; — the apparent confusion of two very distinct topics which may be traced throughout the Essay. In the opening paragi-aph itself, there is a fallacy or ambiguity, — a sort of play upon words, — which might be regarded in other circumstances as of little conse- quence. But as affecting the credit due to the author as a theological writer, and as throwing light upon many of his subsequent statements, it deserves at least a passing notice. The " origin of Evil," is the question raised in the first sentence. It is an old controversy, — a controversy of centuries. And as such, being still as unsettled as ever, it is apt to be rather unceremoniously shelved. But this cannot be ; the author cannot allow it ; he must of necessity reopen it. He must do so, because practically all mankind are debating it, if not among themselves, at least each within his own breast. " We must consider the origin of evil, whether we like it or not." (Pp. 33, 34.) Now this is either not very intelligent, or it is hardly fair. The author can scarcely be altogether ignorant that, under the phrase, " the origin of evil," he is con- 106 TWO QUESTIONS CONFOUNDED. founding two very different questions. And it is not pleasant to find him adroitly substituting the one for the other ; especially when the account to which he turns the substitution comes to be observed. The two questions are easily distinguished. The one refers to the entrance of evil into the universe ; the other, to the rise and progress of evil in the individual. The one may be said to be metaphysical ; the other, psycho- logical. The difficulty in the one case is to explain how, under a government of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, evil has intruded itself into the creation of God. The difficulty in the other case is to account for the admitted prevalence of evil over all the race of man, and in every individual of that race, by refei*ring this universal effect to a common cause. The author raises the first question, and without warning slides into the second. The convenience of this procedm-e becomes apparent before the Essay is far advanced. I ana told that I cannot evade the inquiry as to the origin of evil. I follow the author into that inquiry. I find that under that name, he discusses quite another subject. It is not how evil came to be ; but how I come to be evil. The subject, however, is full of interest. I wish to know what is the reason why I am the evil being that I am. And the reason, it seems, is that there is another evil being, prior to me, and independent of me, to whom somehow I am subject. This reason is commended as ORIUIN OF EVIL — THEORY OF CIRCUMSTANCES. 107 ..more satisfactory than the doctrine of my having in- herited a depraved nature. And it is thus that the problem of the origin of evil is solved. With all deference, it may be submitted that the theory of native depravity, and the theory of universal subjection to a depraved power, are nearly equally valu- able for settling the real question about the origin of evil. In plain terms, neither the one nor the other is of any value whatever. They refer, both of them, to a far lower question ; which, however, far more nearly touches human experience and the human heart, and into which, accordingly, the author enters very fiilly. It being admitted, then, that evil is universal among men ; — that every individual man is evil ; — to what are we to trace this common feature of the race ? 1. It cannot be ascribed to the external world in which men live. " The conclusion, that all evil has its origin in circumstances ; that if you make them good, you make men good," — cannot be maintained. Peculiar temperament, — birth and breeding, — associations at home and abroad, — as well as various other " items " and con- tingencies,— do indeed make up "an enormous calcula- tion," if we would estimate the influences by which character is formed. But the author passes all of them in review before him, and concludes that evil is not thus to be accounted for. It is not by any means that he underrates these influences or is insensible to their power. On the contrary, he gives a just and eloquent sketch of 108 INFLUENCE OF CIRCUMSTANCES. the different positions in which men are placed, and shews how, almost inevitably, it is to a large extent by the peculiarities of these different positions that men are made what they are. He allows that it is very natural for a man to plead these peculiarities of his position in his own defence when he is charged with being wrong, or doing wrong. " Has he not a right to do so ? Can he not prove his case ? " And if " we reason in this way about ourselves, can we refuse the advantage of the same plea to our fellows ? " Moreover, ''if we are aroused to exertion respecting ourselves or our brethren, it appears as if we directly applied this doctrine to prac- tice." We seek for ourselves or for our brethren a change of position, as all but indispensable to a change of conduct. " There are forms of government and forms of belief which we wish to see destroyed, because we suppose individual morality can scarcely exist under their shadow." Still, granting that all this and more may be said for the opinion of those who would make men good by making the circumstances around them good, the author cannot go along with them so far as they would carry him. (Pp. 35-37.) 2. Let another method, therefore, be tried. If cir- cumstances make so many evil impressions, there must, many think, be a susceptibility of evil impressions in man. " They cannot persuade themselves that human creatures would receive so many evil impressions from the surrounding world, if there was not in them some OEIGIN OF EVIL — THEORY OF CORRUPTION. 109 great capacity for such impressions." " The bad cir- cumstances" cannot " produce the susceptibility to which they appeal, however they may increase it. How, they ask, did the circumstances become bad?" Are the elements good, but ill-combined ? What, or who put them out of order ? Is there " some one of them that was bad and distm-bed the rest? That one must have become so, independently of its circumstances. There must be some evil, which was not made so by the acci- dents which invested it." And if so, may it not be "reasonable" to say "that this evil belongs to the very nature of man, that it is a corruption of blood?" " Confess that the infection you speak of is in us all, confess that we are members of a depraved race, and you can explain all the phenomena you take notice of; on any other hypothesis they are incomprehensible." (Pp. 37, 38.) This is evidently meant to be a correct representation of the common theological doctrine respecting man as a fallen being. The correctness of it may be admitted, so far as it goes. It omits, indeed, all recognition of the element of guilt and condemnation, as demanding judicial treatment on the part of a righteous Euler. And it consequently overlooks the explanation of existing phe- nomena which is furnished by the doctrine, that men are living under a dispensation in which judgment is postponed, with a view to definite proposals of mercy. But such as it is, let it in the meanwhile be accepted. 110 CORRUPTION AND ITS CURE. " This view of the origin of evil is pregnant," the author says, with practical consequences ; it never can become a mere theory." May the corruption be cured ? Is " the cure to come by the destruction of the substance in which the corruption dwells ? Or may it be reformed ? In either case," the inquiry must be urged, what is the seat of the malady? " and " how is the amputation to be effected or the new blood poured in, and the man himself" still to "survive?" The world's history," the author adds, " is full of the most serious and terrible answers to these questions, — answers attesting how real and radical the difficulty was which suggested them." (P. 38.) What if one should answer, — first, that the corruption is in the whole " nature of man," — in his blood," according to the full sense of that phrase in common life ; secondly, that the cure is to be effected, neither by destruction of the substance nor by reformation of the conduct, — neither by amputation nor by the infusing of new blood, — but by a change equivalent to a new birth ; and thirdly, that the seat of the malady being in the entire man, the recovery must consequently consist in the entire man being renewed; — the will subjected to the authority and law of God, — the conscience quick- ened to the fear of God, — the heart reconciled to the love of God? Not thus is this author satisfied. He knows appa- rently of only two practical issues to which the view in ENTHUSIASM — MYSTICISM. Ill question leads. " The disease is in my body, this flesh, this accursed matter;" — "the flesh must be destroyed; till it is destroyed, I can never be better." " No, it is in the soul that you are con'upted and fallen. The soul must try to recover itself ; " either by " tliinking high thoughts of itself," as the enthusiast advises ; or, as " the mystic" coiuisels, by " sinking — desiring anni- hilation for itself — dying, that it may know what life is." Thus the alternative is put, according to the doc- trine that the infection of evil is in us all, — that we are members of a depraved race. The disease is in the body : — hence bodily exercise, — " the macerations and tortures of Indian devotees." Or the disease is in the mind : — hence self-deification, or self-annihilation. (Pp. 38, 39.) Such is really a fair summary of the author's state- ment on the subject of the theory which ascribes evil in man to native depravity. He is right on one point. If the theory cannot be better met, — if it must breed these monster superstitions, — they are superstitions which an age of unbelief may deride ; but they have in them a vitality and susceptibility of resurrection apt to be not a little troublesome to the deniers of the supernatural. " These conclusions " must affect not only " a few individuals," but " the whole society in which they are found." There may be occasional reactions, " when a general unbelief may take the place of an all-embracing credulity." But " the old notions are not dead ; they 112' ORIGIN OF EVIL — THE EVIL SPIRIT. cannot die." They are " about you," " within you." " If you can find no clue to them, no explanation of them, they will still darken your hearts and the face of the whole universe." Thus inevitable — thus ineradicable, — are these notions of a destruction of the flesh, — of an exal- tation or death of the soul, — if the explanation of the origin of evil which refers it to a universal depravity of nature be admitted. (Pp. 39, 40.) 3. In this emergency, accordingly, the author invokes the supernatural. It is a dignus vindice nodus. And the deiis ex macliind is the belief in Evil Spirits. That belief touches a theme far too solemn for even a passing smile. And the use which the author makes of it is fitted to awaken serious thought. Almost all that he says about it as a fact in history, is valuable. He speaks of it, with reference to the two former theories, as " an older, we may think quite an obselete, method of accounting for the existence of evil;" while at the same time he says truly that unless it can be rightly explained, it is as apt as either of the others to " darken men's hearts and the face of the Avhole universe;" or rather, indeed, a great deal more so. On this account, any rational and scriptural statement of the doctrine of Satanic agency, such as the author professes to give, cannot but be acceptable. He brings out well the universality of this belief in the heathen world, in which the powers of evil came to be deified, and treated as beings to be conciliated and SENSE OF BONDAGE. 113 appeased. His account of the views and feelings wliich devout Jews cherished is upon the whole a fair one. And he seizes with good eflfect the chief triumph of Christianity in this particular; — its having set con- spicuously in the view of all the great adversary and antagonist of God and of man, as entitled neither to worship nor to compromise, but on the contrary to be resisted with unrelenting force of will, and full assur- ance of victory. He concludes " that this belief is at least as potent as either of the others, often mixing with them and giving them a new character." And he assigns a reason ; " There is in men a sense of bondage to some power which they feel that they should resist and cannot. That feeling of the ' ought,' and the ' can- not,' is what forces, not upon scholars, but upon the poorest men, the question of the freedom of the will, and bids them seek some solution of it." In proof or illus- tration of this, the author refers to tlie eagerness with which men listened " when Covenanters and Puritans were preaching " aboixt such high and deep themes, and he earnestly exclaims : " Oh ! let us give over our miserable notion that poor men only want teaching about things on the surface, or will ever be satisfied with such teaching! They are groping about the roots of things, whether we know it or not. You must meet them in their underground search, and shew them the way into daylight, if you want true and brave citi- zens, not a community of quacks and dupes." True ; H 114 COVENANTERS AND PURITANS. most true ; and no man is more entitled to speak and write thus than this author, as all who are acquainted with his labours in the direction here indicated must cheerfully and cordially allow. He does well to recog- nise in men those cravings with which Covenanters and Pui'itans sought to deal, — and which it was once a point of fashion with polite divines to overlook and ignore. Possibly he might recognise them to better purpose if he could bring himself to apply to them a little more of the authoritative decision with which Covenanters and Puritans were accustomed to speak in behalf of God, — to vindicate his righteousness and enforce his sentence of condemnation against man's guilt. But at all events it is a sound knowledge of human nature which prompts the slightly sarcastic rebuke with which he concludes his sketch of the " three schemes of the universe " he has been considering ; — " You may talk against devilry as you like ; you will not get rid of it, unless you can tell human beings whence comes that sense of a tyranny over their very selves, which they express in a thousand forms of speech, which excites them to the greatest, often the most profitless, indignation against the ar- rangements of this world, which tempts them to people it and heaven also, with objects of terror and despair." (Pp. 41, 42.) The " three schemes of the universe " come again under review, in the reverse order from that in which TYRANNY OVER THE WILL. 115 ttey tave been enumerated. " Each has given bu-th to theories of divinity, as well as to a very complicated anthropology." " They show no symptoms of recon- ciliation ; yet they exist side by side." But in the light of " the statements which have embodied themselves in creeds, and are most open to the censures of modern re- finement,"— not " according to any new conception," — the author proposes to " ask what Christian theology says of them." (P. 42.) 1. " The acknowledgment of an Evil Spirit is charac- teristic of Christianity." Doubtless " the dread of such a spirit" existed before ; always, indeed, and everywhere. But " in the gospels first the idea of a spirit directly and absolutely opposed to the Father of Lights, to the God of absolute goodness and love, bursts full upon us. There first we are taught, that it is not merely some- thing in peculiarly evil men which is contending against the good and the true ; no, nor something in all men ; that God has an antagonist, and that all men, bad or good, have the same." " This antagonist presents him- self to us, altogether as a sphit, with no visible shape or clothing whatsoever." He is not a rival creator, or entitled to worship, but a mere destroyer " — " seeking continually to make us disbelieve in the Creator, to for- sake the order that we are in." This tempter speaks to me, to myself, to my will ; over that he has estab- lished his tyranny : there his chains must be broken j " although " all things in nature, with the soul and the 116 DEPRAVITY. body have partaken, and do partake, of tlie slavery to which the man himself has submitted." These "pro- positions " are left to " defend themselves by the light which they throw on the anticipations and difficulties of the human spirit, by the hint of deliverance which they offer it, by the horrible dreams which they scatter." (Pp. 43, 44, 45.) 2. Among these horrible dreams, the author specially notices " the horrible notion, which has haunted moral- ists, divines, and practical men, that pravity is the law of our being, and not the perpetual tendency to struggle against the law of om being." This notion the gospel " discards and anathematises." " As it confesses an evil spirit whose assaults are directed against the will in man, it forbids us ever to look upon any disease of our nature as the ultimate cause of transgression." (P. 45.) Evidently he means to represent " looking upon some disease of our nature as the ultimate cause of transgres- sion," and " the horrible notion that pravity is the law of om* being," as identical. And just as evidently he means thus to characterise, — perhaps to stigmatise, — the current theological doctrine on the subject of human depravity. It is difficult to see how " pravity " can be at once " a disease of our nature " and " tlie law of our being." It is equally difficult to understand what is meant by " the ultimate cause of transgression." Does the author hold that " the tyranny of the Evil Spirit over the will " is " the ultimate cause of transgression ? " SENSE OF SIN. 117 May not the will itself be "the ultimate cause of transgression;" and may not "the assaults of an evil spirit against it," as well as " the disease or pravity of our natirre," be conspiring or combining forces influenc- ing the determination of the will ? Certainly if the sense of sin depicted in the previous Essay is a reality, the feeling of the sinner is, — I am "the ultimate cause of the transgression," — I myself; — I alone, I willed it. No matter whether I willed it in subjection to an evil spirit, or in subjection to a " disease of my nature," or in subjection to both. I nevertheless, — I willed it. I caused it. And I willed it freely, of my own choice, under no compulsion or coercion of any sort. To explain my willing it, by telling me that my will is in bondage to an evil spirit, is to meet my case, as Eve sought to meet her own case, before a just and penitential sense of sin visited her; ' the serpent beguiled me and I did eat.' To explain my willing it, on the other hand, by telling me that my will is under bondage to a disease of my nature which is the ultimate cause of transgression, — may perhaps be equivalent to representing pravity as the law of my being. But to explain it, as Paul did, when he said, ' I find a law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin in my members,' — is consistent with both of the facts upon which these other explanations might be supposed to proceed ; and maintains entire, what neither 118 ORIGIN OF EVIL — FREEDOM OF THE WILL. of the others does, my individuality , — my responsi- hility ; — the standing of the I, — the ego, — in me, which above all things I must vindicate as my very manhood. Pravity is not this I, — any more than an evil spirit is this I. Pravity may influence me. The evil spirit may assail me. But neither the one nor the other is either the law of my being, or the ultimate cause of transgression. By pravity, or by an evil spirit, it may be said, I am what I am, — as Paul says the con- verse of this of himself as a converted and renewed man — ' by the grace of God I am what I am.' But it is for what I am, from whatever cause, that I am responsible. It is T who am, — it is my will which is, — "the ultimate cause," either of transgression, or of obedience; — according to the only meaning in which the expression "ultimate cause" can have any relevancy here; — the meaning, namely, that it is the really re- sponsible cause, beyond which it is vain to look for any other explanation either of the sin, or of the sense of sin, with which, as a matter of fact, the gospel has to deal. On the whole, it does not appear that either the question of the origin of evil, or the question of the freedom of the will, receives much light fi'om the doctrine of the tyranny of an evil spirit, as tliat doctrine is placed in contrast to the doctrine of man's entire depravity. Whatever difficulty there may be in explaining how my will, though subject to the depravity of my nature, still acts so fi-eely as to make me the PLAGUE OF SELF — SPIRIT OF SELFISHNESS. 