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CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
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CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE; 
 
 OR, 
 
 % fift's C&0«0Ps 
 
 ON 
 
 RELIGION AND MORALS. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. THOMAS ^RESCOTT, M.A., 
 
 VICAR OF CADDINGTON, 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 
 
 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON; 
 And 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 
 
 1888. 
 [A// Rights reserved^ 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY C. GREEN AND SON. 
 
 178, STRAND. 
 
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A PRELIMINARY WORD TO THE 
 READER, 
 
 WHICH MAY POSSIBLY SAVE HIM THE TROUBLE 
 
 OF GOING BEYOND THESE FEW 
 
 INTRODUCTORY LINES. 
 
 Who is the reader of these Thoughts ? To 
 whom in particular are they addressed ? Let us 
 try to define our reader. He is, in the first 
 place and chiefly, a religious man. How, indeed, 
 should one who is not religious care for religion, 
 either in its scientific aspect or in any other 
 respect ? He is also a man of a scientific mind ; 
 otherwise, though he might care for religion, he 
 would not care for science as well, consequently 
 not for this treatise. He is, in fact, both scien- 
 tific and religious, not merely one or the other. 
 Many there are on the one hand religious, and 
 not a few on the other hand scientific ; but how 
 
viii A PRELIMINARY WORD 
 
 many are there both at once, their religion sanc- 
 tifying their science, and their science intel- 
 lectualizing their religion ? 
 
 The reader we have in our mind is, moreover, 
 as to his feelings, a profoundly dissatisfied man ; 
 he is discontented, that is, in the highest degree 
 with the state of religion as he finds it around 
 him. He certainly cannot think of calling it 
 science; he almost hesitates to call it religion. 
 What is he to do ? Is he to acquiesce and take 
 rank simply with the many ? No ; he will not 
 do that. He will try to ascertain for himself and 
 independently what the truth is in religion ; he 
 will attempt to distinguish between the true and 
 the false in his beliefs. He will find out a scien- 
 tific method if he can. Nor will he do this thing, 
 if it is to be done at all, by halves. He is a bold 
 and honest man ; he will follow the truth, whi- 
 thersoever it goes. Even should the truth seem 
 to be going exactly the way he would not have 
 it go at any particular time, he will loyally follow 
 it, nevertheless, having faith in it and being con- 
 fident that it will in the end bring him to the 
 "hlaven where he would be." He not only thinks, 
 
TO THE READER. ix 
 
 which is easy as men generally call thinking, but 
 thinks his matter out, which is another thing quite. 
 
 Such, in their main features, are the character- 
 istics of the man with special reference to whom 
 these Thoughts are put on paper. Where is this 
 well-equipped individual to be found ? To such 
 a one, wherever he is to be met with, we com- 
 mend the following pages. They are for him, 
 and for him alone ; and we now, at the outset, 
 endeavour to delineate him, mentally and reli- 
 giously, in the main bearings of his character, in 
 order that we may not put any one who does not 
 more or less answer to the portraiture, to the 
 disappointment of going beyond these premoni- 
 tory words touching the personality of the reader. 
 
 Hast thou faith ? Thou hast. Art thou dis- 
 satisfied with faith when it stands alone ? Thou 
 art. Dost thou wish for some confirmation of 
 thy beliefs? If thou entertainest no such wish, 
 put this book down almost before thou hast taken 
 it up. It is not a book for thee ; but if, on the 
 contrary, thou dost insist upon some corrobo- 
 ration of thy Christian evidences, cast not this 
 my endeavour aside, but bestow upon it thy best 
 
 b 
 
X PRELIMINARY WORD TO TEE READER. 
 
 consideration. It is calculated to afford thee at 
 all events peace of mind in the matter of thy 
 religion. It aims at assigning to the intellectual 
 element a place^ and its rightful place ^ in religion. 
 Its design is, in short, to secure a perfect obe- 
 dience to that first and great commandment, 
 " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," not only 
 " with all thy heart and with all thy soul," but 
 " with all thy mind" (Matt. xxii. 37). The mind 
 is the regulator and conservator of religion. 
 Without the intellect, religion is a mere instinct. 
 A religion of the heart alone is an imperfect 
 thing ; there needs to be added thereto a religion 
 of the intellect if it is to be made perfect. 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 IN WHICH IS SET FORTH THE SCOPE AND 
 ORIGIN OF THE THOUGHTS. 
 
 How came these Thoughts to be written ? 
 Or rather, how came they to be thought ? 
 for writing would seem to follow as a matter 
 of course. Some hints as to their origin 
 may not only be of interest in themselves, 
 but they will perhaps best serve the purpose 
 of an introduction, and more especially in 
 two not unimportant respects. For one 
 thing, a word or two in the way of expla- 
 nation will stamp these apparently uncon- 
 nected Thoughts with such a mark of unity 
 and cohesion as they do not outwardly and 
 visibly seem to possess ; they appear, indeed, 
 on the surface of them, not as a connected 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 whole, but simply as isolated and discon- 
 nected units of truth — so far, indeed, as we 
 may presume to call them truth, seeing they 
 have not as yet undergone the ordeal of 
 the independent and impartial judgment of 
 other minds and not " been found wanting." 
 And, again, some opening -out of the cir- 
 cumstances under which they were written 
 will make clear that they embody an actual 
 experience, that they are living thoughts, so 
 to speak, and not an abstraction or imagin- 
 ation of difficulties that might be supposed 
 to originate in the mind of the writer ; but 
 difficulties which actually did arise, every 
 one of them, and which may be expected to 
 be met with by others similarly constituted 
 and in the like circumstances. A chapter 
 out of the author's autobiography — not a 
 literal extract, however, but the biography 
 compressed and in a sense re-modelled — 
 will substantially show how these Thoughts 
 arose, what course they took, and what 
 resting-place they finally found. 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 Doubts as to the truth and credibility of 
 Christianity may be of two kinds. They 
 may be merely personal, so as to affect the 
 individual himself only ; or they may be 
 abstract, and so have the widest possible 
 scope. The former kind of doubt concerns 
 simply our own individual salvation, and 
 embodies the question. Am I in the way of 
 salvation myself? without any reference to 
 the salvation of any other individual. The 
 other sort of doubt is as wide as the whole 
 range of religion, and challenges its very 
 reality. Is there a redemption for man at 
 all ? Is Christianity itself true ? If it is, I 
 have no insuperable difficulty as to my own 
 salvation, for I should assuredly use the 
 means ; if it is not, there ends the matter. 
 With the former, or, as we may call them, 
 the selfish category of doubts, we have 
 nothing to do in these Thoughts, the writer 
 never having been in the least troubled with 
 them. It is with the latter sort of doubt 
 only that we have any concern here, that 
 
XIV PREFACE, 
 
 which asks, and seems to ask in vain, the 
 infinite and all-absorbing question, not. Is 
 there a salvation for me? but, Is there a 
 salvation for man at all ? 
 
 We may remark by the way, that as re- 
 gards doubts concerning our own salvation, 
 as compared with doubts affecting the mat- 
 ter of salvation itself, the former are more 
 charitably construed by the Christian world 
 than the latter; indeed, that the former are in 
 favour rather than otherwise, while the latter 
 are thought to savour in their very nature of 
 what is called infidelity. Let a man doubt 
 as to his own religion as much as he will, 
 and his character as a religious man by no 
 means suffers ; on the contrary, it is rather 
 heightened thereby, his doubts being re- 
 garded as a sign of humility and self-distrust. 
 But let him call in question in any way the 
 truth and credibility of Christianity in the 
 abstract, and his reputation as a man of reli- 
 gion is at once as good as gone ; he is an 
 infidel, and there an end. How is this? 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 That it is so, all will acknowledge ; but 
 whether it is rightly so, we shall probably 
 be in a position to see more clearly at the 
 end of these Thoughts than we do now at 
 the beginning. 
 
 We are all of us free from doubts of all 
 sorts to begin with. We are " little children ; " 
 and one main characteristic of little children 
 is, not to doubt or cavil, but to take things 
 for granted, and as they seem to be. Are 
 minds ever so constituted as to be hermeti- 
 cally sealed against doubts, not only at first, 
 but from first to last, from infancy to gray 
 hairs ? There may be minds so fortified or 
 so empty as never to experience doubt ; but 
 whether or not, we are not concerned with 
 their case. Besides, such individuals are 
 not in themselves characters of interest. 
 Either they do not care for religion in the 
 earnest sense of the word, or, if they have 
 minds at all, they have never turned their 
 intelligence seriously to the solution of the 
 great problems of religion. But be the 
 
 c 2 
 
XVI PREFACE. 
 
 experience of others what it may, doubts in 
 the writer's case made themselves felt in 
 what we may not improperly call the " ful- 
 ness of time." The time for doubts came, 
 and doubts came with the time. How did 
 these questionings originate? What was 
 the occasion ? 
 
 When hardly arrived at manhood, a some- 
 what protracted illness took me. The visit- 
 ation went hard with me. During my 
 sickness, no religious thought troubled in 
 any way my mind ; and I may add that up 
 to that period I had been for the most part 
 indifferent as to matters of religion — not 
 professedly so, much less to the extent of 
 outward disregard of religion, but simply 
 as to the mind, no religious thoughts having 
 ever seriously engaged my attention. But 
 now this indifference passed away, and, as 
 it proved, for ever. There are many conver- 
 sions in a man's life, and this was one of 
 mine, from indifference to a deep concern 
 as to future and eternal things. Recovery 
 
PREFACE. xvu 
 
 brought reflection, and I began to take my- 
 self to task. The result of this self-exami- » 
 nation was found to be most unsatisfactory. 
 What did I know practically, or even theo- 
 retically, of Christianity ? Wherein lay my 
 concern for it ? What if my earthly career 
 had been cut short when it seemed to be 
 coming to a standstill ? Was I not a nomi- 
 nal Christian, and nothing more ? I resolved 
 that I would not lie under the dark shadow 
 of these self-accusations any longer; I would 
 at least make myself an intelligent believer. 
 So I resolved and so I acted. I gave my- 
 self up to serious reading and meditation, 
 and to more than meditation. I would go 
 to the fountain-head. In particular I entered 
 upon a close study of St. Paul's Epistles, 
 but not, I confess, to much practical purpose. 
 What was the result ? Not at all what 
 I expected. With thinking came, not clear- 
 ness of mind and increase of faith, as I 
 had hoped, but, on the contrary, darkness 
 and perplexity of soul set in. The more I 
 
XV! 11 PREFACE. 
 
 thought, the more I doubted. I looked 
 round upon my religious neighbours for 
 deliverance from this spiritual thraldom, 
 but I found none. My thoughts now began 
 to be fixed, not so much on my own state, 
 as on the truth of Christianity itself Was 
 there really anything in religion? Time 
 went on ; but these doubts did not exhibit 
 any symptoms of passing away or abating. 
 On the contrary, they seemed to have taken 
 up their quarters as if of right, as it were an 
 invading host in an enemy's country. The 
 more I had to do with them, even in the 
 way of combating them, the more firmly 
 did they seem to have me in their power. 
 
 What, then, was at this period my state 
 of mind as a whole in relation to religion ? 
 Let us pause for a moment in order to make 
 this inquiry, that we may rightly understand 
 what my exact position at this time was. 
 Was I an infidel ? God forbid ! Not an 
 infidel, but that which in some ears sounds 
 quite as ill-omened, a sceptic — a condition 
 
PREFACE. XIX 
 
 of mind which perhaps bears a worse cha- 
 racter than it deserves. The difference 
 between scepticism and unbelief is not of 
 degree merely, but of kind. They are of 
 different faculties of our complex and mys- 
 terious nature. Unbelief and scepticism 
 are of "two houses." Unbelief is of the 
 heart, and scepticism of the intellect. Heart 
 and understanding do not of necessity con- 
 cur in the matter of religion. The heart 
 may believe, and the intellect may refuse 
 to ratify this belief. It may interpose all 
 manner of objections, and those not of 
 necessity dishonest objections. Suppose 
 the heart to give its voice in favour of reli- 
 gion, the intellect has the right of criticising 
 and cross-examining, and seldom does it 
 forego this right when it is an intellect 
 worthy of the name. 
 
 A sceptic is not, we must always remem- 
 ber, necessarily an irreligious man ; in fact, 
 as a rule, we may say that he is not. He 
 may be, and frequently is, quite the con- 
 
XX PREFACE. 
 
 trary. His misfortune is to be a man of 
 thought He is one not unfrequently whose 
 mind has not yet been brought to admit 
 what his heart and affections have willingly 
 accepted. The language of the sceptic, 
 were he to employ Scripture to express 
 himself, would be, "Lord, I believe" (in my 
 heart); "help thou mine" (intellectual) "un- 
 belief." An infidel is a different stamp of 
 man altogether : he is one who in his heart 
 rejects the gospel ; he has no liking for it, 
 and his mind follows willingly the dictates 
 of his affections. If you have to do with 
 an infidel, do nothing; if you have to do with 
 a sceptic, do not exhort him to go back to 
 his old simplicity — that he cannot do — but 
 to go on to the new and better experience 
 which awaits him. So my state at this 
 crisis of my Christian experience was reli- 
 giously that of mind against heart, and 
 heart against mind. Whether, if I had been 
 left to wrestle with these sceptical thoughts 
 single-handed, I should ever have come off 
 
PREFACE. XX i 
 
 conqueror, is not certain ; perhaps I might 
 have got the better of them eventually. 
 But there is in this case no need of con- 
 jecture ; a deliverer, as a matter of fact, 
 appeared on the scene of these spiritual 
 conflicts ; that champion was no other than 
 Bishop Butler. What did Bishop Butler do 
 for me, and what did he fail to do ? 
 
 The argument of Butler in his Analogy is 
 well known. It professes to show — and shall 
 we not admit does show?— the insufficiency 
 and inconclusiveness of certain objections — 
 to wit, those of a Deistical nature — against 
 the truths of Christianity. How far may 
 this overthrow of Deistical objections be 
 held to prove that that against which they 
 are vainly urged, viz. Christianity, is true .? 
 Or, to apply the principle as widely as pos- 
 sible, how far would the proved nothingness 
 of ^// objections against Christianity prove 
 Christianity to be true ? Suppose the an- 
 nihilation of all possible objections against 
 the truth of Christianity to be an accom- 
 
xxil PREFACE. 
 
 plished fact, to what would this demoh'tion 
 amount as a proof that the Christian reve- 
 lation is true ? Practically to little or no- 
 thing. It is at best negative testimony on 
 behalf of Christianity. For example, though 
 we should disprove effectually all the charges 
 brought against some particular individual, 
 this exculpation does not absolutely demon- 
 strate that the man in question is all a man 
 ought to be. The negative does not imply 
 a positive. He is free from the faults 
 imputed to him, but where are his virtues ? 
 Where is his perfection of virtue ? The 
 presumption is a very strong one, we admit, 
 in the man's favour, that he is not merely 
 negatively but positively good ; but it is 
 only a presumption. So Butler's argument, 
 whatever be its value indirectly, is not of 
 the nature of a proof-positive in affirmation 
 of the truth of Christianity. He challenges 
 •you to prove that in certain particulars 
 Christianity is false or impossible ; but that 
 is not the same thing precisely as proving 
 
PREFACE. XXlll 
 
 it to be not only possible but true. He 
 pleads, Not guilty, and his plea must be 
 allowed. His proof, however, is a negative 
 and indirect one ; the proof-positive must 
 be sought elsewhere. 
 
