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 BR 125 .H35 1891 
 Hamilton, Gail, 1833-1896 
 A Washington Bible class 
 
A WASHINGTON 
 BIBLE-CLASS 
 
 1BY 
 GAIL HAMILTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 i8qi 
 
COPYEIGHT, 1S90, 
 
 By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CnAPTEB PAGE 
 
 Introduction 1 
 
 I. — A Peeliminaey Skirmish 8 
 
 II. — The Real Genesis 25 
 
 III. — The King of Salem 64 
 
 IV. — The Institutes of Moses T9 
 
 V. — The Origin of Sacrifice 94 
 
 VI. — The New Testament Solvent of the Old Testa- 
 ment Sacrifices 122 
 
 VI r. — The Election of Paul and the Election of 
 
 Presbytery 148 
 
 VIII. — Spiritual Heat considered as a Mode of Motion . 173 
 
 IX. — The Sectarian Argument 209 
 
 X. — Inspiration 230 
 
 XI. — Oneness with Christ 270 
 
 XII. — Miracles 283 
 
A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS, 
 
 INTEODUCTIOK 
 
 Theology, always an interesting theme, is never more 
 interesting than in an intellectual center like Washing- 
 ton. As the basis, the interpretation, and the inspiration 
 of politics, theology is surveyed with a keener scrutiny 
 than in the more tranquil, the less strenuous spheres of 
 life. In an atmosphere of debate, theoretical errors are 
 promptly detected ; and men who are wont to reply, 
 listen to the argument of the pulpit with an alertness 
 born of the habit of replying, though they listen perforce 
 in silence. 
 
 A mother in Washington, high in the ranks of poli- 
 tics, fashion, and all the arts and graces of life, a mother 
 of growing sons, took counsel with other mothers like- 
 minded, as to what should be the religious teaching of 
 her boys. 
 
 Their clever, alert young minds absolutely rejected 
 sundry received doctrines ; nor could she enforce state- 
 ments which her own reason could buttress only with 
 authority. A mother of growing daughters, a lissome, 
 gladsome, winsome group, unburdened her soul of simi- 
 lar perplexities concerning their uprearing. Two young 
 girls, one just bounding into the gay, bright, fascinating 
 world of belledom, the other just looking out of it with 
 1 
 
2 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 happy, questioning eyes into a deeper and dearer world, 
 found in their beautiful, dutiful days, time and space 
 and thought for the most solemn problems of life, and 
 were forever seeking the eternal light. A perfect woman, 
 nobly planned, superb in her splendid prime, tranquil in 
 conscious power, moving on with no more sign of disturb- 
 ance or revolt than the shining moon curving through 
 cloudless skies, lifted by chance one day the curtain of 
 her thought and revealed a mind utterly at variance with 
 the tenets of the church whose service she attended and 
 whose creed in its institutions she upheld. Another, 
 rich in every gift that love and nature can lavish, never 
 wearied of blessing the world with sympathy, succor, and 
 the cheer of her gracious presence ; but for all spiritual 
 consolation toward herself could only say, with sweet but 
 final accent, '^ When I was in sore need, religion did not 
 help me " ; yet in every word and deed tested the truth 
 of Christ, ^^ Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of 
 the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto 
 me." On all sides the unquenchable thirst for God, the 
 free action of thought, were battling with ecclesiasticisra, 
 and would not be put off with authority or put off from 
 religion. 
 
 Then up spake a woman to whom theology is the 
 breath of life : '* Let us leave speculation to itself ; let us 
 cease to question error, and let us search for truth. The 
 Bible is the source of our formulated faith. Whether it 
 is authority or not, nothing else is authoritative. Let us 
 see, not what is Calvinism, or Lutherism, or Agnosticism, 
 or Catholicism, or Universalism, but what is Scripture ; 
 not what men say Scripture says and means, but what 
 Scripture itself means and says." 
 
 Thus the Lord gave the word to the Bible class. ' The 
 women, prepared to publish the tidings, were a gi'eat 
 host. The wife of the President, with highest interest in 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 highest things, was foremost in support. The wife of the 
 Secretary of State, ever hospitable to truth, proffered her 
 drawing-room for the study of the Holy Scriptures. But 
 before the class had formed itself for its first gathering, 
 a fleecy, filmy cloud, that had boded no evil in a sunny 
 sky, suddenly deepened and darkened with the thunder- 
 bolts of God. From the home which would have wel- 
 comed the Bible class, from' a home which had held four 
 and thirty years of unbroken family unity, a son of rare 
 promise, a daughter of tender love, 
 
 " Went pressing, almost hand in hand, 
 Too early to the unknown land," 
 
 and all the world was changed. 
 
 Sad days lengthened into sad weeks of heartache that 
 can cease only with heart-beat, the pain of an absence 
 that only presence can heal. With the ever-watchful tact 
 of sympathy, the wife of the Vice-President began to re- 
 vive the idea of the Bible class, and to insure it by fixing 
 its early date. The wife of the President promptly re- 
 newed her fealty, and remained a constant, suggestive, 
 enthusiastic student, commanding her children and her 
 household after her, not only in stimulating attendance 
 and attention, but in an always generous consideration. 
 Both houses of Congress, the circles of science, of litera- 
 ture, of education, of diplomacy, sent their delegates. 
 Presbyfcerianism, Congregationalism, Unitarianism, Epis- 
 copacy, were ably and amiably represented, and never 
 more agreeably than when, in Horatian phrase, beautiful 
 daughters came with their more beautiful mothers. The 
 English Church and the Greek Church bent to each other 
 with stately courtesy. The Quaker faith was there, robed 
 according to the last dainty imported touch of the chil- 
 dren of this world, but with all the gentle aspect and 
 saintly bearing of George Fox and the Whittiers, brother 
 and sister. Ignatius Loyola and Jonathan Edwards sat 
 
4. A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 side by side in French costume of faultless cut and won- 
 derful combination ; and the one bad danced no more 
 lightly or deeply into Saturday night than the other. 
 Young Radicalism found the texts for old Orthodoxy ; 
 and both smiled approval whenever the sword of the 
 Spirit slipped in between the loosened joints of Error's 
 gaping armor. All came together, not to advocate any 
 theory or repel any doctrine whatever, but to learn for 
 themselves what the Bible teaches. 
 
 From the beginning there was not wanting a man to 
 stand before the Lord ; but in the beginning he stood 
 alone. Just one man was present at the first assembling, 
 protecting and protected by his serene and lovely, but 
 resolute, young, keen-minded Presbyterian wife, and bore 
 himself so heroically amid the somewhat formidable femi- 
 nine host that one man more, a senator of the United 
 States, nerved himself to walk in erect and smiling, as if 
 brave, after the lesson was over, and patronizingly com- 
 ment, as he advanced, "I hear you have demolished the 
 Serpent and the Garden of Eden at the first bout. What 
 is the next objective point ? " But he never smiled again ! 
 As time went on, men crept in singly and in pairs, till, 
 numbers lending courage. Cabinet, clergy, press, diplo- 
 macy, science, literature, ** magnetism," came to be rep- 
 resented, not by their women only, but by men. So 
 mightily grew the word of God, and prevailed. 
 
 In the outset the idea of the Bible class was one of 
 common study, comparison of results, and general con- 
 ference, on a basis of equal and entire ignorance. But 
 the woman who had first suggested the mode of study, 
 and who by parliamentary courtesy was placed in the 
 chair as leader, speedily abused the position. The nov- 
 elty of being able to speak her mind bore down every in- 
 stinct of justice, till she completely monopolized the talk, 
 and, instead of seeking the views of others, spent the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 whole time in expounding her own. The natural grace 
 and modesty of her audience lent itself to this remorse- 
 less usurpation. The rights of woman were ruthlessly 
 sacrificed, freedom of speech was gradually abolished, and 
 intellectual despotism, routed from our political institu- 
 tions, found its final refuge and firna establishment in 
 this lay and female chair of theology in the capital of our 
 great republic. No man was allowed so much as to enter 
 the room until he had by contract forfeited his right of 
 discussion and promised to listen in silence, if not sub- 
 jection. Fear of each other was sufficient to hold the 
 women in check, for they dreaded nothing so much as to 
 be called on to give an opinion. The woman in the chair 
 was, like all tyrants, the most terrified of the whole 
 throng, and behind this autocracy, untempered by assas- 
 sination, strove only to conceal her desperate fear of being 
 questioned, and thus thrown off a track which she needed 
 all the courage at her command to hold. A steaming 
 samovar immediately following the Bible talk was the 
 signal for universal emancipation. The men were by that 
 time so thoroughly subjugated that they seldom had 
 spirit left for any expression but of accord, or at least ac- 
 quiescence. But the women were simply braced for bat- 
 tle, and clustered round the chairwoman with great heart- 
 someness — some to dispute her positions, others to carry 
 the fight further, and win even more advanced positions. 
 And, strange to say, the eldest mothers in Israel, the gen- 
 tle, sweet-faced, white-haired grandmothers, pressed fur- 
 thest to the front. No doubt was left of the intense in- 
 terest in theology. The silence of the audience during 
 the talk, and the melodious but' multifarious cadences of 
 the audience after the talk, were equally an inspiration. 
 
 In the beginning, one hour was announced as the du- 
 ration of the exercise, but at the end of the first hour the 
 audience met a movement of dismissal with rebellion. 
 
6 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 They filibustered after the straightforward fashion of 
 women. They said : **It is only half past four, and we 
 will not go." Then they sat still. They refused to 
 move. They confronted the cowardly chairwoman with 
 a steady, detiant gaze, till she was fain to take refuge in 
 talking on. She had her revenge by keeping no bounds 
 in subsequent meetings. She ostentatiously placed an 
 open watch on the table at the outset, and never con- 
 sulted it. She begs to announce modestly to her brother 
 clergymen that her only difficulty was to induce her con- 
 gregation to disperse when the sermon was over; that 
 she had to buy them off with the tea and cakes of the 
 Secretary of State ; and that, without any extraneous as- 
 sistance of diversion from music, or litany, or liturgy, or 
 even passing round the contribution-box, her congrega- 
 tion sat for an hour and a half of solid sermon, and 
 seemed always surprised, not to say indignant, that that 
 was all. 
 
 So profound is human interest in the quest of re- 
 ligious truth ! 
 
 When the sun lighted upon Washington with fervent 
 heat, the wise chairwoman determined to bring the Bible 
 class to a close while yet their ardor seemed unabated, 
 and the keenness of their search for truth not dulled by 
 infelicity in its conduct. Before, however, the Bible 
 class went its summer ways to the ends of the earth, its 
 members made a united and formal request for the manu- 
 scrii')t notes : 
 
 **We have followed with deep interest during the 
 past winter the results of your studies and meditations 
 on several subjects bearing upon the spiritual welfare of 
 humanity. We have continually felt a desire to examine 
 more carefully the views that you placed so forcibly and 
 so rapidly before us, and to possess them in the form of 
 a more permanent record. In order to satisfy this desire, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 and to enable us to share with our friends who could not 
 be j)resent the pleasure and instruction that you have 
 afforded us, may we now beg of you a copy of your manu- 
 script notes that we may haye them printed ? " 
 
 The chairwoman pleads no false modesty. Constant- 
 ly and unconsciously forming theological yiews, she finds 
 nothing so satisfactory as sharing them with the whole 
 world, and thus gathering to her own the illumination 
 of other minds. The Sundays which she spent with her 
 Bible class she has no hesitation in saying were the hap- 
 piest and most inspiring Sundays of her life. The Bible 
 class but asked her to do what only a sense of propriety 
 preyented her from clamoring for opportunity to do. 
 The Bible talks were prepared with the keenest interest 
 and enjoyment. With equal interest and enjoyment, 
 and with the added stimulus of personal gratification, as 
 many notes as can be crowded into the compass of this 
 book are prepared for publication. 
 
 It is, perhaps, needless to say that the class are not 
 responsible for the theology. It will be obseryed that 
 their letter is written with discrimination. It affirms 
 not assent, but *^ interest." It desires not to indorse, 
 but to *^ examine." 
 
 In compliance with this request, and with the grate- 
 ful consent, concurrence, and co-operation of the chair- 
 woman, I haye arranged these Bible talks in as condensed 
 and shapely form as may be, and with the heartiest right 
 hand of fellowship they are hereby presented 
 To the Bible class. 
 
 Gail Hamilton. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 A PRELIMINAKY SKIRMISH. 
 
 Thejirst exercise of the Bible class was conversational. I have^ 
 there/are, put thejirst chapter in conversational form, though no at- 
 tempt is made at a report of the conversation ; nor is the succession of 
 topics strictly folloiced. Some of the themes treated in this chapter 
 were discussed at a later period ; hut logically and theologically they 
 belong with the other points in the first chapter, 
 
 Norfolk. How much of a Bible do you think the 
 higher criticism would leave us if it should be allowed to 
 have its own way ? 
 
 Moxsox. Every word, letter, iota of a Bible that 
 would be as much of a Thesaurus to the philosopher as it 
 is to the saint. 
 
 Norfolk. That is decisive, to say the least. 
 
 Moxso:n". Are you surprised ? 
 
 Norfolk. Rather ! You have been so occupied with 
 other matters, I assumed, or presumed, you had stayed 
 where you belonged. 
 
 MoN^soN". That is, you thought I was clamped so hard 
 into the wooden, plenary, mechanical theory that I could 
 not stir. 
 
 Norfolk. Say, rather, I thought you were so rooted 
 and grounded in the good old orthodox faith that you 
 would resist these wild German cyclones, not to speak of 
 the milder English imitations. 
 
 MoNSON. And you thought right. Tell me, now. 
 
A PRELIMINARY SKIRMISH. 9 
 
 how much of a Bible do you think would be left us if we 
 were to shut down on the higher criticism ? 
 
 Norfolk. All that has existed for eighteen hundred 
 years, and I -am weak enough to think that is a good deal 
 of a Bible and a pretty good sort of one, too — good enough 
 for me. 
 
 Moi^sox. You would say, then, that all the study, 
 and all the learning, and all the devotion that have been 
 brought to bear on the Bible for centuries, and which one 
 might call a perpetual miracle, goes for nothing. We 
 know no more about the Bible than if it had never been 
 studied. 
 
 Norfolk. On the contrary. But the Bible is un- 
 changed. We know more about it ; but its volume, its 
 authority, are the same. 
 
 MoNSO^sr. Then there is no difference between us. 
 We are on precisely the same ground. 
 
 Norfolk. Not quite. That is, if you give loose rein 
 to the higher criticism ; because that, in effect, reduces 
 the Bible to nothing. What with its mathematical and 
 historical errors, its tripping up of the Pentateuch, and 
 its general shuffling of the authors, its post-exilic Exodus 
 and its post-Davidic Deuteronomy, its allegoric history 
 and its fabulous miracle, you have practically exchanged 
 your Bible for a Mother Goose's Melodies. I believe 
 scholars have not been wanting to argue learnedly that 
 great national policies have been wraj^ped up in Jack and 
 Gill and Old King Cole. 
 
 MoNSOK. I admit I do not go into those things 
 very extensively. When you hit me with Eeuss and Graf, 
 and Strauss and Keim, Harnack, Hausrath, Kneuen and 
 Baur, Volkmar and Wellhauser and Ewald, I am bowled 
 over quick. I do not object to their methods or their re- 
 sults ; only I do not know them except in a general way. 
 It is your business to know ; but it is my privilege to 
 
IQ A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 browse where I like. I am supported in my ignorance 
 of their work by seeing how impossible it seems for 
 you professionals to agree as to what they teach. The 
 higher critics and the lower critics quote the same au- 
 thorities to support their own positions. Huxley and the 
 principal of King's College pull hairs as fiercely over 
 Holtzmann as they do over the Gadarene pigs, against 
 which Saint Thomas seems to have a special spite. 
 
 Norfolk. Then pray tell me how you can set so 
 high a value on such criticism. 
 
 Mo]S-soK. Truth generally has to be struck out by 
 hard blows, and then often only in sparks. It is not so 
 much the value to the world of any one man's deposit ; 
 but it is of value that every man should be free to strike 
 for the truth in his own way. 
 
 Norfolk. Even if, in so doing, he strikes the truth 
 away ? 
 
 MoNSON. Beyond question ; because truth held under 
 duress is no truth at all — is only a dead weight. But 
 really, when you get down to it, I am egoist enough to 
 admit that what I really go by is my own criticism, not 
 German or English. 
 
 Norfolk. Beg pardon ! Then I am addressing 
 Higher Criticism itself. 
 
 MoNSO]sr. Now, do not be satirical, if only for the sake 
 of old times. I have had a fairly busy life, and I am no 
 scholar. I really feel my limitations so keenly that you 
 must not laugh at me. But I Avas brought up on the 
 Bible, and I took to it as naturally as a duck to water. 
 Then I was brought up, and I remain, a Congregation- 
 alist, and there is nothing to Congregationalism if it is 
 not square and open. 
 
 Norfolk. Then luill you tell me why you are dabbling 
 in this destructive, disintegrating manipulation of a book 
 which you were taught to accept as sacred ? 
 
A PRELIMINARY SKIRMISH. H 
 
 MoxsoN. Oh ! there you are out, for the same author- 
 ity that taught me to revere the Bible taught me to dig 
 into it. Did not old Andover, where I was at the start 
 and you at the finish, lay down the law to us for all time 
 in the *Mnfallible revelation which God constantly makes 
 of himself in his works of creation, providence, and re- 
 demption " ? Creation, I take it, means science. Provi- 
 dence means history. Kedemption means the Bible. 
 Now, then, orthodoxy at its very fountain-head, which 
 certainly you and I ought to agree is Andover, sends us 
 forth on a legitimate quest for the Divine Being. You 
 take the German scholars. 
 
 NoKFOLK. No ; if you please. 
 
 MoKSON". Well, then, you don't. But you seem to 
 know about them. 
 
 Norfolk. Enough not to accept them — at least in the 
 lump. 
 
 MonsoinT. Say your professors, then ; your English 
 and American authorities, your orthodox Germans, your 
 Holtzmanns and your Hermanns, Strack and Dillman, 
 and Zochler and Lange. Very likely I should do the 
 same if I had time. As it is, I take the Bible itself. And 
 sometimes I think there is an advantage in just taking 
 the Bible itself — alone. 
 
 Norfolk. And is it from the Bible you get your as- 
 sent to the higher criticism, to the German analyzing of 
 the Bible out of existence ? 
 
 MoNSO^s". Yes and no. So far as the Germans agree 
 with me I agree w^ith them, but my analysis gives the 
 Bible a higher place, a stronger hold, even, than Ando- 
 ver gave it in the old days — for me. 
 
 Norfolk. For instance ? 
 
 Mois'SON'. Yes, indeed. But I shall bore you. The- 
 ology is shop for you, and you know when to stop, but it 
 is fun to me, and I never get tired. 
 
12 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 NoEFOLK. Go on ; your theology will be fun to me ! 
 
 MoNSOK. I see and scorn. But open your King 
 James's Bible and read the dedication : " Great and mani- 
 fold were the blessings, most dread sovereign, which Al- 
 mighty God, the Father of all mercies, bestowed upon us 
 the people of England, when first he sent Your Majesty's 
 Royal Person to rule and reign over us." What do you, 
 a republican, understand by that ? How did God send 
 King James to rule and reign over us ? 
 
 NoEFOLK. In his Providence. By virtue of his being 
 the next heir after Elizabeth. By virtue of his being 
 born into an order which had reached a stage of develop- 
 ment that made heredity, with some modifications, the 
 will of the people. 
 
 MoxsoN. You do not for a moment suppose that Al- 
 mighty God appeared in any manifest or miraculous per- 
 sonal manner to impose the Stuart on the English people, 
 any more than he has appeared in our day to place Car- 
 not in the French presidency, or Harrison in ours ? 
 
 NoEFOLK. Certainly not. There is no necessity for 
 supposing anything of the sort. It is a canon of philos- 
 ophy not to seek for unknown causes when known causes 
 sufficiently explain the event. 
 
 MoxsoN. Now, then, you open the Bible and read 
 that the Lord came down to see the city and the tower 
 which the children of men builded, and confounded their 
 language that they might not reach unto Heaven as they 
 intended. 
 
 NOEFOLK. Well ! 
 
 MoNSON. Well, it seems to me that the Lord did not 
 come doion to see the Tower of Babel any more than he 
 came down to see the Tower of London. We have to sail 
 to England, but the Lord is under no such necessity. Nor 
 did he confuse the language of Shinar in any other sense 
 than he is at this moment constituting Volapiik. 
 
A PRELIMINARY SKIRMISH. 13 
 
 Norfolk. And do you fancy that you are original in 
 that view ? 
 
 MoNSOK. Come, now ; there is your sarcasm again. 
 I am not posing for an exegetical genius. Spare my real 
 modesty. 
 
 Norfolk. No ; but really, is there anything unusual 
 or extraordinary in supposing that when God is spoken of 
 in the Bible as if he were a man, it is the anthropomor- 
 phism of a child-like race and writer ? 
 
 MoNSOK. Child-like ? Why, it is not two weeks since 
 I heard a reverend missionary say : ^' God means to make 
 Germany a republic." All religious papers and pulpits 
 teem with the designs and plans and purposes of God 
 regarding politics and parties, and even individuals, 
 as definitely as if he were retained on one side or the 
 other. 
 
 Norfolk. And a great deal of it is sincere. People 
 that have a profound faith in a Divine Being see him in 
 everything, and of course they must speak of him and 
 even think of him in terms of human thought and speech. 
 God is pure spirit. Man is spirit embodied. Pure spirit 
 may address itself to spirit embodied, in the terms of pure 
 spirit. But embodied spirit can not communicate with 
 or even concerning pure spirit, except in terms of spirit 
 embodied. 
 
 Mo:n'SON". Admirable ! That is not only reasonable, 
 but suggestive. Tell me, now, how you build the Tower 
 of Babel. 
 
 Norfolk. I build it just as my friend Selden builds 
 it, and as a great many others as judicious as the judicious 
 Hooker. I mention Selden because I happen to have 
 heard him talk it over last. The story was told in the 
 anthropomorphical style which was so well suited to the 
 childhood of the race ; and for that matter, as you inti- 
 mate, we have not outgrown it yet. 
 
14 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 Moi^sOK. Only we ratlier confine it to religious, not 
 to say ecclesiastical, circles. 
 
 Norfolk. I imagine it was rather confined to relig- 
 ious circles then. The bad folks have not left us much 
 account of themselves. Irreligion is a disintegrating, 
 not a conservative, element. 
 
 Moxsoif. Even the Tower of Babel gets its immortal- 
 ity from those who voted against it. 
 
 Norfolk. This childhood of the race, or we may say 
 this popular simplicity or poverty of the mind, makes God 
 real in his personality, direct in his dealings with men. 
 The story has nothing to do with what we call '* secondary 
 causes," leaves ^* natural processes " entirely out of sight 
 for the quickest and highest moral effect, attributes every 
 event directly to God. Yet there is open to us, of a more 
 observant and reflective age, a recognition of the delicate 
 and natural methods by which providential results are 
 secured. Undoubtedly the story of the Tower of Babel is 
 but a condensed and graphic account of the beginning of 
 national divergence — it was probably a premature and fool- 
 ish attempt to plant a great city of people who had not 
 reached the development in religion or civilization which 
 is necessary to peace and prosperity in a great city ; it 
 was the futile attempt at unification and consolidation of 
 a tribe that discerned and antagonized a tendency to sepa- 
 ration. It was a picturesque representation of the break- 
 ing up of the human family into nations and subsequent 
 subdivisions, and anticipates by three thousand years at 
 least the brilliant conclusions of Max Miiller and Baron 
 Bun sen. 
 
 Moxso:n". Eeuss did you say it was who makes this 
 exposition ? 
 
 Norfolk. Reuss ! you rascal ! No ! I said it was 
 Selden, of Springfield. When you are meek you are al- 
 ways mischievous. 
 
A PRELIMINARY SKIRMISH. 15 
 
 MoNSON". I am innocent enough now ; but, in all good 
 conscience, if you let in your friend Selden, of Springfield, 
 you can not rule out my friend Wright, of Oberlin. 
 
 NoRFOiK. What has your friend Wright, of Oberlin, 
 on his mind ? 
 
 M0NS02T. Nothing about the Tower of Babel that I 
 know of, but he has views on Sodom. 
 
 Norfolk. Do they upset the Tower of Babel ? 
 
 MoNSON". They make a leaning tower of it, but it 
 leans your way. Wright and Sir William Dawson seem 
 to have put their heads together and destroyed Sodom 
 after a novel and ingenious way, but natural fashion. 
 The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is told at considerable 
 length and with considerable definiteness. The style of 
 the narrative is familiar. The Lord said : '^ Because the 
 cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their 
 sin is grievous, I will go down now and see whether they 
 have done altogether according to the cry of it which is 
 come unto me,- and if not I will know." That is written 
 very much as if '"the Lord " were a careful and consci- 
 entious editor of a morning newspaper, going out himself 
 instead of sending a reporter, in order to get his news on 
 the best authority. But it was not necessary for the 
 Lord to come doivn to investigate Sodom any more than 
 it was necessary for him to come down to see the Tower 
 of Babel. Being omnipresent, he surveyed Sodom and 
 Babel from one place no more than from another. Be- 
 ing omniscient, he knew their sin without special effort. 
 But we, even we, can not speak of God without using 
 human terms — terms of limitation. God is transcendent ; 
 therefore we can not inclose him, comprehend him, fully 
 know him. But he is immanent ; therefore we can par- 
 tially know him and be in touch with him. 
 
 These keen observers conclude, from the examination 
 of the country about the Dead Sea, and the other refer- 
 
16 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 ences in the Bible, that Sodom and Gomorrah were de- 
 stroyed by the bursting and burning of an immense pent- 
 up reservoir of gas and petroleum. 
 
 The valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea occupy a 
 portion of a wonderful crevasse or crack in the earth's 
 crust, and are subject to earthquakes. The limestone 
 rocks are also strongly impregnated with petroleum prod- 
 ucts. In short, it has every appearance of being an ex- 
 hausted "oil-district^'; and nothing is more probable 
 than the occurrence of such a scene as that described in 
 Genesis. The *' slime-pits" mentioned in Genesis as 
 characterizing the region, and the recently discovered evi- 
 dence of the use of bitumen in the construction of Jeri- 
 cho, give fresh reality to the scene and the whole situa- 
 tion ; while the word which is translated brimstone, 
 Wright thinks is more probably pitch. Any one who is 
 familiar with a burning gas- well is quite at home in the 
 Sodom and Gomorrah description. 
 
 Norfolk. Surely that confirms rather than discredits 
 the Bible narrative. 
 
 MoKSO]s\ I think so ; but of course 3'ou observe that 
 you have gone over — horse, foot, and dragoons — to the 
 higher criticism ! 
 
 Norfolk. Of course I see nothing of the sort. To 
 show hoiu God does a thing is very different from saying 
 that he does not do it. To explain the attendant cir- 
 cumstances of the catastrophe does not diminish its mirac- 
 ulous character, but only brings to light the secondary 
 causes of which the Lord made use in bringing his de- 
 signs to pass. 
 
 MoNSON". Yes, I think Wright says something of that 
 kind, but it looks amazingly like hedging ; because if 
 you explain attendant circumstances enough to show that 
 the catastrophe was natural, you not only diminish but 
 destroy its miraculous phase. If you bring to light sec- 
 
A PRELIMINARY SKIRMISH. 17 
 
 ondary causes sufficient to produce it, you do not need, 
 according to your own philosophical canon, to seek any 
 further, and especially any unusual or miraculous cause. 
 
 Norfolk. But the timing of it is that in which the 
 miraculous element appears. Wright himself emphati- 
 cally recognizes the miracle. He avers that the Lord saw 
 to it that the torch was applied at the right time and 
 place, and this was the great miracle. The production 
 of such an eruption at that juncture was by direct design 
 of the Creator, and serves all the purpose of a miracle. 
 In fact, it was a miracle. The showers of burning naph- 
 tha and bitumen which came down upon Sodom and 
 Gomorrah came no less from the Lord's hands because 
 they were first belched up from the earth's depths by vol- 
 canic forces. The forces of nature, as Wright says, are 
 powerful beyond our comprehension, and are all of them 
 in such a state of unstable equilibrium that it is an easy 
 matter for the Creator to direct them as he will. It is 
 God who does this when the earthquake destroys a city, 
 or a tornado devastates a hamlet, or a cloud bursts upon 
 a mountain-side and carries destruction all along the 
 valley. 
 
 Sophia. I am glad to see that science does not mean 
 to overtask the Creator. 
 
 Mo:n'sok. Obscure. 
 
 Sophia. You say that Mr. Wright thinks it is easy for 
 the Creator to direct the forces of Nature, because they 
 are in such a state of unstable equilibrium. That is, I 
 suppose, the fluidity of the oil and the gas and the lava 
 makes them manageable, but, once solidified, they would 
 have to stay where they are. If the pot boils, Mr. 
 Wright's argument is, anything can be done with it ; 
 but, if the pot is not boiling, the Lord himself can not 
 make it boil over ! 
 
 MoNsoi^. Very good theology, too, on right lines. 
 
 2 
 
18 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 Sophia. Yes ; but on the wrong lines, if on the old 
 or on an old theological theory that God is not great 
 unless he is greater than himself ; as if God were more 
 powerful in disorder than he is in order ; as if it required 
 more Godhood to break a law than to make a law ; as if 
 any one could start a universe awhirl in regular curves, 
 but only a God could whirl it all awry and athwart. 
 
 MoNSOK". And just here, Norfolk, if I were up in my 
 Zochler and Edersheim and the rest of them, I should 
 say is w^here you and Wright blur a little. You speak as 
 if design were all one with miracle. Timing the torch 
 you say was the great miracle. But the torch must be 
 timed if it is to he a torch. An eruption at that juncture, 
 you say, was by direct design of God. An eruption must 
 always be at some juncture, and whenever it comes it is 
 by design of God. / do not believe it breaks out of its 
 own will at random, even outside the Bible. The ex- 
 plosion, you say, came no less from God's hands because 
 it was belched up by volcanic forces. True ; but we 
 never call a volcano a miracle. 
 
 Norfolk. If, however, an angel from heaven appeared 
 to warn you that a volcano was to break out at a certain 
 time, and that you must rush to another region to escape 
 it, and you did rush and did escape, and the explosion 
 came at the time foretold, would you not call that a 
 miracle ? 
 
 MoxsoN. If I were a devout and sensible, but not a 
 scientific, man — 
 
 Norfolk. You need not put an undisputed fact in a 
 hypothetical form. 
 
 MoKSON. Thanks ; but I will stick to my hypothesis 
 — ^living with my family in Sodom, and if some man who 
 was more learned than I in the nature of gas- wells and 
 oil districts, and earth crevasses and naphtha spurts, and 
 the general premonitory symptoms of seismic or other 
 
A PRELIMINARY SKIRMISH. 19 
 
 earth disturbances, should conie into Sodom and warn 
 the people that a convulsion of nature was threatened, 
 and if most of the people did not believe him, as people 
 are apt not — witness Johnstown — and if I should think 
 there was reason enough in his warnings to warrant me 
 in heeding them, and should heed them and save my 
 family, while my neighbors stayed at home and perished 
 — why, I think that I should feel like the English under 
 King James, that God Almighty had sent his servant to 
 deliver me, I should feel that the man who had warned 
 me was the angel of the Lord. 
 
 Norfolk. So you abstract every miraculous element 
 from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and make 
 it a mere natural phenomenon in all its developments. 
 
 MoKSON". No, it is you that do that — you and Selden 
 and Wright — orthodox, common-sense, right-seeing men 
 that you are. I only claim my rights under the law. If 
 you assume to say that when the Lord rained brimstone 
 and fire out of heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrah, it 
 was probably pitch, and first came up out of the earth in 
 the natural order of things, without any special inter- 
 position of divine power, I assume to say that when the 
 Lord warned Lot of his danger by two angels who are 
 distinctly and repeatedly called men, they were men. 
 At any rate, they may have been men, warning Lot by 
 their natural knowledge. I have the same right to say 
 they were men that you have to say that brimstone was 
 pitch or that fire from heaven was fire from earth. 
 
 Norfolk. You admit, then, that you do rule out 
 every element of the miraculous. 
 
 MoN^soK. No, only that I have the right to rule it 
 out without any impeachment of my orthodoxy. Because 
 I am a layman and a politician and do not flout at, any 
 more than I follow, the higher criticism, have I not the 
 power to lead about a little ^^natural-process" rule to 
 
20 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 measure the Scriptures with as well as you and the other 
 apostles ? 
 
 NoEFOLK. Oh ! you need not square off into fisticuffs. 
 
 MoNSOiT. Not a bit of it ! True orthodoxy has no 
 need of that. Why, look at Josephus, a Jew true blue, 
 if eyer there was one. He does not scruple to say : '" God 
 cast a thunderbolt upon Sodom and set it on fire." There 
 need be no miracle in a natural cause, except the peren- 
 nial miracle of Nature. Josephus is no more authority 
 than you and I, but he shows that the Jews, eighteen 
 hundred years nearer to Sodom than we, and in direct 
 descent from Moses and his coadjutors, fell instinctively 
 into the line of Nature's methods. 
 
 Norfolk. But I should really like to know, higher 
 criticism apart, what is your honest i^rivate interpretation 
 of the whole narrative ? 
 
 MoNSON". Very simple, and quite on the lines where 
 you lead off. I do not fight for my interpretation, but for 
 my right to make it without impeachment of my charac- 
 ter ; not for the truth of my interpretation, but for its 
 legitimacy and orthodoxy. I am then inclined to think 
 that in the Scripture story of Sodom and Gomorrah we 
 have the record of an old-world Johnstown disaster, or 
 perhaps the Pompeii and Herculaneum of the world 
 before Christ — a condensed and graphic account of the 
 destruction of a populous and prosperous plain where 
 luxury had engendered corruption. That it was destruc- 
 tion by the forces of Nature we have much trace to-day. 
 The newspapers of that day were full of it. It made a 
 sensation, just as it would if it were the news of our 
 morning paper. The record is made by a religious man 
 in the anthropomorphic style which makes God a real, 
 direct, and limited personality — the only way in which the 
 writer could conceive of God at all. One man escaped 
 — a man of large wealth and great family connections. 
 
A PRELIMINARY SKIRMISH. 21 
 
 The story of liis escape is told in the same anthropomor- 
 phic, picturesque, condensed style. The devout writer 
 deals in neither case with second causes, with natural 
 processes, but attributes everything directly to God. I 
 attribute everything not the less to God, because, being 
 born of a more observant and reflective age, I recognize 
 the delicate and natural methods by which Lot may have 
 been rescued as well as those by which Sodom may have 
 been destroyed. 
 
 Sophia. When you read that Lot's wife, delaying, be- 
 came a pillar of salt, you can hardly help thinking of those 
 thirty-seven delaying Pompeiians, asphyxiated by deadly 
 gases, caught in a shower and suffocation of ashes, lying 
 this moment as they have been lying for eighteen hundred 
 years, every spasm of pain, every contortion of the living 
 muscles preserved and presented in the moistened, hard- 
 ened cast— a pillar of ashes. Just so may Lot's wife, 
 perhaps lingering, perhaps looking back with longing, or 
 love, or curiosity, perhaps only weak and terrified and 
 unable to flee f urther— j^^^ so may she have been caught, 
 overpowered by the rolling noxious vapors and incrusted 
 into a form of stalagmite, a statue of crystal death, a 
 pillar of salt ! Poor, scared creature ! 
 
 Norfolk. If, along with the story of a disaster so 
 great that it was immortalized, there is recorded an 
 equally signal rescue, do you not think that the pre- 
 sumption in favor of the truth of the miraculous rescue 
 is as strong as that in favor of the disaster, which is 
 universally admitted to be true ? 
 
 MoNSO^. Oh ! now you are mixing things ! 
 
 Norfolk. Well, then, analyze me and take me in sin- 
 gle file. 
 
 Moi^soiT. First, then, to take the last. The misery 
 of our irrational Bible reading is that nothing is univer- 
 sally admitted to be true. Insisting that the story of Lot 
 
22 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 should be taken without atmosphere, or antiquity, poetry, 
 or imagination, in an impossible and unliterary sense, we 
 have caused that many would not take it at all. It is 
 only of late years that personal and scientific investiga- 
 tion on the spot, and the opening up of our own material 
 resources, have given independent evidence of historic 
 truth in the story, at least to the popular mind— to my 
 mind, let us say. Your superior— 
 
 Norfolk. Oh ! let my superior mind alone. Go on 
 with your exposition. I never meddle too minutely with 
 my congregation, and I never give them taffy— at least 
 individually. 
 
 MoifSON". That last was well put in. I have been 
 your congregation, you know. Well, thanks to outsiders, 
 rather than to exegetes, yet thanks perhaps to clergymen 
 most of all, the Sodom story is getting into universal 
 credit by being shown to be possible, even to the reason. 
 But now as to the miraculous rescue. Not the writer. 
 He tells his story as simply as the King James transla- 
 tors, as simply as my returned missionary placed Almighty 
 God on the Republican side. None of them give sign 
 of relating a miracle. It is the simple, slight record of 
 events, great, worthy of note, but not unnatural. As to 
 its being a single rescue I am not at all sure. The record 
 is Jewish. Lot was the only one the writer cared about, 
 he being connected with the great Jewish founder, Abra- 
 ham. 
 
 Norfolk. You would not lay stress, nor I either, on 
 the destruction of ^* all the inhabitants" of the cities ? 
 
 Mois'SON". No more than I should include the North 
 American Indians in the decree that went out from Caesar 
 Augustus that all the world should be taxed. 
 
 Norfolk. Ah, well ! I don't consider you a hopeless 
 case, though I don't yet give you clean papers. 
 
 Sophia. President White would not give either of you 
 
A PRELIMINARY SKIRMISH. 23 
 
 cleau papers. As far as I can see, he sweeps Lot's wife 
 clean out of existence. 
 
 NoEroLK. Ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi. 
 
 Sophia. This son of Levi does not display an over- 
 grasping spirit. He simply traces the story back as far 
 as he can, and finds it ending in myth. 
 
 Norfolk. But even myth has an origin. 
 
 Moi^^soN. And a divine origin. 
 
 Sophia. That is President White's position, appar- 
 ently. The myth is the natural husk and rind and shell 
 of our best ideas. He simply traces the growth of this 
 one myth. Sodom, modern Usdum, has a low range of 
 hills mainly made np of salt rock which is soft and fri- 
 able, and by the heavy winter rains is and has been with- 
 out doubt for unknown ages cut ever into new shapes, es- 
 pecially into pillars and columns, which sometimes bear 
 a resemblance to the human form. 
 
 Norfolk. And he thinks the whole story was made 
 lip to fit the pillars of salt ? 
 
 Sophia. A dangerous stand to take, in these days of 
 Egyptian explorations. 
 
 MoNSOiT. Yes ; the Tel-el- Amarna tablets admonish 
 the higher critic to look well to his steps before he under- 
 takes to destroy the Pentateuch, even as history. 
 
 Sophia. Lot's wife will have a sweet revenge on Cor- 
 nell University in the day when the diary of some liter- 
 ary gentleman or some fashionable princess of Sodom is 
 dug up out of the sulphur rock of Usdum, containing the 
 imperishable and indisputable record of the lady's visiting 
 list. 
 
 Norfolk. It would be no more strange than the gro- 
 cery bills and real-estate-sales lists of Babylon. 
 
 Sophia. President White, however, does not think 
 there are any ruins to be dug up under the Dead Sea, but 
 that the sea has always been there. 
 
24: A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 NoEFOLK. That is an old theory. 
 
 Mo2s^sON". It is I alone who am not walking on thin 
 ice. I do not commit myself to any one interpretation, 
 but to the right of interpretation. Whether historically, 
 mythically, poetically, or literally interpreted is a matter 
 of culture, and not a matter of religious faith. My con- 
 tention is only with the man who tells me that I must 
 read it his way or I am not sound. I am willing to give 
 wp any way on evidence, but I am not willing to give up 
 my right of way. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE REAL GENESIS. 
 
 Eeadikg the Bible as we should read any other book, 
 regardless of vvhat men in all ages haye taught about the 
 Bible, what do we find ? 
 
 In the beginning — God. 
 
 Whether ^* beginning" means the time w^hen the uni- 
 verse began as protoplasm, or when the earth began as 
 planet, or what is protoplasm or what is universe, are 
 questions for science, not for religion. What the Bible 
 teaches is that. In the beginning — not force, or law, or 
 energy, or a fortuitous concourse of atoms, but — God 
 created the heaven and the earth. 
 
 The story of the creation is to be read in the broad 
 light and interpreted by the large lines of common lan- 
 guage and common sense. 
 
 God said. Let there be light. 
 
 God said, I am tired of kings. 
 
 There is no reason to suppose that the Genesis writer 
 held his words to a more rigid meaning than Emerson. 
 Both used a rhetorical and poetic impersonation in order 
 to a vivid and imposing presentation of truth. No one 
 supposes that Emerson meant a miraculous voice out of 
 heaven. No one need suppose that the Genesis author 
 meant it. 
 
 The Genesis of the Bible is a pictorial representation of 
 creation — as it might appear to an earth-dweller unfolding 
 
26 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 in a swift panorama. It is creation in its relation to man. 
 The object of the great lights is to give light upon the earth. 
 He made the stars also. There is no word of the vast re- 
 volving globes, centers of other systems, universes of uni- 
 verses, in numbers and spaces inconceivable. The writer, 
 the seer, sees only what they are to us — stars ; created, so 
 far as the Genesis picture is concerned, on the day when 
 the seer saw their dim twinkling through the dense but 
 clearing atmosphere of earth's earlier stages. There is in 
 it a singular and, as yet, unexplained correspondence be- 
 tween this unfolding panorama and the conclusions of 
 science ; but if there were no correspondence at all, the 
 import of the Bible would be unaffected. As a pictorial 
 representation, it teaches, whether by scientific accuracy 
 or inaccuracy, the creation by God, a creation of order, 
 of power without effort, of dignity, of beneficence, of 
 satisfaction. This revelation of God appears on the face 
 of it, and this is the only revelation that is vital. Its 
 historical or scientific quality is interesting, but it is a 
 question for scholars, not for us. We have a keen inter- 
 est in the results of their learning, but we have not the 
 qualities, or the training, or the traits which enable us to 
 take part in the search. Vfe have culture enough to see 
 that the authority of the Bible is not involved in the quest. 
 That there is any trouble about the Garden of Eden 
 is because, though God hath made man upright, man 
 hath sought out many inventions. The Lord God, be- 
 yond doubt, planted a garden eastward in Eden, just as 
 he planted a forest westward in America, by the forces 
 of nature, whether through man with farming-tools, or 
 by the winds of heaven, or the wings of bird and bee and 
 butterfly, scattering seeds. Xothing can exceed the mar- 
 vel of such planting. We have seen the forest primeval 
 and have never lost ourselves in that wood. What is 
 there to bewilder us among the trees of Eden, the Garden 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. 27 
 
 of God ? Josephus, reared in all the traditions of his 
 nation for thorough soundness of interpretation, thought 
 it no new departure to say, affirms it as the simplest state- 
 ment of natural fact, that ** our legislator speaks some 
 things wisely but enigmatically, and others under a decent 
 allegory, but still ex2)lains such things as required a direct 
 explication, plainly and expressly." 
 
 Having laid down this- general law of interpretation, 
 he specifically adds : *' After the seventh day was over, 
 Moses begins to talk philosophically,*' by which we un- 
 derstand not literally. 
 
 The story of Adam and Eve is a parable, an allegory, 
 by its own showing. In any other book than the Bible 
 a story of animals talking would be called a fable, would 
 be recognized as fable. 
 
 " I shall not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 If birds confabulate or no. 
 'Tis plain that they were always able 
 To hold discourse at least in fable ; 
 And even the child who knows no better 
 Than to interpret by the letter 
 The story of a cock and bull 
 Must have a most uncommon skull." 
 
 When we read in a story-book, "The lion said to the 
 mouse," we perceive at once that it is a fable. When we 
 read in the Bible, "The serpent said unto the woman," 
 we call it history. There is no reason why we should. 
 There is no more reason to suppose that snakes talk in 
 the Bible than that they talk in other literature. There 
 is even less reason, for the Bible itself in other places 
 speaks of the serpent as not a serpent, but an evil spirit, 
 showing that the Bible writers considered it allegory. 
 
 To say that it is fable or allegory is not to say that it 
 is false. The very point and pith of fable is truth. An 
 allegory has no life but in its truth. Was it Lacordaire 
 
28 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 who said ''a myth is a fact transfigured by an idea" ? 
 Is it wise — is it the only real orthodoxy — is it orthodoxy 
 at all — is it not rather the worst heresy — to insist upon the 
 fact without the idea ? Is a fact more holy — more im- 
 posing — when it stands alone, unclassified, unmeaning, 
 and in its nakedness absurd, than when it stands in its 
 relations, invested with its associations, inspired with its 
 idea, and lifted thus into the sphere of moral and spiritual 
 life? 
 
 Out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every 
 tree that is 2:)leasant to the sight and good for food ; the 
 tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree 
 of knowledge of good and evil. The mixture of literal 
 and allegorical language is unquestionable. Who ever 
 carried to market a basket of the fruit of the tree of life ? 
 Who ever heard of a knowledge-of-good-and-evil orchard ? 
 The literal interpretation never would have been thought 
 of any more than in the lion-and-mouse fables but for the 
 exigences of theology. Men constructed fables about 
 theology, and then supported them with the fables of the 
 Bible turned into literal statements ; and this in full view 
 of the constant Bible use of the phrase in a figurative 
 sense : She [wisdom] is a tree of life to them that lay 
 hold upon her. The fruit of the righteous is a tree of 
 life. When the desire cometh it is a tree of life. A 
 wholesome tongue is a tree of life. To him that over- 
 cometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in 
 the midst of the paradise of God. In the midst of the 
 street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the 
 tree of life which bore twelve manner of fruits, and yield- 
 ed her fruit every month ; and the leaves of the tree were 
 for the healing of the nations. Blessed are they that do 
 his commandments, that they may have right to the tree 
 of life. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life 
 freelv. 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. 29 
 
 The allegory is solemn and sublime. All may read its 
 truth of divine sovereignty, of human responsibility, of 
 inherent penalty. Its specific truths we as yet only infer 
 or even conjecture. It may be the parable of man's first 
 investiture with a moral nature, the last stage in his evo- 
 lution from animal innocence to the human possibility of 
 guilt and achievement of holiness. Adam, Edom, red 
 earth, may be an epitome of the race ; the story of the fall 
 of one man enshrining the rise of all men. 
 
 It is possible that the trail of the serpent in the Gar- 
 den of Eden m^ay still be seen in the mysterious mounds 
 of the West. Professor Putnam considers the great ser- 
 pent mound to be a relic of the serpent worship which 
 prevailed throughout the world thousands of years ago. 
 We see its symbolism sometimes still in our rings and 
 bracelets, lithe and clinging with serpentine gold— type 
 of wisdom, type of eternity. The serpentine mounds 
 still to be found in various parts of the world were temples 
 of the serpent worship. AVithin the coil of the tail was 
 built the altar of sacrifice. Why may it not be that the 
 serpent of the story of Eden was the abstract personified 
 typical serpent of the early world's worship, the great 
 dragon, Satan, just disappearing, perhaps just beginning 
 to disappear, before the clearer revelation of God to a 
 more highly developed man ? ''It shall bruise thy head, 
 and thou shalt bruise his heel," would thus receive a 
 fuller meaning. The new direct God-worship would have 
 a hard fight with the old serpent-worship ; but after the 
 fight— nay, in the fight— it would prevail. 
 
 It has prevailed. It has left only here and there a 
 mark, a myth, a mystery— a weird, colossal serpent mound 
 on the grassy cliffs of Ohio. 
 
 But the scientific historic explanation, correspondence 
 or divergence, is not a matter of orthodoxy, or heterodoxy, 
 or heresy. It is a matter of the utmost interest ; but it is 
 
30 A WASHINGTO:^ BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 for learning to decide. The essential point is clear to 
 all : God's sovereignty, man's responsibility, inherent 
 penalty, eternal righteousness. No theological school, or 
 synod, or council, or individual can rightfully lay upon 
 the conscience the interpretation of the creation of Gene- 
 sis. But is not this rationalism ? I trust it is ; and per- 
 haps, before we go any further, it would be well to try if 
 we may not lay that ghost. 
 
 AVhat is rationalism ? The bugbear of the churches 
 for one thing. Only a bugbear so far as the churches are 
 alarmed. Rationalism is reasonvngism. No deeper insult 
 can be put upon the Bible than to say that it can not 
 stand reasoning. 
 
 Wlien we speak, as we often do speak, of the contro- 
 versy between the rationalist and the orthodox, we employ 
 what the logicians term tha fallacy of division. There is 
 no logical classification into orthodox and rationalist. I 
 may be less than the least of the orthodox, but all there 
 is of me is orthodox. I may have been endowed by Heaven 
 with but a feeble spark of reason, but all that heaven has 
 given me of reason I will use upon theology ; therefore I 
 am always and wholly a rationalist. 
 
 In the discussion regarding revision, one man con- 
 tended that it is important to put the brakes on any 
 tendency to rationalism proper when it shows itself in 
 our American life, as, unchecked, it will rapidly develop 
 and prove in the end fatal to evangelical religion among 
 us as it did in Germany prior to Schleiermacher. 
 
 It would be well to learn who has authority to put on 
 the brakes. The attempt would be more likely to throw 
 off the brakeman than to slow the train ! 
 
 To say that rationalism is fatal to evangelical religion is 
 to say that evangelical religion can exist only among idiots. 
 
 Was Canon Kingsley an idiot ? He was assuredly a 
 rationalist. Hear what the most straitest sect of New 
 
TKE REAL GENESIS. 31 
 
 England Puritanism, in old Andover and Princeton, says 
 of him : 
 
 ** Kingsley's theology was never very coherent, consist- 
 ent, or orthodox. He was greatly influenced by Maurice, 
 whom he revered as his ^ prophet ; ' he was a leader of the 
 Broad Church ; and went farthest from the straight line 
 in his inferential ^restorationism,' in eschatology. Still 
 his influence was hurtful rather in the encouragement of 
 others to depart from the truth than in his own distinct 
 teachings ; for he was a strong upholder of the Athanasian 
 creed, and was reverent, though somewhat free,, in his 
 treatment of the Scriptures. . . . But few will be found 
 who were such a tremendous force in their day for good. 
 He had much of the prophet in his make-up and com- 
 mission. Dean Stanley says, in his funeral sermon : 
 * His life and conversation, as he walked among ordinary 
 men, were often as of a waker among drowsy sleepers.' 
 And there has been no more ^pure and perfect knight,' 
 none more dedicated to what seemed to him the right, 
 who wore his heart on his sleeve and his sword at the 
 service of the weak, than he who lies restfully amid the 
 grass, the wild flowers, and the tall fir trees of the se- 
 cluded parish church where he loved so much and made 
 so many love him." 
 
 Let orthodoxy reconcile the evasive, elusive, theoreti- 
 cal, inferential ^Miurtful influence" of his rationalism 
 with the ^"'tremendous force for good," the pure and per- 
 fect character, the righteousness and the chivalry which 
 it left, if it did not make, in his character. 
 
 Was Bunsen an idiot ? Hear what the same high 
 conservative authority says of him: ^^We can not and 
 care not to recapitulate Bunsen's sad lapses into rational- 
 ism in this and other works, such as his abandonment of 
 prophecy, and even his denial of the resurrection of 
 Jesus. And yet, strange to say, he not only opposed in- 
 
32 A "WASniNGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 tensely the rationalism of Baur, Feuerbach, and the 
 Tiibingen school, not to speak of Strauss, but he lived in 
 the Scriptures, and clung to them as the object of su- 
 premest love and the only source of spiritual life. The 
 fact is that Bud sen was an enigma, or, perhaps we might 
 say, a theological *Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,' with a 
 rationalistic head and an eyangelical heart." 
 
 Why, then, rationalism is not fatal to evangelical re- 
 ligion even in Germany ! But listen again : 
 
 *^ No one has questioned the reality and depth of his 
 piety. Dr. McCosh gives this emphatic testimony: *I 
 am able to say, what I believe I can say of no other with 
 whom I had so much intercourse, that we never conversed 
 during those five days for ten minutes at a time without 
 his returning, however far he might be off, to his Bible 
 and his Saviour, as the objects which were the dearest to 
 him. . . . 
 
 ^^Bunsen was absolutely free from all concealment. 
 In the most worldly and unbelieving circles, as among 
 the most intimate and like-minded, he was the same out- 
 spoken Christian. So great was his simplicity and trans- 
 parency of character, that the Russian Ambassador said 
 to him : ' Continue to keep your child-heart ; you are 
 the only child of fifty years old I ever saw.' Everywhere 
 Bunsen was the same natural, genial, high-minded man. 
 His presence was a burst of sunshine. . . . 
 
 '' Bunsen's was one of the notable death-beds of Chris- 
 tian history, not only for the beauty of human love, but 
 pre-eminently for a triumphant and unwavering faith 
 and a rapturous love of Christ, which would have crowned 
 the life of any saint that ever lived. To sum up his 
 heart-orthodoxy, let me add one of his latest sayings in a 
 letter : * The Lord taught me early that I am a sinner, 
 and that only in Christ I can become well-pleasing to 
 God and a child of God.' 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. 33 
 
 '^ ^ Few souls have lived so brightly and serenely, so far 
 above the meanness of selfish aims and petty jealousies ' ; 
 and so long as faith, hope, and love take their place 
 among the things that can not be shaken, his immortality 
 is assured." 
 
 Was Neander's rationalism fatal to his religion ? The 
 same evangelical leader says : ^'I regret to be obliged to 
 confess that, like Bunsen, he was pious in spite of decided 
 weakness of theological opinion. He never lost the early 
 influence of Schleiermacher. His views of the inspira- 
 tion and authority of the Scriptures — even of parts of the 
 Gospels as well as the Apocalypse and some of the Epistles 
 — are very latitudinarian, if not loose." 
 
 But what of his character and his influence ? 
 
 '^Imagine a bowed and slender man, with a decidedly 
 Jewish physiognomy, deep-set but keen eyes, high and 
 broad forehead almost covered by thick black hair, and 
 eyebrows like a shaggy and jutting roof. He wears a 
 white cravat, as often tied on the side or back of his neck 
 as at the front, his long frock-coat and all his clothes 
 carrying out the Israelitish impression of his appearance 
 after the Chatham Street type ; an old-fashioned hat set 
 aslant on the back of his head, and jack-boots reaching 
 above the knees. And yet, wherever he appears on the 
 streets, he is greeted by all sorts of people with reverence 
 and affection. Many stories, more or less authenticated, 
 are told of his uncouthness and absent-mindedness — as, 
 for instance, his getting his foot into the gutter and walk- 
 ing thus all the way homxe, and then sending in haste to 
 a physician to consult about his supposed lameness. He 
 would have to be guided, both in going to and returning 
 from his lecture-room, especially if he had changed his 
 residence ; and he was apt to continue writing upon his 
 desk after he had come to the end of his paper. 
 
 '* His attitudes and behavior in the lecture-room were 
 
 3 
 
34: A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 still more grotesque and hizarre. He shot in sideways 
 and with half-closed eyes, and, on taking his seat, began 
 to fumble for a goose-quill, without which he could not 
 proceed ; and if it gave out, through his twistings and 
 tearings, another had to be furnished or he would be quite 
 disconcerted. He stood, but constantly changed the 
 position of his feet, even swinging one of them around 
 till it struck the wall behind him. 
 
 "This description is not exaggerated, but attested by 
 many of his pupils " [one of whom was a member of the 
 Bible class and of the diplomatic corps, and certified the 
 correctness of the presentation], *' who, however dazed at 
 first, came to regard it with gravity, and even with rev- 
 erence, as a part of the greatness and almost superhuman 
 inspiration of the man. JSTo one thought of laughing at 
 what, after all, added to the sense of dignity, enthusiasm, 
 and unworldly purity of this * Israelite indeed, in whom 
 was no guile.' They all loved him, and on every birth- 
 day marched in torchlight pi-ocession through the city 
 and stopped at his house in order to address him and re- 
 ceive his reply. 
 
 **His conversion from Judaism was a slow process, 
 and self -wrought out under the leading and enlightening 
 of the Holy Ghost. He seems, like Augustine and others, 
 to have received the first impulse from Plato, both away 
 from his old faith and on toward higher ideals. Schleier- 
 macher also, *the German Plato,' had a great influence 
 upon his development, and, in fact, stamped the charac- 
 ter of his theology to a large extent. On his last birth- 
 day he spoke in a voice trembling with emotion, calling 
 himself *only a poor sinner,' and exclaiming with St. 
 Augustine, * Divine Love, I have not loved Thee strong- 
 ly, deeply, warmly enough ! ' This gives us a good idea 
 of Neander's character — its humility, simplicity, love, and 
 unworldly innocence and integrity. Says one of his 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. 35 
 
 pupils, Dr. Schaff : ' To understand and admire in its 
 true living force that great word of the Redeemer, " Ex- 
 cept ye become as little children ye shall not enter into 
 the kingdom of heaven," it was only necessary to become 
 acquainted with Neander.' 
 
 *' Bishop Huntington says : ^Few eyes have seen deeper 
 into God's majestic disclosures than those which looked 
 out from under the dark Hebrew brow of the Christian 
 historian, Neander. Yet this was the motto which he 
 kept inscribed on his study wall, making his library to 
 open upward into heaven : ** Now we see through a glass 
 darkly, but then face to face ! " He died as he had lived, 
 in the midst of his work and in perfect calmness of sub- 
 mission to the voice of God. On Sunday, the 8th of 
 July, he insisted upon lecturing, though so weak as to lose 
 his voice several times and to be unable to descend from 
 the rostrum and get home without being carried by his 
 students. Yet in the afternoon he rallied, and managed 
 to dictate for three hours the closing pages of his Church 
 History. He never rose again from his bed ; yet on Sat- 
 urday afternoon he dictated that fine chapter on the Ger- 
 man mystics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, 
 who were called the *^ Friends of God." Then, in a 
 dreamy state of mind, he said to his sister, '^ I am weary, 
 let us go home" ; and immediately afterward, with ten- 
 derness and affection to his kind attendant, '* Good- 
 night," he fell gently asleep and awoke to look face to 
 face upon the Christ who led him out of darkness into 
 the light where we need no glass and are conscious of no 
 dimness.' " 
 
 Professor Delitzsch has just died ; was rationalism fatal 
 to his evangelical piety ? The Rev. Dr. Curtiss, Pro- 
 fessor of Hebrew in the Chicago Theological Seminary, 
 was his admiring pupil and sympathetic friend. He 
 adm.its that some of Professor Delitzsch's interpretations 
 
36 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 were fanciful, but says ^^he was one of the few who knew 
 how to sympathize with the ancient prophets and psalm- 
 ists of Israel, and hence how to render their thoughts into 
 modern language. 
 
 '' He suffered much from radical critics who did not 
 know how anxious he was to present no views which he 
 thought would be detrimental to the Church of Christ. 
 There was at times in his mind a struggle, which came 
 from the conviction that certain critical views were true, 
 and from his fear that the frank expression of these views 
 might be a stumbling-block in the way of some foreign 
 missionary or some of his former pui)ils. While he had 
 a mind which was hospitable for all phases of truth, he 
 was cautious and considerate in its expression from prin- 
 ciple, lie sometimes made a remark like this, * Another 
 concession made for the sake of the truth.' In his later 
 years, while he was an earnest advocate of evangelical 
 theology, his critical views, as is well known, were much 
 modified by the investigations of the modern scliool. 
 
 ''He was a man of devotional spirit and of devout 
 piety. The cause of evangelical religion lay very near 
 his heart. His love for Israel was hardly exceeded by 
 that of the Apostle Paul, and he devoted about fifty 
 years to the preparation and perfection of the New Testa- 
 ment in Hebrew, reckoning from the time when the pur- 
 pose of preparing such a translation first entered his 
 mind. 
 
 "While he was a strict adherent of the Lutheran 
 Church, he firmly believed that ' if any man is in Christ 
 he is a new creature.' I heard him remark one morning, 
 after listening to the discourse of one of the younger pro- 
 fessors at the University Church : 'That man does not 
 know anything about true religion. He has never been 
 converted.' 
 
 "Thus a prince and a father in Israel has left us, and 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. 37 
 
 we must wait long before we see any one worthy to take 
 his place." 
 
 Is it that these men did not live ^^ prior to Schleier- 
 macher" ? But neither do we. If there is any potency 
 in Schleiermacher, imparting vitality to a rationalism 
 which prior to liim contained only the seeds of death, 
 we also are heirs to that potency, and have no relation 
 whatever to any preceding rationalism which bore only 
 evil fruits. 
 
 Looking at these men, at their consecrated life, at 
 their peaceful death, at their holy memory, we. should 
 say that rationalism, so far from rending away in agony 
 the Christ from our view, rather rends away the clouds 
 that hide the Christ, and permits us to look upon that 
 benign and blessed face undimmed. 
 
 ''I am proud of the fact," says an eminent Methodist 
 leader, "that the scholarship of the churches is not wholly 
 in the grip of the rationalists. There is not a Methodist 
 institution, or a Methodist periodical, or, so far as I know, 
 a single Methodist minister, who has joined the higher 
 critics in their destructive historical and literary work, 
 notwithstanding Mr. Faulkner, in his effort to carry the 
 charge of rationalism in the church, assumed that many 
 Methodist clergymen are in the bonds of that great 
 iniquity." 
 
 If the scholarship of the churches is not amenable to 
 reason, it is in the bonds of a great imbecility. If the 
 Methodist Church has no tendency to bring its theology 
 to the bar of reason, it is a far more effete institution 
 than its vigorous condition would indicate. Put down 
 the brakes on reason ? There is but one way to do it. 
 Burn the reasoner ! It is not the Methodist Church 
 which is credited with that monopoly. It is too late for 
 the Methodist Church to introduce it. Even Bruno does 
 not stay burned. The oxygen of the nineteenth century 
 
38 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 is constantly reillumining him. So magnificently have 
 our fathers wrought — our orthodox, iron-bound fathers — 
 that they have freed our reason to perfect liberty. 
 
 ^^If they should revise rationalism into the Confes- 
 sion," say the Presbyterian watchmen, "there will be 
 an interminable war until one party or the other is cast 
 out." 
 
 On the contrary, when rationalism is revised into the 
 Confession there will be everlasting peace, and never till 
 then. All the war comes because reason is outside and 
 orthodoxy inside. Until they are at one inside — that is, 
 until orthodoxy is perfectly reasonable — this conflict is 
 irrepressible. 
 
 " Presbyterians, if they are anything, are intelligent 
 and pious. They know what they believe, because they 
 have committed to memory the Shorter Catechism. They 
 know why they believe, because they have studied their 
 Bibles." 
 
 It might be supposed that the more decorous and 
 deferential way would be to learn from the Bible what 
 to believe and from the Catechism why you believe. But 
 pious and intelligent Presbyterians are too wise in their 
 generation to fancy for a moment that the Westminster 
 Catechism can explain anything to anybody. It is very 
 clever in them to commit the Catechism to memory and 
 the Bible to reason. 
 
 But, say the Literalists, rationalism takes away our 
 infallible Bible and puts reason to judge revelation. 
 