119 proper cause of my own transgression, — there is pre- cisely the same difficulty in explaining how my will, though subject to the tyranny of an Evil Spirit, does so. In both -vdews alike there is the " ought," and the "cannot," — all the same. But they need not be contrasted. They may be com- bined. And so they are, at least apparently, before the author leaves the subject. He too believes in " pravity." And he thinks that " by setting forth the spirit of selfishness as the enemy of man, the gospel explains, in perfect coincidence with our experience, wherein this pravity consists ; that it is the inclination of every man to set up for himself, to become his own law and his own centre, and so to throw all society into discord and disorder. It thus explains the conviction of the devotee and the mystic that the body must die, and that the soul must die. Self being the plague of man, in some most wonderful sense he must die, that he may be delivered from his pravity. And yet neither body nor soul can be in itself evil. Each is in bondage to some evil power." (Pp. 45, 46.) The evil spirit is " the spirit of selfishness." This means, it is to be presumed, that he is himself intensely selfish, — that he is the impersonation of selfishness, — that selfishness is the characteristic, — the moving princi- ple,— of his active moral being. Thus selfish himself, he finds men selfish too ; self being the plague of man. This self in man must die. And the spirit of selfish- 120 TEMPTATIOX. ness tyrannising over man must be overcome. Are these two operations, or are thej one ? Perhaps the question is premature. But it is necessary to indicate here that it is a question which must be raised. Upon the answer to it which may be gathered from this and the subsequent Essays, will depend the solution of a gTave doubt, — how far the author really holds the tyranny of the Evil Spirit and the pravity of man as distinct and independent doctrines, — nay how far, in any well-defined sense, he really holds either. Unless, indeed, — he holds them as distinct and independent, the one from the other, it may questioned how far, to any practical purpose, he can recognise them at all. That I am a fallen being, — that, under whatever temptation, I have aspired to be as God, — that my " in- clination " is to be " my own law and my own centre," — that self is my plague," — I deeply feel. That as a fallen being myself, I have come into a relation to other fallen beings, — to an evil spirit, — implying a large measm'C of subjection on my part and tyranny on his part, I am compelled to own. But the two things do not explain or account for one another. The one may exist without the other. If there be an evil spirit, the one has existed without the other. In the case of the evil spirit himself, — a fallen spirit of course, unless Manichajism is to be om* refuge, — what is to be said? Has he the feeling of the " ought" and the " cannot? " If he has not, he cannot have intelligence, or conscience, SURRENDER OF THE WILL TO EVIL. 121 or will, analogous to ours ; in whicli case he cannot be our tempter, or our tyrant. If he has, whence and how did he get it ? This is not an unfair question when it is the origin of evil that is under discussion. It cannot be evaded other- wise than by having recourse to something like the Indian method of supporting the earth upon an elephant, the elephant upon a tortoise, and so on indefinitely. It is directly in point to ask the question. And the point of it is this. The tyranny of an evil spirit over me is brought in to shew me why I feel myself bound and enslaved, — to solve the mysteiy of my being, — the " I ought " and the " I cannot." If I am myself innocent and holy, — if I am pure from pravity and loyal to the Supreme, — it is difficult to see how any assaults of the evil spirit should enslave me, or make me feel — I " ought " but I " cannot." Certainly not unless my will surrenders, — unless I willingly consent. And if I do thus willingly consent, and my will smTcnders, — to what do I consent — to what does my will surrender? Not to the evil spirit, but to the seeming good and the seeming true which he presents to me as his temptation. The instant I give in, I find myself in the position in which the evil spirit is ; not, however, because he has been my tyrant ; but because at his instance, when he was not my tyrant, I did as he had done. He and I might never afterwards meet. He might never use another art, or wield another weapon, against me. 122 MYSTERY OF THE BONDAGE OF SIN. Would I at all the less in that case have the feeling of bondage— the "I ought" but "I cannot?" "We do meet, however. And I find that he has an ascendancy over me. I am told also that his ascendancy over me is the true explanation of my bondage and my feeling of it. Can I fail to ask what is the explanation of his? For I am as certain of his bondage and his feeling of it, as I am of my own. Otherwise he is again to me the rival of my Creator ; and as such, he is to be appeased, or to be worshipped. The truth is, the confusion of ideas as to the question of the origin of evil which is so noticeable at the begin- ning of this Essay, pervades it to the end. In account- ing for the origin of evil in the race of man, the agency of an evil spirit may be introduced. He is the tempter. But he is the tempter of innocence. Before the tempta- tion, and the surrender of the will to temptation, there is neither tyranny on the tempter's part, nor subjection on the part of man. In seeking to ascertain the source and the strength of evil in the individual man, — in my- self for instance, — I may know that the evil spirit is not now my tempter merely, but my tyrant. And I may deeply feel and resent my subjugation to him. I cannot, however, accept anything I know, or anything I feel, of my relation to the evil spirit as a solution of the mystery of my bondage. For I instinctively know and feel that the bondage is common to me, — and the sense of it is common to me, — with the evil spirit him- RELATION TO THE HOLY ONE— GUILT. 123 self, — who had no tempter and lias no tyrant, — but having been my tempter, has become my tyrant. Thus the doctiine of the tyranny of the evil spirit, if it is to explain the phenomenon or fact to be accounted for, really implies the doctrine of human depravity ; and on the other hand, the doctrine of human depravity sets aside and makes irrelevant the explanation founded on the doctrine of the tyranny of the evil spirit. But in fact, the sense of sin in man is not to be resolved either into an impression of subjection to a foreign force, or into a consciousness of inherent pravity. The sense of sin may bring me into contact with both ; but it is caused by neither. It is a primary, original, independent conviction in the mind of a wrong-doer, or a wrong-thinker, possessed of reason, conscience, and will. And it has respect, not to an evil spirit, not to pravity of nature, but to the Holy One, and the relation of that wrong-doer or wrong-thinker to the Holy One. The thought which haunts me is not that an evil spirit rules me, nor that inherent pravity makes me what I am, but that I sin against the Holy One. And my first glimpse of hope must spring from the assurance, not that he can conquer the evil spirit who rules me, — not even that he can renovate the pravity of my nature, — though I must believe that he can do both, — but that he, the Holy One, can righteously rid me of that con- sciousness of guilt, — that criminality or blameworthi- ness,— that feeling of ill-desert, — which is the real ulti- 124 THE DEVOTEE AND THE MYSTIC. mate cause of the bondage in which I am, and the sense or feeling of bondage which is in me. A capital defect in this Essay is the omission which, for the pre- sent, it is enough thus to indicate. In the meantime, let the element of correspondence or adaptation between man and his tyrant be observed. The plague of man is self; the evil spirit is the spirit of selfishness. The suggestion of the evil spirit to me is to set up for myself, to consult for myself, to act for myself; and I am but too ready to comply with the suggestion. This is my plague, from which by dying "in some most wonderful sense" I am delivered. It is not dying in the sense of "the devotee and the mystic" who are convinced " that the body must die, and that the soul must die." " Neither body nor soul can be in itself evil. Each is in bondage to some evil power. If there be a God of order mightier than the Destroyer, body and soul must be capable of redemption and restoration." (P. 46.) 3. " And thus this theology comes in contact with that wide-spread and most plausible creed which attri- butes all evil to circumstances." It admits all " the facts from which this creed is deduced." It "justifies in principle the prudential alleviations of the evil to which we all do and must resort." Let " injurious influences be taken away from a man," because he is apt " to think that they are his rightful masters, and to act as if they were ; " and also because he ought to know INHERITANCE OF EVIL FEOM ADAM. 125 " what has robbed him of his freedom, whose yoke needs to be broken if he is not always to be a slave." He will discover that " the tyranny which is over him is a tyranny over his whole race." " We shall never give him any clearness of mind, or any hope, unless we can tell him that the spirit of selfishness is the common enemy, and that he has been overcome." (Pp. 46, 47.) It is not necessary to inquire particularly what bear- ing these remarks have on the real question at issue. It may be more useful to follow the author in what may be regarded as the practical application of his viqps respect- ing the evil spirit, and the connexion of his agency with human depravity. The " deeply-rooted aversion " with which Unitari- ans regard ^' the doctrine of the existence and person- ality of the Devil," is so thoroughly understood by the author, that he almost " shrinks from saying, I maintain this dogma." But he will satisfy them that he must maintain it, and even reconcile them to his maintaining it, for he finds in it a defence against " some of the hard- est, most mischievous theories of our modern popular diviuity, — those which shock the moral sense and rea- son of men most, those which most undermine the belief in God's infinite charity." (Pp. 47, 48.) The first of these pestilent heresies is the representa- tion usually given of our fallen state. " We talk of the depravity of our nature, of the evil we have inherited from Adam," instead of saying " as the men in the old 126 WHAT ARE WE BY NATURE ? time would have said bravely, meaning what they said, ' We are engaged in a warfare with an evil spirit ; he is trying to separate us from God, to make us hate our brethren.' " (P. 48.) This, according to the ordinary view, the evil spirit tried at first, when man was yet innocent. And he succeeded. Of course he is trying still to keep us in the state into which he brought us. But the question is, Are men separated from God, and selfish haters of their brethren? Is that their condition and character by nature? If so, then until there is a thorough radical change of both, — of their condition and of their character, — it is idle to talk of a brave battle with an evil spirit. The point at issue lies pre- cisely here. The author says that an evil spirit is trying to separate us fi'om God and make us hate our brethren. Are we not separated fi-om God — is not self the plague of man — naturally? "That every child of Adam has this infection of nature, I must entirely and inwardly believe ; " — so the author writes, with immedi- ate reference to that veiy " depravity of our nature," that " evil "vve have inlierited fi-om Adam " of which he says " we talk," when the men of old would have talked of doing battle against the evil spirit. What is " this infection of natm^e " which the author believes that every child of Adam has ? Is it ungodliness, uncharitable- ness, selfishness ? Is it that we are naturally what the evil spirit is trying to make us ? If not, what is it ? Nor wiU it avail to represent the holders of the com- ACTING ACCORDING TO NATURE, 127 mon doctrine as saying that " this infection of nature forces us to commit sin," and to stigmatise their saying so as " a very close ajjproximation " to " what the Jews of old said, — what the prophets denounced as the most flagrant denial of God, — We are delivered to do all these abominations;''^ — an approximation to " this de- testable heresy " so close as to have " called forth an indignant and a righteous protest from many classes of their countrymen, the Unitarians being in some sort the spokesmen for the rest." (P. 48.) The author strangely enough confounds the Antinomian boast of impunity, — we are at liberty to commit sin, — with the sort of fatalism which he means to impute to some of our popular statements," — we are forced to commit sin. But, in- deed, what is it that he really means ? When a free agent acts according to his nature, does he act upon compulsion? He whose nature is perfect love cannot but do works of love. Would it be right to say that the perfection of his nature forces him to do them ? He whose plague is self, may have that plague as an infec- tion of natm'e so thoroughly that he cannot but do works of selfishness, which are works of sin. Is this fairly equivalent to saying that the infection of his nature forces him to commit sin ? What of the evil spirit ? His nature is infected ; deeply infected ; on the author's own showing, pure malignity is the essence of it. And yet it must be presumed that he acts freely, — not under force or com- pulsion,— when the malignity of his nature moves him to 128 COMPULSION. tempt and tyrannise over man. Nay further, is there more of force and compulsion when a man acts in accordance with his nature, — be that natm-e holy or infected, — than when he acts in compliance with the power or influence of a tyrant ? But in fact, does the author admit infection of nature in any real sense, — to any extent at all ? Does he allow that a man is in any degree, even partially, influenced in his acting by that infection of natm-e ? Be that influence ever so slight, it is, as he represents the matter, force and compulsion so far as it goes ; it must be so, if it is force and compul- sion when the infection of nature is such as to influence him altogether. It is a mere evasion of the difficulty in which he himself is, to taunt those who " maintain the ' absolute, universal, all-pervading depravity ' of human nature " with resorting to " the feeble and pusillanimous course of introducing modifications into the broad phrases with which " they start, and using pretty metaphors " about " ' beautiful relics of the divine image,' ' fallen columns,' &c." (Pp. 48, 49.) The taimt may pass for argument with some ; and perhaps metaphors had better be avoided on " a subject of such solemn and personal interest." The advocates of the obnoxious doctrine in question are quite prepared to say, without a metaphor, — and indeed are in the habit of saying, — that there is good to be found among fallen men, — good qualities, good affections, good deeds, — which may be ascribed partly to their essential humanity, and partly also to the DEPEAVITY — UNGODLINESS. 129 dispensation of divine forbearance under which they are. What they allege respecting depravity is quite consistent with their saying that. They hold, however, not vaguely and with modifications " reducing their assertions into mere nonentities," but distinctly and without qualifica- tion, that in so far as our relation to God and the state of our heart towards God are concerned, our depravity, — the derangement or infection of our nature, — is thorough and entire. And they hold, moreover, that until there is a thorough and entire change in our relation to God and in the state of our heart toward God, we can neither be delivered from the plague of self which makes even the most amiable and kindly of us unsocial and unlovely, nor emancipated from the tyranny of the evil spirit, and put in a position to wage a brave warfare with him. These are explicit enough statements. Are the author's own statements equally so ? Will he tell us plainly, and without " equivocations," what kind or amount of infection of nature he admits, as being safe from the very appearance of approximation to the "detestable heresy," — that "this infection forces us to commit sin ? " In particular, to come back to the real point at issue, will he say whether the evil spirit, when he " tries to separate us from God, to make us hate our brethren," finds us already, by infection of nature, ungodly and selfish, or merely capable of becoming ungodly and selfish at his instance and under his in- fluence and power ? Are we all naturally, what Adam 130 OLD WAY OF STATING THE CASE. is usually understood to have been iDefore the Fall, apt to yield to the evil spirit trying to separate us from God? Are we so apt to yield as to make it morally certain that all of us, more or less, will yield — to make it matter of fact that with scarcely an exception, if with any, we do yield ? Is that our " infection of nature ? " Or is it something more than that? If so, will the author have the goodness to shew what it is, — as distinct from the hereditary and entire depravity asserted in the ordinary doctrine, — and how it is less open to those objections against that doctrine which he regards as so formidable and so fatal? The real question is, — Are we, or are we not, by nature, what the author says that an evil spfrit is trying to make us ? That question must be met, and not evaded. Is it met by the final explanation which the author gives ? He asks " What is pravity or depravity, — affix to it the epithets universal, absolute, or any you please, — but an inclination to something that is not right, — an inclination to turn away fi-om what is right, that which is the true and proper state of him who has the inclination? What is it that experiences the incli- nation ; what is it that provokes the inclination ? I believe it is the spirit within me which feels the inclina- tion ; I believe it is a spirit speaking to my spirit who stirs up the inclination. That old way of stating the case explains the facts, and commends itself to my reason." (P. 49.) RECOGNITION OF A SPIRIT AS THE TEMPTER. 131 It is an old way of stating the case. It is, after all, very much like the way in which the old Unitarians stated the case, with scarcely any material or practically important difference. The author's doctrine that it is a spirit speaking to my spirit who stirs up the inclination, is really equivalent to little more than that the inclina- tion is stirred up by the suggestion of motives and the application of influences to my spirit. Probably not a few Unitarians, of the old school as well as of the new, might not be very unwilling to admit an unseen agency of some kind at work, suggesting these motives and applying these influences. They might acknowledge an evil spirit, and believe that he is dealing thus, in a very powerful manner, with men. But after all, they might say, is not our direct and immediate business with those motives and influences of which we are con- scious ? If we fight manfully with these, we fight with the evil spirit. How otherwise can we meet him ? What is gained by bringing the invisible enemy him- self so much forward, instead of setting us to grapple with the palpable means and instruments he uses? — Much, the author would reply. " The whole battle of life becomes infinitely more serious to me, and yet more hopeful ; because I cannot believe in a spirit who is tempting me into falsehood and evil, without believing that God is a spirit, and that I am bound to him, and that he is attracting me to truth and goodness." (P. 49.) It might have been well for our mother Eve, if Satan 132 ELEMENTS OF WEAKNESS. had not disguised himself as an angel of light, if he had been revealed to her in his own malignant nature. The recognition of an evil spirit tempting her into false- hood and evil, might have set her to think of the Spirit of all good to whom, as her gracious Maker, she was bound, who was attracting her to truth and goodness. Place me again where Eve was 5 make me again what Eve was ; let me be upon a right footing with my God ; let my heart be right with God. Then let me see the enemy face to face, a living, powerful, tyrant spirit ; and forewarned, forearmed, I fight against him valiantly. But my conscience tells me that I am a criminal and rebel. My heart upbraids me with disaffection and disloyalty. Shew me how these elements of weakness are to be got rid of; and then again I rouse myself to the combat. Till then I incline rather to compromise and special pleading ; I am fain to shelter myself under the old apology of circumstances and influences ; I can but hang my head and feebly complain, — ' The serpent beguiled me and I did eat.' Here the examination of this Essay may close with a mere notice of another of " those hardest, most mis- chievous theories of our modern popular divinity," against which the author finds a defence in the doctrine he has been teaching about the evil spirit. This second pestilent heresy is " the unsightly, and to him quite portentous, imagination of modern divines," who, it seems, hold that there " has been a war in the divine WAR BETWEEN JUSTICE AND MERCY. 