 Such is the value of Butler's argument 
 when so extended as to meet objections 
 universally against Christianity. But Butler, 
 as we have said, does not profess to deal 
 with objections universally against the truth 
 of Christianity. His argument applies 
 mainly to those which are of what we may 
 call a Deistical character. He is arguing 
 against men who acknowledge a God of 
 Nature, but who deny a God of Revelation ; 
 and his argumentum ad hominent is as much 
 as to say to them that they jare bound to be 
 more than Deists or less — that the objec- 
 tions which they find in a revelation which 
 they do not admit, are already to be met 
 with in those works of creation in which 
 they experience no such difficulties. So 
 Butler's argument is not only at best a 
 
XXIV PREFACE. 
 
 negative one, but it may or may not meet 
 your or my particular difiBculties, whatever 
 those difficulties may be. 
 
 Of what value, then, would Butler's argu- 
 ment be to me in my then state of mind, 
 his reasonings being what I have attempted 
 to reproduce, and supposing that I have 
 represented Butler and his influence upon 
 myself accurately? Of this accuracy, of 
 course, it is impossible to be quite certain, 
 inasmuch as impressions stamped upon the 
 mind at a comparatively early stage of 
 existence must undergo in course of time 
 changes corresponding to those which the 
 mind itself is liable to ; so that what we 
 take to be a simple recollection may be by 
 no means so simple as we imagine, but a 
 sort of mixed impression made up of then 
 and now. Allowing, however, my present im- 
 pressions to be substantially correct, Butler's 
 work could not be expected to produce 
 upon me any great or soul-stirring effect. 
 For, in the first place, my individual ob- 
 
PREFACE. XXV 
 
 jections were not those which the Bishop 
 directly controverts ; they were not of a 
 Deistical nature, but of another character 
 altogether : they were those of a believer 
 in revelation — only there were difficulties in 
 the way which seriously interfered with, if 
 they did not effectually counteract, this 
 belief. And, for another thing, whereas 
 Butler undoubtedly furnished me, in his 
 refutation of certain doubts of a particular 
 character, with a presumption, and a strong 
 one, of the truth of revelation altogether, 
 this proof was not fhe kind of proof I could 
 be satisfied with. What I required was, not 
 merely negative, but positive evidence of 
 the truth of those things which I had so 
 long and anxiously questioned ; and this 
 positive evidence is not in Butler, nor are 
 we justified in looking for it there. 
 
 So Butler's Analogy might be expected 
 to produce upon me little or no practical 
 effect. However, as a matter of fact, its 
 effect was not what we might have antici- 
 
xxvi PREFACE. 
 
 pated, its operation being what may be 
 described as supernatural rather than in 
 accordance with the ordinary connection of 
 cause and effect. It is not too much to say 
 that it quite, for a time at least, put an end 
 to all my troubles. It turned all my scepti- 
 cism at one sweep out of doors, and made me 
 once more a believer pure and simple. How 
 was this ? The explanation would seem to 
 be, that Butler's argument found me, not 
 cold and critical, but eager and receptive, 
 and wrought in me an enthusiasm which 
 overleaped strict calculation and carried all 
 before it. Alps upon Alps of doubts, which, 
 if considered judicially, would have been 
 insurmountable, were now level as the plains 
 of Dura. The overthrow of the particular 
 difficulties which Butler combats had so 
 much weight with me in my then state of 
 feeling, as to imply practically the downfall 
 of all objections whatsoever. It was impos- 
 sible for me to stop short at a presumption 
 merely, however strong, in favour of Chris- 
 
PREFACE. xxvii 
 
 tianity, or to arrest my steps anywhere short 
 of an absolutely final goal. If Christianity 
 be as good as true, I said to myself, what 
 is that but to say that it is true ? What is 
 the use of making distinctions where there 
 is no practical difference ? So the impulse 
 which Butler had imparted to me carried 
 me far beyond the scope of the celebrated 
 Analogy. The moral effect of the Bishop's 
 reasonings was unlimited as compared with 
 their literal significance, which would have 
 been of comparatively small force if left to 
 themselves. The spirit vastly outran the 
 letter. 
 
 Where, then, were my doubts now ? They 
 are gone, quite gone, "leaving not a rack 
 behind," and I hoped gone for ever. So I 
 fondly imagined. Now, thought I to myself 
 in exultation of spirit, I am my old self 
 again, my old happy, undivided self. I am 
 now once more in that state of self-satisfied 
 belief which was my enviable lot in former 
 days, when doubt with its self-tortures had 
 
xxviii PREFACE. 
 
 not as yet disturbed my Christian repose. 
 But I was reckoning without my former 
 unwelcome guests. They were away, it was 
 true, but only for a time and in a degree. 
 Doubt had not, as I had supposed, taken 
 leave of me for ever. Its absence proved 
 but to be a recoil. I soon began to perceive, 
 and gradually more and more to find, that 
 Butler, notwithstanding the good service he 
 had seemed to do me, and indeed had 
 rendered me for a season, was only specu- 
 latively of value. My old doubts began to 
 re-appear on the scene as though they had 
 never been put to the rout. Not so boldly as 
 formerly, or with so defiant a mien, did they 
 re-assert themselves ; for had they not been 
 worsted once, and made to quit their ground ; 
 and might not what had occurred once, 
 happen again? But certainly here they were, 
 and not looking as though they were here 
 merely as passing guests. 
 
 What was to be done ? Was a greater 
 than Butler to be waited for, to do over 
 
PREFACE. xxix 
 
 again, and effectually, the work which had 
 already been wrought for me, and ineffec- 
 tually, because only for a time ? And what 
 good to me if he did re-appear ? Whatever 
 power he might exercise, experience was 
 beginning to teach me that such vicarious 
 championship is at best but a temporary 
 relief "Who would be free, themselves 
 must strike the blow," is a maxim true of 
 other slaveries than those of the outward 
 man. Yes ; it was clear that I had only 
 upon myself to reckon ; and that for help, if 
 it came at all, I must be indebted to myself 
 alone. What, then, could I effect for myself 
 more than I had done? Was I to argue 
 these bewildering points over again and 
 re-argue them ? Was I so to wrestle with 
 them and overcome them, as finally to work 
 out for myself a redemption which Butler 
 had achieved for me only for too short a 
 time ? No ; that resolve promised nothing. 
 The truth is, I was tired to death of these 
 internal wrangles, and, moreover, thoroughly 
 
 d 
 
XXX PREFACE. 
 
 convinced of their practical inutility. Was 
 it not to thinking, and indeed to over-think- 
 ing, that I was indebted for all my perplexi- 
 ties ; and was it likely that thinking would 
 turn round upon itself, and eat itself up, and 
 so get me out of the mire as completely as 
 it had got me in ? Could I but have kept 
 clear of thinking, I thought within myself, 
 I should never have fallen into this slough 
 of despond. Was I to go on for ever in 
 this uncertain and self- contradictory way, 
 oscillating perpetually between the No and 
 the Yes of the truth of Christianity, and 
 never able to say either Yes or No finally 
 and for ever? Was I always to be the 
 sport of argument, or logic, or of the last 
 speaker, whoever he might be, for or against 
 the truth of revelation ? Would it not be 
 preferable, I was almost tempted to say, to 
 know once for all that what I believe in is 
 false, than thus never to be assured that it 
 is one thing or the other ? Better, would it 
 not be, to end the conflict once for all some- 
 
PREFACE. xxxi 
 
 how, than thus wear out my life to no pur- 
 pose? 
 
 Thus did I ponder over these things; and, 
 as I dwelt upon them, the suspicion at length 
 began to force itself upon me and gradually 
 to occupy my mind, till at last it had full 
 possession of me, that possibly I was on the 
 wrong system altogether, and that I was 
 employing some insufficient or unpractical 
 method of solving the great problem of 
 Christianity, if indeed there was any method 
 at all possible. Was I not laying the entire 
 stress of religion philosophically upon mere 
 thinking, and what was it but thinking that 
 had created all my difficulty hitherto? True 
 it was that thinking or speculation, in the 
 form of Butler's Analogy, had given rest 
 and delight to my weary soul ; but that was 
 only for a time, and the good deed speedily 
 undid itself again. Where was I now? 
 Hardly less wofully in the " horrible pit and 
 miry clay" than before, notwithstanding 
 Butler and his really welcome champion- 
 
 d 2 
 
xxxii PREFACE. 
 
 ship for a season. Where was I indeed but 
 left to the tender mercies of my own 
 thoughts, which I found to be prolific 
 enough in creating difficulties, but power- 
 less to silence or chase them away ? The 
 tribunal to which I have submitted my case 
 persistently so far is, I reflected, that of 
 thought or speculation, or call it what you 
 will. Is this the court made and provided 
 for such cases in the realm of reason or 
 common-sense ? At any rate, it is a most 
 vacillating judgment-seat, at one time pro- 
 nouncing Christianity to be true, at another 
 time judging it to be false, and never giving 
 any two consecutive judgments alike. No ; 
 speculation is not the legitimate tribunal, 
 whatever else may or may not be. Religion 
 is not speculation ; it is a practical thing, the 
 most purely and simply practical thing with 
 which man has to do. Well, is there no 
 practical court before which my case may 
 be tried, so as to bring it to some intelligible 
 and common-sense issue ? 
 
PREFACE. xxxiii 
 
 What is religion? The simplest thing 
 in the world, would man only not confound 
 that which God has made plain. What is it 
 but this — that you are to walk in a certain 
 prescribed way, and you will arrive at a 
 certain promised end ; that prescribed way 
 being the way of faith and God's revelation, 
 and this promised end being the fulfilment 
 of the Bible's "many great and precious 
 promises," a fulfilment which, be it observed, 
 we are authorized to look forward to, not 
 merely in the world to come, but in a mea- 
 sure in this present life ? What is there of 
 speculation here ? What is there to puzzle 
 or mystify the mind ? All is practical, all 
 is plain. What is the conclusion of the 
 whole matter but " Fear God and keep His 
 commandments" ? Faith and obedience are 
 practical virtues. Speculation may confuse 
 them and bewilder us, but it is powerless to 
 promote them. And what is experience, to 
 crown all, but the absolute and irrefragable 
 test of the right or wrong of the life we 
 
xxxiv PREFACE. 
 
 have preferred to lead? Do God's promises 
 come true or not? Are they Yea and 
 AmeUy as they are affirmed to be, to the 
 believer, or not? If they do come true, 
 then Christianity is true. If they do not 
 come true, then where is Christianity ? The 
 whole argument lies, intellectually, in an 
 infinitely small compass. 
 
 The question then is. What shall I do if 
 I would know whether Christianity is true ? 
 not. What shall I thiftk ? And the answer 
 is plain : I will walk in the Christian way, 
 and that not as a mere matter of form, but 
 heartily and honestly. God being my helper, 
 I will "run with patience the race that is 
 set before me ;" and then shall I know, and 
 only then can I know, how much or how 
 little reality there is in my creed. The truth 
 of Christianity is life's problem ; and what 
 can I do better than employ my life in the 
 elucidation of that mystery, which, whether 
 as regards time or eternity, is alone worthy 
 of my regard ? 
 
PREFACE, XXXV 
 
 The more I considered this method, and 
 the more I contemplated it on all sides, the 
 more was I convinced of its intrinsic merits 
 as the only true method, till at last it had 
 full possession of me, and with my complete 
 sanction. And why not be content, seeing 
 that this method is not merely the only 
 assured way of Christian evidence, but the 
 path of true religion as well? It might 
 indeed prove Christianity to be false — but 
 what of that? It would at least prove 
 something, and that something would satisfy 
 at all events my mind, and I had no fear 
 deep down in my heart as to satisfaction in 
 any other sense. 
 
 But where are all my speculations now ? 
 They are vanished. No sooner did the 
 truth break upon me that religion is a prac- 
 tical thing (as Butler himself somewhere 
 confesses), and in no substantial sense specu- 
 lative, than all my whilom doubts fled away 
 as the darkness of night before the rising 
 sun. Why, indeed, should they not take 
 
XXXVl PREFACE. 
 
 their flight, and for ever? Why should 
 they ever again disturb my peace of mind ? 
 Would they even make the attempt ? Had 
 I not found a method, according to which 
 I could conclude positively as to the truth 
 or otherwise of religion if I would only be 
 at the pains? What can speculation add 
 thereto or take therefrom, with its empty 
 parade of logic? Speculation is clearly 
 nowhere. The reason, indeed, why I had 
 dwelt so long under the dark and deadly 
 shadow of doubt was, that I had ignorantly 
 surrendered myself to a wrong method ; 
 though in mitigation of my thus wandering 
 so far from the right path, I may be allowed 
 to plead that it seems to be the method of 
 no inconsiderable section of the Christian 
 world. Now that I had found the true 
 method (the only method), I was no longer 
 tossed upon an infinite sea of doubt ; " the 
 peace of God keeps" at least "the mind." 
 
 The result is, that heart and mind, which 
 parted asunder when these doubts first made 
 
PREFACE. XXXvii 
 
 themselves felt, are now at one again. But 
 are they one again in the sense in which 
 they were one ere I, this sentient, thinking 
 being, could be said to have had, properly 
 speaking, a Christian experience at all — that 
 is, before doubts first fastened upon the 
 mind ? Not so ; the two states, that of in- 
 nocence and that of experience, are widely 
 apart in character no less than in time. 
 Outwardly, indeed, and objectively, this 
 oneness of heart and mind is now precisely 
 what it was in that, as I may term it, pre- 
 sceptical period ; but there is inwardly an 
 immense difference between then and now, 
 a difference worth all the toil and all the 
 tribulation of the intervening stages. What 
 is the religion of a little child ? What is the 
 religion of a father in Christ, of a veteran 
 soldier of the Cross ? What is the differ- 
 ence between the two ? The religion of the 
 former is indeed as yet an unsullied faith ; 
 but it is at the mercy of the first challenger, 
 or it may be of the first suggestion of evil ; 
 
xxxvill PREFACE. 
 
 the latter is a broken faith which has been 
 re-set, the characteristic of which restoration 
 is, that no power on earth or from below 
 can ever break it again. There is all the 
 difference in the world between that con- 
 dition of Christian innocence in which reli- 
 gion is first cradled, and that final stage of 
 Christian experience which is on the way 
 in due time to exclaim, " I have fought the 
 good fight ; I have finished my course ; I 
 have kept the faith." 
 