 What is an infallible Bible ? The multiplication-table 
 is infallible, but is of no use to us until we learn it. If 
 we know nothing of numbers and can not read figures, 
 the multiplication-table might as well be fallible so far 
 as we are concerned. We must put our memory to the 
 multiplication-table and our reason to applying it before 
 we get any good out of it. 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. 39 
 
 So even an infallible Bible is practically fallible so 
 long as the minds that use it are fallible. Rationalists put 
 reason to judge revelation ? What ought to judge revela- 
 tion ? Revelation is addressed to reason. It is God who 
 puts reason to judge revelation. There is no revelation 
 where there is no reason. Cats and dogs, birds and fishes, 
 have no revelation because they have not reason. God 
 reveals himself and can reveal himself only through and 
 to the reason of man, and he himself constantly appeals 
 to man to use his reason in judging God. How can any 
 man upbraid his fellow-man for doing what God con- 
 stantly in the Bible exhorts, and outside the Bible stimu- 
 lates, man to do ! 
 
 Let us apply rationalism and non-rationalism to the in- 
 fallible Bible in the story of Abram. Abram had several 
 wives. He drove away one wife and her son — his son — to 
 die in the wilderness. He was about to murder another 
 son. The tale is interesting, but what of it, if we are not 
 to use reason ? It is simply a story like any fairy tale. 
 
 Oh, no ! says the anti-rationalist, the irrationalist. 
 These things happened for ensamples, as Paul says, and 
 they are written for our admonition, upon whom the 
 ends of the world are come. 
 
 But that is rationalism ! Paul, then, is a rationalist. 
 He is not contented with the infallible Genesis, but adds 
 a comment, a moral, an interpretation of his own. He 
 puts his reason to judge Moses's revelation. He is not 
 content with the simple narrative as Moses gave it, but 
 invests the narrative with a Pauline motive. And what 
 is the result ? Under his lead, taking Abram for an en- 
 sample, we learn that polygamy is legal and righteous, 
 and the Mormons are true saints, as they call themselves, 
 and those who oppose the Mormons are fighting against 
 God. As Abraham was obedient to sacrifice his only son. 
 Freeman of Massachusetts must have been ridit in kill- 
 
40 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 ing his little daughter as a sacrifice to God, and the Mas- 
 sachusetts law was wrong in shutting him into the Dan- 
 yers lunatic asylum. 
 
 No, continues the anti-rationalist, still dissatisfied 
 with our reasoning, and demanding more. The plural- 
 ity of wives and the sacrifice of Isaac were due to the im- 
 perfect light of those barbarous early days. We are not 
 to imitate Abraham in those points. They were not the 
 ones given for our ensample. It is Abram's faith that 
 we are to follow. He was ready to do what God told 
 him to do, even to the sacrifice of his own son. The les- 
 son to us is of equally prompt obedience. The things 
 Abraham did would be wrong in our day, but his faith 
 in God, his entire submission, were counted to him for 
 righteousness. 
 
 Here is a long process of rationalism. The conserva- 
 tives resort to it because without it the story of Abram 
 is but nonsense verses. They go on until rationalism 
 takes them to a stopping -place which satisfies tlicm 
 — that is, to a point where we can be ordered to copy 
 Abram's faith and not his crimes, or what would now be 
 crimes. There they choose to stop, and there they bid 
 every one else stop. But having gone so far in their 
 company, who shall forbid us to go a step further on 
 our own account, and point out that Abram's faith is 
 summoned by Paul to show the earthly origin of the 
 Mosaic law ? The Mosaic law was not only to be de- 
 stroyed for the future. We see by Abraham that it vras 
 not eternal in the past, for the apostle says that Abra- 
 ham was without law. He had nothing but faith in 
 God. The law had not been established in his day, so he 
 was justified, gained his reputation, obtained all his 
 character, without the law of Moses. God is divine, 
 eternal, and faith in him is always a saving faith. The 
 law of Moses was temporary, a mere human device, to be 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. 41 
 
 outgrown and cast off. That is Paul's argument, and it 
 is our argument ; but it is rationalism in Paul just as 
 much as in us. Will any orthodox Methodist, or Pres- 
 byterian, or Episcopalian think it incumbent on him to 
 put the brakes on this tendency in Paul ? But if ration- 
 alism is to be kept out of the Creed and the Confession 
 and the Thirty-nine Articles, it ought to be revised out 
 of the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 And what becomes of the infallible Bible ? It was 
 not infallible in the hands of Brigham Young, who inter- 
 preted its teachings into polygamy. It was not infallible 
 in the hands of Freeman, who murdered his little daugh- 
 ter under its inspiration. It is not infallible to any man 
 further than the Spirit of the Almighty giveth him un- 
 derstanding. 
 
 But the conservative, the anti-rationalist, says that 
 you shall not put your understanding at work on the Bi- 
 ble and find out what it means. He says that is putting 
 reason to judge revelation. What he micans is that it is 
 putting your reason to judge revelation, when he requires 
 you to take his reason instead. 
 
 If you persist, if you will not take his reason, instead 
 of using your own, he charges you with the self-conceit 
 and arrofjfance of maintainina^ that there is a '^ Christian 
 consciousness which is so far superior to the Bible in au- 
 thority that it . . . may interpret it, from Genesis to the 
 Apocalypse, to suit itself," and ''is competent to sit in 
 judgment upon the word of God, and to decide that it 
 must mean some things and can not mean other things." 
 
 Hear what the infallible Bible says : For there is no 
 work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave 
 whither thou goest. 
 
 On the face of it, this means that death ends all. 
 Looking a little further at the circumstances and charac- 
 ter of the speaker, it seems to mean the weary despair of 
 
42 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 a worn-out yoluptuary. But this is putting reason to 
 judge revelation. This is sitting in judgment on the 
 Word of God. You must say that it means eternal noth- 
 ingness after death, or you place your Christian conscious- 
 ness above the Bible. The Bible is infallible, and you 
 are not competent to sit in judgment upon it : therefore, 
 the Bible teaches annihilation. 
 
 If a friend writes you a letter, you must not pretend 
 to understand it. That is to decide what it does and 
 does not mean. That would be accounting yourself su- 
 perior to your friend. That would be sitting in judg- 
 ment on his letter. But, you naturally ask. Why, then, 
 does he write ? What is gained by writing a letter to a 
 man who is incompetent to judge of its meaning ? 
 
 What is it to interpret words to suit yourself ? Whom 
 must you suit ? Must you interpret a word by another 
 man's understanding or your own, as you believe it to be 
 or as you believe it not to be ? 
 
 The same paragraph which indicts the Christian con- 
 sciousness for assuming to be superior to the Bible de- 
 clares that *' two considerations necessarily underlie and 
 control the interpretation of all writing and speech : its 
 terms and our conception of the sense to be put upon 
 them." 
 
 What is that but a complete surrender ? " Its terms " 
 =the Bible. *^ Our conception of the sense to be put on 
 them "=^^ interpreting the Bible to suit ourselves," ** sit- 
 ting in judgment upon the word of God," *^ deciding that 
 it may mean one thing and can not mean another." Yet 
 this very thing which the Christian consciousness is re- 
 proached for bringing to bear on the Bible, the writer in 
 the same breath declares absolutely indispensable to bring 
 to bear on all interpretation of all writing. Human con- 
 sciousness must decide all writing ; Christian conscious- 
 ness must not decide Bible writing. 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. 43 
 
 Another theological reasoner says on one page : '* That 
 our consciousness is not mendacious, lies at the founda- 
 tion of all our thinking and feeling and well-being. " Then 
 straightway forgetting what manner of being he is, he 
 hurls at an erring progressive brother on the same day 
 and in the same place an exultant and "thorough ex- 
 posure of the theory that the Christian consciousness is 
 the court of ultimate appeal." He even lavishes himself 
 on warnings and prophecies that "he who carries his 
 Bible into the world to find out what its doctrines are, 
 and what its precepts mean, will find that the more he 
 trusts himself to the teachings, even of imperfectly sanc- 
 tified fallen human nature, the greater will be his ulti- 
 mate error and downfall.". 
 
 Here, then, are the propositions : 
 
 To trust consciousness is at the very foundation of 
 right thinking and right living. 
 
 To trust Christian consciousness, even our own forti- 
 fied by that of other men, is to compass error and down- 
 fall. 
 
 And this writer is a doctor of divinity, an Andover 
 graduate, a college graduate, a New Englander born and 
 bred under Plymouth Kock. What do you suppose he 
 thinks he means ? What does a man do with his mind 
 while he is putting two contradictory propositions at short 
 range on the same page ? What does he think we are 
 doing with our minds when we are reading them ? Such 
 irrationalism in a teacher is unpardonable. You and I — 
 women — who are busy with the thousand nameless, un- 
 noted but imperative duties of life — 
 
 " We poor women, feeble-natured, large of heart, in wisdom small, 
 Who the world's incessant battle can not understand at all " — 
 
 we are not expected to be logical, or even to understand 
 logic. We may, in our small way, jump a syllogism, 
 dash up against a fallacy, and not forfeit our right to 
 
44 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 self-respect ! But for a man, a college graduate, a voter, 
 a legislator, a theological professor and teacher with the 
 Westminster Catechism at his tongue's end, to put upon 
 the same page, fronting each other, glaring at each other, 
 two contradictory statements that can only devour each 
 other — is for a man to invite woman into the pulpit ! 
 
 When Protestant conservatism is arguing against the 
 Pope it is as strong a rationalist as any philosopher could 
 ask. 
 
 Rome or reason was perhaps never set forth more 
 clearly and conclusively than on the pages of an evan- 
 gelical newspaper that is foremost in the struggle against 
 reason: "As we look at it, only two alternatives are 
 possible in this matter of an infallible faith ; either the 
 conditions of it exist outside of the soul in some con- 
 stituted and certified authority, or within the soul in the 
 purest and loftiest exercise of its reason. If outside of 
 the soul, in any central and constituted authority, then 
 in the Pope. If inside the soul, then God remits every 
 man to those conditions of secure decision which he has 
 established in his breast, and holds him responsible for a 
 judgment and a life founded upon them. God never 
 commands men to hang their faith on the Pope or the 
 Bishop ; but rather inquires — in that tone of asking which 
 is equivalent to the highest form of injunction — ' Why 
 [aph'' heauton] out of your own selves do ye not judge 
 what is right ?' The entire appeal of the apostle is to 
 the tribunal of the Hebrews' reason as the court of ulti- 
 mate decision. 
 
 ** We are even prepared to go so far as to claim that, 
 as human nature has been divinely constituted, it is a 
 psychological impossibility for any man to waive this 
 prerogative of being the supreme authority over himself 
 in regard to his religion. 
 
 '^ There lies before us a recent number of a relisfious 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. 45 
 
 quarterly containing an elaborate article entitled An In- 
 fallible Church, or an Infallible Book — which ? the great 
 object of which is to dethrone the Pope and enthrone the 
 Bible, as the subject of indubitable faith, with that re- 
 ligious certitude with which it may logically comfort 
 the soul. To quote its own language, it would make the 
 Bible Hhe supreme and only arbiter in things spiritual.' 
 And this, it thinks, would cause ' divisions to cease among 
 us forever.' But this forgets that the Bible is always at 
 the mercy of its interpreters, and its unity becomes con- 
 tinual diversity— being all things to all men, as they com- 
 pel it, by the manner in which they receive it. 
 
 *'It is, then, both the privilege and the duty of every 
 man to be a law unto himself ; and out of his own reason 
 and conscience to judge what is right. From the decision 
 which he thus reaches there can be, for him, no aj^peal. 
 Whether it is anybody else's duty to follow the course 
 prescribed therein or not, it is Ms duty to do so. He has 
 pleaded his cause before his infallible tribunal, and its 
 decision over him is necessarily supreme and inexorable. 
 Not to obey it would be to be false equally to God and to 
 himself. If it be not absolute right which he has reached, 
 it stands in the place of absolute right for him ; and only 
 along its road, however thorny and steep and high, can 
 he climb up toward heaven. Practically, then, we insist 
 upon it, there is no infallibility possible to man but that 
 which is resident in his own soul." 
 
 Yet when this same Protestant rationalism was grap- 
 pling with doctrinal rationalism, it turned its back on its 
 own reasoning and maintained that if this inner tribunal 
 be ultimate, it must be able to discern the perfect truth 
 and divinity of each and every joart of the Bible. It 
 must be able infallibly to distinguish the apocryphal 
 from the canonical. It must be able to pronounce judg- 
 ment concerning the genuineness, or at least the inspira- 
 
46 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 tion, of the disputed books. It must be able to detect all 
 interpolations of uninspired transcribers, and all devia- 
 tions of the manuscripts from the original record. 
 
 Must it ? Can not your trained Christian conscious- 
 ness tell you anything unless it tell you everything ? Does 
 mathematical consciousness tell you everything in mathe- 
 matics ? Can not your mathematical consciousness be 
 trained to the point of acquainting you with the fact that 
 there are four fingers on each hand unless it tell you also 
 how many bones and joints and muscles and corpuscles 
 there are in those four fingers and what are their names ? 
 Must it tell you how the blood circulates and nourishes, 
 colors and purifies itself ? Must it tell you on what prin- 
 ciple, in what method, that blood gathers itself from 
 chyme and chyle, and lends to the nails their hardness 
 and to the flesh its softness ? Christian consciousness is 
 only one phase of the universal consciousness. We might 
 just as well say that the baby can not trust the multipli- 
 cation table unless he can comprehend the calculus as to 
 say that a man can not truly believe in the baptism of 
 repentance for the remission of sins unless he understands 
 with equal clearness the whirl of Ezekiel's wheels, wheel 
 within wheel, the beryl stone, and the terrible crystal, 
 for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels ! 
 
 Assume for a moment that the Christian conscious- 
 ness does not give us assurance concerning the Divine 
 authority and inspiration of the Scriptures ; what does ? 
 The Church? The minister? The council ? The as- 
 semblies ? The bishops ? Your Christian consciousness 
 must give you assurance concerning them ! The creed 
 tells you what Paul means, but what tells you that you 
 may trust the creed ? The Church bids you trust the 
 catechism, but your own Christian consciousness must 
 answer for the Church. You take just as much responsi- 
 bility by sitting in judgment on the Thirty-nine Articles 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. 47 
 
 which interpret the Bible as you do by sitting in judg- 
 ment on the Bible. You take as much responsibility in 
 accepting the Apostles* Creed as you do in accepting the 
 apostles. You perform the most momentous act of pri- 
 Yate Judgment in relinquishing private judgment. 
 
 It is brought with great solemnity against Dr. Har- 
 per that he has plainly declared that the Christian stu- 
 dent, after having found out just the language used by 
 the authors of the various books of the Bible and the ex- 
 act meaning of the language, must apply the final test of 
 his own reason in determining what statements are true 
 and what are to be rejected. To the plain question of 
 one of his students, *^Do you mean to say that if my 
 reason condemns any Scriptural statement as untrue I 
 must reject it ?" his reply was : ''Certainly ; for what 
 purpose was your reason given you ? " 
 
 Whatever Dr. Harper may have said, it is forever true 
 that not only has a man the right to reject what his rea- 
 son contradicts, but he has not the power to do any- 
 thing else. It is a psychological impossibility. No man 
 can believe against his reason, because it is through his 
 reason that he believes. To say that he must believe 
 what his reason rejects is to say that he must believe 
 what he can not believe. If a teacher — be his name John 
 Baptist or John Smith — should say, ''every child is bom 
 with six fingers on each hand," you could not believe 
 him, because your reason tells you that four is the nor- 
 mal number. If the penalty for not believing were death 
 at the stake, you might conceal your conviction ; you 
 might even put in your public confession of faith that 
 there are six fingers on each hand ; and if you were a 
 scientific and conscientious man you would betimes dis- 
 cover that the elasticity of language permits you to call 
 the thumb a finger, and the elasticity of science might 
 permit you to discern somewhere under the skin a rudi- 
 
48 A WASnmGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 mentary finger, suppressed by your environment in some 
 past age, or to be developed by your environment in some 
 future age, and so you might somehow creep along con- 
 scientiously with your six fingers till a learned linguist, 
 mousing among old manuscript, should detect a clerical 
 error, and announce that John's copyist had mistaken 
 four for six, but that really it was in the original four 
 fingers on each hand. Yet how much trouble would have 
 been saved if in the beginning we had not worshiped the 
 letter — had recognized the claims of reason and simply 
 said there must be a mistake somewhere : our Christian 
 consciousness is enough when it tells us that there are 
 only four fingers on each hand ! 
 
 This is where the orthodox play into the hands of the 
 fool who saith in his heart, There is no God. Mind, 
 I do not say the thoughtful — it may be sad, it may be 
 weary — searcher for truth who confesses with more or 
 less of pathos and patience, *' I can not see God." I 
 mean the blatant and boastful agnostic who never went 
 ankle-deep in Scriptural or any other investigation, but 
 who makes more noise shouting and splashing in the 
 shoals than the whole Squadron of Evolution makes in 
 saih'ng the wide seas over. His idea of argument is : Do 
 you believe Joshua's sun stayed in the sky all night ? Do 
 you believe Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt ? Yes ? 
 Then you are an ignoramus. No ? Then you must 
 throw away the Bible or proclaim yourself a coward and 
 a hypocrite. 
 
 The real scholars do neither. The men who are in- 
 creasing the sum of the world's knowledge are studying, 
 not scoffing, the Bible. President White, in the very 
 exposition of the story of Lot's wife, has served well every 
 department of study by the excellence of his method. 
 The folly of anti-rationalism was never more clearly 
 demonstrated than by his presentation of the grotesque 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. 49 
 
 absurdities that clustered and flourished around Lot's 
 wife in its absence. Our old friend Josephus has gently 
 enlarged upon the sacred record in the supposition that 
 ''continually turning back to view the city as she went 
 from it " — apparently thinking her punishment too severe 
 for a single lapse—'' and being too nicely inquisitive what 
 would become of it, . . . was changed into a pillar of salt ; 
 for I have seen it, and it remains to this day ? '' 
 
 President White summons from the second cent- 
 ury the great father, bishop, and martyr, Irenaeus, who 
 not only vouches for the biography, but countenances 
 the belief that the soul of Lot's wife still lingered in 
 the statue, giving it a sort of organic life. The Tar- 
 gum of Jerusalem not only testified that the salt pillar 
 at Usdum was once Lot's wife, but declared that she 
 must retain that form until the general resurrection. In 
 the fifteenth century the friar Felix Fabri declared that 
 he could not see the statue because he was too far off ; 
 "but we saw it with firm faith, because we believed 
 Scripture, and we were full of wonder." And he gives 
 a new touch in the information that Lot's wife had met 
 her peculiar punishment because she had refused to add 
 salt to the food of the angels when they visited her. 
 Giraudet, a priest, clinched the whole matter by testify- 
 ing to the point. He found her ! She was " lying there, 
 her back toward heaven, converted into a salt stone, for 
 I touched her, scratched her, and put a piece of her into 
 my mouth, and she tasted salt ! " 
 
 If testimony never agreed, a theory was established 
 for each fact. If pillars of salt were washed away, and 
 new ones appeared in different places, it was because 
 Lot's wife was walking about. If a small salt block ac- 
 cumulated near the statue, it was madam's pet dog also 
 transformed into salt. If the statue were forty feet high, 
 " there were giants in those days " to account for it. If 
 4 
 
50 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 no statue were to be seen, Lot's wife w^as taking a salt- 
 water bath in the Dead Sea. As early as the middle of 
 the eighteenth century, however, we find a theory similar 
 to the one that has been presented here — a suggestion 
 that Lot's wife was caught in a shower of sulphur and 
 saltpetre, which covered her and converted her into a 
 pillar of salt. It is pleasant to see all the way along that 
 the heart of humanity is sounder than its head, and that 
 both Protestant and Catholic, though ready to pound all 
 the world to pieces on the question of Lofs wife's body, 
 were equally ready to admit that her soul was not eter- 
 nally damned, Luther even going so far as to pronounce 
 her a faithful and saintly woman. 
 
 The only i:)oint on which we should fundamentally 
 disagree with President White is where he characterizes 
 '* statements which enlightened men throughout the 
 w^orld hnoiv to be mythical." Know is a far vv^ord, espe- 
 cially when it is four thousand years away, and while as 
 yet the East has hardly more than begun to develop its 
 hidden treasures of tablet and other testimony. The 
 moral effect is just as strong if wt say with him that the 
 worst enemy of Christianity could wish nothing more 
 than that its main leaders should insist that it can not bo 
 adopted save by those who accept as historical, statements 
 which enlightened men throughout the w^orld liold to be 
 mythical. 
 
 Shall we now stand for a moment in the light of 
 Joshua's sun ? For three thousand years it never troubled 
 us. If people thought at all about it, they thought God 
 could as easily make the sun shine for two days as for 
 one. They apparently looked at it like Ruskin : '■' What ! 
 surprised that the sun should stand still ? Not a bit ! 
 I always expected it would ! The miracle is in keeping 
 it going !" But presently science began to stir, and as- 
 tronomy began to adjust the universe and to discover 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. 51 
 
 that everything in it would have to be turned upside 
 down if the sun stood still, and the wiseacres and the 
 penny-a-liners raised a loud cry that now the Bible must 
 surely be thrown away, because Joshua was proved by 
 science to be an arrant humbug ! 
 
 Time rolled on, and people did not throw away their 
 Bibles in spite of that unastronomical and unscientific 
 sun. People are very apt iiot to throw away their Bi- 
 bles, even when they are bidden. One day in the autumn 
 of 1883 I was walking in the country alone, when I pres- 
 ently became aware of something extraordinary in the 
 world— in the earth, and in the heavens. It was just 
 sunset ; the sun had gone down ; it ought to be dusk, yet 
 it was not dusk. It was so noticeable, so impressive, so 
 persistently light and softly bright that I stood still front- 
 ing the west. The whole world was aglow. Over the 
 round earth was a suffusing yellow light. High up, 
 mounting almost to the zenith, a red sky reigned — a 
 soft, red gold inexpressibly strange, beautiful, unnat- 
 ural. You remember it. By the morning papers we 
 learned that the wide earth was bathed in that wonder- 
 ful sun-glow. 
 
 Science started out to investigate the red sunsets, all 
 the newspapers struck in to lend a hand, and even ortho- 
 doxy itself reported that *^a committee of the Royal So- 
 ciety of England, appointed to report upon these sun- 
 glows, connects them with the volcanic eruption of Kra- 
 katoa, which threw into the upper region of the atmos- 
 phere immense clouds of vitreous pumice-dust, or fine 
 particles of glass. This material was projected into a 
 stratum of the air from fourteen to twenty miles above 
 the sea-level. The glows spoken of were caused by the 
 reflection of this cloud of glass-like particles, and its 
 great height caused the effect to continue much later in 
 the evenins: than that which results from reflection of 
 
52 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 particles in the lower strata of the atmosphere, and pro- 
 duces ordinary twilight. 
 
 " Upon searching the records for corresponding phe- 
 nomena in the past, it is found that such after-glows are 
 by no means infrequent. In 1831, when volcanic erup- 
 tions were especially numerous, there were times when 
 the sky was brilliantly lighted at midnight, so that at 
 Berlin and Genoa small print could be read when ' the 
 sun must have been nineteen degrees below the horizon.' 
 
 *^ Close examination of the account of the miracle in 
 Joshua does much to prepare the way for some such nat- 
 ural explanation of the events of that day as is suggested 
 by the report of the Royal Society. Orthodox conserva- 
 tive commentators like Keil properly insist upon our ob- 
 serving that these verses (x, 12-15) are parenthetical — a 
 quotation from the poetical Book of Jasher, in which the 
 words of Joshua were first recorded. 
 
 " It is difficult to see how such a poetical description 
 should have arisen without some basis in fact. This 
 poetical quotation from the Book of Jasher is amply 
 explained and accounted for by some such natural pro- 
 longation of daylight at that particular juncture as we 
 have already witnessed more than once during the present 
 century. Such an explanation of the account relieves it 
 from the apparent incongruity of disarranging the whole 
 mechanism of the heavens to bring about so small a result 
 as the defeat of an army. Such an enormous disarrange- 
 ment is out of harmony with the ordinary economy in 
 the use of miracles as detailed in Bible history. But it 
 is no small confirmation of the general accuracy of the 
 Scripture narratives that so ready an explanation is at 
 hand for the poetical description incorporated from the 
 Book of Jasher into this remarkable account." And the 
 style and spirit of it correspond exactly with those of 
 the preceding verse. In the same flight which the pro- 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. 53 
 
 longed sunliglit made victorious to the Hebrews, fatal to 
 the Amorites, the historian adds : '^The Lord cast down 
 great stones from heaven upon them, and they died." 
 This is not cited as miracle. Why ? Because the writer 
 immediately adds : '^ They were more which died with 
 hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew 
 with the sword." He chanced to duplicate his stones 
 with hailstones, and a hailstone is not an uncommon 
 occurrence. Even hail large enough to kill a man is 
 known to experience [hail was falling in Baltimore at 
 the very moment the Bible class were listening to this 
 reading, in a storm which destroyed property and imper- 
 iled life] ; but these volcanic sunsets we knew nothing 
 about, and so we said Joshua's sun-glow is a miracle. If 
 the sacred writer or the profane copyist had happened to 
 leave those ''hailstones" out and put in only *' stones," 
 that form of unfaith which recognizes itself as conserva- 
 tism would not have allowed us to suggest that they were 
 hailstones, because that would have been rationah'sm ; 
 that would have been sitting in judgment on the word of 
 God ; that would have been putting reason to judge reve- 
 lation. But the Lord is said to have thrown the stones 
 just as much as he stayed the sun. And he threw the 
 stones as he often throws stones, which we call hail-stones. 
 So, by parity of reason, he stayed the sun through natural 
 processes. 
 
 But it is not for the most radical rationalists to plume 
 themselves on their wider views, on their more advanced 
 thought. There is nothing original in their interpreta- 
 tion, nothing that the world has not been well informed 
 of. Their views have been held from time immemorial. 
 Nothing can be more rational than the account of Jose- 
 phus : 
 
 " The place is called Beth-horon, where he also under- 
 stood that God assisted him, wMcli he declared ly thun- 
 
54: A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 der and thunder-holts, as also ly the falling of hail larger 
 than usual. Moreover, it happened that the day was 
 lengthened, that the night might not come on too soon 
 and be an obstruction to the zeal of the Hebrews in pur- 
 suing their enemies. Now, that the day was lengthened 
 at this time, and was longer than ordinary, is expressed 
 in the books laid up in the temple."' Mr. Whiston, Cam- 
 bridge Professor of Mathematics in the early years of 
 the present century, comments calmly: "Whether this 
 lengthening of the day by the standing still of the sun 
 and moon were physical and real, by the miraculous stop- 
 page of the diurnal motion of the earth for about half a 
 revolution, or whether only apparent, by aerial phosjjho- 
 ri, or mock sun, affording sufficient light for Joshua's 
 pursuit and complete victory {luhich aerial phosphori in 
 other shapes have teen more than ordinarily common of 
 late years), can not now be determined ; philosophers and 
 astronomers will naturally incline to this latter hypothe- 
 sis." 
 
 Neither science nor piety need lash themselves to fury 
 over the explanations of literature. They are questions 
 of literature. They are not questions of faith. Let the 
 potsherd strive with the potsherds ; that is the way of 
 pottery. But the word of our God shall stand forever. 
 
 This lyric of Joshua is poetry, it is religion, it is ra- 
 tionalism. The poetry of it and the religion of it stood 
 man in good stead for three thousand years ; then science 
 stepped forward and said it could not be. Astronomical 
 law forbade it. But science stepped forward again and 
 said it could be. Geological law ordained it. Science 
 even showed how it could be. And so, besides the poetry 
 of it, and besides the religion of it, and besides the science 
 of it, we have, thanks to rationalism, an invaluable leaf 
 saved out of that lost Book of Jasher, an invaluable page 
 out of perished history, a glimpse of the sociology and 
 
THE RExVL GENESIS. 55 
 
 literature and natural phenomena of a yanished world. 
 Throw away the Bible ? No ! If there were but one 
 Bible on the earth, we should do well to mount guard 
 over it with the whole United States army rather 
 than lose it out of history even, not to say out of the- 
 ology. 
 
 It is science itself which forbids us to pronounce too 
 confidently against even the literal truthfulness of the 
 Bible. Many things which might be given up to legend 
 without impairing the moral value of the Holy Scripture, 
 because God can be illustrated by a legend or a myth as 
 well as by a fact, science and research seem to be basing 
 upon a true historical foundation. The rationalist must 
 be wary with his myths, for the Egyptian explorers are at 
 his heels. Rationalism would not insist too strenuously 
 upon the details of that beautiful Oriental romance, the 
 history of Joseph, but neither may we be too strenuous in 
 relegating it to romance. Its personages, its scenery, its 
 incidents, are coming out in brick and stone, as well as in 
 immemorial Scripture, to the light of the nineteenth cent- 
 ury. Miss Edwards has told us of excavated cities whose 
 buildings at the foundations have bricks made of coarse, 
 scanty straw ; higher up, these bricks are mixed with a 
 rank weed, and at the top are composed only of the Nile 
 mud. Through all these centuries the Bible alone has 
 preserved those bricks without straw, to be unearthed by 
 our spades. 
 
 Professor Sayce tells us that, a century before the ex- 
 odus, active literary intercourse was going on between 
 Babylon and Egypt and the smaller states of Palestine 
 and Syria. Over the civilized East there must have 
 been libraries and schools where the Babylonian language 
 and literature were taught, because that tongue appears 
 to have been as much the language of diplomacy and of 
 cultivated society as the French is the language of Eu- 
 
56 A WASHLVGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 rojpe. Kirjath-Sepher, the name of the city which gave 
 Joshua so much trouble that he offered his daughter as 
 wife to the man who should take it, means Book- town, 
 and it was the seat of a famous library. Its name was 
 also Debir, meaning sanctuary, indicating that its books 
 were stored in its chief temple, like the libraries of As- 
 syria and Babylonia. These books were in the form of 
 clay tablets inscribed with the cuneiform characters, as 
 we learn from the archives of the palace of Amenophis 
 III, just discovered. It is not impossible that those clay 
 tablets may still exist under the soil, awaiting the spade 
 that shall disclose to the nineteenth century the very books 
 which the Canaan ite scholars were reading and writing a 
 hundred years before Othniel attacked their city, stimu- 
 lated by his love for the beautiful Achsah, whose hand 
 awaited the victor. In this, too, we have a glimpse of 
 another of the many romances scattered along the Bible 
 paths — the heartsome, human Bible paths — for Othniel 
 was the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, and Caleb 
 was the partner of Joshua, and co-leader with him in 
 Israel, so that both young people were of distinguished 
 family. Probably they had seen much of each other, and 
 possibly it was a knowledge of the mutual attachment of 
 the cousins which was in Caleb's confident mind when he 
 announced his daughter as the prize of the victor. Very 
 likely he knew the young man's mettle, and meant not so 
 much to give a stimulus as an opportunity. The scheme 
 was in any case brilliantly successful. The young man 
 won a great victory and a great match. An admirable 
 match it proved for the girl also, since Othniel was not 
 only a skillful and successful general in war, but an able 
 administrator in peace and an upright judge. When 
 Israel cried unto the Lord in stress of anguish, the Spirit 
 of the Lord came upon him, and he went out to war and 
 prevailed, and came home and administered justice with 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. - 57 
 
 equity, and held the land tranquil and prosperous forty 
 years, till Othniel slept with his fathers. 
 
 In a careful reading of these clay tablets just discov- 
 ered in Egyptian palaces, many names and incidents are 
 confirmed which have hitherto been met only in the Bi- 
 ble, thus restoring to history what we had ignorantly rel- 
 egated to myth. 
 
 Mr. Harper, an artist who has traveled much in the 
 Holy Land, is an accomplished Bible scholar, and has been 
 for many years an active member of the Palestine Explora- 
 tion Fund Committee. His general conclusion is that 
 the statements of the Bible are being confirmed by mod- 
 ern discoveries in a remarkably full and exact manner. 
 You may not ask too scofiTmgly whether the Assyrian came 
 down like the wolf on the fold, and whether Hezekiah and 
 his princes and his mighty men really did stop the waters 
 of the fountains to keep him out. We have found the 
 plug ! 
 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, Mr. Harper believes, were de- 
 stroyed by lightning. Joshua's delaying sun was due to 
 refraction caused by the intense cold of, or connected 
 with, the hail-storm ; and declares the phenomenon not 
 unknown in the present. 
 
 Rationalism can as easily lead to folly as the rabies 
 against rationalism. Eationalistic fancy is as unscholarly 
 as anti-rationalistic fact. The old Ebionites " explained " 
 Paul's conversion by theorizing that he was a Greek who 
 went up to Jerusalem, fell in love with the high priest's 
 daughter, was refused, and in resentment set himself 
 full against high priest, altar, law, Sabbath, and every- 
 thing distinctively Jewish. And a new Ebionite, not 
 evidently meaning to be profane, seriously suggests : ^^It 
 seems evident, then, that upon emerging into manhood 
 Jesus found himself in love. But with whom ? Tradi- 
 tion does not tell us. Yet can we not see her ? Is it not 
 
58 A WASHINGTON EIBLE CLASS. 
 
 always the same girl, foreyer reappearing, who attracts 
 genius in its first longings for sympathy ? It is easy to 
 see the soft, appealing eyes, with more luster than steadi- 
 ness ; the face richer in forehead than in jaw and chin ; 
 the slight figure, full of a nameless grace, a tender charm, 
 which would be perfect were it not for a certain inde- 
 cision which lurks in every attitude. Alas ! she is more 
 truthful than candid ; more gentle and complying than 
 sympathetic ; more self-denying than unselfish. . . . 
 And yet how affectionate and winning ! How tempting 
 a rock for a man to split the powers of his mind and 
 heart upon ! " 
 
 This, which is no more rationalism than it is exegesis, 
 simply shows the obtuse angle which folly may make in 
 the rebound. We have a right to the romance of Othniel 
 and Achsah, of Kuth and Boaz, of Esther and Ahasuerus. 
 They are given. Such Ebionitish fictions, without per- 
 spective and without dignity, have no value beyond the 
 quality of the thought which produced them. They do 
 not dim the glory of true reasoning. 
 
 We who were born and bred in a New England village 
 remember the big red Bible that always stood apart on 
 a table by itself in the best chamber, in the guest cham- 
 ber — a book which was sacred on week-days from child- 
 ish meddlesome fingers, but was free on Sundays after 
 church to best clothes and immaculate hands. Among 
 the astonishing pictures in this Bible was the passage of 
 the Israelites through the Red Sea. On each side the 
 procession stood an even, high wall of water that looked 
 like masonry, as solid as rock, with a dry, clean, smooth 
 path under foot. Against that wall of water scientific 
 skepticism threw itself in scorn, and did make some 
 breaches therein ; but by and by came Rationalism pok- 
 ing its fingers into geography, visited the Red Sea, and 
 found out that at Suez there is a bar extending from 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. 59 
 
 one shore to the other, which at times is no\7 almost 
 laid bare by a favorable conjunction of low tide and 
 strong east wind. Upon either side of this bar the water 
 is deep. 
 
 Does it not all stand explained ? You who have been 
 at Bar Harbor can see that a retreating army might get 
 away from a pursuing army in Mount Desert by being at 
 the bar at low tide and rushing across to Bar Island, 
 while the returning high tide should keep the pursuing 
 army on Mount Desert. 
 
 The Ked Sea tide is an irregular one — not always to 
 be depended upon for withdrawal. But it came to pass, 
 in the course of nature, by the determinate counsel and 
 foreknowledge of God, that the frightened, fleeing Is- 
 raelites found the bar so bared that they could cross it. 
 By the course of Nature ? Certainly. So the record 
 says. The Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong 
 east wind all night. That is nature, not miracle. That 
 is the way the Eed Sea bar is always bared. The Is- 
 raelites came safely through between the deep waters on 
 each side. The Egyptians plunged in after them, hot- 
 headed ; but before they had crossed, the waters began to 
 flow down again — not miraculously, not falling upon 
 them from a wall above their heads, but slowly rising be- 
 neath their feet ; a rising tide, only muddy at first, so 
 that they drove heavily, clogging their wheels, and even 
 leaving them sticking fast in the mud. The water deep- 
 ened, slowly rising, but always rising, so that the hot 
 haste of pursuit had time to cool, and leaders took coun- 
 sel and decided that it was too dangerous to attempt fur- 
 ther passage against the threatening waters, and turned 
 back and fled in panic — too late ! too late ! 
 
 " The feet had hardly time to flee 
 Before it brake against the knee, 
 And all the world was in the sea." 
 
60 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 Dr. Talmage asks : ''Why not be frank, and say, 'I 
 believe the Lord God Almighty came to the brink of the 
 Eed Sea, and with his right arm swung back the billows 
 on the right side, and with his left arm swung back the 
 billows on the left side, and the abashed water stood up 
 hundreds of feet high, while through their glassy wail 
 the sea-monsters gazed with affrighted eyes on the passing 
 Israelites ? ' " 
 
 Because we do not believe it. Because the Bible does 
 not say so. It was Moses who came to the brink of the 
 Eed Sea and swung his arms. That is like a man. The 
 Lord God caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind 
 all night. That is like God. Doubtless Dr. Talmage, 
 with his irrepressible energy, would have made a much 
 greater stirabout of the waters right and left than the 
 Lord God made with his commonplace east wind ; but, 
 after all, the east wind is a good deal of a blow. Even 
 Dr. Talmage can not belittle it, nor does exegesis require 
 it. It is enough to say with Josephus : 
 
 " As for myself, I have delivered every part of this 
 history as I have found it in the sacred books. Kor let 
 any one wonder at the strangeness of the narration, if a 
 way were discovered to those men of old time, who were 
 free from the wickedness of the modern ages, whether it 
 happened by the will of God or whether it happened of 
 its own accord ; while, for the sake of those that accom- 
 panied Alexander, king of Macedonia, who yet lived com- 
 paratively but a little while ago, the Pamphylian Sea re- 
 tired and afforded them a passage through itself, when 
 they had no other way to go ; I mean, v/hen it was the will 
 of God to destroy the monarchy of the Persians. And 
 this is confessed to be true by all that have written about 
 the actions of Alexander. But as to these events let 
 every one determine as he pleases." 
 
 This explanation of the devout Jew throws a flood 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. 61 
 
 of light upon Moses. Callisthenes, kinsman and pupil of 
 Aristotle who had been Alexander's tutor, who accom- 
 panied Alexander, and who naturally wished to ^ake out 
 as big a story as he could for his master, says the Pam- 
 phylian Sea did not only open a passage for Alexander, but, 
 by rising and elevating its waters, did pay him homage as 
 its king ! But the rationalistic and philosophic Strabo, 
 removed by three centuries from the temptation to flatter 
 Alexander, explains that between the mountain and the 
 sea there is a narrow passage along the shore, dry at 
 low water, or in calm weather, so as to be passable by 
 travelers, but when the sea is high it is overflowed. The 
 mountain ascent being steep and winding, in still weather 
 they use the coast road. But Alexander, who depended 
 much upon his good fortune, came in the winter season, 
 and rushed forward impetuously, without staying till 
 the floods were abated, and marched his men through it 
 a whole day up to the waist in water. 
 
 Arrian, not only a historian but a statesman and a 
 soldier, combines piety and philosophy, though living in 
 a day when Christians were accounted atheists : ^^When 
 Alexander removed from Phaselis, he sent some part 
 of his army over the mountains to Perga, which road 
 the Thracians showed him. A difficult way it was, but 
 short. However, he himself conducted those that were 
 with him by the sea-shore. This road is impassable at 
 any other time than when the north wind blows ; but if 
 the south wind prevail, there is no passing by the shore. 
 Now at this time, after strong south winds, a north wind 
 blew, and that not without the Divine Providence (as 
 both he and they that were with him supposed), and 
 afforded him an easy and a quick passage.'' 
 
 Appian also gives the modern Christian view. Com- 
 paring Caesar and Alexander, he says : ** They both de- 
 pended upon their boldness and fortune as much as on 
 
62 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 their skill in war. As an instance of which, Alexander 
 journeyed over a country without water, in the heat of 
 summer, to the oracle of (Jupiter) Hammon, and quickly 
 passed over the bay of Pamphylia, when, by Divine Provi- 
 dence, the sea was cut off : thus Providence restrainino- 
 the sea on his account, as it had sent him rain when he 
 traveled over the desert." 
 
 Plutarch says : ''His march through Pamphylia has 
 afforded matter to many historians for pompous descrip- 
 tion, as if it was by the interposition of Heaven that the 
 sea retired before Alexander, which at other times ran 
 there with so strong a current that the breaker rocks at 
 the foot of the mountain very seldom were left bare. 
 
 '^Menander, in his pleasant way, refers to this pre- 
 tended miracle in one of his comedies : 
 
 ' How like great Alexander ! do I seek 
 A friend ? Spontaneous he presents himself. 
 Have I to march where seas indignant roll ? 
 The sea retires, and there I march.' 
 
 But Alexander himself, in his epistles, makes no miracle 
 of it ; he only says he ' marched from Phaselis by the 
 way called Climax.'" 
 
 Langhorne, who stands sponsor for Plutarch, says: 
 '^Josephus refers to this passage of Alexander to gain 
 the more credit among the Greeks and Romans to the 
 passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea." 
 
 But Whiston, espousing the cause of Josephus, de- 
 clares Plutarch's reflections entirely uncalled for : that 
 all the more numerous original historians of Alexander 
 gave the same account of the providential going back of 
 the waters of the Pamphylian Sea, so that Josephus was 
 not only justified in giving his narrative, but would not 
 have been justified in withholding it. But as to these 
 events, let us imitate the moderation of Josephus, and let 
 every one determine as he pleases — meaning as he must. 
 
THE REAL GENESIS. ^3 
 
 Will you stand by the red Bible and the rock wall 
 and be orthodox, or will you accej^t the Red 8ea and the 
 sand-bar and be a rationalist ? Or w^ill you accept the 
 exegesis of the Arabs who pointed out to a member of 
 this class the exact spot where the Israelites crossed ? 
 
 '' But is not the water very deep there ? " 
 
 " Oh ! yes. It is deepest there. But we wished to 
 make the miracle as great as' possible !" 
 
 Or will you interpret the red Bible by the Red Sea 
 and be a rational orthodox Christian, thanking God for 
 the light that has streamed down from those far-off days 
 to us upon whom the ends of the earth are come ? 
 
 These events — the destruction of the cities of the 
 plain ; the red sunsets of that memorable day which en- 
 abled the great general of the Hebrews to follow up his 
 victory to the destruction as well as the rout of his foes ; 
 the emancipation of a panic-stricken nation of slaves by 
 the overthrow of a powerful and splendid army, the flower 
 of Egypt's wealth and pride and absolutism — these were 
 great events. The fame of them overspread the ancient 
 world. They were celebrated in song. They became im- 
 bedded in literature. Their state and splendor and grand- 
 eur, their wide and wild disaster, the height of their 
 power, and the completeness of their wreck, compassed 
 every note in the gamut of tragedy and made their story 
 a song of the world's eternal possession. But it was re- 
 ligion that found the key, it was religion that tuned the 
 lyre, it was religion that held the harmony through three 
 thousand years of warring and waning discord, till now 
 all the passion and pain are lulled to peace, and we blend 
 our voices in what was the enduring inspiration of their 
 song : " Glory to God in the highest ! " 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE KIXG OF SALEM. 
 
 Beloved, Sprite and Psyche, winged from some airier 
 sphere than this and poising here in pain and darkness, 
 longing for native light, of native love sore bereft — you, 
 peering passionately into the abyss in search of your van- 
 ished sunbeam, question me why I can be so jubilant over 
 the '^ oldest book in the world," when it shows that, be- 
 fore the days of Abraham, there was a system of morality 
 comiDrising everything that Christ taught ; and that those 
 precepts, handed down traditionally, might have been 
 given Christ, a boy, by any of the old wandering desert 
 people inheriting them. 
 
 Verily, first, if incidentally, I exult, because through 
 this I learn how closely the error of the dear past ages 
 wraps us all around. I, rooted in Puritanism, Calvinism, 
 St. Augustinism, by long ancestry and close training, 
 may well be hide-bound with theological theory ; but you, 
 Sprite and Psyche — pure soul, pure heart. Flower o' the 
 Peach, Flower o' the Sun — how came you to be meshed 
 in men's devices, so that when you would soar toward 
 native light your white wings may not stir ? 
 
 Yet so it is. Of things as they are, of Christianity 
 pure and simple, we scarcely hear. What we are chiefly 
 taught is the opinions which many generations have 
 formed about Christianit3\ When any part of these 
 opinions is seen to be false, and begins to be reft away. 
 
THE KING OF SALEM. 65 
 
 the cry is that Christianity lies bleeding — that another 
 assault has been made upon it ! 
 
 Whereas Christianity has not been in question. What 
 Origen, or Augustine, or Leo Tenth, or Archbishop Whate- 
 ly, or Matthew Arnold, or Enoch Pond interpreted as 
 Christianity may have been scrutinized, but the body of 
 Divinity i^ unscathed. 
 
 In your question I read your unwritten creed : that 
 the world lay in darkness outside of Christ and of the one 
 moonglade that led back from him to the plains of Mamre 
 and Ur of the Chaldees. Therefore, whatever shows moral 
 light outside that narrow pathway tends to subvert the 
 Christ. 
 
 Listen now, you who have read and heard so much, 
 to the truth of history, and welcome Ptah-Hotep, because 
 he confirms, in detail and from remote antiquity, a world- 
 theory which reason imperiously frames, and which slight 
 but clear historical glimpses in the Bible as imperiously 
 necessitate. 
 
 Let us scan first the very earliest of the Bible glimpses, 
 because we have known Melchizedek much longer than we 
 have known Ptah-Hotep. 
 
 One of the most interesting and important of the 
 great historic movements of humanity is the emigration 
 of the celebrated Emir Abram. Yet it was but the march 
 of a single sheik but a few hundred miles to the south- 
 west. 
 
 The original motive of this migration is known to his- 
 tory and theology as the call of God to Abram. The best 
 explanation concerning the nature of this call we get from 
 the pulpit, which constantly teaches that we are called by 
 God to missionary and other duty, just as Abram was. 
 It follows as the night the day, that if we are called as 
 Abram was, then Abram was called as we are. God 
 spoke to Abram as God speaks to us. If he did not, if 
 
 5 
 
QQ A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 there was any special divine appearance, any special ver- 
 bal communication out of the spiritual heavens, then 
 Abram's obedience has no moral lesson for us, and his 
 career gives us no guidance. If Abram had a direct, un- 
 mistakable order from a higher power, he did not walk 
 by faith but by knowledge. It is not faith which sees 
 and hears God by the bodily senses ; it is sight. Faith is 
 the evidence of things 7iot seen. We alone live by faith 
 who have not seen Jind yet believe ; and if we can not 
 fully believe, think we are at least permitted to hope. 
 
 The testimony of the Bible justifies the teaching of 
 the pulpit. The first narrative relates that "the Lord 
 had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country 
 [Haran], and from thy kindred, and from thy father's 
 house, unto a land that I will show thee." 
 
 Stephen, in the bold, glowing, indignant speech which 
 angered a hostile church to his violent death, says : *' The 
 God of glory appeared to our Father Abram when he was 
 in Mesopotamia before he dwelt in Haran." 
 
 That this can not mean the literal call through the 
 ear and appearance to the eye, the same ancient book 
 teaches with great emphasis, declaring that no man can 
 see God and live. And the latest of the Bible writers 
 strengthens the statement : "No man hath seen God at 
 any time. The only begotten Son which is in the bosom 
 of the Father, he hath declared him." 
 
 We are not, however, left to a negative. The original 
 narrative, to which we have just as ready and free access 
 as had Stephen, gives only a simple story of the migration 
 of a family : " Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the 
 son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, 
 his son Abram's wife ; and they went forth with them 
 from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan ; 
 and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there." 
 
 There is no word or hint of any miraculous or unusual 
 
THE KING OF SALEM. g7 
 
 appearance or call of God. It is precisely as one would 
 say : Manasseli Cutler took his wife Mary and his son 
 Temple, and Mary his daughter-in-law, and Grace his 
 granddaughter, and went from Hamilton, in Essex Coun- 
 ty, to Marietta on the Muskingum, and beheld the land 
 that it was fair. And just as Manasseh Cutler, if he had 
 so willed, might have named the town which he founded 
 Marietta, for his wife Mary, so may Terah, the fond and 
 sorrowing father, have named the city of his new found- 
 ing Haran, for the beloved son who died before his father 
 in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Clialdees ; and 
 the grief and desolation of whose untimely death may 
 have been one of the ways in which God appeared to the 
 bereaved father and brother, predisposing them to abandon 
 their stricken home for the distraction of new scenes. 
 Stephen's piety attributed the leadership to God, just as 
 our pulpits would say that Mr. Cutler was led by God to 
 the Ohio migration and settlement. 
 
 In the spirited and magnificent appeal of a poet of the 
 same blood, of a later time, but still of a remote antiquity, 
 the exact nature of Abram's call is even more distinctly 
 implied : " Who raised up the righteous man from the 
 East, called him to his foot, gave the nations before him, 
 and made him rule over kings ? . . . Who hath wrought 
 and done it, calling the generations from the beginning ? 
 I, the Lord." 
 
 The call of Abram and the call of the generations are 
 classed together as of one and the same kind. 
 
 Joseph us's account of the nature of the call of God to 
 Abraham, containing as it does a record of the gradual 
 conce2:)tion of the true God in Abraham's mind, is rational 
 and most interesting after thousands of years of literal 
 and forced interpretation. Abraham, says Josephus, was 
 a person of great sagacity, both for understanding all 
 things and persuading his hearers, and not mistaken in 
 
68 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 his opinions ; for which reason he began to haye higher 
 notions of virtue than others had, and he determined to 
 renew and to change the opinion all men happened then 
 to have concerning God ; for he was the first that ven 
 tured to publish this notion that there was but one God 
 the Creator of the Universe ; and that as to other [gods] 
 if they contributed anything to the happiness of men 
 each of them afforded it only according to his apj)oint 
 ment and not by his own power. This, his opinion 
 was derived from the irregular phenomena that were 
 visible both at land and sea, as well as those that happen 
 to the sun and moon and all the heavenly bodies. . . . 
 Tor which doctrines, when the Chaldeans and other peo- 
 ple of Meso])otamia raised a tumult against him, he 
 thought tit to leave that country ; and at the command 
 and by the assistance of God he came and lived in the 
 land of Canaan. 
 
 We may therefore believe that the appearance of 
 God to Abraham was such as all may have who follow 
 the Highest. God appeared to Abram at Mesopotamia in 
 fraternal love and filial duty and sympathy, in family 
 faith and steadfastness. Abram was called of God through 
 the purity and piety of his character, through the energy 
 of his nature, through the restlessness or adventurousness 
 of his spirit, through the grace and glory of his ambition, 
 through the irrepressible impulse and forecast of genius. 
 The word of the Lord came to Abram just as the word 
 of the Lord by night to the marching Pilgrims came. 
 God said, '^Get thee out of thy country," just as God 
 said, '' I am tired of kings," or rather it may have come 
 in this way. There is nothing in the Bible which for- 
 bids such interpretation. It puts no strain upon words, 
 either the words of Moses or the words of Emerson. We 
 instinctively interpret it thus in reading Emerson, and 
 there is no heterodoxy or heresy in so interpreting the 
 
THE KIXG OF SALEM. 69 
 
 biograplier of Abram. If our individual judgment were 
 left as free in the one case as in the other, doubtless God 
 would have spoken with the same voice in both. 
 
 The Bible writers were so saturated with the Divine 
 Spirit, so filled with the Holy Ghost, that in all things 
 the}^ heard the voice and saw the will of God ; just as 
 Spencer and Huxley and Tyndall see everywhere the 
 working of an energy which they dare not name. The 
 world in the course of ages, at various times in various 
 places, so lost this divine inspiration and illumination 
 as not even to be able to understand it. The profound 
 and intimate reverence of the Scriptural writers became 
 /^overset" into mechanical theories of sense and matter, 
 coarse, clumsy, inelastic, and untenable. Men read *' God 
 spake," and began to explain how he spoke ; and the peo- 
 ple who did not accept their explanation were reckoned 
 in the same category with men who do not believe that 
 God exists. Not to believe that God speaks as Calvin, 
 or Servetus, or Loyola, or Edward Everett Hale says he 
 speaks, is not to believe in God. 
 
 The carelessness with which we teach the Bible is 
 succinctly displayed in a single paragraph from the lips 
 of a president of an educational institution : 
 
 "As God had taken pains to summon Abraham away 
 from his idolatrous neighbors in Chaldea, and afterward 
 to separate him from low-lived Lot, sending him forth 
 childless to the promised land to secure an uncontami- 
 nated stock, so Abraham himself solemnly responded to 
 the divine intention by keeping himself clear of all his 
 idolatrous surroundings in Palestine, and seeking a wife 
 for his son far away in his brother's home in Mesopo- 
 tamia. . . . 
 
 '* During his long life the patriarch repeatedly changed 
 his residence." 
 
 How a pure stock could be secured by removing from 
 
70 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 one contaminated district to another does not appear. 
 Abraham did in Palestine what he could have done more 
 easily in Ctialdea — sought a wife for his son in his own 
 family. It certainly was not necessary for them to emi- 
 grate in order to intermarry. They might all have re- 
 mained comfortably at home in Ohaldea. 
 
 Does not the whole philosophy of the removals lie in 
 Abraham's nomadic character, and in his towering, aspir- 
 ing genius for the apprehension of God ? In repeatedly 
 changing his residence, was he not simply acting after his 
 kind ? We can trace the purposes of God in history ; 
 but to do this accurately we must be heedful of facts. In 
 this case the only true philosophy seems to lie in the un- 
 regarded final statement. 
 
 But the Bible writers laid the world no nearer to God 
 than modern Science lays it to the inscrutable and omni- 
 present force which she ventures not to personify. 
 
 The migration of Abram was eminently successful, 
 lie prospered in substance, family, and fame. Bearing 
 liimself always with dignity, courtesy, magnanimity, and, 
 generally, with truthfulness and honor, he secured the 
 deference of his neighbors, the friendship of nobles, the 
 comradeship of kings. When, in the vicissitudes of the 
 day, it happened that his nephew was taken prisoner in 
 war, Abram could arm servants enough of his own house- 
 hold to pursue the victorious kings, give battle, and effect 
 a rescue. 
 
 It was upon his return from this brilliant exploit that 
 an incident occurred, slight in itself, simple and natural, 
 yet attaining a world-wide celebrity from its illustrative 
 use in the Jewish church ; a revelation to us of the un- 
 known prehistoric world, but not, as has sometimes been 
 supposed, a revelation of the unknown spiritual world. 
 
 And the '^ King of Sodom went out to meet Abram 
 (after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer and 
 
THE KING OF SALEM. Yl 
 
 of tlie kings that were with liim) at the Valley of Shaveh, 
 which is the king's dale. And Melchizedek, King of 
 Salem, brought forth bread and wine ; and he was the 
 priest of the most high God. And he blessed him and 
 said : ^ Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor 
 of heaven and earth ; and blessed be the most high God 
 which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand.' And 
 he gave him tithes of all." • 
 
 It is simplicity and lucidity itself; yet so bent is 
 human vision on seeing around a corner instead of 
 looking along the straight lines of inexorable law that 
 most of us fail to discern the light that shines through 
 the narrative, in hereditary determination to discover a 
 light that never was on sea or shore. Because Melchize- 
 dek was used among the Jewish writers to illustrate 
 Christ, we insist that he was some mysterious and mirac- 
 ulous person, some being of a higher order than ours, 
 sent from the spiritual heavens as an antetype of Christ, 
 inexplicable, but perhaps, therefore, divine. One dear 
 theologian I know who, driven from the external errors 
 of her hereditary faith, step by step, clings to this divine 
 and miraculous Melchizedek as her last fortification ; and 
 even you, Sprite and Psyche, Flower o' the Peach, Flower 
 o' the Sun, who might be supposed never to have heard 
 of Melchizedek in your garden of lilies and roses— even 
 you say, sighing : ** Christ was necessary as the renewing 
 of the type of Melchizedek very likely," with the air of 
 one who, under strong radical temptation, has made a 
 conservative concession. 
 
 Flower o' the Sun, what have you to do with the type 
 of Melchizedek ? You are no Jew, bound to the horns 
 of the altar ! You may accept Christ or you may reject 
 him ; but if you reject him, it will not be because, like 
 Paul's hearers, you cling to the Levitic priesthood and 
 the burnt-offerings. You need no pra3-Levitic type to 
 
72 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 justify an extra-Levitic priesthood. Priesthood itself is 
 a thing of the past ! 
 
 The Epistle to the Hebrews is the armory whence we 
 draw our weapons of mischief ; but what does that epis- 
 tle say ? 
 
 The letter is accredited to Paul. In closeness of rea- 
 soning, in facility of illustration, in cleverness, courtesy, 
 and tact, it is worthy of Paul ; but we are not concerned 
 as to who wrote it, only as to what it teaches. 
 
 The object of the writer was to dismiss and even to 
 destroy forever the whole prevailing, active, firm-rooted 
 theological system of the Jews whom he was addressing — 
 altar, sacrifice, priesthood — and to substitute for it Chris- 
 tianity, the w^orship of God in spirit and in truth. He 
 was a radical reformer, far more subversive than Luther, 
 of the system in which he found himself ; yet his methods 
 singularly and suavely ilhistrate the truth of Christ : I am 
 not come to destroy but to fulfill. This radical reformer, 
 as wise as radical, instead of directly attacking what he 
 wished to remove, adopted the truth which lay at the 
 heart of it — the longing to approach God — and which 
 had given it the vitality to endure for two thousand 
 years, and this germ-truth he reclothed in the spiritual 
 guise of the new day ; not mechanically, from without, 
 after man's way, but growth-wise, from within, God's 
 way. 
 
 The Jewish nation was priest-ridden ; but Paul, as we 
 will call the writer for convenience, did not denounce the 
 priesthood, but suggested that all priestly function had 
 been transferred, once and forever, to Christ. Paul did 
 not bid them stop the daily degradation of brutal and 
 bloody sacrifices, but suggested that Christ made the suf- 
 ficient sacrifice once for all when he offered up himself. 
 The Levitic priests were many, because they were not 
 suffered to continue by reason of death ; but Christ, 
 
THE KING OF SALEM. 73 
 
 througli the power of an endless life, hatli an micliange- 
 able priesthood. 
 
 But there was the imperative Jewish law that a priest 
 must be of the house of Levi, To meet this comes the 
 full sweep and swing of the argument lifting the ques- 
 tion above the level of Jewish ritual into the wide, 
 clear heights of the universal world. David had given 
 the indisputable key-note, and Paul took up the refrain 
 and rang the new song loud, full, unerring, over the whole 
 land of Judea and the far unlistening future : "A priest 
 forever after the order of Melchizedek ! " 
 
 What was the order of Melchizedek ? It was no order 
 at all. In that lay the whole point and pith of the illus- 
 tration. In that lay all the quality which made him an 
 antetype of Christ. The Jew believed that salvation was 
 of the Jews, and that the salvation of the Jews was of the 
 house of Levi. This Paul refuted by their own sacred 
 Pentateuch, which declared Melchizedek a priest, and 
 their own sacred psalms of the great king, which con- 
 firmed his priesthood ; yet they knew that Melchizedek 
 was not even a Hebrew, much less a Levite. He was 
 outside the whole line of HebrcAV blood, race, church 
 traditions ; he belonged to the world. He was cos- 
 mopolitan and not tribal. So far from belonging to the 
 tribe of Levi, nobody knew to whom he belonged— Paul, 
 his correspondents, David, Moses, no more than we. In 
 genealogy, history, biography, he was without father, 
 without mother, without descent, having neither begin- 
 ning of days nor end of life. For the Jews, as for us, he 
 stepped out of absolute darkness for one dazzling moment, 
 robed in light, and immediately withdrew into the black 
 unknown. But because that radiant moment revealed 
 him a priest of the most high God, a priest of the most 
 high God he abideth continually. 
 
 ^furthermore, Paul clinches his argument to his He- 
 
74 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 brew hearers, this priest, outside the line of Hebrew 
 ties and appointments, attested a priest by Moses and by 
 David, was greater than any Jewish priest, greater even 
 than their great father and founder Abram. It was a 
 hard doctrine to preach to the haughtiest and most ex- 
 clusive people under the sun; yet Paul not only preached 
 it, but proved it out of their own sacred annals. *^ Con- 
 sider how great this man was," he says to his reluctant 
 listeners, *^unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave 
 the tenth of the spoils. The Levites take tithes of the 
 people according to law ; but this man, whose descent is 
 not counted from the Levites, received tithes of Abra- 
 ham, and blessed him ; and, without all contradiction, 
 the less is blessed of the better. Abram, who paid tithes, 
 was less than Melchizedek, who received them. Melchize- 
 dek, who pronounced the blessing, was greater than Abram, 
 who received it." 
 
 The argument for Christ and against the Levitic priest- 
 hood was, on Hebrew grounds, overwhelming. This one 
 admitted fact of Jewish history — that there was a priest- 
 hood of God other and greater than the priesthood of 
 Levi, that there had been a king of nations greater than 
 their greatest leader, and as near to God— disposed for- 
 ever of the Jewish claim that theirs was the only true 
 religious worship, that their priesthood was all-adequate 
 and exclusive, that their system was perfect and per- 
 petual. 
 
 If the Jewish system were adequate and Christ super- 
 fluous, as the Hebrews argued, why, asked Paul, was 
 there a priesthood of Melchizedek outside the Jewish sys- 
 tem ? He did not, nor do we, deny the special mission of 
 the Jewish nation. It was to cradle the Messiah. It 
 was to conserve the word of righteousness. That each 
 nation has its special mission is a thought as old as 
 Clement and Lactantius, probably as old as Ptah-Hotep's 
 
THE KING OF SALEM. 75 
 
 ancients. But the special mission of the Jews was dis- 
 charged in Christ. The word of righteousness was thence- 
 forth to be upheld by the whole world. 
 
 What is Melchizedek to us ? As a type of Christ, 
 nothing. We have no faith in Urim and Thummim. 
 We came out — no, we were never under — the bonds of 
 the Jewish priesthood. 
 
 Yet for us, too, Melchizedek, priest of the most high 
 God, opens wide the doors of the kingdom of heaven. 
 That one moment of his emergence from the ancient 
 unknown world, his face alight with God, his hands up- 
 lifted with blessing, floods the whole earth with the glory 
 of the universal fatherhood. We long ago threw off the 
 bonds of the Jewish law ; but that iron-bound exclusive- 
 ness in which the Jews sought to cramp eternal righteous- 
 ness has reappeared in a visible and fallible Christian 
 Church seeking to bind the gospel of Christ to its own 
 interpretations and ministrations, seeking to limit the 
 fatherhood of God to a special association. But all the 
 weakness and narrowness of vision which sees divine reve- 
 lation flowing toward humanity only through the narrow 
 channel, the one thread-like and often turbid rill of the 
 Judean and the Christian theology, melts and disappears 
 in the pure white glow of this heavenly beam. While 
 Abram was yet a wanderer in a legendary past so far, so 
 faint, that its tracery we hardly discern, its language we 
 but little understand, we see another nation serving the 
 most high God, a king who, in very name, is king of 
 righteousness, king of peace. 
 
 There seems to be unfolded in this beautiful tradition 
 a correspondence as significant as it is exquisite ; so 
 slight, so incidental, that it must be historical as well as 
 poetical. 
 
 The defeated King of Sodom, whom Abram avenged 
 and befriended, went out to meet him at the King's Dale. 
 