133 mind between justice and mercy; and that a gi-eat scheme was necessary to bring these qualities into reconciliation." He thinks that the belief that " an evil spirit is di-awing men away both from mercy and righteousness, is a practical witness against any notion of this kind." Men holding strongly that belief must feel " that to be in a healthful moral state, they must be both just and merciful ; that there must be a perfect unity and harmony between these qualities ; that what- ever puts them in seeming division comes from the Evil Spirit ; that it is treason to ascribe to the archetypal mind that which destroys the piurity of the image. The God who is to deliver men from this strife, cannot him- self be the subject of it." (P. 50.) Does the author really not know that when theologians speak of a war between justice and mercy, they refer not to a strife in the divine mind, but to a crisis or exigency in the divine government ? If he does not know this, or if he cannot see the difference between these two things, he is an incompetent theologian. Of the other alternative it is imnecessary to speak. True, there must be no strife — there can be no strife — in the mind of the God who is to deliver us from the strife which the evil spirit causes. But what is that strife? Is it not the divorce of justice and mercy ? Mercy will prevail against justice ; ' ye shall not surely die.' The author's plan, apparently, is to disown both attributes. In his system there is no room either for justice or for mercy ; 134 FIGHT WITH WORLD, FLESH, DEVIL. for there is no sentence of condemnation, and no re- mission of it. All is resolved into love, and a law of love working itself out somehow, as any other law of nature must do. The divine plan, on the other hand, refuses either to disown or to dissever the perfections of justice and mercy in God. It exhibits their harmony in Christ, — in Christ as meeting the claims of justice; causing mercy and truth to meet together, righteousness and peace to embrace each other. In that way it destroys the strife which the devil would fain perpetuate. The concluding appeal to the younger men among the Unitarians is full of power. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress," — " the fight with Apollyon," — are owned by them as real. Apart from the old Hebrew drapery" there are " abysses and eternities with which men have to do, — valleys of the shadow of death, if you like that language." By all means, replies the author, let " the outside " be given up ; " to the inside I hold fast." But these eternities and abysses of yours look to me very like outsides, mere drapery." Strip it off, and what remains ? " The history of some mental process no doubt ; — but the nature of the process ? Is it a shadow-fight? Is it a game of blacks and whites, the same hand moving both?" No, says the author. You will be simple, healthy, victorious, true, — it is " the result of my own experience," — " when you have courage to say, ' We do verily believe that we have a world, and a flesh, and a devil, to fight with.' " Certainly the PRELIMINARY TO THE FIGHT. 135 battle of life is not a game of blacks and whites, moved bj the same hand. I am not a lonely amateur, getting up a fight upon a chess-board to interest or amuse my solitude. I am engaged in a real strife with a real enemy, to whom my sin, — my guilt, — my depravity, — gives an immense advantage over me. If I am to cope with him successfully, I must first of all come to an un- derstanding with another being, — the Being to whom I really belong and am legitimately bound. The adjust- ment of his claims as a Ruler upon me as his subject, — and of my peace with him, — must be as real and per- sonal as my warfare with the evil spirit ; and must precede any hopeful prosecution of that warfare. The author himself seems to admit, that there must be some divine panoply. Addressing a parting word in this Essay to the younger Unitarians, he promises to shew them, — before they believe, or know that they believe, what he has been telling them of the evil spirit, — " that in their heart, as much as in his own, there is a witness for righteousness and truth, which world, and flesh, and devil, have been unable to silence." (P. 53.) This, ac- cordingly, he proceeds to do in the next Essay. Let it be observed, however, in leaving the present Essay, that not a hint is given of any personal transaction between a man and his Maker, — such as judicial reckoning and renovation of natm-e. There is no need of any such transaction to be the preliminary to an effectual struggle with the evil spirit, — there is no room for it in the 136 EXPERIENCE OF JOB. author's theology. What he undertakes to shew is that, quite apart fi-om all procedure of that sort, every man has in himself, as the root of his being, a living Re- deemer, whom if he will but own, he is more than a match for world, flesh, and devil, all combined. ESSAY IV. — ON THE SENSE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IN MEN, AND THEIR DISCOVERY OF A REDEEJIER. The experience of Job is the beginning and end of this Essay. It is not necessary to inquire how far the author's view of the Book, — or his view of the character of Job and the dealings of God with him, — may or may not be recognised as Scriptm-al and sound. He makes Job the representative of manhood generally, and of every in- dividual man in particular. He finds nothing in the experience of Job which is not common to the whole race. And he finds also, in every member of the race, the elements of the experience of Job. These elements are two in number. The one is a sense of righteousness ; — the other is resentment of pain. The sense of righteousness is a protest against the charge of sin : the resentment of pain is a protest against the call to submission. Having the sense of righteousness, I cannot admit the charge of sin without an explanation on my part : having the resentment of pain, I cannot yield to suffering without an explanation SENSE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS — PAIN. 137 on the part of God. If I must confess that I sin, I must be allowed, in doing so, to vindicate my righteous- ness : if I must consent to suffer, I must be permitted to ask the reason why, and with whatever docility I can command, to require an answer. These are the primary elements of genuine human experience. They pass, as the Essay advances, into principles of the divine government. Or rather, they are found to meet in a divine Person. The righteous- ness of which every man has a sense, is identical with the Redeemer. The acknowledgment of his right to be set free from evil, is identical with the redemption. Thus ' I know that my Redeemer liveth,' The sense of righteousness is associated with the sense of sin. The resentment of pain has associated with it the sense or feeling of a claim to deliverance from pain. In this double antithesis, the idea, or belief, of a Redeemer and a redemption takes its rise. The sense of righteousness and the sense of sin, are intimately bound up in one another. They are so in the case of Job, as the author puts it in the very begin- ning of the Essay : — " The suffering man has the most intense personal sense of his own evil. He makes also the most vehement, repeated, passionate, protestations of his own righteousness." (P. 54.) His friends may ask — " why does he indulge in such dreadful wailings, which must be offensive to the Judge who has afflicted him ? Above all, how dares he talk, as if a man might 138 SENSE OF SIN — RIGHTEOUSNESS. he just before God? How could he, who complained that he possessed the sins of his youth, nevertheless de- clare, that there was a purity and a truth in him, which the Searcher of all hearts would at last acknowledge (P. 55.) As the trial goes on, the two feelings grow in intensity, apparently strengthening one another. Job's " consciousness that he has a righteousness, a real sub- stantial righteousness, which no one shall remove from him, which he will hold fast and not let go, waxes stronger as his pain becomes bitterer and more habitual. There are great alternations of feeling. The deepest acknowledgments of sin come forth from his heart. But he speaks as if his righteousness were deeper and more grounded than that. Sin cleaves very close to him ; it seems as if it were part of himself, almost as if it were himself But his righteousness belongs to him still more entirely. However strange the paradox, it is more Mmself than even that is." (Pp. 56, 57.) Whether this is a true representation of Job's feel- ings or not, — is not now the question. It represents truly the author's view of what is the common experience of man. (P. 59.) Accordingly he tells us that " clergymen and religi- ous persons " who " have conversed at all seriously with men of any class," — " hear from one and all, in some language or other, the assertion of a righteousness which they are sure is theirs, and which cannot be taken from them." Amid all their confession and feeling of sin. SENSE OF PAIN. 139 and all their fear of judgment, " there is a secret reserve of belief that there is in them that which is not sin, ■which is the very opposite of sin." If you tell them that this is wrong, " that ' God be merciful to me ' is the only true prayer, that God's law is very holy, that they have violated it, and so forth, — they will listen — they may assent " — they may be silent. But not the best and honestest." " The man who cries. Till I die you shall not take my integrity from we, — may be nearest, if the Bible speaks right, to the root of the matter, nearest to repentance and humiliation." At all events, " each man has got this sense of a righteousness, whether he realizes it distinctly or indistinctly, whether he expresses it courageously, or keeps it to himself." (Pp. 60, 61.) Such is the author's account of the first element in human experience, as identified with the experience of Job. Omitting the somewhat supercilious, and not very respectful allusion to the holy law of God, tlie viola- tion of it, " and so forth," — it is impossible not to notice the extreme vagueness of this description. Nor is the fault amended by what he says of " that other convic- tion which Job uttered so manfully, that pain is an evil and comes from an enemy, and is contrary to the natm-e and reason of things." Some questions might here be asked. Is the enemy from whom pain comes the evil spirit? If so, how is this to be reconciled with the in- fliction of punishment on the part of God ? If not, if pain is a salutary discipline, — which is the author's only 140 PAIN — FROM WHOM DOES IT COME ? idea of punishmentj — how is the conviction that it comes from an enemy to be justified or explained? An enemy- may be the instrument, — the subordinate agent ; work- ing, as in Job's case, by express permission from God, and under restrictions previously fixed by God. But Job does not recognise him in that capacity. On the contrary, the very object of Satan is to make Job feel that the pain comes from an enemy, — that God is the enemy, — and that the sufferer had better seek relief in an alliance or compromise with himself. Job resisted this feeling. He never owned Satan as the party from whom his pain came. He traced it all to God. And whatever darkness might envelope the whole procedure, he never thought of regarding the God from whom his pain came, as on that account an enemy. His victory in the trial was that he refused to do so. Such ques- tions and remarks, however, may be classed by the author among the " cool, disinterested reflections," for which " the witness of the conscience, — of the whole man, — on this point, is too strong." " It is no time for school distinctions between soul and body." " It is not a Redeemer for his soul that man asks, more than for his body," — but a deliverer from " the condition in which he is." " To be as he is, is not, he thinks, according to nature and order. He asks God, if he asks at all, to shew that it is not according to his will." (Pp. 61, 62.) It is apparently a bold demand. It compels at all events an examination of what the author says in the Satan's feeling of sin and pain. 141 way of explaining, defining and identifying, tlie fact or phenomenon in human experience, — the instinct of man's moral nature, — on which he bases the demand; and to which he attaches so much importance as to make it the germ of man's idea of a Redeemer, — if not even the ground of his belief in a Eedeemer. It is important, then, to know what is real in the instinct or experience to which the author appeals ; — what is really natural. The sense of sin and the resent- ment of pain are the fundamental elements of this inquiry. They are the data, — the assumed or conceded facts. Now it is true that the sense of sin involves as its counterpart or correlative, a sense of righteousness ; and the accompanying resentment of pain involves a sense of some claim to deliverance — or at least of some deliver- ance that may be claimed. Let the sense of sin and the resentment of pain be genuine. Let them have respect to God, and my relation to God. I sin against God ; God inflicts pain upon me. If I do unreservedly own these two facts, it must be because I am enabled to see a righteousness and a redemption, — or a righteous redemp- tion,— adequate to meet both of them ; either apart, or both together. No human — ^no rational being, can really feel sin apart from righteousness, — or pain apart from redemp- tion. The evil spirit, — Manichaiism being out of the question, — sins and suffers ; he commits sin and suffers pain. He justifies the sin. He resents the pain. He 142 FORBEARANCE — MERCY, justifies tlie sin ; not perhaps as sin, but as forced upon him by the exigency of his case, and warranted in all the circumstances ; — inevitable, in short ; — a just protest against undue severity. He resents the pain, rebelling against it as an infliction of tyranny, to be repudiated when it cannot be resisted. Let him be brought to acknowledge the sin, and accept the pain, as Job did. And like Job, he will be saved. But has the evil spirit the elements of this salvation in himself ? Or could he have them apart from a divine message, proposing to him reconciliation, and prescribing its terms ? The question is in point. And the point of it does not lie in any contrast between om* position and tempera- ment, and those of the evil spirit ; for it may be con- tended that fallen men and fallen angels are not on the same footing, — and it is admitted that they are not. But the point of the question, in its bearing upon the author's theory, is this : — If the sense of sin and the re- sentment of pain are different in fallen men from what the corresponding feelings are in the fallen angels, to what is the difference to be ascribed ? If the answer be, that it is to be ascribed to a dispensation of forbearance and a revelation of mercy, — then plainly, those who are the subjects of that dispensation, and to whom that reve- lation is made, come to a sense of sin and resentment of pain, to whatever extent they may come to either or both, in very peculiar circumstances ; — in circumstances, THE SUFFERING SINNER MEETING GOD. 143 indeed, so peculiar as to preclude their subjective per- sonal experience from being any indication of the divine method of procedure ; since that experience is itself the result of the divine method of procedure, indicated in the dispensation of forbearance, and unfolded in the reve- lation of mercy. It would seem, indeed, as if the author reasoned in a circle. He takes the sense of sin and resentment of pain as these rise in the bosom of a criminal respited and within sight of a reprieve ; which is man's real position. And he sets up that sense of sin and that resentment of pain in the criminal so situated, as the measure, the proof and evidence, of the very respite and reprieve, — the present respite and prospective reprieve, — which call these feelings forth. I sin and I suffer. All above and around me there is no voice or sign of mercy ; but only an awful silence. I am summoned to stand, to use the solemn language of Isaac Taylor, ' denuded of all but conscience, before the open presence of the Holy One.' Still there is no voice or sign beyond the solitary question — Hast thou done the evil ? What room can there be for any other feel- ing in my bosom but sulky shame, or sneaking fear, or insolent defiance, or all the three? But let a look of compassion be seen on the countenance of the Holy One, and let words of hope come from his lips, — let him tell me of bis purpose to provide a remedy for the evil I have done, — let him discover to me the love which he still 144 rROGRESS OF REAL CONVICTION. bears to me, and give me a hint of some wise and holy- plan by means of which that love is to meet my case, — then, if I understand him, and in so far as I understand and believe him, there rises within me a new-born honesty. My sin is before me. It is before me in the sight of the Holy One. But his communication to me restores my manhood. Confession comes ; but it is no longer craven ; it has in it a consciousness of integrity, — a feeling of returning self-respect — wide as the poles asunder from self-justification — essentially, however, and truly, a sense of righteousness. Meanwhile suffering continues or increases. I suffer, — I suffer more and more. And I cry out, not only from the instinct of pain, but with a deeper grief, — the grief of an unsolved mystery. Why all this anguish, seeming to keep pace with the uprightness of which I am now conscious in the matter of my sin and the confession of it, — warring against that uprightness, — and threatening to throw me back, as unwise friends would throw me, upon the mere effort to propitiate my tormentor, — the inflicter of my pain, — by abject submission ? Let the struggle go on and get worse. Let my sin be more and more felt and owned. The more it is felt and owned, the more I am conscious of my integrity. I am certain that, let sin be ever so much in me, as part of me, as my very self, — yet because I see it to be sin, and feel it to be sin, and confess it to be sin, — there is that in me which is not sin, but is against sin. And still I suffer more and RECONCILIATION. 145 more. And it is more and more hard to understand how all this comes to be so. The temptation to defiance, or to servility, grows very strong. It is time for the Holy One again to speak to me. Calmly he directs my view to the wisdom with which he guides and governs all things above and around me, — a wisdom which I can- not search, but which with reference to all these things I firmly trust. He asks me if I cannot trust that wis- dom, though I cannot search it, in my own case also. And I am silenced and ashamed. Or, still more to reassure me and enable me to hold fast my integrity, he discovers to me more unreservedly the plan of my recovery ; and in the mission of his Son, causes me to perceive his own fatherly love. Then, in the choice language of this Essay, " a feeling of infinite shame grows out of the feeling of undoubting trust. The child sinks in nothingness at its Father's feet, just when he is about to take it to his arms." (P. 63.) Let the author be cordially thanked for these few words of rarest beauty as well as of deepest truth. There can be no controversy here ; the ciy, ' who shall deliver me ?' is met. ' Eeturn unto thy rest, 0 my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.' Alas ! that with so much apparent and even real agreement as to the result, there should be any question as to the process ! But if the result is to be genuine and trust- worthy, the process must be sound and Scriptm-al. It is necessary, therefore, to prosecute the inquiry, — How K 146 ARGUMENTS FROM NATURE. does the author aiTive at the blessed consummation he so well describes ? The suffering man, crying to heaven, believes that he must have a deliverer somewhere. The condition in which he finds himself, — not a part of him- self merely, his soul as distinct from his body, — (the author is right in that, though who they are whom he means to hit is not very apparent,) — but his entire self, — is one from which he has a sort of right to be set fi-ee. It is not " according to natm-e and order ; he asks God to show that it is not according to his will." God " answers his creature and child out of the whirlwind ; and by wonderful arguments, drawn, it may be, from the least object in nature, from the commonest part of man's experience, or from the whole Cosmos in which he finds himself, addressed to an ear which our words do not reach, entering secret passages of the spirit to which we have no access, leads him, — the instincts and anticipa- tions of his heart being not denied but justified, — to lay himself in dust and ashes. When a man knows that he has a righteous Lord and Judge, who does not plead his omnipotence and his right to punish, but who debates the case with him, who shows him his truth and his error, the sense of infinite wisdom, sustaining and carry- ing out infinite love, abases him rapidly. He perceives that he has been measuring himself, and his under- standing, against that love, that wisdom." Trusting and ashamed, " the child sinks in nothingness at its Father's feet, just when he is about to take it to his arms." INFORMATION PROM GOD. 147 Now it may be admitted most fully that if God, in answering " the instincts and anticipations " of my heart, were to deny, instead of justifying them, — and in parti- cular, if he were merely to " plead his omnipotence and his right to punish," — no such gracious effect as this could be produced in me. If, however, I believe and cannot help believing, not merely that God has a right to punish, but that being a righteous Ruler, he must punish, and punish judicially ; — if my conscience testifies that as a guilty and corrupt criminal I am condemned ; — if I deeply feel that no redeemer will meet my m'gent need who is not able to rid me of my guilt and my corrup- tion, and that too with the concun-ence of my offended Lord ; — if these are among the instincts and aspirations of my heart ; — then, no " debating of my case " that does not imply some liglit on these points will either humble me, or reconcile me. Information, to some ex- tent at least, on the subject of God's manner of dealing with guilt and corruption in man, was actually given after the Fall, by express revelation and by tlie institution of sacrifice. All men, in all ages and countries, have had the benefit of that information ; the earlier races having the most of it, — excepting, of course, the line of Scripture. Job had it ; and most expositors think that he refers to it when he says, ' I know that my Redeemer liveth.' At all events he had it. And whatever may have been the full import of what God said to him out of the whirlwind, as bearing upon his immediate expe- 148 GOD A FATHER — PANTHEISM. rience, — his knowledge of the divine plan and purpose of redemption, as revealed after the Fall, must have entered into that impulse of generous and honest self- abasement which moved him to exclaim, — ' I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee ; wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.' All this is quite consistent with the child falling at the feet, being taken into the arms, of its Father. Nay, it explains the reconciliation on both sides. As a Father, God has imdertaken, in infinite mercy, to provide for the removal of fallen man's guilt and corruption. Believing this, feeling this, I am satisfied at last, — after his calm remonstrance with me for not implicitly trusting his wisdom and his love. I am more than satisfied, I am subdued. The criminal is melted into a child ; the child is clasped in the embrace of a Father. " It is a Father, not a vague world, before which he has bowed." So the author follows up immediately his touching representation. And he implores us, ''if we would preserve our brethren from a dark abyss of pan- theism, when their spirits are beginning to open to some of the harmonies of the universe, not to pause till we understand how it should be the end of God's discipline to justify Job more than his three friends ; how it can be possible for him to sanction that conviction of an actual righteousness, belonging to the man himself, which we were so anxious to confute." " For this pur- BRINGING THE SINNER TO CHRIST. 