 Here ends the autobiography, so far as 
 it has reference to, or throws light upon, the 
 following Thoughts. It explains how the 
 Thoughts came to be written, and shows 
 that they are not a chaos or an abstraction, 
 but a unity and an actual experience. In 
 fact, the Thoughts are such as presented 
 themselves as it were spontaneously to the 
 writer for solution in the course of his medi- 
 tations on the possibility of a Christian 
 Science. They are put before the reader 
 first of all under their respective headings. 
 
PREFACE. xxxix 
 
 in a Conspectus or Table of Thoughts^ and 
 then an attempt is made to work them out 
 severally in the order in which the Table 
 presents them. And what is this order? 
 In one sense it is no order at all : the 
 Thoughts might just as well — not a few of 
 them — have occupied some other place, so 
 far as the general argument is concerned. 
 Nevertheless, some consecutive order has 
 been attempted, and, it is hoped, not alto- 
 gether without success. The great point, 
 however, is, as to whether these several 
 Thoughts do or do not in their respective 
 degrees conduce to the solution of the one 
 great problem in hand, i.e. Christianity made 
 Science. If they do serve this purpose, it 
 is of small consequence in what relation 
 they stand each one to the thought which 
 immediately precedes or to the one which 
 next follows. Truths are independent and 
 in a sense isolated ; they do not necessarily 
 follow in a sequence. The word " therefore" 
 does not invariably usher in a truth, nor 
 
xl PREFACE. 
 
 the absence of it betoken some hollow or 
 empty thing. Truths are seen, not con- 
 cluded. 
 
 One word more to wind up the Preface. 
 How comes it to pass, it may be asked, 
 that morals occupy so large a place in these 
 Thoughts, or indeed any place at all, seeing 
 that the problem before us is a purely re- 
 ligious one? Why have we not kept to 
 religion ? The answer is that we have 
 kept to religion, and that, in order to do so, 
 it was necessary to take full account of 
 morals and of their relation to religion. 
 Religion without morals, notwithstanding 
 all its grandeur, is a lame and impotent 
 thing. Morals and religion are so inter- 
 woven that they cannot be kept apart, do 
 what we will, either practically or scientific- 
 ally considered. In discoursing on religion, 
 you must take morals fully into account, or. 
 your religion is nothing — or worse ! 
 
CONSPECTUS, 
 
 OR 
 
 TABLE OF THOUGHTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. — Faith the faculty of the Spirit and the source 
 or origin of our primary religious percep- 
 tions I 
 
 II. — On Faith as a faculty in its relation to Com- 
 mon Sense 6 
 
 III. — Faith and Scepticism, how related lo 
 
 IV. — Faith the preliminary stage of all Knowledge 1 4 
 
 V. — Religion and Science not antagonistic 21 
 
 VI. — Reason and Faith compared and contrasted 23 
 VII. — No need for more than Faith to begin with 25 
 
 VIII.— The sphere of Faith 26 
 
 IX. — Faith or Unbelief in itself proves nothing. . . 28 
 X. — Faith up to a certain point good ; beyond 
 
 that point, evil 3' 
 
 XI. — Faith must go on or go off; it cannot stand 
 
 still 32 
 
 XII. — Galileo a pattern to the Believer as touching 
 
 his Faith 37 
 
 XIII. — Man not indebted to Philosophy for the ele- 
 ments of Religion 39 
 
 XIV. — Suppose Philosophy could give us demon- 
 stration to begin with — what then? 41 
 
xlli TABLE OF THOUGHTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XV. — Thanks to Philosophy for its endeavours, 
 
 nevertheless 43 
 
 XVI. — "Why are our religious ideas so indistinct ? 
 
 Different classes or orders of ideas 45 
 
 XVII. — Was a Revelation to Man necessary ? 50 
 
 XVIII. — We may at least imagine a Revelation not 
 
 necessary , 51 
 
 XIX. — But fact does not confirm our imaginings 55 
 XX. — Why this discrepancy between imagination 
 
 and fact? 59 
 
 XXI. — Man not left to himself as regards religious 
 
 %ht 63 
 
 XXII. — But has God given us as much as possible? 64 
 XXIII. — To have given more would have been 
 
 hurtful, not helpful 65 
 
 XXIV. — Wanted a Method by which Religion may 
 
 be tried 72 
 
 XXV. — A scientific Method possible 74 
 
 XXVI.— Experience the test of Truth in Religion 77 
 XXVII. — Faith and Experience the two pillars on 
 
 which Christianity rests 79 
 
 XXVIII. — The three stages of Religion : i. Faith ; 
 
 2. Works ; 3. Experience 80 
 
 XXIX. — Christian Science not in itself Religion ... 85 
 XXX. — Experience no new test of Truth in Reli- 
 gion 89 
 
 XXXI. — Why has so simple a Method not been 
 
 universally followed ? 94 
 
 XXXII. — But is there no Method actually at work 
 
 now? loi 
 
 XXXIII. — Difference between theological and scien- 
 tific Method 103 
 
 XXXIV. — Descartes not with us in our Method 105 
 
TABLE OF THOUGHTS. xliii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XXXV. — What a Science of Religion is not. 
 
 M. Emile Burnouf 107 
 
 XXXVI. — Orthodoxy and these Thoughts 112 
 
 XXXVII. — Speculation no way to Christian Truth. 
 
 Four reasons 115 
 
 XXXVIII.— Bishop Butler as to the worth of Specu- 
 lation in Religion 119 
 
 XXXIX. — Human knowledge relative, not absolute 122 
 XL. — The Bible : its proper place in the Chris- 
 tian Scheme 123 
 
 XLI. — The Bible rests upon Christian Experi- 
 ence, not vice versa 127 
 
 XLI I. — The right way of dealing with Holy 
 
 Scripture 129 
 
 XLIII. — Religion does not rest upon Bible or 
 
 Church as a foundation 130 
 
 XLIV. — The Bible itself countenances a sign in 
 
 confirmation of its Word 132 
 
 XLV. — Truth of Bible a conclusion, not a premiss 136 
 
 XLVI. — Morality and Religion, how related 139 
 
 XLVII. — Morality: its end and its aim 143 
 
 XLVIII. — Man has moral senses or faculties to 
 
 begin with 144 
 
 XLIX. — Religion and Morals distinct, though 
 
 connected 146 
 
 L. — Morality incomplete in itself as a prac- 
 tical goodness 147 
 
 LI. — Religion the complement of Morals and 
 
 the fulfiller of the Law 151 
 
 LII. — Religion a usurper in general, particu- 
 larly in the sphere of Morals 158 
 
 LIII. — Importance of determining whether of 
 the two is greater, Morality or Reli- 
 gion 159 
 
xliv TABLE OF THOUGHTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 LIV. — Moral sense and Experience the two arbi- 
 ters of Morals 162 
 
 LV. — ^Judaism and Christianity — in what relation 
 
 do they stand to each other ? 166 
 
 LVI. — ^Judaism and Christianity in matter one, in 
 
 form diverse I73 
 
 LVII. — Is God angry with us when we are what is 
 
 called critical in Religion? 177 
 
 LVIII. — Religion as to these Thoughts an individual 
 
 concern only I79 
 
 LIX. — Notwithstanding any Knowledge we may 
 acquire, we walk not by Sight, but by 
 
 Faith, unto the end 187 
 
 LX. — Our Knowledge incommunicable as Know- 
 ledge 188 
 
 LXI. — Is it possible to draw the line between the 
 Christian in his individuality and in his 
 
 relation to Christendom at large? 191 
 
 LXII. — By what right have we taken in hand these 
 
 Thoughts? 197 
 
 LXI 1 1. — A forecast, or Christian Science in the future 213 
 LXIV. — Conclusion, wherein the writer bids adieu to 
 
 the reader and leaves him his work to do 232 
 
CHEISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE, 
 
 I. — FAITH THE FACULTY OF THE SPIRIT AND 
 THE SOURCE OR ORIGIN OF OUR PRIMARY 
 RELIGIOUS PERCEPTIONS. 
 
 Religion {id quod religaf) is the connect- 
 ing link between man and God, between 
 man and the invisible world. Religion, 
 when stated in its simplest terms, may be 
 said to be a belief in God and in things 
 eternal. This belief is the expression of the 
 believing faculty in man, and an evidence 
 of the actual existence of such a faculty. 
 The object proves the eye, no less than the 
 eye the object. That these beliefs do exist 
 in us, and that not sluggishly and passively, 
 but actively and vigorously, is simple matter 
 
 B 
 
2 CHRISTIAmTY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 of experience. Whence, then, are these 
 beliefs, or how can they be accounted for, 
 unless man, as he has bodily eyes for mate- 
 rial objects, and eyes of the mind for things 
 intellectual, has also an organ of the spirit 
 for "things that are spiritually discerned" ? 
 Say that a spiritual world really exists, 
 how is man to be cognizant of that spiritual 
 world, or hold converse with it, unless there 
 be between the two worlds some channel of 
 communication, and in man a power of 
 spiritual apprehension ? Things seen argue 
 a seeing faculty. The unquestioned fact 
 that there are in man — in man universally, 
 we may say — beliefs, implies unquestionably 
 the existence of a believing organ. This 
 faculty also, it is certain, is distinct from 
 any other of man's faculties, notably his 
 intellect, the one with which it might seem 
 to have most in common. Were faith a 
 species of intellect, we should expect it to 
 be strong in a man in proportion as his 
 intellect is so. But we by no means find 
 
FAITH A FACULTY. 3 
 
 this to be the case, but rather the contrary ; 
 a plain proof that our reh'gious faculty, what- 
 ever it may be, is not identical with the 
 understanding, but that it is an independent 
 sense, and serves other purposes than those 
 of intellect — to wit, that it is the appre- 
 hension of those things that are spiritually 
 discerned. 
 
 How, moreover, are we to account for 
 inspiration and revelation as commonly 
 understood, but on the assumption of a spi- 
 ritual faculty in man to begin with ? Reve- 
 lation and inspiration are, in their common 
 acceptance, intelligible solely on the pre- 
 supposition of such a faculty. If inspiration 
 and revelation are realities, it follows — or 
 perhaps we ought to say, having regard to 
 the order of time, it precedes — that the 
 spiritual sense we attribute to man is a 
 reality also. On the supposition of an 
 organ in man whose province it is to take 
 cognizance of things divine, we at once un- 
 derstand what is meant by inspiration in 
 
 B 2 
 
4 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 man. Inspiration is the greater illumina- 
 tion, the intensification of this power. An 
 inspired man is a believer in a larger sense 
 of the word faith than are believers gene- 
 rally — not, however, of course, so far as to 
 transcend the limits between faith and sight. 
 The believing faculties are raised for the 
 time being to a higher power. 
 
 And, indeed, it seems but natural, and 
 strictly in accordance with analogy, that if 
 man is really endued by nature with dis- 
 tinctively religious faculties, these faculties 
 should, in the privileged few and for parti- 
 cular purposes, rise so high as to become 
 extraordinarily what we call inspiration. 
 As there are men of what we style genius 
 in natural things, in learning, science, art, 
 why not also in the things of the kingdom 
 of heaven, though we do not call this excel- 
 lency of gift in this case by the name of 
 genius ? Faith, in short, as a faculty capable, 
 as are all our faculties, of increase and dimi- 
 nution, accounts for inspiration ; but what 
 
INSPIRATION AND REVELATION. 5 
 
 is to account for it if faith is not a faculty 
 to begin with ? 
 
 So also as regards revelation. What can 
 revelation possibly mean except on the 
 ground of an already existing faculty such 
 as we take faith to be? Revelation is 
 objectively what inspiration is subjectively. 
 They amount to the same thing virtually. 
 Revelation is literally the unveiling of that 
 which is within the veil. But an object to 
 be seen implies an eye to see with. If man 
 has indeed a spiritual eye, we at once un- 
 derstand how a revelation can be made to 
 him. On this supposition all is plain. But 
 how if the eye is wanting or never existed ? 
 How if the man is " blind and cannot see 
 afar off" or even near at hand? To what 
 in man's spiritually dark nature is the reve- 
 lation then to be made ? 
 
 We find just the same difficulty in com- 
 prehending what is meant by revelation as 
 we experienced in the matter of inspiration, 
 and for the same reason. Revelation, equally 
 
6 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 with inspiration, implies a power of spiritual 
 perception in man, and on this hypothesis 
 alone can you attach any real and substan- 
 tial meaning to the words inspiration and 
 revelation ; they are words, and nothing 
 more. Unless man has an eye of the spirit, 
 no less than and distinct from any other eye 
 that is in him, we cannot understand how 
 he should ever have had any ideas at all 
 outside the material limits of this world, 
 even supposing the reality of such a world ; 
 and certainly not how a faculty, of which 
 he is not possessed to begin with, should 
 ever be raised to the higher power of inspi- 
 ration, or to an apprehension of the more 
 special objects of revelation. 
 
 II. — ON FAITH AS A FACULTY IN ITS RELATION 
 TO COMMON SENSE. 
 
 Faith, if we have rightly taken it to be a 
 sense, man's spiritual sense, must be subject, 
 as are the senses in general, to the laws 
 and authority of common sense. Common 
 
FAITH AND COMMON SENSE. 7 
 
 sense is the common ground on which all 
 the senses meet. " II faut concevoir" (says 
 Descartes, Ragles pour la direction de r esprit) 
 "que tandis que le sens exteme est mis en 
 mouvement par I'objet, la figure qu'il regoit 
 est transportee vers une autre partie du corps 
 appelee le sens commun." Common sense is 
 the universal sense, that sense which takes 
 cognizance of all the senses. Or we may- 
 say it is a compound of all the senses, how- 
 ever many there be, and in whatever pro- 
 portions. Where the senses are few or 
 feeble, common sense is of little value ; on 
 the other hand, however potent and multi- 
 farious the several senses may be, if there is 
 no common sense, the individual so endowed 
 is a mere creature of impulse, acting in ac- 
 cordance with those particular inclinations 
 which may have possession of him for the 
 time. 
 