Y6 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 The spot selected by the splendid, spoiled Absalom to rear 
 a pillar to himself was also the King's Dale. Therefore 
 it was probably near the capital city, Jerusalem the 
 Golden ; wherefore it seems probable that the King of 
 Salem held his royal residence and his pure court at the 
 very spot where afterward rose the Holy City of the w^orld. 
 Melchizedek, before history began, worshiping not the 
 God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but the God of his 
 own fathers, upon the Holy Mountain, left in his depart- 
 ing the blessing of his yanishing age upon the new time ; 
 blessed it and baptized it with his own name of righteous- 
 ness and peace. 
 
 How many more such nations and such kings gave its 
 strength of life to the ancient world we do not yet know ; 
 but here comes one from his burial of centuries, Ptah- 
 Hotep, with his book in his hand, testifying, and to the 
 satisfaction even of French skeptics, that in our night 
 of the long ago, before Jew or Gentile had analyzed them- 
 selves out of the human race, God, the Creative Force, 
 Absolute Being, Eternal Energy, had given man power 
 and light to organize society. Ptah-Hotep stands before 
 us from the ages preceding Abraham as clearly outlined, 
 as firmly colored, as delicately shaded, as if Cabanal had 
 drawn the picture yesterday — a calm, firm, generous, re- 
 fined gentleman. 
 
 Ptah-Hotep reveals to us a society of scholars, teach- 
 ers, artists, judges, police, farmers, sailors, pilots — the 
 classifications of long-established social order. In his 
 pages we see the well-conducted household — the father 
 deserving and receiving the reverence of his children ; 
 the one wife tenderly loved and honored ; children trained 
 gently in obedience and knowledge ; we see bad morals 
 abhorred as death ; law supreme ; authority respected. 
 
 The Proverbs of Solomon and the Proverbs of Ptah- 
 Hotep are from the same fountain of wisdom : 
 
THE KING OF SALEM. Y7 
 
 "He who is master of his own spirit is superior to 
 him whom God has loaded with his gifts." 
 
 Act "as a steward of the goods belonging to God. 
 
 " Love thy people. 
 
 *^Eeturn a gentle answer. 
 
 '* Forget the wrong. 
 
 ^^ Be kind to all. 
 
 " Do not contemn or ridicule men even when wronsr. 
 
 "Beware of pride, of hal-dness of heart, of oppressing 
 others, of bad temper, of scandal, of libertinism." 
 
 Ptah-Hotep's theology is occasionally a little obscure, 
 as if the clear image of the most high God were some- 
 what blurred. Nevertheless, with gods he recognizes one 
 God. All that man has, he teaches, is the gift of God. 
 All is held at the will of God. He believes in prayer, 
 and accounts himself beloved of God, as Abram was 
 called the friend of God. He holds that God's will to- 
 ward men is that they should have life with peace ; the 
 same song which the angels sang over Bethlehem. God 
 wars against the oppressor, and a pure morality alone can 
 please him. A noble conception of a Supreme Being, a 
 lofty code of ethics, a system of spiritual religion, we 
 gather from the pages of this prince of Egypt before 
 the Bible history of the Jewish or of the Christian relig- 
 ion began. 
 
 And be it observed that to Ptah-Hotep the world was 
 as old as it is to us. He certifies that the law of true mo- 
 rality has been perfect from the earliest times, lecause it 
 is of divine origin. It must, therefore, also remain un- 
 changed. Himself as remote as the Pyramids, he yet 
 appeals to the authority of the ancients. He fortifies his 
 own position by showing that they, too, inculcate the study 
 of wisdom, duty to parents, respect for property, charita- 
 bleness, peaceableness, content, liberality, humility, chas- 
 tity, sobriety, truthfulness, justice ; that they, too, depre- 
 
78 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 cate the wickedness and folly of disobedience, strife, arro- 
 gance, pride, slotlifulness, intemperance, un chastity. 
 
 Thus Ptah-Hotep testifies with Melchizedek to the 
 only satisfactory world-theory ; not that the Jews were a 
 chosen people, and all other peoples were rejected or 
 neglected peoples ; but that to all peoples God communi- 
 cated the light of divine reason. In the beginning was 
 the Word — the Logos, reason. The same code of morals 
 that we strive to practice to-(Jay the wisdom of old Egypt 
 tried to enforce. What is virtue now and spiritual grace, 
 filial duty and conjugal fidelity, was the same then. You, 
 Sprite and Psyche, Flower o' the Peach, Plower o' the 
 Sun, need not stay your light poise to show me that 
 Christ might have learned this from the desert travelers. 
 The main thing is that the desert travelers knew it. 
 Melchizedek in sacred history and Ptah-Hotep in profane 
 history open the door into their ancient world and reveal 
 to us a realm of order and morality and true religion ; 
 men seeking God and finding him and living in his light 
 and having joy and peace in believing. Anterior to 
 Jewry, outside of Christianity, absolutely unconnected 
 with either by visible ties, in the Bible and outside of 
 the Bible, we see nationalities constructed, organized, 
 and conducted in the fear and the worship of God. 
 
 Thus the continuity of faith spans the whole world 
 from the unknown past to the unknown future with its 
 bow of promise and of peace. Christ came into the world 
 not to teach a new ethics, but to spiritualize and vitalize 
 the old, to bring life and immortality to light, to authen- 
 ticate and accomplish the at-one-ment of humanity with 
 God by the authority of a divine personality and the 
 power of an endless life. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE IIN^STITUTES OF MOSES. 
 
 An orthodox clergyman — old^ Uind, past worJo, as men phrase it — 
 sat in Ms easy-chair hy the winter Jireside, walked under his elms be- 
 neath the summer sJoy, and scattered with full hands, everywhere, 
 anywhere, seed-thoughts, some of which tooTc root, sprang up, and 
 hore fruit in the following exposition of the institutes of sac- 
 rifice. 
 
 If it were ever lawful to relinquish one^s right of private 'judg- 
 ment, this man of Ood would have been by divine right Pope. Blind- 
 ness had only closed his eyes to trivial distractions, and released his 
 well-equipped mind to clear vision. Apparently, absolutely, free from 
 prejudice, seeTcing ever and only truth, he looked out upon the world 
 of literature, of theology, of politics, through no distorting medium ; 
 and bringing to bear, upon all, the illumination of history, gave 
 calm judgment, undismayed. Priest and poet and critic, apostle, 
 prophet, president, passed before him in the pure white liglit of his 
 reason, yielded up their secret to his tranquil gaze, and lived hence- 
 forth in a decision which was conclusive in the radiance of its own 
 righteousness. 
 
 Wise in all large wisdoms, his only worldly wisdom was in rele- 
 gating his personal loelfare to the wise women by whom he was sur- 
 rounded and infinitely cherished. 
 
 Reared under his tutelage, living in the sunshine of his rectitude, 
 the reverence of the child but gathered volume and fixity as each 
 crowded, succeeding year showed hoic rare were his qualities, how 
 grand teas their scope, how undisturbed their balance, how irreversi- 
 ble their decree. 
 
 While the Bible class were listening to these Mosaic readings, 
 
80 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 which were his in their original suggestion, his in their mode of rea- 
 soning, and indebted to him for much of their illustration, 
 " Heaven^ as at some festival. 
 Did open wide the gates of her high palace hall,'''' 
 
 and in that light he saw light. 
 
 To him, hinsman, teacher, lover,, mentor, comrade. 
 To the Bight Reverend and Most Reverend 
 
 JOHK PHELPS COWLES, 
 
 I dedicate these sacrificial chapters. 
 
 Every sacrifice upon every altar, of first-fruits of the 
 ground, or the first-born of animals or of human beings, in 
 the Bible and out of the Bible, from the earliest recorded 
 offering by Cain to the last path worn by the feet of ani- 
 mals led to slaughter at the still-standing altars of Pom- 
 peii — all is paganism. 
 
 This is not to say that it is evil and only evil contin- 
 ually. God accepts the right intent and the honest act, 
 even though it be mistaken or imperfect. He estab- 
 lished humanity in an order of development, and he can 
 not be displeased with humanity because at any particular 
 stage of its career it has reached only its appropriate de- 
 gree of development and not the ultimate perfection. 
 
 The difference between Christianity and paganism is 
 this : Christianity teaches that God is a spirit, and they 
 that worship him must worship him in spirit and in 
 truth. Paganism teaches that God is a material, a condi- 
 tioned being, to be worshiped with fruits and beasts and 
 blood, with fire and wood and stone. The Bible is the 
 record of man's rise, by the spirit of God working in him, 
 from worship by wood and stone and burnt-offering, to 
 Christ, in whom and through whom were destroyed for- 
 ever all material sacrifice, and by whom was given the 
 final spiritual interpretation toward which all literal 
 sacrifice was slowly tending, that God is a spirit and is to 
 be worshiped by becoming like him. 
 
THE INSTITUTES OF MOSES. 81 
 
 The Bible is not a revelation /rom God outward and 
 downward to man. It is the story of the revelation of 
 God 171 man forever upward. It is the story of man's 
 spiritual evolution prefaced by a few lines — outlines — 
 presenting his material evolution. All sorts of religion 
 were in the world before the beginning and outside the 
 limits of the Bible record — from worship by the gentle 
 fruit-offerings of the gentle races to the fierce blood- 
 offerings of the ferocious races. There were gods many 
 and lords many. One might almost say every process 
 had its god. There was the god of battles, the god of 
 love, the god of storms, the god of disease, innumerable 
 little gods of hearth and harvest, of all traffics, all amuse- 
 ments, and all emotions. 
 
 The Bible is the record, not of the first dawn of the 
 idea of one God, for we know that idea had already 
 not only dawned, but shone in Melchizedek and Ptah- 
 Hotep ; probably in many more. But it is the record 
 of the only dawn of the supreme and holy unity that 
 was strong enough and long enough, wide enough and 
 warm enough, to glow into the perfect day, to reach 
 down to our time, to embrace the whole world. To this 
 idea — the idea of one God — doubtless many men, perhaps 
 many races, had attained ; but in the Jewish race alone 
 it found staying quality — a stubborn, proud, tenacious 
 race, whose very qualities of stubbornness and pride and 
 tenacity made them clutch the idea and hold it as in a 
 vise through dark ages of ignorance ; and so the idea 
 grew through battles and lapses, through bad and stupid 
 kings, and vigilant, vigorous reformers, till the Jews de- 
 livered it once for all to the world in our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and perished forever as a nation, to live forever 
 as a proof. 
 
 The Jews were chosen of God to receive and retain 
 the Lord our righteousness, not by any miraculous call 
 
 6 
 
82 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 of God to Abraham out of the skies, but by virtue of that 
 natural hereditary and acquired force of character which 
 we can describe but never explain — a force which spe- 
 cially adapted them to the mission of holding and propa- 
 gating the faith. It is on the principle of the survival 
 of the fittest. The election of God is the selection of 
 Darwin. 
 
 The naturalist traces back along the lines of science 
 the same principles which the scholar traces back along 
 the lines of history. 
 
 For the divine authority of the Mosaic sacrifices we 
 consult the Mosaic books, and we read : 
 
 **The Lord called unto Moses and spake unto him 
 out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying, If any 
 man of you bring an offering unto the Lord, ye shall 
 bring your offering of the cattle. And he shall put his 
 hand upon the head of the burnt-offering, and it shall be 
 accepted for him to make atonement for him. And he 
 shall kill the bullock before the Lord, and the priests, 
 Aaron's sons, shall bring the blood, and sprinkle the blood 
 roundabout upon the altar. And he shall flay the burnt- 
 offering, and cut it into his pieces. And the priests, 
 Aaron's sons, shall lay the parts, the head and the fat, 
 in order upon the wood that is on the fire which is upon 
 the altar. But his inwards and his legs shall he wash in 
 water ; and the priest shall burn all on the altar to be a 
 burnt-sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savor 
 unto the Lord. 
 
 "And if the burnt-sacrifice for his offering to the 
 Lord be of fowls, then he shall bring his offering of 
 turtle-doves or of young pigeons. And the priest shall 
 bring it unto the altar, and wring off his head and burn 
 it on the altar, and the blood thereof shall be wrung out 
 at the side of the altar. And he shall pluck away his 
 crop with his feathers, and cast it beside the altar on the 
 
THE IXSTITUTES OF MOSES. 83 
 
 east part, by the place of the ashes. And he shall cleave 
 it with the wings thereof, and the priest shall burn it 
 upon the altar ; it is a burnt-sacrifice, an offering made 
 by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord." 
 
 Is that like God ? Like God who is a spirit ? The 
 unspeakable, ineffable, inconceivable spirit who is to be 
 worshiped in spirit and in truth, did he ever order him- 
 self to be worshiped with the entrails of a bullock ? Can 
 he be pleased to smell the. odor of burning fat ? Would 
 you be gratified to know that your daughter delighted to 
 see a chicken's head wrung off and burnt before her eyes ? 
 And do you not agree with Whittier that nothing can be 
 good in Him which evil is in me ? 
 
 The internal evidence is against it. It is not like 
 God. It is not gentle, gracious, seemly, harmonious. 
 It is violent, brutal, bloody, barbarous. It is not spirit- 
 ualizing ; it is brutalizing. It is, therefore, against the 
 eternal order. Therefore it can not be of God. 
 
 As an approach to God, it is retrogression. It puts 
 in the background repentance for the remission of sins, 
 and brings to the foreground the baptism of bullock's 
 blood for the remission of sins. One word of repentance 
 and reformation is given, to ten words of cattle and 
 flour. In repeated instances there is expressed or implied 
 assurance of forgiveness upon sacrifice being offered with- 
 out the slightest reference to repentance. This sacrifice 
 is called atonement — atonement for sin — and the under- 
 standing is distinctly conveyed that the sacrifice is all 
 that is required, and is perfectly satisfactory to God. 
 When you wish to please him it shall be by a sweet savor 
 of burning flesh or it shall be by a meat-offering of fine 
 flour and oil baked in the frying-pan. 
 
 ^^Thus shall Aaron come into the holy place : with a 
 young bullock for a sin-offering, and a ram for a burnt- 
 offering. And he shall take of the congregation of the 
 
34 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS 
 
 children of Israel two kids of the goats for a sin-offering. 
 And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats, one lot for 
 the Lord, and the other lot for the scape-goat. And the 
 goat on which the lot fell to be the scape-goat, shall be 
 presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement 
 with him, and to let him go for a scape-goat into the 
 wilderness. Then shall he kill the goat of the sin-offer- 
 ing and bring his blood within the vail and sprinkle it 
 upon the mercy-seat. And he shall make an atonement. 
 And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the 
 live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the 
 children of Israel, putting them upon the head of the 
 goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man 
 into the wilderness ; and the goat shall bear upon him 
 all their iniquities into a land not inhabited." 
 
 That is, the sin of a man shall be shouldered off upon 
 an innocent beast. A bullock that has no knowledge of 
 good and evil shall be killed to placate the Lord, who 
 has been angered because a man who has knowledge of 
 good and evil chooses the evil. A goat shall receive upon 
 his head the sins of men and shall bear them away into 
 the wilderness. The sinner is not commanded to repent 
 and forsake his sin. His sin forsakes him — runs away 
 on the head of a goat. The priest and the bullock and 
 the goat make atonement. The man who committed the 
 sin is but a passive spectator. 
 
 This is not the way of the Lord. It is the device of 
 imperfect men. It is not raising man to the likeness of 
 God ; it is degrading God to the likeness of greedy and 
 bloody men. 
 
 Rightly said the author of Genesis : '' The Lord spake 
 unto Moses out of the tabernacle of the congregation." 
 It was not the word of the Lord out of the spiritual 
 heavens where his honor dwelleth ; but the word of the 
 Lord as it came all blood-stained and distorted out of 
 
THE INSTITUTES OF MOSES. 35 
 
 the tabernacle of the congregation of brutal and bloody 
 men. 
 
 The external evidence is against it. The best men, 
 the most eloquent prophets, denounced the sacrifices of 
 their priests with all the zeal and disgust of radical re- 
 formers the world over. 
 
 Samuel said: ^^Hath the Lord as great delight in 
 burnt-offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of 
 the Lord ? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and 
 to hearken than the fat of rams." 
 
 David said : *' Offer the sacrifices of righteousness and 
 put your trust in the Lord. Sacrifice and offering thou 
 didst not desire. Mine ears hast thou opened : burnt- 
 offering and sin-offering hast thou not required. Thou 
 desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it. Thou delight- 
 est not in burnt-offering. The sacrifices of God are a 
 broken spirit." 
 
 Isaiah argued with the white heat of spiritual revolt 
 against a false gospel preached from places of authority : 
 
 '' To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices 
 unto me ? saith the Lord. I am full of the burnt-offer- 
 ings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts ; and I delight not 
 in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. 
 Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomination 
 unto me. When ye come to appear before me, who hath 
 required this at your hands ? Your hands are full of 
 blood. Wash ye, make you clean, put away the evil of 
 your doings ; cease to do evil, learn to do well. Eelieve 
 the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." 
 
 Micah protested with an outburst of passionate rea- 
 soning : *' Wherewith shall I come before the Lord? 
 Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves 
 of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands 
 of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? Shall I 
 give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my 
 
86 A WASHLNGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 body for the sin of my soul ? He hath showed thee, 
 man, what is good ; and what doth the Lord require of 
 thee but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk 
 humbly with thy God ? " 
 
 Modern science, modern culture, could not show more 
 clearly the unreasonableness of it all ; the grotesqueness, 
 the inadequacy of animal and of human sacrifice. The 
 whole body of divinity is in the final appeal to conscience. 
 
 The word of the Lord to Jeremiah was of the same 
 import : " To what purpose cometh there to me incense 
 from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country ? 
 Your burnt- offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacri- 
 fices sweet unto me." 
 
 With fierce sarcasm Amos pours out his contempt for 
 the depravity and the devoutness of his countrymen : 
 
 " Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan which oppress 
 the poor, which crush the needy. Come to Bethel and 
 transgress ; at Gilgal multiply transgression ; and bring 
 your sacrifices every morning and your tithes after three 
 years, and offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, 
 and proclaim and publish the free offerings, for that 
 liketh you, ye children of Israel. Ye who turn judg- 
 ment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the 
 earth." 
 
 Then turning abruptly to direct denunciation : '' I 
 hate, I despise your feast-days. Though ye offer me 
 burnt-offerings and your meat-offerings, I will not accept 
 them, neither will I regard the peace-offerings of your 
 fat beasts." 
 
 And then the eternal gospel : '' Seek good and not 
 evil, that ye may live ; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, 
 shall be with you. Hate the evil and love the good, and 
 establish judgment in the gate." 
 
 Finally the worship of God by the slaughter of beasts 
 had become so corrupt that the great preachers classed it 
 
THE INSTITUTES OF MOSES. 87 
 
 with the surrounding idolatries. The word of the Lord 
 wliich came unto Zephaniah : ^'^I will stretch out mine 
 hand upon Judah and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusa- 
 lem, and I will cut off the remnants of Baal from this 
 place, and the names of the Ohemarims with the priests. 
 And them that worship the host of heaven upon the 
 housetops, and them that worship and that swear by 
 the Lord." 
 
 Undoubtedly these reformers — these Luthers of a con- 
 stant reformation — did not all or always contemplate the 
 overthrow of the institute of sacrifice. They desired and 
 designed only its purification and vindication by a reform 
 in conduct ; but the sense of its inadequacy, and a percep- 
 tion of the true gospel of righteousness, underlie all their 
 words and deeds, whose natural outcome was the destruc- 
 tion of the whole system. Emancipation was not the in- 
 tent of the Government in our war of the rebellion, but 
 lay wrapped in the first proclamation, as, the fruit is 
 wrapped in the seed. 
 
 But material sacrifices, it is argued, though not per- 
 fect or meant to be permanent, were divinely ordained as 
 best adapted to a rude and barbarous people who had not 
 arrived at any conception of a spiritual God and spiritual 
 worship. Then why do we carry the gospel of Christ to 
 barbarous peoples, and why do we not carry the gospel 
 of burnt-offerings ? The Apache Indians are a good deal 
 more barbarous than were those countrymen of Moses 
 and Micah. The Jews had as fine and forcible a litera- 
 ture as any in the world — a literature perhaps more per- 
 vasive and influential than another nation can show. 
 The legislation of Moses may be ranked with that of So- 
 lon and the Twelve Tables, and the reputation of Moses 
 as the great law-giver has suffered no eclipse. The songs 
 of David are yet to be excelled in their sweep of imagina- 
 tion, in their depth of experience, in their wide and true 
 
88 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 appeal to the human heart certified by their unparalleled 
 popularity in undreamed-of countries through uncounted 
 generations. No didactic teaching is better than that 
 of Isaiah. No eloquence has a loftier tone, no genius 
 has more solemn strains than are found in the Hebrew 
 prophets. 
 
 If animal sacrifice be a proper way to prepare a rude 
 people for spiritual worship, why did we not baild altars 
 in Hawaii ? Why did we not sacrifice bullocks among the 
 Cherokees ? Why did we not burn the fat of fed beasts 
 in Micronesia ? Why do we not pour oil over flour for the 
 Zulus ? By as much as they are behind the Jews in civ- 
 ilization, by so much they need the preparation by the 
 slaughter of beasts to make them ready to receive Christ. 
 
 Was it effective ? 
 
 Did animal sacrifice prepare the way for the Lord ? 
 Did it make smooth the path for the Messiah ? The sacri- 
 fices were in full blast when he was born a babe in Bethle- 
 hem, and that blast was turned upon him to destroy 
 him. Could they have treated him worse ? The very 
 priests who performed the sacrifices, the very men who 
 ministered at the altar, the very scribes and Pharisees 
 who expounded the law of the sacrifices to the people, 
 were the ones who hunted him to his death on the cross. 
 Those who knew most about these preparatory insti- 
 tutes were the ones who were least prepared. They 
 crushed and crucified the Christ for whom the sacrifices 
 were to prepare them. 
 
 Pilate, the Eomans, the idol-worshipers, the heathen, 
 hesitated a little, tried to save him, had to be urged on to 
 the crucifixion by those who worshiped the Most High 
 God with burning fat and dripping blood. 
 
 Why did Isaiah ask : ^^ To what purpose the multitude 
 of your sacrifices to me ? " He should have answered 
 himself : ** To prepare the minds of the people for the 
 
THE INSTITUTES OF MOSES. 89 
 
 great atonement of Christ." Isaiah's question has no 
 pertinence if the sacrifices were preparatory. 
 
 But if the institutes of sacrifice were not a j^repara- 
 tion for Christ, were they not divinely ordained as a type 
 of Christ ? The blood-atonement of sheep, though not 
 really atonement, did prefigure the real atonement of 
 Christ. The paschal lamb was a type of the Christ, the 
 lamb slain from the foundation of the world. To this 
 type Christ was antitype — to which in the fullness of time 
 the type must give way. 
 
 But was this a successful device — so successful that it 
 must have come directly from a divine hand, and not 
 through the medium of human experiment ? Twenty 
 generations of innocent animals slaughtered by divine 
 command in order to notify the world beforehand of the 
 coming of our Lord, yet never conveying to the world 
 one hint, so that when Christ did come, the very ones 
 who administered the animal sacrifices knew nothing of 
 their drift, their scope, their meaning, their notification ! 
 The officers of the type crucified the antitype. If God 
 framed that device, it was a signal failure. But God 
 never fails. Therefore the device was not of God. 
 
 The Old Testament may be searched in vain for any 
 such meaning to sacrifices. Isaiah says expressly that 
 they were of no use whatever, and that God was weary to 
 bear them. If he had appointed them, why should he 
 be weary to bear them ? 
 
 If sacrifices were a type of Christ, there must be some 
 resemblance. Wherein does it lie ? Christ was a willing 
 sacrifice ; he offered himself. A bullock was forced to 
 the slaughter for he knew not what. He was not even 
 an intelligent sacrifice. He died like any beast at the 
 shambles. He made the sanctuary of the Most High but 
 a butcher's slaughter-house. There is no possible resem- 
 blance but innocence and death, and the innocence of the 
 
90 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 beast is without knowledge of good and evil, and there- 
 fore of no significance, and the innocence of Christ is the 
 innocence of supreme holiness. The involuntary death 
 of an unwilling animal can not signify the voluntary 
 death of him in whose hands are the issues of life. 
 
 Jesus himself must have known what was the worth, 
 mission, type of animal sacrifices. He never spoke one 
 word for them ; all his words were against them. He 
 never once spoke of their prefiguring value, their typical 
 meaning. He never called himself the paschal lamb. 
 He never called himself a sheep at all, but the Shepherd 
 of the sheep. There is upon him no flavor of this ty- 
 pology. 
 
 To the law and to the testimony : what was the pas- 
 chal lamb originally ? For all that followed — the Sacri- 
 fice of the Lamb, the Passover, the Lord's Supper cele- 
 brated in our time, all lie in the original rite. What was 
 the paschal lamb ? 
 
 ** The Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land 
 of Egypt, saying, Speak ye unto all the congregation of 
 Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall 
 take to them every man a lamb according to the house of 
 their fathers, a lamb for an house ; and if the household 
 be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next 
 unto his house take it according to the number of the 
 souls ; and the whole assembly of the congregation of 
 Israel shall kill it in the evening. And they shall take 
 of the blood, and strike it on the two side-posts and on 
 the upper door-post of the houses wherein they shall eat 
 it. And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with 
 fire, and unleavened bread ; and with bitter herbs they 
 shall eat it. And ye shall let nothing of it remain until 
 the morning ; and that which remaineth of it until the 
 morning ye shall burn with fire. And thus shall ye eat 
 it : with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and 
 
THE INSTITUTES OF MOSES. 91 
 
 your staff in your hand ; and ye shall eat it in haste ; it 
 is the Lord's passover. And the blood shall be to you 
 for a token upon the houses where ye are ; and when I 
 see the blood I will pass over you and the plague shall 
 not be upon you to destroy you when I smite the land of 
 Egypt. And this day shall be unto you for a memorial ; 
 and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your gen- 
 erations ; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever. 
 *^ And the children of Israel did as the Lord command- 
 ed Moses and Aaron. And it came to pass that at mid- 
 night the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of 
 Egypt. And Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron by 
 night, and said, Rise up and get you forth. And the 
 Eo-yptians were urgent upon the people that they might 
 send them out of the land in haste ; for they said. We be 
 all dead men. And the people took their dough before 
 it was leavened, their kneading-troughs being bound up 
 in their clothes upon their shoulders. And they jour- 
 neyed, and they baked unleavened cakes of the dough 
 which they brought forth out of Egypt, for it was not 
 leavened, because they were thrust out of Egypt and 
 could not tarry." 
 
 What, then, was the passover ? It was a simple meal, 
 a family meal, a nourishing and strengthening meal ; a 
 hasty meal preparatory to a hard journey next day. The 
 Israelites were, so to say, turned out of Egypt neck and 
 heels. They ate, as it were, in traveling-dress, with their 
 shawl-straps in their hands. Pharaoh was in such a 
 hurry to get rid of them, and they were in such a hurry 
 to be gone before he should get over his panic and change 
 his mind, that they could not wait for the bread to rise. 
 They swallowed their lamb and packed up the dough as 
 it was, kneading-troughs and all, and ran. 
 
 There is no sacrifice in it at all. There is hardly 
 solemnity. There is hurry and rush, but no confusion, 
 
92 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 because they were well disciplined. To the Jews there 
 was a meaning in celebrating it as a festival, for it meant 
 a great deliverance, the emancipation of the Jews from 
 four hundred and thirty years of slavery, and it memori- 
 alized even the method of emancipation ; but there is not 
 a word of sacrifice. The slaughter was not pretended to 
 be sacrifice. It was only that they had a hearty and 
 relishing supper of roast lamb. It was a meal sensible 
 and frugal, for if the family was small the next neigh- 
 bor joined them in one lamb. Nothing was left for 
 next day, for they would not be there next day. The 
 cold victuals were to be burned — not left to decay, to 
 make a stench and become a nuisance, even to their ene- 
 mies and oppressors. Moses, their leader, looked closely 
 after health, and therefore after cleanliness, and the 
 burning was sanitary and not sacrificial. 
 
 The passover appears not to have been celebrated at 
 all in the wilderness ; or in Canaan, so far as we know, 
 till the time of Hezekiah. There is indeed color for the 
 theory that the passover was not founded till long after 
 the emancipation, though it was founded or fitted upon 
 an incident of the emancipation. The establishment of 
 a celebration of deliverance would be more in accord 
 with the tranquillity and gratitude of a deliverance past 
 than with the haste and stress^ of a deliverance yet to be 
 achieved. But the traditions of the elders, whenever 
 they began to build, builded so firmly and so liberally 
 on the basis of history that when we get down to the 
 times of Christ we find the sacrificial theory a component 
 part, as it were, of the original institution. Josephus 
 states as confidently as if it were holy writ that '^when 
 the fourteenth day was come and all were ready to depart, 
 they offered the sacrifices and purified their houses with 
 the blood. . . . Whence it is that we do still offer this 
 sacrifice to this day and call this festival Pascha." 
 
THE INSTITUTES OF MOSES. 93 
 
 All the sacrificial element was lent to the slaughter, 
 and all the purifying element to the blood, by later theory. 
 It is not in the original narrative. The slaughter original- 
 ly was of a lamb for food. The blood marked the houses 
 that were to be passed over. Josephus spoke according 
 as he had been taught, not as he had read for himself. 
 
 When our Lord cslebrated the feast of the passover 
 it was not as a sacrifice. There was no burning of fat 
 on the altar, no blood-stain on the altar-horns, no blood 
 poured out at the altar's base. *' Then came the day of 
 unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed. 
 And he sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare us 
 the passover, that we may eat : and they made ready tlie 
 passover. And as they ivere eating, Jesus took bread and 
 blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and 
 said, Take, eat ; this is my body, which is given for you : 
 this do in remembrance of me. And he took the cup 
 and gave thanks and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye 
 all of it ; for this is my blood of the new testament 
 which is shed for many for the remission of sins. Peace 
 I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. Let not 
 your heart be troubled." 
 
 There is love in it and sympathy, the eternal pain of 
 human parting, and the infinite consolations of divine 
 tenderness. It is as if Heaven opened wide her ever- 
 during gates and poured forth once for all upon the 
 suffering and sorrowing earth a flood of heavenly heal- 
 ing ; gave, instead of despair for a vanished face and a 
 silent voice, not hope of future meeting, but immediate 
 eternal presence, eternal, instant reunion. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE ORIGIN" OF SACRIFICE. 
 
 If the institutes of sacrifice were not ordered by God, 
 whence did they come ? If they were not divine ordi- 
 nances, what were they ? 
 
 Human ordinances instituted by man. Patient and 
 minute investigation has found in man a native tendency 
 to ascribe to a power above Nature everything in Nature 
 which man can not understand or control. This is the 
 first outflow of divine inspiration ; the first faint breath of 
 eternal life, constituting man alone, of all the animals, a 
 living soul. If the phenomenon which ho observes agrees 
 with man's idea of the good and beautiful, he ascribes it 
 to a good being. If it agrees with his sense of the hostile 
 and the horrible, he ascribes it to a bad being. TTe can 
 see this tendency in our own day. Captain Cook's sailors 
 were hardly set for the first time on the Australian shore 
 when they came rushing back to their boats crying that 
 they had seen the devil in the bush ! Thus they named 
 the kangaroo. 
 
 This tendency marks a certain stage of development 
 — the development in humanity of a spiritual nature. It 
 is suggested in the Bible Genesis that the human race 
 existed, whether for years or for ages, before it attained 
 the knowledge of good and evil. Whenever humanity 
 had attained that knowledge, by that knowledge it be- 
 came capable of morality, and therefore morally responsi- 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SACRIFICE. 95 
 
 ble. When humanity could lift itself out of Nature and 
 view itself in its relations, could abstract, classify, organ- 
 ize, and pass moral judgment on moral actions, its very 
 first inference seems to have been that there was an un- 
 known superior power outside of and above itself. Men 
 saw that when they had done everything which they 
 could do, the issue was still uncertain. Therefore there 
 must be a power behind unseen. This power we call the 
 powers of Nature. We may have a glimpse of it in the 
 Garden of Eden, where they heard the voice of the Lord 
 God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. A 
 marginal reference substitutes the word wi^id for the cool 
 of the day. They heard the voice of the Lord God in 
 the wind. 
 
 Pope alludes to it : 
 
 " Lo ! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind 
 Sees God in clouds and hears him in the wind." 
 
 We have reasoned a few steps further. We have discov- 
 ered that many things which seemed to our ancestors 
 supernatural are really natural. What ignorance had 
 located outside of Nature, knowledge has relegated to 
 Nature. But we have not advanced one step if we main- 
 tain that because God works by law, in law, through law, 
 he does not work at all. The ancients misunderstood 
 order and worshiped God, but better and truer so than 
 to worship order and deny God. 
 
 This unknown power they individualized infinitely, 
 and slavishly, because ignorantly, deprecated and concili- 
 ated it. They worshiped the god of fate to secure his 
 help. Tliey worshiped the god of disaster to avert his 
 wrath. We can hardly call this morality, but it was a 
 basis of morality. It may have existed a long while 
 before it developed a sense of moral right and wrong, but 
 out of it has sprung a sense of right and wrong. This 
 power, which we have not dethroned when we call it the 
 
96 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 power of Nature, became to the ancients living and per- 
 sonal. 
 
 As great men seemed to partake of the unknown 
 power, they, too, came to be worshiped as gods. If Na- 
 poleon had lived twenty centuries earlier, he would doubt- 
 less have been apotheosized, for genius is spasmodic in 
 its appearance, not hereditary. It has not been accounted 
 for, nor has it been common enough to make familiarity 
 serve the purpose of comprehension. It was therefore 
 mysterious. 
 
 We are not without eye-witness. We ourselves have 
 barely emerged from the god-making era. The Caesars 
 are as well known to us as George Washington, but they 
 had their cult. Frescoes represented them taking their 
 place among the gods. The *^ deified Caesar" was as 
 common a term to the Eomans as "the late emperor" is 
 to us. To the "deified Caesars" temples were built, 
 priests were appointed, sacrifices offered. I think the 
 Caesars knew better. Augustus Caesar, perhaps the best 
 of them all, showed a strong flavor of skepticism, but he 
 availed himself of the popular belief in deities to fasten 
 his institutions on the state. Tiberius, generally consid- 
 ered, though I think wrongly, the worst of them all, 
 wrought in a sad sincerity, and refused to be deified. " I 
 know well," he protested, "that I am but a man, and 
 subject to all the conditions of humanity." But for 
 many a day the thrones of heaven were recruited from 
 the palaces of earth. 
 
 Naturally these earth-born gods carried with them 
 into their heaven the qualities of earth. So Agamem- 
 non's treasures were buried with him ; so the dead hand 
 of the Indian was furnished for the next world w4th the 
 weapons which he had needed in this. As men required 
 food for sustenance here, they carried this need into the 
 unknown, and hence offerings of food and drink were 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SACRIFICE. 97 
 
 made to them as gods. Burnt-oSerings may have rep- 
 resented cooked food ; libations of wine sjirang hence, 
 and possibly the sprinkling of blood, for the drinking 
 of blood among men was not unknown as a symbol of 
 victory. 
 
 When the divine aspiration in man began to reach 
 out into worship by oilerings, into worship by slaughter 
 of beasts, we do not know. It was not in the Garden of 
 Eden. It did not appear, outside of Eden till after a 
 '^process of time." Possibly the story of Cain and Abel 
 epitomizes the first institution of animal sacrifice, the 
 departure from the peaceful and harmless fruit-offering 
 of the elder brother, or the earlier race, Cain, to the 
 bloody and violent beast-offering of the younger brother, 
 or the later race, Abel. It is true that the representative 
 of fruit-offering has fared badly at the hands of the 
 world, but it must be remembered that he was on the 
 losing side. The beast- worshipers prevailed. The beast- 
 worshipers told the story and had it all their own way. 
 We have not yet heard Cain's side. 
 
 Josephus unhesitatingly explains the acceptance of 
 Abel's sacrifice and the non-acceptance of Cain's by as- 
 suming that '^God was more delighted when he was hon- 
 ored with what grew naturally of its own accord than ho 
 was with the invention of a covetous man, and gotten by 
 forcing the ground !" 
 
 If Cain forced the ground more than Josephus forced 
 this reasoning, he merited that his sacrifice should be re- 
 jected. We should naturally suppose that the one who 
 took the most pains would give the most pleasure. 
 
 St. John gives a more reasonable explanation : " Cain 
 was of the Evil One, and slew his brother. And where- 
 fore slew he him ? Because his own works were evil and 
 his brother's righteous." It does not appear, however, 
 that John was giving any more than his own inference, 
 7 
 
98 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 or the traditional Jewish teaching. He was using the in- 
 cident in a literary sense ; as a rhetorical intensification, 
 not a question of historical investigation ; not apparently 
 of divine inspiration. It was a tradition common to the 
 Jews, the generalization of Josephns's specification. In- 
 deed, the hard measure dealt out to Cain by his Jewish 
 kin generally savors more of prejudice than of impartial 
 history. *'He accepted his punishment," Josephus de- 
 clares, "not in order to amendment, but to increase his 
 wickedness. He aimed only at his own bodily pleasures, 
 though it injured his neighbor. He gained wealth by 
 rapine and violence. He became a great leader of men 
 to robbery. He was the author of weights and measures ; 
 and whereas," says his naive biographer, "men lived in- 
 nocently and generously while they knew nothing of such 
 arts, he changed the world into cunning craftiness. He, 
 first of all, set boundaries about lands ; he built a city 
 and fortified it with walls, and he compelled his family 
 to come together to it. His posterity became exceed- 
 ingly wicked, every one successively dying one after 
 another, more wicked than the former. They were in- 
 tolerable in war, vehement in robberies, if not murder- 
 ous, profligate, bold in acting unjustly and in doing in- 
 juries for gain." 
 
 But none the less does Josephus account for the great 
 age of the antediluvians by the theory that "God gave 
 them length of days on account of their virtue !" And 
 with Josephus's grave general charges of crime we mark 
 that his specifications are all of the weights and meas- 
 ures and metes of civilization, the organization of socie- 
 ty, the establishment of homes. Even in the story of 
 Cain's victorious antagonist, the inspiration of the Al- 
 mighty giveth us understanding of a man who, in defeat 
 and exile, kept communion with God, received his pro- 
 tection, and became the progenitor of a race distinguished 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SACRIFICE. 99 
 
 for its agricultural, industrial, mechanical, and musical 
 genius — that is, for the arts, the charms, the victories of 
 peace, not of blood. What Josephus calls '^cunning 
 craftiness" seems to have been an Edisonian inventive- 
 ness. It is impossible to believe that the story of the first 
 murderer means nothing but the first murder. 
 
 Abel perished, but it was in the beginning as it is 
 now, and ever shall be— the blood of the martyrs is the 
 seed of the Church. God. rebuked Cain for bloodshed, 
 even though it were to prevent bloodshed — the blood of a 
 man for the blood of a beast— and the church of blood- 
 atonement was established. But almost coeval with its 
 establishment was the undying protest against it ; first 
 against its abuses, finally against itself. Its temptations 
 to corruption were overwhelming. The reservation of a 
 large part of the animal sacrifice to the priest was in 
 itself a constant temptation, and brought great scandal 
 both in the worship of idols and in the beastly worship 
 of God. The original institutes of Moses ordained that 
 "the priest that offereth any man's burnt-offering, even 
 the priest shall have to himself the skin of the burnt- 
 offering which he hath offered. And all the meat-offering 
 that is baked in the oven, and all that is dressed in the 
 frying-pan, and in the pan, shall be the priest's that 
 offereth it. And every meat-offering, mingled with oil, 
 and dry, shall all the sons of Aaron have, one as much as 
 another. And this is the law of the sacrifice of peace- 
 offerings, which he shall offer unto the Lord. If he 
 offer it for a thanksgiving, then he shall offer with the 
 sacrifice of thanksgiving unleavened cakes mingled with 
 oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil, and cakes 
 mingled with oil, of fine flour, fried. Besides the cakes, 
 he shall offer for his offering leavened bread with the sac- 
 rifice of thanksgiving of his peace-offerings. And of it 
 he shall offer one out of the whole oblation for a heave- 
 
100 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 offering unto the Lord, and it shall be the priest's that 
 sprinkleth the blood of the peace-offerings. 
 
 "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto 
 the children of Israel, saying. He that offereth the sac- 
 rifice of his peace-offerings unto the Lord shall bring his 
 oblation unto the Lord of the sacrifice of his peace-offer- 
 ings. His own hands shall bring the offerings of the 
 Lord made by fire, the fat with the breast ; it shall he 
 bring, that the breast may be waved for a wave-offering 
 before the Lord. And the priest shall burn the fat upon 
 the altar : but the breast shall be Aaron's and his sons'. 
 And the right shoulder shall ye give unto the priest for 
 a heave-offering of the sacrifices of your peace-offerings. 
 He among the sons of Aaron that offereth the blood of 
 the peace-offerings, and the fat, shall have the right 
 shoulder for his part. For the wave breast and the heave 
 shoulder have I taken of the children of Israel from off 
 the sacrifices of their peace-offerings, and have given them 
 unto Aaron the priest and unto his sons by a statute for- 
 ever from among the children of Israel." 
 
 A detailed account of the manner in which the priests 
 imposed upon the people in idol worship is found in the 
 story of Bel and the Dragon, cut off from the Book of 
 Daniel. It is a story of the country from which Abram 
 came, where his ancestors lived and worshiped just such 
 gods. 
 
 "!N"owthe Babylonians had an idol called Bel, and 
 there were spent upon him every day twelve great meas- 
 ures of fine flour and forty sheep and six vessels of wine. 
 And the king worshiped it and went daily to adore it : 
 but Daniel worshiped his own God. And the king said 
 unto him. Why do?t not thou worship Bel ? Who an- 
 swered and said, Because I may not worship idols made 
 with hands, but the living God, who hath created the 
 heaven and the earth, and hath sovereignty over all flesh. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SACRIFICE. IQl 
 
 " Then said the king unto him, Thinkest thou not that 
 Bel is a living god ? Seest thou not how much he eat- 
 eth and drinketh every day ? 
 
 ** Then Daniel smiled and said, king, be not de- 
 ceived : for this is but clay within and brass without, 
 and did never eat or drink anything. 
 
 *'So the king was wroth and called for his priests and 
 said unto them, If ye tell me not who this is that de- 
 voureth these expenses, ye . shall die. But if ye can cer- 
 tify me that Bel devoureth them, then Daniel shall die : 
 for he hath spoken blasphemy against Bel. And Daniel 
 said unto the king, Let it be according to thy word. Now 
 the priests of Bel were threescore and ten, besides their 
 wives and children. And the king went with Daniel into 
 the temple of Bel. So Bel's priests said, Lo, w^ go out : 
 but thou, king, set on the meat, and make ready the 
 wine, and shut the door fast, and seal it with thine own 
 signet ; and to-morrow when thou comest in, if thou 
 findest not that Bel hath eaten up all, we will suffer 
 death, or else Daniel, that speaketh falsely against us. 
 
 "And they little regarded it, for under the table they 
 had made a privy entrance, whereby they entered in con- 
 tinually and consumed those things. 
 
 " So when they were gone forth the king set meats 
 before Bel. Now Daniel had commanded his servants to 
 bring ashes, and those they strewed throughout all the 
 temple in the presence of the king alone : then went they 
 out, and shut the door, and sealed it with the king's sig- 
 net, and so departed. 
 
 *'Now in the night came the priests with their wives 
 and children, as they were wont to do, and did eat and 
 drink up all. 
 
 "In the morning, betime, the king arose, and Daniel 
 with him. And the king said, Daniel, are the seals 
 whole ? And he said. Yea, king, they be whole. And 
 
102 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 as soon as lie had opened the door the king looked upon 
 the table and cried with a loud voice, Great art thou, 
 Be], and with thee is no deceit at all ! 
 
 *^Then laughed Daniel, and held the king that he 
 should not go in, and said. Behold now the pavement, 
 and mark well whose footsteps are these. And the king 
 said, I see the footsteps of men, women, aud children. 
 And then the king was angry, and took the priests with 
 their wives and children, who shewed him the privy 
 doors, where they came in and consumed such things as 
 were upon the table. 
 
 '* Therefore the king slew them and delivered Bel into 
 Daniel's power, who destroyed him and his temple. 
 
 "And in that same j)lace there was a great dragon, 
 which they of Babylon worshiped. And the king said 
 unto Daniel, Wilt thou also say that this is of brass ? 
 lo, he liveth, he eateth and drinketh ; thou canst not say 
 that he is no living god : therefore worship him. 
 
 *'Theu said Daniel unto the king, I will worship the 
 Lord my God, for he is the living God. But give me 
 leave, king, and I shall slay this dragon without sword 
 or staff. The king said, I give thee leave. 
 
 "Then Daniel took pitch, and fat, and hair, and did 
 seethe them together, and made lumps thereof : this he 
 put in the dragon's mouth, and so the dragon bnrst in 
 sunder : and Daniel said, Lo, these are the gods ye wor- 
 ship. , 
 
 '* When they of Babylon heard that they took great 
 indignation, and conspired against the king, saying. 
 The king is become a Jew, and he hath destroyed Bel, 
 he hath slain the dragon, and put the priests to death." 
 
 The story may be a narrative of history, or a myth, 
 or a legend, or a poem ; but equally it indicates the 
 source, character, and corruption of the institution. 
 
 The worship of the Israelites presents corresponding 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SACRIFICE. 103 
 
 abuses — abuses for which their blood sacrifices presented 
 special temptations. 
 
 '^The sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew 
 not the Lord. And the priest's custom with the people 
 was, that, when any man olfered sacrifices, the priest's 
 servant came, while the flesh was in seething, with a 
 flesh-hook of three teeth in his hand ; and he struck it 
 into the pan, or kettle, or caldron, or pot ; all that the 
 flesh-hook brought up the priest took for himself. So 
 they did in Shiloh unto all the Israelites that came 
 thither. Also before they burnt the fat the priest's serv- 
 ant came and said to the man that sacrificed, Give flesh 
 to roast for the priest ; for he will not have sodden flesh 
 of thee, but raw. And if any man said unto him. Let 
 them not fail to burn the fat presently, and then take as 
 much as thy soul desireth ; then he would answer him, 
 Nay ; but thou shalt give it me now : and if not, I will 
 take it by force. 
 
 ^* Wherefore the sin of the young men was very great 
 before the Lord, for men abhorred the offering of the 
 Lord." 
 
 Malachi paints an equal degeneracy : ^' A son honor- 
 eth his father, and a servant his master : if then I be a 
 father, where is mine honor ? and if I be a master, where 
 is my fear ? saith the Lord of hosts unto you, priests, 
 that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we 
 despised thy name ? Ye offer polluted bread upon mine 
 altar ; and ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee ? In 
 that ye say, The table of the Lord is contemptible. And 
 if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil ? and if ye 
 offer the lame and sick, is it not evil ? offer it now unto 
 thy governor ; will he be pleased with thee, or accept 
 thy person ? saith the Lord of hosts. And now, I pray 
 you, beseech God that he will be gracious unto us : this 
 hath been by your means : will he regard your persons ? 
 
104 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 saith the Lord of hosts. Who is there even among you 
 that would shut the doors for nought ? neither do ye kin- 
 dle fire on mine altar for nought. I have no i^leasure in 
 you, saith the Lord of hosts, neither will I accept an 
 offering at your hand. But ye have profaned it, in that 
 ye say, The table of the Lord is polluted ; and the fruit 
 thereof, even his meat, is contemptible. Ye said also. 
 Behold, what a weariness is it ! and ye have snuffed at 
 it, saith the Lord of hosts ; and ye brought that which 
 was torn, and the lame, and the sick ; thus ye brought 
 an offering : should I accept this of your hand ? saith the 
 Lord. But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his 
 flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto the Lord 
 a corrupt thing : for I am a great King, saith the Lord 
 of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen." 
 
 Moreover, the early outreach of man to God reveals a 
 frank commercial element. 
 
 Undoubtedly there was an instinctive spiritual grop- 
 ing to find God, but there w\is as undoubtedly a very ma- 
 terial quid pro quo. We may call it the early develop- 
 ment of a sense of justice as between God and man, but 
 in common talk it was a business contract. It was fair 
 play or no play. When God met Jacob at Bethel, Jacob 
 drove a palpable bargain. **If God will be with me and 
 will keep me in this way that I go and will give me 
 bread to eat and raiment to put on so that I come again 
 to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my 
 God." 
 
 AYhen the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah that 
 Israel was punished because they worshiped other gods, 
 men and women rose up and protested that they had kept 
 the contract and that it was the Lord w^ho had failed ; 
 and I do not remember that men were ever quite so bold 
 and outspoken in their idolatry as here — where they had 
 the women to back them ! 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SACRIFICE. 105 
 
 "Then all tlie men which knew that their wives had 
 burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that 
 stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt 
 in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, 
 saying : 
 
 *'As for the word that thou liast spoken unto us 
 in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee. 
 But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth 
 out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen 
 of heaven, and to pour out drink-oiferings unto her, as 
 we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our 
 princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jeru- 
 salem : for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, 
 and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense 
 to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings 
 unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been con- 
 sumed by the sword and by the famine. And when we 
 burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out 
 drink-offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to wor 
 ship her, and pour out drink-offerings unto her, without 
 our men ? 
 
 *^ Then Jeremiah said unto all the people, to the 
 men, and to the women, and to all the peojole which had 
 given him that answer, saying. The incense that ye 
 burned in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jeru- 
 salem, ye and your fathers, your kings and your princes, 
 and the people of the land, did not the Lord remember 
 them, and came it not into his mind ? So that the Lord 
 could no longer bear, because of the evil of your doings, 
 and because of the abominations which ye have commit- 
 ted ; therefore is your land a desolation, and an astonish- 
 ment, and a curse, without an inhabitant, as at this day. 
 Because ye have burned incense, and because ye have 
 sinned against the Lord, and have not obeyed the voice 
 of the Lord, nor walked in his law, nor in his statutes. 
 
lOG ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 nor in his testimonies ; therefore this evil is happened 
 unto you, as at this day. 
 
 ** Moreover, Jeremiah said unto all the people, and to 
 all the women. Hear the word of the Lord, all Judah 
 that are in the land of Egypt : 
 
 *' Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, 
 saying : Ye and your wives have both spoken with your 
 mouths, and fulhlled with your hand, saying. We will 
 surely perform our vows that we have vowed, to burn in- 
 cense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offer- 
 ings unto her : ye ivill surely accomplish your vows, and 
 surely perform your vows " — w^ill you ? 
 
 " Therefore hear ye the word of the Lord, all Judah 
 that dwell in the land of Egypt : Behold, I have sworn 
 by my great name, saith the Lord, that my name shall 
 no more be named in the mouth of any man of Judah 
 in all the land of Egypt, saying. The Lord God liveth. 
 Behold, I will watch over them for evil, and not for 
 good : and all the men of Judah that are in the land of 
 Egypt shall be consumed by the sword and by the famine, 
 until there be an end of them. Yet a small number that 
 escape the sword shall return out of the land of Egypt 
 into the land of Judah ; and all the remnant of Judah, 
 that are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, 
 shall know whose words shall stand, mine, or theirs." 
 
 Cicero testifies that the worship of the gods had come 
 to be by rites. The gods would protect them so long 
 as they punctiliously performed the ceremonies. It was 
 not a question of dogmas or doctrines, but of the merest 
 formalism, of offerings and libations, of priests and cere- 
 monies, of give and take. 
 
 The worst corruption of all was the desecration, the 
 destruction of human life to placate the Creator of life. 
 Of its origin we have no account ; of its abolition, or 
 of the origin of its authoritative, final, and permanent 
 
THE OEIGIN OF SACELFICE. 107 
 
 abolition, it is possible that we have an account in the 
 Bible. 
 
 Witchcraft seemed to be in mid-career throughout the 
 world in the last part of the seventeenth century, and, like 
 a brook in a smooth channel, flowed on tranquil because 
 unopposed. But in New England the spirit of freedom 
 was astir. Massachusetts began to question. Salem, at 
 the heart's core of Massachusetts, began to question, and 
 they put out the fires, and they took down the gallows, 
 and they built the heavy weights into stone walls, and 
 never any more after that time was a witch molested 
 here. But my poor old Massachusetts and my poor old 
 Salem are remembered not honorably, as they should be, 
 for standing up fronting the world and forbidding the 
 witch to be hanged, but dishonorably, because their oppo- 
 sition made them conspicuous and the iniquity of the last 
 hangings centered on them. The world noted that the 
 hanpfins: was on their soil, and did not note that it was 
 they who made these hangings to be the last ! 
 
 So the horror of human sacrifice is sometimes concen- 
 trated on the offering up of Isaac, without observing that 
 it may be signalized because it was final and not because 
 it was pious. Never is human sacrifice even assumed to 
 be ordained of God in the Bible after that one sacrifice 
 of Isaac ; and that is a sacrifice forbidden. And just as the 
 witchcraft delusion was questioned, resisted, denounced by 
 Rev. Mr. Hale, of Beverly, after his own wife had been 
 accused, though he was passive if not active in it before, 
 so it may be that Abram had looked unopposing upon 
 the religion of human sacrifice until his own son was in- 
 volved, and then the father's tenderness sharpened the 
 man's wits, and the voice of God in his soul reversed the 
 order of blood forever for his whole nation. 
 
 And thus indeed he made good liis reputation that 
 was to be, as a person of great sagacity, and not mistaken 
 
108 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 in his opinions. Thus manifested he his higher notions 
 of virtue than others had, and thus he continued, in his 
 new home as in his old, to change men's opinion about 
 God, as Josephus said ; not only proclaiming the unity of 
 God, the creator, but his righteousness and the sacredness 
 of human life which partakes of the divine. To a world 
 that worshiped with human sacrifice, Abraham preached 
 that God was not to be worshiped with human sacrifice. 
 
 The Mosaic institutes were orderly, healthy, and 
 chiefly decorous. They treated human sacrifice as a dese- 
 cration and a horror. They were always against cruelty 
 and oppression except of beasts for sacrifice. The 
 Hebrews had bloody rites ; but while all the surround- 
 ing nations worshiped many gods, they worshiped one 
 God. They were continually going astray after false 
 gods, but as continually coming back to the one God. 
 
 It is easy then to see that idol worship and beast wor- 
 ship of God were easily corruptible and often corrupted. 
 But the corruption of a principle or a practice does not 
 invalidate its original sincerity. Undoubtedly the origi- 
 nal institutes of idolatry and the Mosaic institutes of ani- 
 mal worship were honest. They were the pathetic efforts 
 of men feeling after God if haply they might find him. 
 It was the device of the heart of man — a very rude and 
 savage heart, but an aspiring heart — which God accepted 
 in its aspiration and answered with ever-increasing spirit- 
 uality in the sincere worshiper. The good Lord pardon 
 every one that prepareth his heart to seek God, though 
 he be not cleansed according to the purification of the 
 sanctuary ! 
 
 So the definite spiritual idea of one God and a right- 
 eous God was constantly, with increasing clearness, shap- 
 ing itself in the Jewish mind, even through this material 
 idea and joractice of worship. Far back there arose, like 
 a solid mountain peak out of surrounding fog, a purer 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SACRIFICE. 109 
 
 doctrine about God and divine things, gained volume and 
 strength through the long ages, drew to itself all the good 
 and wise men from whose moral kindred it sprang at the be- 
 ginning, until at length it was taught with absolute author- 
 ity, because with absolute truth, that God, a spirit, must 
 be worshiped spiritually ; and that as with human parents, 
 so with the divine, although the ill desert of wrong-doing 
 can never be expiated or abated in the least degree, yet 
 the wrong-doing itself can be freely and fully forgiven 
 upon honest repentance, because such repentance restores 
 the law-breaker to duty and to peace, and the law itself — 
 the law of love, the only law — to its true place, its right- 
 ful honor, and its due observance. Appearing first in 
 protest against the abuse of sacrifices, entwining itself 
 with ridicule of the heathen worship of many gods and 
 with reverent delineation of the true God whom alone 
 Israel was taught to worship, it rose in the times of the 
 prophets to a forecast of the abolition of all sacrifices. 
 
 With what vigor of logic and vivacity of rhetoric does 
 Isaiah inveigh against the absurdity of idol worship ! 
 
 •^^Is there a God besides me ? yea, there is no God ; I 
 know not any. 
 
 ^^ They that make a graven image are all of them vanity ; 
 and their delectable things shall not profit ; and they are 
 their own witnesses ; they see not, nor know ; that they 
 may be ashamed. 
 
 '^Who hath formed a god, or molten a graven image, 
 that is profitable for nothing ? Behold, all his fellows 
 shall be ashamed ; and the workmen, they are of men : let 
 them all be gathered together, let them stand up ; yet they 
 shall fear, and they shall be ashamed together. The 
 smith with the tongs both w^orketh in the coals, and fash- 
 ioneth it with hammers, and worketh it with the strength of 
 his arms : yea, he is hungry, and his strength faileth : he 
 drinketh no water, and is faint. The carpenter stretcheth 
 
110 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 out his rule ; lie marketh it out with a line ; he fitteth it 
 with planes, and he marketh it out with the compass, 
 and maketh it after the figure of a man, according to the 
 beauty of a man ; that it may remain in the house. 
 He heweth him down cedars, and taketli the cyjoress and 
 the oak, which he strengtheneth for himself among the 
 trees of the forest : he planteth an ash, and the rain doth 
 nourish it, 
 
 **Then shall it be for a man to burn : for he will take 
 thereof and warm himself ; yea, he kindleth it, and bak- 
 eth bread ; yea, he maketh a god, and worshipeth it ; he 
 maketh it a graven image, and falleth down thereto. He 
 burneth part thereof in the fire ; with part thereof he 
 eatcth flesh ; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied : yea, he 
 warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen 
 the fire : and the residue thereof he maketh a god, even 
 his graven image : he falleth down unto it, and worship- 
 eth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me ; for 
 thou art my god. 
 
 ^^ They have not known nor understood : for he hath 
 shut their eyes, that they can not see ; and their hearts, 
 that they can not understand. And none considereth in 
 his heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding 
 to say, I have burned part of it in the fire ; yea, also I 
 have baked bread upon the coals thereof ; I have roasted 
 flesh, and eaten it : and shall I make the residue thereof 
 an abomination ? shall I fall down to the stock of a tree ? " 
 
 Against the complaint of foreigners, that the God of 
 Israel hidetli himself, how earnestly he preaches the divine 
 omnipresence ! 
 
 ''For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; 
 God himself that formed the earth and made it ; he hath 
 established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to 
 be inhabited : I am the Lord, and there is none else. I 
 have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth : I 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SACRIFICE. Hi 
 
 said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain : I 
 the Lord speak righteousness, I declare things that are 
 right." 
 
 With what scorn of idolatry, beginning almost with a 
 jeer, he compares these made-np, helpless wooden images 
 with the great I Am ! 
 
 " Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth ; their idols w^ere 
 upon the beasts, and upon the cattle : your carriages were 
 heavy laden ; they are a burden to the w^ary beast. 
 They stoop, they bow down together ; they could not 
 deliver the burden, but themselves are gone into captivity. 
 And even to your old age I am he ; and even to hoar 
 hairs will I carry you : I have made, and I will bera- ; 
 even I will carry, and will deliver you. To whom will 
 •ye liken me, and make me equal, and compare me, that 
 we may be like ? They lavish gold out of the bag, and 
 weigh silver in the balance, and hire a goldsmith ; and 
 he maketh it a god : they fall down, yea, they worship. 
 They bear him upon the shoulder, they carry him, and 
 set him in his place, and he standeth ; from his place 
 shall he not remove : yea, one shall cry unto him, yet 
 can he not answer, nor save him out of his trouble. 
 
 *^Eemember this, and show yourselves men : bring it 
 again to mind, ye transgressors. Remember the former 
 things of old : for I am God, and there is none else ; I 
 am God, and there is none like me." 
 
 Neither astronomy nor metaphysics nor mechanics 
 can lend any touch of greatness to the absolute force, in 
 whose worship the whole institute of sacrifice is shriveled 
 to nothingness under the prophet's inspired portrayal. 
 
 ^' Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into 
 the high mountain : Jerusalem, that bringest good ti- 
 dings, lift up thy voice with strengtli ; lift it up, be not 
 afraid ; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God ! 
 
 "• Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his 
 
112 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and compre- 
 hended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed 
 the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance ? Who 
 hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his coun- 
 selor hath taught him ? With whom took he counsel, 
 and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of 
 judgment, and taught him knowledge, and showed to 
 him the way of understanding ? 
 
 "Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and 
 are counted as the small dust of the balance : behold, he 
 taketh up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon 
 is not sufiBcient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient 
 for a burnt-offering. All nations before him are as 
 nothing ; and they are counted to him less than nothing, 
 and vanity. 
 
 " To whom then will ye liken God ? or what likeness 
 will ye compare unto him ? The workman melteth a 
 graven image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with 
 gold, and casteth silver chains. 
 
 " He that is so impoverished that he hath no oblation 
 chooseth a tree that will not rot ; he seeketh unto him a 
 cunning workman to prepare a graven image that shall 
 not be moved. 
 
 " Have ye not known ? have ye not heard ? hath it 
 not been told you from the beginning ? have ye not un- 
 derstood from the foundations of the earth ? It is he 
 that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabit- 
 ants thereof are as grasshoppers ; that stretcheth out the 
 heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent 
 to dwell in. To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I 
 be equal ? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on 
 high, and behold who hath created these things, that 
 bringeth out their host by number : he calleth them all 
 by names, by the greatness of his might, for that he is 
 strong in power ; not one faileth. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF Sxi^CRIFICE. I13 
 
 " Hast thou not known ? hast thou not heard, that 
 the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of 
 the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary ? there is no 
 searching of his understanding." 
 
 In comparing the ordinances of Moses with the 
 obligations of morality, the prophets go hard to destroy 
 the ordinances altogether. 
 
 " Is it such a fast that I have chosen ?" cries Isaiah, 
 impersonating the Lord, "a day for a man to afflict his 
 soul ? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to 
 spread sackcloth and ashes under him ? wilt thou call this 
 a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord ? Is not this 
 the fast that I have chosen ? to loose the bands of wicked- 
 ness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the ojjpressed 
 go free, and that ye break every yoke ? Is it not to deal 
 thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor 
 that are cast out to thy house ? when thou seest the 
 naked, that thou cover him ; and that thou hide not thy- 
 self from thine own flesh ? " 
 
 Amos protests even more forcibly : *' I hate, I despise 
 your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn as- 
 semblies. Though ye offer me burnt-offerings and your 
 meat-offerings, I will not accept them ; neither will I re- 
 gard the peace-offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou 
 away from me the noise of thy songs ; for I will not hear 
 the melody of thy viols. But let judgment run down as 
 waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. Have ye 
 offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness 
 forty years, house of Israel ? But ye have borne the 
 tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the 
 star of your god, which ye made to yourselves." 
 
 Jeremiah utters a flat denial of the Mosaic authority: 
 
 ^' Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel : Put 
 
 your burnt-offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh. 
 
 For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them 
 
 8 
 
114 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, 
 concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices. But this thing 
 commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice and ye shall 
 be my people, and walk ye in all the ways that I have 
 commanded you." 
 