149 pose," he says, " we must lay the foundations of our faith very much deeper than they are laid in modern exposi- tions." (P. 63.) Then he seizes on the expression " bringing the sinner to Christ," as the sum and sub- stance of these " modern expositions." And representing that as equivalent to bringing him to know what Christ did and spoke, in those thirty-three years be- tween his birth and his resmTection," he adds, we shall never understand the infinite significance of those years, or be able to take the gospel narratives of them simply as they stand, if we have no other thought than this, or if there is no other which we dare proclaim to our fellow- men." (Pp. 63, 64.) It seems that our " belief that Christ was, before he took human flesh and dwelt among us," — " that he actually conversed with prophets and patriarchs, and made them aware of his presence," — has become unreal ; " an arid dogma, which we prove out of Pearson, and which has nothing to do with our inmost convictions, with om* very life." And the reason is, — "because we do not accept the New Testament expla- nation of these appearances and manifestations ; because we do not believe that Christ is in every man, the source of all light that ever visits him, the root of all the right- eous thoughts and acts that he is ever able to conceive or do." (P. 64.) Now, in the first place, if we would preserve thoughtful men from pantheism, we must distinguish the righteous- ness,— the uprightness, — the ' truth in the inward parts,' 150 CHRIST BROUGHT NEAR. — wtich Job had and which God owned in him, — from the Redeemer whom Job knew to be living, and to be his. To confound, or to identify, these, — is to cut away the foundation of any real personal transaction between me and my IMaker ; — any actual reckoning on his part with me ; — any righteous adjustment of my position as imder law to him. And if that foundation be destroyed, I think I see only a very frail ban-ier, if any, between me and pantheism. Again, secondly, "we" do not in our preaching merely wish to bring sinners to Christ ; we try to bring Christ near to them ; or rather to shew them that in the gospel which we preach Christ is brought near to them ; very near ; so near that as he stands at the door and knocks, they have but to open, and he will come in to them and sup with them. In the third place, we do not forget that Christ as the living Redeemer, — the Word, — the Life, — the Light of men, — has been always and is now everywhere in the world, — lighting more or less every man that cometh into the world, — shining in darkness though the darkness comprehendeth it not. But, in the fom'th place, — while we account for what- ever is good in human character and human society by the fact that he who is the light of men has always been among men, — we do not believe that Christ is in every man. We say that such a belief does not meet the sin- ner's case. Christ for him, not Christ in him, is what he first needs, — what he first will welcome. This is the point at issue. This is the real question CHRIST THE LIGHT AND THE LIFE OF MEN. 151 raised bj the painful but gracious experience of Job and its liappy issue. It is this ; How may a certain state of mind with reference both to sin and to suffering, be explained ? Is it the result of " the instincts and anti- cipations of" every man's " heart not being denied, but justified?" Is it "Christ in every man?" Or is it Christ, from the beginning, discovering more or less clearly to every man, by a revelation from without and from above, the Father's purpose and plan of salvation, — and making that discovery more and more clear to all whose minds are opened to receive it ? Is it " Christ in every man? " Or is it Christ to every man ? That there is, and has always been, ' a light, lighting every man that cometh into the world,' — and that Christ is that light, — must be admitted, if it be true that God revealed at first his plan of mercy, and has never since left himself without a witness. That light all men have had, and have, in their experience of the forbearance of God, and in the indications of his graci- ous designs on their behalf. It increases in clearness as the revelation in the word becomes more plain. But more or less it lighteth all. And it is under that light, that the feehngs which have been described as to sin and suffering are called forth. The author does not formally deny this external light ; but he omits it ; he leaves it out of view, and makes no use of it as an element in his account of the experience in question. All the light he needs is " Christ in every 152 NECESSITY OF DISCOVERY FEOM WITHOUT. man." This indeed is all, or nearly all, that there is room for in his theology. And here, let it be observed, it is not necessary even to discuss the question ; — Is Christ in every man ? Admitting that to be true, another question must arise, — Is it possible to explain in that way alone the state of mind which is ascribed to Job? It is not said that Christ is in every man, as giving him information on the subject of God's maimer of dealing with sinners ; but that Christ is in every man, as calling forth, or originating, a certain common experience. And the difficulty is this, — that after all, the experience is of such a sort as nothing but some knowledge or notion of God's manner of dealing with sinners can rationally explain. By no conceivable internal movement or operation or principle, — by no inward light, — no Christ in me, — can I reach and realise that frankness to confess sin, and faith to submit to suffering, which constitute my integrity, unless I have before me, — presented to me and not evolved out of me, — some idea, whether vague and doubtful or distinct and certain, of what the mind and purpose of the Holy One towards such as I am, really and actually, and as a matter of fact, are. The author considers that his view, — finding in every man a state of mind with reference to sin and suffer- ing, whether he realises it distinctly or indistinctly," which is equivalent to the Redeemer, and is in fact the Redeemer, — has an important bearing on the STRAUSS — CRITICISM. 153 Straussian doctrine," and on the "Unitarian contro- versy." (P. 64.) He Las no fear of our falling, in these days, " into the doctrine about Christ which prevailed in the last century," — "into a belief of him as a man, and nothing more than a man." He dreads our falling " into the notion of him as a shadow-personage, whom the imagi- nation has clothed, as it does all its heroes, with a certain divinity, really belonging to and derived from itself." He sees no security against this in a critical confutation of Strauss and his disciples. " That which is a tendency and habit of the heart, is not cured by detecting fallacies in the mode in which it is embodied and presented to the intellect. If you have no other way of shewing Christ not to be a mythical being, or a man elevated into a god by the same process which has deified thousands before and since," you will be sure to fail. (P. 65.) How, then, is this theoiy to be met ? " Our divines are, in the first place, to deal more honestly with facts of human experience " than they do ; " and secondly, they are to connect these facts with principles which they admit to a certain extent, when they are arguing with those who deny them, but which they seldom fairly present to themselves, and still more rarely bring home to the consciences of their suffering fellow-men." (P. 66.) What are the facts? and what the prin- ciples ? The facts are those which the author " has tried to 154 ROMA^^S X. 6-10, present " in the light of Scripture and observation. The principle is applied to those facts in two ways. It is applied when we tell " the man who declares that he has a righteousness which no one shall remove from him— ^ That is true. You have such a righteous- ness. It is deeper than all the iniquity which is in you. It lies at the very gi-ound of your existence. And this righteousness dwells not merely in a law which is con- demning youj it dwells in a Person in whom you may trust. The righteous Lord of man is with you/ not ' in some heaven,' — ' in some hell/ — hut nigh you, at your heart." (P. 66,) The author evidently refers to the statement of the Apostle Paul (Romans x, 6-10.) He omits the condi- tion which the apostle attaches to the statement. If the author means what the apostle seems to mean, that the word of the gospel, revealing Christ as ' the righteous- ness of God,' brings Christ so very near to every man who hears it, — is itself so nigh him, in his mouth and in his heart, that he has but to ' confess with the mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in his heart that God has raised him from the dead,' in order to his being saved, and having ' Christ in him the hope of glory ; ' — if that is the author's meaning, it is, as has been seen, no more than every earnest evangelical preacher is con- stantly teaching. But then it is Christ, not in contrast with the law, but in closest union with the law, who is nigh us, at om- heart. The righteousness which such a CHRIST NIGH TO EVERY MAN. 155 preacher speaks of, dwells first and primarily in a law which is condemning us ; " and " it dwells in a Person in whom we may trust," because it dwells in Christ, who is " the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." This Christ the word brings nigh to every man, — to me, — so nigh that I have but to open my heart and my mouth to find Christ in both. This is the apostle's doctrine, which "our divines" delight " to bring home to the consciences of their suffering fellow-men." It would be very satisfactory to find that this is also the doctrine of the author in this Essay, — that there is nothing more than a misunderstanding between him and other divines, arising partly out of the somewhat ideal cast and character of his writings, — that he means what they mean, and only wishes to say more strongly than they do, how near the word of the gospel brings Christ to every man to whom it comes. This, however, can- not be his meaning. According to his view, the word of the gospel must find Christ in every man to whom it comes. It may find Christ dead in the man, as in his tomb ; and it may have to effect a resurrection of Christ in the man, as from his tomb. But that is all. This would seem to be, in part at least, what is meant when the author speaks of the principle being expressed with reference to suffering. You do well, he says to the sufferer, in " maintaining that pain is not good but ill, — a sign of wrong and disorder," " a bondage." " You 156 PAIN A BONDAGE. cannot stop to settle in what part of you it is," — you need not, — " it is throughout you, affecting you al- together,— you want a complete emancipation from it." " Hold fast that conviction. Let no man, divine or lay- man, rob you of it." Pain is " a bondage, the sign that a tyrant has in some way intruded himself into this earth of om'S. But you are permitted to suffer the con- sequences of that intrusion, just that you may attain to the knowledge of another fact, — that there is a Re- deemer, that he lives, that he is the stronger. That righteous King of yoiu- heart, whom you have felt to be so near you, so one with you, that you could scarcely help identifying him with yourself, even while you con- fessed that you were so evil, he is the Eedeemer as well as the Lord of you and of man. Believe that he is so. Ask to understand the way in which he has proved himself to be so. You will find that God, not we, has been teaching you of him " — " has taught you that you have been in chains, but that you have been a willing wearer of the chains. To break them, he must set yovi free. Self is your great prison-house. The strong man armed, who keeps that prison in safety, must be bound." (P. 67.) What does this mean ? Is it that when I suffer pain, there rises within me the sense of an oppressor, a tyrant, an intruder, the keeper of a prison, to whom the disorder which pain indicates is to be ascribed, — while at the same time, God teaching me, I discover near me, at RELATION TO GOD TO BE RECTIFIED. 157 mj heart, a Redeemer who is the stronger, — and that this discovery breaks " the rod of the enchanter who holds my will in bondage," and sets me free? But what if, when I suffer pain, even knowing it to be the con- sequence of a tyi-ant's intrusion, I am haunted with the surmise that my relation to God may have something to do with my subjection to bondage? I feel that in my relation to God may lie the root of the disorder, for that is itself disordered. I ask how I am to be on a right footing with God — how the outstanding question which my sin has raised between my God and myself is to be adjusted ? Let me have a Kedeemer who comes from God to me to tell me this, — himself to effect the required adjustment ; — let him rectify my relation to God ; — and the enchanter's rod is broken. I may suffer pain still, as Job did ; and feeling it still to be " not good but ill," " a sign and witness of disorder," I may feel also as if I had a right to ask why. But, at all events, I am in a position now to disconnect my suffering of pain from any tyranny of an intruding enemy. And when the Redeemer who comes to tell me of a Father's mercy and to take me home to a Father's heart, stands by me in my suffering, — expostulating with me, encouraging me, reminding me of a Father's wisdom and a Father's love, — I begin to understand the discipline by which that Father is preparing me for a better experience than that which crowned the trial of Job: and mderstanding that, " I confess my own baseness," I acquiesce and 158 EXTERNAL MORALIST — EXCLUSIVE RELIGIONIST. adore. Nay, in this way, I think I could enter perhaps even better than the author himself, were I as true and genuine as he is, into what he says so beautifully about " the gray hairs of the stricken, worn out, desolate man — ^being fresher, freer, more hopeful than the untaught innocence of his childhood," — as well into what he says of the " deep mystery," — how God " may use the consequences of the evil to which we have yielded," — and how he can make also the deliverance, if it be at present only a partial one, from these consequences, — instruments in our emancipation from the evil itself." (P. 68.) But it is time to draw these remarks to a close, by briefly noticing what the author says of the Unitarian controversy. He would have it to start from a new point. He rightly exposes the contrast between " the Unitarians discoursing concerning the doings of man," and " those they called enthusiasts concerning his being." He discovers a general dissatisfaction with two opposite theories. The one is " that flimsy doctrine about behaviour, which was all that the religion of rewards and punishments could produce." The other is " that assertion of truths as belonging to the believer and not to other men, which is its antagonist." " Both systems are falling by their own weight. The external moralist fails to produce the results he says are all- important. The exclusive religionist shews himself more worldly than his neighbours." " The exclusive STARTING-POINT OF UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY. 159 religionist " is of course the party whom the Unitarian wouki call an enthusiast. It seems that he asserts truths as belonging to the believer and not to other men. This is a view of what is commonly regarded as evangelical preaching which would require explanation. Truths belonging to the believer and not to other men," — are not generally asserted by the party in question. The truths which they assert are common to all; and it is their boast and glory to assert them as common to all. They make a distinction, indeed, between those who believe these truths and those who do not. But that is all. Would the author do less? Would he place on the same footing those who believe a truth and those who do not? Or, because he did not place them on the same footing, would he consider that he was asserting a trath belonging to the believer and not to other men? Does he mean that there are no truths to be believed? — no truths, the belief or disbelief of which can make men to differ from one another? The exclusive religionist" says that there are. And he says no more. Does the author say less ? To start the Unitarian conti'oversy from the admis- sion of our Lord's humanity, and then arg-ue from Scrip- ture that he is more than man, is a mistake now, if in- deed it was not a mistake all along. The author would start it from " the experiences of a man's own heart, — those spiritual conflicts of which he has learnt to see the significance," and with which he is to " look upon Jesus 160 JESUS — SON OF MAN — SON OF GOD. as connected in some wayP We thus get rid of mere texts and narratives " more easily than Priestley and Belsham," and " with less of outrage upon scholarship." We get rid of scriptural interpretation and argument altogether. And " with how much more of delight than they ever betrayed, can we recognise all that was divinest in the life of him who is called the Son of Man ; with how much more of freedom and less of exclusiveness can we connect him with all the other great champions of the race!" (P. 74.) Is it thus that the author " asserts truths " different from those which " the exclusive religionist " asserts as " belonging to the believer and not to other men ? " Is it that, on the one hand, he finds the Kedeemer, Jesus, tlie Son of Man, as to " all that was divinest in his life," in the common experience of man, — and that on the other hand, he connects " him who is called the Son of ]\Ian " with all the other great champions of the race ? " Are these the truths which he asserts ? Still, even these are truths "belonging to the believers" of them " and not to others," in the only sense in which this can be intelligently said of the truths asserted by " the exclusive religionist." And certainly if these are the truths which the author asserts, — concerning the connexion of Jesus, and of all that was divinest in the life of the Son of Man, with the experiences of a man's own heart, — and his connexion with all the other great champions of the race, — it is time WHAT AND WHO IS JESUS? 161 to ask who and what this Son of Man, this Jesus, really is? Tlie author in his walk through life stumbles upon " rich mines." Exploring these rich mines in himself, he discovers that " lie is the worker of them and has wrought them ill ; that he is the steward of some one who is the possessor of them ; that he is a bankrupt, and guilty." " It becomes a necessity of his inmost spirit, that he should find some one whom he did not create, some one who is not subject to his accidents and changes, some one in whom he may rest for life and death. Who is this ?" (P. 75.) I am a bankrupt and guilty. To meet my case I must have some one whom I did not create, and who is not subject to my accidents and changes. Such a one, uncreated and unchanging, rises out of the expe- rience of " Job, and David, and the prophets," of every man, in short, — myself of course included. I certainly have a deep interest in learning why I should " hold this righteous Being to be the Son of God." The de- mand for him on my part, bankrupt and guilty as I am, and the discovery of him, as meeting my demand, — seem to proceed from the same source, — my own con- sciousness,— my own experience ; " texts and narratives being got rid of." It much concerns me to know some- how in what relation he stands to God, whose bankrupt and guilty steward I am. CHAPTER III. THE REMEDY PROVIDED— THE PERSON AND WORK OF THE REDEEMER— THE PERSON.— ESSAYS V. VI. ESSAY v.