 Man has many orders of senses or instincts 
 — senses of the body, senses of the mind, a 
 moral sense, a religious sense (which we call 
 
8 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 faith), a sense of shame, a sense of beauty ; 
 and we know not how many more might 
 be catalogued, could we but map out 
 human nature adequately. It is a matter 
 of course, therefore, that there be some com- 
 mon ground on which all these senses may 
 meet for the purposes of comparison and 
 conclusion. Without a common sense as a 
 sort of clearing-house, judgment or reason- 
 ing would be impossible ; man would be at 
 the mercy and under the dictation of his 
 instincts alone. By means of the sense of 
 hearing or sight, we hear or see ; but common 
 sense compares together, and draws a joint 
 conclusion from, what we hear and see. Our 
 bodily senses take cognizance of things tan- 
 gible and visible ; our thinking powers, of 
 things intellectual ; our religious sense or the 
 sense of faith apprehends things invisible ; 
 and by virtue of common sense we bring 
 together and draw conclusions from these 
 several data of the individual senses. 
 
 Common sense is not, strictly speaking, 
 
FAITH AND COMMON SENSE. g 
 
 reason or judgment, but it furnishes the 
 materials and ground-work necessary to our 
 reason and judgment ; nay, it is judgment, 
 in so far as correct and wide general instincts 
 may be termed judgments. A man of com- 
 mon sense is one who is well endowed with 
 senses, and with the common basis on which 
 all the senses meet. A man of genius is 
 one in whom some special sense of an extra- 
 ordinary character is unusually predomi- 
 nant. It is a most rare thing to find a man 
 who is at once distinguished for genius and 
 for common sense. A second Shakspeare 
 is possible, but in the highest degree im- 
 probable. Men of genius are generally taken 
 to be deficient in common sense ; but the 
 truth may be that some one sense so over- 
 powers the senses as a whole that they suffer 
 in comparison, or, it may be, are actually 
 oppressed. 
 
 In particular, the relation in which faith 
 as an individual sense stands to common 
 sense as the aggregate and arbiter of all the 
 senses, seems to be simply this. It is the 
 
10 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 province of faith as a faculty to say what is 
 and what is not religion — to define religion, 
 in short. But where the question is mixed, 
 as most of our deliberations are — moral, reli- 
 gious, and social (or even more mixed still) — 
 all in one, then it is not for faith or any 
 single voice to determine the point at issue, 
 but it must be referred for decision to the 
 high court of the senses, the tribunal of 
 common sense. 
 
 III. — FAITH AND SCEPTICISM, HOW RELATED. 
 
 Faith and scepticism in religion do not 
 stand to each other in the relation of affirm- 
 ative and negative of the same faculty. 
 They are of different faculties. Faith is of 
 the heart, or, may we say? of the will; scep- 
 ticism is of the intellect or thinking powers. 
 Faith is the eye of the spirit, the believing 
 faculty, an inlet of the simple ideas of reli- 
 gion. It has for its objects, primarily, things 
 invisible and eternal ; and, secondarily. Chris- 
 tian revelation wherever contained, and 
 
FAITH AND SCEPTICISM. II 
 
 especially in Old Testament and New Tes- 
 tament. This eye may be strong or weak, 
 or it may be altogether blind, but it never 
 can be more than blind. It may see no- 
 thing, but it never can affirm that there 
 is nothing to be seen. Scepticism, on the 
 other hand, is of a different nature and 
 operation altogether. It is the result of the 
 exercise of the intellect upon the primary 
 and fundamental truths of religion, that is 
 to say, the being of a God and the reality 
 of an unseen world, or upon the facts of 
 revealed religion. 
 
 Consequently, one and the same indivi- 
 dual may be both a believer and a sceptic ; 
 a believer by virtue of that faith which is 
 " the evidence of things not seen " (Heb. 
 xi. i), and a sceptic by reason of the exer- 
 cise of his thinking powers (and as a result 
 of that exercise) upon things invisible, which 
 the sceptic tries to reason out, but in vain, 
 seeing they are beyond reason, or rather 
 antecedent to reason, being simple percep- 
 
12 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 tions. Whether faith or scepticism shall in 
 the end prevail, depends upon the relative 
 strength of the intellectual and believing 
 powers. Scepticism results from the impos- 
 sible attempt to arrive at certainty in religion 
 by means of speculation. There is no such 
 way to certainty. The only path is that 
 which every good man consciously or un- 
 consciously treads — that of practice, not of 
 speculation ; that of doing, not of mere 
 thinking. It is experience that must finally 
 determine the all-important question of the 
 truth of religion, not observation alone, how- 
 ever accurate and extensive. 
 
 Faith and experience are the two pillars 
 on which religion philosophically and prac- 
 tically rests ; faith for ideas and for facts 
 whether primary or secondary, and experi- 
 ence to put these ideas to the test. And 
 the only way that experience can take is 
 that of a godly life according to the dictates 
 of faith. "Fear God and keep His com- 
 mandments" is the last word of the sceptical 
 
FAITH AND SCEPTICISM. 1 3 
 
 preacher, as it is the first word of all prac- 
 tical inquiries into the truths of religion. 
 When any one prides himself upon his 
 orthodoxy and upon his never having been 
 troubled with doubts upon the subject of 
 religion, what is this orthodoxy but as much 
 as to say that he is not a thinking being, or 
 at least not in matters of religion ? Mere 
 thinking must generate scepticism. Reason- 
 ing may be expected finally to vanquish 
 scepticism, where the scepticism is of home 
 origin and growth, and not an importation 
 from elsewhere ; but thinking must in the 
 first instance beget this enemy and beclouder 
 of faith. 
 
 Do not be afraid of honest doubts. Never 
 shrink from the freest possible thought in 
 religion ; only beware of other people's 
 doubts and insinuations. Beware also of 
 foregone conclusions. Do not regard them 
 as conclusions until they really are so. Your 
 own sincere questionings can do you no 
 harm ; the scepticism of other people may. 
 
14 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 You may not be able successfully to cope 
 with the more formidable doubts of stronger 
 or more subtle minds. Think for yourself; 
 think boldly, and think to the end. " Unto 
 the upright there ariseth a light in the 
 darkness." You are sure, finally, if you are 
 honest and courageous, and not afraid of 
 looking truth in the face, to make your way 
 through the darkness to the light beyond, 
 where is no darkness at all. 
 
 IV. — FAITH THE PRELIMINARY STAGE OF ALL 
 KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 That religion should begin in faith ought 
 not to surprise us. It is a principle not 
 peculiar to religion. Which of the exact 
 sciences is there that was not of faith to 
 begin with, be the belief true or false ? What 
 was the Ptolemaic system of astronomy but 
 simple faith? The sun in that system is, 
 according to the science of Shakspeare's 
 day, merely a planet, albeit "the glorious 
 planet Sol," and the earth is fixed and im- 
 
HOW ALL KNOWLEDGE BEGINS. 1 5 
 
 movable, being no other than " this centre." 
 Whence did the simple-minded philosophers 
 of that unscientific period get all this ? They 
 had not proved their theory ; they had not 
 put it to any test ; they did not care to 
 do so ; they simply believed. When proof 
 comes in the person of Galileo, all this faith 
 vanishes. So when we say that religion 
 intellectually does, to begin with, lie within 
 the domain of faith exclusively, we are only 
 stating of religion now what was erewhile 
 the position of even the exact sciences. Man 
 never jumps into knowledge all at once. 
 He does, however, rise gradually to know- 
 ledge. So it has been in astronomy and 
 geology and other sciences. 
 
 We are not therefore to feel surprised 
 that the same principle should hold in reli- 
 gion, and that, moreover, a longing should 
 be felt and a genuine attempt made, on the 
 part of those to whom religion is nothing 
 if not truth, to put religion on a scientific 
 foundation, on a basis of knowledge if pos- 
 
1 6 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 sible, and no longer simply of faith. If we 
 were not content with appearances in the 
 case of the earth — if " I believe that the 
 earth stands still" did not then permanently 
 satisfy our minds — how could it be expected 
 that we should regard mere appearances as 
 fully and finally satisfactory now in the 
 matter of heavenly things, and should be 
 content to go on saying for ever, without 
 any wish to go further, " I believe in God 
 and in a world to come" ? 
 
 Why should Christianity remain perpe- 
 tually at the low point of dogma, the lowest 
 of all stages on the road to truth, and not 
 rather strive to rise to the rank of positive 
 knowledge ? Is astronomy or chemistry or 
 geology to enjoy in this respect a glory 
 which is denied to that spiritual kingdom 
 which, so far as the material with which 
 it has to deal is concerned, incomparably 
 transcends all merely human heights of 
 investigation? If religion is to stay for 
 ever at this stage of intellectual develop- 
 
BE NOT A TRAITOR TO THY FAITH. 1 7 
 
 ment, what value can it be expected to have 
 in the eyes of the man whose mind is cast 
 in the scientific mould, even though the man 
 of religion, who cannot have too much faith, 
 may on this very account prize it all the 
 more ? Are religion and intellect to be in a 
 state of perpetual divorce ? Is religion to be 
 cast on one side as an impracticable thing ? 
 Is the objector to be for ever asking, "Where 
 are thy proofs, O Religion ! not thy beliefs 
 merely, but thy certainties," and no precise 
 answer be returned ? 
 
 But it may be you are afraid to go beyond 
 faith, afraid to bring religion to some scien- 
 tific test, even though you should have it in 
 your power to do so. Perhaps you have no 
 confidence in your faith, not fully believing 
 that it is really worthy of the allegiance you 
 pay to it, or that it is ready to answer all 
 reasonable demands made upon it in the 
 matter of its credentials. Be not a traitor 
 to thy faith ! Thou art a traitor if thou 
 wilfully eschewest the scientific method, 
 
 C 
 
1 8 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE, 
 
 that is to say the only method, of arriving 
 at truth. Do not, while professing to love 
 thy religion above all things, show that 
 thou hast no confidence in it whatever. 
 Cast thy faint-hearted cowardice to the 
 winds, or rather sink it in that bottomless 
 abyss whence all such half-heartedness pro- 
 ceeds. Do with religion what is being done, 
 and will be done more and more, in every 
 field of human inquiry, until the rule is uni- 
 versal. 
 
 Put thy Christian beliefs to the test, and 
 what will happen ? Do not suppose that 
 thy beliefs will all of them stand the fiery 
 ordeal. Some of thy cherished opinions — 
 we know not how many — will be found of 
 no worth, "the baseless fabric of a vision ;" 
 but, on the other hand, things thou dost 
 not now so much as imagine will be found 
 gloriously certain, if it be indeed true, as 
 thou believest, that " eye hath not seen, nor 
 ear heard, neither have entered into the 
 heart of man, the things which God hath 
 
PREJUDICE IN THE WAY. 19 
 
 prepared for them that love Him" (i Cor. 
 ii. 9). 
 
 Thou wilt have difficulties, we confess, 
 in acting in this straightforward, decisive 
 manner, difficulties not only from without, 
 but from within. Thy prejudices are in the 
 way. Dost thou say thou hast no prejudices ? 
 When didst thou cast them off? Thou 
 hadst them once— thou must have had. All 
 the impressions of thy mind stamped upon 
 thee in thy infancy and early childhood, 
 and before thou wast able to be on thy 
 guard against false or imperfect judgments, 
 were but so many prejudices and prepos- 
 sessions. Whether true or false in them- 
 selves, they were, so far as thou wast con- 
 cerned, literally /r^>^^/^/^, that is, conclu- 
 sions formed irrespectively of any prior 
 judgment on thy part. When didst thou 
 cast them off as unproven, if not as filthy 
 rags? When didst thou test them in the 
 crucible of reason, to try them whether they 
 be the pure gold of the sanctuary? At 
 
 c 2 
 
20 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 what point of thy life and under what cir- 
 cumstances didst thou make the resolve to 
 look truth full in the face, however much 
 it might be against thee, and so open thy 
 mind to the pure and simple perception of 
 the white rays of truth ? 
 
 The process of this casting off of old 
 things and putting on of new is not easy ; 
 it is, moreover, so utterly repugnant to flesh 
 and blood, that it is not likely ever to have 
 left thy recollection. It is no less than tear- 
 ing self from self, the self of the flesh from 
 the self of the spirit. If thou hast never 
 experienced and excruciatingly felt this 
 rending asunder and consequent nakedness 
 of spirit, so as to retain it still vividly in thy 
 remembrance, thou art a man of prejudice, 
 say what thou wilt ; thou seest things not 
 as they are in themselves, but as they are 
 in thyself and through the medium of some 
 more or less distorted or impure light, 
 and thy prepossessed and precharged mind 
 taints or warps all thy judgments. 
 
(21) 
 
 V. — RELIGION AND SCIENCE NOT ANTAGONISTIC. 
 
 It is a common notion that Religion and 
 Science are somehow in opposition, and that 
 as one goes up the other goes down. The 
 two are of different natures certainly, but 
 there is no antagonism between them, if 
 each is allowed to have its own place ; 
 indeed, they are the two things which most 
 of all stand in need of each other's friendly 
 countenance and support. Religion is the 
 material to be dealt with, and science is the 
 method of dealing intellectually with this 
 divine material ; and it is no argument 
 against its right so to do, or against the 
 obligation of religion to submit to the ordeal, 
 that science has authority as regards also 
 materials which are earthly and not divine ; 
 for the scientific method is one and univer- 
 sal. An earthly method, and divine mate- 
 rials for this earthly method to deal with, 
 where is the contradiction, unless you are 
 prepared to say that man himself, who is 
 
22 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 human, is incompetent to apprehend and 
 appreciate what is divine ? 
 
 There is only one method of arriving at 
 truth, whatever be the material with which 
 we have to do. Your ounce-weight is good 
 for your ounce of gold no less than for your 
 ounce of lead. A yard measure has just 
 told off a quarter of a yard of calico : is it 
 thereby degraded so as to be disqualified 
 from taking the measure of a bale of silk ? 
 A divine method for things divine may 
 sound well ; but we are human and not 
 divine, and, as human beings, must be con- 
 tent with a human method, whatever may 
 be the nature of the material, terrestrial or 
 celestial, with which we are concerning our- 
 selves. A divine method, wherever it has 
 been invented and applied — for it is man's 
 invention — has unfortunately never been 
 found to answer to its high-sounding title. 
 Supernatural it may not inappropriately be 
 termed, but only in the sense of " workmen 
 who strive to do better than well," with the 
 
REASON AND FAITH. 23 
 
 inevitable result of doing worse than well. 
 Whatsoever is not according to nature even 
 in religion, is false.- 
 
 VI. — REASON AND FAITH COMPARED AND 
 CONTRASTED. 
 
 Never ask, as some do, whether reason or 
 faith is greater. The question arises from 
 inconsiderateness, or at least forgetfulness, 
 of how different reason and faith are in their 
 nature and office, and how incapable they 
 are of comparison. Faith is a witness as to 
 fact; reason sits in judgment on the evidence 
 which faith gives. To inquire whether is 
 greater, is like asking in a court of justice 
 whether the judge on the bench or the wit- 
 ness in the box is greater ; or whether a 
 piece of silk or the yard measure which tells 
 it off occupies the higher position. Each 
 has its own place, which the other is incom- 
 petent to fill. In one sense, that is as to 
 intrinsic value, the piece of silk is greater ; 
 but in another sense, that of sitting in the 
 
24 ■ CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 seat of judgment, the yard measure is greater : 
 it is, in fact, supreme if it be a true measure. 
 Reason in religion is nothing, absolutely 
 nothing, without faith, just as the occupation 
 of a yard measure is gone where there is no 
 material to be measured ; but where there is 
 such material, it is for reason, and for reason 
 alone, to tell the length and breadth of it, 
 and to say whether it be full measure or 
 " weighed in the balances and found want- 
 ing." 
 