 The prayer of Manasses might have been offered by 
 Professor Park but for one archaic word : 
 
 "0 Lord, Almighty God of our fathers, Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob, and of their righteous seed ; who hast 
 made heaven and earth with all the ornament thereof ; 
 who hast bound the sea by the word of thy command- 
 ment ; who hast shut u]) the deep, and sealed it by thy 
 terrible and glorious name ; whom all men fear, and 
 tremble before thy power ; for the majesty of thy glory 
 can not be borne, and thine angry threatening toward 
 sinners is importable ; but thy merciful promise is un- 
 measurable and unsearchable ; for thou art the Most High 
 Lord, of great compassion, long-suffering, very merciful, 
 and repentest of the evils of men. Thou, Lord, ac- 
 cording to thy great goodness hast promised repentance 
 and forgiveness to them that have sinned against thee : 
 and of thine infinite mercies hast appointed repentance 
 unto sinners that they may be saved. Thou therefore, 
 
 Lord, that art the God of the just, hast not appointed 
 repentance to the just, as to Abraham, and Isaac, and 
 Jacob, which have not sinned against thee ; but thou 
 hast appointed repentance unto me that am a sinner : for 
 
 1 have sinned above the number of the sands of the sea. 
 My transgressions, Lord, are multiplied : my trans- 
 gressions are multiplied, and I am not worthy to behold 
 and see the height of heaven for the multitude of mine 
 iniquities. I am bowed down with many iron bands, 
 that I can not lift up mine head, neither have any re- 
 lease : for I have provoked thy wrath, and done evil be- 
 fore thee : I did not thy will, neither kept I thy com- 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SACRIFICE. 1X5 
 
 mandments ; I have set up abominations, and have 
 multiplied offenses. Now, therefore, I bow the knee of 
 mine heart, beseeching thee of grace. I have sinned, 
 Lord, I have sinned, and I acknowledge my iniquities : 
 wherefore I humbly beseech thee, forgive me, Lord, 
 forgive me, and destroy me not with mine iniquities. 
 Be not angry with me forever, by reserving evil for me ; 
 neither condemn me into the lower parts of the earth. 
 For thou art the God, even the God of them that repent; 
 and in me thou wilt show all thy goodness : for thou 
 wilt save me, that am unworthy, according to thy great 
 mercy. Therefore I will praise thee forever all the days 
 of my life : for all the powers of the heavens do praise 
 thee, and thine is the glory for ever and ever. Amen." 
 
 With an ever-increasing spirituality in the leaders, 
 and an ever-diminishing bloodshed among the people, 
 came at length the total extinction of the sacrifices them- 
 selves — in Jesus Christ — the cessation of organic offerings 
 to an inorganic Deity. 
 
 Does that seem a small thing ? 
 
 The world was, apparently, never more strongly in- 
 trenched in the worship of idols and in the idolatrous 
 worship of God than on the day when the babe was born 
 in Bethlehem. Caesar Augustus, endowed with a genius 
 for pacification and organization, joined the gods of the 
 conquered peoples to the gods of Rome, and, setting new 
 gods of the Caesars on the thrones of heaven, compacted 
 the temporal power and the spiritual power, welded poli- 
 tics and religion into a system which held the world in 
 thrall — but in a peace, too, that promised to make the 
 thrall permanent. 
 
 But the babe in the manger was stronger than Caesar 
 with his Pantheons. Under the truth which fell from 
 Christ's lips, that great and splendid community of gods 
 crumbled and vanished away forever. 
 
116 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 Foreyer, too, with idolatry, vanished the idolatrous 
 worship of God. "When the legions of Titus fell upon Je- 
 rusalem, the fires were still burning, though more faintly, 
 upon her altars ; the temple was still standing, though 
 in paling splendor. Of that temple was left not one 
 stone upon another, and the sacred flame was extin- 
 guished, never to be rekindled. If that devout and pious 
 Jew, Sir Moses Montefiore, had been able to carry out 
 his patriotic purpose and restore the holy city to its an- 
 cient glory, still not one drop of wanton blood would 
 pollute the worship of God. Eeligion in this free coun- 
 try is free, but the life of lamb and goat and turtle-dove 
 is safe from sacred slaughter ; for not a Jew of all the 
 sons of Abraham would revive the rite of blood-atone- 
 ment. So far, at least, Christ was successful. The 
 whole Western world ceased to preach the bajotism of 
 blood sacrifice for expiation, but everywhere was preached 
 the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. And 
 the world has gone forward in the path upward, till, if 
 King Hezekiah's great reform were started in Washing- 
 ton, with his thousand bullocks and ten thousand sheep, 
 he would instantly be arrested for cruelty to animals. 
 
 Eenan considers the most important part of the his- 
 tory of Judaism to be the complete transformation of 
 Jahveh, the national god of the Jews, from a merely local 
 and provincial to a universal deity. After having been 
 looked upon as one petty god among others, he came 
 during this period to be accepted by the Jews as one Su- 
 preme Creator, and, in the popular conception, a just 
 God, which he had not been before ; thus the introduc- 
 tion of the element of morality into religion was accom- 
 plished. 
 
 I have not myself been able to see anywhere in the 
 Old Testament that the God of the Jews was ever held 
 up to them by their religious teachers as local or unjust. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SACRLFICE. I17 
 
 He seems to me always to have been preached as the one 
 supreme God and as a just God, representing the highest 
 Hebrew ideal of justice, and in this lay the difference 
 between their theology and that taught by the other 
 nations. I am delighted to find my Bible-reading con- 
 firmed by the learned Baethgen. After an exhaustive in- 
 vestigation, he maintains that the religions of the other 
 Semitic peoples were polytheistic in character, while 
 Israel's religion was ofiicially monotheistic, and as such 
 differed essentially from all those of cognate races — from 
 all those of the Syrians, Arabs, Ethiopians, Moabites, 
 Phoenicians, who surrounded the Jews, and by whom 
 their religious ideas could have been influenced. He 
 quotes with minute examination the song of Deborah, 
 which is accounted the oldest or one of the oldest docu- 
 ments of the Pentateuch, and he shows that the princi- 
 pal differentiating thoughts of Israel's religion are in this 
 song. He examines the word Elohim, and shows it to be 
 like many other words plural in form, but not indicating 
 plurality of meaning. He finds nothing to warrant the 
 idea that Jehovah was only a national god and not the 
 supreme God. 
 
 But, in support of our view that God is the God of 
 all nations, the help of all nations, and not of the Jews 
 alone, he does find that, while the Jews were so advanced 
 in their theory of one God that he frankly admits with 
 Kittel, another German critic, that he can not account 
 for it except on a theory of special personal revelation, 
 he sees in all the polytheism of the Semitic races a trend 
 toward monotheism. 
 
 God was leading them, also, but in slower ways, to a 
 knowledge of himself. As we saw Melchizedek and Ptah- 
 Hotep feeling after and finding the God of righteousness, 
 so down to the very last ages before Christ we see the 
 pagan world ever and anon in their great men rising to 
 
118 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 the height of divine things with true inspiration ; as 
 Syrus teaching the Eomans to — 
 
 *' Listen to thy conscience ; it will punish even where 
 there is no law. 
 
 " He who loses honor has nothing more to lose. 
 
 "To command one's self is the noblest empire. 
 
 *^Keep thy word even to an enemy, 
 
 '* It is better to receive an injury than to do one. 
 
 '^Forgive others often ; thyself never. 
 
 *' God looks to see if the hands are pure ; not if they 
 are full. 
 
 '' The extreme justice is almost always an extreme in- 
 justice. 
 
 " Discuss all that thou hearest ; prove all that thou 
 believest. " 
 
 And Clement of Alexandria distinctly recognizes the 
 voice of God in what he as well as we called the heathen 
 world: "Perchance, too, philosophy was given to the 
 Greeks directly and primarily till the Lord should call 
 the Greeks. So, then, the barbarian and Hellenic phi- 
 losophy has torn oif a fragment of eternal truth. 
 
 "For the knowledge of God these utterances [written 
 by Plato, Socrates, Xenophon, Clean thes, the Pytha- 
 goreans] through the inspiration of God may suffice." 
 
 Pythagoras and Ovid were inspired of God to utter 
 the law of the conservation of force : " All things change ; 
 nothing perishes." 
 
 Thus through thought and character we see men ad- 
 vancing slowly to a belief in one righteous God and to a 
 knowledge of his w'ill and ways. But the Jews had it in 
 the beginning. Whence did they get it ? They slowly 
 advanced from the cessation of human sacrifices, throuofh 
 the gradual diminution of animal sacrifices, to their aboli- 
 tion. By the time of Christ the existence of one supreme 
 God was so confirmed in the Jewish mind that they 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SACRIFICE. II9 
 
 never again fell into idolatry, even while all the world 
 outside of them was still not only worshiping many gods, 
 but making new ones. I can not understand it except 
 on the theory that there is a God who knew in the be- 
 ginning that man whom he had made could get on just 
 so fast and just so far of himself. In art, in society, in 
 organization, man seems to have been able to develop of 
 himself from his impulse originally implanted. 
 
 In spiritual growth he was feeble, feebly reaching up 
 toward God, falling constantly into the same pit— idola- 
 try — whether he were a savage Hottentot, an aesthetic 
 Greek, or a Koman citizen. It was, therefore, not by a 
 late rectification of a mistake, but in the divine plan 
 from the beginning, to endow a special race with special 
 traits, fitting it to receive, in ways we do not understand, 
 a special, limited, yet large and accurate idea of God, 
 which should grow in that race, and through that race 
 be delivered to the world in the person of our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 
 History, recorded in the Bible, and science, inyesti- 
 gating outside the Bible, agree that the way by which 
 humanity approached God is a way of deyelopment. 
 Therefore it is the divine way. In that sense God or- 
 dained sacrifice, and in no other. He placed man in the 
 world v/ith a moral nature and a spiritual nature capable 
 of being developed. The story of their development is 
 minutely told in the Bible by Moses and the prophets — 
 told outside the Bible by Herbert Spencer and the natural- 
 ists. It is God leading man step by step — each step a lit- 
 tle higher, a little nearer to himself — from a conception 
 of a being a little stronger than man to our conception of 
 a being beyond finite conception. What other way is 
 there ? Can a being just above a brute conceive of our 
 God ? And will not our conception of God increase with 
 increasing knowledge till it is as much beyond the pres- 
 
120 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 ent idea as the present idea is beyond the idea of the 
 Patagonian ? 
 
 If God, as seems necessary to believe, gaye an extraor- 
 dinary impulse to Israel in knowledge of himself, it was 
 only in two respects — that he was one,- the only God, and 
 that he was a righteous God. As regards all else, their 
 ideas were as crude as those of the neighboring peoj^les ; 
 and to retain that idea, to prevent its constant degrada- 
 tion to the worship of wood and stone, their leaders were 
 forced to forbid all indulgence in art. The whole 8Bs- 
 thetic nature of the nation had to be repressed that its 
 religious nature might not be hindered. The sense for 
 beauty, as Matthew Arnold would say, had to be sacri- 
 ficed to the sense for righteousness. The Hebrews were 
 forbidden to paint a picture or to make a statue, because 
 all around them pictures and statues were inextricably 
 interwoven with, consecrated to, the idea of many gods — 
 of wicked gods — and would necessarily take their minds 
 o3 from the elevating idea of a spiritual God. 
 
 Modern research has revealed to us Egypt fall of 
 paintings, statues, idolatry. Four hundred years of 
 slavery had familiarized even the ignorant with the art 
 of that ancient civilization. But their great leader had 
 lived at the court of the king, and knew every form of 
 luxury and vice and effeminacy that had fastened upon 
 the vrorship of many gods, and had changed the statue, 
 which may have been at first a mere representation and 
 symbolism of the deity, into the deity itself. Fresh from 
 the statues and the paintings which research is now re- 
 vealing to us, Moses, as soon as he got his people well 
 away from them, made his prohibitory law : " Thou shalt 
 not make unto thee ai^y graven image or axy likeness of 
 anything." 
 
 The agnostic says, looking upon this development in 
 man of the idea of God : '* God did not make man — man 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SACRinCE. 121 
 
 made God"; and reasons thence that there is no God. 
 I say : man conceived God, therefore God made man. 
 Nature from the first protoplasm has been rushing for- 
 ward to the production of a creature capable of reason- 
 ing, loying, hating, changing ; capable of receiving the 
 world from nature, and working it up and molding it 
 into new forms, combining forces into new forces and as- 
 suming new features ; capable of reaching out beyond 
 this world and discovering f.acts and laws of the universe ; 
 capable of reaching out beyond the material universe, 
 and framing from the moral and spiritual laws of his 
 own world the conception of a spiritual universe with a 
 supreme reason, a supreme love. Along the same line of 
 reasoning by which I know only this planet surrounded 
 by its few round disks and its few shining spots, but infer, 
 and fully believe in and accept by faith, a great universe 
 of worlds beyond sight and sound and reach ; so, know- 
 ing only such realities of the spiritual, invisible universe 
 as love and reason, acting in this world, but acting so 
 strongly that they dominate the world, I infer, and by 
 faith accept, an invisible spiritual universe with a supreme 
 Creator — the divine, infinite reason whose name is Love. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE KEW TESTAMENT SOLVENT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 SACRIFICES. 
 
 The attitude of Christ and the apostles toward all 
 the Mosaic institutes, wherein the ordinance of sacrifice 
 is imbedded, was one of liberal conservatism, occasionally 
 of cordial indignation, generally of moderation and char- 
 ity. They seldom denounced, but they always supplanted. 
 When the man was cured of leprosy, Christ recommended 
 him to go and offer the gift that Moses commanded ; but 
 we can readily see that the customary and legal certifica- 
 tion of the cure was at the moment of paramount impor- 
 tance. 
 
 When his hungry disciples, walking through the corn- 
 fields, began to pluck the corn and eat it, the Pharisees 
 accused them of breaking the law of Moses. He might 
 have refuted them with the law of Moses, for Moses had 
 expressly said that a hungry man might pluck the corn 
 though he might not put a sickle to it. He did not do 
 this, however, but made it an occasion to declare his own 
 supremacy over the Mosaic law. He did not pull down 
 the temple and the altar, but preached God above them 
 both. He did not denounce the Mosaic law, but pro- 
 claimed that love — not slain beasts — love is the fulfilling 
 of the law. 
 
 ^^The first of all the commandments is, The Lord 
 our God is one Lord : And thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 
NEW TESTAMENT SOLVENT. 123 
 
 God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with 
 all thy mind, and with all thy strength ; this is the first 
 commandment. And the second is like, namely, this: 
 Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none 
 other commandment greater than these. On these two 
 commandments hang all the law and the prophets." 
 
 And the law-ridden, sacrifice-burdened scribe was so 
 struck with the beauty, the simplicity of this new laAV, 
 that he gave instant assent : '' Well, Master, thou hast 
 said the truth : for there is one God ; and there is none 
 other than he : And to love him with all the heart, and 
 with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and 
 with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, 
 is more than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices. 
 
 ** And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he 
 said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." 
 
 In the very same chapter in which he, as it were, in- 
 dorses Moses and the prophets, he also, as it were, abol- 
 ishes them : ^' The law and the prophets were until John ; 
 since that time the kingdom of God is preached." When 
 the famished people pleaded that Moses gave their fathers 
 bread from heaven to eat, and therefore they believed on 
 him, Christ met them with a broad denial : ** Verily Mo- 
 ses gave you not that bread from heaven. My Father 
 giveth you the true bread from heaven, /am the bread 
 of life. I am the living bread which came down from 
 heaven " ; and when, in these word-battles, he confound- 
 ed the sticklers for orthodoxy — Jewish orthodoxy — and 
 touched the living, vital truths underlying all perishable 
 forms, his adversaries were ashamed, and all the people 
 rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by 
 him, for there is always in the heart of humanity a sen- 
 sibility to truth, a recognition of truth, a leaping up to 
 truth, which makes good man's claim to the divine na- 
 ture, which is the truth itself. 
 
124 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 To the people he was kind, pitiful, comforting, sus- 
 taining, sympathetic, excusing. His sarcasm, indigna- 
 tion, denunciation, were poured out upon the teachers, 
 the preachers — scribes and Pharisees, who insisted on the 
 letter of the law and disregarded its spirit, although even 
 they had in the course of generations greatly mitigated 
 its bloodiest features, so truly had the divine vitality of 
 righteousness worked out the peaceable fruits of right- 
 eousness. Always Christ's attitude was of respect toward 
 the sincere believer, of loathing and denunciation toward 
 the hypocritical professor and false teacher. He held the 
 Mosaic law, including the sacrifices, as a real though 
 imperfect act of religion, to be destroyed by fulfilling its 
 central and ultimate idea — love. He would destroy its 
 ritual by diffusing its spirit. The statue is the fulfilling 
 of the mold. The statue perfected, the use of the mold 
 is served and the mold is broken. 
 
 When once and again, under the stinging lash of our 
 Lord, all the oxen, sheep, and doves, candidates then 
 present for sacrifice, fled or fluttered out of the courts of 
 the temple at Jerusalem, they carried with them for all 
 time, before as well as after, and for all places, within as 
 well as without the temple, his universal and absolute 
 condemnation of any and all animal sacrifices to such a 
 being as the invisible incorporeal Deity. That stern lash 
 of the mildest of men and the most daring of reform- 
 ers wrote on each of those destined victims, scored or 
 scared by it, his own personal and final excuse from the 
 altar and the sacrificial knife, together with a full dis- 
 charge of altars and sacrificial knives from henceforth 
 forever. But this was not the whole lesson. The lesson 
 of that lash and those words, was retrospective, as well 
 as present and prospective. Governed by the same rea- 
 sons, stim.ulated by the same motives, sanctified by the 
 same high, moral purpose, that lash furnished for the 
 
NEW TESTAMENT SOLVENT. 125 
 
 ages to come an authoritative certificate to the following 
 effect, namely : It meant that the whole Jewish sacri- 
 ficial code, the law and the practice under it, were abso- 
 lutely without divine authority. The only alternative 
 was, and was thus pronounced to be, that the said code 
 was altogether of man. 
 
 It puts our Lord in square internecine conflict with 
 the whole sacrificial system of the Jews, with Exodus 
 and Leviticus, but it places him in perfect accord with 
 Isaiah and Micah and many a psalmist. Those victims 
 fled not so much because he bade their owners take them 
 away, though he did that also, as because he himself 
 drove them away. Further, he must have driven all 
 those sacrificial birds and beasts away from the altar and 
 out of the court, assuredly not because he was at cross- 
 purposes with a genuine appointment of God, but exactly 
 for the opposite reason, namely, because he was alto- 
 gether at one with the will of the Father, who therefore 
 had never authorized such sacrifices. For the use of 
 human prayer and real worship Christ cleared the ground 
 of those inattentive, unappreciative, and incapable four- 
 foots and fledglings ; not because the times had then 
 just outgrown a certain form of worship, rude and primi- 
 tive indeed, yet for the times valid and valuable, but 
 because the thing referred to — namely, animal sacrifice 
 — was form, and form only, invalid, and worse than 
 valueless, without expression or implication of divine 
 worthiness at all ; but the exact contrary. Because ani- 
 mal sacrifices were not made for God, not fit for God, not 
 worthy of God, but the very opposite, because animal 
 sacrifices were made for idols. Just as in the Sermon on 
 the Mount our Lord had perfected other precepts of the 
 decalogue, lifting at once whatever he touched into the 
 true moral atmosphere, he would supply what was lack- 
 ing in the second, forbidding not only animal sacrifices 
 
126 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 to idols, but the transfer of such sacrifices to Jehovah ; 
 for ])lainly animal sacrifices could not raise the idol to 
 God's level, but to worship God just as the idol was wor- 
 shiped might and did bring God down to the level of 
 the idol, degrading him and debasing his pretended 
 worshipers. 
 
 It is hardly possible to overrate and overstate the 
 import of this narrative. Far more likely is it that we 
 underrate the import of Christ's words and deeds. No 
 man ever said more in little than he. He could com- 
 press volumes in a word, and more than all volumes in 
 one passion. The occasion under notice was a passover, 
 the nation's great anniversary. It was the annual pan- 
 Jewish reunion ; the elite of Jewry, all influential Jewry, 
 was there. All had come up to Jerusalem to worship ; that 
 is, to offer sacrifices after the traditions of the Fathers. 
 The sacrificial code required sacrifices in great numbers. 
 This requirement constituted a demand. The demand 
 created a corresponding supply. The man from Gyrene 
 could not bring his calf or lamb with him ; he expected 
 to buy it on the spot. The man of Bethlehem was aware 
 of the demand, and had the supply prepared to meet it. 
 Supply must meet the demand at the time and place of 
 the demand itself. The presence of candidates for sacri- 
 fice in the courts of the temple is a necessary incident of 
 the institution. To strike a blow at this incident is to 
 strike a blow at the institution, and this is what was 
 intended. 
 
 But, while he bids the owners of tlie cattle to remove 
 them, he does not trust it solely in their hands. He 
 helps to expel them. He helps not only with words, but 
 with a woven scourge. He drives not to the altar, but 
 away from the altar ; not into the court, but out of the 
 court of the temple into the open street or open country. 
 The rattle of coin on the broker's board, the clatter of 
 
NEW TESTAMENT SOLVENT. 127 
 
 voices higgling over tlie price of a calf, miglit well enougli 
 disgust a spiritual man. But all that could have been 
 prevented by preventing the sale alone. That did not 
 make it necessary to drive the intended victims away. 
 The expulsion indicates tlie true aim of the blow- 
 namely, at the head of the whole system. The intended 
 victims expelled, the institution itself could not live a 
 moment, and his act of expelling them shows that he 
 meant to kill the institution. The Jews so understood 
 it. They saw that he meant an internecine struggle. 
 The Sanhedrim said : " He or we must die." Their table 
 and all their living, their business as curators of the Jew- 
 ish religion, their name and fame — all were at stake. Our 
 Lord knew it as well as they. He knew that the contest 
 would cost his life. He knew, also, that he should win, 
 and that the victory would be worth even all that it cost. 
 
 His answer to the Samaritan woman is negatively 
 and positively conclusive. She wants his decision be- 
 tween Gerizim and Jerusalem for sacrifice ; and he says, 
 ''In neither place and never; the Father seeketh true 
 and spiritual worshipers." This decision of our Lord is 
 universal ; always and everywhere he wants spiritual wor- 
 ship, and that only. This absolutely and for all time 
 excludes animal sacrifice. 
 
 Herein, as in all else that he did, our Lord spake and 
 acted by virtue of that clear and just moral insight which 
 is true inspiration. Whoever has this moral insight is 
 inspired, though he have written never a line in the 
 Bible — witness our Lord himself inspired far beyond all 
 the sacred writers put together — and whoever has not 
 this moral insight is uninspired, though he have written 
 much and in the Bible. 
 
 The feast of the passover, as we have seen, was the 
 last supper of the Israelites in Egypt, and was kept as an 
 emancipation celebration by the Jews. It matters not 
 
128 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 whether the story was framed to explain the feast, or 
 whether the feast sprang from the fact, or whether the 
 story and the feast, one or both, were the reconsecration 
 to God of an old rite of animal worship. It would be, in 
 any case, but such a happening as he sees any day who 
 beholds the Roman devotees slowly and painfully ascend- 
 ing on their knees the scala santa of the Lateran, de- 
 voutly believing that they are the sacred steps over which 
 Christ ascended to his trial before Pilate's judgment seat. 
 But Christ was not born in Bethlehem when Julius Csesar 
 climbed on his knees the steps of the Capitol on the op- 
 posite hill to avert by this act of humility the anger of 
 Nemesis, the goddess hostile to great fortunes. Our 
 Lord was but ''the turbulent Christ" to the Emperor 
 Claudius when he painfully kneeled up the same steps in 
 gratitude to his gods for the conquest of Britain. If 
 Moses rebaptized a rite of animal worship into recogni- 
 tion of one supreme God, he did what many and many a 
 time reformers have done in endeavoring to purify and 
 elevate the spirit of a custom whose observance they 
 could not prevent. 
 
 The same night in which he was betrayed, in the 
 same spirit of accommodation and aspiration, our Lord 
 took the feast of the passover, eliminated from it every 
 possible relic of cruelty and error, turned it into a fare- 
 well feast to his disciples, made it the tenderest memorial 
 to himself and an emancipation celebration for all the 
 world — emancipation from the old covenant of blood to 
 the new covenant of purity. The old passover was a 
 meal for strengthening the body ; the Lord's farewell 
 supper was chiefly for the consolation and sustenance of 
 the soul. It was a sad festival, for the man Christ Jesus 
 was parting from his friends, and the shadow of his 
 troubled spirit fell upon their loving, anxious, ignorant 
 hearts. The passover had been a hurried feast, but the 
 
NEW TESTAMENT SOLVENT. 120 
 
 Jast supper was a long love feast, with time enough not 
 only to satisfy hunger, but enough for rash, headlong, but 
 real love to protest against the Master's object-lesson in 
 humility ; time enough for the curious but not overcon- 
 fident disciples to urge the confident love of John upon 
 an anxious question which was answered and not rebuked ; 
 time enough for the avarice of Judas, attending under 
 the disguise of affection, to see itself detected and dis- 
 missed to the sincerity of cjime, to the eternal punish- 
 ment of remorse and human infamy ; time enough for a 
 conversation whose fragmentary report is our most dear 
 and cherished legacy of the human heart of Christ. It 
 was a glorious supper, for in its gentle and solemn friendli- 
 ness was symbolized and signalized the redemption of the 
 ■world from the old domain of blood and beasts to the 
 new domain of love and light. 
 
 The world has been long in learning the lesson which 
 is yet but partially learned. The very disciples for 
 whose companionship at this feast their Master pas- 
 sionately longed knew so little of his spirit and his mis- 
 sion that they lifted their lips from the cup of his 
 blessing to bicker about precedence. We have not gone 
 so far beyond them that we can afford to scoff. We 
 harden his words into a coarse literalism, we reject his 
 tender, pure, and sacred symbols, and insist upon a re- 
 volting and impossible interpretation whose hideous feat- 
 ures we strive to veil under the thin disguise of miracle. 
 With the moan of a thousand generations in his ears, the 
 moan of hapless beasts massacred in vain expiations, the 
 sinless son of God held up the bread that gives but not 
 surrenders life, and made it the parting token of his 
 willing sacrifice, leading all martyrdoms for the truth. 
 ** TJiis is my body." To the innocent blood of sacrificial 
 slaughter crying unto him from the ground of the whole 
 wide earth he listened and made answer ; he took the 
 9 
 
130 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 cup and said unto them : *' TJiis is my blood of the new 
 testament." What was it? Not blood at all, but the 
 fruit of the vine, a real stimulant. What was it ? Not 
 flesh at all, but the fruit of the ground, a real nutri- 
 ment. 
 
 It was a symbol he had often used to represent the 
 close yital connection between himself and humanity, the 
 succor he would impart to souls. Sometimes he had 
 been well-nigh impatient at their failing to find the true 
 spiritual content of his teaching, which he had well and 
 often explained. 
 
 " How can this man give us his flesh to eat ?" asked 
 the heavy-browed Jews. ''I am the living bread," an- 
 swered Jesus. "I am that bread of life. He that be- 
 lieveth on me hath everlasting life." But, more blind 
 than the blindest scribe and more stolid than the stolid- 
 est Pharisee, without the excuse of a long-established cus- 
 tom of atonement by beast and of expiation by blood, 
 without the excuse of the natural hostility to innovation, 
 there are thousands among us to-day who turn away from 
 Christ's purification and spiritualization of worship, and 
 when asked, '^ How can this man give us his flesh to eat ? " 
 reply, *'By a miracle !" We are so determined to wor- 
 ship with blood and sacrifice, we are so resolved to go 
 back to the beggarly elements of this pagan world from 
 which Christ came to free us, that we summon the Lord 
 from his spiritual heavens into a loaf of bread in order 
 that there may be something to sacrifice ! 
 
 This is not an improvement on the Jewish ritual ; it 
 is a retrogression to the pagan ritual. If there must be 
 a sacrifice, it is better to sacrifice an animal than a man. 
 If that man is the prince of life, the Son of God, then 
 to sacrifice him is a crime without a name. If there 
 must be a priest to sustain religion, better that it should 
 be a Jew slaying a bullock upon an altar than God cruci- 
 
NEW TESTAMENT SOLVENT. 131 
 
 fying Ills beloved Son upon the cross, because that is a 
 profanation of the heavens. 
 
 It is difficult to speak of this with the respect due to 
 thought and sincerity. It is in direct and degrading op- 
 position to the teaching and trend of our Lord. If it 
 could be true, it would be shocking beyond expression. It 
 would substitute for the tenderest rite of Christianity 
 the grossest rite, the most horrible appetite, of heathen- 
 dom. 
 
 The same night in which he was betrayed, the same 
 night on which he took the bread and blessed it and said, 
 ** This is my body," he said : "I am the vine, ye are the 
 branches." The same Jesus said : '' I am the good shep- 
 herd. I am the door of the sheep." Did he mean to 
 teach that by a miracle Christ becomes instantly a vege- 
 table, a shepherd, a wooden door ? But such a tran sub- 
 stantiation is just as authoritative, just as reasonable, 
 just as important, no more absurd, and far less loath- 
 some. 
 
 To the rational, reverent, inquiring mind the only ex- 
 planation given is that it is a mystery. But a grotesque, 
 brutalizing, retrograde, unnatural transformation is not a 
 mystery ; it is a monstrosity. When Christ said, " This 
 is my body," his body was intact and present. There is 
 no pretense that his body then and there was the loaf of 
 bread or entered into the loaf of bread, or had any rela- 
 tion to the loaf of bread, except by the perfectly natural 
 process of reception and assimilation. Christ gave no 
 hint of any miracle performed or required. There is no 
 more reason why believers should be taught that they eat 
 the dead Christ than why the apostles should have been 
 taught that they ate the living Christ. To crave a mira- 
 cle to satisfy or gratify the religious nature is as if one 
 should refuse to be enlightened on the mechanical secret 
 of a phonographic doll because he loves mystery, while 
 
132 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 all around him in every human being lies the insoluble 
 mystery of life. 
 
 We dwell in mysteries — in the solemn, eternal un- 
 known. 
 
 Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. 
 God was manifest in the flesh. He is not manifest in the 
 loaf of bread, in the glass of wine. It is only that some 
 men say he is there. God manifest in the flesh, preached 
 unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, reconciling 
 the world unto himself, is a mystery which even the 
 angels desire to look into. We speak the wisdom of God 
 in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God or- 
 dained before the world to our glory — a mystery which 
 we shall never, if ever, resolve until God ordains it, after 
 the world, to his own glory. 
 
 *^ Behold I show you a mystery. We shall not all 
 sleep, but we shall all be changed " — the unspeakable 
 mystery of death. We go down to the gates with our 
 beloved, peering in vain beyond, seeing nothing beyond, 
 yet feeling sure that in a moment, in the twinkling of an 
 eye, this corruptible must put on incorruption, this mor- 
 tal must put on immortality ; but only when this cor- 
 ruptible lias put on incorruption, only when this mortal 
 has put on immortality, shall death be swallowed up in 
 victory. This side the gates death prevails, bnt beyond 
 the gates — *' Death, where is thy sting ? Grave, 
 where is thy victory ? " Lost in everlasting life. In the 
 presence of real mystery, our toy mysteries seem the coarse 
 and trivial things they are. 
 
 The apostles assimilated and disseminated the thought 
 and purpose of Christ very quickly and, on the whole, very 
 thoroughly. 
 
 They were, above all, Jews, lovingly and loyally sub- 
 ject to the law of Moses, desirous above all things not 
 to be considered disloyal, anti-Judaistic. They did not 
 
NEW TESTAMENT SOLVENT. I33 
 
 understand Christ, but they had been in touch with him, 
 and they at least knew that the law of Moses was to be 
 fulfilled by love. In their first assembling after they had 
 recovered breath from the unexpected downfall of their 
 leader, and had a little readjusted themselves after the 
 whirlwind of disappointment, amazement, bewilderment 
 that befell them, they promulgated their wonderful new 
 gospel, in which was no sacrifice, but "Eepentandbe 
 baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, 
 for the remission of sins." 
 
 "Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your 
 sins may be blotted out." 
 
 But Peter will not be misunderstood to mean that 
 this is a new departure — radicalism, a despite to the old 
 faith. He insists that it is the continuance, the corollary 
 of that very faith. It is no new deity, but " the God of 
 Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our 
 fathers, that hath glorified his son Jesus. Those things, 
 which God before hath showed by the mouth of all his 
 prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. 
 Whom the heaven must receive until the times of res- 
 titution of all things, which God hath spoken by the 
 mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. 
 For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall 
 the Lord your God raise up unto you of your breth- 
 ren, like unto me ; him shall ye hear in all things what- 
 soever he shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass, 
 that every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall 
 be destroyed from among the people. Yea, and all the 
 prophets from Samuel and those that follow after, as 
 many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these 
 days. Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the 
 covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto 
 Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the 
 earth be blessed. Unto you first God, having raised up 
 
13i A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away 
 every one of you from his iniquities." 
 
 Stephen, in his last bold words which cost him his 
 life, turned aside from his rapid sketch of Jewish history, 
 at the gates of Solomon's temple, to declare : ''Howbeifc 
 the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands ; 
 as saith the prophet. Heaven is my throne, and earth is 
 my footstool : what house will ye build me ? saith the 
 Lord : or what is the place of my rest ? Hath not my 
 hand made all these things ? " 
 
 When a Koman soldier and officer, a Christian who 
 had never heard of Christ, sent to bring Peter to declare 
 Christ unto him, Peter even to him preached the gospel 
 of Christ as nothing new, but a fulfilling of the old law. 
 '* To him give all the prophets witness that whosoever 
 believeth in him shall receive remission of sins." 
 
 He expressly declares that the Mosaic law was insuffi- 
 cient. 
 
 '^Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, 
 that tlirough this man is preached unto you the forgive- 
 ness of sins : 
 
 ^' And by him all that believe are justified from all 
 things, from which 3^e could not be justified by the law 
 of Moses." It was with great difficulty that this new 
 doctrine of remission of sins by repentance was grafted 
 upon the old doctrine of remission of sins by rites and 
 sacrifices. When Paul and Barnabas first went up to 
 Antioch to open the door of faith to the Gentiles, a group 
 of formalists promptly followed them to spoil the whole 
 movement by preaching to the Antioch people, ''Except 
 ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye can not 
 be saved." 
 
 We may suppose they were sincere followers of Christ, 
 but they misapprehended the very pith and point of his 
 teachings ; and because a foolish friend is the worst of 
 
NEW TESTAMENT SOLVENT. I35 
 
 foes, they made so much trouble that a delegation, headed 
 by Paul and Barnabas, was sent to Jerusalem to lay it be- 
 fore the apostles for decision. 
 
 A council of the apostles and elders was convened— if 
 the apostles were Oongregationalists ; an assembly or synod 
 if they were Presbyterians — at which Peter spoke elo- 
 quently on the liberal side, saying in substance : ^* Men 
 and brethren, God bare witness, giving the Gentiles the 
 Holy Ghost, just as he did unto us, and put no difference 
 between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith, as 
 they had no law, but saving us who had the law, also by 
 faith in Christ, and not by law. Why, therefore, should 
 we insist upon putting their necks under the yoke of the 
 law which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear, 
 and which is no longer of any use even to us ? " 
 
 The argument was unanswerable, and Paul and Bar- 
 nabas immediately clinched it by reciting to the council 
 the proofs of their ministry in the effect upon their hear- 
 ers. Simeon followed in a speech of entire liberality, 
 gentleness, and discrimination, justifying his judgment 
 by precedent and, as many a judge has done, first decid- 
 ing upon equity and then bringing the law to uphold it. 
 An official letter missive was sent to the petitioners, en- 
 tirely vindicating Paul and Barnabas, repudiating the 
 commandment of circumcision, and laying upon the con- 
 verts only ^' these necessary things : That ye abstain 
 from meats offered to idols, and from things strangled, 
 and from fornication." 
 
 Thus formally was the law of Moses pronounced obso- 
 lete by the highest Christian authority. 
 
 But it was to come up yet again. 
 
 After another long missionary tour, Paul and Barnabas 
 again returned to Jerusalem to report to the council. 
 
 Their disciples had been very unwilling to let them 
 go. Some went so far as to declare emphatically that 
 
l^Q A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 they spoke by the authority of the Holy Spirit in for- 
 bidding the departure of Paul and Barnabas ; but Paul 
 was accustomed to judge for himself as to when the Holy 
 Spirit spoke and when it was only human wish, and he 
 kept on. 
 
 The brethren welcomed them cordially and convened 
 the council ; listened to Paul's account of his great suc- 
 cess among the Gentiles, and passed a resolution of con- 
 gratulation, but then gently suggested that he was going 
 a little too fast ; that he was making trouble at home ; 
 not with them, but with the ill-informed who could not 
 quite understand this wild new commingling of Jew and 
 Gentile. 
 
 "When they heard it, they glorified the Lord, and 
 said unto him. Thou seest, brother, how many thousands 
 of Jews there are which believe ; and they are all zealous 
 of the law : And they are informed of thee, that thou 
 teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to 
 forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise 
 their children, neither to walk after the customs. 
 
 "What is it therefore? the multitude must needs 
 come together : for they will hear that thou art come. Do 
 therefore this that we say to thee : We have four men 
 which have a vow on them ; them take and purify thyself 
 with them, and be at charges with them, that they may 
 shave their heads : and all may know that those things, 
 whereof they were informed concerning thee, are noth- 
 ing ; but that thou thyself also walkest orderly, and 
 keepest the law. 
 
 "As touching the Gentiles which believe, we have 
 written and concluded that they observe no such thing, 
 save only that they keep themselves from things offered 
 to idols, and from blood, and from what is strangled, and 
 from fornication. 
 
 " Then Paul took the men, and the next day purify- 
 
NEW TESTAMENT SOLVENT. I37 
 
 ing himself with them entered into the temple, to signify 
 the accomplishment of the days of purification, until that 
 an offering should be offered for every one of them." 
 
 I almost wonder that Paul did it, though there is a 
 good deal to be said on both sides ; but all his trouble sub- 
 sequently recorded came from the doing, or at least came 
 in spite of the doing. The attempted compromise, even 
 if it was justifiable, absolutely failed. The Jews did 
 not wish to be conciliated, and faster than Paul could 
 exculpate himself from one slander, they inculpated him 
 in another. 
 
 " When the seven days were almost ended, the Jews 
 which were of Asia, when they saw him in the temple, 
 stirred up all the people, and laid hands on him. Crying 
 out. Men of Israel, help : This is the man that teach eth 
 all men everywhere against the people, and the law, and 
 this place : and further brought Greeks also into the 
 temple and hath polluted this holy place. (For they had 
 seen before with him in the city Trophimus an Ephesian, 
 whom they supposed that Paul had brought into the 
 temple. ) 
 
 **And all the city was moved, and the people ran 
 together : and they took Paul, and drew him out of the 
 temple : and forthwith the doors were shut," and all 
 Jerusalem was in an uproar. The head of the police 
 was called and came on the run with a posse of soldiers and 
 dragged Paul out of the mob, more dead than alive, up 
 the stairs and into the castle. But Paul with his prompt 
 presence of mind spoke to the captain, who was ap- 
 parently astonished to find by his address that Paul was 
 a gentleman and a scholar. " Canst thou speak Greek ? 
 Art not thou that Egyptian which before these days 
 madest an uproar and leadest out into the wilderness four 
 thousand men that were murderers ? " Poor Paul ! not 
 only beaten and dragged by the populace, but thought 
 
138 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 a seditious ragamuffin by the authorities. So much for 
 his docile obedience to the council ! So much for their 
 gentle attempt at compromise ! 
 
 Paul answered with spirit: *'I am a man which am 
 a Jew of Tarsus, in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city. 
 I beseech thee to suffer me to speak unto the people." 
 
 Paul was so strong a rationalist that he was not able 
 to bring himself to believe that people would not listen 
 to reason. But to this mob he appealed in vain through 
 the *' great silence '^ with which they heard him at the 
 beginning. The moment he asserted his mission to the 
 Gentiles they renewed their yell and would have pro- 
 ceeded to violence but for the interposition of the offi- 
 cials. 
 
 We need not follow Paul through his trials, the 
 dangers which he braved, the martyrdoms which he re- 
 pelled by his adroitness or his courage. But it is to be 
 observed that he took a higher tone. Undoubtedly he 
 was thinking of this result of council when he wrote to 
 the Galatians : ^'As many as desire to make a fair show 
 in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised, only 
 lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of 
 Christ." 
 
 He had compromised a little under the influence of 
 James and the elders and had suffered persecution just 
 the sa,me. Very likely he was thinking of this experience 
 and justifying it to himself when he declared : '^IJnto the 
 Jews I became as a Jew that I might gain the Jews, for 
 the gospel's sake." 
 
 His final summary of opinion is : "Behold I, Paul, say 
 unto you, Christ is become of no effect unto you, whoso- 
 ever of you are justified by the law ; ye are fallen from 
 grace." Could repudiation be stronger ? 
 
 His treatment of the passover is simple and final to 
 all who respect his authoritv : 
 
'NEW TESTAMENT SOLVENT. 139 
 
 '^ For even Christ our passoyer is sacrificed for ns. 
 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, 
 neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness ; but 
 with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." 
 
 It might have been New England professors of the- 
 ology whom Paul describes when proclaiming the authen- 
 ticity of his gospel and his right to preach it : 
 
 " Who also hath made us able ministers of the new 
 testament ; not of the letter, but of the spirit : for the 
 letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. But their minds 
 were blinded : for until this day remaineth the same vail 
 untaken away in the reading of the old testament ; which 
 vail is done away in Christ. 
 
 *'But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the 
 vail is upon their heart." 
 
 In the Gospel to the Hebrews the theme of the sacri- 
 fices is most fully treated and Christ's relation to it most 
 minutely delineated because it was addressed to Jews. 
 This idea is entirely one of substitution. The old priest- 
 hood, the old ritual, is to be swept away and Christ is to 
 be all in all. 
 
 We have misunderstood it. We do indeed sweep away 
 the old ritual, the old priesthood, but, instead of substi- 
 tuting for it Christ, a spirit, God, a spirit, to be wor- 
 shiped in spirit and in truth, we substitute a ritual of 
 Christ, a priesthood of Christ, a sacrifice of Christ. The 
 true substitution is that of Paul, the substitution of the abo- 
 lition of all sacrifices in Christ. Our substitution is false — 
 the substitution of continuance of sacrifice in Christ. This 
 is the great argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews. We 
 have already the comparison with Melchizedek, showing 
 Melchizedek to be of a higher order than the Levitic 
 priesthood, because in Abram the Levitic priesthood paid 
 tithes to him ; and Christ, pronounced a priest after the 
 order of Melchizedek, which is no order at all, because 
 
24-0 -A. WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 Melchizedek had no predecessor and no successor. The 
 writer adds to this a wealth of comparisons showing the 
 imperfectness of the Mosaic priesthood and service and 
 the perfection of Christ as a substitute for all priest- 
 hood and service ; but this is no argument for us. We 
 have no Mosaic ritual to be thrown off ; we never ob- 
 served it. The argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 was successful. The altars were broken and were never 
 restored ; sacrificial blood was forever stanched. Yet 
 we go on using the language of paganism and Judaism 
 as if Christ were crucified but yesterday. The New 
 Testament writers assure us that the Old Testament 
 sacrifices were but a temporary and earthly figure, and 
 we insist on using their language as if altars and burnt- 
 offerings were a divine and permanent fact. Blood-atone- 
 ment was the precursor of repentance-atonement. We 
 make only the quality of the blood, lamb's blood, pre- 
 figure the quality of the blood, Christ's blood. Such a 
 gospel of the blood of Christ is as much more horrible 
 than a gospel of bullock's blood as the murder of a man 
 is more horrible than the slaying of beasts. There was 
 an annulling of the old commandment, argues Paul, be- 
 cause of its weakness and unprofitableness and the bring- 
 ing in of a better hoj^e. Could condemnation of the Mo- 
 saic ritual be more clearly given ? For if the first cove- 
 nant had been faultless, then Avould no place have been 
 sought for a second. The first covenant had ordinances 
 of divine service and a worldly sanctuary, for there was a 
 tabernacle made with the candlestick and the table and 
 show-bread, and the veil, the golden censer, and the ark 
 of the covenant overlaid roundabout with gold, and the 
 golden pot that had manna, and Aaron's rod that bud- 
 ded, and the cherubim of glory — of all which, like Paul 
 himself, we can not now speak particularly, which was 
 a figure for the time then present in which were offered 
 
NEW TESTAMENT SOLVENT. 141 
 
 both gifts and sacrifices that could not make him that 
 did the service perfect as pertaining to the conscience. 
 
 But Christ, being come a high priest of good things 
 to come, makes a new covenant, and this it is, '^saith 
 the Lord : I will put my laws into their mind and write 
 them in their hearts, and they shall not teach every man 
 his neighbor, saying, know, the Lord, for all shall know 
 me." The tabernacle of the new time shall be greater 
 and more perfect than the old — not made with hands, that 
 is, no tabernacle at all. Moses took the blood of calves 
 and goats and sprinkled all the vessels of the ministry, 
 for without shedding of blood there is no remission un- 
 der the Mosaic law ; but our religion has no such pre- 
 cept, for Paul taught so successfully that the blood of 
 bulls and goats can not take away sin, that we have never 
 sprinkled a church with blood. *^In burnt-offerings and 
 sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure, which are 
 offered by the law. Having, therefore, brethren, bold- 
 ness to enter into the holiest, by the blood of Jesus, by a 
 new and living way which he hath consecrated for us, 
 through the veil — that is to say, his flesh — let us draw 
 near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having 
 our hearts sprinHed from an evil conscience and our 
 bodies washed with pure water. By him, therefore, let 
 us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually — that 
 is, the fruit of our lips. To do good and communicate 
 forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." 
 Paul so thoroughly disbelieves and discards the law that 
 he upbraids the foolish Galatians for reverting, after their 
 acceptance of Christ, to the weak and beggarly elements 
 of their pagan Judaism. He begs them to stand fast in 
 the liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free, and 
 not be entangled again with the yoke of Judaistic bond- 
 age. Over and over and over, but not with too much 
 iteration, as our observation shows, he affirms that the 
 
142 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 law is nothing. All tlie law is fulfilled in one word 
 — ^love. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
 "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." "Bear ye one 
 another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ." 
 
 Not with too much iteration, for still, eighteen centu- 
 ries afterward, we cling to the phraseology and the ideas 
 of paganism, and the veil is upon our hearts. We re- 
 fuse to Christ his work, to Paul his victory, and main- 
 tain that, nnder Christ, as under Moses and Jupiter and 
 all the gods of this world, without shedding of blood 
 there is no remission of sin. Now, here, under the full 
 shining of the sun of righteousness, our pulpits and our 
 religious press declare that "the doctrines of the Gospel 
 as Paul stated them will and must stand through all time 
 as the faith of the Church ; and the words which he 
 nsed^ or their equivalents when his words are translated 
 into other languages, must also stand as the received and 
 established language of the Church for these doctrines. 
 The Church can not outgrow either the doctrines or the 
 words, or so revise either as to remove from either the 
 Pauline stamp. What was good enough for the age in 
 which the apostle lived is good enough in any age. What 
 was a ^form of sound words' in his day can not, either 
 as a form or in its contents, become obsolete by the lapse 
 of time. Saints and sinners to-day need just what saints 
 and sinners needed when Paul lived and preached and 
 wrote. 
 
 "The apostle had several favorite expressions which 
 he often used as defining the work of Christ — * Christ 
 died for us ' ; * Christ died for our sins ' ; ' reconciled to 
 God by the death of his Son ' ; ^ redemption through his 
 blood ' ; ' Christ our passover is sacrificed for us ' ; Christ 
 'who gave himself for our sins' ; Christ ^set forth to be 
 a propitiation through faith in his blood'; 'being now 
 justified by his blood ' ; these are specimens of Paul's 
 
NEW TESTAMENT SOLVENT. I4.3 
 
 rhetoric in stating the doctrine of Christ's sacrificial and 
 expiatory work in behalf of sinners. 
 
 " No advance in culture and no improYements in the- 
 ology can or should supersede Paul's Epistles, or substi- 
 tute for them either different ideas or different and better 
 modes of expressing Christian ideas." 
 
 -And no more full and deliberate statement can be 
 made than this of the conviction that Paul preached in 
 Tain and Christ died in yain. Paul preached to a people 
 bound in the thongs of the Mosaic law, and still within 
 sight of the cross. Yet he preached to so little purpose 
 that the eighteen centuries since have not redeemed us 
 from one error of doctrine or practice ; but we are bound 
 by the same thongs, we have no more conscience of 
 Christ, no ignorance has become less dense, no misappre- 
 hension has become obsolete ! Eighteen centuries have 
 brought us no step from paganism, and what was fit for 
 a people used to blood-atonement is proper for us ! 
 
 This is the decree of unreason. It is too gross and too 
 prominent an error to permit any softening of terms. It 
 is the utter upturning and negation of the teaching of 
 Christ and Paul. It is pulling down what they died to 
 upbuild. The Church has outgrown both the doctrine 
 and the words. Christ has not died in vain. Paul did 
 not preach in vain. What was not only good enough, 
 but divinely good for the age of Paul, is obsolete and in- 
 appropriate to this age. Paul's age was fettered upon 
 the altar of sacrifice. Paul's preaching, Christ's life and 
 death, have ransomed this age altogether from sacrifice, 
 and there remains for us only repentance for the remission 
 of sins. What was a wise, practical form of sound words 
 in Paul's days is but a historical, not a practical, form of 
 sound words for us. Saints and sinners to-day do not 
 need many a form of sound words which both needed in 
 P-auFs day, for not a saint or sinner of us all is in any 
 
14:4: A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 danger of slaying a turtle-dove or two young pigeons for 
 the forgiveness of sins. 
 
 Nearly every phrase which is here cited from the 
 Bible should be obsolete — should be used never except in 
 its appropriate historical sense. They have, as this writer 
 says, ^Mmparted their own coloring to the rhetoric of 
 piety," and a frightful coloring it is, ghastly and re- 
 pulsive : 
 
 " There is a fountain filled with blood 
 Drawn from Immanuel's veins, 
 And sinners plunged beneath that flood 
 Lose all their guilty stains." 
 
 Nothing but long usage prevents us from seeing the hid- 
 eousness of the picture. The Jews were familiar with 
 blood. We recoil from it. It was to them a term of 
 purification. For us blood does not cleanse. It stains. 
 It is the stain of stains. For us there is no sacrificial 
 atoning quality in blood. It is the sign manual of the 
 gravest crime. 
 
 "Reconciled to God by the death of his Son," ** re- 
 demption through his blood," '* Christ our passover," 
 *'set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his 
 blood " — they are all relics of Judaism and of the pagan 
 element in Judaism. Paul was laboring to show it ; to 
 convince the Jews that the law — of which propitiation and 
 justification were a component part^ — was good for noth- 
 ing, was obsolete. By the deeds of the law shall no flesh 
 be justified. The righteousness of God — alone, without 
 the law, outside of the law, having nothing to with the 
 law — is manifested in Christ Jesus, proclaiming redemp- 
 tion through repentance. All the propitiation which God 
 wants is repentance, which is technically no propitiation 
 at all. Faith in Christ is not faith in the blood of his 
 body, but in the inspiration of his spirit. 
 
 We have better authority than the pulpit or the press 
 
NEW TESTAMENT SOLVENT. I45 
 
 for saying that such language will become obsolete by the 
 lapse of time. Paul himself declared that Christ had 
 Hotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against 
 us and contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nail- 
 ing it to his cross. I think we shall presently be content 
 to let it stay there and not try to keep it alive, or in the 
 semblance of life, by cherishing it as the essential phrase- 
 ology of all religion. The wrappings of a mummy would 
 not decorate, but disguise and disgust, the living man. 
 
 Atonement, expiation, propitiation, are not the doc- 
 trines of Christ, were not taught by Christ. They are 
 not in Christianity. They were preached in the Old 
 Testament, but the object of the New Testament is to 
 destroy them. They were accepted by Christ and the 
 apostles as a historical fact ; they were recognized as an 
 aspiration and effort of humanity toward order and right- 
 eousness and spirituality ; greatly successful as against 
 idolatry and atheism, but against the law of Christ so 
 entirely imperfect and inadequate as to merit only dis- 
 missal. They were characterized as but the school-master 
 to bring Israel to Christ, to be discarded when the master 
 came, as the servant is discarded by the child whom he 
 has led to school when the school is reached. 
 
 The atonement of Christ is at-one-ment ; the uplifting 
 of man out of his beast nature into his divine spiritual 
 nature, and thus making him at one with God. It is not 
 averting the wrath of God by slaying an innocent animal 
 victim in the stead of a guilty human criminal ; still less 
 is it averting God's wrath by slaying God's holy Son in- 
 stead of a guilty criminal. It is God, in the fullness of 
 time, giving to humanity the impulse of a divine partak- 
 ing, showing man his kinship with God, saving him 
 from sin by revealing its real character in contrast with a 
 nature wholly human yet wholly divine and sinless ; so 
 drawing man to God, not by the law of a carnal com- 
 10 
 
146 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 mandment, but by the power of an endless life. The 
 worship of God by the slaughter of beasts characterizes 
 the progress of man up from his own animal nature 
 toward perfect spiritual being. The use of the phrase- 
 ology of animal worship is the trail of the serpent still 
 over us all, though the serpent has writhed past. The 
 at-one-ment of Christ is the final rescue of man from the 
 control of these lower forces into union with God in 
 spirit and in truth. 
 
 When Christ, after the resurrection, summed up to 
 his disciples the object of his death, what was it ? The 
 great and final atonement — a sacrifice of life to take away 
 sin? Not at all. "Thus it behooved Christ to suffer 
 and to rise that repentance and remission of sins should 
 be preached in his name among all nations" ; not blood 
 and remission of sins. He knew that tlie suffering of no 
 other being than the transgressor himself can at all vin- 
 dicate the honor of the law which he has broken. The 
 transgressor's own suffering must, as far as it can, restore 
 the honor of the law which he breaks. And this it does, 
 so far as it does, by showing that the lawgiver was right 
 and just in the law. Incomparably the best and truest 
 reparation that a transgressor can make for his trans- 
 gression is repentance and return to obedience. Nothing 
 honors a broken law like ceasing to break it. 
 
 The baptism of repentance for remission of sins. 
 
 We drone out the words in meaningless monotones. 
 We have lived in their light so long that we heed it no 
 more than the sunshine. We hold it by inheritance, and 
 are hardly aware that the world has not always held it. 
 But its dawn was the herald of a wonderful day, a new 
 departure, a radical reformation. To the human race it 
 was a glorious deliverance ! Christ was indeed the pas- 
 chal lamb in this : that whereas the paschal lamb me- 
 morialized the great emancipation of the Jews from the 
 
NEW TESTAMENT SOLVENT. 14,7 
 
 long bondage in Egypt, Christ wrought the emancipation 
 of the human race from beastly worship to spiritual wor- 
 ship ! The whole earth was sodden with innocent blood. 
 All the skies were darkened with the smoke of burning 
 sacrifice in expiation for sin. Christ came, the Son of 
 God. The lurid light of blood-sacrifices went down for- 
 ever. The sun of righteousness shone in the clear heaven, 
 with what healing in his wings ! The murky mists, the 
 somber shadows, rolled away. The polluted earth was 
 purified, and men learned once for all the good tidings 
 of great joy that there is no other atonement, and no 
 other expiation, and no other baptism given under heaven 
 among men than the baptism of eepentance for the re- 
 mission of sins. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE ELECTIOIT OF PAUL AND THE ELECTION" OF PRES- 
 BYTERY. 
 
 A mother, restless under the first sharp anguish of an inconceiv- 
 dble loss, welcomed the distraction of listening to the following essay 
 while it was yet in the undress of first composition. Her daughter y 
 a young wife and mother, of the Catholic communion, begged also to 
 listen, and manifested the deepest interest in the theme as well as 
 intelligent acquaintance with the subject. For further study, she 
 avowed her purpose of attending the Bible class, though aware that 
 it might run athwart some of the teachings which she accepted. 
 But hers was a mind which rejected arbitrary limitations and ever 
 pushed out boldly in all directions. 
 
 She rose from the reading to go out into this fair world for the 
 last time. With her two little boys and her young sister she drove 
 to the house of a friend whose ivork had lain among the Indians in 
 the far-off Cherokee land. Returned home, some hidden force of dis- 
 ease, that had been lurking in wait, seized her ivith sudden sway, 
 laid her unconscious in her fathers arms, shut her soul in even from 
 her husband's voice, till in the end of the Sabbath, as it began to 
 daum ioivard the first day of the week, the arms that u'ould have held 
 her, the love that never failed her, ivere constrained to give her up to 
 death. 
 
 " And we smile to think God^s greatness flows around our incompleteness. 
 Round our restlessness, his rest.'''' 
 
 From the opposite extremes of the Church of Christ, from the 
 Presbyterian female missionary ivho received her last visit on earth, 
 and from the Roman Catholic archbishop, who was her confessor 
 and friend, I pay a tribute to the most shrinking and self-mistrustfid 
 of God's creatures ; — showing that in Jesus Christ neither Protest- 
 
ELECTIONS OF PAUL AND OF PRESBYTERY. I49 
 
 anUsm availeth anything, nor Catholicism, hut faith ivhich worketh 
 by love. 
 
 To her husband wrote the archbishop : 
 
 " I beg to offer my sincerest sympathy on the loss of your devoted 
 wife. The most substantial consolation I can offer yoxL arises from 
 the memory of her many virtues and deep religious feeling and per- 
 sonal piety. She alivays struck me as a remarkable woman, cast in 
 a higher mold than the generality of her sex, and therefore m some 
 sense peculiar, but always boldly honest and intense. I shall not 
 forget her in the Holy Sacrifice, and I shall ask that God may give 
 you fortitude to bear the heavy cross.^' 
 
 And soothingly, like a comforting voice from the grave, came these 
 dear ivords from the gentle missiotiary, telling us of that last precious 
 hotir ivhose story, but for this kind thoughtfuhiess, we should not 
 have known — whose story is full of peace : 
 
 " / can not realize that the modest, unselfish life is ended, that 
 the heart, so filled ivith love for her dear ones, so kind to every one, 
 has ceased to heat. To me this comes as a great personal loss. I was 
 for some days her guest at Fort Gibson, and had I been a princess 
 of the blood royal instead of a poor missionary teacher, she could 
 not have shown me more exquisite hospitality. 
 
 " We had many conversations upo?i religious subjects, and, dif- 
 fering as we did in outward profession, we were of the same faith. 
 Last Tuesday, when she came in to see 7ne, much of our conversation 
 ivas upon religious topics, starting from her telling me of the paper 
 you had been writing upon revision of the creed, and which she was 
 greatly interested in. Incidentally came the question of death, and 
 she expressed her fearlessness of it, and showed by her words a sin- 
 cere, child-like faith ivhich it will always be very sweet to me to re- 
 member. 
 
 " / wish I could put in ivords the impression her life has made 
 upon me. It seemed in my brief knowledge of it so selfless a life. 
 She seemed never to think of herself — always of others. 
 
 " During the days of her illness I prayed earnestly that she 
 might be spared. Noiv I can only pray that the Divine Comforter 
 may he very present in your grief-stricken household. She is ' with 
 Christ, which is far better.* " 
 
 To the dead in Christ in whom is Ufe — to 
 
 ALICE STANWOOD BLAINE COPPINGER 
 I dedicate this last essay which held her unclouded attention. 
 
250 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 The doctrine of election as taught by St. Paul and 
 the doctrine of election as taught by the Presbyterian 
 standards and the Congregational creeds are as wide 
 apart as the poles— exactly as wide apart as the electric 
 poles of thought. The election of Paul is the negative of 
 Judaism, a liberal moyement, a new departure, the broad- 
 ening of a stubborn sectarianism of birth into a recogni- 
 tion of the universal Fatherhood of God. The election 
 of Presbytery is at present the positive of misconception ; 
 not so much a standstill as a retrogression from Paul, the 
 narrowing of Godhood to sects and creeds. 
 
 It is held in Congregational and Presbyterian churches 
 that salvation is effected by an election and an immediate 
 interposition of God. God chooses some from the mass 
 of the lost, on whom he exercises a special power. 
 
 " The rest of mankind [i. e., the non-elect] God was 
 pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own 
 will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he 
 pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his 
 creatures [prceterire], to pass by, and to ordain them to 
 dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his 
 glorious justice." 
 
 Many people are so bent on rejecting this theological 
 error that they will not investigate its history, or credit 
 its respectability, or honor its origin. We have so iden- 
 tified our creeds with Scripture teaching that men think 
 there is no alternative between ridiculing Paul and deny- 
 ing their own reason ; consequently they ridicule, or 
 at least reject, Paul. If this were the alternative they 
 would not be far wrong. No absurdity can be greater 
 than to require a man to stand on the ruins of his mind 
 in order to accept a statement. " God created man in 
 his own image ; in the image of God created he him ; 
 male and female created he them." Because man is cre- 
 ated in the image of God, he is able to judge of God. 
 
ELECTIONS OF PAUL AND OF PRESBYTERY. 151 
 
 Male and female, God created man to judge of God. 
 Nay, he entreats men to judge : *^ Come, now, and let us 
 reason together, saith the Lord." Nay, he commands 
 men to judge : " Why, out of your own selves, do ye not 
 judge what is right ?" is a question which rhetoric char- 
 acterizes as the most intense form of affirmation. Under 
 this divine command and divine likeness a first principle 
 of the Christian consciousness is that " nothing can be 
 good in him which evil is in me." 
 
 Dr. Vincent, of the Union Seminary, in the Presby- 
 terian Assembly recognizes the situation and plants him- 
 self upon his manhood : "As a teacher of the New Testa- 
 ment Scriptures in one of the Church's theological schools, 
 I am not content that God by the arbitrary decree of his 
 own will should condemn me to eternal torment in hell. 
 Paul tells me I have no right to reply ; I am only a lump 
 of clay in the potter's hands, and he has a right to make 
 of me a vessel for base uses if he so choose. I deny it. I 
 say I am not a lump of clay, but a man made in God's 
 image. This word of Paul's is not the last word. If it 
 were, it would be, as some one has truthfully said, at 
 once a satire of reason upon herself and the suicide of 
 revelation." 
 
 The first point in any argument is to know what the 
 man said ; next, to know what he meant. 
 
 The Presbyterian conventions have been arguing fully, 
 freely, splendidly, the allied questions of election, repro- 
 bation, God's sovereignty ; but if this is the best they can 
 do for Paul, Paul has fared rather hardly at their hands. 
 
 I stand by Paul ! The strong argument alleged in and 
 out of convention to show that God may doom men, of 
 his own good pleasure, to everlasting death, is drawn 
 from the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and 
 the declaration is confidently made that in this chapter 
 the doctrine of reprobation is more strongly stated than 
 
1^2 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 it is in the Presbyterian Confession. Would it not be 
 wise, it is asked, to see first if men can revise this doc- 
 trine out of the Scripture before we attempt to revise it 
 out of the Confession ? 
 
 It is a fair proposal ; but the doctrine is not in 
 Scripture. 
 
 *^ As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have 
 I hated." 
 
 " He saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I 
 will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I 
 will have compassion." 
 
 " Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it. 
 Why hast thou made me thus ? Hath not the potter 
 power over the clay, of the same lump to make one ves- 
 sel unto honor, and another unto dishonor ? " 
 
 The old-school Presbyterian reads this and confesses 
 that it is tough, but closes his teeth hard and resolves 
 loyally and bravely to stand by it as the very word of 
 God. The radical scoffs at it as absurd and tramples it 
 under foot, and even the moderate, like Dr. Vincent, 
 thinks that Paul is a little out ! 
 
 It is neither absurd nor tough, and Paul is wholly in. 
 It is the power of God and the wisdom of God ; and, 
 still more, it is the love of God unto salvation ; as it 
 was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world 
 without end. Amen. 
 