— ON THE SON OF GOD. May not your faith, — your ' I believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, — be merely the adoption of those human feelings and notions " which have crowded all my- thologies with emanations firom God and sons of Grod ? You adopt these human feelings and notions without some of their former adjuncts, and with some new ones of your own, which will drop off in time by a necessary law. You especially connect a high ideal of humanity with a particular person. That ideal will be found to belong to the whole race, not to him. He will retain a high place, not as the only Son of God, but as one of many. (Pp. 76, 77.) Such, in substance, is the suggestion on the part of Unitarians with which the author proposes to deal at the outset of this Essay. He will not deal with it according to " the ordinary methods of controversy." These are " entirely out of place when statements of this kind are propounded. The question, whichever way it CRITICISM — REASONING — VOTES. 163 is decided, must concern the life and being of every one of us. It must affect the condition of mankind now, and the whole future history of the world. To argue and debate it as if it turned upon points of verbal criti- cism, as if the determination could be influenced by the greater or less skill in reasoning on either side, as if it could be settled by votes," tends to darken the con- science and make men question the importance or the possibility of finding truth. Better silence than such a mode of treating these doubts ; silence, in that case, is both religious reverence and common sense. (P. 77.) There is an odd combination or confusion here ; criti- cism, reasoning, votes. It is a question of theology that is to be considered ; the question of the relation in which the Redeemer stands to God as his only-begotten Son. How it may be put to the vote, it is not easy to see. Perhaps reasoning, as a mere trial of dialectic art, may be unsuitable ; and the minute word-catching that lives on syllables may, when applied to Scripture, be offensive. It is not clear, however, that criticism and reasoning, — a scholar-like examination of what the Bible says and the manly exercise of a sound judgment upon it, — are really " out of place" when we are discussing what would seem to be very much, if not entirely, a matter of revela- tion and discoveiy on the part of God. But be that as it may, the author distinctly indicates that the question is not to be debated upon Scriptural evidence. It is not to be settled by an appeal to Scripture, — a critical and rea- 164 BELIEF IX SOXS OF GOD. sonable examination of the statements of Scripture. The author pm"sues his usual method. He first analyses the doubts in which the question takes its rise. And then he extracts a product, — to be afterwards identified with some saying or sayings in the Bible, and with the article in the Creed. In that com-se he is to be followed, with much interest, but with some anxiety. Starting from the fact of a universal tendency to own and believe in sons of God, — he inquires, " what are those general human feelings which this faith " in sons of God " embodies ?" They are three in number. The fii-st is " an instinct of men that their helpers must come to them from some mysterious region ; that they cannot be merely childi-en of the earth, merely of their own race." The second is " a strong persuasion among men, that human relationships have something answering to them in that higher world" whence their heroes come. And the third is the sure com-iction, that " unless the superior beings were not only related to one another, but in some way related to theyn, their mere protection would be worth very little ; they would not confer the kind of benefits which the inferior asks fi-om them." (P. 79.) Om" helpers must be from heaven. They must be em- braced in relationships of heaven analogous to those of earth. They must partake of the relationships of earth. These "instincts," — this "conscience of humanity" — might almost create a presumption that some of " the beings who have done it good " may " have come fi-om EXPERIENCE OF JOB — OF MAN. 1G5 some mysterious source," were it not that men imputed to them so much, of their own peculiarities of country and race, their own morbid temperaments, their own corruption and debasement. Sons of God, then, such as these three feelings naturally crave and create, are to be set aside as unworthy and unreal. (Pp. 79, 80.) " But," says the author, " there is a chapter of human experience which we have not yet looked into. It is that of which I spoke in the last Essay." (P. 80.) The experience of Job is again rehearsed, — his experi- mental discovery that " there was, in some mysterious manner, a Redeemer, — an actual person connected with him, — one who he was sure lived, — one who was at the root of his being, — one in whom he icas righteous." The emphatic was, contrasts the idea of a Redeemer in whom every man is righteous with the idea of a Re- deemer in whom every man, even tlie guiltiest, may become righteous, or may be justified. That, however, is not the present question, excepting in so far as it bears upon the next experimental discovery; — that this " actual person " whom Job finds " connected with him," is not "a Redeemer but the Redeemer." Job is not a man un- like other men, placed under rare and peculiar conditions which enabled him to ascertain certain facts as true for himself which are not true for his race." The sufferer has been compelled to feel himself simply a man." This is true ; and therefore it is also true that whatever Redeemer Job had, must be a Redeemer whom every 166 JOB FEELING HIMSELF SIMPLY A MAN. man has, — or may have. To take this last alternative^ — to say that he must be a Redeemer whom every man may have, as Job had him, — would not by any means satisfy the author. To him, that would appear equiva- lent to saying that Job was " a man unlike other men, placed under rare and peculiar conditions which enabled him to ascertain a certain fact as true for himself" and not for his race. But it really is not so. A Redeemer whom every man may have as his own, as truly satisfies the condition of the problem, — which is Job feeling him- self to be simply a man, — as a Redeemer whom every man has, or who is in every man. The fact true for himself is true for his race, — equally in either view. A Redeemer liveth who is mine, and whom every man as well as I may have as his, — this is language which does not isolate Job one whit more than his being understood to say; — a Redeemer liveth who is mine, and whom every man as well as I, whether he knows and believes it or not, actually has as his. The author assumes, without proof, that if Job is not to be regarded " as a man unlike other men," but as " feeling himself simply to be a man," — every man, merely in virtue of his being a man, must have the living Redeemer as his ; — not in right but in fact — not de jure but de facto ; — exactly as he was Job's, at the crisis of his experience at which he said — ' I know that my Redeemer liveth.' It is this unproved assump- tion which really lies at the root of the author's doctrine that Christ is in every man. EXPLANATION OF THE MANY SONS OF GOD. 167 He advances now a step. Upon the man to whose " innermost heart and spirit God himself is discovering his righteousness as well as his sin, — the avenger as well as the oppressor," — " the question forces itself ; Is this Redeemer," — that is, the righteousness of the man, the avenger, — " so closely connected with the human sufferer, not connected also with that divine instructor who answered him out of the whirlwind ? Was this righteousness which Job perceived, not the righteousness of God himself? Was he as widely separated from his creature as ever ? Was there no meaning in the asser- tion that one was the image of the other?" (P. 83.) The Redeemer, the righteousness, the avenger, must therefore be connected with God as closely as he is con- nected with the human sufferer ; otherwise " the sense of separation from him, — the longing to plead with him," — which Job felt, is not met. The " cry for a daysman between them " is not heard. In this instinct or experience the author finds the " explanation of those many sons of God of whom he has been speaking." He regards this as " the radical and universal experience " which " interprets those superficial and partial ones." First, " Job could not think of this daysman, near as he was to his veiy being, except as one who had come to him, — who had stooped to him, — who belonged to a world of mystery." Secondly, " Job could not think of him except as related to the in- visible Lord of all." Thirdly, " Job's most intimate con- 168 ANALYSIS AND PEODUCT OF EXPERIENCE. viction was, that lie was related to himself." These are the three conditions of the mythological sons of God. They are realised here ; and without " the causes which make those dreams of demigods and heroic men local, temporary, artificial." For, in the first place, " it is from the one being, the Lord of the spirit of all flesh, that this Son of God must have come." Next, " he must be spiritual, like that Being ; for it is the spirit and not the sense of the sufierer which confesses him." And then, " whatever righteousness and goodness are perceived by the erring, trusting, broken-hearted penitent to be in the one, — speaking to his son'ows and wants, — must be the image and reflex of an absolute righteousness and grace in the other, which he could only adore." (P. 84.) This is the author's analysis of human experience ; and this the product. He now reverses the process. He deduces firom Chris- tian theology, especially firom the writings of the Apostle John, a Son of God, — an only-begotten Son, — to be identified with the Son of God discovered or developed in the experience which he has described. But before entering upon his synthesis, or process of deduction, it is necessary to ask, to what do his analysis and its product amount ? Before I judge how far the Son of God concerning whom the Apostle John writes, is to be recognised as the Son of God whom the author has found in the instincts of humanity, — I must be allowed to ask, — who and what is the Son of God developed or BANKRUPT AND GUILTY. 169 discovered by this last method ? Does he meet my case ? Does he exhaust my experience ? Certainly not, — if I am " a bankrupt and guilty." You tell me first, that I must have a helper who comes from heaven, who is related to God in heaven as closely as he is related to me. You tell me also secondly, that this helper is the sense of righteousness, — the kind of protest against pain, — which sin and suffering call forth in me. And you tell me, moreover, that this helper is the Son of God, But what of my bankruptcy and my guilt ? Will any personification, — will any deification, — of my experience, while bankrupt and guilty, even if you make a Son of God, an only-begotten Son of God, out of it, — meet my case ? I say at once, No. I say tliat if I am to form any notion of the Son of God whom I need, and who alone can satisfy the demands of my conscience and heart, — he must not merely be one who represents my experience, and stands in a certain undefined connexion with God as well as with me. He must be one who comes to me, outside of me, directly from God ; not lapsing or gliding into me, but speaking to me ; and telling me how my debt is to be discharged and my guilt disposed of. That is the sort of helper whom, as a bankrupt and guilty," I yearn for. And I cannot easily believe that any other can be my helper, in that sense, but only one coming straight fi-om the bosom of the Father, — not coming through the circuitous channel of my subjective experience, but directly, as a living 170 SCEIPTURAL DEDUCTION. Person from a living Person, — entitled and authorised to tell me that he is the Son of God, and that he has his Father's commission to discharge my debt and expi- ate my guilt. As a bankrupt and guilty, I can accept no helper from within me as sufficient, however authen- ticated from without and from above. I desiderate a helper who, altogether apart from his relation to me, can give me assui-ance of his relation to the Holy One, and his power on earth to forgive sins. But let the theological or Scriptural deduction, which is to fit into the experimental induction, be taken fairly and fully into account. The author disclaims, — what " many readers fancy," that " when we speak of a Person who is at once divine, and the ground of humanity, we must be assuming an incarnation." (P. 84.) What is meant by a divine Person being the ground of humanity, is not clear. According to the representation given in the previous Essays and in this one, it would seem to mean that all human experience of the right kind subsists in this divine Person, — that it is he in all men who originates that experience, — who is himself that experience. But at any rate, there is no reference as yet to an incarna- tion. " Christian theology does not speak of an incar- nation, imtil it has spoken of ' an only-begotten Son, begotten of his Father before all worlds, of one sub- stance with him.' " This article of the Creed, thus ex- pressed, is the author's starting-point now. ARTICLE IN THE CREED. 171 He laments that " these words, though in former times they were the strength and nourishment of con- fessors and martyrs, have come, in modern days, to be regarded as mere portions of a school divinity." " Learned men must maintain them by subtle arguments and an army of texts." " Ordinary men are to receive them im- plicitly, because it is dangerous to doubt them." But they " have no hold upon our common daily life, can be tested by no experience." Those who are busy with reli- gious feelings and states of mind will pass them by with indifference, as not concerning vital godliness." (P. 85.) This is a grave allegation, for which, however, there is no apparent ground except the author's fixed idea that to set about proving a doctrine directly out of Scriptvire is at once and ipso facto to make it a dry and arid dogma. But is it so ? I may happen to think that the truth concerning the Eedeemer's relation to the Father as his only-begotten Son is best ascertained, and indeed can only be ascertained, by the devout and intelligent study of the Bible; — that authentic information and a correct belief on this subject are to be obtained, not from the instincts and aspirations of man, — the experience of Job or any one else, — but from the written revelation of God. That may be my opinion. Acting upon it, I examine the scriptures of the Old and New Testament ; I compare passages ; and praying for the help of the Spirit who inspired them, I use my faculties of under- standing and reason, to the best of my ability, for in- 172 SCHOOL-DIVINITY. terpreting these passages, and gathering up the sum and substance of what, when fairly taken together, thej con- cur in teaching. Of course, if I am a mere sophist or Dryasdust, I may conduct the investigation with a chop- ping of logic and a marshalling of words and syllables worthy of Martinus Scriblerus himself. But there is nothing in the process itself to preclude the deepest personal earnestness. On the contrary, I engage in it believing that my highest interests are involved in the issue. And when the issue is actually reached, — when I rise from searching the Scriptures and weighing the scriptural evidence, — it is with a heart full of the dis- covery which God makes to me of the Son of his love. It is no idea of my own that I grasp as the image of what I think my Redeemer, and the Redeemer of men, must be. It is no mere idea of my own, verified, authen- ticated, reflected, in the Divine word. It is ' what eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man.' It is the unfolding of the Father's bosom, in which the Son has ever dwelt. Angels behold and worship. I too behold. I see the Son coming forth from the Father's bosom, to do the Father's will, to be my Redeemer from the curse of the law, the Redeemer of the lost ; and to give us the adoption of sons. Believing, I enter into his relation to the Father ; — and hearing him, as he prays at parting with his disciples, use words like these, — ' Thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me,' — I rejoice with trembling ; I stand in awe. OBLIGATION TO OBJECTORS. 173 This is no " school divinity," having no hold on com- mon life, which can be tested by no experience. If men busy with religious feelings and states of mind, pass it by, — or if men trying to spin an entire Christo- logy and Theology out of their own head or heart will have none of it, — I cannot part with it for any Christ in every man, the ground of humanity, who cannot be thought of except as related somehow to me and to the Invisible Lord of all. In the deep conviction of my heart, this is the essence of vital godliness. I thank the learned men who maintain it by arguments and texts, who enable me to receive it intelligently and defend it Scripturally. I thank above all the God and Father of my Lord Jesus Christ who by the power of his Spirit causes me to know — that he to whom my faith unites me is indeed the only-begotten Son of the Highest. But to return. The author looks with far more com- placency on objectors, in this instance, than on tlae ordinary run of advocates. " We owe it to them " " that these traths," the mysteries connected with the Sonship, " are compelled to come forth from amidst the cobwebs in which we have left them, to prove that they can bear the open day, and that they bring a more glorious sun- light with them, which may penetrate into all the ob- scurest caverns of human thoughts and fears." (P. 85.) The objectors are those who raise the question at the outset of this Essay ; — what is there in Christ the Son of God, beyond the universal idea of sons of God being 174 VULGAR EAllTH-BOKN NOTIONS. the deliverers of men? They scatter the " school- divinity" delusion; it is not very clearly stated how. The Apostle St John," however, being our guide, — we shall find" among other things, that the mysteries in question " can set us free from a host of vulgar earth- born notions and superstitions which we have adopted from the cloister or the crowd into our Christian dialect and practice ; that they can shew how the one funda- mental truth of God's love and charity makes all other facts, — those belonging to the most inward discipline of the heart, those concerning the most outward economy of the world, — sacred and luminous." (Pp. 85, 86.) It might be wrong to assume here that the ^' vulgar earth-bom notions and superstitions adopted from the cloister or the crowd," are the opinions commonly en- tertained respecting the necessity of an expiation of guilt, and the reconciliation of justice and mercy, — not in the divine mind but in the divine government, — as bearing upon the pardon of offenders, — the justification of the ungodly. The author does not say what those chimeras are from which we are to be set free. But he holds that, under the guidance of the Apostle John, we are to explain all human experience and all the divine government by the one truth of God's love and charity ; — and that, too, upon the ground of the " mysteries " connected with there being " an only-begotten Son, be- gotten of his Father before all worlds, of one substance with him." For himself, " he only sees at a great dis- JOHN VIII. 31-36. 175 tance" the much-desired consummation which he hopes and prays that others may be raised up to hasten. He gives, however, one illustration of " the relation in which a behef in the Son of God stands to that conciousness of bondage which is inseparable from a consciousness of sin." (P. 86.) The passage which he selects is that in which Christ reasons with the Jews on the subject of liberty. (John viii. 31-36.) He says that he would not quote it if he " traced in it any allusion to the behef of his incarnation, or to that passion which had not yet taken place." What- ever allusion there may be to one or both of these facts, the incarnation and the passion, our Lord's argument does undoubtedly turn upon a higher view than either. The essential relation of the Son to the Father is the ground of the appeal. You, who say that you are Abra- ham's children and were never in bondage to any man, commit sin, and are the servants of sin. Such is yom* position with reference to him by whom you have been overcome. And what is your position with reference to God, to whom originally you belong, and in whose house you have to make good your footing? You are servants, not children, in the house ; and the only stand- ing you can have in the house is the standing of servants. The servant, however, has no permanent standing in the house ; and especially if he becomes the servant of another master, he can claim no right to abide in his original 176 SERVANT IN THE HOUSE — SON IN THE HOUSE. master's family. But the Son lias a full title and firm footing. ' The servant abideth not in the house for ever ; but the Son abideth ever ; if the Son therefore make you free, you are free indeed.' Tv70 things are plain here, if words have any mean- ing. The first is, that it is the indefeasible right of the Son to abide in the house, — the house or family of God, — as being not a servant but the Son, — which fits him for being the emancipator. The second is, that the emancipation consists in his making the servants of sin, who cannot always abide in the house, partakers of his own right to abide in it for ever. It is a great truth, that to be made partakers of the Son's right to abide in the house for ever, is the only freedom. This is " the glorious liberty of the children of God." We then wage war with evil and the evil spirit, — " shaking off the yoke from om' wills," — strong in the belief that ' greater is he that is for us than all they that are against us,' — ' greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world.' The author's view of our Lord's teaching in this passage omits apparently these two thoughts. He dwells rather on the idea, that to recognise " a Son of God " actually ruling in the house, to whom the house belongs — " not to the poor slave who fancied it was his," — is om* redemption, om* freedom. The house, in that view, is man's nature — men themselves. " Over this house of theirs, not made with hands, there is a Son actually ruling, a Son of God." " To confess THE TRUE HERCULES. 