 Those who do only what they like in 
 matters of religion (and their " name is 
 legion, for they are many") will, as we may 
 expect, demur to this supremacy assigned 
 to reason, which, however, nature and the 
 Bible have alike agreed to give it, and not 
 we. Men of self-will naturally prefer to 
 have the power of pronouncing for them- 
 selves what is to be the weight and measure 
 of their religion ; and, above all things, they 
 would rather not refer the case to the stan- 
 dard weights and measures of the court of 
 
FAITH TO BEGIN WITH. 25 
 
 Reason. Their reluctance is quite natural. 
 Do not thou follow their example, or attempt 
 to set things of faith and things of reason 
 the one against the other. Things of faith 
 are also things of reason. All things, with- 
 out exception, are things of reason to the 
 man of reason ; to the man of unreason, 
 nothing is. 
 
 VII. — NO NEED FOR MORE THAN FAITH TO 
 BEGIN WITH. 
 
 Properly speaking, there could not be cer- 
 tainty in the evidences of Christianity to 
 begin with, otherwise religion could not be 
 of faith. The rich man in the parable de- 
 mands evidences which are not of faith, but 
 of sight, for his five brethren, and they are 
 refused him. Nor need there, in the strict 
 sense of the word, be positive evidence on 
 behalf of Christianity to begin with, seeing 
 that there is complete evidence on the other 
 side to the effect that, to live according to 
 this world, the only other possible life to lead 
 
26 CEEISTTANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 is "vanity of vanities." We see at least that 
 the world is false and worthless — there is no 
 doubt on that score : what need we, there- 
 fore, practically to see without doubt that 
 religion is true to begin with ? There is, 
 properly speaking, no competitor. 
 
 VIII. THE SPHERE OF FAITH. 
 
 Keep religion within its own assigned 
 domain as regards the universal realm of 
 truth. It is apt to break its bounds and 
 encroach upon its neighbours, and even 
 upon those with whom it can hardly be said 
 to have a natural affinity. It has indeed 
 trespassed largely. Its province is not geo- 
 logy* or astronomy, or politics, or, even as a 
 matter of jurisdiction, morality. It is not 
 the office of religion to pronounce whether 
 the sun moves or stands still. Nor does it 
 follow that the Pope has authority in morals, 
 even though we were to grant, what we need 
 not be at the pains to grant or to deny, that 
 he is supreme in matters of faith. He might 
 
THE DOMAIN OF RELIGION. 2y 
 
 have a lawful jurisdiction in faith without 
 possessing any jurisdiction whatever in the 
 sphere of morals. The domain of religious 
 truth is primarily that which concerns things 
 invisible and eternal, and it has to do with 
 things of time and sense so far only as these 
 are the visibility of things invisible. Surely 
 things eternal, and whatever appertains 
 thereto, are dominion enough, without the 
 earthly mockery of a worldly throne or even 
 of a philosopher's chair. 
 
 The fact is, that religion, to the detriment 
 of truth in general, and to its own unspeak- 
 able loss in particular, may be said to have 
 been engaged in minding everybody's busi- 
 ness but its own. Its language might well 
 be, " They made me the keeper of the vine- 
 yards, but mine own vineyard have I not 
 kept." When the Church is finally stripped 
 of what we may call its foreign and usurped 
 possessions (a surrender which is continually, 
 however unwillingly on its part, in progress), 
 it will perforce, in its naked and destitute 
 
28 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 condition, turn its attention from the dross 
 it has so unworthily coveted, to its own rich 
 and imperfectly developed territories. The 
 Church, when the buyers and sellers are 
 finally whipped out of the Temple, will find 
 the truth of what she has taught rather than 
 practised, that the things which are seen 
 are temporal, and therefore worth nothing, 
 though they be thrones and dominions and 
 principalities and powers ; but that the things 
 which are unseen are eternal, and therefore 
 " worthy of all acceptation." 
 
 IX. — FAITH OR UNBELIEF IN ITSELF PROVES 
 NOTHING. 
 
 If thy belief in Christianity proves that it 
 Is true, my unbelief proves equally that it is 
 false. My unbelief as an argument is as 
 good as thy faith. The truth is, faith or' 
 unbelief demonstrates nothing, one way or 
 the other. Our beliefs are merely so many 
 propositions to be put to the test, and to be 
 ultimately accepted or rejected as they turn 
 
FAITH IN ITSELF. 29 
 
 out to be true or false. Faith, in short, is 
 not infalHbility. It is the common assump- 
 tion of all religions philosophically to assume 
 faith to be certainty, and this prevailing ten- 
 dency is as rife in Geneva as in Rome. The 
 only difference is, that in Romanism this 
 claim is gathered up and centred in one 
 supreme Head, whereas in Protestantism it 
 is myriad-headed, being parted into as many 
 heads as there are individuals, or at least 
 sects, in the whole body of Protestant Christ- 
 endom. No wonder, then, that the religion 
 of the present day, being self-made, is so 
 sweet a morsel in the mouths of those who 
 love rather what is sweetly false than what 
 is bitterly true ! 
 
 Thy first step in the path of true science, 
 and in the ways of true religion and of true 
 humility, is to believe firmly that what thou 
 believest firmly may possibly prove false. 
 Thou art a Christian man, and thou profess- 
 est to believe with thy heart all the articles 
 of the Christian faith, and thou accountest 
 
30 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 them therefore true. Well, so far as thy 
 reason is sound, and thy honesty pure, and 
 thy nature genuine, and thou art entirely 
 free from prejudice, so far thy faith stands 
 a corresponding chance of being what thou 
 believest it to be ; but so does also, on the 
 same conditions, the faith of him who holds 
 the exact contrary. What is to decide 
 between him and thee ? Assuredly not 
 faith. Faith has given rise to hosts of con- 
 troversies ; when was it ever known to settle 
 one ? Nor is there any possibility of believer 
 and non-believer, or of believers of varying 
 form and colour, ever meeting together on 
 common ground, and comparing notes to 
 purpose, until they both of them hold as 
 their first and great principle that what they 
 respectively believe may possibly be false, 
 and that there is need of a daysman between 
 them. 
 
 And what is this daysman ? We will not 
 venture to say specifically ; but it is some 
 objectivity which thy thoughts and likings 
 
FAITH HOW FAR GOOD. 3 1 
 
 and prejudices shall have no control over, 
 and to which both thy beliefs and those of 
 thine adversary must unconditionally bow. 
 Hitherto, it may be, thou hast been wor- 
 shipping idols, the work of thy mind (or 
 rather of thy likes and dislikes, for thy mind 
 may have had little or nothing to do with 
 the matter), but thou hast not found the 
 true God ; nor am I quite sure that thou 
 hast yet begun in earnest "to seek after 
 Him, if haply thou mightest find Him." 
 When thou dost begin to seek, there is but 
 one principle, and that is to put aside thy- 
 self, and to count thy faith at least as in 
 suspense until it be ratified. 
 
 X. — FAITH UP TO A CERTAIN POINT GOOD; 
 BEYOND THAT POINT, EVIL. 
 
 It is not in the nature of faith to bear the 
 whole stress of religion. Faith, when we 
 would put that burden upon it, breaks down, 
 or turns to unbelief or superstition. Faith, 
 which up to a certain point is one of the 
 
32 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 best things in the world, becomes, when it 
 goes beyond that point, one of the worst, 
 and chiefly because in this its non-natural 
 stage it occupies a place which is not its 
 own, and whereby it keeps out some higher 
 and better thing. A superfluous faith occu- 
 pies the place of a necessary knowledge. 
 
 XI. — FAITH MUST GO ON OR GO OFF; IT 
 CANNOT STAND STILL. 
 
 Faith — that is to say, faith in things eter- 
 nal, faith in God's revealed will — is a grand 
 reality ; but it is not a reality with which we 
 can stand still and rest content ; it is not a 
 finality. Why not ? Have I not the Bible ? 
 Have I not Moses and the Prophets, Christ 
 and the Apostles? Why not be satisfied 
 with hearing them ? Why not rest content 
 on that basis of Holy Scripture ? Or I have 
 my belief in the Church : why not be content 
 with that foundation? For this simple reason, 
 that it is out of our power to stop short at 
 our original faith, even were we so minded. 
 
CER TAINT Y THE CHRISTIAN'S MARK, 3 3 
 
 Faith is in its very nature transitory, and 
 not permanent. Faith must of necessity go 
 on or go off. Faith must rise to knowledge, 
 or sink to unbelief or superstition. 
 
 Nor would it be wisdom in us to rest 
 satisfied with faith, even were it in our 
 power to do so, seeing that we are permitted 
 to go further and " add to our faith know- 
 ledge." If faith in the things of religion be 
 good, a knowledge of these things must be 
 far better. If the belief that God hears 
 prayer comforts us and stirs us up to pray, 
 is it not a higher consolation still if belief 
 should become experience ? We believe 
 that Christ wrought miracles ; but what is 
 this belief compared with a possible expe- 
 rience of a miracle wrought upon ourselves 
 or in connection with ourselves ? 
 
 Nor would the Bible itself have us be so 
 content with faith as not to seek to go 
 further. Certainty, in some form or other 
 is the mark towards which Holy Scripture 
 would have the Christian ever press forward : 
 
 D 
 
34 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 certainty of sight or certainty of knowledge, 
 or what may amount to assurance of some 
 kind. The blessedness of the pure in heart 
 is that they shall "see God," not merely 
 believe in Him. We are taught to pray 
 that we may "know the love of Christ 
 which passeth knowledge." " I know whom 
 I have believed," is the exultant exclama- 
 tion of the great Apostle — not merely, I 
 believe in Him. And what is hope, but 
 some better thing than faith as regards cer- 
 tainty? Hope is a substance, faith is a 
 vision. Hope is a first-fruits, a pledge on 
 the part of God of the truth and reality of 
 that wherein we believe. Faith is a promise, 
 hope is the partial fulfilment of the promise; 
 or rather, faith is a belief in the promises 
 of God, and hope is an earnest of the real- 
 ization of those promises. 
 
 In a word, faith, according to the Bible, is 
 good, very good, and absolutely necessary; 
 but knowledge is better, far better. Not 
 that all Christians, as a matter of course, go 
 
FAITH MAY BE MERELY NOMINAL, 35 
 
 on from faith to knowledge. Not all that 
 is called faith is faith. It is real faith only 
 that ripens into knowledge. But real faith 
 is a comparatively rare thing. The faith 
 so-called of Christians in general is, for the 
 most part, merely nominal. They take the 
 truth of Christianity for granted, and call it 
 faith. This merely nominal faith ends, as 
 we might expect, where it began. That 
 which has no beginning cannot well come 
 to an end. It has no reality, and is con- 
 sequently incapable of increase or decrease. 
 No faith is so abiding as that which exists 
 only in name. You cannot shake its foun- 
 dation, for it has none. 
 
 It is such faith as this that our great 
 poet seems to have had in his mind when 
 he makes Camillo say of Leontes, in the 
 
 Winter's Tale: 
 
 " You may as well 
 Forbid the sea for to obey the moon, 
 As or by oath remove or counsel shake 
 The fabric of his folly, whose foundation 
 Is piled upon his faith, and will continue 
 The standing of his body." 
 
 D 2 
 
36 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 What Leontes had got without reason, rea- 
 sons were powerless to move. But a real 
 faith must go on, and its goal is knowledge 
 or certainty of some kind. It is not a quag- 
 mire or a pool, but a stream of living water. 
 Progress is the law of its existence. He 
 who lives the life of faith must find eventu- 
 ally, whether he looks for this consumma- 
 tion or not, what this life of faith is ; and if 
 he is a man of reflection as well as of prac- 
 tical piety, he keeps this final result conti- 
 nually in view. He, on the other hand, 
 who has no faith but in name, will wonder 
 why to believe in the Bible or in the Church 
 Catholic should not be all-sufficient ; why, 
 in short, the believer should not be content 
 with simply believing and making a pro- 
 fession. Such contentment, however, is a 
 mark, not of humility, but of indifference. 
 
 The problem which is the virtual title of 
 these Thoughts, " How may I know that 
 Christianity is true?" is not everybody's 
 problem. It is a right inquiry, only it needs 
 
GALILEO THE BELIEVER'S PATTERN. 37 
 
 the right sort of inquirer ; and the qualifi- 
 cations of this genuine seeker after truth in 
 this particular matter are a living operative 
 faith to begin with, and, over and above all, 
 reflection brought to bear upon faith and its 
 workings in our own individual experience. 
 Faith may indeed rise to knowledge uncon- 
 sciously to ourselves ; but in order to take 
 an interest in what we may call the science 
 of religion, and to give others the benefit 
 of our experience, we must not only be 
 religious, but give good heed to what we 
 experimentally find religion to be. 
 
 XII. — GALILEO A PATTERN TO THE BELIEVER 
 AS TOUCHING HIS FAITH. 
 
 Galileo may be well taken as a pattern 
 of the method the believer ought to pursue 
 in putting his beliefs to the test ; for just 
 as Galileo was not satisfied with believing- 
 that the sun does really rise and set, though 
 it appears to do so, but was resolved to bring 
 
38 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 the truth of this appearance to some unques- 
 tionable proof, and found that in this case 
 seeming is not reaHty, — so the believer who 
 IS of such a mental constitution as not to 
 confound belief and truth together, feels 
 constrained to submit his beliefs to some 
 test, if he can by any possibility do so, 
 especially when he considers that truth in 
 astronomy is but a shadow of the import- 
 ance of truth in religion. He holds himself 
 bound, in short, to try in some legitimate 
 way to know, if possible, how far what he 
 believes is true in religion. So far as we 
 are content to be merely Christian believers, 
 however hearty and honest we may be in 
 our beliefs, what are we but followers of 
 what we may call the Ptolemaic system of 
 Christianity, taking things to be so because 
 they seem to be so, and because the world 
 generally holds them to be so ? 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND THE BELIEVER. 39 
 
 XIII. — MAN NOT INDEBTED TO PHILOSOPHY FOR 
 THE ELEMENTS OF RELIGION. 
 
 The religious sense in man, that is to say- 
 faith, is the origin of our primary religious 
 ideas. So at least we have had reason to 
 think. It is observation that tells us that 
 this is their origin — observation brought 
 to bear upon our natural faculties — such ob- 
 servation as is within the reach of all of us, 
 provided only we have the power of reflec- 
 tion and will exercise that power, that is, 
 the power of turning the eye of the mind 
 back upon the thinker. What other origin 
 could there be? What could philosophy 
 do for us by the method of argumentation, 
 with no eyes, but only a mind, though it 
 may be a mind of no ordinary qualifications.? 
 Philosophy essays to speak, and does indeed 
 seem to speak ; but in reality its utterances 
 are voiceless. All the efforts philosophy 
 has made to find some better starting-point 
 in religion than faith, have only proved to 
 
40 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 be SO much labour well meant, but profit- 
 less. 
 