 For, in these assertions, Paul was not preaching the 
 doctrine of reprobation ; he was preaching against it. 
 Theologically it was not in his mind. Future destiny 
 was not what he was talking about. What was in his 
 mind was the widening of God's love to all the world, 
 against narrowing it to the Jewish nation, as the Jews 
 claimed it should be narrowed. 
 
 Let us go back to the day of Paul. The Jews around 
 him believed in hereditary salvation for the seed of Abra- 
 
ELECTIONS OF PAUL AND OF PRESBYTERY. 153 
 
 ham. They believed themselves the one nation, beloved 
 of God. They had indeed been chosen of God for a par- 
 ticular purpose. This we need not learn from any mirac- 
 ulous divine utterance. We trace it backward in the 
 world's history, the Bible confirming it. That purpose 
 was, if not the discovery, at least the preservation and 
 promulgation to the human race of the idea that God is 
 one and that God is righteous. The Jews held this idea 
 clear and close, while other nations were only groping 
 toward it. Under the domination of this idea the Jews 
 inferred that they were therefore the pet people of God. 
 They inferred that God had given them this great mis- 
 sion, not because he had given them certain traits which 
 best adapted them to transact it successfully, but because 
 he loved them more than any other nation. They were 
 his exclusive favorites. Naturally they therefore consid- 
 ered themselves as better than any other nation. To be 
 a Jew was to be a pious man, a religious man. They 
 looked down upon all other peoples as barbarians. The 
 Jews were superior and sacred, elect and select of Heaven, 
 not to do a certain work for the world, but to receive 
 favor from Heaven as descendants of Abraham. There 
 was no salvation outside of Jewry. 
 
 Thus the Jews believed profoundly in reprobation — in 
 the reprobation of everybody but themselves. Against 
 this idea Paul threw himself with all the fervor of his 
 logic. 
 
 Paul went on a new crusade. It was the great era 
 of theological history. This narrow rivulet of life had 
 flowed down through two thousand years, diverging into 
 slender currents and upspringing in living fountains un- 
 der the inspiration of poet and prophet, the Davids, the 
 Isaiahs, the Micahs, but now at last in Christ broadening 
 out into a mighty river, whose waters should wash the 
 shores of the wide world forevermore. It was a thorough 
 
154 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 reyersal of the whole Jewish polity. It was an upheaval 
 of the whole idea of Jewish dignity. It was taking from 
 the Jews the M?igdom of heaven, breaking it up into a 
 republic, and making them but a single and equal state 
 with others in that republic. Ah'eady subjugated by the 
 Eoman Empire, it was wasting away their last hope of 
 aristocracy and authority and the resumption of ancient 
 splendor, and dooming them to the perpetual territorial 
 inferiority which their weakness threatened, but from 
 which they ever hoped to be redeemed in some supernat- 
 ural way by their peculiar favoritism and friendship with 
 God. So little did they understand what they had been 
 chosen for ! 
 
 Paul was the leader of this movement, this leveling, 
 democratic, politico-theological movement. It was his 
 special business, his sphere, his mission. He called him- 
 self the Apostle to tlie Gentiles, and he magnified his 
 office. He was not appointed with the original twelve. 
 He had a separate ordination and installation, but he 
 claimed as divine a sanction as that of the original 
 twelve. He pressed urgently the claim of bis clients, the 
 Gentiles, to be as much and as justly the children of 
 God as were the Jews, yet always defended himself against 
 charges of disloyalty to his own nation. He did not so 
 much ask as demand recognition of his rights and of 
 the rights of his Gentiles : '^Be it known therefore unto 
 you that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles ! " 
 It was not a prayer for privilege, but a proclamation of 
 equal rights. 
 
 Undoubtedly learning has changed, and learning will 
 continue to change, our translation ; but, just as it stands, 
 the argument is not only clear, but luminous, and per- 
 fectly easy to trace. The Jews were elected of God, Paul 
 admits, but, in the first place, not all Israel. Not all the 
 children of Abraham were the children of God, even in 
 
ELECTIONS OF PAUL AND OF PRESBYTERY. 155 
 
 the narrow Jewish sense, but only the children of Isaac ; 
 Ishmacl's descendants were not included in the covenant; 
 — not all the children of Isaac even — for ^'^ Jacob have I 
 loved, but Esau have I hated." What, then, becomes of 
 the Jewish claim that they were elect '^ because we have 
 Abraham to our father ? " Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob and 
 Esau, were equally children of Abraham. If there were 
 any force in this Jewish claim of exclusive and hereditary 
 righteousness, both would alike have been "elected," 
 "loved"; whereas all Jews recognized that Jacob had 
 been elected and Esau reprobated. Elected to what ? 
 Heaven ? No. Elected to be a peculiar people, to re- 
 ceive, to cherish, to transmit to their posterity, and thence 
 to the ends of the earth, the idea of one God, a God of 
 righteousness ; the idea of a Eedeemer, who should save 
 his people from their sins. Eeprobated to what ? Hell ? 
 No. Eeprobated from this special service — left to be 
 merged in the surrounding nations, lost to history as 
 most nations and tribes and small peoples of the East 
 were lost, in regard to their individual and tribal exist- 
 ence. Any other kind of love for Jacob or for his de- 
 scendants God has no more displayed than for Esau. He 
 was continually chiding them, punishing them. Hatred, 
 vengeance, might seem rather to characterize the elec- 
 tion, the selection, which created the nation in slavery, 
 continued them in repeated captivities, and, since Christ, 
 has kept the Jews ever in the fore-front of history for 
 homelessness, for the bitterest persecution, for unmerited 
 reproach, till the wraith of the Wandering Jew is but an 
 epitome of this nation without a country, while the name 
 and the heritage of Esau have found the sweet, safe 
 shelter of obscurity. 
 
 So far as we knov/ their story, the children of Esau 
 seem to have been as prosperous, as favored of God in 
 basket and store and lore, as were the sons of Jacob, for 
 
156 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 Esau took away with him all the persons of his house, and 
 his cattle, and all his beasts, and all his substance, and 
 went into the country from the face of his brother Jacob, 
 because their riches were more than that they might dwell 
 together, and the land could not bear them because of 
 their cattle. When Esau went up to meet his brother 
 coming home to Canaan, he was attended by a retinue of 
 four hundred men. In the long genealogies Esau could 
 boast as many dukes as Jacob ; and it was the descendant 
 of one of these, Duke Teman, who sat down in the ashes 
 with Job seven days and seven nights without speaking, 
 and then spoke, because he could not help it, such words 
 of wisdom and piety and culture as show him to have 
 been a man of parts, of thought and education. Job 
 found him a miserable comforter ; but the Church honors 
 him to-day and barbs her arrow to the sinner, and sweet- 
 ens her consolations to the saint, and pierces the fallacy 
 of the sophist with extracts from the common sense of 
 Eliphaz the Temanite, one of the three friends of the 
 fallen Eastern magnate — Eliphaz the Temanite, a lineal 
 descendant and ever so great grandson of Esau. Cer- 
 tainly there is no hate, only history to be seen in the 
 dealings of Providence with the houses of both Jacob 
 and Esau. 
 
 If we look back to the personal biography of Jacob 
 and Esau, out of which both Paul and Malachi took 
 their illustration, what do we find ? God is not so much 
 as mentioned in the business of Jacob's election. Esau 
 was the elder, a man of action, of impulse, of impa- 
 tience, a man of sj)ort, a man of the stirring, outside 
 world. Jacob was the younger, a man of reflection, 
 calculation. Jacob took advantage of Esau's hunger, 
 impetuosity, impatience, and bought for next to nothing 
 the birthright which Esau in the famine of the moment 
 foolishly undervalued. The bargain which Jacob con- 
 
ELECTIONS OF PAUL AND OF PRESBYTERY. 157 
 
 ceived in selfishness lie confirmed with fraud and hjrpo- 
 critical assumption of piety ; but, good or bad, weak or 
 strong, the act by which Esau lost his birthright was 
 Esau's act, not God's. He lost it, not because God loved 
 Jacob and hated Esau, but because, in one hungry, 
 thoughtless moment, he insanely sold it for a mess of 
 jDottage. God did not arbitrarily, absolutely, of his mere 
 good pleasure, from all eternity, without reason or re- 
 course, "elect" Jacob to salvation. He did but respect 
 Esau's own *^ election" of Jacob to the eldest son's place. 
 God "elected " Jacob to the primacy exactly as he elected 
 Washington to the presidency — by ordinary human meth- 
 ods, and by no other. There is no sign of any miracu- 
 lous interposition of God between Esau and Jacob, any 
 love of God greater toward Jacob than toward Esau, nor 
 is there any question of heaven or of soul's salvation. It 
 was all about a matter of inheriting estate. It was mere- 
 ly a question of primogeniture and entail and illustrious 
 history ; and as such it was used by Paul to elucidate a 
 question of larger sense and wider sweep — the question 
 whether God was the father of the Jew alone, or the 
 father of the Gentile also. The words love and hate are 
 but a terse and intense expression of the value set by the 
 Jews upon their position in the world, compared with 
 that of kindred yet separate nations. The question is 
 introduced to show that as the favored nation and the 
 despised nation were both the seed of Abraham, the Jew- 
 ish aristocracy of blood counts for nothing. 
 
 Having established the fact that salvation is not of 
 hereditary transmission, because some of the children of 
 Abraham were selected and some were excluded, Paul 
 continues to argue that God was right in this selection, 
 election of some Jews and exclusion of others, and inclu- 
 sion of the Gentiles. "What shall we say, then ? Is 
 there unrighteousness with God ? God forbid." God 
 
158 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 was not bound by moral obligation to stand by the Jews 
 alone and abandon the rest of the world. He had unde- 
 niable right to save the Gentiles also. God was confined 
 by no heredity. God recognized no heredity. He is a 
 Jew which is one '* inwardl}^," a worshiper of the one 
 righteous God. The only Judaism God respects is Juda- 
 ism of character, not of blood. The really important 
 feature of Judaism is its teaching the unity and righteous- 
 ness of God, and demanding righteousness of man. If 
 the Gentiles, without the Jewish law, have attained to 
 righteousness, and if Israel, following that law, hath not 
 attained to the law of righteousness, shall not God make 
 known the riches of his glory on the Gentiles ? 
 
 Dr. Shedd, after setting forth his view of the logic of 
 this case, says : 
 
 '* But God himself has decided the question. He as- 
 serts his sovereign right to optional decision in the mat- 
 ter of human salvation. In that wonderful description 
 of his being and attributes which he gave to Moses, 
 among other declarations he says : * I will be gracious to 
 whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom 
 I will show mercy.' In this solemn pronunciamento 
 with which he prefaced the whole work of human salva- 
 tion he distinctly declares that he is under no obliga- 
 tions to redeem sinful men, but whatever he does in the 
 premises is of his own unobliged, free, and sovereign 
 mercy and decision. God incarnate teaches the same 
 truth in the Gospels. And St. Paul recites the words of 
 God to Moses — 'I will have mercy on whom I will have 
 mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have 
 compassion ' — as a conclusive and unanswerable demon- 
 stration of the divine sovereignty in salvation." 
 
 Did God preface the whole work of salvation with 
 this pronunciamento — the whole work ? According to 
 received chronology, the world had already been going on 
 
ELECTIONS OF PAUL AND OF PRESBYTERY. 159 
 
 more than twenty-five hundred years. Was God all this 
 time doing nothing for the creatures he had made ? Abel 
 and Enoch and Melchizedek, Abraham and Isaac and Ja- 
 cob, the four hundred years of slavery in Egypt, the pass- 
 over, and all the pain and peril and glory of the eman- 
 cipation — was God not in all this ? Was God doing 
 nothing for his world ? 
 
 Dr. Shedd reads in this solemn pronunciamento a 
 declaration of God that he is not under obligation to re- 
 deem sinful men. I do not so read Moses. Paul did 
 not so read Moses. I accept Paul's rendering and I re- 
 ject Dr. Shedd's. I read with Paul in this solemn pro- 
 nunciamento God's distinct declaration that he is under 
 no obligation 7iot to redeem sinful men. 
 
 God is sovereign of the whole world. He will have 
 mercy on whom he will have mercy. Gentile as well as 
 Jew. Is God to be restrained from showing mercy to 
 one man because another man claims all God's mercy ? 
 Whom he will he hardeneth, Jew or Gentile, Esau or 
 Pharaoh. The stress is not on the process of hardening, 
 but on the persons hardened ; not on the act of showing 
 mercy, but on the object of rnercy. Paul's point is to 
 show God's impartiality as against the Jewish claim of 
 partiality to them. 
 
 It would be easy if it were pertinent to point out that 
 God hardened Pharaoh's heart exactly as he " reprobated" 
 Esau, by the processes of human experience. If we 
 study the history of the transaction, we find that God 
 hardened Pharaoh's heart through the natural laws by 
 which despotism, greed, self-indulgence, falseness, bro- 
 ken pledges blind the eyes to wisdom and righteous- 
 ness, whether the eyes be those of the tyrant of Egypt 
 or the Grand Monarch of France. Indulgence in sin 
 dulls the sensitiveness of the soul to sin. This is not 
 simply the revealed truth of the Bible ; it is the com- 
 
IQQ A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 mon truism of the newspapers. We live under a social 
 order, not established by any man, in which continued 
 indulgence in sin, whether it be selfishness, or robbery, 
 or murder, dulls in the soul the sense of guilt, hardens 
 the heart. No one says it shall be so. Every one says 
 it is so. You may state it thus : According to the law 
 of man's nature, Pharaoh's heart was hardened by indul- 
 gence in oppression and rapacity. Put it thus, if it please 
 you best. He means the same thing who says God, be- 
 cause law is but the mode of God's action, and this is a 
 beneficent law — a law that worketh righteousness. Paul's 
 point is that Jew and Gentile are under the same natural 
 law, alike hardened by indulgence in sin, alike welcome 
 to God in repentance of sin. 
 
 " Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it. 
 Why hast thou made me thus ? " 
 
 Yes, if he that formed the thing blamed it and pun- 
 ished it for being thus formed. " Hath not the potter 
 power over the clay, of the same lump to make one ves- 
 sel unto honor and another unto dishonor ? " Certainly ; 
 but he has no right to blame and punish the vessel he has 
 made to dishonor for not being honorable. He has no 
 right to blame and punish the earthen pudding-pan for 
 not being a peach-blow vase. Presbyterians and Congre- 
 gationalists have said that he has this right, but Paul 
 never. 
 
 This meaning has been put into Paul's words by the- 
 ology, but Paul never put it there. Paul, indeed, does 
 not so much argue as assert God's sovereignty, but the 
 examples he cites are not of arbitrary acts of God, but of 
 God's acting through man's own free will and choice. 
 Esau and Pharaoh were not outwardly, mechanically 
 constrained to plunder and waste. They did exactly as 
 they chose. Paul does not dwell on this point because it 
 is not the point to which he speaks, but it is involved in 
 
ELECTIONS OF PAUL AND OF PRESBYTERY. 161 
 
 his words and implied in his argument. The clay in his 
 hands is not the Presbyterian clay, out of which God has a 
 right by eternal decree of his mere good pleasure to make 
 one man who shall go to heaven, and another man who 
 shall be doomed to hell forever. Paul's clay is the clay 
 out of which Jew and Gentile are alike made. The Great 
 Potter has a right to make of this clay vessels of honor 
 — Jews — and vessels of dishonor — Gentiles — but he has 
 also an equal right to make the Gentiles vessels of honor. 
 Nay, what if some of these Jewish vessels of honor, de- 
 spising their beauty and sacred purpose, should mar and 
 crack and despoil themselves, and become vessels of 
 wrath, and the potter should pour the riches of his in- 
 vention upon what the Jews consider the vessels of dis- 
 honor, *' Even us whom he hath called, not of the Jews 
 only, but also of the Gentiles ? " It would be only what 
 the Jewish scriptures had themselves declared — that they 
 who were not considered the Lord's people, should come 
 to be called the children of the living God. It was only 
 what the prophets foretold : '* In thee shall all the nations 
 of the earth be blessed." The Jewish vase has no right 
 to say to the Gentile vase, "What business have you to 
 be a vase ? Only the Jew shall be a vase. Let the Gen- 
 tiles remain always pots !" 
 
 The illustration of the potter's clay was a favorite 
 one among the Jews, but they never maltreated it as we 
 have done. They never molded it into the image of an 
 arbitrary, self-willed, irresponsible, unjust, omnipotent, 
 spoiled child, and called it God — a worse idol than any 
 god of wood or stone. 
 
 "The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, 
 saying : 
 
 " Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there 
 I will cause thee to hear my words. Then I went down 
 to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on 
 11 
 
162 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 the wheels. And the yessel that he made of clay was 
 marred in the hand of the potter : so he made it again 
 another yessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it, 
 
 " Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying : 
 
 *' house of Israel, can not I do with you as this 
 potter ? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the 
 potter's hand, so are ye in my hand, house of Israel. 
 At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and 
 concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, 
 and to destroy it ; if that nation, against whom I have 
 pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the 
 evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what in- 
 stant I speak concerning a nation, and concerning a 
 kingdom, to build and to plant it ; if it do evil in my 
 sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of 
 the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them." 
 
 This is divine sovereignty, but it is a reasonable sov- 
 ereignty, founded on justice, on immutable right, tem- 
 pered by mercy, and watched by love. It is a declaration 
 of God's sovereignty accompanied by a distinct appeal to 
 man's sense of right and wrong desert. We try to hide 
 our false logic behind '^the unsearchable counsel of his 
 own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as 
 he pleaseth." But God does not attempt to hide behind 
 his own willfulness. God, with the utmost frankness, 
 appeals to our reason : I am all-powerful, and all my 
 power I exert to repress evil and to cherish good within 
 the limit of your free choice. 
 
 The Westminster divines say that God, for the mani- 
 festation of his glory, has predestinated some men to 
 everlasting death, and that they are particularly and un- 
 changeably designed, and their number is so certain and 
 definite that it can not be increased or diminished (Con- 
 fession of Faith, chap, iii, sees. 3, 4). But God himself, 
 through Ezekiel, says: ^^When I say unto the wicked. 
 
ELECTIONS OF PAUL AND OF PRESBYTERY. 163 
 
 tilou shalt surely die, if he turn from his sin and do that 
 which is hiwful and right, ... he shall surely liye, he 
 shall not die." 
 
 " Woe unto him that striyeth with his maker ! Let 
 the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. 
 Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What 
 makest thou ? or thy work, He hath no hands ?" 
 
 That, too, is divine sovereignty, but it is utterly 
 reasonable. God, whether we call him God or Nature, 
 is so great, so powerful, that it is as useless to deny 
 or decry natural laws, whether material or moral, as it 
 would be for the clay to decry the potter, God. Na- 
 ture has created mau, body and souk We do not know 
 whether the body is the prison of the spirit, or the serv- 
 ant of the spirit ; wliether the soul is evolved from the 
 body, or the body from the soul. The question of im- 
 mortality, the question of moral responsibility, is not at 
 stake in either. One man is made with the power to 
 turn everything he touches into gold, another into sen- 
 timent. One man is born with the sense of form and 
 color, and he makes himself an artist. One man is born 
 with an insight of invisible forces and possible combina- 
 tions, and he becomes a great inventor. Many a time 
 must the poor crock be tempted to say to the Great Pot- 
 ter : " Why hast thou made me thus, ugly and undeco- 
 rative — always on the kitchen-shelf or in the oven's heat, 
 till, cracked and worthless, I go down into the pit, while 
 the precious vase, by no will of its own, stands always 
 with its charge of lilies and roses, bearing no heavier 
 burden than their fragrance, a thing of beauty and a joy 
 forever ? " I can not answer. I do not know. Herein is 
 mystery, for the human crock is as aware of beauty and 
 poetry and genius and ease as is the royal vase. I do 
 not know why the Great Potter — being great, being 
 omnipotent — did not grant to all an equal gratification ; 
 
164 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 but if you will concede another life than this, if you 
 will concede infinite goodness with infinite power, I can 
 wait the Great Teacher, Death, and God adore. If you 
 impose upon me an omnipotence that has endowed me 
 with reason yet gives me no reasons, that commands my 
 present judgment, yet contradicts the principles he has 
 himself established, and intrenches himself behind his 
 own inscrutability, a God arbitrary, self-willed, incon- 
 sistent, ordaining his creatures without their volition, 
 and then dooming them, or leaving them, to eternal suf- 
 fering, eternal hunger and thirst and disappointment 
 and sin and remorse and pain — there is no such God I 
 He is the Frankenstein monster of logic — the wild en- 
 gine of a too strenuous theological system. 
 
 God is immeasurable, and we can not comprehend 
 him ; but he is entirely frank and intelligible in all tliat 
 he demands of us. He does not require of us a decision 
 which he does not give us the means to make. He does 
 not command a loyalty to what he has made us loathe. 
 With absolute assertions of infinite power, he joins equally 
 absolute assertions of infinite righteousness : 
 
 " I will go before thee, that thou mayest know that I 
 the Lord am God ; though thou hast not known me. 
 
 "I form the light and create darkness. 
 
 ''Thus saith the Lord, Ask me of things. I have 
 created man, but I have raised him up in righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 "I have not spoken in secret. I declare things that 
 are right." 
 
 It was the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Sabeans, 
 idol-makers, who complained that the Israelites wor- 
 shiped a God who *' hidest thyself." ''I the Lord 
 speak righteousness so clearly that every one shall say, 
 In the Lord have I righteousness and strength." 
 
 It is the necessities of an unnecessary theological sys- 
 
ELECTIONS OF PAFL AND OF PRESBYTERY. 165 
 
 tem that constrain us to these fiendish misrepresenta- 
 tions. It is not the love of Christ that constrains us. 
 Christ '^came not into the world to condemn the world, 
 but that the world through him might be saved." Saved 
 from what ? From sin. Not from a future hell, but 
 from present sin. 
 
 In the late discussions over revision one of the op- 
 ponents of revision said : ** Just here lies a point of great 
 peril. The Calvinistic system is so beautifully and logic- 
 ally connected in all its parts that to alter a statement 
 in one place necessitates a corresponding alteration all 
 through the system." 
 
 Professor Stowe once remarked : ** When any theo- 
 logical theory claims to be a complete system, I know 
 without examination that it is false." The reason is 
 clear : In the endless chain of divine work we know 
 only that minute part of it that enters out of the dark- 
 ness at the beginning of earthly life and re-enters the 
 darkness at the close of earthly life. To attempt to con- 
 struct — to fancy we have constructed — out of the few 
 links presented by the world's experience, the divine 
 endless chain, the complete plan of salvation, the per- 
 fected theological system — is an idle dream. If our 
 theology, as far as it goes, is correct, it must be imper- 
 fect. To be true it must be fragmentary. If the Calvin- 
 istic system is so beautifully and logically connected in 
 all its parts that it can not allow the introduction of any 
 new light, any new truth, without fatal disturbance and 
 dislocation, shall we wrap it in tissue-paper and cotton- 
 wool and lay it carefully out of harm's way ? No. Con- 
 demn it for structural weakness ! Turn and overturn 
 till the truth shake not the earth only, but also heaven ! 
 All upheaval will but serve to shake out the error and 
 shake the truth more firmly into place. 
 
 It is held by many in the Presbytery that if we do 
 
IQQ A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 not let the old error stand a while longer, there will be 
 the great calamity of division. 
 
 *'An acceptable creed will be the fruit of peace, not 
 of war. Fanaticism may come out of excitement, but a 
 creed must be the result of prayer and quiet study." 
 
 **This discussion is opening already new lines of di- 
 vision in every church, and no matter which party suc- 
 ceeds, there will be an irritated and dissatisfied minority 
 which will renew and keep up the struggle in successive 
 assemblies. This will occasion excitement and ill-feeling 
 instead of peace and brotherly love." 
 
 "The immediate eiiect of the overture and of the 
 newspaper discussion which it has generated has been un- 
 settling. Men's minds have been disturbed and the im- 
 pression needlessly created that our standards are seri- 
 ously at fault." 
 
 But what of Christ ? Did he decline to make a di- 
 vision in the church of burnt-offering for the remission 
 of sins ? On the contrary, he came on purpose to make 
 a division. "I came not to send peace on earth, but a 
 sword." He preached instantly and everywhere his new 
 doctrine of repentance for the remission of sin till the 
 veil of the temple was rent in twain ; of the temjole itself 
 was not left one stone upon another, and the church of 
 Jewry — the perfectly united church of sacrifice and altar 
 and slain bullocks — was not only divided, but dissolved. 
 
 What of Paul ? To him it was given to drive in the 
 wedge constructed on Christ's principles — the most di- 
 visive wedge that ever threatened the integrity of an in- 
 stitution. It was not only theological, but political. It 
 laid open to suspicion not only Paul's orthodoxy, but his 
 patriotism. He defended both valiantly — the one by 
 constant assertion that his new departure was only car- 
 rying out the teachings of the old prophets, the other by 
 constant iteration of his loyalty to his country. 
 
ELECTIONS OF PAUL AND OF PRESBYTERY. 167 
 
 "I am a man whicli am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city 
 in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city, brought up at the 
 feet of Gamaliel, taught according to the perfect manner 
 of the law of the fathers, as zealous toward God as ye all 
 •are at this day. Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock 
 of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the He- 
 brews, as touching the la^v a Pharisee, concerning zeal per- 
 secuting the church, touching the righteousness which is 
 in the law blameless." There is orthodoxy for you ! 
 
 And before and after, and above and around, and 
 through and through Paul's passionate protest that he 
 and his Gentiles shall not be thrust back from the love 
 of God, that they as well as the Jews are God's elect, 
 justified in their claim by God himself, come flashing 
 and fervid his equally passionate protests of patriotism. 
 His claim of equal spiritual rights for foreigners, he will 
 not suffer to be construed into indifference to his native 
 land, her traditions, her institutions, her glory and her 
 grace : 
 
 I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience 
 also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost that I have 
 great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart that 
 my own people will not accept the gospel of Christ. For 
 I could wish myself accursed from Christ for my brethren, 
 my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, 
 and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came. No 
 one supposes this to be cool and deliberate statement of 
 fact. Every one sees that it is a fervid and sudden out- 
 burst of feeling. Accursed from Christ means to hate 
 Christ, whicli for Paul was a contradiction in terms, and 
 it is followed instantly by a subsidence into argument. 
 But it serves to emphasize the question between Jew and 
 Gentile. It shows Paul eager to fight for the rights of 
 the Gentile to the benefit of Christianity, yet guarding 
 himself at every point against hostility or lukewarmness 
 
168 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 toward his own country. There is no diilerence, he is 
 ready to maintain with his life, between the Jew and the 
 Greek. *^ The same Lord over all is rich nnto all that 
 call upon him " ; but at the same time his heart's desire 
 and prayer unto God is that Israel should be saved. 
 
 Is the unsettling of men's minds always to be depre- 
 cated ? Never, unless they are settled right — which they 
 never can be in this life, perhajis not in any. When vol- 
 canoes close and there are no more earthquakes, and the 
 cyclone has ceased to sweep, and the freshets to over- 
 whelm, it will be a settled earth, but it will be a dead 
 earth. 
 
 Eighty or ninety years ago, says an antiquarian, there 
 were, among others who might be mentioned, three min- 
 isters of Essex County, Massachusetts, mighty preachers 
 of the Westminster doctrines, ardent, sagacious, and 
 progressive Christians, foremost in founding Andover 
 Seminary, the American Board, the American Tract 
 Society, the American Education Society, and the Massa- 
 chusetts Domestic Missionary Society. These were men 
 who needed not to be ashamed, noted and admired at 
 home and throughout the country. 
 
 The first was Dr. Samuel Spring of Newburyport, 
 father of Dr. Gardner Spring, of New York city. In the 
 forty-six years of his pastorate he received only one hun- 
 dred and forty-seven to the church. In eighteen con- 
 secutive years he received but ten members. In twenty- 
 two of the years he had no additions at all. The second 
 was Elijah Parish, D. D., of Byfield, more noted, if pos- 
 sible, who, in the thirty-seven years of his ministry, ad- 
 mitted but one hundred and five to the church. In 
 twenty-nine successive years there were but sixteen mem- 
 bers added, and in twenty-seven of the thirty-seven years 
 no additions at all. Eev. Leonard Woods was the third, 
 afterward D. D. and Professor at Andover. He was ten 
 
ELECTIONS OF PAUL AND OF PRESBYTERY. 1^9 
 
 years pastor of the Second Churcli in West Newbury, 
 during which time he received but fourteen members — 
 ten by profession. And no church in Essex North, and 
 perhaps few in New England, did better than these men- 
 tioned during the fifty years from 1775 to 1825. 
 
 These men at that time preached according to the 
 "Westminster Confession,' and the Catechism was taught 
 in every family and in the common schools. In a vol- 
 ume of admirable sermons by Dr. Parish, which doubt- 
 less well illustrates the style and scope of the preaching 
 of these, the searcher fails to find in a single instance the 
 love of God in Christ magnified, or the duty of sinners set 
 forth to love and obey him, and to repent and consecrate 
 themselves to him ; or any preaching to the unconverted 
 as such, as if he or they had any responsibility in the case. 
 Dr. Woods was praised, by one of his hearers, because he 
 preached so much of God's sovereignty and the total in- 
 sufficiency of all unregenerate exertions, and most of all 
 because he had said : ** When the devils were made, God 
 meant they should be devils." 
 
 The doctrine of God's sovereignty as against man's 
 free will is never touched by Paul ; as a doctrine never at 
 all. Both are assumed, as they have a right to be. 
 Neither is susceptible of proof. Both are at the basis of 
 reason. They underlie all Paul's argument, but he does 
 not argue them. In practical affairs this is always done, 
 and Paul was eminently practical. He gave his life to 
 converting Gentiles and to convincing Jews that Gentiles 
 had a right to be converted. He did not attempt to ex- 
 pound metaphysics. But he was not afraid of metaphysics. 
 He never went out of his way either to explain or avoid 
 it. But if a metaphysical theory promised to serve his 
 purpose, he swung it around at full arm-sweep with the 
 heartiest good-will, not caring though the whole thing 
 went to pieces in the handling, if only he made his point. 
 
170 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 The carefully constructed ^' system " of theology, with its 
 elaborate and definite ramifications and interlacings and 
 dovetailings between divine sovereignty and freedom of the 
 "will was not made by the Apostles, but by the later theo- 
 logians — the Augustines, the Calvins, the Jonathan Ed- 
 wardses. Paul had no theory. Paul's divine sover- 
 eignty and ours surrounds, envelopes, clasps, penetrates, 
 sustains our free will as the atmosphere surrounds and 
 sustains the earth. How could men wrap an ocean fifty 
 miles deep around this earth without suffocating and 
 crushing out all life ? Yet so it is that an ocean wraps 
 US around in which we are not suffocated or crushed ; in 
 which we live and move and have our being, in lack of 
 which we could not live at all. Within us and without 
 us — in the bounding blood, in the sensitive lungs, in the 
 most capricious yet constant air — the delicate balance, 
 the marvelous rhythmic life, is always preserved. Mill- 
 ions of beings do not know of the existence of an ocean 
 of air, but they all breathe. We may not formulate the 
 sovereignty of God, but we discover and do not invent the 
 laws of nature, and we are conscious that within those 
 laws we are as free as God. We are free with the free- 
 dom of God — will and choice. 
 
 It is surely a most curious twist of theological can- 
 dor and ingenuity which makes Paul preach the opposite 
 of his humane and liberal thought. He has passed 
 through a looking-glass world. He taught that God 
 would not confine himself to the Jews, but w^as Father of 
 the Gentiles also; and men have bejuggled it into a wick- 
 ed doctrine that God w^ould save or damn his creatures 
 as he pleased. Paul taught that God would save as 
 many as he wished to save, and we render it that he will 
 damn as many as hq, wishes to damn. Paul preached 
 that God would not pass by or reprobate the Gentiles, 
 and we Gentiles turn upon him and say that he shall. 
 
ELECTIONS OF PAUL AND OF PRESBYTERY. 171 
 
 God says: ''I will have mercy on whom I will have 
 mercy. Even when I say unto the wicked. Thou shalt 
 die, if he turn from his sin, he shall surely live ! He 
 shall not die." Presbytery says : " Not so, Lord ! Thou 
 must stand by thy word, and thy word shall be what I 
 say it is. When I think that thou predestinest men to 
 everlasting death, they are unchangeably designed and 
 their number can not be increased or diminished." 
 
 But if we knock this all away, what have we left as a 
 deposit of faith ? 
 
 What have we if we do not knock it away ? A God 
 all-powerful, all-willful, arbitrary and irresponsible, cre- 
 ating man with reason yet withholding from him reasons, 
 demanding man's prompt decision and allegiance, yet pre- 
 senting himself to man as a God utterly capricious, infi- 
 nitely cruel, and sheltering himself from man's spirited 
 and just remonstrance behind a bulwark of unsearcJia- 
 Ulity. We have a terrible game of hide-and-seek, with 
 eternal death for the forfeit and with the odds heavily 
 aoainst the man. 
 
 And we have a beautifully-balanced, perfectly-adjusted 
 theological ^^ system." 
 
 If we let the '' system " fall to pieces, what have we 
 left ? A God all-powerful, only a part of whose ways we 
 know, only a part of whose plan we can make out, but 
 whose tender mercies are over all his works. A God in 
 whose unsearchability all men may take shelter, but be- 
 hind whose unsearchability no man can hide. A God 
 w^ho made man, but made him for righteousness. A God 
 who will by no means clear the guilty, but who is forever 
 showing the guilty how to clear himself, and showing him 
 that it is not by slain beasts or by burnt incense, but by re- 
 penting and forsaking sin and thus making his soul clean. 
 A God sending his beloved Son into the world not to con- 
 demn the world, but that through him the world might 
 
172 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 be saved ; that, seeing God in Christ more clearly, men 
 might love God as seen in Christ through faith in him 
 and the righteousness that comes by such faith ; that men 
 might be buoyed up by the hope of his resurrection and 
 purified and unselfed by fellowship with his sufferings. 
 A God who desires men to worship him, not because his 
 self-conceit demands to be inflated by man's adulation, 
 but because he is the eternal righteousness, the ideal of 
 self-sacrifice lavishing himself forever on his creatures, 
 and therefore worship of him is alike the measure and 
 means of man's enlightenment. 
 
 Progress is slow ; at any one present moment it seems 
 to be no progress ; but, looking back to the far begin- 
 ning, we can discern and define the glacial movement of 
 humanity from the arctic rigors of moral ignorance and 
 darkness toward the summer of eternal life. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION". 
 
 That mental and moral, rhythmic and regular, in- 
 ward and inspired, eternal movement which was felt 
 upon earth when the Spirit of God moved upon the face 
 of the waters ; which stirred in humanity in its first aspira- 
 tion toward the God from whom humanity came ; which 
 impelled Abraham to leave the worship of idols in Ur of 
 the Chaldees and go up in the worship of the true God 
 to Canaan ; which impelled Paul to abandon the worship 
 of God by the slaughter of sheep and goats for the wor- 
 ship of God by repentance and faith in Christ ; which 
 impelled Luther to break with the church of authority 
 and priestly mediation, and establish the church of rea- 
 son, under one mediator between God and man, the man 
 Christ Jesus— is the same mental and moral movement 
 which has impelled the Presbyterian church to-day to 
 attempt the revision of its creed, the same movement 
 which is represented in the Congregational churches as 
 The New Departure. It is thus, as we see, no new de- 
 parture. It is as old as history. It is as old as human- 
 ity. Yet rightly is it, also, a new departure, for it is 
 new every morning and fresh every evening— new as our 
 orisons, fresh as our vespers, new as the old sun swells 
 newly in every blossom of every spring. 
 
 Although Congregationalism is here in a very small, 
 not to say minute, minority, it is not impertinent to 
 
174 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 notice the Congregational movement, because, although 
 it is local, it is part of a movement that is general. 
 
 There can be no revision of the creed in the Con- 
 gregational church because there is no Congregational 
 church. Every church is an independent body and 
 makes its own creed. Congregational churches unite in 
 councils, but these councils are not authoritative ; only 
 advisory. The new departures of Congregationalism 
 show chiefly in bodies organized by its churches for some 
 special purpose ; as in the American Board organized for 
 foreign missionary work, and in the Andover Seminary 
 organized for the training of men into clergymen. The 
 former is supported by the contributions of the churches ; 
 the latter chiefly by a church fund. Over both the fight 
 waxes hot this moment in the North. Over tlie latter the 
 contention is so sharp that it is called by that ancient 
 radicalism which has become the conservatism of to-day 
 — the Andover scandal. This has a bad sound, but it is 
 really no worse than the Paul-and-Barnabas scandal or 
 tb.e Paul-and- Peter scandal, which were settled not only 
 amicably, but advantageously. If you remember, when 
 Paul and Barnabas designed to go on a tour of inspection 
 from Antioch, Barnabas determined to take with them 
 his nephew, Mark. Perhaps it would have been more 
 courteous in Barnabas to consult Paul before determining 
 who should be admitted to the intimacy of being their 
 traveling companion, and perhaps private secretary. But 
 it is very possible that Barnabas had reasons for suspect- 
 ing that Paul did not wish Mark to go, and therefore Bar- 
 nabas concluded not to run the risk of refusal, but to take 
 Mark and say nothing about it. But Paul was not to be 
 so easily disposed of. He did not hesitate to refuse be- 
 fore he was asked. He thought not good to take with 
 them one who departed from them from Pamphylia and 
 went not with them to the work. Barnabas, forced into 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTIOX. 175 
 
 the open ojiiDosition which he was no doubt anxious to 
 avoid, stood up bravely for his sister's son ; and the con- 
 tention was so sharp between them that the whole plan 
 was broken up. Paul took his man and WTut one way, 
 and Barnabas took his man and went another. 
 
 Everything indicates that Paul was wrong. The 
 trouble hinged upon the departure of Mark from Pam- 
 phylia. We are not told the reason. The journey was 
 long and labored, partly by sea. Mark might have been 
 ill, or homesick, or seasick — but whatever it w^s, Paul 
 thought the reason trivial, and one that made Mark un- 
 trustworthy. Perhaps Paul himself was a little piqued. 
 At any rate, Paul was in the wrong. He ought to have 
 known Mark's character better. Mark's mother's house 
 was the first one Peter sought after his release from pris- 
 on ; and when he got there he found them all praying for 
 him, which speaks well for Mark's upbringing. When 
 Paul preached in sea-born Salamis, the delegation had 
 Mark for their minister, which shows him true to his 
 mother's faith. Afterward Paul himself, a prisoner in 
 Rome, wrote a letter of recommendation for Mark, speak- 
 ing of him in the highest terms as " my fellow-worker into 
 the kingdom of God, who has been a comfort unto me," 
 showing that Paul had discovered that Mark was trust- 
 worthy, and that there had been a complete reconcili- 
 ation between them and a return to cordial compan- 
 ionship. 
 
 For us Mark's certificate of character is the honor of 
 the authorship of the second gospel, or so great a promi- 
 nence in the early Church that his name is indissolubly 
 connected with it ; but if it was worth while to send down 
 through the centuries the record of what was only a little 
 tiff between two eminent and admirable men over a third, 
 wiio became scarcely less eminent and admirable, we can 
 afford to give one Sunday hour to a dissension — even some- 
 
176 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 times a dissension heated to the Pauline point — founded on 
 the moral expansiveness of the human soul. 
 
 In further guidance of our own conduct we may also 
 observe that when Peter came to Antioch and betrayed his 
 Master a second time, carrying all the fearsome with him, 
 insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their 
 dissimulation, Paul threw himself into the breach in- 
 stantly and openly. This time undoubtedly Barnabas 
 was wrong ; but he was wrong with Peter, which made 
 it almost what politicians call a *'bolt." However, he did 
 not say, with conscientious old-school Presbyterians in the 
 creed discussions, *' If I oppose Peter it will draw party 
 lines which it may take years to obliterate. It is not a 
 good thing for friends to be fighting each other when the 
 enemy is attacking the citadel." On the contrary, Paul 
 thought that decidedly the best way to conduct a war is 
 to secure fidelity to the cause and harmony of action in- 
 side the fort first ; and he withstood Peter to the face be- 
 fore them all, — as we do this day ! 
 
 The Andover scandal, then, as I understand it, is this : 
 The president and professors of the Theological Semi- 
 nary at Andover are charged with teaching as orthodoxy 
 what they have sworn to regard as heterodoxy. The con- 
 servatives, do not plead that the new departure or its 
 essence, *^ future probation," is false, but that it is not 
 what the founders of Andover Seminary pledged the pro- 
 fessors to teach. To the outside world, therefore, it ap- 
 pears to be simply a question of common honesty. Old 
 orthodoxy, say the Gallios, who really care nothing about 
 orthodoxy, old or new — old orthodoxy is absurd, but, as 
 the Andover professors have sworn to teach it, they ought 
 to teach it or go ; teach it, or give up the Andover fund 
 on which the school was founded. And some of the 
 conservative clergymen who do care for old orthodoxy 
 characterize the action of president and professors as 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION. 177 
 
 **the most stupendous breach of trust of a century not 
 unmarked by such crimes." 
 
 The laity do not, perhaps, go so far as the clergy. 
 The laity impute no breach of trust to the Andover pro- 
 fessors; on the contrary, pronounce them eminently hon- 
 orable, able, upright, conscientious Christian men, but 
 mistaken in their position. 
 
 Judge Hoar compared the case to that of an English 
 landlady who would not allow a heathen boarder to sacri- 
 fice a bull to Jupiter in her back parlor. She did not forbid 
 freedom of thought, but her back parlor was no place for 
 its indulgence in that peculiar form. So, argued Judge 
 Hoar, the Andover Seminary is no place to teach even 
 the doctrines of the Christian religion, if those doctrines 
 are inconsistent with the Andover Creed. I suppose 
 Judge Hoar could hardly find anything more inconsistent 
 with his idea of the doctrines of the Christian religion 
 than his idea of the doctrines of the Andover creed. 
 
 In like manner, the daily papers express probably a 
 wide-spread lay opinion when they affirm that there are 
 very many laymen who do not coincide with the com- 
 plainants' theological opinions who yet agree with them 
 to this extent : that whether the Andover creed itself 
 is theologically sound or not, the trust by which the 
 seminary is mainly supported demands strict adherence 
 to the letter of the creed ; and for the sake of perfect 
 honesty, therefore, and as an example of the fulfillment 
 of the letter of an obligation, much needed in these days, 
 it would be better that further enjoyments of those old 
 bequests should cease than that the slightest suspicion of 
 their perversion should go forth to the world at large. 
 
 This is a phase of the question to which too little atten- 
 tion has been paid, and which is certainly indispensable to 
 a fair understanding of the conservative side of the con- 
 troversy. 
 12 
 
178 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 All this constitutes the Andover scandal as well it may. 
 A stupendous breach of trust is, or ought to be, not 
 merely an ecclesiastical, but a penitentiary question. 
 
 The " Andover Fuss " is what it was called forty years 
 ago. Seeming only an ecclesiastical quarrel about a non- 
 practical point, it is the successive bursting of burs that 
 marks the ripening of successive kernels of truth. And 
 while the kernel must ripen or the fruit of the tree of 
 life fail, it should not be forgotten that the bur does vital 
 work in holding fast the precious seed till moved by the 
 internal and eternal force to loosen its lifelong grasp. 
 
 But while the drama is the same, the actors have 
 changed — some in person, some in parts. The villain of 
 the last generation has become the hero of this. Profes- 
 sor Park in particular is gathering up the weeds and 
 grass and stones that were flung at him forty years ago, 
 and is shying them at President Smyth with as hearty a 
 good will as if he did not know exactly how they could 
 hit and not hurt. 
 
 The contention was so sharp between Paul and Bar- 
 nabas that they snapped apart. The contention is so 
 sharp between new Andover and old orthodoxy that they 
 have grappled. 
 
 *' Dare any of you," says Paul, sternly, '^ having a mat- 
 ter against another, to go to law before the unjust and 
 not before the saints ? " 
 
 And a very considerable and a very respectable co- 
 terie of Congregationalists in Massachusetts reply : '^ Yes, 
 we dare," and betake themselves with their Andover dis- 
 putation to the Supreme Court. 
 
 It is not to be assumed that the Supreme Court of 
 Massachusetts is unjust, nor do I understand that Paul 
 meant to accuse the courts of Corinth of injustice. But 
 they were heathen and did not know or care for the ties 
 which bound together the early Christians. The Su- 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION. 1Y9 
 
 preme Court are lawyers, and, as lawyers, not concerned 
 with questions of theology. 
 
 But it is not theology, claim these Gongregationalists. 
 It is not the theological or metaphysical aspect of the 
 question which brings it before the courts. It is the 
 moral aspect. Men who hold no opinion on the cove- 
 nant of the redemption, who do not know the difference 
 between Hopkinsianism and Grand Llamaism, who could 
 not define the federal headship of Adam to save their 
 own heads, have yet a clear conviction that whatever 
 Hopkinsianism may be, the man who says he will teach it 
 ought to teach it ; and if he takes the money that was de- 
 voted to its teaching, and with that money teaches some- 
 thing else, it would pass for pretty sharp practice on Wall 
 Street, whatever it may be called in Audover. 
 
 And in proof that a brother oiiended is harder to be 
 won than a strong city of foes, see how tenderly we deal 
 with the forth-putting of Presbyterian new-departure 
 revisionists, while we appeal to law as well as gospel to 
 unseat our new-departure Andover professors. Says a 
 Congregational official, conservative of the conservatives : 
 '^ There is a great deal said just now in certain quarters 
 about our Presbyterian friends, and the restiveness which 
 they are thought to exhibit under the Westminster formu- 
 lae, which still, theoretically, mold all their opinions. 
 And the accusation has not been unmade that there is an 
 inherent and inevitable falseness in every pretense on the 
 part of a Presbyterian pastor of to-day to answer affirma- 
 tively the 'questions' asked at his ordination, which 
 ought to be so repugnant as to be impossible to an honest 
 man. The second of these questions is this : * Do you 
 sincerely receive and adopt the Westminster Confession 
 and Catechisms as containing the system of doctrine 
 taught in the Holy Scriptures ?' And reference is espe- 
 cially had to the divine ordination of the non-elect *to 
 
180 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 dishonor and wrath ' ; to the positive guilt of original, 
 previous to actual sin ; and to other portions which it is 
 said that nobody now believes. Yet it is insisted that the 
 Presbyterian ministry keej) on solemnly declaring that 
 they believe them, and will preach them — doing neither. 
 
 "Now, the fact that there is a movement for revision 
 does surely indicate that there is some truth in the claim. 
 Yet we have no idea that it could be fair to insist that 
 our Presbyterian brethren who believe and teach just as 
 other evangelical people do, on all these points under 
 question, are guilty of any inward falseness in the mat- 
 ter. The fact is that — in common with all thinking and 
 sensible men — they hold their faith in the only way in 
 which they can hold it, in that reasonable aspect which 
 has been shaped in their minds by the force and pressure 
 of the whole world of Christian thought. For substance 
 of doctrine they hold it. 
 
 " So long as they remain true to the central and essen- 
 tial idea which characterizes their system, they are hon- 
 est men, and uncensurable." 
 
 Thus far it is all a commendable Christian liberality ; 
 but here comes the 'Hittle dig" at Andover, for whose 
 sweet, pungent sake I half suspect it is that so much 
 consideration is folded around these Presbyterian lapses ! 
 *^Did they get their living from funds founded expressly 
 to secure the perpetual teaching of those Westminster 
 doctrines, and did they actually teach doctrines from 
 which the Westminster men would have shrunk with 
 horror, that would be another question." 
 
 That is, you may preach not exactly what you be- 
 lieve, but what other people preach, and be an honest 
 man — if you preach on a yearly salary ; but if you preach 
 thus on an established fund — why, that is another ques- 
 tion. You may hold your faith in the only way you can 
 hold it — reasonably, sensibly, substantially, essentially — 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION. 181 
 
 if you are only a Presbyterian minister. But if you are 
 an Andover professor, you must hold it as you can not 
 hold it — unreasonably, punctiliously, as no thinking and 
 sensible men do ! Else you are guilty of a breach of trust 
 and an Andover scandal. 
 
 Ex-Professor Phelps, of Andover, father of a clearer 
 theological insight than his own,* goes even beyond his 
 conservative comrades. He will not admit the test of a 
 lawsuit. Even if new Andover has the law, he says, 
 honor should restrain them. " Should it be sufficient 
 for honorable men if, in law, the liberty they are assum- 
 ing can not be rebuked ? Should it even content them 
 that the Supreme Court of Massachusetts would not re- 
 move them from their chairs ?" He considers it mere 
 hardihood to think that the founders would have approved 
 the faith of the Andoverians if it had been imported in 
 their day, and, therefore, the professors should make it a 
 point of honor not to teach it, although the creed says 
 nothing about it. 
 
 So far as this is to the point, the question is not 
 whether, if the new theology had been taken back a hun- 
 dred years, the founders would have accepted it, but 
 whether, if the founders were brought forward a hundred 
 years, they would not accept it. To this, one could un- 
 hesitatingly answer Yes, because they accepted the best 
 light of their day, as their heirs and assigns accept the 
 best light of to-day. 
 
 A young lady was visiting in Andover not long since, 
 and in the course of conversation with the emeritus pro- 
 fessor, is said to have been asked by him how she would 
 like it if she left money to pay for instruction in French 
 in a particular institution, and a professor supported by 
 
 * In the yesterdays, when this was written. To-day alas ! on earth 
 is no vision so clear as his whom the heaven has received. 
 
182 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 her endowment should teach German instead. Her reply 
 was that she should not like it at all, but she should cer- 
 tainly expect that the professor would teach French as it 
 toas spoken at the time. The learned ex-professor smiled, 
 said that he had not been fortunate in his choice of an 
 illustration, and passed to another topic of conversation. 
 
 Ex- Professor Park, of Andoyer — forty years a radical, 
 pushed by the conseryatives, now in turn a conseryative, 
 pushing the radicals — is so brilliant, so pungent, so rogu- 
 ish, so extraordinarily cleyer, that he must know better. 
 When he gibes at the ^^ moral integrity" of Andover 
 and "i\\Q new Andover ethics," it must be an intel- 
 lectual caper. Time-stained pamphlets, exhumed from 
 boxes beneath the eaves, still glitter with the sarcasm, are 
 moist with the tears, and red hot with the wrath evoked 
 by the derelictions of Professor Park when he presided 
 over the seminary whose head has been cut off, although 
 it refuses to roll into the basket. Every charge of breach 
 of trust, logical inconsistency, dangerous error brought 
 against President Smyth to-day was brought against Pro- 
 fessor Park forty years ago. All that is not appalling is 
 amusing in the spectacle of this heretic of the last genera- 
 tion, absolutely forgetting those things which are behind 
 and reaching forth unto the heretic of to-day with the 
 same unwieldy blunderbusses that fired their vain volleys 
 at him. That it is a holy war does not prevent the tac- 
 tics from being grotesque. 
 
 In their time the old formulas did good service, but 
 the world moves — moves in the evolution of religious 
 truth just as really and rapidly as in the evolution of 
 material truth. Flint and steel marked a momentous 
 invention. The doctrine of election, in politics and in 
 theology, was a great advance over hereditary transmis- 
 sion of saving grace and sovereign power. But to take 
 the doctrine of election out of history and present it to 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTIOX. 1S3 
 
 the world as a nugget of unrelated truth is just as ab- 
 surd as it would be to declare flint and steel the one 
 divinely appointed method of kindling the domestic 
 hearth. 
 
 Then, as now, the piece of toughest resistance was 
 the Westminster Catechism. '^If there are words in the 
 English language which can make anything plain," pro- 
 tested the remonstrants against Professor Park in 1849, 
 **the founders have made plain and undeniable their in- 
 tention that the doctrines of the Assembly's Catechism, 
 and no other, should be maintained, defended, and 
 proj)agated through the instrumentality of their semi- 
 nary." But, under Professor Park's deft hand, original 
 sin and other related doctrines prove to be an altogether 
 different grist from that which came out of the West- 
 minster hopper. Just as heretic Smyth is charged with 
 the *^ stupendous crime" of breach of trust, the beloved 
 Park aiding and abetting the charge, so did the world, 
 the flesh, and the devil charge at Professor Park in 1853. 
 *^ How can the professor reconcile his position with the 
 principles of moral integrity ? On the one hand, dis- 
 tinct and explicit declarations of doctrinal belief, and 
 pledges to teach in accordance therewith, and, on the 
 other hand, a course of teaching apparently contrary. 
 There must rest a painful feeling of misgiving, lest in 
 his ardent love and pursuit of philosophical speculations 
 he may have forgotten what is due to those high princi- 
 ples of uprightness which ought so manifestly to govern 
 all the professors in the seminary that every question re- 
 specting it should be wholly precluded ! " 
 
 Is that of 1853 or 1890 ? 
 
 Professor Park is of too large a nature to lay to heart 
 little grievances of this sort. In his noble forgetfulness 
 he now declares that, if an official doubt of his allegiance 
 to the creed had ever been intimated, ^'I should have re- 
 
18i A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 garded the intimation as an insult to me and as an im- 
 plied charge of prevarication ! " 
 
 "I am afraid/' said President Lincoln to a friendly 
 judge who was giving an account of his proceedings at 
 the nominating convention, ^* I am afraid, there, you pre- 
 varicated a little." 
 
 ** Prevaricate ! " cried tlie too ardent judge ; " I lied 
 like !" 
 
 Beyond and above any crime charged upon Professor 
 Smyth, this conservative of to-day but inconoclast of yes- 
 terday was accused of having repeatedly stamped the arti- 
 cles that he rejected ''with ridicule and exposed them to 
 public scorn." And I am afraid he did. I am sure that 
 when he saw the bur splitting it was not in him to press 
 it together, but rather to join forces with the interior 
 expanding truth and hasten its release by the keen thrusts 
 of his playful and polished but powerful wit. 
 
 On the face of it, those theological Forty-niners had 
 Professor Park on the hip exactly as Professor Park has 
 President Smyth on the hip now. Each alike had to 
 avow on the day of his inauguration, and, to prevent a 
 subsequent breaking away, every five years thereafter, his 
 faith in the Westminster Catechism. 
 
 To prove Professor Park's heresy, the remonstrants 
 quoted from his sermons such words of wisdom and right- 
 eousness as make the yellow pages of my garret rubbish 
 thrill with living fire. Why is Professor Park training in 
 the old camp when his own words show that he belongs 
 to the new departure, falsely so called ? Egbert Smyth 
 never struck a truer note, never gave a clearer exposition 
 of the proper method of Bible interpretation and the 
 common errors of exegesis, than does Professor Park in 
 these heretical and heaven-taught sermons. Every page 
 is crowded with truth, discrimination, the all-compelling 
 eloquence of lucidity. It is inexplicable that his oppo- 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION. 185 
 
 nents did not yield to their force at once. It is inex- 
 plicable that pulpits should still be found preaching the 
 dead and petrified method of interpretation when, for 
 these forty years and more, Professor Park has been so il- 
 luminating the living way. It is a freak of nature that 
 Professor Park himself, in his vigorous and magnificent 
 age, should turn upon Professor Smyth for following in 
 the footsteps of his splendid and stirring prime. 
 
 Professor Park is the most brilliant as well as the 
 most delightful man in the world. He is always brim- 
 ming over with mischief — using the word '* for true heart, 
 and not for harm." It must be that as his work is well 
 done he can not help playing. Walking up and down the 
 beautiful greenery, wherein, like gems, are set his house 
 and all the saints' houses and haunts of the Andover 
 school of the prophets, he spies President Smyth, re- 
 mote, unfriended, melancholy, gliding out from the 
 shadows of Brechan Hall ; and instantly grabs a wisp of 
 ** speculations" and handfuls of *' moral integrity" and 
 ** German rationalism " and lets fly at him for pure fun, 
 as who should say : '* See here, young man, if you think it 
 is a fine thing to step into my shoes and be a progressive 
 theologian instead of a stationary one, take this — and this 
 — and this, and see how you like it ! " 
 
 Just as unprogressive theology casts longing glances 
 back from the aggressive incursions of present thought to 
 the good old times when Professor Park held fast the 
 form of sound doctrine, so did the stationary of the last 
 generation bemoan themselves for the golden age of the 
 good Dr. Woods, when the Westminster Catechism was 
 in its glory of unquestioned supremacy. The doctrine of 
 original sin, including the personal guilt of each and 
 every individual of the human race, in all successive ages 
 to the end of time for its commission ; and the just desert 
 of and liability to everlasting punishment in hell, by one 
 
186 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 and all of the posterity of Adam, for their violation of the 
 law of God imputed to them as their own transgression, 
 done by them in Mm, their antecedent representative and 
 covenant head — this good old wholesale doctrine, not 
 whittled down by reason, but olfici ally guarded and trans- 
 mitted by Professor Park's model predecessor. Dr. AVoods 
 — this doctrine the remonstrants of 1849 declared to be 
 the touchstone of New England orthodoxy. No doubt a 
 great host outside of New England orthodoxy will agree 
 with them and gloat over it with unseemly mirth. 
 
 But I, who gather within mj^self the strictness of eight 
 generations of New England orthodoxy, am justified 
 therein by finding that Dr. Woods says nothing of the 
 sort. Dr. Woods, so far from setting his hand and seal 
 to such irrationalism, left on record a theology worthy 
 of his grandson, the late Rev. Dr. John Cotton Smith, 
 beloved and lamented rector of the Church of the Ascen- 
 sion in New York ; worthy of the gracious presence and 
 noble promise of his great-grandson, late the youthful 
 rector of the Church of St. Peter in Beverly, Massachu- 
 setts, and now holding up the right hand of Phillips 
 Brooks in Boston ; worthy even of his great-great-grand- 
 son, the most reverend of all, John Cotton Smith, of the 
 Church of the Holy Innocents, whose theology is yet un- 
 defined, but -was certified by the Redeemer of the world as 
 entitling him to the Kingdom of Heaven. Dr. Woods, who 
 preached so powerfully and so unsuccessfully the divine 
 sovereignty in the creation of devils with fore-knowledge 
 that they w^ould be and fore-will that they should be 
 devils ; Dr. Woods, reared in New England and educated 
 in her most ancient college, for many years the only theo- 
 logical professor in her only theological seminary — rose 
 as spokesman for his brethren and loudly proclaimed : 
 *' Every attempt which has been made to prove that God 
 ever imputes to man any sinful disposition or act which 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION. 187 
 
 is not strictly his own has failed of success. ... I 
 say, with the utmost frankness, that we are 7iot entirely 
 satisfied with the language used on this subject in the As- 
 semMy's Catechistn. Though v/e hold that catechism, 
 taken as a whole, in the highest estimation, we could not 
 with a good conscience subscribe to every expression it 
 contains in relation to the doctrine of original sin. 
 Hence it is common for us, when we declare our assent to 
 the catechism, to do it ivith an exjjrcss or i?nj)lied re- 
 striction. We receive the catechism generally as contain- 
 ing a summary of the principles of Christianity. But that 
 the sinfulness of our natural fallen state consists, in any 
 measure, in the guilt of Adam's first sin is what we can 
 not admity And seven times afterward did he loudly re- 
 peat that he subscribed to the Westminster Catechism in 
 general and denied it in particular. And all the people 
 said Amen ! It is idle to talk of anything dishonest or 
 sinister in a proceeding so open. 
 
 Here, then, we have the striking spectacle of a group 
 of solid New England Christians conscientiously striving 
 to oust President Smyth because he can not keep step on 
 the creed with Professor Park ; and we go back thirty 
 years and find another group of saintly men trying just 
 as hard to oust Professor Park because he could not keep 
 step with Dr. Woods on the catechism, and we go back 
 thence twenty years, and find that Dr. Woods made no 
 pretense of keeping step at all. He made the march 
 right loyally, but he deliberately proclaimed from his 
 mountain-top, the wide world over, that the catechism 
 was often out of time, and that he and his comrades had 
 no scruple in marching to their own music. 
 
 Professor Park finds that President Smyth has softened 
 down the everlasting penalty of the creed into everlasting 
 possibility, and Dr. Dana mourned that Professor Park 
 had softened down the original sin of the catechism into 
 
188 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 a *' series of intense expressions." But Dr. Woods, to 
 whom we are directed as the standard, made short work 
 of both creed and catechism, and taught the common- 
 sense doctrine that original sin is the sin that originates 
 with every man. Why must President Smyth shut out 
 all the light let in by Professor Park in the last genera- 
 tion, and by Dr. Woods in the preceding generation, and 
 contract his pupils to the gray twilight of Westminster 
 Abbey ? 
 
 When Professor Park reminds the Andover trustees 
 that they ^'^have a sacred responsibility for the theological 
 character of the seminary " against President Smyth's 
 heterodoxies, he must remember that when he was presi- 
 dent fifty years ago the trustees of that day were just as 
 solemnly warned against him ; were bidden by the con- 
 servatives to remember that '^both he and they are ac- 
 countable to a higher tribunal, where evasions, limita- 
 tions, and mental reservations are of no avail." By these 
 evasions, limitations, and mental reservations they meant 
 Professor Park ; and the very things to which they gave 
 these ugly names were some of the very best and sound- 
 est and most enduring points of his theology ! 
 
 With a charming, not to say jolly, boyishness, the 
 octogenarian professor maintains that President Smyth 
 can not subscribe to the Andover creed without having 
 been thoroughly ashamed of himself when he made his 
 declaration of faith in public, and without being again 
 thoroughly ashamed of himself at every successive period 
 of five years, when he renews it. 
 
 But Dr. Park must surely remember the glee with 
 which he used to describe himself and his brother pro- 
 fessors as marching up every five years to swear that they 
 were not any wiser than they had been five years before ! 
 He must recall the charges which were flung at him fifty 
 years ago — charges of inconsistency in signing the creed 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION. 189 
 
 while he was ''evading the definition of the atonement " ; 
 charges of teaching ''a religion manifestly false and ab- 
 surd as well as dangerous and destructive — in other words, 
 anything but Christianity." Does he recall that he was 
 ever ashamed of himself for it ? I think if Professor 
 Park would lay his hand on his heart and tell the truth, 
 the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he would 
 say that he gloried in it ! 
 
 He denounces the rationalistic drift of Andover, pro- 
 testing that the founders '' could never have been per- 
 suaded to endow a seminary which would drop one article 
 of its creed at every fresh arrival of a German steamer." 
 His own critics of his early days could not be so witty, but 
 they were not less sensible of the breach of trust and mis- 
 appropriation of funds involved in what they called his 
 "polished and frigid rationalism." He declares that of 
 all the orthodox seminaries in the United States, ''there 
 is not one which is so firmly bound to resist the new 
 movement as is the seminary at Andover." Just so the 
 earnest old fathers of 1853 warned the same seminary 
 authorities that if they would " persist in supporting 
 Professor Park they would be guilty of such violation of 
 duty and responsibility as rests upon no similar band of 
 trustees in the land." He maintains stoutly that if 
 President Smyth has any right to his " professor's chair," 
 " then it is time to dispense with the English language " ; 
 for the men of the new departure, he cries aloud, "are 
 revolutionizing the English language as well as the An- 
 dover creed." Just as desperate a raid upon his own 
 use of the English language made they of the old time, 
 though with more Grand isonian and complimentary per- 
 sonal raference. " He is in direct conflict with the cate- 
 chism to which he has promised to conform in all his 
 theological teachings. We are aware that he is extreme- 
 ly skillful in the use of language, and that many strong 
 
190 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 phrases have yielded much of their meaning, when couched 
 in his pliant and beautiful forms of illustration ; but the 
 stubborn English of the Assembly's Catechism is proof 
 against the enchantments of his brilliant but deceitful 
 rhetoric." 
 