177 the true Lord of it, to give up his own imaginary claim to it, which is submission to a real servitude," " to own that a Son, an actual Son of God is his Lord," — is the secret of freedom. " This is the true Hercules that takes Prometheus from his rock, and slays the vulture who is preying upon him," (P. 88.) Now what there is in the owning of a Son, an actual Son of God, — as Lord of the house. Lord of me, — to disenthrall my will and make me free, I cannot, if I follow the author's order of thought upon this subject, understand. I can understand it better if I reverse that order ; and instead of rising from human experiences to a divine relation, begin with the divine relation, and bring it down to these human experiences. The Holy One himself tells me, what I never could have guessed otherwise, — what no instincts of mine nor the instincts embodied in all the mythologies could ever have sug- gested,— that he has a Son, — an only-begotten Son, — who has been with him, in his bosom, from everlasting. The Son comes forth, — I care not for the present whether in the flesh or not, — he is ever coming forth. And he also tells me what no instincts of mine or of any man could tell me ; — he tells me perhaps what these in- stincts mean, but what is far more important, he tells me of what will meet them. He tells me how his Father loveth him, and how his Father loveth me and every man. He tells me that he has authority from liis Father to deal with me and with every man for the settlement M 178 OWNING THE SON. of whatever claim or charge the Holy One has against me or against any man. He tells me also that he has power to renovate my nature and every man's nature. And to crown all, he tells me that he has overcome the evil spirit, and that neither I nor any man need be separated from his Father, or subject to the evil spirit, any longer. For the Son to tell me this, not as identifying himself with my instincts, or my instincts with himself, but as making a direct communication to me from his Father, — for the Son thus to tell me this, is to tell me what, if I believe it, makes me free indeed. And what, in reality, is the other view? I find in me an instinct, — or whatever else it may be called, — something, however, which does not acquiesce in sin and suffering, but is contrary to both. I recognise in that instinct a life, — a living person. He is near me, — in me, — my Redeemer. I feel that he must be from above, from heaven. I am certain that as he is connected with me, so he must be connected with the Holy One, the great Father. I own him as a Son — a true Son of God, — the Son. And I am fi-ee. At the very best this is only intensifying to the highest point, — to the measure of divinity itself, — a sense and a power already in me, — the sense of righteousness and the power of resistance. If any earnest men reach emancipation in that way, one would think that it must be through some such kind of xmavowed, and almost unconscious, faith as the author sometimes ascribes to the better class of Unitarians. THE POPULAR DOGMA. 179 It must he through their believing more than they them- selves consider that they believe, — through their ascrib- ing far more of a true and divine personality to the Son as being with the Father from etemityj and far more of a distinct, objective reality to the coming forth of the Son fi'om the bosom of the Father ever since time began, — than might appear to be imphed in their own state- ments and representations. That the contrast between these views is fairly stated, and the account of the author's theory correct, may appear from what he says when, after quoting the open- ing lines of " In Memoriam," he proposes to " look courageously " at what he calls " the popular dogma." That dogma, as he represents it, finds " certain gi-eat ideas floating in the vast ocean of traditions which the old world exhibits to us." And it holds that " the gospel appropriated some of these, and that we are to detect them and eliminate them from its own traditions." Probably the author means to refer to the common opinion that many of the wild fables in the old mytho- logies,— Trinities, Sons of God, Incarnations, Victims, and such like, — are corrupt traditional remains of the primaeval revelations before and after the Flood. That opinion it is not necessary to discuss. It might have some bearing on the author's previous analysis : it has little to do with his argument here. He disposes of it summarily. He states again in opposition to it his own view of " the great ideas floating " in that wide sea. 180 THE PROBLEM OF HUMANITY. They " demand," he says, " to be substantiated." " What we ask for," he adds, " is — not a system which shall put these ideas in their proper places, and so make them the subjects of our partial intellects, but — a revelation which shall shew us what they are, why we have these hints and intimations of them, what the eternal substances are which con-espond to them." The " popular dogma" certainly does not want the system he sets aside, any more than he himself wants it. But it does want something more than the author desiderates. It wants what will not merely substantiate the instincts of humanity, but satisfy their cravings. " We beseech the Father of lights, if he is the God of infinite charity we proclaim him to be, to tell us " — not " whether all our thoughts of freedom and truth have proceeded fi-om the father of lies," (p. 90) — but whether He has any communication to make to us, in and through his Son, which may fit into these thoughts, — bring the real economy of heaven to meet the real experience of earth, and so solve the problem of humanity. There is valuable matter in the closing portion of this Essay. How far the author is right in o-vvning so great an obligation to Unitarians, first for their assertion of the subordination of the Son, and secondly for their pro- test against idolatry, — it is not necessary to inquire. He succeeds in establishing, with not a little both of power and of pathos, a great truth, not often enough attended to. It is this : — that the creature, invested PROTEST AGAINST IDOLATRY. 181 with high and noble qualities, either truly or by the fond imagination of admirers, must always be drawing- men away from the Supreme, and leading them into virtual idolatry. The only security lies in the discovery that the ideal of humanity is the Son of God ; that the perfect human hero, swallowing up in himself all hero- worship, turns out to be one who is "of the same sub- stance with the Father." There is no answer to " the Straussians," with their appeal to the multitudinous " sons of God," who have left " their foot-prints on every different soil," all of them demanding a God, — either " an abstraction," or a " Father ; " — there is no " escape " from " the worship of ten thousand imaginary Buddhas and demigods ; " — unless it be in the brutish worship of Mammon, or in the acknowledgment of the Son of God, and the belief of what he tells us of him- self when he says, ' I and my Father are one.' Finally, the author asks the parties with whom he pleads, to consider " whether they can avoid the acknow- ledgment of fleshly beings made into gods, with all their infirmities and crimes, if they are not prepared to confess that there is an only-begotten Son of God, who has been made flesh." (Pp. 93-97.) Thus the question of Incarnation is raised. ESSAY VI.— THE INCAENATION. " The hearts of the people, as much in the East as 182 INCARNATION. in the "West, demanded incarnations." The sons of God among the Greeks were real flesh and blood. The Orientals rather dealt in emanations, shrinking from the contact with flesh and blood. The Jews were familiar with angels or sons of God, " persons, not abstractions," " conversing with human beings as if they were of the same kind ; " — and yet not embodied or incarnate. Spiritual themselves, they " leave in us a strong impres- sion of spirituality," making us feel that we must be spiritual also. " One higher Angel," in particular, " one Son of God," they had " no difficulty in acknow- ledging," " above all the rest." " The formal Scribes," indeed, might expect merely the coming of a great king and Messiah." But there were those who per- ceived this divine Person, — " this mysterious Teacher," — " tracing him through their Scriptures," — " not con- fining his illuminations to the wise of their own land," but yet believing " that the law and the prophets inter- preted his relation to God and to the souls of men as no other books did, and that their nation was chosen to be an especial witness of his presence." (Pp. 98-100.) But all combined against the true Incarnation. " The chief struggle of all minds in the first centuries after the Church had established itself in the world, was against this belief, — I say emphatically and deliberately, in all minds." So the author puts the case. And after a brief allusion to the different aspects of the Gnostic controversy, he resolves the general offence taken, " when KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 183 the voice went from a band of despised men, ' the Word, or the Son of God, has been made Jlesh, and dwelt among m,^ ^' — into three maxims common to all the objecting " schools." " They held, first, that it was possible to know God without an incarnation ; secondly, that it is not right or possible, that a perfectly good being should be tempted as men are tempted ; thirdly, that all we have to look for is a dehverer of some choice spirits out of the corruption and ruin of humanity, not a deliverer of man liimself, of his spirit, his soul and his body." (Pp. 100-102.) The author vindicates the Incarnation by " reversing these propositions." In the reverse of these three pro- positions he finds " the convictions which have sustained the general creed of the Chm-ch." " First, we accept the fact of the Incarnation because we feel that it is im- possible to know the absolute and invisible God, as man needs to know him, and craves to know him, without an incarnation." Thus the first proposition is broadly enough reversed. But the question occurs, — is the pro- position, thus reversed, to be accepted as universal ? Are there no other intelligent beings besides men who need to know God ? Is it universally true that in order to the Creator being known by his creatm-es, there must be on the part of the Creator an assumption of the nature of the creature ? Or if this is a necessity of the human family alone, in what peculiarity of the human family does it take its rise? And what is the explanation of 184 INCARNATION NECESSARY. the peculiarity? Apparently the author does mean to restrict the proposition to the race of man, " It is im- possible," he says, " to know God, as man needs and craves to know him, without an incarnation." But then, how is this ? Is it because man has brought him- self into a position in which no knowledge of God can be of avail to him without an incarnation? Then, there must be something in his position which an incar- nation meets, and which an incarnation alone can meet. The Incarnation thus becomes, not a mode of revealing, but a fact revealed. The inquiry now suggested is not irrelevant or im- pertinent. Is the assumption by the Creator of the nature of the creatm-e, an essential condition of the creature's knowledge of the Creator? Then, in that case, incarnation is a mode of revelation to man, — ^just as angelisation, or whatever else the assumption of the angelic natiu-e might be called, would on that supposition be the mode of revelation to angels. On the other hand, is the assumption of human nature by the Son of God an act of condescension rendered necessary' by some peculi- arity of the human race which makes it impossible for them otherwise to know God ? In that case, the Incar- nation can be the means of om' knowing God, only because it removes that peculiarity, whatever it is. If the peculiarity is in us, personally, — if it attaches to our nature, — it is hard to see how any presentation to us of God, even in the Word made flesh, can rid us of that. CHRIST REVEALS THE FATHER. 185 If, on the other hand, the peculiarity lies in our relation to what is outside of us, — to God, — then there must be a readjustment of that relation. And it must be as a step towards such a readjustment, or as effecting it, that the Incarnation contributes to our knowledge of God. Let it be observed, however, that the question. Whether God can be known, or ever is known, by any order of intelligences, otherwise than through the Son, is not the question here raised. Nor is there any controversy about the benefit which we have in knowing God as ex- hibited to us in the person of one who shares our nature. Let the Lord's own declaration be thankfully received ; — ' Whosoever hath seen me hath seen the Father.' Still the inquiry must be pressed, — Wherein consists the impossibility of our knowing God, as we need and crave to know him, without an incarnation ? — and how does the Incarnation remove that impossibility ? The author seems to put the matter thus. We find in human beings qualities of goodness, an element or sense of truth, and certain family relationships. Men are gentle or brave. They are friends, brothers, fathers. They have a glimpse of a truth beyond their life and death for which they can suffer and die. " Are all these facts and feelings delusions?" "No. It has pleased the Father to shew us what he is." And it has pleased him to shew us this in a Man who says that he comes from the Father ; — and who in himself, — in his manifest fulness of grace and truth, and in his ascribing all the 186 THE ONE SHRINE OF THE HOLIEST. glory that shines in him to the Father, — gives evidence sufScient to establish his claim to be believed. Thus all divine perfections are concentrated, and become apparent, in this Man, who satisfies the craving we have for a real ground of the good, the affectionate, the true, as discovered among our fellow-men, and who at the same time ' seeks not his own glory but his glory that sent him.' In accordance with the author's view, it is not difficult to see, in the first place, how this Man must be the type and representative, not of what distinguishes men from one another, but of what man universally is ; — so that not a throne, or a palace, or any singular career, must be his, but a manger for his birth, and what all may recognise as the common lot for his life. Nor is it difficult to see, secondly, how he must be not " a shrine of the Holiest " but the One ; " — how " the glory of God," instead of being diffused through many images, " must be con- centrated in one." " That it may be diffused through many, it must be concentrated in one." (P. 108.) It might be unfair to say that this is really nothing more than the manufacture of a human image or repre- sentation of the Holiest, out of whatever goodness, or truth, or love, may be observed in the excellent of the earth. The author does not think so ; but the thought may occur to others. A man is found who combines in himself perfectly all human excellency ; he gives all the glory of that excellency to God ; and he declares himself to be the Son of God, sent to reveal his Father. TEMPTATION. 187 Is there anything here beyond a model man, in whom the glory of God, or his moral image, which shines in a fragmentary way throughout the human race, is con- centrated and revealed ? The author deals with a second objection to the In- carnation, urged by those who say, — " It destroys the idea of a Son of God to suppose him in contact with the temptations of ordinary men." (P. 109.) This proposition, also, he reverses. Now if the author here, or in the previous essay to which he refers (Essay Third), recognised fairly these two elements of evil, — natural corruption and Satanic temptation, — as distinct from one another, however the one may act upon the other, — his treatment of the objec- tion which he is now discussing would on the whole be good. He says well, of the " actual trial " in which the superiority of righteousness over " an actual " evil spirit is to be tested and ascertained ; — " If we suppose that the Son of God had any advantage in that trial, any power save that which came from simple trust in his Father, from the refusal to make or prove himself his Son instead of depending on his word and pledge, we shall not feel that a real victory has been won." But then he adds immediately ; — " Thence will come (alas ! have come) the consequences of supposing our flesh to be accm-sed in itself, our bodies or our souls to be subject to a necessary evil, and not to be holy creatures of God, made for all good." (P. 111.) Of course, this 188 HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. cannot on any account be admitted to be a fair antithesis. The author, with all his repudiation of logical accuracy, can scarcely believe that it is. Our bodies and our souls may be, and are, holy creatures of God, made for all good. And yet they may be, and are, in conse- quence of the Fall, subject to a necessary evil. The author himself admits that they are subject to the neces- sary evil of a conflict with the evil spirit. Is this con- sistent with their being holy creatures of God, made for all good ? If it be, how can it be inconsistent with their being so, to hold, besides, that they are subject to the necessary evil of corruption in themselves, and of liability to the curse or condemnation of God ? But the main point is this. So far as temptation from without is concerned, — such temptation as Adam in innocency had to meet, — it is most important to remem- ber that our Lord did not take advantage of any power or privilege belonging to him as the Son, but relied, as other men must do, on the promises and on the Spirit of God. The question, however, remains — Was his flesh like that of other men in all respects? Was he, in soul and body, altogether like other men? Are they guilty and corrupt by nature, — as they come into this world and live in this world, before they undergo the new birth, whatever that may be ? Was he thus guilty and corrupt ? The author does not say that he was. He certainly holds the reverse. But just as certainly he holds that there is no subjection to evil in men MANNER OF CHEIST'S BIRTH, 189 generally, at all essentially different from that trial of strength with the evil spirit, in which, as he rightly says, the Son of God had not " any power save that which came from simple trust in his Father." The truth is, the author evades the difficulty, — which is, not to conceive of a Son of God, or the Son of God, contending with an evil power, — but to admit that his holy divine natm^e can have united to it om* human na- ture, as that nature has exhibited itself in all the speci- mens of it which have existed since the Fall. Is the miracle of our Lord's birth a reality ? And if so, what is its meaning? It may be gravely doubted how far Unitarians, or any others, can accept the author's ac- count of the Incarnation, without knowing more of what he holds on the subject of the change which om- human nature experienced when sin entered into the world, and also on the question whether the human natm-e of the Son of God was, or was not, in all respects the same as our human nature since then has been. The question just put — Is the miracle of our Lord's birth a reality? — is at least a natm-al one when the Incarnation is the subject under consideration ; and the omission of all notice of it in an essay on that subject, must appear strange to ordinary theological readers. In a subsequent essay, when he is closing his discussion of the person and work of the Eedeemer, the autlior partly explains the omission. " Respecting the Con- ception, I have been purposely silent; not because I 190 BIRTH OF CHRIST MIRACULOUS. have any doubt about that article or am indifFerent to it, but because I beheve that the word miraculous, which we ordinarily connect with it, suggests an untrue meaning." " The simple language of the Evangelists," he adds, " offers itself as the only natural and rational account of the method by which the eternal Son of Grod could have taken human flesh." (P. 313.) For the fuller expression of his thoughts on this subject, he sends us to his sermon " on marriage," in " The Church a Family ; " in which, speaking of " the received doctrine respecting the way in which the Son of God became man," as " the simplest that we could adopt," he gives this as the reason : "Any other contains something which shocks the heart and conscience, something which limits the imiversal Man to narrow, partial conditions, something which interferes with the full and clear recognition of him as the only-begotten of the Father." (P. 97.) The author is speaking, in that sermon, of the manner of our Lord's birth, chiefly in connexion with the institu- tions of domestic and social life. Any allusion to it in these Essays must have had a more general re- ference to the quality or character of the " human flesh," or human nature, which he " took." Was it in all respects the same as ours since the Fall has been? Was he, as to his manhood, altogether such as we are ? Or did the manner of his birth secure an exemption, — an immunity, — from guilt and corruption, which does not belong to us ? The author's vague phraseology may CHRIST SEPARATE FROM SINNERS. 