 Where is the philosophy which will under- 
 take to prove, and not fail in the endeavour, 
 the simplest and most fundamental propo- 
 sition of all religion, that there is a God ? 
 Faith gives us at least a belief that there is 
 a God. Well, that is something, and may, 
 if properly husbanded, lead to a good deal 
 more. What does philosophy do ? It looks 
 with an eye contemptuously askance at 
 faith, but has nothing to put in its place. 
 Philosophy is ambitious ; it disdains faith, 
 and will have nothing less than demon- 
 stration even to begin with. But whatever 
 efforts philosophy has made to put religion 
 on a basis of positive proof to start with, 
 all these attempts, even according to the 
 confession of philosophy itself, have ended 
 where they began, except for the trouble 
 and bitter disappointment they have inva- 
 riably entailed. 
 
 In short, if man were without the spiritual 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND THE BELIEVER. 4 1 
 
 sense — that sense which we affirm for him 
 whereby he believes, and only believes, that 
 there is a God — he would be left literally 
 "without God" in the world. "Through 
 faith" (not through philosophy or meta- 
 physics, or call it what you will) "we un- 
 derstand that the worlds were framed by the 
 word of God." Philosophy, which rejects 
 faith, has not succeeded in finding even a 
 nominal substitute for faith. It scorns the 
 confession embodied in the creeds ; but 
 neither will it put it within our reach to say, 
 " I know." Tell philosophy you will at all 
 events hold fast by your faith until it pro- 
 vides for you some better thing. Faith 
 is at least something, with its single eye ; 
 philosophy is a blind man talking about 
 colours. 
 
 XIV. — SUPPOSE PHILOSOPHY COULD GIVE US DE- t 
 MONSTRATION, TO BEGIN WITH — WHAT THEN ? 
 
 But suppose philosophy had succeeded 
 in putting religion on a basis of demonstra- 
 
42 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 tion, to begin with — what then ? Suppose 
 we could begin with saying, I know that 
 there is a God, instead of merely, I believe 
 in God — wherein should we be the better ? 
 Our theory, we confess, of faith as an 
 independent faculty, would have been over- 
 thrown ; and our occupation, so far as 
 regards the purpose which these Thoughts 
 are intended to serve, would be gone ; but 
 what else would not be gone too ? A great 
 deal more than our theory would have 
 vanished ; religion itself, in its very essence, 
 would have come to nought. Philosophy, 
 when fighting against faith, is fighting 
 against religion itself. Religion is faith. 
 But let religion be resolved into a proposi- 
 tion of Euclid, and be no longer faith, to 
 begin with ; let its first step be, I know, 
 instead of, I believe ; and it will then not 
 only be true that you do not need faith as 
 a starting-point in such a religion, but it 
 will equally be true that you do not need 
 faith at all from first to last. Faith is tran- 
 
THANKS TO PHILOSOPHY. 43 
 
 scended at the very outset, and left behind 
 for ever. Philosophy has borne you aloft 
 to a higher region immediately on your 
 setting out, where, instead of the confused 
 but strong twilight of faith, you enjoy the 
 full blaze of certainty. Religion has changed 
 its nature, if, indeed, it has not ceased alto- 
 gether to be. 
 
 XV. — THANKS TO PHILOSOPHY FOR ITS ENDEA- 
 VOURS, NEVERTHELESS. 
 
 Why, then, should not the believer at 
 least be satisfied with simply believing, to 
 begin with? Why should he be anxious 
 to prove to demonstration, as a starting- 
 point of his religion, that there is a God 
 and a world beyond the grave ? He would 
 not get more, this Christian philosopher, 
 for his pains ; he would get less. Why the 
 so-called infidel should deny that the ele- 
 ments of religion are capable of demonstra- 
 tion, we can well understand — he rejects 
 religion altogether, and in every shape and 
 
44 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 form ; but why the believer should strive 
 after knowledge, to begin with, is not so 
 easy to say. Why should he wish to super- 
 sede the eternal principle of faith as the 
 basis and starting-point of all religion,- and 
 establish religion on a new principle of 
 proof positive ? Would he prefer to build 
 the edifice of his Christianity on a mathe- 
 matical foundation, and with mathematical 
 framework, after the example of the Ethics 
 of Spinoza ? He would certainly, if he suc- 
 ceeded, prove more than he ever meant or 
 desired to prove. He would destroy religion 
 altogether. 
 
 In fact, it is no less the real interest of 
 the believer than it is the supposed interest 
 of the unbeliever, to hold that the being of 
 God is not within the pale of demonstration. 
 Philosophy has done religion at least this 
 much service, that it has shown us what 
 it cannot do for religion. This negative 
 conclusion, that demonstration of the ele- 
 mentary truths of religion is an impossibility, 
 
DIFFERENT ORDERS OF IDEAS. 45 
 
 is of t-he highest practical value. What all 
 philosophy has failed to effect, must, we 
 are sure, be in the nature of things unat- 
 tainable. We see clearly in this universal 
 failure that religion must be, to begin with, 
 by faith or not at all. There is no compe- 
 titor as against faith for the office of laying 
 the first foundations of religion in the heart 
 and mind. 
 
 XVI. — WHY ARE OUR RELIGIOUS IDEAS SO INDIS- 
 TINCT? DIFFERENT CLASSES OR ORDERS OF 
 IDEAS. 
 
 We can hardly, however, after all, be sur- 
 prised at the attempt being made to appre- 
 hend more clearly than we do the things 
 that are outside the conditions of time and 
 space, supposing there to be any such reali- 
 ties. These supernatural objects are by no 
 means so distinct as we should wish, or 
 indeed expect them to be. Might we not 
 have anticipated that the ideas of God and 
 of eternity would be simply overpowering ; 
 
46 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 that they would assuredly not be the faint 
 images in our minds we find them to be ; 
 that they would at least be such as no one 
 could deny the existence of? Faint we con- 
 fess them to be subjectively; but this sort 
 of dimness or insufficiency proves nothing 
 against their objective reality. Ideas are 
 real, not in proportion to their vividness, but 
 their power, as we shall perhaps more fully 
 perceive if we try to distinguish the principal 
 classes or orders of ideas. 
 
 In the first place, those ideas are clearest 
 of all which the mind forms for itself, of 
 which it is creator and consequently master, 
 and which represent nothing in the universe 
 objectively; those ideas, in fact, which could 
 be nothing at all were they not ideas. What 
 ideas could be more clear than those of 
 Shakspeare when they were in his own 
 mind, and when he had not yet set them 
 before the eyes of men ? What ideas could 
 be more sharply defined than those on which 
 mathematical science rests, the idea of a 
 
DIFFERENT ORDERS OF IDEAS. 47 
 
 point, a line, a triangle? and yet these things 
 are purely a creation of the mind : there is 
 no such thing in rerum naturd as a triangle, 
 nor even a circle in the pure mathematical 
 sense, certainly not a mathematical line, 
 "length without breadth," least of all a 
 point, "neither length, breadth, nor thick- 
 ness." These ideas are purely the creation 
 of the mathematical faculty, and they are 
 unsurpassable in clearness. But what power 
 has the science of mathematics, with all its 
 lucidity of idea, to move men practically 
 this way or that ? Whom has the irrefrag- 
 able truth that "the three angles of a triangle 
 are equal to two right-angles," ever consoled 
 in misfortune or disquieted in his worldly 
 success ? Mathematical ideas, while they 
 are clearest of all, are at the same time 
 practically weakest. 
 
 Next in order, perhaps, are what we may 
 call practical ideas, or ideas of time and 
 sense. Our ideas of an objective world, of 
 the things we touch, hear and see, are not 
 
48 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 SO clearly defined as our ideas of a square 
 or of a circle, but they are more real than 
 these purely mathematical ideas ; not abso- 
 lutely real, but still we are practically satis- 
 fied of the reality of the things they repre- 
 sent, and of revolutions on this ground we 
 have heard and may hear continually. The 
 veriest idealistic philosopher would, as a 
 man of plain sense, whatever he might do 
 as an idealist, be perfectly content if he were 
 to have a landed estate or a bag of gold on 
 the basis of such evidence. He would raise 
 no objection whatever on the score of the 
 idealistic presentment not being so satisfac- 
 tory as it might be imagined to be. 
 
 There is a third order of ideas, and the 
 one indeed with which we have more imme- 
 diately to do. The dimmest and most 
 obscure ideas of all, and yet the strongest 
 infinitely in their effects, are our religious 
 ideas. They lie at the very root of our 
 nature. They constitute the basis of our 
 being. When they move in force, they set 
 
DIFFERENT ORDERS OF IDEAS. 49 
 
 in motion the whole man. They upset 
 governiTients, they overturn kingdoms, they 
 change the face of the world. They are the 
 volcanos and earthquakes of human nature 
 and of human society. They dissolve old 
 associations, they form new brotherhoods. 
 " The father is divided against the son, and 
 the son against the father ; the mother 
 against the daughter, and the daughter 
 against the mother." They are the most 
 hidden, and at the same time the most 
 powerful, elements of our being. You may 
 deny the existence of religion, and question 
 what it is ; you cannot, however, doubt the 
 effects which the name of Religion (reality 
 or unreality) always has produced in the 
 world and in the individual, and which there 
 is no sign whatever it will not continue to 
 produce to the end of time ; and it is in 
 these effects of religious ideas, not in the 
 vividness or otherwise of the ideas them- 
 selves, that their reality consists. Dim and 
 indistinct our religious ideas undoubtedly 
 
 E 
 
50 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 are, but this is only so much as to say that 
 faith, which is the strongest power in the 
 world and the most effectual, is at the same 
 time the most deeply hidden and the least 
 cognizable of all the forces of human nature. 
 No objection, therefore, can rightly be 
 urged against faith as a faculty, on the 
 ground that the ideas which are the expres- 
 sion of this faculty are mystical and, mate- 
 rially speaking, shadowy, and not, as per- 
 haps we should have thought they ought to 
 be, bright and precise. We have no right 
 to expect them to be mathematically clear 
 and distinct. What we are entitled to look 
 for is, that things invisible and infinite, if 
 they are brought to bear at all upon the 
 finite things of time and sense, would have 
 an overwhelming influence upon these finite 
 things, and so by experience we find it to be. 
 
 XVII. WAS A REVELATION NECESSARY TO MAN ? 
 
 Why has God given man a revelation at 
 all ? or why not less or more, or in a differ- 
 
A REVELATION NECESSARY, 5 1 
 
 ent way ? Why just what we have and as 
 we have it ? Suppose " holy men " had 
 never spoken, had never been "moved by 
 the Holy Ghost"— what then ? What if man 
 had been left entirely to those primary reli- 
 gious beliefs that are in man ? Would he 
 ever have risen from belief to knowledge ? 
 Would he (without revelation) have grown 
 in religion as he does (without revelation) 
 in literature and art and science ? 
 
 XVIII. — WE MAY AT LEAST IMAGINE A REVELA- 
 TION NOT NECESSARY. 
 
 It is at least not beyond the power of 
 imagination to conceive that man might 
 thus have made progress in the ways of 
 religion. We can suppose him reasoning 
 thus with himself : The God in whom, how- 
 ever faintly, I believe, must be good and 
 take a pleasure in goodness. He will, I 
 cannot doubt, stand by those who look to 
 Him for guidance and protection. " He 
 will not suffer the righteous to fall for ever." 
 
 E 2 
 
52 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 What can that invisible world be, of which 
 I have also a conception and for which I 
 yearn, but a world of righteousness, and 
 therefore of happiness ? What can it be 
 but the blessed abode of those who have 
 walked upon earth in accordance with the 
 precepts which I find written upon my heart 
 and mind ? God has not left me without a 
 sense of His presence altogether. I do not 
 see Him with my bodily eye, it is true ; but 
 I do feel that " in Him I live and move and 
 have my being." I fail to understand my- 
 self else. What is His design, but that I 
 should make the most of this His witness 
 within me? Let me only be faithful in 
 little, and He will make that little much ; 
 and in process of time He will give me to 
 rejoice in a clearer and better light, and 
 finally in the light that is now unapproach- 
 able. What can this dark world, in which 
 my lot is cast in a way inscrutable to me, 
 and which I find to be my place of sojourn 
 but for a brief and uncertain period, and 
 
A REVELATION NECESSARY. 53 
 
 not my home — what can it be but my 
 school, my training- ground, my place of 
 trial, to the end that it may be proved 
 what manner of man I am, whither my 
 inclinations tend, and what my dispositions 
 are ; and not only so, but that I may be 
 made meet to be a partaker of that higher 
 and better state of existence towards which 
 my being aspires ? 
 
 In some such reflections as these a man 
 might naturally be supposed to hold con- 
 verse with himself, even without a special 
 illumination from on high in the way of 
 revelation. And he would, as a matter of 
 course, walk accordingly. He is a man of 
 faith, and he would live by faith. He could 
 not do otherwise if his faith is genuine, and 
 we take it to be so. He lives according to 
 the light of his inner man — what follows ? 
 His conclusions will put his premisses to the 
 test, and try the validity of them. He has 
 lived in the conviction that there is a God 
 and another world — what has he found? 
 
54 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 Any confirmation of his beliefs ? Or has his 
 faith been put to confusion ? He has "sought 
 after God if haply he might find Him" — 
 have his seekings been altogether fruitless, 
 or have they been attended with results, 
 outwardly and inwardly, which he felt he 
 had a right to expect, and which, in a mea- 
 sure at least, would give rest to his soul ? 
 This finding or not finding, this fruit or no 
 fruit of his seeking after God, would show 
 whether his hypothesis that there is a God 
 was well grounded or not, at least in the 
 only way in which it was possible for him 
 to put this matter to the proof. 
 