 Professor Park insists that the main spirit of the new 
 departure is antagonistic to the main spirit of the An- 
 dover creed in its relation to the doctrines of total de- 
 pravity, the atonement, and future punishment ; but, by 
 a singular parallelism, when he was Abbott professor, his 
 critics claimed that iiis theory was '^a complete denial of 
 native depravity," that he *' mollified the doctrine of 
 original sin," and that his ^^ notion of the atonement was 
 evasive, extremely vague, and unsatisfactory ! " 
 
 Better than Judge Hoar, better than the Supreme 
 Court of Massachusetts, Professor Park knows how little 
 and how much there is in the clamor for President Smyth's 
 removal, in the cry against his honesty — and that is, noth- 
 ing at all. 
 
 When Dr. Woods was gathered to his fathers, and 
 Dr. Park reigned in his stead, he struck the old truths 
 with so direct and so forcible a blow that the shower of 
 sparks seemed the illumination of a new departure, and 
 people who had done up their minds in camphor and did 
 not wish to open and air and use them any more, tried to 
 save themselves all mental trouble by dismissing him from 
 the seminary. But neither would the seminary dismiss 
 him, nor would he be dismissed, but stood up stoutly for 
 Ms total depravity and his views of future punishment 
 and original sin, declaring that ^* when a theorist seizes 
 at the living words of the Bible and puts them into his 
 vise, and straightens or crooks them into the dogma that 
 man is blaraable before he chooses to do wrong, deserving 
 of punishment for the involuntary nature which he has 
 never consented to gratify, really sinful before he actu- 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION. 191 
 
 ally sins, then the language of emotion, forced from its 
 right place and treated as if it were a part of a nicely 
 measured syllogism, hampers and confuses his reason- 
 ings, until it is given back to the use for which it was 
 first intended and from which it never ought to have 
 been diverted." ^ 
 
 Professor Park is my very dear friend, or, if that be 
 presuming, I am his most ardent admirer ; and when a 
 man has held up the candle of the Lord as high and 
 bright as he has done, it is not for us to chide, though 
 the apostle of sweetness and light does for a moment for- 
 get his own illumination and not only tries to thrust 
 President Smyth's candle under a bushel, but to sit on 
 the bushel ! 
 
 Conservative orthodoxy, liberal Christianit}', secular 
 common sense, and ultra radicalism unite in condemn- 
 ing the Andover professors, declaring that they are not 
 to be justified in their claim that they have a right 
 under the creed to teach their doctrines. Neverthe- 
 less, the Andover professors are right, and all the others 
 are wrong. If the Andover professors should give up the 
 contest and withdraw from the seminary, they would be 
 guilty of a breach of the trust confided to them by the 
 founders. It is not necessarily stupid in outside circles 
 to misunderstand the case, but it is not wise to pronounce 
 upon it until it is understood, and it can not be under- 
 stood without attention to the meaning, the use, and the 
 weight of words. We are so accustomed to speak words 
 with a hop, and read them with a skip, and pronounce 
 judgment upon them with a jump, that when important 
 issues are involved we rush wildly astray. 
 
 The struggle is not, as the world assumes, over the ac- 
 ceptance of the creed, but over the interpretation of the 
 creed, just as the struggle in the Church to-day is not 
 over the acceptance of the Bible but over the interpreta- 
 
192 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 tion of the Bible. The present professors accept the creed. 
 The outside world says they ought not to accept it. Must 
 the professors, the modern experts, the men who have 
 made the creed the study of their life — must they relin- 
 quish it actually or constructively because the editors, 
 the lawyers, the pastors, and the previous generation of 
 experts think they ought ? That is, must a man guide 
 his life by his own conscience and consciousness or by 
 other persons' ? The founders of Andover prescribed 
 only that professors should accept and teach the creed. 
 They did not prescribe how it should be interpreted. 
 The professors swear that they do accept and teach it. 
 Who shall say them nay ? 
 
 Old orthodoxy charges that they interpret it so differ- 
 ently from the founders that it amounts to a rejection of 
 the creed ; and that they yet persist in using — nay, even 
 '^ affect " to use — the old-fasliioned terms. Mr. Charles 
 Voysey, transferring to the extreme left that mental qual- 
 ity which on the extreme right is called bigotry, says : 
 
 '* They scandalously and with intellectual fraud try 
 to foist a new meaning into the old horrible Christian 
 phrases, a meaning the exact opposite of the hitherto 
 accepted sense. I reject these miserable subterfuges . . . 
 because the process of interpretation is fraudulent." 
 
 But the new theology is right in refusing to sacrifice 
 to the old one single word. To the truth it is willing to 
 sacrifice all words, to falsehood none. If human falli- 
 bility for a thousand years has given a false meaning to a 
 phrase, the new theology has still a divine right to throw 
 out the false meaning and restore the true. The truth 
 has no statute of limitations. The truth does not lose 
 proprietorship in a formula because falsehood has been 
 an unhindered tenant for centuries. 
 
 The right to retain the old words is inalienable. What 
 as to the wisdom ? 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION. 193 
 
 There can be no greater difference between the old 
 theology and the new than there was between the Mosaic 
 theology and the Christian theology. As we have seen, 
 the Christian system involved the complete overthrow of 
 priesthood, temple, altar, sacrifice ; the whole system not 
 only, but the very structure of Jewish worship. The 
 clever and learned Pharisees, scribes, doctors of the law 
 saw this clearly. The conservatives of that day and city 
 were not so polite, so self-restrained, so moderate as our 
 conservatives at Des Moines and Springfield and Andover 
 and Minneapolis, and they protested against the new 
 theology to the point of mobs and scourge and crucifix- 
 ion for the new theologian ; and all the while to their 
 charges he constantly protested : '^ Thinkest thou I am 
 come to destroy the law and the prophets ? I am not 
 come to destroy but to fulfill." 
 
 How could he honestly say that ? He preached a re- 
 ligion which not only has subverted, but which was in- 
 tended to subvert the whole Jewish ritual, the priests 
 who administered it, the temple in which it was per- 
 formed. Must there not rest upon all minds a painful 
 misgiving that Christ, for love of a quiet life and fear of 
 opposition, may have forgotten those high principles of 
 uprightness which Dr. Dana of old times inculcated upon 
 Professor Park, and which Professor Park in his turn en- 
 joins upon Professor Smyth ? Does not Christ incur the 
 suspicion of intellectual fraud in putting a new meaning 
 into the old words ? 
 
 But Christ saw further, deeper, keener, wider than 
 the Pharisees, and he spoke, as he had a right to speak, 
 from his own broad vision and not from their narrow 
 one. They saw the destruction in his teachings, but not 
 the construction. He had not come to destroy the law. 
 He had come to fulfill the very object for which the law 
 had been originally established. 
 
 13 
 
194: ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 It is true that this fulfillment involved the destruc- 
 tion of the law, but this destruction was not the object 
 of his coming, and, still more and vitally to the purpose, 
 it was not such destruction as the Pharisees apprehended, 
 by force from without, but a gentle dissolution by in- 
 ward necessity — a natural, healthy, and painless absorp- 
 tion. The object of the law was to establish communi- 
 cation between man and his Maker for his own upbuild- 
 ing in righteousness. Christ came to bring a more 
 perfect communication,- and the more perfect must in 
 time disestablish the less perfect. Man had built a hard 
 and even a hateful and cumbrous way to God — a way of 
 burnt-offerings and brutal slaughter and costly temple 
 and ceremonial priest. Christ came to say : "I am the 
 ^ay" — the way of love — that potent alembic in which 
 rite and violence and selfishness should be forever dis- 
 solved. Christ destroyed the law as day destroys the 
 dawn. 
 
 The great apostles wrought in the same spirit. They 
 did not tear down the old as a necessary preparation for 
 building the new on a mechanical theory of ecclesias- 
 ticism. They proceeded on the spiritual theory and de- 
 veloped the new out of everything that was eternal in the 
 old ; and not only on the old of the Mosaic law, but on 
 the old of the pagan nations as well. Indeed, it was 
 Paul's boast that he became all things to all men. Who- 
 ever Avrote the Epistle to the Hebrews employed the tac- 
 tics of infusing the Gospel of Christ into the Hebrew law. 
 We have seen that he did not preach, "Abolish your priest- 
 hood, throw down your altars, burn your temples, they 
 are outgrown." He said: "Christ is your high priest 
 forever. We also have an altar, and to do good is its sac- 
 rifice." He did not scornfully repudiate the centuries- 
 old covenant of Abraham, so dear to the Jews, calling it 
 a clumsy and imperfect make-shift. He directed atten- 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION. 105 
 
 tion to the better covenant in Christ ; that the divine 
 law should be written on better than tables of stone— in 
 their minds and in their hearts. 
 
 By the same tactics, when Paul was giving his charge 
 to Timothy there was an utter change of policy. No 
 beating about the bush, no careful deference to long asso- 
 ciations, no cautious verbal manipulation. He went 
 straight and swift to the mark : " There is one mediator 
 between God and men— the man Christ Jesus, Blessed 
 and only Potentate, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, 
 who only hath immortality." We have not a word about 
 altar or sacrifice, but short, sharp, and decisive : " Let 
 every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from 
 iniquity." Paul was careful of his beloved son's stomach 
 and he was careful of his own cloak ; but he did not take 
 the smallest pains to walk softly over Timothy's ecclesi- 
 astical prejudices. He had himself educated that young 
 man, and knew that he had no right to have any. 
 
 But when he left his well-beloved Timothy and ad- 
 dressed the stranger Athenians he was again all suavity 
 and tact and consideration, addressing them not with 
 Hebrew metaphor any more than with the Timothean 
 hrusquerie, but with the Greek technique. Just as he 
 had poured his gospel into Hebrew forms for the He- 
 brews, so now he poured it into Greek forms at Athens, 
 knowing that the forms were temporal and frangible, but 
 the gospel is eternal. As he had talked of high priest 
 and sacrifice to the Jews, he now talked of Zeus and 
 poetry to the Greeks, declaring unto them not the God 
 of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom they would have 
 perhaps despised, but the God to whom their own altars 
 were erected and of whom their own poets sung. And, 
 be it observed, Paul apparently selected the only one of 
 all the altars of Athens that could be upreared to the 
 supreme God. It required a robust logic, but Paul was 
 
196 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 equal to it. I greatly fear that old Orthodoxy would have 
 thought Paul was double-dealing, and I am not sure that 
 Professor Park would not have adjured him to smj that 
 he was an idolater if he was an idolater ; and no doubt 
 Mr. Voysey would have cried out upon the "miserable 
 subterfuge " if he had been on Mars' Hill that day. But 
 Paul stoutly asserted and maintained his right to speak 
 his own way. 
 
 From our day prophet, priest, and king have passed. 
 The words have no living meaning for us. Even with 
 the Eoman Catholic church, priest, altar, sacrifice are 
 merely symbolic. No smell of blood is found, no bleat- 
 ing of lambs is heard in a Catholic cathedral any more 
 than in a Protestant meeting-house. If Paul were 
 preaching to us, he would not represent Christ as a 
 sacrifice. He would say to us as to Timothy : *' Let 
 every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from 
 iniquity." 
 
 Therefore, when the Andover creed orders its profess- 
 ors to declare that Christ, as our redeemer, executeth the 
 office of prophet, priest, and king ; when Professor Park 
 apportions the work of Christ by lot to the various func- 
 tions of the Jewish priesthood, they are guilty of — what ? 
 An anachronism. Nothing more. They are speaking as 
 old Jews instead of American republicans. They are 
 emphasizing the temporary, the already vanished part of 
 the Hebrew teaching Now that the Jewish ritual has 
 for us completely passed away, all this terminology has 
 for us only a historical, not a vital meaning. We have 
 no such officer as prophet, priest, or king. All these 
 offices were merged in Christ so long ago that the words 
 themselves are merely literary. Everything on that 
 theme was said centuries ago, when Paul faced the past 
 with a gospel which was to supplant them all. What 
 needs to be hammered into us is what Paul said, front- 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION. 197 
 
 ing the future : '' Let every one that nameth the name 
 of Christ depart from iniquity." 
 
 But the literary and moral sense these words still 
 have. In that sense they are wholly true. Nothing has 
 ever put into them a single element of falseness. Every 
 good thing which prophet, priest, or king was supposed 
 to do or actually did for the Hebrews, that Christ came 
 to do for all the world.. If I were to frame a creed I 
 should not put in the Hebraistic clause, but I could sub- 
 scribe to the Hebraistic clause in any creed whatever. 
 
 There is a pretty little rhymed theology lisped by very 
 little folk — Frazeor, and Edward, and Meriel, and Char- 
 lotte, and Stan wood : 
 
 " Where did you get your eyes so blue ? " 
 " Out of the sky as I came through." 
 
 As a scientific biogenesis this Socratic creed may leave 
 something to be desired ; but it expresses the Bible truth — 
 the truth which, by exclusion, is thus far the established 
 truth of science, that life is from God ; and it teaches 
 this truth to the child by a pointed, definite, and remem- 
 ieraUe statement. 
 
 Nay, further. It is not only that the baby soul could 
 know nothing of hereditary transmission, but the scien- 
 tist who knows all that man knows of heredity knows no 
 more than the little child, where did you get your eyes 
 so blue. 
 
 From your father ? No, the father's eyes are black. 
 From your grandfather, then ? No, the grandfather re- 
 tains his own eyes blue and bright. The scientist is pro- 
 foundly ignorant. Heredity is but ignorance writ large. 
 The sage knows no more than baby the principle on which 
 baby's eyes are blue and baby's brother's eyes are black. 
 It is only that so the Hidden and Absolute Force wrought 
 it out in the eternal order ; and so the baby prattles a 
 great truth with innocent lips. 
 
198 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 We should not frame a creed saying : 
 
 I believe that children are the gift of God, and that 
 the blue of their clear eyes is painted on their passage 
 through the earth's atmosphere. But if the little chil- 
 dren had made themselves into a Christian society to 
 help each other to be kind and true, I could with good 
 conscience sign even such a creed. I could sign it for 
 substance of doctrine, fully believing that all souls are 
 born of God and partake of the divine nature ; and I 
 could sign it for scientific truth if I were challenged. 
 For, as the human body is demonstrably composed of 
 ninety-five parts water and all parts earth, and as the 
 earth's atmosphere is largely composed of water, it must 
 be that the baby's blue eyes are gathered from the earthy 
 materials and chiefly from the watery atmosphere of the 
 planet on which it lives and from which its tiny body is 
 composed ! The only creed one could not sign would be 
 a creed precluding the order of nature. This creed would 
 simply give the order of nature, the divine order, under 
 a figure which the childish mind could follow. There- 
 fore, when the innocents lift their sweet voices in devout 
 inquiry : "Where did you get your eyes so blue ?" loud- 
 est and firmest shall ring my voice with theirs in confi- 
 dent, and I may say defiant, response and accord : "Out 
 of the sky as I came through ! " 
 
 The interpretation of the creed by the Andover pro- 
 fessors is not only reasonable — Pauline, Christian — it is 
 wholly in the direction toward which the faces of the 
 founders were turned. In rejecting the grosser, the more 
 ignorant interpretation, they are but treading a little fur- 
 ther the same path which the founders trod, and which 
 has been trodden by every intelligent professor since, and 
 by the whole Christian world so far as it has advanced in 
 spiritual and intellectual life. 
 
 A single example will give ample illustration. The 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION. I99 
 
 creed declares that the wicked at their death will '^with 
 devils be plunged into the lake that burneth with fire and 
 brimstone forever and ever." 
 
 The founders may well have taken this literall3\ 
 The founders of Andover were not disturbed by chem- 
 istry, geology, biology, ethnology, comparative philology. 
 They "overset" the Greek into English and left it there. 
 But do the most conservative of orthodoxy to-day believe 
 that brimstone is eternal ; that oxygenation can be applied 
 to soul ; that spirit can be subjected to the combustion of 
 sulphur ? Do they believe that the immaterial soul is 
 wedded to the chemical change of matter ? Mr. Samuel 
 Jones lately and greatly scared a Boston congregation 
 with a story of the Devil chasing a lost and departing 
 soul around a woodpile and through a window — which is 
 in line with a part of the Andover creed, but it is impos- 
 sible to believe that the Andover complainants would join 
 that hunting. Unless they would, unless they consider it 
 possible to plunge a disembodied soul into actual burning 
 brimstone, they have no ground for even a "friendly law- 
 suit" with the Andover professors. 'No member of an or- 
 thodox Congregational church who dissolves that brim- 
 stone in rhetoric can refuse to the Andover professors lib- 
 erty to put a rhetorical cast or a literary interpretation 
 upon any other word in the creed. One old departure 
 from the literal rendering carries all new departures with 
 it. There is no tribunal in the world which has authority 
 to say, Thus far shalt thou go and no further in latitude 
 of interpretation. 
 
 The professional agnostic affirms that barbarians in- 
 serted the text in the creed, that hypocrites teach it for 
 money, and that it is simply a lie. This disposition of 
 the matter has the merit of a simplicity so primitive as 
 to be archaic. The moderate and reasonable layman and 
 the '^ liberal " clergyman do not believe in the literal 
 
200 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 brimstone, yet consider that the trust fund by which the 
 seminary is supported demands literal brimstone, and, for 
 the sake of perfect honesty and to set a much-needed good 
 example, think it would be better to give up the be- 
 quest than to let the slightest suspicion of perversion of 
 funds go out to the world on account of the quality of the 
 brimstone. 
 
 These views are not more superficial than is to be ex- 
 pected from persons who are able to give only a swift 
 glance to what needs a close inspection. It may be re- 
 marked that one principle of the moderate layman is 
 fundamentally wrong. Avoidance of suspicion is not 
 one of the large bases of action. If it were, the rule of 
 a man's life would be changed from the certainty of his 
 own conscience and consciousness to the shifting con- 
 jectures of another man's ignorance. It would make the 
 ship sail for the wind and not for port. A ship heeds the 
 wind, but does not follow it. A man heeds suspicion, but 
 is not dominated by it. It may be his primal duty to dis- 
 regard it. It is never his duty to do one wrong thing 
 in order to avoid the suspicion of doing another. 
 
 Conservative orthodoxy under stress of science weakens 
 a little and puts the brimstone into a rhetorical figure, 
 but beyond that refuses to go. It gives way on one 
 word, but utterly declines to permit any one to give way 
 on another. It sees that science, chemistry, metaphys- 
 ics, have made brimstone not only impossible, but ridicu- 
 lous as a corner-stone of theology ; but forever is a term 
 of another world, beyond the domain of science, incapable 
 of proof or disproof, and on that it makes a stand. 
 
 Professor Park emphasizes the permanency of the An- 
 dover creed as a necessary condition of the original com- 
 promise by which it was adopted. But what did the 
 founders mean by "permanency"? Their constitution 
 declared in 1807 that the seminary should be forever con- 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION. 201 
 
 ducted and governed in conformity to certain principles, 
 one of which was the Westminster Catechism. But anon 
 the original founders learned that the Hopkinsians were 
 about to establish another seminary in Newbury, and 
 with a great deal more money, which money the Audo- 
 verians were exceedingly anxious to get hold of. The 
 Hopkinsians were just as sturdily determined to keep 
 hold of it themselves. Then began a struggle of the 
 giants. Thirty-six times drove Eliphalet Pearsons over 
 the hills of Andover and along the winding roads to 
 Newbury after that money. Do I mean to insinuate that 
 he was mercenary ? Not in the least. I would have 
 driven over with him the whole thirty-six times rather 
 than he should not have got it — rather than have seen 
 one starveling seminary pushing a feeble growth in An- 
 dover and another in Newbury. 
 
 The perseverance of the saints prevailed, but it pre- 
 vailed by a compromise. There was to be a new creed. 
 The catechism was to be mitigated and modified. Is 
 that an adamantine permanency ? Is that an emphatic 
 forever ? 
 
 Even this permanency did not endure. Between the 
 years 1808 and 1826 the professors were required merely 
 to declare their belief in the creed without reference to 
 the catechism. Between 1826 and 1839 they were re- 
 quired to declare their belief in the creed, loith reference 
 to the catechism. In 1842 the associate professors were 
 not required to declare their belief in anything more than 
 the catechism. Their "forever," it will thus be seen, 
 was of but a year's duration, and their "permanency" 
 had a way of skipping like lambs. If their "forever" 
 was so very fleeting, why must we make it eternal ? What 
 they did, we must assume they meant to do. What they 
 did was to strike as nearly as possible an average on which 
 all Christians could meet. 
 
202 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 " The Andover statutes expressly forbid the retention 
 in office of any professor who does not continue to 
 approve himself *a man of sound and orthodox prin- 
 ciples of divinity, agreeably to the system of evangelical 
 doctrines contained ^>^ the Westminster Assemhhfs Short- 
 er Catechism.^ ^^ But Dr. Park said to Dr. Cod man that he 
 never believed, and never would believe, the doctrine 
 taught in No. 82 of the Assembly's Catechism. How 
 could they let in Professor Park ? 
 
 " We have always understood the visitors to hold," 
 reply the authorities, *^ that any deviations from the exact 
 letter of the creed which did not impair its evangelical 
 character were permissible, and that it was because Pro- 
 fessor Park's deviations were such that they were per- 
 mitted. It is because later ones do not seem to be such 
 that they are objected to." 
 
 It is thus seen that even the Professor Park orthodoxy 
 does not demand strict adherence to the letter of the 
 creed, but only to sucli letters of the creed as itself shall 
 select. It permits departure from brimstone and No. 82 — 
 the things which Professor Park has been educated out of, 
 but beyond Professor Park it is a breach of trust to pass. 
 
 The present Andover professors are only doing a little 
 more of the same work which their predecessors wrought 
 powerfully in their day. They not only permit the 
 revelation of geology to illuminate the revelation of 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, but they are studying it in the 
 light of heredity and history. When the old orthodoxy 
 explains that fire and brimstone mean that the soul of 
 the incorrigibly wicked will be as exquisitely tortured as 
 would be the body by fire, new orthodoxy sorrowfully 
 admits it, but remembers that the sting of death is sin. 
 The soul enslaved through all its life by sin, the soul 
 that has persistently violated the law, disobeyed the order, 
 destroyed the harmony of the universe, may, in the re- 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION. 203 
 
 vealing light of death, see itself so clearly, see the order 
 of heaven so clearly, as to be deyoured with shame and 
 self-contempt — a shame and contempt more biting and 
 burning than the matter-entangled spirit can conceive. 
 The light from which it could hide behind the flesh it 
 can not avoid when the flesh is laid off. Light which is the 
 life of the healthy eye is agony to the diseased eye. But 
 death itself is to be swallowed up in victory. Is it not 
 possible, asks the larger hope — not seeing the way, seeing 
 only perturbations of the divine harmony which seem 
 to mean that there must be a way, because the divine 
 harmony can not be perturbed — is it not possible that this 
 spiritual shame shall presently destroy shameworthiness 
 and work out spiritual purification ? 
 
 President Park emphasizes the difference in position 
 of the respective antagonists by declaring that he only 
 revolted against the '^ summarily expressed" doctrines of 
 the catechism, whereas President Smyth flies out from the 
 traces on those doctrines as ** particularly expressed " in 
 the creed. His statement is as convincing as William Lloyd 
 Garrison's avowal of fatherly impartiality when he used 
 to declare to his boys that he loved all his children alike — 
 especially Fanny ! The great professor, balancing him- 
 self a-tiptoe on his slender adverb and calling aloud to 
 orthodoxy and heterodoxy to behold 
 
 " On what a narrow neck of land, 
 'Twixt two unbounded seas / stand ! " 
 
 seems a very Blondin of acrobatic theology. But we, of the 
 weak and wicked world— no Blondins— need a firmer foot- 
 hold, and such foothold the founders furnish ur. It is 
 by no second thought, or strained construction, or late 
 discovery, that the Andover professors hold their places. 
 They are in the places appointed them by the founders 
 themselves. They are there by a principle set in the 
 solid base and actual substructure of the creed. That 
 
204 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 creed oi^ens with a declaration whicli not only justifies 
 the professors in holding their places, but which imposes 
 upon them the obligation to hold their places against all 
 such efforts to destroy their incumbency ; which consti- 
 tutes it indeed a betrayal of trust, a dishonor to the 
 founders to withdraw. This declaration embodies a prin- 
 ciple which must last so long as time lasts, and can only 
 be dismissed, if even then, by the wreck of matter and 
 the crash of worlds. 
 
 By the terms of the creed, "Every professor shall, on 
 the day of his inauguration, publicly make and subscribe 
 a solemn declaration of his faith in divine revelation and 
 in the fundamental and distinguishing doctrines of the 
 Gospel as expressed in the following creed, which is sup- 
 ported by the infallible revelation which God constantly 
 makes of himself in his works of creation, providence, 
 and redemption." 
 
 This principle is broader and deeper than any item of 
 the creed, because it underlies them all. It is the rule 
 by which every one of them is to be tested. It is the 
 foundation upon which they must all stand. 
 
 First is required — Faith in divine revelation. 
 
 Second — On this infallible revelation the creed stands. 
 By this revelation the creed is supported. Therefore the 
 creed is binding just so far as this revelation binds it, and 
 no further. The reason of the creed is in its harmony 
 with revelation. If in any point it diverges from revela- 
 tion it becomes void, by the will and provision of the 
 founders. 
 
 Third — This infallible revelation is not a completed 
 thing, a fixed quantity. It is a revelation which God is 
 "constantly" making. Therefore it is a progressive 
 revelation. Therefore the creed must change to con- 
 form to the changing revelation. There is no meaning 
 to the word constantly, unless it means this. Language 
 
SPIRITUAL UEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION. 205 
 
 is incapable of being used in eyidence, nnless constantly 
 is a word of process. To say that God is constantly 
 making a revelation of himself, and yet that our knowl- 
 edge of him must never increase and our belief regarding 
 him must never change, is only absurdity. The found- 
 ers gave the creed, which, in their view, formulated the 
 revelation that had been made up to their time ; but they 
 required the professors to swear that they would explain 
 the Scriptures to their pupils with integrity and faithful- 
 ness ^'according to the best light God shall give we." 
 
 And in full vievv of this lucid oath, pledging the teach- 
 ers forever to an extraordinary generous seeking and dif- 
 fusing of light, Judge Hoar stands up before the Supreme 
 Court of Massachusetts and likens the Andover Seminary 
 to a blind asylum whose provisions require that its 
 teachers should be always blind ! The founders may 
 admit, he says, that light is a blessing, but their statutes 
 forbid the professors to give it to their pupils ! 
 
 The learned, brilliant, and fascinating judge is so 
 captivated by the humorous possibilities of the situation 
 that he neglects the serious side. To him the sturdy re- 
 sistance of the professors seems like the prolonged struggle 
 of a cat against her captors. His feline figure suggests 
 other felicities, for he brings to the question only the 
 antics of a frolicsome kitten over a ball of twine. He is 
 charmed by the roll and the snarl, butt and rebutter, and 
 he curvets into a thousand graceful and amusing atti- 
 tudes ; but on the real and abiding issues involved he has 
 not taken the trouble to give himself or the Supreme 
 Court any more enlightenment than the kitten has on 
 spherical geometry or the angles of incidence and reflec- 
 tion. 
 
 In imposing revelation as the basis of the creed, and in 
 stipulating a recognition that God is ''constantly" mak- 
 ing this revelation, the founders, by inevitable implica- 
 
206 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 tion, not only warrant, but impose, constant change in 
 the creed in order to conform to every fresh revelation. 
 This is no new doctrine. This is no new departure. 
 Augustine says the same thing : When they say a thing is 
 not rightly done if it be changed, truth, on the contrary, 
 l^rotests that it is not rightly done if it he not changed ; 
 because, in both cases, it will be rightly done if the dif- 
 ference be regulated according to the difference in the 
 circumstances. 
 
 Schopenhauer alludes to the same inevitable inherent 
 advance of truth when he says '^she enjoys but a short 
 time of trial between two long eras — in the first of which 
 she is condemned as paradoxical ; in the last, despised as 
 trivial." In the Bible story we have seen that the notion 
 of blood atonement was so deeply rooted in the human 
 mind that ages upon ages could not dig it out. The 
 truth that there could be any remission of sins without 
 blood was condemned by the world as impossible. Finally 
 came Christ himself, the well-beloved Son of God — Em- 
 manuel, God with us — preaching the doctrine of repeiit- 
 ance for the remission of sins — at-one-ment without blood, 
 reconciliation to God by reformation ; and that doctrine 
 has so supplanted the doctrine of blood atonement that 
 repentance atonement seems a commonplace. Christ came 
 into the world just to teach repentance for remission of 
 sin, we say — that is absurd ! He did not come for such 
 a little thing as that. As Schopenhauer says, the great 
 truth is despised as trivial. And we go to work and in- 
 vent some clumsy and impossible mechanical and mer- 
 cantile contract between the Father and the Son to make 
 Christ's mission seem worth while. 
 
 The Andover founders specified the sources whence 
 revelation might be expected, so that there can be no 
 mistake ; and these sources they place on a level in point 
 of authority. 
 
SPIRITUAL HEAT CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION. 207 
 
 Works of Creation : This includes every possible dis- 
 covery of truth by study of the material universe till time 
 shall be no more. Whatever light shall be thrown upon 
 earth or stars from geology, biology, astronomy, chemis- 
 try, the founders welcome. Whatever illustrates the real 
 mode of creation, the properties of matter, they accept. 
 For all the discoveries and utilities of steam, electricity, 
 the story of the rocks apd the suns, the suggestions of 
 the skeleton and the embryo, they made room, only ask- 
 ing that it be a revelation of God— that is, truth. No 
 Darwin, or Huxley, or Tyndall, past, present, or future, 
 can ever climb outside the scope of those Andover found- 
 ers, whom we in our shallow arrogance have called " iron- 
 bound," but whose principle, inspired of the Holy Spirit, 
 is as flexile as life itself. It may well be that they did 
 not know — though it may well be that they did divine — 
 the full scope of their words, but ever the promised re- 
 ward of them who speak and do the best they know, is 
 that they shall follow on to know the Lord. 
 
 Eevelation in Providence : This includes the whole 
 history of humanity — language, race, growth, migration, 
 the rise and fall of nations, and of men, from the first 
 rude trace of primeval man upon the earth to the last item 
 in the morning newspaper. The present is photograph- 
 ing itself to the student with a minuteness never excelled. 
 Into the past, scientist, antiquarian, Egyptologist, are 
 searching with an enthusiasm constantly increasing under 
 success, and a success ever conquering fresh advantages. 
 But whatever revelation God has made or may make of 
 himself in his relations to men — through flint knife, or 
 exhumed statue, or uncovered tile, or deciphered record, 
 or discovered manuscript, or long-buried city — the found- 
 ers of Andover Seminary made provision for it all in the 
 opening sentence, the ground plan of their creed. 
 
 Eevelation of Kedemption brings us to the culmination 
 
208 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 of all revelation — in Jesus Christ our Lord — the Holy 
 Spirit of prophecy ; the immanent Deity — God with us — 
 Emmanuel. The written word remains. No addition can 
 be made to the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. 
 Therefore the reyelation which God is constantly making 
 of himself in redemption must be through new light 
 thrown on the Bible, new light shining upon its interpre- 
 tation from the new revelation of himself through his 
 works of creation and providence, through science and 
 history. For this also the founders made room in that 
 profound and wonderful opening sentence of their ^Mron- 
 bound " creed — a sentence which binds them, and binds 
 us, not with iron, but with the elasticity and strength of 
 the interstellar ether to every sphere of truth that shall 
 swing out into the light of new knowledge henceforth for 
 evermore. 
 
 For the Andover professors to give up their seminary 
 would be to give up the inspiration of the fathers to the 
 limitations of the sons ; would be to relinquish light to 
 darkness, breadth to narrowness. Heaven's flash of radiance 
 to earth's brooding obscurity. It would be to snatch from 
 the founders the glory of their crown, to hide its splendor 
 beneath the debris of our own mechanisms. The obstruc- 
 tionists may succeed, but it will be temporarily. The 
 Supreme Court of Massachusetts may turn their faces 
 from the light, but the court of last resort is not even in 
 Massachusetts. If this age can not discern Heaven's 
 shining, the next age will. It is better to fail in a good 
 cause than to succeed in a bad one. But final failure is 
 not. Already, beautiful upon the mountains, may be 
 seen the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings. All 
 the air is alive and astir with the breath and blossom of 
 spring. 
 
CIIAPTEFw IX. 
 
 THE SECTAEIAN ARGUMENT. 
 
 Around a family table, tvhere debale is always in order, if 
 sometimes in disorder— the disorder of perfect freedom— the Sun- 
 day luncheon was once diversified by a lively discussion of the 
 sermon that had Just been preached in the home pulpit by a 
 rather distinguished stranger. From this especial sermon the talk 
 wandered on to the nature, object, and origin of the sermon in 
 general and its place in the Church, and thence to the Church and 
 its mission. 
 
 An hour afterward a young man ivho had been one of the most 
 interested disputants put into the hands of another and an equally 
 interested disputant a paper containing his " addenda " to the dis- 
 cussion. Tliis paper, which I have called " An Argument for Episco- 
 pacy,'' noivj^rinted for the first time, and the following paper, ''An 
 Argument for Co7igregationalism:' pertineiit to the same occasion, 
 were ivritten without Jcnoicledge each of the other's writing Ihe 
 second paper was subsequently prepared for publication. The first 
 paper I have not had the courage or the desire to alter, even so far as 
 to change the conversational and familiar tone belonging to its pri- 
 vate purpose. It was but incidentally preserved, and, coming to light 
 now, is presented to the Bible Class-all of whom were the ivriters 
 friends-as a personal and pertinent incident, which they will be 
 glad to learn; an unexpected voice, which the class ivill 
 
 » Hold, not as wise, or no, or out of place, but dear, 
 Because the lijis are no more here:' 
 
 The young man was not by profession a churchman. From a 
 child he had known the Holy Scriptures, had devoutly accepted their 
 doctrines, and had faithfully followed their precepts in a ^ffl'll' 
 As son, brother, friend, he was not only irreproachable, but altogether 
 delightful. In every intellectual aspect his early promise was al- 
 U 
 
210 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 ready rich in performance. To weakness, to suffering of every soriy 
 he gave quick, enduring sympathy, prompt and efficient succor. 
 Brilliant, ma7ily, chivalrous, elegant, sought at club and banquet 
 and every form of social festivity and mental contest, discreet and 
 able in business, with great aptitude for great affairs, yet wise and 
 patient in the smallest details, home was the field of his richest and 
 dearest life. 
 
 When the Bible Class began to be talked of, he promptly and gay- 
 ly announced, " / shall attend ! " 
 
 Before the Bible Class coidd meet he had vanished from our be- 
 wildered vision ; he had entered upon the activities of the spiritual 
 world. 
 
 To him, gentleman of the old school, knight of the new time ; 
 
 To him whose name ivill not any more be spoken among living 
 
 men, a living name ; 
 
 To him who gathered into his short life the love of many a 
 
 lifetime ; 
 
 To 
 
 WALKER BLAINE, 
 I consecrate his own. 
 
 REASONS FOR EPISCOPACY, 
 
 I WISH to set myself right in an argument which I 
 advanced, and I prefer to put it in writing. What I 
 meant to say is this : 
 
 What the English call dissenting churches, sacrifice 
 service to preaching. This is a wrongful view of relig- 
 ious worship, if not of religion itself, and will lead, if it 
 has not already led, to harm. Your position is that if a 
 congregation wish preaching, let them have it ; after all, 
 it is a mere form and can make little difference. It is 
 not an essential thing — part of the being, existence, life 
 itself of religion. I do not think it is, and I suppose 
 all people who are religious, no matter what their sect — 
 all people, even, who may be disbelievers, provided they 
 are good and inclined to good things (which, after all, 
 leaves out chiefly the criminal classes) — are agreed as to 
 
TUE SECTARIAN ARGUMENT. g^ 
 
 the duty of man ; unite in believing that conduct is the 
 greater part of life ; that to work toward righteousness, 
 to lead pure and upright lives by rules clearly recognized, 
 known to the Christian religion and easily ascertained 
 by every one and any one, is the way rightly to attain 
 the three fourths of life which constitutes conduct. Her- 
 bert Spencer, working without aid of Scripture, studying 
 solely the development of man morally and mentally; 
 Matthew Arnold, critically examining the writings of 
 the Old and New Testaments — traveling by different roads, 
 will find the same end to their journey. This, it seems 
 to me, is perhaps the strongest proof of the truth of 
 Christianity : that it laid down moral laws and essayed 
 an explanation of the true inwardness of life, which is 
 satisfactory and satisfying to the highest form of modern 
 critical thought, to material as well as to psychical phi- 
 losophy. That is why a gross wrong must be done, and 
 is done, when a man in the pulpit tries to prove the truth 
 of St. John's gospel by so barren and unsatisfactory an 
 exegesis as we heard this morning. But this is not what 
 I desire to discuss. 
 
 That the Congregationalist and Presbyterian and other 
 churches, which have no established form of worship or 
 formulated prayer, do attach great, the chief, importance 
 to the sermon, it is unnecessary to demonstrate. I as- 
 sume this, but it is abundantly shown by the way in 
 which churches ordinarily conduct their '^settlement" 
 of a minister. The various candidates appear and preach, 
 the call is extended, and the minister settled chiefly by 
 reason of the sermon ; as a rule, churches do not even 
 hear persons whose religious views on essential points are 
 not in harmony with the professed views of the denomina- 
 tion. Possibly the Methodists differ, for there a minister 
 is, I think, assigned by the bishop, or conference, or 
 somebody, for a definite term of years ; but in modern 
 
212 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 practice I am told that if a congregation desires the min- 
 ister to remain, and the minister desires to stay with the 
 congregation, the conference ordinarily conforms to their 
 united wish. 
 
 A stronger argument may be made against my views 
 by the assertion that the very same practice of ordination 
 prevails in the Episcopal church. Possibly it does. I 
 do not know, but I assume that it does. The difference 
 is here. Your Congregationalist church in all outward 
 matters depends for the beauty and satisfying nature of 
 its service upon the minister. This so far as adults even 
 are concerned. If a Canon Farrar brings learning, elo- 
 quence, and sim2:>licity to Hamilton or to Augusta, un- 
 doubtedly his gi'acious prayers and earnest and eloquent 
 sermons will do great good, especially the sermons, just 
 as they now do great good in his own church ; but if a 
 man is settled in Augusta or in Hamilton whose faulti- 
 ness of logic and want of mental tact are apparent to a 
 large part of his auditors, his sermon and the whole 
 service will at least do no good to them. On the other 
 hand, in the Episcopal church, his capacity for doing 
 harm, to say the least, is lessened. To use Arnold's 
 mathematics, three fourths of the service in that church 
 is contained in the prayer-book and lessons — one fourth 
 in the discourse. The converse proportion seems to me 
 true in the other churches. 
 
 To set forth certain reasons why I believe that more 
 attention to service, less to sermon, is better : People pre- 
 fer the sermon ; why ? Because of wrong thinking ; be- 
 cause originally dissent arose on matters of doctrine, and 
 they desired an exposition of doctrines which they had 
 come to regard as very precious. Scott's David Deans 
 occurs to me, and the type of the Scotch covenanters, 
 running through his books. Next, they came to regard 
 the sermon as exceedingly important, because they were 
 
THE SECTARIAN ARGUMENT. 213 
 
 taught by their fathers to regard'it thus ; and then the 
 minister also began to be regarded as something very 
 sacred. The early Scotch covenanters just mentioned 
 did not invest the expositor of their doctrine with a 
 sacred character. He was the mouth-piece for the doc- 
 trine dear to them, employed as a pleader, an advocate, 
 because polemically learned, just as a lawyer is employed 
 to mend a title or defend- a suit ; I imagine they regarded 
 him as little more. But the position of the minister in 
 a Protestant dissenting congregation became something 
 far higher. It would be a subject of curious study to 
 examine historically the growth of the New England 
 clergy to power and to reverence ; to a position in the 
 view of their congregation far greater than rector or 
 curate, though he is set apart and consecrated by those 
 on whom apostolic succession has fallen ; to a position 
 as great and as influential as the priest of the Romish 
 church. 
 
 For the reasons why I think men are wrong in making 
 the sermon— not service— essential, let me say, first, the 
 great need of the Church is to influence the young to 
 right living. If the Church can teach the youth to con- 
 duct themselves rightly, to think honestly and justly, can 
 make them good men and women, it has accomplished a 
 great deal. All that Christ required of the young ruler 
 was to obey the ten commandments, and it was only upon 
 the youth's earnest protestation that he had done so from 
 infancy, and that this did not satisfy him, that he was 
 told to sell all that he had. It may be well for the Church 
 to have an ideal of utter self-abnegation, but it will only 
 reach it by the practical method of teaching its followers 
 to obey the decalogue. Personally I have been at church 
 five hundred times, to guess roughly. I began going 
 youno- and I continued— at school and college compulso- 
 rily, and now rather carelessly. How many of the scr- 
 
214 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 mons which I have heard or which were preached at me 
 do I remember ? The ablest men in the Congregation- 
 alist denomination thundered twice every Sunday from 
 thirty minutes to an hour, each at a crowd of two or 
 three hundred school-boys. How much did any of 
 those boys remember ? I have heard five hundred long 
 prayers, as the boys at school called them. How much 
 do I remember of them ? How much did I understand ? 
 Only enough to be sure that never once have I heard a 
 prayer as beautiful as that of the prayer-book of the 
 Episcopal church ; only enough to know that not one 
 prayer put forth what I rationally might desire as well 
 as does that beautiful service. Do you think that a child 
 or boy could have gone to hear the service of the Church 
 of England as many as five hundred times and not have 
 borne in mind forever prayer and litany, the ten com- 
 mandments, the two which "our Lord Jesus Christ 
 saitb," which Dean Stanley so rightly commends the 
 American church for reading each Sunday after the 
 other ten ? The strongest associations which I have per- 
 sonally are connected with certain old hymns — not the 
 words, perhaps, but the tunes, *^In the cross of Christ I 
 glory," for instance. Fairly stating the case, then, which 
 is all I wish to do, is not this true ? The strangely bar- 
 ren, hebdomadally varying character of the service of the 
 Protestant church leaves little or no impression on the 
 mind of the youth ; that of a settled form where worship 
 is made predominant does. The sermons they share in 
 common. 
 
 Is not the advantage of impression and association 
 and remembrance in after life with the church which 
 magnifies service, accentuates worship, at the expense of 
 homily or sermon ? 
 
 How is it with a church for older people ? I take the 
 broad ground that the necessity of a church, the work 
 
THE SECTARIAN ARGUMENT. 215 
 
 which a church is called upon to do, is to strengthen 
 men in habits of right living, in worshiping God and 
 keeping his commandments ; and that this is best done 
 by impressing these lessons. If the simile of ^^ Except 
 ye become as a little child " means anything to me when 
 I reason about it, it means that I must be as free from 
 prejudice or taint or misconception or misconstruction 
 as a little child ; as free from error and as ready to learn. 
 If you can not teach a child the truths of religion and 
 the Bible, the comparison is worthless. So that, after 
 all, the essential truths of Christianity may be learned in 
 infancy ; and can not be better learned, but possibly may 
 be better understood, in maturity. The work of the 
 Church, as the work of the school, must be done among 
 those of tender years. Reasoning from personal experi- 
 ence (in this instance a fair method), a church with a 
 beautiful free worship which impresses itself on child- 
 hood has the greater chance for good. The seed may 
 fall on stony places; but more seed falls. I do not 
 argue in favor of absolute fixed forms. Language may 
 change, and if the prayer for deliverance from sudden 
 death has acquired a new and wrong meaning, write 
 "violent death." I do not argue against extempora- 
 neous prayer, though personally it seems to me that 
 the prayer-book is comprehensive enough for all pe- 
 titioners. But I do vote earnestly in favor of a church 
 which emphasizes the worship of God, and which gives 
 to worship, in the sense of prayer and thanksgiving, 
 the chief place. 
 
21G A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 AN ARGUMENT FOR CONGREGATIONALISM. 
 
 While we were discussing in the Bible Class the doc- 
 trines and the dissensions of Presbyterians and Congrega- 
 tionalists, I thought I discerned a light in some faces as 
 of triumph. Indeed, distinctly in my hearing, if not di- 
 rectly addressed to my hearing, came the exultant sub- 
 tones : ** There is nothing for it but to join the Episcopal 
 church and find rest." 
 
 Perhaps no better reply can be given than the one 
 that was given on the spot by a steadfast Presbyterian 
 of the highest rank in the world : ** You have just as 
 questionable doctrines as we, only you let them alone !" 
 Certainly, no doctrine of any sect can be more difficult to 
 prove than this, for instance, which was established as an 
 article of religion by the bishops, the clergy, and the laity 
 of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States 
 of America, in the year of our Lord 1801, and is bound 
 up in the Book of Common Prayer to-day : 
 
 Christ did truly rise again from death and took again 
 his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining 
 to the perfection of man's nature ; wherewith he ascended 
 into heaven, and there sitteth until he return to judge all 
 men at the last day. 
 
 But to the glory of the Episcopal church let it be re- 
 membered that she also is a church militant. Her Thirty- 
 nine Articles bristle with her flags of ancient war. Within 
 the memory of men not yet old, her right and left grap- 
 pled in the fierce contest of utter sincerity, and. Heaven 
 be praised ! the right prevailed. Men who were then, so 
 to speak, on trial for life, occupy now posts of honor on 
 the walls of her Zion. It is not necessary to join the 
 Episcopal church to secure peace ; but it is edifying to 
 observe how, in the past, the Episcopal church has con- 
 quered a peace. 
 
THE SECTARIAX ARGUMENT. 217 
 
 At present, however, let us observe, in the interests of 
 inter-churcli comity and of general intelligence, that 
 the questions between these churches are chiefly of polity 
 and not of doctrine. The Congregationalist by convic- 
 tion is a Congregationalist, because Congregationalism, 
 considered as a policy, not as a creed, seems to combine 
 in the happiest proportions individual religious freedom 
 with social religious organization. 
 
 Congregationalism is sometimes said to be that form 
 of ecclesiastical government which is most nearly allied 
 to, and which most closely harmonizes with, the Republi- 
 canism that constitutes our national political government. 
 
 This, however, is hardly demonstrable. Congregation- 
 alism is modeled upon the Southern idea of a confeder- 
 acy, rather than upon the Northern idea of a nation. In 
 Congregationalism all power inheres in the congregation. 
 Each church is a separate and independent body, con- 
 ducting its own business without reference to any higher 
 body, without ultimate appeal beyond itself ; calling coun- 
 cils, but only for decorum ; combining with other churches 
 in a conference, but only for conference ; organizing it- 
 self with others in a national council, but only for coun- 
 sel. In none of these bodies does a church relinquish a 
 particle of its self-government to any other body, either 
 in respect of belief or action. The conference may, for 
 difference of creed, withdraw fellowship from some 
 church. The council may, for lack of confidence, refuse 
 to assist at the installation of some minister. But none 
 the less does the particular church remain a Congrega- 
 tional church, organized and perfect in all its parts ; and 
 none the less may a church insist on installing and retain- 
 ing the pastor of its choice without forfeiting its claims 
 to be a Congregational church. All that it forfeits is its 
 place in the association of Congregational churches. So 
 far as they are concerned it is independent, but so far as 
 
218 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 its own constitution is concerned it is Congregational. A 
 church may at any moment secede from any conference, 
 withdraw its representation in national council, refuse to 
 act in accordance with the advice of a local council — and 
 no council, local or national, is empowered or pretends to 
 do more than advise — and the worst and most that can 
 happen is that it may cease to be a member of a local as- 
 sociation and become an independent church. It in no 
 way loses its entity as a Congregational church. All its 
 organization is still complete within itself. Incorporation 
 into any larger body is purely voluntary, does not affect 
 the constitution of the larger body, is a relation which 
 can be assumed and resigned at will. The departure of 
 any church does not organically rend the body from 
 which it secedes. The advent of any church in no way 
 constitutes the larger body an organism. A conference 
 or a council is but a voluntary assembly of churches, a 
 congregation of congregations present by representatives. 
 A church is but a voluntary assembly of believers united 
 by their belief. There is thus no Congregational church, 
 while there are a great many Congregational churches. 
 In this, therefore, it is unlike our national government, 
 that it is, in any combination, but a collection of organ- 
 isms of equal rank. These are never, like the States of 
 the Union, welded into one, a different and a higher body, 
 the nation. The Congregation alist is strictly and simply 
 a home ruler. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone speaks of the church, of the priesthood 
 or ministry, of the sacraments, as the established machin- 
 ery of Christian training, as the wings of the soul ; but 
 sometimes the machinery becomes too heavy for the 
 motor. The church and the priesthood and the sacra- 
 ments shut the soul away from God rather than interpret 
 God to the soul. The wings are wooden and crush the 
 spirit down when it would soar toward its source. 
 
THE SECTARIAN ARGUMENT. 219 
 
 Christ established no church, neither Catholic nor 
 Congregational, nor any church between the two. All 
 ecclesiasticism is of human origin. Christ left undisturbed 
 all the mechanism of human society — ecclesiastical, politi- 
 cal, domestic, friendly. More than that, he repeatedly and 
 j^ublicly called attention to the fact. He protested that 
 he did not come to destroy the law or the prophets. He 
 preached in the synagogues already built ; he entered with 
 ready sympathy into the social festivities to which he was 
 invited ; he loyally paid tribute to the rulers under whom 
 he found himself ; but he enunciated princij^les under 
 whose working the law became only a shadow and a remi- 
 niscence — synagogues crumbled, tyrants fell, festivals were 
 purified. 
 
 Neither one church nor another, therefore, can be jus- 
 tified in claiming to be the original Church of Christ. 
 Congregationalism finds its warrant — a true warrant — in 
 the promise of Christ : Where two or three are gathered 
 together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. 
 That is what a church establishment is for — to retain 
 the spirit of Christ on the earth, to diffuse the spirit of 
 Christ through the earth, to draw the kingdoms of this 
 world into the one kingdom of our Lord, the Kingdom 
 of Heaven. 
 
 We have the assurance of Christ that no comi^licated 
 machinery is necessary, no Synod or Presbytery or Hie- 
 rarchy, Episcopate or Bishopric, or See or sermon. A 
 church is the simplest possible form of organization. It 
 is only to be on the spot. It is only to come together in 
 the name of Christ, and Christ will be there. Every little 
 country school-house prayer-meeting, every pioneer group 
 gathering itself in a log hut on the outskirts of civiliza- 
 tion, can make itself into a church complete in all its 
 parts, because the only condition is that it shall assemble 
 in the name of Christ— not in the name of rivalry or 
 
220 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 faction, ambition to establish its own sect, or dissatisfac- 
 tion with the other minister, or determination to have its 
 own way — but in the name of Christ. This is the con- 
 dition which men must fulfill. Christ has promised to 
 fulfill the other condition. He will be present. 
 
 The name of Christ — name which is above every name ; 
 name in which lies all our hope, perfection of the life 
 that now is, promise of the life that is to come — how many 
 crimes are committed, how much of selfishness, self-will, 
 vulgarity, and vice broods under that holy name ! But 
 there is none other name given under Heaven among men 
 whereby we can be saved, and upon this rock must the 
 true Church be built. 
 
 Congregationalism acknowledges the invisible Christ 
 as the only church foundation, and builds upon this foun- 
 dation no visible church universal after the fashion of the 
 kingdoms of this world, but recognizes that the true 
 church universal must be invisible and spiritual, after the 
 fashion of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 Any warrant for Congregationalism in the words of 
 Christ is not to be confounded with an imposition of 
 Congregationalism upon the world as the one imperative 
 divinely ordained church government. The context itself 
 shows that Christ did not in the text command or found 
 the establishment of a church, for he recognized a church 
 already existing. Before giving his disciples the assur- 
 ance of his presence at their gatherings, he had directed 
 them in a certain contingency to tell their troubles to the 
 Church. Therefore, a church must have been already 
 formed. What this church was, or on what principles 
 organized, we are not told. Probably it was in conform- 
 ity with Christ's subsequent assurance, which assurance 
 itself may have been but the stronger afiirmation of some 
 previous unrecorded *' seed-thought," for the word used 
 and translated church is defined to mean literally congre- 
 
THE SECTARIAN ARGUMENT. 221 
 
 gafion, any pitblic assemUy, It may mean, and has some- 
 times been supposed to mean, the Jewish Sanhedrim on 
 the one hand, or any assembly of devout men on the 
 other. 
 
 This declaration of Christ — that where two or three 
 are gathered together in the name of Christ, there will 
 Christ be in the midst — is no more a divine ordering of 
 Congregationalism as the .one eujoined Scriptural, eccle- 
 siastical polity, than is that other declaration — Think not 
 that I am come to destroy the laiu and the prophets ; I am 
 not come to destroy, hut to fulfill — an enforcement of the 
 perpetuity, the universal binding obligation of the law of 
 Moses. It is no more a divine ordering of Congregation- 
 alism than is that other declaration to Peter, Upon this 
 roch loill Ihuild my church, a divine ordering of the Eo- 
 man Catholic church as the one only true church. All 
 such interpretations seem equally and utterly foreign to 
 the true interpretation of Christ's life and teachings. 
 "We do not need to fall back upon the researches of learn- 
 ing, though they show us earlier manuscripts in which 
 the text "upon this rock will I build my church " is not 
 found. Granting the full text, the Roman Catholic in- 
 ference is only a little harder to draw than the Congre- 
 gational inference. Both are forced. !N"either follows of 
 its own accord. 
 
 We greatly weaken our cause when we found it on any 
 adventitious circumstance, on any isolated text, and not 
 on natural, eternal principles. We who worship God with 
 simple rites are too apt to sneer at ceremonials more mi- 
 nute and numerous than oui own ; but all ceremonial is 
 of human origin, of man's device. The posturings and 
 vestments of the Episcopal church, the altar and incense 
 of the Eoman Catholic church, we sometimes picture as 
 un-Christlike — pompous, worldly, not to say wicked addi- 
 tions to the simplicity, corruptions of the purity, of the 
 
222 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASa 
 
 true Church of Christ. But thej are not necessarily 
 wicked or wanton. True, Christ ordained no miter 
 or chasuble, cope or cassock, but neither did he ordain 
 the chorister, or the cushioned pews, or the silver com- 
 munion tankards of the Congregational churches. I sup- 
 pose the embroidered robes of the archbishop are more 
 like the parted garments and the allotted vesture of Cal- 
 vary than is the de rigueur black coat of the Congre- 
 gational minister. These things are absolutely human, 
 matters of taste, choice, discretion, adding an acquired 
 sacredness of years to what was originally in some cases 
 but commonplace every-day custom, and in others the 
 hallowed relic of an outworn and discarded faith. They 
 are important only in what they are not. They are 
 merely interesting in what they are. It is suggestive, it 
 is even thriUing, to reflect that in looking upon what 
 are sometimes uncivilly called the mummeries of Eoman 
 Catholic worship we are beholding the last faint and 
 fading traces of the worship of vanished peoples. If 
 early Christians gathered into Christianity pagan rites 
 which they could not wholly suppress, if they strove 
 steadfastly to empty these rites of the old errors and fill 
 and transfuse them with the new truths, who can say 
 that they were not wise, as well as pious, in so doing ? 
 Was it not the way of Moses ? Was it not the way of the 
 apostles, nay, of their master also ? If those new truths 
 are in time devitalized into new errors, is it not the way 
 of the world ? If, on the other hand, these ancient 
 rites are quick with somewhat that answers to human 
 need, an aid to devotion and reverence ; if some souls are 
 subdued to receptiveness, quiescence, submission by the 
 solemn ceremonial of the Eoman Catholic and the Epis- 
 copal churches, so that the bread of life is more readily 
 assimilated thereby, pure and devout Congregationalism 
 has with this no quarrel. Congregationalism denies only 
 
THE SECTARIAN ARGUMENT. 223 
 
 that these ai*e divinely ordained to the divine exclusion 
 of its own simpler rites and common garb. 
 
 Thus, also, Congregationalism recognizes the validity 
 of immersion as a sign of adhesion to the person and 
 teachings of Christ, while it rejects wholly the idea that 
 immersion was ordained by Christ, that the sprinkling of 
 water upon the forehead in the name of Christ is not an 
 equally valid sign, or that any application of water is 
 more than the mere outward token of inward and spirit- 
 ual grace, accepted by Christ, and, therefore, out of love 
 to him, adopted by his Church, but not enjoined by him 
 as an indispensable duty or an incomprehensible mys- 
 tery. The Congrcgationalist no more believes that it is 
 necessary to be plunged into a tank in order to be buried 
 with Christ in baptism than he believes a cup of wine to 
 be the blood of Christ because he said at the last supper : 
 This is my blood. He believes both constructions of 
 Scripture to be forced ; obstructions to truth and not 
 truth itself. 
 
 Congregationalism, as I understand it, is founded on 
 the nature of man as trained according to Scripture, and 
 marching in ecc\Gsiiistic\8m pari passu with its march in 
 science, in politics, and in the common arts of life. Con- 
 gregationalism, in the time of Christ, and in our own, is 
 in some sense a reaction against a too elaborate and tyran- 
 nical organization, a return to nature after the fatigues 
 of cumbrous form. The Hebraism of Christ's time was 
 an intricacy of generations, and bound upon the shoulders 
 of men burdens too heavy to be borne. Christ, not with 
 violence, but with gentle insinuation of truth, unloosed 
 those heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free. AYhcn 
 a Jewish preacher was to be installed with whatever detail 
 of their separating ritual and sacerdotal consecration, one 
 of the charges to the pastor was : ^^Take thou liberty to 
 teach what is boui^d and what is loose." Christ formu- 
 
224 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 lated no argument against this as a usurpation of divine 
 power, heaped upon it no denunciation, but to the little 
 listening group of unlettered fishermen, learning of him 
 to be meek and lowly in heart, he said quietly: *' "Whatso- 
 ever ye bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and what- 
 soever ye loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." It was 
 the indirect but complete annihilation of all the arro- 
 gant pretensions of the Jewish Church — priest and rabbi. 
 It was the unfrocking of the Jewish clergy. They had 
 become an absolute hierarchy. They claimed authority 
 over the Kingdom of Heaven, i:)ower to lay down its law, 
 to open and to close its doors. All this Jesus swept aw^ay 
 with the gentlest breath of his lips. In the Kingdom of 
 Heaven the greatest is not he who claims the most ; but 
 the greatest is as a little child. You, little ones, he seems 
 to say to his disciples, you ignorant but knowing me, you 
 are the real priesthood of my spiritual kingdom. You, 
 without synagogue, or ritual, or birthright of Levi, but 
 taught of me, you are the ones who have the secret of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. The Catholic church, founding on 
 this its claim to pronounce absolution, adopts the exact 
 idea which Christ indirectly condemned ; builds up its 
 close-fitting and far-reaching organization on the very 
 plan of the rejected Jewish priesthood. Christ denied 
 to any hierarchy the control of the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 making it the vested right of Peter and of the disciples, 
 uneducated fishermen, unconsecrated by form ; the vested 
 right of any two or three who should be gathered to- 
 gether in his name ; the vested right of any congregation 
 of believers, or, indeed, of any single believer, praying to 
 the Father in Heaven. 
 
 Congregationalism thus interposes the least possible 
 machinery between man and his Maker. The constant 
 tendency of mankind is to sacrifice unto the net and 
 burn incense to the drag — and a very good reason the 
 
THE SECTARIAN ARGUMENT. 225 
 
 prophet gives— because by them is their portion fat and 
 their meat plenteous. If, in addition to this, the net 
 and drag are made aesthetic, sonorous, magnificent with 
 all the splendor of wealth and culture, music, art, and 
 architecture, the danger of remembering the net alone 
 and forgetting him who giyeth all is greatly increased. 
 It is the aim of Congregationalism to use only such and 
 so much netting as may be necessary to catch men ; so 
 much form and ceremony as may be necessary to the 
 preservation of yalues, to the dissemination of truth ; as 
 much as is hinted at in the words and deeds of Christ ; 
 as much as is demanded in the Pauline requirement that 
 all things be done decently and in order. Congregation- 
 alism would have no organization for organization's sake, 
 but only so much as shall best secure the preaching and 
 practicing of the gospel. It sees in all Christ's teachings 
 a steadfast tendency against the machinery of the Jewish 
 church, a steadfast endeavor to place religion upon a spir- 
 itual and practical basis. Humanity is constantly asking : 
 Shall we worship the Father in this mountain or in Jeru- 
 salem ; by the Greek, or the Roman, or the English, or 
 the Presbyterian church, with priest or minister, with a 
 white neck-tie or a white surplice ? And Christ ever re- 
 plies : Neither here nor there, neither in one church nor 
 another, neither with robes nor bells, nor pulpit nor 
 order. All this is not Christianity. It is only cus- 
 tom, convenience — temporary, incidental, and altogether 
 changeable. Real worship is in spirit and in truth. If 
 the elaborate ecclesiasticisms of the world claim that they 
 are necessary to keep alive in men the sense of divinity ; 
 that the world needs, still, machinery even if it tends to 
 superstition ; that promulgation of the gospel must be by 
 intricate politics, checks and definitions, ranks and or- 
 ders, changing robes and sounding services — wheels within 
 wheels of command and subordination — why still has 
 
 15 
 
226 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 Congregationalism other work to do than dispute with 
 them. I think they are mistaken. I think a good deal 
 of their effectiveness is in danger of becoming sacrifice 
 unto the net and burnt-incense to the drag. I think it 
 is sometimes worshiping and serving organization more 
 than God. I think that, as a direct result, the church 
 which is the furthest removed from Congregationalism, 
 which is, perhaps, the most powerful, compact, complete 
 organization on the earth, reveals a tendency to sacrifice 
 principle to power ; not simply by the fact that its chil- 
 dren commit sin against its teachings as Congregational 
 sinners do against the teachings of their creeds, but that 
 it throws so ample a shelter of ecclesiasticism over indi- 
 vidual responsibility that it sometimes lulls the con- 
 science to stupor, where it should, instead, sting to re- 
 newing vigilance and vigor. As a result, side by side, 
 hand in hand with its Christian doctrines, its saintly 
 lives, its heavenly charities, go — not as in other churches, 
 dishonored and dragged, a body of death, but unnoted, 
 practices which a freer inward development under a less 
 rigid external imposition might reveal in their true light, 
 might detach and destroy. As a political force, as an ec- 
 clesiastical principality, as a kingdom of earth, that church 
 might thus become less powerful, but by the Christ stand- 
 ard it would be greater in the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 In all time-movements we must recognize the divine 
 hand, and Congregationah'sts bid God-speed to those who 
 follow the Master, even though they follow not us, even 
 though they sometimes double and turn upon us ; but 
 much of enginery seems not only to belong to and to 
 build up a kingdom of earth, rather than the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, it seems also to have a tendency to conceal the 
 real nature of the Kingdom of Heaven. Christ, leaving 
 the earth as a person, to remain forever upon it as a pres- 
 ence, as the Holy Spirit, emphasized but one mode of evan- 
 
THE SECTARIAN ARGUMENT. 227 
 
 gelization: " Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel 
 to every creature. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations." 
 
 Whenever an idea is sent fresh into the world, the 
 tendency is for it to stiffen at once into forms. The foot- 
 fall of Christ had hardly ceased upon the hills of Judca 
 before his spiritual church was loading itself down with 
 prescripts. Reason is constantly breaking forth into revo- 
 lution against prescription, and is no sooner free than 
 another system of prescription is constructed. It is the 
 mission of Congregationalism constantly to antagonize this 
 constant tendency — not to malign or traduce it, but to 
 moderate it to the lowest advantageous point. It is the mis- 
 sion of Congregationalism to keep as close as possible to the 
 Christ-idea. When the rest of the Avorld is swinging its 
 censer and broidering its garments in the name of Christ, 
 it is the part of Congregationalism to remind the world, 
 by example, indeed, rather than by precept, that this is 
 not Christianity. It may accompany worship, but wor- 
 ship is other than this. 
 