191 be allowed to pass, because no one would choose to discuss in detail such questions as he suggests. The ordinary theological doctrine, however, that the birth of the Son of God was miraculous, and that it was miracu- lous because its being so was the necessary condition of his becoming man, true and very man, — and yet be- coming man, free from all that taint of criminality and pollution which is the common inheritance of Adam's race ; this doctrine, as a doctrine revealed in Scripture, will explain the recorded historical fact at least as well as any a priori idea of what might be the mode of incarnation most worthy of the eternal Son of God, and most fitted to constitute him the universal Man. The understanding, the conscience, the heart of man, — of any man of sound sense and right feeling, — of the man who most thoroughly enters into the author's vivid representations of sin, and the plague of self, and the sense of bondage ; unsophisticated human nature in short, may be allowed to say, how far a Son of God, ever so in- timately revealed as in me, and ever so manifestly em- bodied or incarnate before me, can really meet my case and be my Redeemer, — if his consenting to be one with me, and to make common cause with me, implies his being originally, in his manhood, no better than I am. And it matters little whether you tell me, as to this common manhood, — that he is, as I am, fallen ; — or that I am, as he is, unfallen. In the one case, you out- rage my veneration; in the other, my consciousness. 192 THIRD GNOSTICAL REFINEMENT. Even " a strong Son of God," becoming tlie man I feel myself to be, guilty, corrupt, and frail, cannot be accepted as my Redeemer. 3. The third gnostical refinement with which the author deals is the " belief that Christ descended from some pure and ethereal world, to save certain elect souls from the pollutions of the flesh and the death which was consequent upon them : not to save the human race ; above all not to save that which was designated as the poor, ignoble, accursed body." The refutation of this refinement he discovers in our Lord's addressing himself, not to select companies, but to multitudes of all classes, even the lowest ; in his care also for the bodies of men, and his manner of dealing with "pain, disease, death," — which he treated " not as portions of a divine scheme, but as proofs that it has been violated ; as witnesses of the presence of a destroyer, who is to be resisted and cast out." (P. 112.) This is a right protest " against all persons who, on any grounds whatever, religious or philosophical, are maintaining an exclusive position, striving to separate themselves firom other human beings, or wishing to dis- parage animal existence as the only way of exalting that which is intellectual or spiritual." (P. 113). Undoubt- edly Christ, as man, possesses the human natm-e, not as peculiar to some, but as common to all ; and he possesses that nature entire. Its animal life, not less than its intellectual and spiritual life, was and is his. To iso- CHRIST OUR BROTHER. 193 late ourselves from other men, or to undervalue tlie body, is practically to deny the incarnation of the Son of God. So far the author is in harmony with all sound divines. And it is a service rendered to the cause of truth, as well as to many struggling men in the battle of life, when any competent person, such as this author, illus- trates, as he can so well illustrate, the aspect which the incarnation of the Son of God — his true and proper manhood — has towards humanity in general j towards all human fellowships and relationships ; towards all the toils and trials of human life ; towards all members of the human family. It may be admitted that this fact or doctrine, — the assumption of our nature by the Son of God, — has sometimes been viewed by divines and exhibited by preachers, too much as if it were merely a means to an end, — a step in the work of redemption ; and that in consequence of this, its significance and value, considered simply in itself, may have been unintentionally somewhat overlooked. There is always danger lest we substitute a thing, a transaction, a plan, or whatever it may be called, instead of a real and living person, as the object of our habitual confidence and contemplation ; and he who calls us from the mere belief of a system, to living communion with the Divine Man, deserves our thanks. Probably, a candid observer of modern evangelical min- istrations would allow that the person of the Saviour is very prominently brought forward, and that he is earnestly commended to the loving embrace of his disciples • while N 194 Christ's manhood cues. pains are also taken to shew, how the mere fact of his becoming man stamps a certain character of sacredness on human natm-e, wherever it is found and in whatever circumstances ; how it elevates and hallows all human ex- perience ; how it invests every human being with a value which his fellow men cannot estimate enough. By all means, however, let more be done in this direction. Let all such considerations be urged as are fitted to break down barriers of separation, to quicken our sense of re- sponsibility in our dealings with one another, and to put an end to the unseemly divorce of the religious from the common life. If the author will labour on in that vocation, every right-minded and right-hearted Chris- tian will bid him God-speed, But at the same time, it is not necessary for such a practical use of it, and it is not possible in a theological point of view, to isolate the doctrine of the Incarnation. It must be considered in connexion with two other doctrines at least, — the one, the doctrine concerning the nature of man since the Fall, and the other, the doctrine concerning the nature of the imdertaking for which the Son of God was born into this world. And in the end it will be found, that when it is so represented as to be consistent both with the belief of fallen man's depravity and gTiilt, and with the belief of a real vicarious sacrifice of propitiation, — the Incarnation, — the manhood of our blessed Lord, — becomes only the more valuable, and the more universally available for all the purposes of man's life, — personal, social, spiritual, and Christ's manhood sinless. 195 divine. It is because the author's representation of it does not appear to be consistent with right and scriptu- ral ideas of the Fall and the Atonement, that a further examination of this Essay is indispensable. The author speaks of " theology making its appeal to the gi-eat human heart ; " and of " the witness which that has found for the gospel and for the fact of an incarnation," in those very passages which might be ^' offensive " to certain classes of religionists. They might be offensive, as implying almost too close a contact of what is divine with what is human, even in " the lowest types of the race," as well as in the mere " animal natm^e and animal wants " of the man. Certainly, the humanity of Christ connects him, and it may be said, identifies him, with our humanity, throughout all its range and in all its parts. The author, however, evidently holds that the Incarnation has, by itself alone, accomplished all that our humanity requires for its emancipation. " ' The Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil ;'' this is St John's summary of the whole matter." But how does the incarnate Son defeat the devil ? First, by " revealing the Father, destroying in human flesh the great calumny of the devil that man has not a Fa- ther in heaven ; " secondly, by " submitting to tempta- tions, and so proving in human flesh that man is not the subject and thraU of the tempter ; " and thirdly, by afiirming, for man's entire deliverance out of bondage, that his own humanity is the standard of that which 196 CALL TO EEPENTANCE. eacli man bears, and is that to whicli man shall be raised." (Pp. 113, 114.) In connexion with this view of redemption, the author remarks that " when the Son of God was to be manifested to men," a prophet came, " not to argue and prove the probability of an incarnation," but to preach, " saying, ' Sejjoitj fm- tlie kingdom of Heaven is at hand.'' " Such a call to repentance, he says well, is " the true way of bringing evidence for any of the articles of Christian theology." He urges its importance, accordingly, in connexion with the article now under consideration ; earnestly desiring to carry Unitarians as well as others along with him. And then he resumes the subject of the Baptist's preaching, taking it as it is recorded in the gospel by John. " When St John explains the object of the Baptist's mission, he does not use the language of the other evangelists. He says, ' He came to hear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.^ This is not a mere equivalent for the words, ' Repent, for the hingdom of Heaven is at hand ; ' but it gives the inner- most force of them." And that " innermost force," — " taking away the vagueness " of the mere call to repent, — seems to amount, according to the author, to something like this ; " There is a light within you, close to you. Oh, turn to it." — Is it " my conscience ? " — " Call it that, or what you please ; but in God's name, my friend, do not cheat yourself with a phrase. I mean a reality ; I mean that which has to do with your innermost being ; MYSTICISM. 197 I mean something wliicli does not proceed from you or belong to you ; but which is there, searching you and judging you. Nay ! stay a moment. I mean that this light comes from a Person, — fr'om the King and Lord of your heart and spirit, — from the Word, — the Son of God. When I say, Repent ; I say. Turn and confess his presence. You have always had it with you. You have been unmindful of it." (Pp. 113-117.) The author anticipates, here, that not only Unitarians, but good orthodox souls, may be startled, and cries of " Mysticism," and so forth, may be heard on all sides. He may be at ease on that score. Sometimes, indeed, his vague idealism might bring to recollection " the lore of the Alexandrian fathers," — or " Ffedlon, Madame Guion, Jacob Bohme, &c. ;" and sometimes also it suggests the reflection that the reveries of such dreamers as Irving, and the birth-throes of such pregnant thinkers as Coleridge, may be the sources of the author's theologi- cal speculations. But the hard fate that ties him to the Unitarian stake keeps him always within the range of terrestrial attraction. If he is chargeable with mysticism at all, it certainly has more in it of what is allied to the prosaic subtlety of modern rationalism, than of anything resembling either Alexandrian lore, or the enthusiastic rapture of the quietists. At any rate, he may brave the reproach of mysticism, boldly and with a safe conscience. How far he can separate himself as easily from the colder creed, — whether of the Friends, or of the Materialists, — 198 GOD MANIFEST IN THE FLESH. which would resolve all revelation into inward experience, and identify Christ the Redeemer with conscience or the light within, — is another matter altogether. Mysticism apart, then, — and the author provokes this sally, — let his manner of following up the call to repentance, based upon an appeal to the inward light, be carefully observed. Not only " Unitarians," but " many among us," are "bewildered by the proposition, ' Christ took flesh.'' What Christ ? they would ask, if they were not withheld by some fear. Is not Jesus of Nazareth the Christ ? " Surely this is an excess of timidity. The proposition, ' Christ took flesh,' has no particular sacredness attached to it, and is, in fact, by no means very defensible. It is a convenient stepping-stone, however, for the author. He finds that the " difficulty " which it occasions " is not relieved, but increased, by the emphasis with which divines, here and in Germany, are dwelling on the words, * God manifest in theflesh.^ " Not that " these divines " put on their " spectacles " to examine the " 0," with or without the line, "in the Epistle to Timothy;" but " they take these words as expressing the very sense of the Gospel." So also does the author. But, having an eye to " Unitarian difficulties," he sees a danger, lest — " setting forth the manifestation," and not sufficiently " declaring who is the manifester " — we " lead people to suppose that the Image of the Holy One had no reality till it was presented through a human body to GOD ALWAYS KNOWN THROUGH THE SON. 199 men, or at least, that till then, this Image had no relation to the creature who is said in Scripture to be formed in it." We thus, it seems, cut off " the Old Testament economy" from the revelation of the Son of God." And " what is worse still, by this means the heart and conscience of human beings become separated from that revelation. It stands outside, as if it were presented to the eye, not to them ; as if those who saw Christ in the flesh must really have known him for that reason, whereas every sentence of the Gospels is telling us that they did not." (P. 119, 120.) Here is confusion worse confounded ! We seem to teach, either first, that the Holy One had no image of himself before the Incarnation ; or secondly, that before that event, the Son who is ' the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his person ' had no rela- tion to man and no dealings with man; hence thhdly, that he is not in the Old Testament economy ; and fomihly, that to see him in the flesh, with the bodily eye, was enough to insure a real and saving knowledge of him. Such ghosts are raised out of one imaginary text, ' Christ took Jksh^ and one real one, ' God manifest in thefiesliU For calming weak minds, it may be enough to say that those who represent the incarnation of the Son of God as the manifestation of God in the flesh, always strenuously assert these two things : On the one hand, whatever knowledge of God man has had from the begin- ning has been through the Son, the Word, the Image of 200 INWAED ILLUMINATION BY THE SPIRIT, the Father, who has ever been in the world, — the light, and the life of men ; on the other hand, no mani- festation of Christ, or of God in Christ, from with- out,— whether it be in his personal presence or in the preaching of his gospel, — can give a real knowledge of him without the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit. That, however, is no reason why we should confound or identify what Christ reveals to us, what is revealed to us in Christ, or by and through Christ, before his incarnation and since, with the light in every man, Christ in every man. It is a mere artifice of controversy to represent any party as holding, that to have seen Christ in the flesh with the bodily eye was equivalent to really know- ing him. And it is a strange one-sided explanation of the difficulty which the author conjures up, when he makes the Incarnation, which, at the beginning of the Essay, was the only means of our knowing God as we need and crave to know him, nothing more after all than the exhibition or realization, for once, in a perfect man, of what every man may find in himself ; — and to all appearance might equally well have found, if there had been no promise of the woman's Seed at the first, and no fulfilment of the promise in the fulness of the time. Of course, the author does not abandon his first propo- sition. On the contrary, after again appealing to " the method of St John," in the preface to his Gospel, as " far more scientific, and also far more human and practical," than what he has been denouncing, he fixes CHRIST ENTERING INTO OUR TEMPTATIONS. 201 the Unitarian in a kind of dilemma. Either own the Son, as he appeared on earth, to be ' of one substance with the Father,' or else you will assuredly, however you may talk about " omnipotence or omnipresence," " honour the Son, not as you honoux the Father, but above him." (Pp. 120-122.) You cannot help it ; for what you see of God in Christ approves itself to you as more godlike than any vague and abstract notions you can form of Deity apart from Christ. This is a view which sm^ely admits of, if it does not require, a separation of two things which the author is always blending into one ; the light to men and the light in men. The Son of God, as the Word, has ever been the revealer of the Father. He reveals him fully as the Word made flesh. He reveals him, however, to men, not in men. It is the special office of the Spnit, who has ever since the Fall been moving on the face of the chaotic human waters, to ' take of what is Christ's and shew it unto us ; ' to ' shine into our hearts and give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.' After a brief and emphatic appeal to the younger Unitarian," in connexion with his second proposition, — enforcing the practical importance of what he has said about " Christ entering into our temptations," (p. 122, 123,) — the author proposes to indulge in a mere argurnentum ad Jiominem,^^ by which he hopes " to make much of his third proposition in discom'sing with a Unitarian." 202 EXCLUSIONS EEPUDIATED. He appeals to Unitarians as " pledged, along with Arminian chiirclimen, to hostility against the Calvinisti- cal theory of election." They both " have complained of the Calvinist, partly for his exclusions, partly for his zeal in proclaiming the will of God as the sole cause of redemption and salvation." He proposes to "repudiate" the exclusions and to adopt the proclamation. What Calvinism proclaims is " as much presumed in the doctrine that God redeems mankind, as in the doctrine that he redeems certain elect souls," — he means persons, — " out of mankind." Does the author not see that this is a mere evasion ? Apart altogether from the doctrine of election, — the question is. What is the cause of one man believing and being saved, while another man refuses to believe and is condemned ? Is it his own will? Or is it the will of God putting forth divine power to move the will of the man ? Nor will it avail to distort and caricature the opinions of " those who consider themselves very moderate Calvinists," and to speak of " those favourite divisions of theirs which seem to make the ' believer ' something different from a man, and so to take from him the very truth which he has to believe." (Pp. 123-125.) Is the author jesting ? If I believe a truth in science which another man rejects, — does that make me different from a man, or take from me the very truth I have to believe? If I believe the author when he offers me a boon, and accordingly take the boon, — does that make EEAL HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 203 me something different from a man ? But this is trifling. The main point is, that, according to the author, it will not do "to denounce the exclusiveness of Calvinists," unless " Anglicans give up their exclusive- ness, and Unitarians of all schools give up their several exclusivenesses," and " we heartily and unfeignedly acknowledge that Christ, the Son of God, has taken the nature of every man. With that faith, when it has possessed our whole being, exclusiveness of any kind cannot dwell." (Pp. 123-125.) Now if this sentence means merely that Christ, the Son of God, has taken the nature common to all men, — or in other words, that real human nature which every man has, — it is true ; but it is not to the author's pur- pose : for it does not shut out the exclusivenesses which he repudiates, nor any one of them. If it is to do that which the author desires, it must be because it means something else than this, or something more. Does it mean that Christ, the Son of God, has taken the nature of every man, in the sense of his being the same to every man, — and continuing always the same to every man, — whether he believes or not ? If believing or not believing makes any difierence whatever between men, with reference to Christ, the Son of God in human nature, — or if any other thing makes a difference, — if recognising or not recognising the light within does so, — then what becomes of the doctrine that the Incarnation is a safeguard against all exclusiveness ? It can be so, 204 THE INCARNATION BANISHING HEATHENISM. only if it is understood as ipso facto , — or ex apere operato, — making Christ and every man one ; making them one — beyond the power either of the human will or the divine to cause any difference in that respect between man and man ; — miless indeed it come to this, that Christ is every man and every man is Christ. The author hints, in closing, that his view of the Incarnation may have the effect of banishing " all the dark and horrible thoughts respecting our Father in heaven, and our fellow-creatures on earth, which exist among us, and which we have adopted from heathenism." (P. 126.) What these are, will probably appear in the sequel. In the meantime, he suggests the inquiry, " whether the belief that Jesus Christ set forth in the gospels as the express image of God, and the image after which man is formed, has not been the secret of all that is confessedly high, pure, moral in our con- victions." Even here, should it not be " the image after which man was formed ? " At all events, with the author's theology, as already unfolded before us, — with the prospect also of finding that the theology with which he conti'asts his own is " at the root of all that is cruel in our doctrine, as well as of that which is most feeble and base in our practice," — it is necessary to hesitate. These concluding words of this Essay form a somewhat ominous prelude to the consideration of the doctrine of the Atonement. CHAPTEE IV. THE REMEDY PROVIDED— THE PERSON AND WORK OP THE REDEEMER. ESSAY VII.