 The man who lives as though there were 
 a God, even though he be left entirely to the 
 light of nature, must eventually have his 
 creed ratified or destroyed, strengthened at 
 least or weakened, if he can afford to wait 
 long enough, and work earnestly enough. 
 In this way we might represent to ourselves 
 one who believes in the two fundamental 
 truths of all religion — the being of a God 
 
A REVELATION NECESSARY. 55 
 
 and the reality of a future world — to work 
 out for himself the problem of religious 
 evidences, and to set, the truth of religion, 
 if true, upon a sure foundation, so far as he 
 was individually concerned, independently 
 of a revelation from Heaven, whether Chris- 
 tian or Jewish or any other. The work 
 would doubtless be an infinitely hard one 
 on these bare conditions, harder by far than 
 is the solution of the same problem with 
 the aids which revelation affords ; but still 
 we are not authorized in pronouncing it to 
 be utterly impossible of accomplishment. 
 
 XIX. — BUT FACT DOES NOT CONFIRM OUR 
 IMAGININGS. 
 
 So we might conceive ; but how far does 
 the history of the world as to religion justify 
 our theorizings ? Happily or unhappily for 
 our theory, man has been left to himself, 
 and these the very best of men, in larger 
 or smaller measure, and under a variety of 
 
56 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 circumstances, so far as to show what he 
 can do, at least what he will do, in the way 
 of religion, if not assisted specially from on 
 high ; and what says experience ? The 
 result of all experiments of the kind is not 
 such as to warrant any sanguine expecta- 
 tions we might have entertained as to the 
 value of man's unassisted powers in the 
 sphere of religion. 
 
 That unique people, the Greeks, the 
 world's wonder in art and philosophy and 
 learning of all kinds, were left to themselves 
 and to the light of nature in their religion — 
 what was the result? Are the Greeks of 
 the year 80 before the Christian era more 
 religious than were their forefathers of the 
 year 800 B.C. ? Were they more God-fear- 
 ing when Paul preached at Athens on Mars' 
 Hill, than in the heroic days of Homer and 
 Hesiod ? Is not a steady and continuous 
 decline observable in their morals and in 
 their religion, generation after generation, 
 until it reaches a point, both in morals and 
 
A REVELATION NECESSARY. 57 
 
 religion, below which it would not be easy 
 to fall ? 
 
 And what shall we say of the Romans ? 
 The word religion {religio) is their word. 
 Did this religio flourish more and more in 
 this its native home as time went on, or 
 did it turn to corruption, and end at last 
 in utter decay and the vilest superstitions ? 
 The ancestors of the Romans were, accord- 
 ing to Sallust, "religiosissumi mortales" — 
 what were they in the days of Sallust him- 
 self? So far from the term religio acquiring 
 a richer and deeper significance as time 
 passed by, it lost more and more its pristine 
 virtue, till at length it more than vanished 
 altogether. 
 
 How, finally, stands the case concerning 
 even the Jews, with their partial revelation, 
 as compared with the non- revelation of 
 the Gentile world ? When prophecy ceased, 
 as it did some centuries before the birth of 
 Christ, and they were left to themselves in 
 this respect, what became of them ? Did 
 
58 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 they rise religiously, so as more than to 
 retain their ancient vitality, or did they 
 decline ? What are they during the interval 
 between the Old and New Testaments? 
 Do they grow in spiritual wisdom and 
 grace, or Is there a melancholy declen- 
 sion ? They are certainly not more reli- 
 gious in the days of Scribes and Pharisees, 
 than they had been, for example, in the 
 latter time of the Babylonish Captivity, 
 under (if we may speak of a prophet as we 
 do of a king) Isaiah II. For the 500 or 
 600 years immediately preceding the advent 
 of the Redeemer, they are left in a great 
 measure to the sacred records of past gene- 
 rations ; there is neither prophet nor open 
 vision for the greater part of that wilderness 
 period of Jewish history ; and the conse- 
 quence is that true religion, at the expi- 
 ration of those dreary days, has turned 
 absolutely to corruption. When the Apostle 
 Paul wrote his first chapters of the Epistle 
 to the Romans, there was little to choose, 
 
A REVELATION NECESSARY. 59 
 
 in point of religion and morality, between 
 Jew and Gentile. 
 
 The case of the Jews seems to show that 
 not only is revelation necessary if man is to 
 grow in religion, but revelation up to a cer- 
 tain point, inasmuch as we see that the 
 partial revelation accorded to the Jew was 
 insufficient to counteract the forces in human 
 nature which are persistently drawing man 
 in a downward direction. So we find that, 
 while we have no difficulty at all in imagin- 
 ing man to be religious and even to increase 
 in godliness without revelation, and with the 
 aid which nature alone may be supposed to 
 afford, experience, so far as the appeal to 
 experience is open to us, whether Grecian, 
 or Roman, or even Jewish, is very far from 
 justifying these anticipations. 
 
 XX. — WHY THIS DISCREPANCY BETWEEN 
 IMAGINATION AND FACT? 
 
 Why this marked difference between what 
 we should have expected and what we ac- 
 
60 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 tually find by experience ? Can it be that 
 we have left out of our calculation, in our 
 suppositions as to what might have hap- 
 pened under certain circumstances, some 
 important factor in the reckoning which we 
 ought to have taken account of? So, indeed, 
 it is. We have been asking unconsciously 
 what the world might be expected to do 
 when at its best, and when consisting ex- 
 clusively or mainly of well-disposed indi- 
 viduals, instead of taking man as he is. 
 Imagination makes very light of practical 
 difficulties, and the obstacle in the present 
 ease is that most formidable one of man's 
 own nature, which tends not heavenward, 
 and which cannot be said to love truth. 
 " Men love darkness rather than light," it is 
 never to be forgotten. So far from taking 
 pains to know the truth, and " searching for 
 her as for hid treasure," they will hardly 
 stoop down and pick the truth up when it 
 lies before them on the ground. Were man 
 but enamoured of the truth, the imagination 
 
A REVELATION NECESSARY. 6 1 
 
 we have indulged in might at some time 
 and somewhere have realized itself. 
 
 But man is not fond of truth, least of all 
 of heavenly truths. Men love pleasure, and 
 riches, and honour, and books, and pictures, 
 and art, and literature ; but they cannot be 
 said to love truth for its own sake. They 
 like to make-believe that they have a regard 
 for it ; and what they prefer most of all is to 
 appear to follow the truth, when in reality 
 they hold truth in leash, in order to let it 
 slip at the right moment for their own pur- 
 poses. We are happy, and even ostenta- 
 tiously proud, to go with the truth, so long 
 as the truth happens to go our way ; but 
 when truth will do this no longer, then it is 
 clearly seen whether truth all this while has 
 been really leading or only following. Woe 
 worth the truth if it presumes to take the 
 lead and expects us to follow ! If we would 
 rightly conjecture what the world is likely 
 to do in any given case, we must take man- 
 kind at a very low average, and consider, 
 
62 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 not what this or that good man, who is in 
 goodness much beyond the ordinary run of 
 his fellows, may be expected to do, but what 
 the world will probably do as a whole ; and 
 if we would hit the mark, we must take care 
 to aim low enough. 
 
 There are, we know, men of whom it may 
 be truly said that they love light rather than 
 darkness, and whose unceasing endeavour is 
 light-wards. A world of light-loving men 
 might possibly work out the problem of 
 truth in religion on the condition of no 
 revelation from on high, but not a world of 
 men such as we actually find mankind to 
 be. Lessing, in his Erziehiing des Men- 
 schengeschlechtSy does indeed not hesitate to 
 express the opinion that man might have 
 succeeded in finding truth in religion with- 
 out the assistance of revelation, only give 
 him time enough. He does not, however, 
 compute how much time would have been 
 needed, how many millions of years, or 
 what might not have happened meanwhile — 
 
MAN NOT LEFT TO HIMSELF. 63 
 
 whether mankind, through the corruptions 
 that are in the world, might not have 
 perished outright before the momentous 
 experiment had been completed. A world 
 of Lessings might possibly have succeeded 
 in doing the work of religion without revela- 
 tion, but hardly the sort of world with which 
 we have experimentally to do, a world which 
 finds it apparently much easier and more 
 agreeable to fabricate a religion in its own 
 image and likeness, than observingly and 
 patiently to inquire whether there be not 
 somewhere, and to be found by some means, 
 a religion which is not altogether of man's 
 device. 
 
 « 
 
 XXI. — MAN NOT LEFT TO HIMSELF AS REGARDS 
 RELIGIOUS LIGHT. 
 
 But man has not been left to himself, and 
 to what is called the light of nature, in the 
 matter of religion. God could not indeed 
 have thus left the world partially, or almost 
 entirely, in the dark, though man so left 
 
64 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 might have been able, even under these un- 
 favourable conditions, somehow or at some 
 indefinite time, to " work out his own salva- 
 tion." "God giveth to all men liberally," 
 and His gifts in revelation are no exception. 
 It is not the divine principle to give us as 
 little as we can possibly do with, but as 
 much as ever will be for our good. The 
 Giver of all good things does not closely 
 calculate how little man can do with at the 
 very least, but how much will be for his 
 good at the very most. On this principle 
 of infinite liberality it is that God has given 
 His revelation of divine truth. 
 
 XXII. — BUT HAS GOD GIVEN US AS MUCH AS 
 POSSIBLE? 
 
 But has God really done so ? Is it the 
 simple fact that He has given us the utmost 
 in the way of revelation that could have been 
 of service to us ? Could not more have been 
 done, and would not this larger measure 
 have been so much the more for our good ? 
 
MORE REVELATION HURTFUL. 65 
 
 If revelation is a good thing, we could hardly, 
 it might be urged, have too much of it. The 
 world is not over-religious as it is : would it 
 not have been helpful to us religiously, if the 
 Almighty had vouchsafed to us some more 
 convincing proofs of the truth of religion 
 than we now possess, proofs which it would 
 have been impossible for the unbeliever to 
 evade or explain away ? 
 
 XXIII. — TO HAVE GIVEN MORE WOULD HAVE 
 .BEEN HURTFUL, NOT HELPFUL. 
 
 To speak plainly, it would not have been 
 of advantage to us that we should have had 
 a revelation in any respect of a more cogent 
 character than we possess now ; assuredly 
 not that we should have one of an absolutely 
 compulsory character. Most good things 
 are only good to a certain extent and in a 
 particular way. Just as " There is some soul 
 of goodness in things evil," so also there are 
 possibilities of evil in things good. A reve- 
 lation might be so good as to destroy the 
 
 F 
 
66 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 very purpose and end of revelation itself. 
 Those more convincing proofs which we are 
 tempted to ask for would have been a vio- 
 lation of that principle of faith, according 
 to which God has given His revelation. Man 
 is a free agent, and revelation a free agency, 
 and works on the will and affections ; and 
 a larger measure of revelation, that is to 
 say, a revelation of a compulsory character 
 (for such it must of necessity be), and which 
 should act more on our fears and less upon 
 our affections, would have been a revelation 
 more or less destructive of both freedom and 
 revelation. 
 
 Religion is of faith, and faith is of free-will. 
 In whatever other respects a man may be 
 bound, he is free as to his faith. Whatever 
 appeals to my faith leaves me free to take 
 my own way, the way that I judge best. 
 But suppose the truth put so plainly as to 
 necessitate my going as a man of any sense 
 at all in a particular direction — where is then 
 my freedom ? The moment you make the 
 
MORE REVELATION HURTFUL. 67 
 
 truth of revelation as good as certain, reli- 
 gion is forced upon me ; it is no longer any 
 test of the real bent of my mind. What I 
 do is no longer any evidence of what I wish 
 to be, but of what I am compelled to be. 
 
 On this condition of maintaining strictly 
 the principle of faith, the Author of man's 
 salvation has gone as far in the way of 
 spiritual help as we may presume it was 
 possible for Him to go. More would not 
 have been more, but less. The only further 
 appeal practicable would be, not to faith, but 
 to sight — would be a breaking down of the 
 wall of partition that separates the two 
 worlds, a rending of the veil, an actual vision 
 of those eternal verities which are ours now 
 only by faith so far as they are ours at all. 
 The effect would be to weaken or destroy 
 the relation in which man now stands to 
 the Gospel ; we should be no longer Chris- 
 tians on the ground of preference, as we are 
 now, but of necessity; we should be God's 
 bondmen, not His sons or even His servants. 
 
 F-2 
 
68 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 This, whatever else it might be, would not 
 be religion as we understand it. 
 
 Suppose the Almighty were to vouchsafe 
 us but a glimpse of that other world in 
 which we now must be content only to be- 
 lieve — of its eternal glories on the one hand, 
 and of its blackness of darkness on the 
 other — what would become of our voluntary 
 service ? How could it be known, with these 
 certain evidences of the truth of Christianity 
 before us, whether we served God from fear 
 or from love ? The whole character of reli- 
 gion would be changed, or rather religion 
 itself would vanish. What had been so far 
 "the glorious liberty of the children of God," 
 would now be a mere phrase, or rather a 
 base and inglorious slavery. Religion is, 
 on its present conditions, "a discerner of 
 the thoughts and intents of the heart ;" it 
 declares plainly whether we love God or 
 not ; but what would it be, if its evidence 
 were put beyond doubt, but a vile hypocrisy, 
 or, if we prefer the name, a calculating pru- 
 
MORE REVELATION EURTFUL. 6g 
 
 dence ? One thing is certain — it would not 
 bear the marks of an honourable service. 
 We now believe because we wish to believe, 
 for faith is of the heart ; we should then 
 believe, if believing it could be called, be- 
 cause we had no option but to believe. 
 
 Dives, in the parable of the " Rich Man 
 and Lazarus," prays Father Abraham to send 
 Lazarus to his five brethren, " lest they also 
 come to that place of torment." Abraham 
 refuses ; such a messenger, he .says, for such 
 a purpose would be superfluous ; " they have 
 Moses and the prophets, let them hear 
 them." Dives is not satisfied; he still presses 
 his suit. One from the dead, an actual vision, 
 not a thing to be believed merely, but a 
 thing actually seen, would be a stronger 
 argument, he urges, than even Moses and 
 all the prophets. Abraham's final rejoinder 
 is peremptory and absolute : " If they hear 
 not Moses and the prophets, neither will 
 they be persuaded though one rose from 
 the dead." The stress is on the word " per- 
 
JO CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 suaded ;" as much as to say that whatever 
 argument is put forward in the name of 
 religion, if it keeps not mainly within the 
 limits of persuasion, oversteps its legitimate 
 boundaries. The apparition of Lazarus to 
 the five brethren, whatever effect it might 
 produce, could not be of a persuasive cha- 
 racter, and that is decisive as to at least its 
 inutility. Like the ghost in Hamlet, it might 
 make a purely momentary impression, ope- 
 rative while the ghost was present, and gone 
 when the ghost was gone, or it might even 
 be " a damned ghost." Whatever the effect 
 might be, it would not be of such a nature 
 as to affect the heart or move the will, and 
 leave the subject of its influences all the while 
 free. In short, God's revelation never, it 
 would seem, transgresses the boundary which 
 separates between persuasion and compul- 
 sion. The apostle Paul was right well aware 
 of this principle. " Knowing the terrors of 
 the Lord," he says, "we persuade men;" we 
 do not terrify them ; the effect would be evil 
 and not good. 
 