 Congregationalism can make no greater mistake than 
 to erect its simple and sensible forms into as rigid a frame- 
 work as that which incases, and sometimes imprisons, 
 other churches. As formalists. Congregation alists are 
 weak. There is no comparison between our severe serv- 
 ices and the sonorous, spectacular, and impressive ritual 
 of what are called the historic churches. Our strength lies 
 only in keeping close to the spirit and teachings of Christ. 
 Art and science and culture have done their utmost to 
 produce the solemn forms of a thousand years' growth. 
 We can have no hope of improving on that. These 
 churches are historic because they have cultivated those 
 qualities of human nature, love of beauty, music, senti- 
 ment, which answer most easily to cultivation. Our 
 church has been relatively inconspicuous in history be- 
 cause its chief appeal is to the reason, upon which indolent 
 
228 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 human nature is loath to rely, from whose cultivation it 
 largely shrinks. Christ makes a man judge for himself. 
 Man greatly prefers to put upon some one else the re- 
 sponsibility of judging for him. The history of Congre- 
 gationalism is a history of new departures. It began 
 fresh, pure, strong with the inspiring words of Christ. It 
 has begun afresh many time? since under the bold and 
 lofty impulse of clear thought and holy aspiration. It is 
 continually hardening into limits, fixity, death, but it 
 rises again with newness of life, and each time a little 
 higher, with a little more life than before. It will pre- 
 vail only with the prevalence of reason. Believing that 
 mankind is on the road from tutelage to self-government, 
 from the dominion of the animal to the dominion of 
 reason, and that man can best learn to use his reason by 
 using it, the Congregationalist takes courage. 
 
 It will readily be seen, as it naturally follows, that 
 while other churches may, in seasons of torpor, fall back 
 upon the embodied truth of their forms, Congregational- 
 ism, which has no embodied truth, must have its truth 
 always fluent to be vital. The historic churches may af- 
 ford to sleep, strong and confident, behind their barrier of 
 sentiment, their record of power, their store of litany and 
 liturgy and ritual, feeling that the wheels are still turn- 
 ing while they slumber. But Congregationalism has no 
 such barrier against the steady tide of advancing thought ; 
 has no such substitute for the steady working of the ran- 
 somed and regenerated reason. Unless one is free-minded, 
 active, receptive, with the windows of his soul — be they 
 large or small — wide open to the rays of the ever-rising 
 sun of righteousness, a Congregational church is no place 
 for him. Nothing is more unattractive, I might almost 
 say more repulsive, than the'meager formulas of Congrega- 
 tional worship in the hands of a pastor without thought. 
 If one's mind has touched its limits, if he is settled im- 
 
THE SECTARUN ARGUMENT. 
 
 229 
 
 movably on any creed whatever, if he pins his faith to 
 Scott, or Edwards, or Cahin, or Athanasius— to any 
 other than the one only name given under heaven among 
 men whereby we can be saved— Congregationalism is not 
 for him. Let him go into the historic churches, and slec}! 
 on there, and take his rest. In a Congregational church 
 he is losing all the good of their beautiful and imposing 
 ritual, of the obedience and decorum which they com- 
 mand. He is missing all the good of the free mental play, 
 the untrammeled spiritual growth, the incessant search 
 for truth, the development of the whole man which con- 
 stitutes the sole " reason to be " of Congregationalism. 
 
 Congregationalism is valuable only as it keeps the 
 human reason in close, sensitive, loving contact with the 
 divine reason. In constructing houses of refuge for the 
 repose of reason, it is the weakest of all earth's architects, 
 building but booths, always slight, sometimes uncouth, 
 which every wind of heaven may rock and rend. 
 
 Nor is this a discourteous reflection upon other 
 churches. That would be as foolish as un-Christian and 
 false. Great men have been nurtured in them all, but 
 is not greatness always Congregational ? Great men rise 
 above all denominational limits and appeal to the great con- 
 gregation, to the universal reason. The great man is, I 
 think, never great as a churchman. He is great outside 
 and above his church. Nay, he is even often at odds 
 with his church. Its bonds hang loosely on him, and 
 they who are held together only by bonds fear his bold, 
 free flight. His constituency ceases to be denominational, 
 ceases to be ecclesiastical, becomes the congregation of 
 believers throughout the world, whether Jew, or Roman- 
 ist, or Calvinist, or Scientist — men who keep bright the 
 lamp of thought, feeding its perpetual flame from that 
 central light which lighteth every man that cometh into 
 the world. 
 
CHAPTEE X. 
 
 IKSPIKATION. 
 
 Practically, the religious light which all except 
 scholars receive from study is light thrown from the pul- 
 pit. The pulpit is the popular chair of theology in the 
 university of the world. Thence we are taught what is 
 the revelation of God. Therefore, if the pulpit is wrong, 
 the error is wide-spread. 
 
 And the pulpit is sometimes wrong ! So wrong that 
 we can see it. The pulpit is often so forcible and im- 
 pressive in the presentation of error that this presenta- 
 tion furnishes the best frame for truth. A clergyman 
 may state so concisely what you ought to believe, that 
 for the first time you perceive at a glance exactly why 
 you do not believe it — which is the next best thing to 
 believing it. 
 
 Eighteen centuries bear witness to the thoroughness of 
 Gamaliel's learning, to the excellence of his character, to 
 the culture of his spirit, to the eminence of his reputa- 
 tion. He was a powerful leader of the people and a teacher 
 so impressive that his most celebrated pupil, a man whose 
 name and fame brighten with the rolling years, character- 
 izes his instruction as in "the perfect manner." 
 
 Yet his teaching was wrong — so wrong that this very 
 pupil, his brilliant eulogist, counted himself the chief of 
 sinners for carrying his teacher's instructions into prac- 
 tice ! Is it not possible that our own teachers, learned 
 
INSPIRATION. 231 
 
 doctors of the divine law, eloquent in council, had in 
 reputation among all the people, teaching according to 
 the perfect manner of the law of the Fathers, zealous 
 toward God, may yet sometimes be teaching doctrines as 
 antagonistic to the truth as were those of Gamaliel, which 
 led Paul to persecute men and women unto the death ? 
 
 The existence of God and his revelation of himself to 
 man is the most important, the most practical, the most 
 vital of all religious, perhaps of all earthly questions. On 
 this point of all points we not only welcomxC but crave 
 light. Dr. Clark expounds the nature of the revelation 
 of God to man under the figure of a man who began life 
 by floundering in the mire, wading in a swamp of mys- 
 tery, ignorance, and sin. The more he struggled the 
 more he mired. Presently he felt something solid be- 
 neath his feet. It was God's promise. He stood on this 
 and was safe — until the rationalistic craze seized him. 
 Then he began to widen his foundations, driving in for 
 one pile '^reason," for another ^' ethical consciousness," 
 for another '^ the moral fitness of things," and for another 
 *^ God mirrored and limited in human conception." Then 
 the structure of Christian faith was carefully moved aside 
 from its old rock base and made to rest partly on a divine 
 and partly on a human foundation. 
 
 This is negatively an admirable, and even, in most re- 
 spects, an exact, statement of the true doctrine of inspira- 
 tion ; the word of God resting on, certified by, appealing 
 to man's reason, to his ethical consciousness, to the moral 
 fitness of things— God mirrored but limited in human 
 conception. 
 
 But Dr. Clark names it only to reject it. After a 
 while his poor man found, to liis horror, that the pile 
 work was not firm ; that his vast outlay was hopelessly 
 sunk. He abandoned his whole scheme, and found no 
 solidity or rest until he rebuilt ''his faith upon a child- 
 
232 A WASHmGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 like trust in every word of God. His final, fixed belief 
 was, * Forever, Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.' " 
 
 These be pious words. Would it be flippant, irrelig- 
 ious to say that they only tickle the ear and never touch 
 the brain ? He who regards the meaning of words and 
 is not beguiled by their sound, reads this parable with a 
 mistrust that deepens into certainty, for the question is 
 not of heaven but of earth. We admit that the word of 
 the Lord is settled in heaven. What we wish to know is, 
 whether there is any settled word of God on earth, and 
 what and where it is. To this Dr. Clark's answer is no 
 answer. It leaves us exactly where we were. To coun* 
 sel a *^ childlike trust in every word of God" is to evade 
 the question : What is the word of God ? and it is no less 
 an evasion, and it is all the more a snare, because it is 
 spoken from a pulpit. 
 
 What is the '' word of God " ? The Bible ? In another 
 city sits another doctor of the same law, equally had in 
 reputation, and at his feet are gathered a group question- 
 ing him as to the proper attitude of a Christian toward 
 the theatre, to whom thus answers he : " Our conscience 
 tells us not to go, lest at the very least we violate the 
 command to abstain from all appearance of evil." In- 
 stantly then Dr. Clark's rock-base begins to totter and we 
 find ourselves flat in the primeval mud, for the revised 
 version says there is no such command ; bids only to 
 avoid every species of evil, which not only gives us no 
 enlightenment on the question whether the theatre is 
 evil, but forces us to ask whether '^ every word of God" 
 means every word of King James's translation or every 
 word of the revised version. Until that is decided, and 
 because it is to be decided, and, therefore, after it is de- 
 cided, our faith rests partly on a divine and partly on a 
 human foundation. Forever, without doubt, the word 
 of the Lord is settled in heaven, but it is so far from be- 
 
INSPIRATION. 233 
 
 ing settled on earth that all the churches and creeds and 
 sects of Christendom have come into court for the pur- 
 pose of settling it. When the word of God is settled on 
 earth, earth will be earth no longer, but the IIolj City— 
 the New Jerusalem. 
 
 If the Christian faith rests on a foundation w^holly 
 divine it must be communicated at first hand by God to 
 every human being. Every man must receive his revela- 
 tion fresh from God— through no human or earthly or 
 other medium. This, I believe, is what the Quakers 
 teach, and their lives have been so pure, gentle, benefi- 
 cent, that their belief has a good deal to say for itself. 
 Certainly those two sons of thunder against human op- 
 pression, John Boanerges and John Grcenleaf AVhittier, 
 must equally be, in the sweet, unselfish, manly character 
 common to both, disciples whom Jesus loves. 
 
 But those of us who are not Quakers are taught from 
 the pulpit that the revelation is not made to ourselves, 
 but was made many years ago to a few men, by whom it 
 was transmitted to the rest of the world. Holy men of 
 old, moved by the Holy Ghost, spake, but they spoke in 
 what is to us an unknown tongue. Even if they were 
 inspired by a divine being in every word and sentence, 
 it is nothing to us. We can not understand one word of 
 it. I suppose there are not a hundred native American 
 men and not ten native American women who could read 
 a single word of what Isaiah the prophet himself wrote, 
 or who could understand a single word if they had over- 
 heard the whole private conversation between Job and 
 his wife. The Hebrew language reveals nothing to fifty 
 millions of the American people. We have to depend 
 upon some man to tell us what the letters are — what the 
 words mean. Granting that God revealed facts to Sam- 
 uel, no one claims that he has revealed Samuel to us. 
 Practically the nineteenth century has no revelation un- 
 
234 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 less it has one partly on a human foundation. That hu- 
 man foundation is the translators of Greek and Hebrew. 
 Our revelation is by hearsay. It depends upon the fidel- 
 ity, the scholarship, the mental rectitude of several men 
 in. several generations, in several countries, all purely hu- 
 man, for no one claims that King James's translators 
 or the revised versionists were inspired. Alcuin and Lu- 
 ther and the saints of the revised version claimed no in- 
 spiration outside of their learning and their devotion. 
 They were lights of the world, but all worldly lights are 
 liable to flicker and to fail. Acquainted as we are with 
 Harvard and Yale and Andover and Oxford and Heidel- 
 berg, it must be admitted that the human part of the 
 structure of Christian faith is a little unsteady, not to 
 say rickety. It must give a little or it must splinter. 
 It is easy to preach every word of God so far as we know 
 it, but a man must use his reason in order to know which 
 is the word of God and which is the word of prejudice or 
 passion or ignorance. Even if God inspired Matthew to 
 write ''Baptize," he can not have inspired one man to 
 decide that it means always to go under the water and 
 another man that it means always or only to have a little 
 water sprinkled on the forehead. Practically, therefore, 
 we American republicans know no more what is meant 
 than if the word had not been inspired at all. We must 
 use our own reason to ascertain which and what it means. 
 Therefore the revelation must have one pile of reason to 
 rest on in spite of Dr. Clark. If he teaches us truly that 
 every word of the Bible is the word of God, then either 
 King James's translators or the revised-version clergy- 
 men are fighting against God ; and among the Septua- 
 gint and Douay and Griesbach and Tischendorf, and 
 their great host, we need a supplementary inspiration to 
 tell us which of all these pretenders is the real word of 
 God. One of the piles under our structure of Christian 
 
INSPIRATION. 235 
 
 faith is and must be reason. Even then the structure is 
 not so firm as could be wished ; but if that pile be taken 
 away, it is not firm at all. It can not stand. 
 
 Dr. Foster sees the difficulty, and to the people gath- 
 ered at his feet would fain explain it away. Not less 
 positive and categorical, he essays a limitation and prac- 
 tical definition. *^ The Bible," he says, *Ms tlie word of 
 God ; does not simply contain it, but is it. It is inspired 
 in every sentence, and in every word, so far as this : that 
 it is so constructed under the control of the Holy Spirit 
 as to convey precisely the meaning God intended. Not 
 a single word is admitted which does not pass the scru- 
 tiny of the divine inspector as approved." 
 
 This sounds not only pious, but rigidly orthodox ; yet, 
 under scrutiny, does it really say anything ? Does it in 
 the least explain inspiration ? Does it even give any 
 practical information ? Of three or four interpretations 
 placed upon a text, where is the umpire who shall decide 
 which is the meaning God intended to convey ? And to 
 whom does he intend to convey it ? Where is deposited 
 the certificate of approval from the divine inspector ? 
 Does God intend to convey to the Roman Catholics the 
 doctrine that the Apostle Peter was the rock upon which 
 he would build his church, and to the Protestants that 
 that rock was Christ ? If he does not, which rendering 
 has received the warrant of the divine inspector ? The 
 clergy and the lawyers, the second best men in Massachu- 
 setts, hung and pressed to death twenty of the first best 
 men and women, their superiors, on their own under- 
 standing of the word of God : Thou shalt not suffer a 
 witch to live; and modern learning oversets this into: 
 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to get her living. Did 
 God intend to convey to Cotton Mather the mandate 
 that Eebecca Nourse should be hanged, or did he intend 
 to convey to the nineteenth century the idea that people 
 
236 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 should not earn a livelihood by practicing sorcery ? With- 
 out waiting for the seal of divine inspection, we — unin- 
 spired human beings, simply by studying grammar, geog- 
 raphy and aritlmietic, metaphysics, history and material 
 science, simply, that is, by the ordinary and orderly march 
 of the human reason — have unanimously rejected the first 
 rendering of the word of God. If we adopt the second, 
 do we not put God in the unhandsome and debilitated 
 attitude of not giving men a revelation till they have 
 found things out for themselves ? AVhile the intelligence 
 and virtue of the Salem community were struggling in 
 the dark, the Supreme Being gave no sign ; but when 
 intelligence has cleared for itself and for us a pathway 
 of comparative light, and witchcraft is a lost art, and 
 misunderstanding can do no further harm, he conveys to 
 us his precise meaning ! Is that like a God ? That seems 
 to me like a very mean and malicious man. 
 
 Dr. Foster says that "the absolute infallibility of the 
 Scriptures will soon be beyond question among Christian 
 thinkers, and the only questions mooted will be those of 
 interpretation." That is a wise, not to say Innocently 
 wily way to throw heresy-hounds oif the scent ; but is it 
 not rather a verbal than a real distinction ? 
 
 What is the odds between a question of interpretation 
 and a question of infallibility ? If the meaning of Scrip- 
 tures is impenetrable, it is little to the purpose that they 
 are infallible. One would as soon be hanged by an inter- 
 polation as by a misunderstanding. An infallibility se- 
 curely hidden in the text, dormant through ages of his- 
 tory, latent while interpretation is dealing death and 
 disgrace to a baffled and virtuous world, seems hardly 
 fitted to be a working infallibility for fallible human 
 
 It amounts only to saying : The teachings of the Bible 
 are true, but w^e do not know what they are. 
 
INSPIRATION. 237 
 
 What we want is a theory of the Bible tliut means 
 something — a theory that shall make the Bible mean 
 something to ns ! 
 
 A learned and venerable doctor of the law, had in 
 reputation among all the people, expounds thus after the 
 perfect manner of the law of the fathers : ** The Bible is 
 a unit. . . . The whole or nothing is the word of God. 
 A revelation supported by intermittent authority, in- 
 spired in patches and parentheses, we may be very sure is 
 not a revelation either of God or from God. Its structure 
 is not Godlike." 
 
 " There are three that bear record in Heaven, the Fa- 
 ther, the Word, and the Holy Ghost ; and these three are 
 one." That is our Bible, which our ancestors bequeathed, 
 which they believed in, which we received. But the re- 
 vised version leaves this out altogether. Is the revised 
 version, then, rejecting the word of God ? Or did King 
 James's translators put in the words of men as the words 
 of God ? How are we to know ? If we give up this verse, 
 as the revisionists bid us, we must give up the whole Bi- 
 ble, for "the whole or nothing is the word of God." If 
 the revisionists are right, our ancestral Bible was inspired 
 in patches, and this piece between patches the revisionists 
 cut out and threw away, and, to be logical and theologi- 
 cal, we must follow suit and throw the whole Bible away ! 
 
 "The Lord gave the word ; great was the company of 
 those that published it." So ring the voices of Dr. Rey- 
 nolds and his host at Hamj^ton Court, singing the Psalms 
 of David, but the translators of a later time tune their 
 harps to another key : "The Lord gave the word. The 
 women that publish the tidings are a great host." Must 
 we throw away the Bible unless that great host of women 
 is drawn off from it. It looks as if the seventeenth- 
 century translators thought those women ought not to 
 have been there, and simply and succinctly translated 
 
238 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 them out of sight, without regard to King David's hon- 
 orable award, without the slightest conscientious scruple 
 concerning fidelity to the text. But time rolled on, and 
 women's colleges sprang up, and women's boards were 
 formed, and when the nineteenth-century translators sat 
 down to their task it was thought best to bring the wom- 
 en back again where they belonged. And have not wom- 
 en — it is, to be sure, a mere side-issue — by this token a 
 special and prescriptive right to expound and promulgate 
 the word of God, being celebrated by King David for so 
 doing ? 
 
 Can it be said that the translators were not inspired, 
 and that we must go back to the original writers for the 
 text which they directly received from Heaven ? Xot only 
 does this leave the great majority of human beings with- 
 out any authoritative revelation — since we, the unlearned, 
 can not read the Hebrew and Greek originals — but the 
 learned are no better off than we, for they differ about the 
 original text as widely as they differ about the transla- 
 tions. There does not exist in the whole world a Bible, a 
 unit, a whole, of which we can say, or of which the most 
 learned scriptural scholar can say, this is the original, 
 real, undisputed Bible, given by God to man. On the 
 contrary, when we go behind the translations to the origi- 
 nal book, we are launched on a whirlpool of contradic- 
 tions, for the Bible, through many centuries, did not ex- 
 ist as a unit. The dates of the different books composing 
 it are different, distant, and doubtful. The number of 
 manuscripts in which these various books are found is 
 uncounted. Many of them were lost before our litera- 
 ture began. The variations of text are also innumerable. 
 If the Bible is in every part and parcel the Vv'ord of God 
 — if the Bible as a unit, as a solid body, is the word of 
 God — of which no part can be lost or rejected without 
 losing or rejecting the whole, then are we of all men 
 
INSPIRATION. 239 
 
 most misevaWe, for in the lapse of ages «"<i f^J^^^"^ 
 literary and scientific culture certainty about the Biblo 
 tezt is absolutely unattainable. 'i'h%-''.d of God ,s m 
 inextricable confusion and God has left himself without 
 witness in the book of books. 
 
 If a theory of inspiration can ho formed which shall 
 not only leave us our Bible, in spite of all debate and 
 discussion about the text, but which shall cause all thi 
 debate and discussion to bring out in bolder lines and 
 stronger light the divine origin of the Bible and its mar- 
 velous adaptation to human need and to the human con- 
 stitution, would there not be a presumption in its favor ? 
 No, is the reply, because if the whole Bible is not the 
 word of God, whose is the prerogative to sit in judgment 
 for us and tell us where error ends and truth begins ? 
 
 The answer ought to be easy and natural ; the preroga- 
 tive is our own. God has given to every man the means 
 to do it. The Logos, the logical faculty, Reason is_ the 
 true light which lighteth every man that cometh into 
 the world. That lisht, faint though it be, is a true spark 
 kindled from the divine light ineffable. In the begmnmg 
 was the Logos, the Reason, and Reason was God. In 
 R son is light and that hght is the life of men. By the 
 endowment of reason is the life of man raised above the 
 ffe of beasts and akin to the life of God Professor Phelp^ 
 would give the prerogative to sit m judgment for us and 
 tell ns what the word of God is, to groups of men in re- 
 mote times, in distant nations-men whom we call Angus- 
 tino Calvin WvolifE-great men in their day, who did 
 g«:t .tllJi but f ho were not heirs of all «ie age 
 that have poured their golden treasure into our cofieis 
 men who make it impossible to receive their conclusions 
 because they contradict ea«h other, but whose unwearying 
 work helps us to form conclusions of onr o^^n J.^v. 
 dinal Newman and Cardinal Manning confer the pie- 
 
2J:0 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 rogative of judging revelation upon great companies of 
 men in all Christian ages, whom they call the Ohurcli, 
 but who also contradict each other tooth and nail. The 
 one group brings forward as proof of their ministry, '^ All 
 scripture is given by inspiration of God," and the other, 
 *' On this rock will I build my church," and the one is 
 just as pertinent to the sufficiency and the exclusiveness 
 of Biblical authority as is the other to the sufficiency and 
 the exclusiveness of ecclesiastical authority, and that is 
 not at all. For the same scripture which declares its own 
 inspiration declares also the inspiration of reason. The 
 inspiration of the Almighty giveth understanding, and 
 the rock on which the Church was built was no man but 
 Christ, the Son of the living God. The Catholic may in- 
 sist upon the narrowest point of verbal collocation, and 
 because Peter is followed by this, has some verbal ground 
 for saying that Peter, and not Christ, is the rock of our 
 salvation, but the Protestant has no canon by which he 
 can dislodge the inspiration of his own reason and retain 
 the inspiration of the Bible, for the Bible itself declares 
 that the inspiration of the Almighty giveth understanding. 
 It is maintained that ^' the plain Christian believer 
 feels the need of a revelation from God which is authori- 
 tatively Godlike." But how does the plain Christian be- 
 liever know what is Godlike ? In no way but by his own 
 reason. Are we then to assume the position that human 
 reason is capable of judging what kind of revelation men 
 ought to have, but is not capable of judging what kind 
 of a revelat'ion men have received ; is capable of defining 
 beforehand what God ought to do, but is incapable of dis- 
 cerning afterward whether he has done it or not ; is ca- 
 pable of saying authoritatively and outside of the Bible 
 what is Godlike, but is not to be trusted to say what is 
 Godlike within the Bible ? To me it seems more modest 
 and reverent, as well as more scientific, to study the rev- 
 
IMSPIRATION, 241 
 
 elation we have than to limn the revelation we ought to 
 have. God is to be discovered, not simply by imagining 
 what he ought to be, but by seeking what lie actually is 
 from his footsteps, as seen in the worlds of matter, of ac- 
 tion, and of spirit ; for all worlds are his, and through all 
 worlds he reveals himself. 
 
 The consequences of a true theory of the Bible do not 
 diminish the stress of truth ; but there are no consequences 
 to be feared. Men apprehend and declare that if the Bi- 
 ble only contains the word of God, and is not in every 
 part and parcel the word of God, the inevitable sequence 
 will be *'that the major part of the Old Testament, to- 
 day and to us, has no more moral authority than the Ve- 
 das. Whether it has as much, what means has the unlet- 
 tered mind of knowing ?" 
 
 It has at least the means of reading the Vedas and 
 comparing them with the Scriptures. 
 
 But the unlettered mind can not read the Yedas. 
 Therein lies the gist of the argument. The Vedas have 
 never had sufficient moral impulsion to get themselves 
 translated for us, and transported to us, and transplanted 
 in us. "We know practically, religiously, nothing what- 
 ever about the Vedas. The Scriptures of the Old and 
 New Testaments we do know, although the work is just 
 as Oriental as the Vedas. From being the sacred books 
 of a primitive tribe, of a small province, of a scattered 
 and homeless race, they have insinuated themselves into 
 the very heart and life and control of the widest and 
 highest nineteenth-century civilization, the most power- 
 ful and practical civilization in the history of humanity. 
 All the churches of Christendom are founded on them. 
 All the politics of Christendom are amenable to them. 
 All the character of Christendom is molded by them, so 
 far as moral improvement is recognized. The unlettered 
 mind knows nothing about the Vedas, and it knows more 
 16 
 
242 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 about the Bible than about any other book in the world. 
 It knows that the Bible has more moral authority than 
 the Vedas, because it feels and recognizes the authority 
 of the Bible, and does not know the Vedas, although 
 they are the sacred books of a notably intellectual and 
 metaphysical people. 
 
 What the world needs just now is not a new religion, 
 but a more accurate knowledge of the old religion. 
 Church-of-Englandism is not the old religion. Roman- 
 Catholicism is not the old religion. Congregationalism, 
 Unitarianism, Presbyterianism is not the old religion. 
 They are all different forms of paganism. All form con- 
 sidered as religion is paganism. This is not to say that 
 they are bad. All paganism is not bad. But God is a 
 spirit, and the only real worship of him is in spirit and in 
 truth. 
 
 Christianity is the spiritual truth of all the ages, irre- 
 spective of all forms, distilled from all sources, forever 
 vitalized with the power of an endless life in Jesus Christ 
 our Lord. All the conflict comes from taking the Church 
 as spiritual authority, instead of taking the authority of 
 one's own reason, upon the words of Christ, the work of 
 God. Everything which substitutes authority for reason 
 is to that extent paganism. Reason is God's own revela- 
 tion to every man. He may use his reason in judging 
 authority, but nothing has authority except so far as it is 
 founded on reason. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone but falls into the w^ay of error when 
 he says of the new religion — Christianity without Christ — 
 that it abolishes, of course, the whole authority of Script- 
 ure. Scripture itself has no authority outside itself — 
 outside, that is, of its own reasonableness. The Scripture 
 writers never hesitate to abolish each other's authority. 
 Isaiah swept away the ground from under the feet of 
 Moses. Paul withstood Peter to the face because he was 
 
INSPIRATION. 243 
 
 to be blamed. Christ in so many words affirmed that the 
 great Jewish law-giver had compromised with sin and 
 framed iniquity into a law which was not the upright law 
 of the beginning. The Bible has no authority except 
 that of right reason in the reasoning animal — man — and 
 this is the claim, and the only claim, which the Bible 
 itself makes. 
 
 Joseph us placed the legislation and the statesmanship 
 of Moses on a solid rock from which eighteen centuries 
 have not dislodged it ; have but confirmed its strength as 
 an impregnable basis : 
 
 '^I exhort all those that j^eruse these books to apply 
 their minds to God, and to examine the mind of our 
 legislator, whether he hath not understood his nature in 
 a manner worthy of him ; and hath not ever ascribed to 
 liim such operations as become his power ; and hath not 
 preserved his writings from those indecent fables which 
 others have framed ; although by the great distance of 
 time when he lived he might have securely forged such 
 lies, for he lived two thousand years ago, at which vast 
 distance of ages the poets themselves have not been so 
 hardy as to fix even the generations of their gods, much 
 less the actions of their men, or their own laws. 
 
 "But because almost all our constitution depends on 
 the wisdom of Moses, our legislator . . . the reader is to 
 know that Moses deemed it exceeding necessary that he 
 who should conduct liis own life well, and give laws to 
 others, in the first place, should consider the divine na- 
 ture ; and upon the contemplations of God's operations, 
 should thereby imitate the best of all patterns, so far as it 
 is possible for human nature to do, and to endeavor to 
 follow after it ; neither could the legislator himself have 
 a right mind without such a contemplation, nor would 
 anything he should write tend to the promotion of virtue 
 in his readers : I mean unless they be taught, first of all. 
 
244 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 that God is the Father and Lord of all things, and sees 
 all things, and that thence he bestows a happy life upon 
 those that follow him, but plunges such as do not walk 
 in the paths of yirtue into inevitable miseries. Now, 
 when Moses was desirous to teach this lesson to his 
 countrymen, he did not begin the establishment of his 
 laws after the same manner that other legislators did — I 
 mean, upon contracts and other rights between one man 
 and another — but by raising their minds upward to re- 
 gard God and his creation of the w^orld, and by persuad- 
 insf them that we men are the most excellent of the creat- 
 ures of God upon earth. Now, when once he had brought 
 them to submit to religion, he easily persuaded them to 
 submit in all other things ; for as to other legislators, 
 they followed fables, and by their discourses transferred 
 the most reproachful of human vices unto the gods, and so 
 afforded wicked men the most plausible excuses for their 
 crimes ; but as for our legislator, when he had once dem- 
 onstrated that God was possessed of perfect virtue, he 
 supposed that men also ought to strive after the partici- 
 pation of it ; and on those who did not so think and 
 so believe he inflicted the severest punishments. . . . 
 There is nothing therein disagreeable either to the ma- 
 jesty of God or to his love of mankind." 
 
 Thus nobly did the pious Jew apprehend the truth 
 which his nation was elected to hold and declare in the 
 beginning — God. 
 
 What is the claim of the testimony of the Bible it- 
 self ? A plenary, literal, mechanical inspiration is the 
 device of Scripture commentators ; not the assertion of 
 the Scripture writers. 
 
 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, but also 
 the inspiration of the Almighty giveth understanding, 
 and whatever of divine clings herein to the Bible clings 
 equally to man's reason. Holy men of God spake, moved 
 
INSPIRATION. 245 
 
 by the Holy Ghost, but every good gift is from above, 
 from the Father of light, and therefore evcrij word of 
 truth must be insj^ired by the Holy Ghost, who is again 
 and again delineated by Christ as the Spirit of Truth, the 
 Comforter, an immanent and prevailing Spirit. The 
 apostle Paul claimed to have received the Holy Spirit 
 and to speak with tongues, yet affirmed that it amounted 
 to nothing if he had not love ; showing that whatever of 
 inspiration he had in writing his letters was less than the 
 inspiration of love — which is common to all. 
 
 Whatever this inspiration is, the Old and the Xew 
 agree that it is universal. It is promised to every one : 
 All thy children shall be taught of the Lord. Jeremiah 
 had a very short way to find out what was the word of 
 God. The land was full of pretended prophets, who 
 were deceiving the people with their "Thus saith the 
 Lord." If they did not profit the people they were not 
 authoritative ! Moses warned them in the same succinct 
 way — if a prophet arose among them commanding to 
 forsake God and go after false gods, he was no prophet. 
 The test of the Lord is to hate evil. The divine authority 
 of the Scriptures is by the Scripture writers based upon 
 their righteousness. So much of truth as they teach, so 
 much are they inspired. Scripture appeals, notwith- 
 standing Dr. Clark, to our ethical consciousness. The 
 historical authority of Scripture appeals to our trained 
 historical consciousness. And, best of all, to those whose 
 historic consciousness is little trained comes the assurance 
 of Christ himself : If any man will do God's will he shall 
 know of the doctrine. A truth well comprehended and 
 confirmed by Pastor Robinson, the father and founder of 
 New England, the great leader of Congregationalism : 
 
 '* The best and safest way is to get true and sound 
 conscience of things certain and without controversy. 
 Such a person God will direct in his ways so far and cer- 
 
246 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 taiiilv as uot to miss of the main end — eternal life ; and 
 therewith in mercy will pardon all other of his human 
 aberrations." 
 
 "Who knoweth with how little God can and doth 
 save many, being faithful in learning what they can, and 
 in observing what they know ? " 
 
 " He who gets this general grace, to have his heart in- 
 deed and seriously bent upon the course of piety toward 
 God and innocency toward men, the Lord will not so 
 far suffer to err in his way as to miss of heaven in the 
 end, notwithstanding his particular aberrations of human 
 frailty, which God will cover under the veil of his rich 
 mercy by the person's sincere faith and general repent- 
 ance." 
 
 Do the right and you will know the doctrine, whether 
 it be of God or of man. Moral rectitude is the safest 
 guide to mental accuracy. Every good gift and every 
 perfect gift is from above. What is not good, what is 
 not perfect, is not from above. 
 
 That loosening of the moral authority of the major 
 part of the Old Testament to-day, and to us, which is 
 foreboded as the result of not considering every part and 
 parcel'of the Bible to be the word of God, is a loosening 
 which has already occurred even under the theory that 
 the Bible is a solid, a unit. Orthodox or heretic, we no 
 more observe the Levitical law than if it were inculcated 
 in the Vedas. Why is it more dangerous to say that the 
 Levitical law has no authority for us than it is for us 
 to pay no heed to it ? Why is it more heretical to say 
 that a law is obsolete, than it is constantly to disregard 
 it ? The most conservative and orthodox portion of the 
 religious world has done precisely what it is striving to 
 prevent the advancing regiment of the religious army 
 from doing to-day ; it has rightly divided the word of 
 God. Eeverently and devoutly studying the Scriptures, 
 
mspiRATiON. 247 
 
 it has decided and taught that what was imperative 
 and elevating for the Jews is inappropriate and retrogres- 
 sive for us. It takes this unit, this solid, this Bible, 
 every word the word of God, and it says of one part : 
 This is the ceremonial law, and we need not observe it ; 
 and of another part : This is moral law, and it is binding 
 on us. By what right, on whose authority, does it limit 
 one word of God to the. Jews of Palestine, and spread, 
 another word of God over all the world .^ By right of its 
 own reason. But no pretensions of heterodoxy or heresy 
 can be more radical than this. Unless a clergyman wor- 
 ships God with a candlestick of pure gold, six branches 
 coming out of the sides of it, three branches of the can- 
 dlestick out of the one side, and three branches of the 
 candlestick out of the other side ; three bowls made like 
 unto almonds, with a knop and a flower in one branch, 
 and three bowls made like almonds in the other branch, 
 with a knop and a flower ; four bowls made like unto 
 almonds, with their knops and their flowers, a knop 
 under two branches of the same, and a knop under two 
 branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of 
 the same, according to the six branches that proceed out 
 of the candlestick, their knops and their branches of 
 the same, all of it one beaten work of pure ?old, there is 
 a considerable part of the Old Testament which has with 
 him no more moral authority than the Vedas. There is, 
 therefore, now no condemnation to them who would 
 bring to any other part of Scripture as devout a heart, 
 as close a scrutiny, as wise a discrimination, as all clergy- 
 men have brought to the law of the Lord delivered to 
 Moses upon the mount of Sinai. 
 
 The word of God in Genesis sa3^s that Israel bowed 
 himself upon the bed's head. The word of God in He- 
 brews says Jacob worshiped leaning upon the top of his 
 staff. Alford renders out the leaning, and says that 
 
248 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 Jacob worshiped upon the top of his staff. The Vulgate 
 still further takes out upon, and says that Jacob wor- 
 shiped the top of his staff. The learned Dean says it was 
 Jacob's own staff upon which he leaned. Dr. Taylor says 
 it was Joseph's staff. Professor Thayer says that Jacob 
 did not worship at all, but simply paid homage to Joseph 
 after the Egyptian fashion, as a high officer of state. 
 Every word the word of God ? Whose— Thayer's or Al- 
 ford's, the Vulgate or the Septuagint, Genesis or He- 
 brews ? 
 
 Is not this staff of Israel a very bruised reed to lean 
 on ? If the true principle is that the Bible is a solid, a 
 unit, every word the word of God, and that we can not 
 throw away one part without throwing away all — then 
 we must give up the Bible with its legacy of love and 
 truth and comfort and hope, with all its sacredness of 
 generations, because the vowel points were not invented 
 in season for the Septuagint translators to know whether 
 the word was liamittali — bed, or liamatteh — staff ; because 
 M. Chabas was not born soon enough to tell King James's 
 translators that bowing one's self on the superior's staff 
 of office was an ordinary Egyptian mode of recognizing 
 the superior's authority. Must we sink in the troublous 
 ocean of life, unbuoyed, unsustained by the word of God 
 unless we have the head of Jacob's bed to float on ? 
 
 But to some minds any other theory involves absurd- 
 ity. **That he has given to a lost world a book inspired 
 here and not inspired there, historic now and mythic then, 
 blundering sometimes and by hap right at other times, 
 and that he has left it to man's infirm intuitions to di- 
 vine whether it is oracular anywhere is absurd. It is not 
 like God to build such a rickety structure." 
 
 But to me it seems exactly like God. What can be a 
 more rickety structure than this world which he has 
 made ? Doubtless to its creator's eye it goes on its stately 
 
INSPIRATION. 24:9 
 
 course undisturbed in eternal order, but to us who live in 
 it, what ricketiness ! It is shaken by earthquakes, it is 
 pierced by lightnings, it is swept by cyclones. The sea 
 plucks at the land. The land slips under the sea. The 
 rivers ravage the meadows. Vineyards are overwhelmed 
 by volcanoes. Man is born upon earth and he can not 
 emigrate to another planet. Fastened to this, he is yet 
 preyed upon by fire and water, and bug and beast. And 
 what a rickety structure is man himself ! — complicate and 
 wonderful in design, but so imperfectly completed, so ill- 
 adapted to his surroundings, that multitudes perish be- 
 fore the journey of life is fairly begun, and multitudes 
 more sink by the wayside from pain and weariness. Of all 
 the millions born, so rickety is the world-construction 
 that the number is infinitesimal who pass, without pain 
 or trouble, through well-rounded days to the full comple- 
 ment of their years, and enter heaven gently, from glory 
 to glory. It is such a rickety world, such a piece of dam- 
 aged goods, a machine so out of gearing, that science 
 agrees with theology in calling it "a hurt world, a lost 
 world." If the structure of inspiration given by God is 
 to correspond to the structure of the world made by God, 
 it must have one pervading and prevailing principle of 
 life, a continuous and upward line of movement ; but 
 it must be very rickety in that part of its construction 
 which comes within human experience. 
 
 This absurd book is exactly what has been given us — 
 a book inspired here and not inspired there. **I com- 
 mand," says Paul ; '' not I, but the Lord." And soon after 
 he adds, "^ The rest speak I, not the Lord " — a specific dec- 
 laration that his word is inspired here and not inspired 
 there. '* Historic now and mythic then." Certainly. 
 David was undoubtedly the historic king in Jerusalem. 
 The tempter of Eve was as undoubtedly a mythic snake. 
 So the Bible itself tells us hundreds of years afterward. 
 
250 A WAsnmGTON bible class. 
 
 for the serpent which coils itself into the first book as a 
 beast of the field is cast out of the last as Satan, which de- 
 ceiveth the whole world. *' Blundering sometimes, and 
 by hap right at other times." Yes, Peter was right when 
 he pronounced, '^Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
 living God," and he received the solemn confirmation, 
 ''Upon this rock will I build my church." But he 
 blundered straightway in contradicting Jesus, and was 
 instantly and unflinchingly rebuked. "Get thee behind 
 me, Satan. . . .Tliou art an offense unto me." 
 
 What is ''infallibility"? What is "authority"? 
 What is " inspiration " ? Is not a stress often laid upon 
 the words which is wholly unwarranted ? Suppose we 
 admit — leaving aside all questions of text and translation 
 — that the whole Bible, as a unit, is inspired and infal- 
 lible ; do we mean that Abraham was directed by God to 
 offer up his son Isaac, or that Moses was directed by God 
 to tell the story ? Suppose both, what of it ? Suppose 
 the book of Genesis to be infallible, what of it ? To 
 whom does it give authority to do what ? Suppose the 
 book of Exodus to be inspired, infallible, and authorita- 
 tive in every part and parcel, what of it ? Assuming that 
 God did direct the Jewish master to bring his faithful 
 servant to the door-post, and bore his ear through with 
 an awl, no American master is authorized to do the same. 
 To a bad servant he would sometimes like to do it, but 
 the law would not allow it. The servant would not per- 
 mit it. Suppose Matthew was divinely inspired to nar- 
 rate the story of the tribute-money found in the fish, we 
 are not ordered to pay our taxes by such recourse. There 
 is hardly a word in the Old Testament, there are not many 
 words in the New Testament, directly addressed to us. 
 Most of both is narrative, directions, sermons, songs, re- 
 monstrances, arguments — all with a strong personal bear- 
 ing upon men who have been dead for generations. The 
 
INSPIRATION. 251 
 
 stress of these instructions lias quietly lapsed witl^ the 
 lapse of time, with the change of institutions. Whether 
 God told the Scripture writers in so many words what 
 to say, or whether their inspiration was through genius, 
 enthusiasm, love to God, love to man, spiritual uplifting, 
 just the same have we all — Professor Phelps and Professor 
 Park, Andover, and Bangor, and Princeton, and Wash- 
 ington, and all the pulpits. Congregational, Baptist, 
 Episcopal, Unitarian — taken liberties with it, taken leave 
 to say what part we would accept and what part we would 
 reject, what part we would practice and what part we 
 would discard. God said : Eemember the Sabbath day 
 to keep it holy, but Dr. Douglas practically says : Not so, 
 Lord, I will remember the Sunday to keep it holy. God 
 says : The garments which the priests shall wear are a 
 breastplate, and ephod, and a robe, and a broidered coat, 
 and a miter, and a girdle ; but the most conservative 
 clergyman prefers a plain clerical suit, even when he ad- 
 dresses us upon the necessity of having a theory of in- 
 spiration '^ loliich mahes the authority of the Scriptures 
 imperative ! " 
 
 Inculcating the necessity of the literal verbal plenary 
 inspiration of the Bible, orthodoxy makes merry — gently 
 — over Starr King's attempted explanation of inspira- 
 tion : *^' It is — hm — it is a kind of mental uplifting ; it 
 is an illumination ; it is — well, it is an inspiration of 
 the whole man." We must have something better than 
 this, protests orthodoxy. "We must have the doctrine 
 in a bold and decisive form," v/hich *^ plain men" can 
 use. And for Mr. King's glittering and sounding gener- 
 alities it substitutes something which must "make the 
 Bible resonant with the very voice of God. It must be 
 something which tlie soul can hear in the far distance, 
 when conscious of estrangement from its Maker. It must 
 give visions of truth which men can see in the dark." 
 
252 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 This is lofty and admirable. I think it is also true. My 
 theory of inspiration does all this. But it seems to leave 
 as much to the imagination as did Starr Kiug's defini- 
 tion. A theory that gives visions of truth Avhich men 
 can see in the dark is certainly and markedly a theory of 
 *Mllumination." *' Plain men" will find no more diffi- 
 culty in grasping the theory of a "mental uplifting" 
 than a theory "which the soul can hear in the far dis- 
 tance." 
 
 But, says the fearsome saint, "a theory of inspiration, 
 of which the final outcome is that Moses contradicted 
 Christ, that the imprecations of David conflict with the 
 epistles of John, and that St. Paul could not even repeat 
 himself correctly, abrogates all claim of the Scriptures to 
 imperative and divine authority. God has not thus con- 
 tradicted God." 
 
 No, but it is not the theory that causes the contra- 
 dictions. The coctradictions cause the theory ! The 
 contradictions are there. What we want is a theory that 
 shall take them in without throwing the Bible away. 
 God has not contradicted God, therefore there are no con- 
 tradictions, says the old philosophy. God has not con- 
 tradicted God, therefore the contradictions are not of 
 God, says the new philosoi^hy. One might as well deny 
 day and night as deny the contradictions. " Thou shalt 
 cause a bullock to be brought before the tabernacle of the 
 congregation," says the Lord through Moses, "and thou 
 shalt kill tlie bullock before the Lord, by the door of the 
 tabernacle of the congregation. And thou shalt take of 
 the blood of the bullock, and put it upon the horns of 
 the altar with thy finger, and pour all the blood beside 
 the bottom of the altar ... it is a sin offering." Speak- 
 ing through Isaiah, God says, with every mark of disgust, 
 "I delight not in the blood of bullocks. Who hath re- 
 quired this at your hand ? Bring no more vain oblations !" 
 
INSPIRATION. 253 
 
 "He shall burn a perpetual incense before the Lord 
 throughout your generations," says God in Exodus. " In- 
 cense is an abomination unto me," says God in Isaiah. 
 
 The service of the Lord in the Chronicles required the 
 Levites to offer all burnt sacrifices unto the Lord in the 
 Sabbaths, in the new moons, and on the set feasts, contin- 
 ually before the Lord. But in Isaiah the Lord said : *' The 
 new moons and Sabbaths I can not away w'ith ! Your 
 new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth." 
 
 '* Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife ? " asked 
 the Pharisees, tempting Christ. 
 
 *' What did Moses command you ? " he replied, warily. 
 
 "Moses suffered to put her away," they said. 
 
 "For the hardness of your heart," answered Jesus, 
 "he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of 
 the creation God made them male and female. What, 
 therefore, God hath joined together, let no man put 
 asunder." 
 
 Can contradiction be sharper ? Does not our Lord 
 apparently summon Moses for the very purpose of con- 
 tradicting him ? Is it any theory about inspiration that 
 makes these contradictions ? Is there any theory in earth 
 or heaven that can make them anything but contradic- 
 tions ? Must we throw away the Bible because Moses and 
 Isaiah contradict each other, or throw away our own rea- 
 son by asserting that they do not contradict each other ? 
 Never ! Neither ! But with the golden thread of truth 
 and righteousness running unbroken through both, and 
 by aid of these very contradictions showing the develop- 
 ment of human reason under the cherishing light of the 
 divine reason, let us weave a theory of inspiration which 
 shall fit the facts of earth, and to that extent at least 
 must be the inspiration of heaven. 
 
 But such a theory, says theology, would give us a vol- 
 ume which it is not "like man to interpret truthfully. 
 
254 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 The uncultured mind can not solve the riddle of such a 
 book." Yet even on the rigid old solid unit theory, the 
 Bible has not been truthfully interpreted. The uncultured 
 and the cultured mind have alike failed to solve its riddles. 
 It was because they looked upon the Bible as a unit, solid, 
 inelastic, without perspective, inspired everywhere alike, 
 never contradicting itself, oracular everywhere, that men 
 hanged witches. Slavery in the Southern States planted 
 itself flatfooted on the law of Moses, and stood there. 
 Polygamy transplants the institutions of Abraham and 
 Isaac and Jacob into modern Christendom, and breathes 
 out threatenings and slaughter against the spirit of Christ. 
 There is hardly an evil institution, hardly an evil deed 
 under the sun, which the Bible does not buttress if the 
 Bible is to be taken at the foot of the letter, solid, square 
 to scientific statement, a formula, like the multiplication 
 table. 
 
 Any other than this solid unit theory is spoken of as a 
 new theory, a new departure. But there is nothing new 
 about it. It is the oldest theory there is. It is as old as 
 the Bible. 
 
 New England theology especially has no right to call 
 it new. 
 
 Pastor Robinson, in whom all Congregationalists live 
 and move and have their ecclesiastical being, renounced 
 for himself and for his followers all attachment to any 
 mere human systems or expositions of Scriptures, reserved 
 an entire and eternal liberty of studying the Bible and 
 forming their own principles and practices for themselves 
 from what their own reason should discover in the Bible. 
 His preface to his Defense of Dort Calvinism said : ''It 
 is true we ought not to pin our faith on the sleeves of any, 
 nor to call any man master, as Christ speaks and means, 
 but him alone." 
 
 Again he says : " The custom of the Church is but 
 
INSPIRATION. 255 
 
 the custom of men ; the sentence of the fathers is but 
 the opinion of men ; the determination of councils but 
 the judgment of men, what men soeyer." 
 
 ^^Sonie are so servilely in bondage to the determina- 
 tions of certain doctors as that they think nothing well 
 done in religion which these teach not ; and some of these 
 are so transported with waspish zeal as they can scarcely, 
 without a fit of an ague, Cither speak to or think of him 
 who a little steps out of their tread." 
 
 " I profess myself always one of them who still de- 
 sire to learn farther or better what the good, will of 
 God is." 
 
 " I will not justify all the words of another man, nor 
 3'et mine own." 
 
 '* Tlie meanest maiih reason, specially ik matter 
 OF FAITH AND OBEDIENCE TO GOD, IS to 1)6 preferred lie- 
 fore all autliority of all other men. " 
 
 "Men are often accounted heretics with greater sin 
 through want of charity in the judges than in the judged 
 through want of faith." 
 
 Eichard Baxter, whose orthodoxy no one will question, 
 had no fears of the higher criticism, raised no claim for a 
 solid Bible, a unit, or no Bible at all, but affirmed almost 
 as a truism : 
 
 "The Old Testament letter (written as we have it 
 about Ezra's time) is that vehicle which is as imperfect 
 as the revelation of these times was ... so that he that 
 doubteth of the truth of some words in the Old Testa- 
 ment, or of some circumstances in the New, hath no rea- 
 son therefore to doubt of the Christian religion." 
 
 This appears to have been the opinion which prevailed 
 among the divines of the Westminster Assembly. 
 
 "Reason," says Bishop Butler, " is the only faculty 
 we have wherewith to judge concerning anything, even 
 revelation itself." 
 
256 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 Who has eyer made a more radical, a more '^ free- 
 thinking " statement ? 
 
 ** It is of much more importance," says Origen, '^to 
 give our assent to doctrines upon grounds of reason and 
 wisdom than on that of faith merely." 
 
 ** Which subject he (Cyprian) did not handle as he 
 ought to have done, for he (Demetrius) ought to have 
 been refuted, not by the testimonies of Scripture, which 
 he plainly considered vain, fictitious, and false, but by ar- 
 guments and reason." 
 
 Thus, all along the way a clean, clear path has been 
 stamped by the strong, steady feet of thinkers fighting 
 for reason when reason meant chains and stake and cross, 
 and we who have entered into their rest but never into 
 their labors, we Agnostics, Radicals, ^'New Departure" 
 folk, we pipe a languid note for reason, and on the 
 strength of it call ourselves original and heroic, the slaves 
 of thought. 
 
 As a Mosaic institute, as a Pauline dialectic, as a the- 
 ological issue, as a Congregational question, Miss Breck- 
 enridge bears so directly on the doctrine of inspiration 
 that she needs no apology for an introduction. 
 
 Professor Foster informs us that Miss Juanita Breck- 
 enridge, a student in Oberlin Theological Seminary, ap- 
 plied for the customary license to preach the Gospel to 
 the Cleveland Conference, at its recent meeting at North 
 Amherst, Ohio, April 16, 1890, in connection with the 
 other members of the seminary who applied in accord- 
 ance with the usage of the churches. 
 
 The application, after a considerable discussion — 
 which did not attack the examination sustained by the 
 young lady, which was, indeed, eminently satisfactory — 
 was laid upon the table till the fall meeting of the Con- 
 ference. The matter is therefore before the denomination 
 for discussion. 
 
INSPIRATION. 257 
 
 Professor Howe hopes '* that it will be discussed as a 
 question of positive religion. The apostle Paul, in the 
 first Epistle to Timothy, expressly forbids that women 
 should Ueach.' The passage is the one in which he 
 lays down those general directions concerning the minis- 
 try which constitute the very foundation of the sacred 
 office. It begins with the office of public prayer. This 
 is committed to men in distinction from women, and the 
 reason upon which the prohibition is grounded is found- 
 ed in the creation, in the history of the fall of man, 
 and in the relations of sex. The passage passes then to 
 the immediate consideration of the qualifications of bish- 
 ops. Text and context determine the meaning of the 
 apostolic prohibition, and that is that while woman is a 
 daughter of Eve, and while she still remains a woman, 
 she can not authoritatively ^ teach,' or do precisely that 
 which Miss Breckenridge desires to do when she applies 
 for a license. So it would appear to be a question sim- 
 ply whether Christianity is a positive religion, which 
 binds Congregationalists, or else whether the interpreta- 
 tion of this passage which has been almost universally 
 given is correct. We hope the discussion will follow this 
 line." 
 
 And perhaps the highest Congregational authority 
 pronounces more formal judgment after giving what 
 seems to be a fair and full statement of the case : **Our 
 ministry and our churches have almost uniformly re- 
 garded the family, and not the individual, as the social 
 unit ; and have understood Paul [I Cor. xi, 3-1 G ; xiv, 
 34, 35 ; Eph. v, 22-24 ; and especially I Tim. ii, 11-13] 
 as teaching, as plainly as it is within the power of hu- 
 man language to teach, that Christianity does not, as the 
 rule, w^hatever may be true in rarely exceptional cases, 
 recognize any right of woman in the pulpit. In recent 
 years men have arisen, like the late Mr. Beecher, who 
 17 
 
258 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 have argued that times have so changed that, were Paul 
 now alive, he would teach a different gospel on this sub- 
 ject. Such a suggestion seems to us squarely in the face 
 of any effectual doctrine of divine inspiration. If the 
 Scriptures can be modified in their tone of truth by what 
 somebody thinks their authors would say, were they writ- 
 ing to-day, the word of the Lord does not stand as Isaiah 
 said it did, while the grass withers and the flower fades. 
 We hope our brethren will have grace to settle this ques- 
 tion as God wants it settled." 
 
 Thus it seems that, as plainly as it is within the power 
 of human language to teach, Paul teaches that Miss 
 Breckenridge must not preach ; and to teach otherwise 
 is to stand squarely in the face of any effectual doctrine 
 of divine inspiration. 
 
 Happily the texts are given which bear on Miss Breck- 
 enridge. Let us examine them, noting, however, first, 
 that if the Scriptures are not to be modified by times and 
 seasons, the ceremonial law of the Jews is of full obliga- 
 tion in America at this day : 
 
 I Corinthians, xi, 3-16. 
 
 ** But I would have you know, that the head of every 
 man is Christ ; and the head of the woman is the man ; 
 and the head of Christ is God. Every man praying or 
 prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoreth his 
 head. But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth 
 with her head uncovered dishonoreth her head : for that 
 is even all one as if she were shaven. For if the woman 
 be not covered, let her also be shorn : but if it be a shame 
 for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered. 
 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch 
 as he is the image and glory of God : but the woman is the 
 glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman ; 
 but the woman of the man. Neither was the man 
 created for the woman ; but the woman for the man. 
 
INSPIRATION. 259 
 
 For this cause ought the woman to have power on her 
 head, because of the angels. Nevertheless neither is the 
 man without the woman, neither the woman without the 
 man, in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, 
 even so is the man also by the woman ; but all things of 
 God. Judge in yourselves : is it comely that a woman 
 pray unto God uncovered ? Doth not even nature itself 
 teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame 
 unto him ? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory 
 to her : for her hair is given her for a covering. But if 
 any man seem to be contentious, we have no such cus- 
 tom, neither the churches of God." 
 
 It requires heroic self-control not to give the exe- 
 gesis which this most interesting passage prompts, but 
 we must keep to the point, which is Miss Brecken- 
 ridge ; and all that Paul has to say about Miss Brecken- 
 ridge is that she should preach with her head covered. 
 He not only does not refuse to recognize her license to 
 preach and to pray in public, but he distinctly recognizes 
 both — if she wears a bonnet ! More than that, he refuses 
 to continue the argument, even if she will not wear her 
 bonnet. He says what he thinks is proper, but if any 
 man is contentious, Paul declines to waste time over 
 that ; he waives it aside with the simple remark, *^ It is 
 not our way," and goes on to more important matters. 
 
 But what of the reasoning that would make such a 
 
 text prove such a conclusion or stand squarely in the face 
 
 of inspiration ? 
 
 I Corinthians, xiv, 34, 35. 
 
 '^ Let your women keep silence in the churches : for it 
 is not permitted unto them to speak ; but they are com- 
 manded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. 
 And if they will learn anything, let them ask their hus- 
 bands at home : for it is a shame for women to speak in 
 the church." 
 
260 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 Observe that Paul does not say, *Met all women keep 
 silent in the churches," but "let your women" — the 
 women of the noisy, clamorous, unruly Corinthian 
 church, to whom his letter is specifically addressed. 
 There is no question of pulpit, or teaching, or preaching, 
 but of women starting up in the pews to interrupt the 
 preaching with questions. He does not say, *' if they 
 wish to preach or teach anything, let them ask their hus- 
 bands at home, but if they will learn anything let them 
 ask their husbands at home." He is trying to bring order 
 and decorum into a new and turbulent church. Even 
 the men are like grown-up boys— delighted with their 
 new liberty but not half comprehending it, and altogeth- 
 er running riot. In a hundred ways, gently but most 
 urgently, he tries to curb them with every consideration 
 of worldliness and unworldliness ; to keep them from 
 talking all together and making a nuisance and scandal of 
 their meeting. He shows them how absurd it is, how use- 
 less, how mischievous. Hq tells them when they ought 
 to speak, how many may speak at once, when they ought 
 to be silent talking only to themselves and to God, giving 
 them the most minute directions with a reasonable and 
 delicate persuasiveness. It was a troublesome and 
 thankless task, and when he turns to the women he evi- 
 dently sees that it is hopeless. Even Paul abandons 
 the situation and says simply : *' Do not you talk at 
 all " ; and I think we all agree that he took the wisest 
 course. 
 
 But what of the reasoning that says unless the direc- 
 tions given to the disorderly female chatterers in the 
 Corinthian churches, where the men were chattering as 
 noisily, and were curbed as strenuously, short of being 
 absolutely silenced — unless these directions apply to Miss 
 Breckenridge, able, educated, and desiring to preach the 
 Gospel with perfect decorum and the full consent of 
 
INSPIRATION. 261 
 
 her congregation — there is no effectiye doctrine of divine 
 inspiration ? 
 
 Ephesians, V, 22-24. 
 
 " Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as 
 unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, 
 even as Christ is the head of the church : and he is the 
 saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject 
 unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in 
 everything." 
 
 As plainly as human language can teach, this seems to 
 
 teach that if a man wishes his wife to preach, she must ; 
 
 and if he is willing she should preach, she may ; and that 
 
 Miss Breckenridge, having no husband at all, may do as 
 
 she chooses. 
 
 And especially 
 
 I Timothy, ii, 12-U. 
 
 *^But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp au- 
 thority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam 
 was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, 
 but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." 
 
 Paul may seem to have been a little hard pushed for 
 argument, but it answered his purpose perfectly with the 
 audience he was addressing. We, however, are concerned 
 only in re Juanita Breckenridge, who has no desire to 
 usurp authority over the man in teaching and preaching, 
 but asks authority from man to teach and preach. Paul 
 having previously enjoined upon woman to be well dressed 
 Avhen she was preaching, and to preach if her husband 
 wished her to preach, how can this command to women 
 not to speak at all unless they can speak in an orderly and 
 legitimate way apply to Miss Breckenridge, who asks in 
 the orderly and legitimate way for permission to preach ? 
 
 And what of the reasoning that squarely refuses any 
 effectual doctrine of divine inspiration unless Paul speaks 
 to the Oberlin graduates and the Smith College gradu- 
 
262 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 ates, and the Wellesley and the Vassar graduates, in the 
 'vvords that he spoke to the Corinthian neophytes eighteen 
 hundred years ago ? 
 
 Listening to such exegesis from the lips of men, I am 
 ready to believe that there is a loud call for Miss Juanita 
 Breckenridge in the pulpit. 
 
 Surely there is something to be learned from the 
 words and the attitude of Christ toward women. He 
 paid to their intelligence the exquisite compliment of 
 addressing it. As Dr. Donaldson has reminded us, with 
 a woman he held the most profound conversation, and to 
 a woman he proclaimed the grandest truths of his reve- 
 lation. A woman, in her enthusiasm, entered the room 
 where Christ was dining as a guest, to pay her costly 
 tribute of adoration, and was not only not rebuked, but 
 has been immortalized by the expressed approbation of 
 our Lord. In his Oriental nation, Christ and his mother 
 mingled with equal freedom among host and guests. 
 His intimacy with the family at Bethany took in the 
 sisters — even the housekeeping sister — to as lofty and 
 intellectual an intercourse as the brother ; and his first 
 appearance after the resurrection was to a woman. All 
 the mildness and lenity and consideration of Christ were 
 lavished on women. I do not remember that to any 
 woman, however erring, Christ showed token of dis- 
 pleasure or condemnation, or aught more severe than a 
 grave and gentle benignity. His few words of wrath 
 and rebuke were for men. 
 
 Is there any reason why the test of Jeremiah should 
 not be applied to the female prophets ? If they profit 
 the people, they speak the words of the Lord. 
 
 The New Testament is nearer to us in time and in 
 social organization than the Old Testament. Indeed, so- 
 ciety at the time and in the country of the birth of Christ 
 was more like the nineteenth century than almost any 
 
INSPIRATION. 263 
 
 subsequent century. And as the New Testament was in 
 a sense the culmination of the Old, embodying the biog- 
 raphy and preaching of our Lord, it is to the Old Testa- 
 ment as sunshine to twilight ; but the twilight is from the 
 same sun, and it is the twilight of the dawn, and not the 
 coming night. We should not countenance the idea that 
 the New Testament has any more claim on us than the 
 Old. The Old Testament is the story of God's shining 
 pathway through the life of man, leading to his fullest 
 revelation in Christ. The New Testament is the record 
 of the manifestation of God in Christ. Neither is a book 
 of precepts for us. Both are books of principles and spirit 
 which we must apply to our own life on our own respon- 
 sibility. The precepts of the Old and the New Testaments 
 were for the persons to whom they were addressed — to 
 all the world only so far as circumstances make them ap- 
 plicable. Of that every man is his own judge. We suffer 
 not the authority of Moses to prevail against Sunday wor- 
 ship, and there is no more reason why we should quote 
 Paul against Miss Breckenridge, now that she wants a li- 
 cense to preach from Oberlin College, than there is why 
 we should quote Moses against a clergyman's frock-coat. 
 
 The hosts of learned men and women who are devoting 
 their lives to the Pentateuch and the prophets, and the 
 other hosts who are digging in the sacred soil, searching 
 for the hidden treasures of buried cities, only show how 
 deep a hold this revelation of God has taken on the hearts 
 of men. In all these studies, in all these excavations, 
 the Bible is the mainspring and guiding spirit — nay, not 
 only the guiding spirit, but literally the guide-book. 
 
 M. Naville, the persistent and successful Egyptian 
 explorer, recently made a statement, at the Victoria In- 
 stitute in London, of the discoveries which he has just 
 made ; and quoted the prophecy of Ezekiel against 
 Egypt, because it contained the names of the leading 
 
264 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 buried cities, the recovery of whose records he is desir- 
 ous to secure. The greatest and most successful Egyp- 
 tian explorer of modern times goes to prophecy for light 
 to enable him to find that which others had failed to 
 discover, thus taking the Bible as the little red Baedeker 
 of his Egyptian travels. 
 
 He informs us that he had found two statues of Apepi, 
 the Pharaoh of Joseph, and inscriptions in regard to the 
 Pharaoh of the Exodus, and says : *' I can not dwell at 
 great length here on the events of the Exodus, yet I should 
 like to mention that the successive discoveries made in 
 the Delta have had the result of making the sacred nar- 
 rative more comprehensible in many points.'' 
 