— ON THE ATONEMENT. The author disclaims " the so-called theology of con- sciousness." He does so, however, with three qualifica- tions. He " is anxious to observe all the experiences and consciousnesses which the history of the world bears witness of." He desires that " all these should be un- derstood, as they can only be understood, through the conscience of each man." And he " asks of theology that it should explain these consciousnesses, and clear and satisfy that individual conscience." There are, then, general consciousnesses " which the history of the world bears witness of." And there is an " individual con- science,"— " the conscience of each man." Theology must explain the consciousness ; and it must also clear and satisfy the conscience. But it seems, " a theology which is based upon consciousness, which is derived out of it, cannot fulfil these conditions." It cannot harmo- nise the consciousnesses and the conscience ; — the con- 206 CONSCIOUSNESSES — CONSCIENCE. sciousnesses witnessed by history, and tlie individual conscience of each man ; — as that conscience has been carried through sin, suffering, righteousness, a Kedeemer, a Son of God, an incarnation, — in the previous Essays. (Pp. 127, 128.) Four of the consciousnesses are specified : the consci- ousness of sin ; " " the consciousness of a tyrant and oppressor ; " " the consciousness of an advocate ; " " the conciousness that "we share our sin with our fellow-crea- tures, and that we are obnoxious to a punishment which belongs equally to them." (Pp. 128, 129.) This last consciousness ought to be equivalent to a consciousness of common guilt, and a common liability to retribution, on the part of each individual of the human race, own- ing a common character with all the rest. These fom" consciousnesses originate four theologies, or theological tendencies. The first, — the consciousness of sin, — suggests " a consciousness of consequences flowing from sin, — stretching into the furthest future." It raises the question, " Who shall sever the consequences from the cause? " It " suggests the thought that pain, suffering, misery, are especially the Creator's work ; " — he having linked the one to the other; — that they are therefore " the signs which denote his feelings towards his creatures." The second, the consciousness of a tyrant and oppressor, " leads to the supposition that he," the Creator, " is that tyrant and oppressor." The third, the consciousness of an advocate, " leads to the supposi- TPIEOLOGIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 207 tion that the advocate may be the instrument of deliver- ing us out of the hand of the Creator^ of saving us from the punishment which the Creator has appointed for transgression." While the fourth " leads to the reflec- tion, how can we pvit ourselves into a different position firom" that of om* fellow-creatures ? " how can we escape from the calamities with which God has threatened them?" (Pp. 128, 129.) How can we escape from the calamities with which God has threatened us? — would seem to he the more natural way of putting the question. But it serves a purpose to put it otherwise. " In each of these cases," the author adds, " a notion or maxim respecting theology is likely to be generalised from the consciousness, which will oppose and outrage the conscience.'''' And he " wishes the reader to observe" this. (P. 129.) It may well be observed: for is it not somewhat strange ? That there should be consciousnesses, — ori- ginal instincts of our being, — moral and spiritual senses, — from each of which " a notion or maxim is likely to be generalised " different from that wliich may be generalised from any of the others ; — and that all of these notions or maxims should " oppose and outrage conscience ; " this is sm'ely a startling view of human nature. No doubt it might be expected, if human nature is corrupt and man has fallen, — that man's best instincts or consciousnesses might be so perverted as to breed monsters from which the conscience must revolt; such 208 FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. monsters as the author brings together in fourfold array, to guard the threshold of his theory of the Atonement. But it will not do to marshal these products of the alleged consciousnesses of mankind before the conscience, and sue for an indiscriminate sentence against them. Let the products, in the meantime, be dismissed out of com-t. Let the conscience be asked to deal with the consciousnesses themselves, as ascertained to be genu- ine ; all perversions of them, or of their products, being set aside. And let an estimate be made as to the fair value of each apart, and of all together. The author institutes no such process. He does not pause to distinguish the precious from the vile, either in the consciousnesses themselves, or in the notions or maxims generalised from them. And yet his own summary, — his own analysis as now given, — may suggest a ground or basis for the doctrine of the Atone- ment which he himself altogether evades. Let these four facts in my experience be admitted to be real : — I feel that I do wrong and am wrong ; I feel that I am under bondage, and am not my own master, — not master of myself ; I feel that I should be delivered or emancipated, — that I ought to be, and somehow must be, different from wliat I am ; I feel that there lies upon me, in common with all men, guilt, criminality, con- demnation, liability to punishment. Now take these feelings, — or these facts, — as fairly representing my consciousness and that of every man. Take them in OBNOXIOUSNESS TO PUNISHMENT, 209 their true and full meaning. I am a wrong doer, a wrong thinker. I am in bondage to an evil spirit. I have that within me which demands a deliverer. And T have also that within me which tells me that, in common with all men, I am " obnoxious to punishment." In plain terms, I have not only consciousnesses, but a conscience ; for the consciousnesses coalesce in a conscience ; which, however, speaks more to the point, and more ' as one hav- ing authority,' than they can do. My conscience testifies that I am obnoxious to punishment. And my conscience also testifies that unless the deliverer is one who can deal with that feature of my case ; — who can meet and dispose of, — not the punishment to which I am obnoxious, — but my consciousness of being obnoxious to punish- ment ; — he cannot rescue me from my subjection to the tyranny of the evil spirit ; — he cannot make me a right doer, — a right thinker ; — in a word, he cannot make me a righteous and holy being, I cannot get out of this vice in which my conscious- nesses, as authenticated by my conscience, hold me fast. I may be told that if I dwell exclusively on my con- sciousness of sin, in connexion with its inevitable and inseparable consequence, suffering, — I may come to regard the suffering, if not also the sin, as an index of the Creator's feelings towards his creatures ; — perhaps even to cast the responsibility of both upon him ; — and so to originate a theology of fatalism, or something worse. I may be told that " the consciousness of a tyrant and o 210 VARIOUS THEOLOGIES. oppressor may lead to the supposition that he," the Creator, is that tyrant and oppressor ; " — which is the theology of Devil-worship. I may be told further of the temptation besetting me to look for an Advocate who shall " deliver me out of the hand of the Creator," and in that way " save me from the punishment" which he has appointed ; — a notion lying at the root of the theology of superstition. And to crown all, I may be told that because I feel this punishment to belong equally to me and to my fellow-creatures, I will be moved by that feel- ing to originate a theology of selfishness, and to ask how I may escape " from the calamities with which God has threatened them ; " — as if I were not one of them, — in the same condemnation with the very worst of them. But neither this last selfish theology, — nor the superstitious, — nor the Satanic, — nor that of fatalism, — fairly represents any one of these consciousnesses apart ; — far less the whole of them compactly joined together. Under the dark pressure of all the four, I go straight up to my con- science. I ask of that oracle what all this means. And the answer I get is, that I am an intelligent being who has sinned ; — that I am a criminal, — guilty, — ill-deserv- ing,— incapable of deserving better ; that I am under a just sentence, — condemned as the violator of an unalter- able Moral Law. True, I feel, most true. Now I have reached the ultimate explanation — the primary cause — of my nature's unnatural strife. Tell me how this consciousness is to GUILTLESSNESS — GUILELESSNESS. 211 be met, — how my craving for relief from my guilt and corruption is to be satisfied, — how I am to get rid of the feeling that I am a depraved and condemned man, — helplessly depraved, and righteously condemned. Tell me that, I say. For until you tell me that, you need not speak to me of escape from punishment, — or of an Advo- cate to plead for me, — or of an evil spirit overcome,— or even of sin yielding to an inward sense of righteous- ness, and pain to an inward resentment of wrong, — of a "strong Son of God" waging the very war which I have to wage, and a man like myself, yet perfect in the image of God. Most precious is all such assurance of my oneness with my Saviour and of his sympathy with me. But shew me first, I repeat, how I may be just with God, and how God may be just with me, — how he may be pure in receiving me, and I may be pure in returning to him. Then I will listen thankfully to what you have to shew me of these other things. Give me back my sense of guiltlessness and guilelessness, — or else you do not make me the man I was before I broke the law of my God ; the man I feel I would have been if I had not broken the law of my God, and had not been hardened in the breaking of it. This is the consciousness, or conscience, — call it what you will, — in which the root of the doctrine of the Atone- ment is to be found; and no man adequately discusses that doctrine unless he recognises this feeling far more unequivocally and explicitly than the author does. It 212 SELF-RESPECT — FEAR OF HELL. is real. And so far from its being relieved hj any mere discovery of the absolute love of God, — his love to us, — or by any advances which he may make to us through his Son becoming one of us, one with us, — it grows deeper and darker, — more intense than ever. Shew me that God does not hate, but loves his sinfril creatin-es, — and me among the rest, — the most sinful of them all. Shew me that he desires and deserves to be loved and tnisted, not suspected and feared. Shew me any amount what- ever of grace and condescension by which he seeks to win our confidence and destroy our tp-ant, and make our nature like his own. The more jow shew me all this, — the more, — if I have a spark of generous feeling in my bosom, — the more do you stir up in me, — in my inmost heart and soul, — an intolerance of the thought that I am guilty in the judgment of such a God, — guilty of violating his holy and good law. And I cannot rest until I see how that guiltiness in me is to be righteously got rid of. I cannot otherwise have that self-respect, without which 1 cannot respect Him. It is a libel on the common doctrine of the Atonement, — not that this author knowingly utters it, for apparently he does not know the doctrine itself, — but it is neverthe- less a foul libel on that doctrine, to say that it merely meets the vulgar dread of punishment, — the fear of hell, — which is ' the hangman's wliip, to keep the wretch in order.' That is met far more easily and successfully every day by the thousand presumptions of impunity SENSE OF CONDEMNATION. 213 and pleas for mercy in which men take comfortable refuge. It will be met more easily also by the doctrine which resolves the whole character and government of God into charity. What the Atonement really meets is a far higher, holier, deeper feeling in our moral natm'e ; — a feeling which, though too nearly dead in most men, yet speaks more or less in all ; — a feeling which, the more God is known to be love, and the more there is of ' truth in the inward parts,' only grows the more in- tense ; — the feeling of blame-worthiness, — the sense of being justly condemned. Tiie best theologies, overlook- ing this consciousness so much as the author's theology does, may refine and elevate the thoughtful mind. But it may be doubted if they can make the heart right with God, — as a child's heart is made right with his father, when his ofience is not connived at, but dealt with and disposed of And it must be deliberately said, that dis- owning,— or at least not owning, — what is perhaps the truest and best instinct of fallen man struggling to be free, — these theologies want the substance and body which alone can render any belief that stirs the con- science enduring, — and must soon therefore give place, either to the reveries of the mystics, or to the far lower but more practical discipline of a cold and superficial utilitarian morality. These remarks partly anticipate, although they do not exhaust, the matters of discussion suggested by the 214 PRIESTS OP CHRISTENDOM. remainder of this Essay ; and therefore the review of it may be less minute than it might otherwise have been. Having found that from each " consciousness^^'' as described by him, " a notion or maxim respecting theo- logy is likely to be generalised which will oppose and outrage the conscience,^'' — the author represents a man proceeding naturally on these "data," as "of necessity working out a system, on which he afterwards gazes with terror, from which he longs to break loose, which he charges priests and doctors with having created." No, the author replies, they did not quite create it. But they endorsed, and systematised, and embodied in rules and practice, the false, loose, morbid conceptions and cravings of the diseased heart; and sanctified as " faith, that which is grounded, in great part, upon fear and distrust." For this they are to be blamed, especially the Christian portion of them. " They have had an intuition of a higher truth," " which alone gave substance to the opinions with which they and their disciples disfigured it." " The priests of Christendom," in particular, " have a theology revealed from heaven, which perfectly satisfies the demands of the human heart;" which, among other recommendations of it, " presents such a God as the conscience witnesses there must be and is, not such a one as the understanding tries to shape out from its own reflections on the testimony of conscience." (P. 130.) CONSCIENCE — UNDERSTANDING. 215 There is, of com-se, a meaning in tliis contrast be- tween the conscience witnessing directly, and the con- science witnessing through the understanding. The " priests of Cliristendom " are represented as taking the idea of God on which they rest their theory of the Atonement, not immediately from what the conscience itself testifies, but as it were at second hand, from what the understanding manufactures out of its testimony. There is an impertinent interference of the understand- ing, professedly to interpret, but really to pervert, the evidence of the conscience. Why this jealousy of that humble functionary, — the understanding ? If a question arises as to the real import of what the conscience witnesses in any matter, how is it to be settled without some use of the understanding? The author thinks that a being of mere absolute love is such a God as the conscience witnesses that there is and must be. I may happen to be of opinion that this is not what conscience testifies at all, when it is questioned fairly, not through any medium, but directly, — that on the contraiy it testifies of law and government, of guilt and judgment, of sin and death, — that only a holy and righteous Ruler, dealing judicially with his responsible creatures, can be such a God as the conscience witnesses that there is and must be. I may be quite wilUng to submit the case between us to the arbitration of the understanding. But the author objects, and I am silenced. All I can do is to protest that I shall not be held as confessing that the 216 THE TESTING SUBJECT. deposition of the witness, according to my reading of it, is in the least degree more inferential and consti-uctive than the author's own statement of its import. And perhaps I may be allowed, as I retire from court, to suggest that this manifest distrust or dislike of the imderstauding, taken in connexion with a certain eager- ness already noticed to get rid of texts and narra- tives," affords an additional reason for receiving with considerable caution what the author may have to say, either on the subject of " an intuition of a higher truth," or on the subject of " a theology revealed from heaven." Having conjured up for the bewildered student or ^"ictim of " consciousnesses" and "conscience" a system on which he " gazes with horror ; — and having duly stigmatised " the priests of Christendom " as largely responsible for the system, and the most criminal of all its abettors ; — the author now " reaches the subject which is the test of all that he has been saying hitherto." He finds in the teaching of " the priests of Christendom," an ample apology at least, if not a justification, for " those who cry for a theology based upon consciousness, which shall supersede the theology of Christendom." These parties protest that " the doctrines respecting sacrifice and atonement which prevail in Christendom, among Protestants as well as Eomanists," are "doomed," " dead ; " that neither " texts of Scripture " can keep them unburied on the plain, nor " the verdict of centuries " galvanise them into artificial life ; that they CRUEL CONCEPTIONS RESPECTING GOD, 217 exist merely by tlie weight of authority, civil and ecclesiastical, and the prejudice of " a certain public opinion ; " that they darken the sense of right and wrong, bewilder the understanding, sanction the most false conceptions respecting sin, the most cruel con- ceptions respecting God ; " that " the conscience of human beings is in revolt against them." (Pp. 129- 131.) Such is their cry, such is their protest; with which the author now proceeds to deal, with a view to make out that the theology based on consciousness for which they cry, instead of being the fitting cure, is the real cause of the evil against which they protest. He admits that these notions may be imputed to Romanists and Protestants. With a vast show of candour, he confesses a want of courage on the part of himself and others " in saying whether they regard these as parts of their creed or not." He holds " that they are not parts of God's revelation, or of the old creeds, but belong to that theology of consciousness which modern enlightenment would substitute for the theology of the Bible and of the Church ; that their rise may be distinctly and historically traced to this source," and " that Christian theology, as expressed in the language of the Bible and of the Church, construed most simply, is a deliverance from these oppressive notions, and is the only one which has yet been or ever will be found." (Pp. 132, 133.) He proceeds to trace the notions in question historically 218 ROMANISM — LUTHER. to their source in the theology of consciousness. Of course he means the theology of consciousness as he has given an analysis of it in the beginning of the Essay. 1. He traces the usual account of the " growth of the Romish system." " Men who were stung with the recollection of evil acts, thought they might do some- thing to win the favour or avert the wrath of the Divine Being." Hence the conviction that they must make sacrifices, the greater the better, that their sins may be forgiven. They consult the priests. They accept in- dulgences and penances. They apply to popular con- fessors,— the saints, — the Virgin Mother to intercede with the Divine Son, that his infinite sacrifice might remove post-baptismal sins. (Pp. 133, 134.) 2. He sketches the experience of Luther and the manner of his deliverance. The sketch is very brief. What Luther believed respecting the Atonement, on the authority of the Bible, is given as simply this, " that the Son of God had taken away sin." His " conscience did not make a system. It protested against one which had been made in compliance with apparent necessities of the conscience. It said that the real necessity of the con- science was, that God should speak to it, declare himself to it, — should proclaim himself as its Reconciler, should shew how and in whom he had accomplished that work on its behalf." (P. 136.) It is not necessary at pre- sent to ask what this means — or how far it does justice to Luther's glorying in the cross of Christ. PERVERSION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT. 219 3. The material point comes now. The author says, " I admitted that there were grave and earnest doubts against much of what is called our doctrine of the Atonement." These doubts are thus expressed by the objector, who is represented dramatically as expostu- lating with " ?