 But in endeavoring to become acquainted with the 
 Bible, to yield ourselves to its divine inspiration, the 
 very first thing is to get rid of false theories of inspira- 
 tion, that shut out its light and arrest its influence. 
 They have been chiefly mischievous in this : that when 
 men began to doubt them they began also to doubt the 
 Bible itself. But the impulse caused by a little doubt 
 is checked by a continuous, a widening, and a deepening 
 knowledge which is setting the word of God on an im- 
 mutable basis. In this eHort the Bible combines with 
 human reason, acting on science, on explorations, on all 
 human observation to justify and elucidate itself. A mys- 
 terious inward quality, an unexplained prescience, an 
 insight — not only moral, but scientific — in the Bible, is 
 coming out under the fervent, clear light of modern re- 
 search, of keen investigation ; so strong, so indisputable, so 
 startling that it has already called a halt upon induction, 
 just as rationalism called a halt upon the old manufac- 
 tured, illiterate, impossible interpretation. Reason itself 
 must wait for facts. The Bible is proved by its works. By 
 its fruits we know it. Its divine certificate is its compel- 
 ling force, its pervasive power. A clumsy theory was in- 
 
INSPIRATION. 265 
 
 vented by clumsy man ; but as man himself, under the 
 divine educative influence, becomes more spiritual, he in- 
 stinctively discards the clumsy mechanism, instinctively 
 falls into harmony with the divine spirit. 
 
 The Bible theory of inspiration is not of an external au- 
 thority, but of influence, inbreathing. Man makes things 
 by external measurements and means. God makes by in- 
 ward growth. During our war men battered away at 
 Charleston for four years, and only displaced a few stones. 
 The mighty earth-force touched her for one quiveriug mo- 
 ment, and left destruction. Man makes a house noisily 
 with saw and hammer. Silently God makes a tree. Man 
 governs by courts and congresses. God writes his law un- 
 seen, upon the unseen heart. In human work man is al- 
 ways at the fore. He alone is God who hides liimself. 
 But inspiration man can not understand ; he can only 
 feel. He suns himself in the heavenly outflow, his whole 
 nature expands with the heavenly inbreathing, but he 
 can not define it. 
 
 When we have thoroughly read a volume of Homer or 
 Eanke or Descartes we recognize that we have mastered 
 its contents according to our several abilities. However 
 wide its scope, still its scope is limited. We make no 
 new discoveries in Macaulay. We found no new systems 
 on Aristotle. These men do their work, shape the thought 
 of their generation, and pass to the shelves of immortality 
 — to be known by name to the intelligent, to be studied 
 here and there by scholars, to be absolutely dead to the 
 populace. 
 
 Thus also our best and latest books of religion — by 
 Professor Allen, Matthew Arnold, Dean Stanley, Herbert 
 Spencer, Professor Fisher, and others — full as they are of 
 higli thought and honorable words, enlightenment and 
 sanctification, differ from the Bible in that they are not 
 infinite. It is all there ; nothing is behind. And it is 
 
266 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 a little all — the arc of a small circle. But the Bible is 
 forever unfolding. It is a growth and not a mechanism. 
 It is a guide to the humble heart which knows nothing 
 about it intellectually, but craves God. The wisest gen- 
 ius, conquering the mountain-tops of mind, finds equally 
 that the Bible is before him, spanning still his highest 
 heaven with its bow of promise, arched by his strictest 
 law of mathematics, tinted according to his most rigid 
 chromatic science, satisfying in form and color his most 
 delicate artistic sense. 
 
 Other the best books are to the Bible what a picture 
 of the midnight sky by some master's hand is to the dome 
 of heaven itself. The picture is stirring, stimulating, 
 suggestive, ideal ; but it is a flat surface — always the 
 same. Too near, it is a daub of oil on canvas. But the 
 overbending heaven is ever-revealing. It charms the 
 soul, it soothes grief, it gratifies the sense of beauty. It 
 lights the peasant on his path, guides the mariner across 
 the sea, who know not one star from another, except as 
 private light and guide, nor guess whence any star is cir- 
 cling, or on what law it is hung. But the astronomer, 
 too, who turns his cunning glass upon it, sees what they 
 see, and more — marvels upon marvels, universe beyond 
 universe, yet never gets so far as to reach a bound ; with 
 keenest eye and strongest lens never plucks its secret from 
 the sky ; with life-long study and devotion never takes a 
 single step in learning that does not widen the horizon of 
 his iprnorance. 
 
 From such a book, the repository of the inspiration of 
 ages, so heavily charged with the divine Spirit that we 
 call it The Book of Inspiration, it is but natural to ex- 
 pect that truth upon truth will unfold. Its revelation 
 should keep step with the march of the human mind. 
 To found upon it an unchanging theology would be to 
 relegate it to the list of books, great indeed, but plentiful 
 
INSPIRATION. 267 
 
 enough to make a list, accepted at one age of the world, 
 practically unused thereafter. A theology unchangeably 
 true to its unchanging principles of righteousness, love 
 to God and love to man, but forever developing new feat- 
 ures in conformity with new discoveries of its meaning 
 after new study of its history and new unfolding of the 
 secrets of the world — this is precisely what we should ex- 
 pect from that intensity of revelation which makes this 
 the Book of books. 
 
 We are ever clamoring that God should be oracu- 
 lar, and he never is. Sometimes we try to make the 
 Bible oracular by opening it at random and putting a 
 blind finger on a verse. But this, also, is vanity. God 
 is inexorable. He will not say to us yea or nay. All the 
 authority of Scripture serves simply to give each man a 
 warrant for his own convictions, a reason for the hope 
 that is in him. He can intrench himself in error behind 
 the breastwork of the Bible just as strongly to his own 
 convictions as he can intrench himself in the truth. The 
 light of revelation may shine in darkness, and the darkness 
 comprehend it not. "We have the revelation of Jesus the 
 Christ. We have the revelation of the earth and the 
 heavens ; and we have within us that vital spark of 
 heavenly flame, reason, which must be to each man his 
 judge of all revelation. This reason we shrink from 
 using. We are ever sinking down into the animal nature 
 up from which we sprung, out from which we are bidden 
 forth, and asking to be controlled, asking for an outside, 
 tangible authority, for an *^ obvious authority, an imperial 
 authority, an authority from which there is no appeal." 
 But God has made us free agents and he requires tbat we 
 control ourselves. He tells no one what to do, or think, 
 or say, or believe ; but within every man, differentiating 
 him from the beast, making him in the image of God, is 
 a something by which he must say, and do, and think 
 
238 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 about all things for himself, both of this world and the 
 next — the spirit of man and the law of God. All the 
 way is strewn with blunders ; but so only is the right 
 way learned. The inspiration of the Almighty giveth un- 
 derstanding, but not in any manner or to any extent that 
 forbids the human understanding to be often at fault. 
 Men make a thousand blunders even in their highest at- 
 tempts at pure reasoning. All Scripture is given by in- 
 spiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, 
 for correction, for instruction in righteousness, but dis- 
 charging no man from responsibility for his own belief. 
 For a thousand years it has said to no man : Do this I 
 Believe that ! The Bible is the deposit of ages of human 
 experience under the unseen government of the universe. 
 It marks and records the highest revelation of Deity to 
 humanity. We trace in it the footsteps of the Creator 
 from the first brooding darkness of our material universe 
 to its culmination in the redemption of man through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. All that is contradictory in it, 
 all that is unmeaning, is but the inevitable limitation of 
 the human minds through which it was conveyed, of the 
 human minds by which it is to be apprehended. It is 
 just what Dr. Clark says it is not — God mirrored, but 
 limited, in human conception ; but, with all our limitation, 
 the divine element in the Bible is so strong, so sane, so 
 overpowering, that — through all the errors of all the ages, 
 through the bickering of churchmen, the ignorance of 
 scholars, the mistakes of translators, the prejudices of 
 commentators, through the besetment of bloody barbar- 
 ism and barbarous intolerance — sweet and pure and clear 
 it shines, with a steady and increasing light, justifying it- 
 self by its own radiance, slowly but surely softening the 
 world with its warmth, transfusing ignorance with knowl- 
 edge, penetrating manners with kindness, changing fe- 
 rocity to gentleness, displacing selfishness by love ; 
 
INSPIRATION. 269 
 
 slowly, slowly, but surely, wresting— say, rather, releas- 
 ing, redeeming, dissolving — this world from the domin- 
 ion of the beast, and bringing us into the kingdom of our 
 Lord, Christ, what we w^ere originally created to be, the 
 children of the Highest. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 OKElJfESS WITH CHRIST. 
 
 Before approaching the subject of miracle it may 
 be well to disembarrass ourselves of prejudice that the 
 study or the results of the study are necessarily pain- 
 ful. He has little perception of the- nature of truth who 
 does not know that the world offers no greater joy than 
 its discovery, whether that unfolding come slowly like 
 the rapturous dawn, or suddenly, dazzling forth from 
 clouds and thick darkness. 
 
 The agnostic, even the reverent agnostic, develops a ro- 
 bust capacity for believing that ho who is dragged, rigid, 
 resisting, anguished, at the chariot- wheels of thought, is 
 the representative of a small minority of noble natures 
 who are at the mercy of thought, at the mercy of truth, 
 and from whom, in fact, all human advance comes. To 
 such a one the parting with what is called the Christian 
 mythology pictures itself as the rending asunder of bones 
 and marrow. A recognition of the kinship of humanity 
 with God and of the divinity of the order of nature rep- 
 resents itself as the soul-harrowing crisis of the intel- 
 lectual and spiritual life. 
 
 Not so. A Christian of the old Christianity, who has 
 not simply felt its spirit in his life but has given direct 
 and candid thought to its doctrines, feels, in classifying 
 its myth, that he has come to the fullness of time when 
 the clumsy, centuries-gathered conglomeration is to fall 
 
ONENESS WITH CHRIST. 271 
 
 away and the simple, direct religion of Christ is to shine 
 forth in its pristine purity. It is the sublime and crown- 
 ing moment of his life, the revelation of God and from 
 God in his own rapt and worshiping soul. 
 
 Eighteen hundred years ago Jesus Christ himself de- 
 clared the truth of human and divine kinship ; came on 
 earth expressly to declare it ; when he stretched forth 
 his hand toward his disciples and said: ''Behold my 
 mother and my brethren ! For whosoever shall do the 
 will of my Father which is in heaven the same is my 
 brother, and sister, and mother. As thou. Father, art 
 in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us." 
 
 Paul said it as strongly : '' The Spirit itself beareth 
 witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, 
 and if children then heirs ; heirs of God and joint heirs 
 with Christ." He not only asserted our sonship, but 
 cried out, ^^ Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth 
 the Spirit of his son into your hearts, crying Abba 
 Father." 
 
 The beloved and loving disciple reiterated it: ''Be- 
 loved now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet ap- 
 pear what we shall be." 
 
 Old orthodoxy has befogged many truths, but it has 
 kept itself alive because it has kept alive in its rugged 
 bosom the vital truth that we are the children of God. 
 It is a great truth, but it was not left for nineteenth-cent- 
 ury agnosticism to discover. 
 
 "Every human soul in which the voice of God makes 
 itself felt enjoys, equally with Jesus of Nazareth, the di- 
 vine vsonship." 
 
 This statement or formula, which has been presented 
 as utterly subversive of the Christian religion, is in truth 
 the very soul of the Christian religion. 
 
 It means something or it means nothing. The some- 
 thing meaning is that which lifts man to the level of 
 
272 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 Christ. The nothing meaning is that which lowers Christ 
 to the level of man. 
 
 Jesus Christ is only a great man : This is the final 
 outcome of a long, sharp struggle in the devout agnostic 
 who believes himself to be the slave of truth, and he im- 
 mediately assumes toward Christ an attitude which, if 
 Christ were indeed only a great man, would be simply 
 maudlin. One of the rules of the Christian brotherhood, 
 founded in London on a recoil from the Godhood of 
 Christ, is that every meeting, every undertaking of what- 
 ever kind, shall open with the special word or formula of 
 the brotherhood : ** This do in remembrance of me." 
 
 Refusing to partake of the Communion Supper in re- 
 membrance of a risen Lord, they devise the eating of all 
 meals in remembrance of a dead great man, and thus the 
 brotherhood's carj^enter rises in his cottage home, lifts 
 his right hand, and pronounces solemnly : " The Master 
 said, 'This do in remembrance of me,' '^ and the smallest 
 youngster responds : *' Jesus, we remember thee always." 
 
 It is little that this custom would rob the original 
 rite of its special beauty and tenderness, or that it inevi- 
 tably suggests to us Peters crude and headlong desire to 
 do something out of the common in first refusing to per- 
 mit the Saviour to wash his feet with the others, and 
 then insisting on being washed a great deal more than 
 the others. 
 
 Nor is there objection to it on the old orthodox idea of 
 Jesus, the Christ, if one finds in it a help to right living. 
 It is futile and grotesque as an attempt to invest a mere 
 Jewish peasant with the heavenly robes of a discarded di- 
 vinity. The new religionist will have Jesus of Nazareth 
 a mere man, but he can not leave him to take his chances 
 beside other great men. We may admit the superiority 
 of his character and of his intellect as a Jewish peasant ; 
 and I do not know any flaw in the integrity of Sir Moses 
 
ONENESS WITH CHRIST. 273 
 
 Montefiore or in the genius of Lord Beaconsfield, but the 
 man who should attempt to induce people to say grace at 
 table to Sir Moses Montefiore or to Mr. Disraeli would 
 be counted a lunatic. We have as good men in our day 
 and country as tlie world has ever seen, but no man ever 
 spreads his hands over consecrated bread before the peo- 
 ple and says, with reverent lips : " This do in remem- 
 brance of Lincoln." President Garfield never stood so 
 low in the society of his time as stood Jesus in Judea, and 
 never will be so high as Christ before Christendom, but 
 no little children are taught to lisp at even-tide, "Gar- 
 field, we remember thee always." When the sermon is 
 ended and the prayer offered, no congregation is ever dis- 
 missed with the benediction, ** Go in peace, in the love of 
 God, and in the memory of his servant George Washing- 
 ton." The very suggestion seems like mockery, irrever- 
 ence. One feels a moral shock. 
 
 " God was in Christ not otherwise in kind than he is 
 in man," says the devout agnostic, honestly believing 
 that he feels the inward wrench of bones and marrow. 
 Not at all. There is no marrow in such bones. This 
 agonizing agnostic truth is a truism of the Bible. It is 
 not only between Christ and man, but between God and 
 man that there is no difference except in degree. We 
 have the word of the Bible for all who beliere the Bible. 
 We have the word of science for all who reject the Bible. 
 God made man in his own image, says the Genesis, and 
 those who distrust the Pentateuch may read their Gene- 
 sis out of Herbert Spencer : 
 
 "The power manifested throughout the universe dis- 
 tinguished as material is the same power which in our- 
 selves wells up under the form of consciousness : 
 
 " The power which manifests itself in consciousness is 
 but a differently conditioned form of the power which 
 manifests itself beyond consciousness." 
 18 
 
274 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 The Genesis of Moses and the Genesis of Science agree 
 that the power which created man is the same in kind as 
 man himself. It is a scientific confirmation of the Bible 
 Genesis over which one might go mad with joy if one 
 must go mad : and none more quickly than he who, 
 reared in the old orthodoxy, accepting :ts truths, loving 
 its spirit, emulating its self-training, j^et can not adopt 
 the traditions and impossibilities which have accumulated 
 to its hiding. If it be not truth, it is yet to be explained 
 how the earliest glimmer of light upon the nature of man 
 should shine harmoniously with the latest gleam of the 
 light which science has kindled. If it be not truth, it 
 is certainly a wonderful cumulation to the proof of error 
 that the oneness of humanity with divinity, vaguely and 
 variously hinted at in many ways by many philosophers 
 through many ages, apparently demonstrated by science 
 in these later times, should conform so exactly with the 
 Logos, the word incarnated in Christ, the unity of spirit 
 outbreathed by him as life and immortality brought to 
 light. Ilis good tidings of great joy, communicated to 
 his followers by the thousand-fold touch of personal 
 association, and by them preached to the world tlirough 
 doctrine and enthusiasm and martyrdom, was that hu- 
 manity partakes of the divine nature ; that man alone of 
 all created beings is in the image of God. He took not 
 upon himself the form of beasts ; he took upon himself 
 the form of man, thereby consecrating and certifying 
 humanity as the image of God. 
 
 But it is just as important to note the difference be- 
 tween God and man as it is to note the likeness ; and to 
 note that, although we are made in his image, we are a 
 great deal more unlike him than we are like him. Strong 
 in the consciousness of bearing his image, we at first re- 
 ject this statement, but a second and reasoning thought 
 compels us to accept it, because the quantitative difference 
 
ONENESS WITH CnRIST. 275 
 
 between God and man, though one of degree alone, is so 
 great as to constitute a qualitative difference. An atom of 
 salt spray on the rose's petal is in the image and likeness 
 of the ocean. Its components and proportions are the 
 same. It is governed by the same laws, is derived from 
 the same source, is tending to the same goal, and the 
 quantitative difference between itself and the ocean, 
 though immense and to us incalculable, is not infinite. 
 Yet: who, from the evanescent and almost impalpable atom 
 of spray, could form the slighest conception of the mighty 
 deep, its boundless peace and eternal unrest, its marvel of 
 color and sound and storm, its upbearing power, its puri- 
 fying potency, its destructive energy, its ministration to 
 human weal ? Surely, the spray-atom, though of the 
 ocean, is more unlike than like the ocean. It is like only 
 by its own tiny measurement. It is unlike by the count- 
 less billows of the sea's wide-stretching solitudes. 
 
 The difference between God and man can not be esti- 
 mated, but we can reach toward it. In the science and 
 art of mechanism, man is a machinist. We understand 
 that. God is also a machinist. Man makes a steam- 
 engine, marvelously contrived, marvelously effective ; but 
 it never goes till it is started. Its fuel has each day to 
 be clumsily put in, its water supplied, its track laid, its 
 course guided every minute, without its own knowledge, 
 or volition, or pleasure, or consciousness, by some one, by 
 many, outside of itself. If it is left alone one moment, it 
 either stands still idle or runs wild to destruction, while 
 every valve and wheel and piston and crank is by itself a 
 dead distinct thing, a useless piece of wood or metal. 
 
 The universe is the engine of God ; its motive power 
 invisible, its course inconceivably swift and silent along 
 unerring paths, its life self-perj)etnating, its sustenance 
 self-administered, its Creator and engineer a God who 
 always hideth himself', every minute subdivision of the 
 
276 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 great macliine, a separate machine, instinct with a life 
 and purpose and pleasure of its own, and each one vitally 
 bound to the great whole, rising at least in one case — 
 man — into a machine instinct with the life of God ! 
 
 The machine of the universe — as many stars, so many 
 suns ; as many suns, so many systems of worlds ; and be- 
 yond all visible suns and systems, universe on universe 
 circling the unthinkable spaces, till our great stirring, 
 twinkling, twilight world is but a pin-point in the im- 
 measurable sky — how can there be a being equal to fram- 
 ing, moving, guiding, upholding this visible universe, 
 which is as far beyond thought as it is beyond expression ? 
 
 There is only one thing to hold the mind steady ; the 
 universe is a fact. The miracle is wrought. The Chris- 
 tian and the atheist are at one on the main point — that 
 the immensity exists, and that it is an immensity of or- 
 der, law, harmony. Therefore it is of one. The anem- 
 one whorls its tender petals of earliest spring in obedi- 
 ence to the law which guides Arcturus with his sons. 
 For all our littleness we are just as sure of this as if our- 
 selves had made Arcturus and the anemone. The Chris- 
 tian and the atheist alike find themselves in a universe of 
 law which they did not establish, and which they can not 
 overthrow. It would, indeed, be impossible to believe 
 that one being could create and control, from large to 
 small, were it not that we see the creation and obey the 
 control — both in infinite measure, great and small in both 
 directions alike beyond our ken. What matter whether 
 we call this creative force Absolute Being, or the Stream 
 of Tendency, or the "World-Soul, or Unconscious Intelli- 
 gence, or the Unknowable, or Eternal Energy, or the 
 Power outside ourselves that makes for righteousness — 
 Jehovah, Jove, or Lord ? All nomenclature is but the 
 outreach of language toward the unreachable. All the- 
 ology is but search for the unsearchable. What possible 
 
ONENESS WITH CHRIST. 277 
 
 analogy can give to a being chained every moment to one 
 single spot of earth any adequate idea of a being who is 
 at all times everywhere ? Thought offers the only glim- 
 mer to the imagination, and that is, indeed, only a glim- 
 mer. What analogy between thought which can fix firm- 
 ly on only one object at a time, and but feebly on two or 
 three at most, and that Infinite Thought to which all is 
 an Eternal Now and Here ? Science is more frank than 
 theology, and confesses an ignorance, an inability, which 
 theology can not disown or disarm by calling it infidelity. 
 Nothing is gained for religion by attempting to in- 
 clude the greatness of God in the littleness of man. Here 
 theology stumbles, but never demonstrates. 
 
 " What mortals think they know of God 
 A thousand tomes rehearse ; 
 What mortals do not know of God 
 Fills all the universe." 
 
 Nevertheless, the power which manifests itself through- 
 out the universe is the same power which in ourselves wells 
 up under the form of consciousness. 
 
 "Beloved," says the apostle of love, "now are we the 
 sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; 
 but this we know, that when we see him we shall be like 
 him, for we shall see him as he is." The argument of 
 arguments for our hope in heaven lies in these words. 
 Here we see God through mists and clouds — through a 
 glass, darkly — through bad habits and low desires and 
 false theology and all sorts of moral distortion and con- 
 tortion and abortion, and we are only a little like him, 
 only a little patient and true and just and kind, growing 
 ever more and more, we trust, a little more like him ; but 
 there, when we see him as he is, the naturalness of his 
 justice, the radiance of his goodness, will burn out the 
 sin in us with its unquenchable fire, purify us to its own 
 purity, kindle in us its own light and warmth. This is 
 
278 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 what I read in the divine sonship of man, in the brother- 
 hood of Christ, in our oneness with God. 
 
 The agnostic forgets this oneness of man with God, 
 sees only Christ reduced to the level of man, when the 
 oneness of humanity with Christ presents itself to him as 
 a crucial point, an agonizing truth, the crisis of intense 
 and even destructive spiritual struggle. 
 
 The trouble is that this sort of ideal truth -seeker is not 
 at the mercy of truth or of thought, but of words. He does 
 not think them out far enough or deep enough to see that 
 a quantitative difference may, by reason of intensity and 
 immensity, become a qualitative difference. God is in the 
 beast, the same God that is in man, yet so differently in 
 degree that the beast is classified popularly and practi- 
 cally as different in kind from man. We can not mark 
 the boundary line, but we never fail to recognize it. 
 Theoretically, it is elusive. Practically, it is insurmount- 
 able. Science amuses herself with detailing our oneness 
 with the beast, but no Huxley makes a contract with his 
 horse. John Bright never asked that sheep should have 
 the ballot. Matthew Arnold did not urge an intermedi- 
 ate school for elephants. Schopenhauer and Schleier- 
 macher and the most strenuous of the German evolution- 
 ists are at one with the most bigoted of pietists in treating 
 talking animals as on an entirely different plane from 
 dumb animals. 
 
 In and out of the Bible God speaks to us in terms of 
 humanity as needs must, leaving thus to human reason 
 wide scope for exercise, as also needs must. God is repre- 
 sented as our Father, Christ as our elder brother. In this 
 world the son often becomes a greater man than the 
 father. The younger brother often outstrips the elder in 
 wisdom and stature, in favor with God and man. We do 
 not on that account suppose ourselves to be greater than 
 God. We need not on that account suppose ourselves to 
 
ONENESS WITH CHRIST. 279 
 
 be equal with Christ. What we may learn from it is that 
 we partake of, we share in, the diTme nature. 
 
 Kadicalism itself has scarcely dethroned the divine 
 Christ before it begins to reconstruct a human Christ on 
 the old divine basis. Every step shows the difficulty of 
 the task. When the new brotherhood founded without 
 a divine Christ is assembled, the murmur of assent to 
 the leader's oratory is so enthusiastic that he fears it is 
 the personal element that is shaping their future and his, 
 and he is up in arms lest any mere personal fancy should 
 usurp the power and place of his idea. 
 
 Why should he deprecate joersonality ? Personality 
 was the strong point of the Jewish peasant whom he rec- 
 ognizes as master, yet who was but such a one as him- 
 self. Christ did not shrink from personality. Christ 
 preached it, proclaimed it as head and front of his mis- 
 sion. '^ Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest. 
 
 **Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am 
 meek and lowly in heart — I am the way, the truth, and 
 the life. 
 
 '' Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life. 
 I am the resurrection and the life. 
 
 '* Ye that have followed me, every one that hath for- 
 saken houses or brethren or sisters or father or mother or 
 wife or children or lands for my narne's saTce shall inherit 
 eternal life,^^ 
 
 Should we be willing to forego one jot or tittle of 
 that divine self-setting-forth ? 
 
 I believe and maintain that the world has never seen 
 better men than those whom we know and honor, whom 
 we love and live with ; and if the difference between the 
 best of them and Jesus Christ is not a quantitative dif- 
 erence which amounts to a qualitative difference, Jesus 
 Christ was a very self -conceited man. 
 
280 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 " Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God, * 
 is the rock on which was built the Church of Christ. 
 
 ** Jesus of Nazareth becomes to us by the evolution 
 of circumstance the most moving, the most efiBcacious of 
 all types and epitomes of God's work in man/' is the rock 
 on which the new church is founded. The statement is 
 undoubtedly true as far as it goes, but is it so much more 
 adequate and accurate a statement that a man should 
 wreck his pastoral office and his personal happiness on 
 its production ? It is surely a far less fundamental ut- 
 terance, a far more partial and local assertion than the 
 one which it supplants. 
 
 " A new social bond, a new compelling force in man 
 and in society," is what the agnostic craves ; ''that dimi- 
 nution of the self in man which is to enable the individual 
 to see the world's ends clearly, and to care not only for 
 his own but for his neighbor's interest ; to make the rich 
 devote themselves to the poor and tlie poor bear with the 
 rich. If man only would, he could solve all the problems 
 which oppress him. It is man's will which is eternally 
 defective, eternally inadequate. Without religion you 
 can not make the will equal to its tasks. Our present re- 
 ligion fails us ; we must, we will have another." 
 
 With the roar of Jonathan Edwards still reverberating 
 through New England theology, old England's agnos- 
 ticism puts forth its pronunciamento on the eternal inad- 
 equacy of the will as a fresh discovery. With the voice 
 of Christ ringing a thousand changes on the heavenly cor- 
 rective, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," the 
 voice of the agnostic clamors for a new compelling force 
 in man and in society which shall make a man care not 
 only for his own, but for his neighbor's interest. With 
 thousands of churches and Young Men's Christian Asso- 
 ciations and all sorts of societies of Christian Endeavor, 
 the agnostic gathers another assembly as like as the peas 
 
ONENESS WITH CHRIST. 281 
 
 in a pod, and, because he calls his assembly '* The New 
 Brotherhood of Christ," he imagines that he is material- 
 izing a new religion. The agnostic's prayer at his first 
 religious service of the new brotherhood is ** rather an act 
 of adoration and faith than a prayer properly so called. 
 It represents, in fact, the j)lacing of the soul in the pres- 
 ence of God. It is essentially modern, expressing the 
 modern spirit, answering' to modern need." 
 
 But before agnosticism was born the old-fashioned 
 churches were singing : 
 
 " Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, 
 Uttered or unexpressed ; 
 The motion of a hidden fire 
 That trembles in the breast. 
 
 " Prayer is the burden of a sigh, 
 The falling of a tear, 
 The upward glancing of an eye 
 When none but God is near." 
 
 The old religion fails us and we evolve a new religion 
 out of our moral consciousness, and this new religion, 
 upon examination, presents not one single person or pur- 
 pose, principle or idea, which is not borrowed from the 
 old, only so dismantled and degraded and betinseled as 
 to seem almost a deliberate burlesque. 
 
 But it is not. Undoubtedly it is an honest and 
 earnest attempt to find God ; and it will succeed. And 
 yet, speaketh Paul to-day, shew I unto you a more ex- 
 cellent way. 
 
 The agnostic turns away from the old religion, not be- 
 cause it has failed him, but because he has failed it. He 
 is like one who got on comfortably enough with the sys- 
 tem of things so long as the earth was the only world in 
 the universe, but whose mind shrinks and shrivels before 
 a universe of worlds. At the very moment when the 
 grand sweep and scope of Christianity seems outlining 
 
282 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 itself in the light of day, the light of heaven shining full 
 upon our dark, revealing it to lis as the heir of all the 
 ages, the proof and promise of all our future, he reverses 
 his field-glass and sees in Christianity only "something 
 small and local." 
 
 Christianity something small and local ! It is true or 
 it is false according as it is set against Christ's words or 
 against some untenable human dogma built upon Christ's 
 words. If we must believe that the whole world was lost 
 in sin without any effort on the part of its Creator to 
 communicate himself to his children, to teach and guide 
 and strengthen them, except through one wandering 
 desert tribe leading to a Christ who benefits only those 
 who consciously met him on earth, and those who now 
 accept him through a certain definite formula — against 
 such a theory the declaration that Christianity is some- 
 thing small and local is revolutionary. But he who has 
 read the Bible with receptive and candid mind knows 
 that all the books can not make Christianity much 
 smaller, much more local than the grain of mustard-seed, 
 the little leaven whereunto Christ likened it. But, small 
 and local, the vital point was there, the eternal life which 
 has been ever since unfolding, however slowly, which by 
 its mighty development promises to become universal. 
 The agnostic sees in that mustard-seed only a grain of 
 sawdust. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 MIKACLES. 
 
 "And miracles do not happen.'' 
 
 This is the culminating point of intellectual revolt and 
 intellectual illumination in theology. 
 
 What is miracle ? Is it a violation of the laws of na- 
 ture ? This may be or may have been the popular assump- 
 tion, but in no science has more rapid and real advance 
 been made than in theological science. Yet enlightened 
 minds that pride themselves on being superior to popular 
 superstition and above the domain of authority, will dis- 
 cuss theology exactly as if the theological world had been 
 at a stand-still for a hundred years. There are men whose 
 reputation for original research, for liberal views, for in- 
 tellectual freedom, for eloquent theological revolutionism, 
 rests chiefly on their skill in ridiculing discarded theories. 
 Of the advanced positions of theology they exhibit a pro- 
 found ignorance. Nay, more ; so unequal are the ways 
 of man toward theology that this very advance has been 
 made its reproach. Theology, leaping from one stage to 
 another as increasing light shows it the way, is represented 
 as encountering defeat. Is astronomy defeated when men 
 cease to counteract the evils of an eclipse with gongs, and 
 begin to prophesy it by figures ? Science docs not drive 
 theology from its positions. It clears the path and opens 
 the gate by which theology rushes on radiant to new pos- 
 sessions and new triumphs. Rather is theology itself the 
 ultimate science. 
 
28i A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 It would be a little further behind time, but no more 
 really behind time, to write an essay to prove that the 
 world is not sustained on the back of a turtle than it is to 
 write an essay to demonstrate to theology that God does 
 not violate his own laws. 
 
 With the wider and higher views that theology shares 
 with and learns from all other sciences, theologians see 
 that miracle is not the violation of law, but the action of 
 law. Miracle is not even a deviation from known law. 
 All apparent deviation is considered to be caused by the 
 action of unknown law upon known law. Luther appre- 
 hended and illustrated this truth with equal clearness and 
 beauty, divining it by the poetry of his own nature. 
 
 '*I have recently witnessed two miracles," he wrote to 
 his friend. ''This is the first: As I was at my window, 
 I saw the stars and the sky and that vast and magnificent 
 firmament in which the Lord has placed them. I could 
 nowhere discover the columns on which the Master has 
 supported this immense vault, and yet the heavens did 
 not fall. 
 
 " And here is the second : I beheld thick clouds hang- 
 ing above us like a vast sea. I could neither perceive 
 ground on which they reposed, nor cords by which they 
 were suspended ; and yet they did not fall upon us, but 
 saluted us rapidly and fled away." 
 
 The wont of science is not to deny the apparent devia- 
 tion, but to account for it. When Neptune wandered, 
 the astronomers did not indolently content themselves 
 with laying it to bad telescopes, or shimmering atmos- 
 phere, or deluded observers. They put up their lenses 
 and discovered Uranus. 
 
 It is absolute truth that miracle lives with ignorance 
 and is withered by knowledge ; but, instead of establishing 
 the impossibility of miracle, it establishes directly the con- 
 trary — its possibility ; nay, even its probability. With 
 
MIRACLES. 285 
 
 God alone the Omniscient is and can be no miracle. To 
 him alone is no law unknown. To him is everything 
 easy, open, natural. But man, limited and ignoraut, is 
 always liable to the operation of unknown laws — always 
 liable to a miracle. 
 
 The course of modern thought is not, as many fear, to 
 destroy the supernatural, but to lift nature into the region 
 of what was formerly called the supernatural. AVe no 
 longer look upon God as outside, showing himself occa- 
 sionally by reversals of order. God is in his world. God 
 is in his universe, showing himself always in the tran- 
 quil and stately march of universal order. The earth 
 in its circling path has come, as it were, into a belt of 
 miracle ; the kernel of truth which lay at the heart of 
 myth and legend has been brought under the reign of law, 
 and miracle itself takes its place in the grand procession 
 of knowledge, circling forever upward toward the eternal 
 mystery. 
 
 And at this time of all times we are asked to reject the 
 Bible as competent testimony; are referred to the ''un- 
 broken sequences of Nature, in the long history of man, 
 for the revelation of God." 
 
 What does this revelation testify ? 
 
 An exhaustive examination of human records on the 
 theme of miracle requires, we are informed, a familiarity 
 with several Oriental languages, including Sanskrit and 
 Hebrew ; fifteen years in the whole mass of existing rec- 
 ords, Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Jewish; then fifteen 
 years more for the Christian records from the beginning 
 of the Christian era down to the sixth century, from Livy 
 to Gregory of Tours, from Augustus to Justinian— thirty 
 years of unbroken solitary labor. 
 
 And, after all is said, what does this revelation tes- 
 tify ? "I find," says a student of such labors, "in the 
 a^e which saw the birth of Christianity, as in so many 
 
286 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 other ages, a universal preconception in favor of miracle 
 — ^governing the work of all men of all schools. The air 
 teems with miracles. The East is full of Messiahs ! " 
 
 If there is any meaning to words, it would seem, then, 
 that the revelation of God in the long history of man, 
 outside the Bible, is a perfect confirmation and counter- 
 part of the revelation of God in the New Testament. 
 But no, quite the contrary, says the student. 
 
 Here is the syllogism. 
 
 God reveals his way in the long history of man. 
 
 The long history of man testifies to a universal precon- 
 ception in favor of miracle, and the Bible testifies to the 
 occurrence of miracle. 
 
 Therefore there are no miracles ! 
 
 Or, to put it a little differently : 
 
 God reveals himself in human history. If thirty years 
 of research into human record disclose a universal belief 
 in and expectation of miracle, and if eighteen hundred 
 3'ears of experience reveal a belief in miracle accom- 
 plished, it is a proof that miracle is impossible. Such is 
 the logic of agnosticism. 
 
 Then the revelation of God in the long history of 
 man is a stupendous lie. Whatever may be the truth of 
 the Bible, the revelation of God in the long history of 
 man has been a delusion and a snare. It shows that hu- 
 manity may have a universal preconception, with no 
 truth to correspond ; that these universal human instincts 
 may be guided by culture and wrought into philosophy by 
 all men of all schools, and yet signify nothing and come 
 to nothing. The revelation of God in the long history 
 of man is but a mockery if there is no such thing as 
 miracle. 
 
 To say that miracles can not happen, which is the 
 practical popular equivalent of the assertion that miracles 
 do not happen, is to say that all the laws of nature and of 
 
MIRACLES. 287 
 
 God are known to man. To say thafc miracles could not 
 have attended the advent of Christ is to say that all the 
 laws of all the universes were known to the Jews in Judea 
 eighteen hundred years ago. All the laws of that matter 
 which sparkles as stars in the heavens or Avhich is hidden 
 by unfathomable distance ; all the laws which that in- 
 scrutable power called by science Force, by religion God, 
 impresses upon matter ; all the laws of that force, whether 
 allied necessarily with matter, or working as pure force 
 upon pure spirit — all are known to the one ephemeral being 
 glued to one minute globe of the whirling universes. 
 Man has encircled the cosmic sphere. What we do not 
 know in this age, in this stage, in this world, can not be 
 true. 
 
 Bigotry itself never took a narrower foothold. Sci- 
 ence itself never made so preposterous a claim. 
 
 If not a single miracle had been recorded in the Bible, 
 if no particle of testimony had ever been given in support 
 of miracles, nothing can be true in the established consti- 
 tution of things, but that miracles may happen. In the 
 order of the universe there is a place for miracle, whether 
 it ever happened or not. 
 
 If God was in Christ, reconciling the world to him- 
 self, the long history of man becomes logical. Every- 
 thing is not explained, but everything is set in the line 
 of explicability and tends toward a rational and lofty 
 solution. If God was in Christ, the impossible becomes 
 not only possible, but natural and orderly. 
 
 If God was in Christ, and if by him he made the 
 worlds, Christ must have known all the possibilities and 
 potencies of matter; he must have known the worlds 
 he made. All that science has ever discovered, or will 
 ever discover, he, the Maker, knew. Whatever force of 
 service, of healing, was in plant or mineral, in simple or 
 compound, Christ knew. Hidden from the world then. 
 
288 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 hidden from the world now, Christ, if he made the world, 
 knew it all. The constitution of light and heat and 
 sound was familiar to him. Every source of disease, 
 every mode of cure in the materia medica, every healing 
 property in mind or matter, was familiar to him because 
 they harmonized with the principles on which he had con- 
 structed the world. Science has hurried but slowly, 
 creeping, fighting as she crept for right of way ; yet, look- 
 ing back, we see that she has made great strides, and they 
 are all in the direction of the world of spirit. She has 
 advanced always in the direction of lightening the clog of 
 matter. From the clumsiness of wood and coal and iron 
 she has released the refinements of oil and gas ; for hu- 
 man labor she gives the machinery of unwearying iron 
 fingers, conquering thus time and toil and space. The 
 mocking and mysterious electricity, a sphinx subtile and 
 dangerous, is not perhaps subdued, but mocks no longer ; 
 is very far from being even wholly understood, but is 
 already trained to service, is compelled to submit to in- 
 vestigation ; while the compelling mind has darted even 
 beyond electricity and conjectured the elusive ether. 
 
 If God was in Christ to such an extent that by Christ he 
 made the worlds, Clirist must have known the worlds he 
 made, in their ultimate constitution, in their remotest pos- 
 sibilities. If he sometimes used that knowledge in ways 
 unknown to Judea, it was no miracle to Mm, It was 
 no contravention of the laws of nature, but only an appli- 
 cation of laws which the world had not yet discovered. 
 If Jesus had chosen to flash his words from southern 
 Judea to northern Galilee on the lightning's wing, it 
 would have been a miracle. We flash our words around 
 the earth and it is no miracle. Knowledge has withered 
 the miracle. It is now but a natural process, a utiliza- 
 tion of the earth's forces. But the same forces were in 
 the earth then, lacking only the master mind to wield 
 
MIRACLES. 289 
 
 them. If God was in Christ, the master mind was not 
 lacking. 
 
 Without time to bring to the examination of every 
 miracle, without the learning, or as yet the knowledge, to 
 make such an examination conclusive, we may yet divide 
 miracles into two classes, which may afford help to the 
 judgment, and say ; All miracles which lie along the lines 
 of the world's movement have much in favor of their his- 
 torical nature. All miracles which lie outside of that 
 movement have no such probability, and by so much 
 have a presumption on the side of their allegorical or 
 mythical interpretation. 
 
 For example, the story of the talking serpent, the 
 story of Balaam's ass, lie outside the track of the world's 
 progress. There is no indication of the world's moving 
 in the direction of conversational brutes ; that is, mind 
 does not tend downward toward the intellectuality of 
 animals. It is all the other way. It is toward the es- 
 tablishment of spirituality in man. It is away from 
 animals to angels. I should therefore naturally consider 
 the probability to be that these stories are allegorical, 
 mythical, pictorial. 
 
 In confirmation of this view it may be observed that 
 the miracles of Christ are generally, if slightly, attached 
 to nature. Sometimes it is only the will of man that is 
 concerned. Often the miracle is built up, as it were, on 
 the material world — is, we may say, but a step beyond our 
 reach. If we take, for example, the first miracle which 
 Jesus wrought in Cana of Galilee, we see that he did not 
 create wine out of nothing. He turned water into wine. 
 The miracle, instead of being inconceivable, is conceivably 
 credible and scientific. Let me not be misunderstood. I 
 give it simply by way of illustration and suggestion, not 
 by way of proof. Nor is the illustration or the science 
 mine — only the application. 
 
290 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 Water, composed of oxygen and hydrogen, lacks in 
 chemical combination one of the elements needed by 
 molecular change to form wine ; but it does liold in 
 solution the lacking element — carbon. Water, at ordi- 
 nary temperatures and atmospheric pressure, is capable 
 of holding an equal volume of carbon dioxide, which 
 may be absorbed from the atmosphere ; and as that sup- 
 plies carbon, it is possible to have in water every element 
 needed to form wine — namely, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon. 
 The sugar is made up wholly of molecules of water con- 
 bined with carbon. The ethers and the acids are formed 
 of groupings of the same elements. The alcohol results 
 from slight molecular changes in the sugar. If, then, 
 we had the power of controlling molecular changes in 
 water, we no doubt could at any moment transmute it 
 into wine. Nature continually does this. Every open- 
 ing spring and summer and autumn sees the unwearied 
 sun from day to day turning water into wine. It needed 
 but an intensifying of the force of nature to accomplish 
 the miracle — an intensification and an accomplishment 
 which we may all one day command. 
 
 With our present knowledge of chemistry we have no 
 such control. But neither had Luke any knowledge of 
 the trained possibilities of steam. To Zebedee the electric 
 car would have been as impossible as to us molecular dis- 
 turbance. Tw^o weeks before the ocean cable was firmly 
 laid, science printed elaborate and incontrovertible argu- 
 ments showing that the constitution of water must for- 
 bid the transmission of electricity for any long distance. 
 Christ never pretended any miracle more absurd to all 
 but the credulous than to hear a man talking a hundred 
 miles away. We have not raised the dead, but we have 
 already invented an instrument by which one, although 
 dead, yet speaketh, and may speak for a thousand 
 years. 
 
MIRACLES. 
 
 291 
 
 Is it incredible, inconceivable, that the power, the 
 force, the God who or which stamped atoms with the 
 laws we know, may have stamped upon them also other 
 laws which we have not yet discovered ? Shall a world 
 which has learned, one might almost say, to live by water ; 
 which within a few years has learned how to produce mo- 
 tion and light and heat from water ; how to force water 
 into its service to do its hardest work ; how to make air 
 and lightning its spiritual messengers and annihilate space 
 and time in common talk — is it for such a world to say 
 that an accelerated transmutation of water into wine is 
 inconceivable and unscientific ? 
 
 If God was in Christ, the thing is not only possible 
 but natural. Christ himself always treated his miracles 
 as natural, referred to them sometimes as proof of his 
 power, but quite as often apparently sought to lighten 
 the stress laid upon them ; often indeed adjured his fol- 
 lowers not to mention them, not to speak of them. It 
 was as if he would occasionally appeal to things palpably 
 and strikingly beyond their knowledge to impress upon 
 them that he was master of knowledge ; but at the same 
 time he was alert that they should not rest tliere, should 
 not fritter themselves away in vain wondering about mat- 
 ters otherwise unimportant, beyond the scope of that day, 
 but should use the confidence imparted by his superior 
 knowledge, in the absorption of those spiritual truths 
 which he had come to enforce by the authority, the illu- 
 mination, the power of his divine personality. 
 
 If God was in Christ, if Christ was God manifest in 
 the flesh, miracles were not only conceivable, but natural, 
 orderly, to be expected from him. It all depends upon 
 the fact and truth of the incarnation ; it is whether Jesus 
 Christ was at the head of the list of Socrates, Cato, Lo- 
 renzo, Howard, Franklin, and Mr. Bergh ; or whether he 
 was the Son of the Living God. 
 
292 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 The fact of the incarnation is not affected by any 
 philosophy of the incarnation. 
 
 If Jesus Christ had descended from Joseph and Mary 
 by ordinary generation, it would haye no relation whatever 
 to the truth of the incarnation. 
 
 If it had been left to us to devise a mode of incarna- 
 tion, there could occur to us no reason why the extraor- 
 dinary divine should not invest itself with the orderly 
 and ordinary divine humanity. There would indeed 
 seem to be a reason why it should, for thus would the 
 incarnate be in all points like as we are, only without sin. 
 
 The fact of the resurrection is not affected by any 
 philosophy of the resurrection. 
 
 If in some tomb, hewn out of the solid rock, there 
 should be discovered to-day the unquestionable body of 
 our Lord, wound in the linen clothes, with the hundred- 
 pound-weight of myrrh and aloes wherewith loving 
 friends had laid it to rest — none the less, Christ the Lord 
 is risen to-day. 
 
 Humanity has no experience out of which to evolve 
 any theory of a new order. Nothing can be more nar- 
 row than to limit the ways, the modes by which God 
 shall enter his world, by which spirit force shall impress 
 itself upon matter, by which the ever-immanent shall re- 
 veal itself to the finite. AYe have not to invent ways in 
 which power would be likely to manifest itself. We 
 have only to study the ways in which power has mani- 
 fested itself. We are to study the incarnation as we find 
 it in the unbroken sequences of nature, in the long his- 
 tory of man ; as the old Andover founders put it, through 
 that infallible revelation which God constantly makes of 
 himself in his works of creation, providence, and redemp- 
 tion. 
 
 The grounds of Christianity are literary and histori- 
 cal. They are also philosophical. If they were not philo- 
 
MIRACLES. 
 
 293 
 
 sopliical, their literary and historical character would be 
 insiguificaut. 
 
 For the present, however, let us consider Christianity 
 on its literary and historical grounds ; on which ground 
 Christian story is, by certain scholars, decided to be 
 false. '' To the man who has had the special training 
 required, and in whom this training has not been neutral- 
 ized by any overwhelming bias of temperament, the Chris- 
 tian story is proved false ; is demonstrated to rest on a 
 tissue of mistake.'' 
 
 What is the special training required to prove the 
 Christian story false ? In one case we have seen that it 
 is a knowledge of Hebrew, Sanskrit, and other Oriental 
 languages and thirty years' research into the records of 
 India, Persia, Egypt, Judea, and the Christian records for 
 the first six centuries of the Christian era. It will readily 
 be seen that a demonstration of the mistake of the Chris- 
 tian story is inaccessible to the great mass of humanity. 
 We must take the falsity of the Christian story on faith, 
 and on a good deal more faith than the Christian story 
 requires. I venture to say there are not a hundred men 
 in America, I question if there are a hundred men in 
 England, who have devoted the thirty years of research 
 necessary to this demonstration ; while there are hun- 
 dreds of men — there have been perhaps hundreds of thou- 
 sands of men — who have devoted life to the investigation 
 and elucidation of the Christian story. The Christian 
 story is spread before our eyes. Ko man so poor but he 
 can buy the documents and read and judge for himself. 
 The falsity of Christianity is demonstrated by documents 
 which the vast majority of the human race, which the 
 vast majority of Christendom, never have seen, never 
 will see, never can see. All the documents that prove 
 Christianity false have not been able to secure from the 
 master races of the world one thousandth part of the 
 
294 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 scrutiny which has been lavished on the story of Christi- 
 anity. 
 
 A few, a very few, years ago a little book was discov- 
 ered, a mere treatise of two thousand one hundred and 
 ninety words ; and because it related to the first century 
 after Christ the learned world sprang upon it with an 
 eagerness that has produced a library of comment. Al- 
 ready it is said the literature of that one little book — what 
 it teaches, what it confirms, the light it throws on dark 
 places — has occupied the most original, the best furnished 
 minds of the age. So far from there being any decline of 
 interest or any decline of confidence even, in this cool, 
 critical, unsuperstitious, evidence-weighing nineteenth 
 century, the literature of this late-found leaflet already 
 exceeds that on any of the so-called Apostolic Fathers. 
 And it all tends to confirm the truth of the Christian 
 story ! 
 
 Considering Christianity as a question of documents, 
 outside of itself what documents are in its favor ? For 
 one thing, everything. Every book from the printing 
 press, every newspaper at the breakfast table, every bill 
 sent from the grocery, every bequest from the dead, every 
 contract of the living, bears witness to the truth of the 
 Christian story. All the letters of affection, all the tele- 
 grams of business, all the exact details of legal transac- 
 tion, are founded on the truth of Christ, and by their 
 very date testify of his coming — Anno Domini — the 
 Year of our Lord. Nearly two thousand years ago some- 
 thing happened in the East — something which happened 
 without observation, but which had persistence and per- 
 vasiveness, which insinuated itself into the very frame- 
 work of society till out of silence and suffering and shame 
 it has changed the heart and the face of civilization and 
 has become the dominant idea of the dominant race of 
 the world. Every man who reads or heeds December 
 
MIRACLES. 
 
 295 
 
 25, 1888, January 1, 1889, July 18, 1890, confesses Christ, 
 be he saint or sinner, Jew or Gentile, infidel or rector, 
 tractarian or radical. 
 
 The whole structure of the dominant civilization is 
 not only based on but inwrought with the truth of the 
 Christian story. If by any means the name and the 
 story of Jesus Christ, everything which has come from it 
 into the life of the world; could suddenly and completely 
 be burned out of the memory and consciousness and rec- 
 ord of man, society would be a chaos. 
 
 "The toiler of the world," says the doubter, sadly, 
 "as he matures, may be made to love Socrates, or Buddha, 
 or Marcus Aurelius. It would seem often as though he 
 could not be made to love Jesus." 
 
 By their fruits ye shall know them. Which has the 
 most influence on life to-day in Europe and America, 
 Socrates, or Buddha, or Marcus Aurelius, or Jesus 
 Christ ? How many churches are reared to Buddha in 
 England ? How many w^orking men and women on the 
 continent sustain a memorial supper to Socrates ? How 
 many of the trades unions of the United States or how 
 many individual members of society, young men and 
 maidens, ever founded an alliance of mutual endeavor 
 in right living, in beneficent and charitable work, in the 
 name of Marcus Aurelius ? Or of Socrates ? Or of 
 Buddha ? 
 
 A little while ago a young girl — sweet, pure, perfect, 
 I think one might say — went beyond the vision of earth. 
 Three and a half years after her death a sealed envelope 
 was found which contained a paper whose date showed 
 that it was written when she was twelve years old. It 
 was to this effect : 
 
 " I do henceforth and forever give myself to the Lord 
 Jesus Christ. I give my soul to him ; my body to work 
 for him ; my tongue to speak for him ; my hands to 
 
296 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 work for him. I give my whole self to him, to be for- 
 ever his. He will keep me, guide me, and guard me. 
 I must seek him every day. I must love him better than 
 all the rest of the world. I must do as I know he wants 
 me to do, and all I do must be to please him. I must 
 love to read his word. I must do all the good I can in 
 all the ways I can. Not one of all these things can I do 
 without his help, and he will help me if I come to him 
 with my whole heart." 
 
 Seven years after, overtaken by sudden illness in Eu- 
 rope, the same little hand wrote : 
 
 *'0h, my darling, how I miss you ! I am so home- 
 sick that I feel sometimes as if I can not bear it. 
 
 ''Nothing seems like home. When I think I may 
 die here, the longing is dreadful to get home and see you 
 all once more. I would give all Europe to be with you 
 again. But Jesus is my never-failing friend. He is al- 
 ways near with comfort and help. He always makes me 
 happy and satisfied to leave every event of life or death in 
 his hands." 
 
 Is it only what Jesus Christ has in common with 
 Marcus Aurelius, and Socrates, and with other Jewish 
 peasants of amiable inclinations that brings him thus in 
 effective pledge and stimulus, comfort and succor, to the 
 innocent — yes, and to the guilty, to the weak, the strug- 
 gling, to the helpless and the suffering ? What lie is 
 more stupendous than God's revelation of himself in the 
 long history of man if the Christian story which has 
 ministered to generations of trusting, helpless, ignorant, 
 devout, shall in a moment of dread awakening, or a more 
 dreadful blank and dark, be proved false ? 
 
 " To reconceive the Christ. It is the special task of 
 our age, though in some sort and degree it has been the 
 ever-recurring task of Europe since the beginning." 
 
 Why ? There has never been anything which might be 
 
MIRACLES. 29Y 
 
 called a movement toward reconceiving Socrates, or Mar- 
 cus Aurelius, or George Washington. We have not been 
 aware of any especial attempt in Europe or America to 
 reconceive Buddha, though Buddha is for us originallv 
 and as a man no more an Oriental, an Asiatic, than is 
 Jesus Christ. And Buddha had anywhere from five to 
 fifteen hundred years the start of the Christ. Why is it 
 that the world can never have done with Jesus Christ ? 
 Why is it that he, his name, his nature, his life, his char- 
 acter, his work, is the center of perpetual interest, is the 
 pivot upon which the world's life turns to-day ? 
 
 W^e can not all spend thirty years among Persian 
 manuscripts and past ages, but a present European and 
 American fact must be met. It can not be buried under 
 any mass of legendary or Oriental lore. We require no 
 learning to see that the stamp of Christ is on Christen- 
 dom and that the stamp of Christendom is on the world. 
 A Jewish peasant ? Believe it who must. It is better 
 to believe so much than not to see Christ at all. It is 
 better to touch the hem of his beautiful garments than 
 not to recognize in any way his benign and beneficent 
 presence. But to me that belief is but the substitution 
 of an unmeaning, unreasonable, and degrading miracle 
 for a philosophical, an ennobling, and significant miracle. 
 It sets a miracle, at odds with the long history of man, 
 in the place of a miracle wholly in line with the history 
 of man. 
 
 To mc it is easier to understand it, if in him was life; 
 and that life is the light of men ; to believe that in him 
 the Word, tlie Logos, the Eternal Eeason was made flesh 
 and dwelt among men ; and forever as long as the world 
 stands, and more and more closely and lovingly the longer 
 the world stands, will men study that object-lesson from 
 the unseen universe, will men peer through that rift in 
 the heavy clouds of matter to discern life and immortali- 
 
298 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 ty brought to light ; good tidings of great joy which shall 
 be to all people. 
 
 That the air teems with Messiahs is the testimony 
 of the documents. Who stamped upon humanity this 
 divine expectation, wholly at yariance with the unbroken 
 sequences of nature ? Whence came this idea of heavenly 
 transmission, this instinct of the Holy Ghost, this aspira- 
 tion for a higher order to crown the world's completion ? 
 
 For hundreds of years before Christ came, in what 
 wide regions remote we find this hope, this aspiration, a 
 presentiment of humanity in the direction of help from 
 above, a more than mortal power to spring from earth's 
 highest virgin purity vitalized from the unseen universe. 
 
 If the revelation of God in the long history of man 
 is trustworthy, must there not be some essential truth to 
 meet this wide expectation ? 
 
 Science scoffs the possibility. Does science never hint 
 the possibility ? Are the sequences of nature unbroken ? 
 Science has spoken some significant words ; not less sig- 
 nificant because they were not spoken to this point. 
 
 It is a common scientific statement that the laws 
 governing the higher forms of life can be rightly compre- 
 hended only by an acquaintance with the lower and more 
 formative types of being. Science is continually making 
 more and more evident the close relations which exist 
 between our own life and the lives of the very humblest 
 of our fellow-creatures — even those minute creatures 
 whose organisms consist of a single cell. 
 
 In no problem is this more true than that of sex. It 
 is not until we go below the vertebrate series and contem- 
 plate the invertebrate and vegetable worlds that we really 
 begin to find the data for a philosoj^hical study of the 
 meaning of sex. 
 
 This is the impartial major premise of Science. Since 
 we can not then complete a philosophical cycle of the 
 
MIRACLES. 299 
 
 highest life until we learn the lowest, what does that in- 
 vestigation teach for a minor premise ? 
 
 That tliere is a great world of life which wholly ante- 
 dates the appearance of sex, the world of asexual life ; 
 but, so far as sex can be predicated of tliis world of asexual 
 life, it is feminine. The genesis is parthenogenesis. The 
 parthenogenetic parent is in all essential respects a mother. 
 There are numberless cases in which the female form con- 
 stitutes the type of life. 
 
 It follows then — it is still Science speaking, not I — 
 that the argument from biology that the existing rela- 
 tions between the sexes in the human race are perfect 
 and permanent, comprise all that Nature ever intended 
 and have no further significance, leads logically to ab- 
 surdity. Those who rightly interpret the facts can not 
 avoid learning that the female sex is primary, in point 
 both of origin and of importance, in the history and 
 economy of organic life. And as life is the highest prod- 
 uct of Nature, and human life the highest type of life, it 
 follows that the grandest fact in nature is woman ; that 
 woman is the race ! 
 
 Evolution has no limits. If these principles, laid 
 down by science, are correct, in the far-away ages of the 
 lowest forms of life, in the first introduction of life upon 
 this planet, may be discerned the signs of the coming of 
 the Son of Man, born of the Virgin Mary. The sequences 
 of nature, so far from disproving the Christ, foreshadow 
 him. The sequences of nature are broken to testify of 
 him. Far off his coming shines. 
 
 In the same spirit of scientific humility and spiritual 
 discernment we should regard the statement of the resur- 
 rection and ascension of our Lord. Through life he is 
 represented like as we are, and there is visible and pal- 
 pable no reason wliy his assumption and dismissal as well 
 as his conduct of life should not be those of humanity. 
 
300 ^ WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 The resurrection of the body for ourselves we have utterly- 
 discarded. Why should it not be discarded for the body 
 of Christ ? If flesh and blood can not inherit the king- 
 dom of God, how can we declare, with the Thirty-nine 
 Articles, that when Christ did truly rise again he took 
 with him into heaven his body, flesh, and bones, and all 
 things appertaining therewith ? 
 
 The disciples had no thought, apparently, of natural 
 history, and by the resurrection they meant nothing but 
 palpable continuance of life. In some way, by incon- 
 testable evidence, they were shown that he was not dead, 
 but alive for evermore. The spiritual body we have not 
 so much as begun to analyze — or even to certify its exist- 
 ence — any more than had the apostles. Whether they 
 saw Christ after his resurrection in the spiritual body, by 
 what unknown laws he may have manifested himself to 
 them, one thing is assured : they were certain that they 
 had seen the Lord ; their conviction that Christ had 
 risen, and that he is Christ the Lord, sprang up so strong 
 and firm out of the grave, where their hope was buried 
 with him, that it has conquered the world. 
 
 It may well be that this vital fact clothed itself with 
 a defective reason and philosophy of which clearer reason 
 and a truer philosophy will divest it ; but we should do 
 well to remenber that the impossibilities of our reason 
 and our philosophy may be the natural order of the fu- 
 ture, and that the babes and sucklings of metaphysics, 
 holding firm to the living fact that underlies all reason 
 and all philosophy, may be nearer the kingdom of God, 
 the kingdom of truth, the kingdom of science, even, than 
 the hoariest veterans of reason who reverence only rea- 
 son ; and that their own. With the widest spiritual free- 
 dom, with the greatest scientific liberty, no grace is more 
 compatible and more comely than spiritual and scientific 
 humility ! 
 
MIRACLES. 301 
 
 The mystery of Christ's incarnation is no greater than 
 the mystery of every incarnation ; both are absolutely 
 inscrutable. Science confesses herself no nearer the solu- 
 tion of the problem to-day than she was at the beginning 
 of time. But tlie one is in the order of nature we say. 
 
 How long an order ? How wide a nature ? A point of 
 time, a moment's space. For we see that even in this one 
 little world of yesterday the sequences are not unbroken. 
 Even here Nature herself points to a diviner plan. 
 
 If the Immanent had chosen to reveal himself through 
 the common ways, it would have been none the less a 
 revelation. Is it less a revelation if from the first throes 
 of life to this nineteenth centur}-, e3^es that can see, na}', 
 read the signs of a higher order, may see in the incarna- 
 tion what the protoplasm meant ; may read the mystery of 
 redemption in the riddle of the parthenogenetic S^^hinx; 
 may discern along this one shining pathway how the un- 
 known and invisible universe has come down with its 
 own divine order to touch our lower order with the breath 
 of its higher life ? 
 
 It is not breadth or culture or science, but a lack of 
 all, which says that the order of yesterday, the order of to- 
 day is the eternal order ; that the order of here and the 
 order of there is the universal order. But now that 
 Science herself confesses that the order of here is not the 
 order of there, that the order of now is not the order of 
 then, this argument should disappear forever from the 
 haunts of logic. 
 
 From what we know of the long history of man, from 
 the myths of the early ages to the news of the morning 
 paper, from the Messiah of the Old Testament and the 
 Christ of the IS'ew Testament emerging slowly out of 
 shadow, ruling to-day in the heart and at tlie head of 
 the world, I gather that when the fullness of time was 
 come, when the orderly evolution of life had reached the 
 
302 A WASHINGTON BIBLE CLASS. 
 
 destined stage, — the absolute energy, the Almighty God 
 which had already at some previous unknown stage 
 breathed into man and man alone the breath of divine 
 life, imparted now to the divine life in man a new energy, 
 advanced him by a fresh afflatus of the eternal love to 
 loftier spiritual heights. Humanity, which had been 
 already forever differentiated from the beast by the 
 breath of a distinct life, received now the highest seal 
 of its consecration to Spirit by the manifestation of God 
 in the flesh. 
 
 The incarnation of God in Christ was no more a mir- 
 acle than was the incarnation of God in man ; the indi- 
 vidualizing of absolute force in limited personality. It 
 was the same kind of miracle operating at a higher stage 
 of evolution. Of the constitution of spirit we are utterly 
 ignorant. Of the alliance between spirit and matter we 
 know but the alphabet. We live on the shores of the spirit- 
 ual ocean. Its invigorating breath is on our brows. Its 
 surge sweeps at our feet. Its murmur, inarticulate but 
 inspiring, is in our ears. All that life has of worth or joy 
 or hope is wafted to us in the breath of that unfathom- 
 able sea. But whither it bears us we can not know till we 
 embark on its mysterious tide. 
 
 Foolish, false, trivial rumors of miracles no more invali- 
 date miracle than false and foolish men forbid the dignity 
 of humanity. Documents have their worth ; but the ex- 
 istence of man upon the earth is not a matter of docu- 
 ments, and the existence of the earth prior to the advent 
 of man upon it is not a matter of documents. Yet at 
 some time between the two came a miracle. Whether it 
 came suddenly in full measure or subtly without palpable 
 measure matters not. There was a moment when human 
 reason did not people the earth. There was another mo- 
 ment when human reason was astir. At the moment be- 
 tween when human reason came there was a miracle. 
 
MIRACLES. 303 
 
 Something was here that was not here before. A new 
 wave of the absolute force never refluent overspread the 
 earth. 
 
 Such another wave from the eternal energy, which 
 is also — science teaches it — eternal love — swept over the 
 world so powerfully in Christ that it stands once for all in 
 the long history of man as the Advent. A wave never 
 spent, for when the humanity of Christ ceased in visible 
 form, as must be if God were to assume humanity, a 
 Holy Spirit remained, a vital power, — remains to-day, 
 diffused, prevailing ; independent of church or state or 
 school or creed, though using all for the behoof of men ; 
 the largest insweep from the spiritual world this world 
 has ever known ; slowly evolving out of the beastliness of 
 humanity, in eternal order, its eternal life. 
 
 THE EKD, 
 
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