MORE REVELATION HURTFUL. yi 
 
 However strange it may seem that the 
 world of spirits (on the supposition of such 
 a world) should be so entirely " the undis- 
 covered country from whose bourne no 
 traveller returns," as to give us no certain 
 information concerning itself, this strange- 
 ness will altogether disappear if we will 
 only reflect that revelation is essentially of 
 faith, and that an actual visitant from this 
 unknown world would act injuriously upon 
 this cardinal principle of religion itself; that 
 it would either have no influence at all 
 upon our faith (it would have had none upon 
 the faith of the five brethren, the parable 
 says), or the effect might be prejudicial, if 
 not destructive of faith altogether. So far 
 as we allow the principle of faith, and the 
 sanctity and inviolability of the principle, 
 we must, upon reflection, admit that a break 
 for the most part of all inter-communion of 
 •a visible character between the world of 
 sight and the world of things invisible, can 
 be no argument against the existence and 
 
72 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 reality of an unseen world — nay, that the 
 impenetrability of the veil as regards the 
 many is an absolutely necessary condition, 
 if there is to be a veil at all. 
 
 XXIV. — WANTED A METHOD BY WHICH RELI- 
 GION MAY BE TRIED. 
 
 How may I know that Christianity is 
 true? Find me a METHOD. My present 
 position is that of a believer, but I am not 
 at all content with that position. Besides, 
 what men call believing is, generally speak- 
 ing, little more than taking as a matter of 
 course the thing in which they say they 
 believe, as though it were self-evident and 
 needed no further proof In this way the 
 Mussulman or Hindoo believes. The con- 
 sequence is that, his religion not in any way 
 resting upon reasons, reasons cannot move 
 it. Are we to take for granted that we are 
 all right ? We cannot at least do that. Give 
 me, then, I say, a method, a rule, by which 
 I may try my religion whether it be true 
 
WANTED A METHOD. 73 
 
 or false, and, incidentally, all other religions 
 that are or ever were. It is an enviable 
 state of things, no doubt, to be able to solve 
 the truth of our religion by the easy and 
 self-flattering method of assuming its truth 
 to begin with, but it is not a reasonable 
 thing. We are, in religion, under what we 
 may call the Ptolemaic system. Where is 
 Copernicus ? And when I ask for a method, 
 I mean that and nothing more. I do not 
 wish you to apply this method for me, and 
 prove to me what Christianity is one way 
 or the other ; you cannot do that ; I must, 
 I am aware, apply it for myself A method, 
 and a method only, is what I want. 
 
 But let me be precise as to what it is 
 I really expect I wish to find out, not 
 whether religion merely is true — that would 
 be an easy matter comparatively — but whe- 
 ther Christianity is true. Christianity is 
 religion with a difference. Christianity is 
 not only a belief in God and in an invisible 
 world — for these are the elements of all 
 
74 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 religions — but it consists besides of certain 
 historical facts, which are said to have taken 
 place upon this earth 1 800 years ago. Are 
 these things so ? I might be a religious man, 
 and not a believer in these particular facts ; 
 in other words, I might be a holder of the 
 great fundamental truths of all religions, 
 and yet not a Christian. Is it true that 
 Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, was 
 crucified; and not only crucified, but that he 
 rose again from the dead, and ascended up 
 on high, and gave the gift of the Spirit ? 
 Are these things so? I do believe them 
 and with all my heart ; but how may I be 
 assured that my belief is well founded ? 
 Give me a method by which I may know, 
 and not merely believe, that Christianity in 
 particular, and not merely religion in gene- 
 ral, is true. 
 
 XXV. — A SCIENTIFIC METHOD POSSIBLE. 
 
 Is it possible to put Christianity on a 
 scientific basis? It is possible; the mate- 
 
SCIENTIFIC METHOD POSSIBLE. 75 
 
 rials are at hand, with all needful appliances. 
 Faith furnishes the materials : in the first 
 place, the materials common to all religions, 
 viz. the being of God and a spiritual world ; 
 and secondly, the materials which are con- 
 tained in the Christian creeds and in Holy 
 Scripture generally, and it may be elsewhere, 
 and which are peculiar to the Christian reli- 
 gion. But this basis of faith is not yet a 
 scientific basis, nor in itself qualified to be so. 
 Science means certainty, not merely belief. 
 The question to be asked, therefore, is, How 
 may I knozv {not merely believe) that Chris- 
 tianity is true? How is this to be com- 
 passed ? By means of experience. The end 
 of religion is man made good, perfectly 
 good, and therefore perfectly happy. So 
 religion professes. Is it as good as its word ? 
 So far as its professions are made good, so 
 far religion is true ; so far as they are 
 realized in us, so far our religion is true. 
 
 Faith and experience are thus both of 
 them necessary to determine truth in reli- 
 
76 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 gion : faith wherewith to provide all requi- 
 site materials, and without which no religion, 
 nor even a conception of religion, would be 
 possible ; and experience, in order to con- 
 firm these materials, and so stamp them 
 with an imperishable value. Such a method 
 may rightly be termed scientific, if, indeed, 
 it be science to distinguish satisfactorily, in 
 things of a particular character, between 
 what is true and what is false. 
 
 So a science of religion is a possibility, 
 on two admissions : first, that man has a 
 faculty which takes cognizance of the things 
 of religion — of those things, that is, which 
 are beyond the bounds of things material — 
 a faculty which we call the faculty of faith, 
 and by which we not only mean the act of 
 believing, but the believing faculty itself; 
 and secondly, that he has the means of 
 bringing his beliefs to the test of experience, 
 so that they remain no longer beliefs merely, 
 but rise to the height of ascertained facts. 
 If our system were not according to faith. 
 
EXPERIENCE TEE TEST OF TRUTH, 'jy 
 
 it would not be religion ; if it be not ratified 
 by that which alone in all practical things 
 has the power of ratification, that is, by 
 experience, it is not science; but resting, 
 as our method does, on both faith and ex- 
 perience, it professes to be religion made 
 science, or a science of religion. 
 
 XXVI. — EXPERIENCE THE TEST OF TRUTH IN 
 RELIGION. 
 
 What I affirm, and would repeat again 
 and again, is, that whatever truth there be 
 in religion of a practical character is to be 
 found by experience, and by experience 
 only, and is equally discoverable by the 
 unlearned and the learned ; and that each 
 believer may in a measure ascertain this 
 truth for himself What we believe is not 
 necessarily true, however firmly we believe 
 it. A test is necessary. If no proof were 
 possible, then one religion would be as good 
 as another, and religion would be altogether, 
 what it is in no small degree now a mere 
 matter of fancy. 
 
78 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 What do we ourselves find religion to be ? 
 That is the vital question. Why is not this 
 test universally applied? Are men really 
 in earnest as to religious truth ? What 
 course can be more conclusive and simple ? 
 We come in faith ; what do we go away 
 with ? The sick and needy came to Christ 
 in faith when he tabernacled with men, and 
 they found the faith they had brought with 
 them confirmed — nay, put beyond doubt. 
 Had they experienced nothing, they would 
 have gone away with nothing, not even with 
 the faith they had brought with them. What 
 find we now-a-days ? Does experience jus- 
 tify our faith or condemn it ? But do we 
 even look for a reality ? Remember, if you 
 do not look for a reality, you do not get it, 
 though God be ready to give it. And re- 
 member, that to look for this blessing aright 
 means to look earnestly and unto the end. 
 " Though it tarry, wait . for it ; because it 
 will surely come, it will not tarry" (Hab. 
 ii. 3). It may be late, but it will not be 
 too late. 
 
( 79 ) 
 
 XXVII. — FAITH AND EXPERIENCE THE TWO 
 PILLARS ON WHICH CHRISTIANITY RESTS. 
 
 The two pillars on which, from a scientific 
 point of view, Christianity rests, are faith 
 and experience. We begin with " I believe" 
 (where indeed everything begins), and we 
 end with " I know" (where also everything 
 ends), unless, indeed, our pursuit in the 
 realm of religious inquiry has proved barren 
 and unfruitful. Be careful to keep these 
 two poles of thought asunder, and each in 
 its own place. We say there is a God, when 
 all we can mean, if we would speak exactly, 
 is that we believe there is a God. What is 
 our belief worth in itself? Just nothing 
 whatever, unless it be ultimately confirmed 
 by experience. Or do we mean to imply 
 that we are infallible ? We' do imply this, 
 whether we intend it or not, if we regard 
 our faith as an evidence of truth absolutely ; 
 and this self-infallibility it is which is at the 
 root of the many confusions there are in 
 
80 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 religion, whether practically or scientifically 
 considered ; and, we might add, not in reli- 
 gion only, but in common life, and even in 
 philosophy. 
 
 XXVIII. — THE THREE STAGES OF RELIGION : 
 I. FAITH ; 2. WORKS ; 3. EXPERIENCE. 
 
 Religion has three stages. The first stage 
 is faith. We believe that there is a God 
 and a world beyond the grave, or we do 
 not. We believe in revelation, or we do not. 
 We believe all the articles of the Christian 
 faith, or we do not. How we came to these 
 beliefs matters little. Why we believe or 
 do not believe is not in our power to say. 
 Faith is elementary, and not Q. E. D. The 
 next stage is a life in accordance with 
 our beliefs. A man's life always is, if 
 he really has a faith, in keeping with his 
 faith. It is not so much what we think 
 we believe, or what we say we believe, as 
 what we do and the kind of life we live, 
 that is to be taken as the true and certain 
 
THREE STAGES OF RELIGION. 8 1 
 
 index of our faith. So, at least, says that 
 not least of thinkers, Descartes {Quelqiies 
 regies de la morale) : " Pour savoir quelles 
 etaientveritablement leurs opinions je devais 
 plut6t prendre garde a ce qu'ils pratiquaient 
 qu'a ce qu'ils disaient .... car Taction de la 
 pensee par laquelle on croit une chose etant 
 differente de celle par laquelle on connait 
 qu'on la croit, elles sont souvent Tune sans 
 I'autre." However this may be, unless we 
 practise what we believe, our first stage is 
 the only stage, our faith becoming corrupt 
 or vanishing entirely. 
 
 Our third and last stage is the experience 
 of whatever kind, good or bad, which this 
 life of faith brings, negativing or confirming 
 our expectations. We believed that certain 
 things were true, that they would produce 
 certain good results ; we walked in the way 
 of these beliefs, and so put them to the test. 
 What have we found ? Has experience 
 ratified the things in which we believed, or 
 not ? If so, we now know what, to begin 
 
 G 
 
82 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 with, we only believed. We now are fully 
 apprised of the infinity or nothingness of 
 our beliefs. We shall know, on the suppo- 
 sition of a world to come, at all events in 
 that future world. Then, at least, our faith 
 will rise to, or rather be merged in, certainty. 
 But have we not a right to expect that 
 we shall enjoy that experience to some 
 extent " now in the time of this mortal life," 
 if we are believers indeed and faithful unto 
 the end ? Is it not simply an impossibility 
 that one should live the life of faith, and 
 remain a mere believer unto the end ?• This 
 belief must ripen into knowledge, or die out 
 altogether, or turn to unbelief, or perchance 
 be lost in superstition or mysticism. The 
 only healthy development of faith is that it 
 should become certainty. Wherein this cer- 
 tainty will consist, or to what it will amount, 
 we do not profess to explain ; but that faith, 
 as the consummation of a life of faith, will 
 either die out, or live a new and higher life 
 amounting to assurance of some kind, seems 
 
THREE STAGES OF RELIGION. 83 
 
 clear from the subjective nature of faith 
 itself 
 
 The last stage, in fact, of a good man's 
 life is Christian experience, which puts him 
 in a position to say, not merely I believe, 
 but, in a measure, I know that these things 
 are so. And it is the aggregate of these 
 experiences that may be said to constitute 
 in the strictest sense evidences of Christian- 
 ity. Evidences of Christianity are not to be 
 expected to begin with ; they ought to be 
 forthcoming to end with. You have lived 
 the Christian life in all godliness and sin- 
 cerity ; what have you found as the sum 
 and substance of your long and toilsome 
 journey through this world's wilderness, now 
 at last when the river only separates between 
 you and the heavenly Canaan ? Tell us, 
 now. Such knowledge is of a very high 
 order, the highest possible in this life, and 
 pity 'tis we have not more of this practical 
 and satisfying sort of evidence. 
 
 At any rate, do not fail to make plain to 
 G 2 
 
84 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 your own self what you find in this life's 
 pilgrimage ; for remember that if you would 
 more than believe that what you believe is 
 true, you must solve this problem for your- 
 self, and that the three practical stages of 
 which we have spoken are the only con- 
 ceivable method. You will never be able 
 to read out, or think out, the truths of reli- 
 gion, or so much as the being of a God. 
 The only practicable way of arriving at 
 truth in religion is to work it out. The 
 problem of religion is a practical one, and 
 one which, in fact, all who are believers 
 indeed do work out for themselves, though 
 it may be for the most part unconsciously. 
 Unfortunately, a so-called Christian experi- 
 ence, even when it is forthcoming, is mostly 
 of a subjective character and of doubtful 
 value. What we lack is objectivity. 
 
(8s ) 
 
 XXIX. — CHRISTIAN SCIENCE NOT IN ITSELF 
 RELIGION. 
 
 Is this science of which we have been 
 speaking absolutely necessary to a life of 
 practical religion ? By no means ; for if so, 
 what judgment are we to pass on all the 
 religion of the world up to the present time, 
 which undoubtedly has intellectually been 
 anything but scientific? Chi'istian science 
 is not in itself religion, notwithstanding that 
 it is concerned about the things of religion. 
 A scientific knowledge of religion is not of 
 direct value religiously, but only intellectu- 
 ally. A man may be practically a religious 
 man, without troubling himself about a 
 science of religion ; as, in fact, very few 
 religious people do so concern themselves, 
 or, indeed, know how. To care for the 
 science of religion, as well as for religion 
 itself, a man must be something more than 
 religious, he must be scientifically gifted 
 as well — a two-fold inner endowment not 
 
S6 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 always to be met with in the same indivi- 
 dual. Just as in the cultivation of the 
 ground the husbandman may plough and 
 sow, and gather in the fruits of the earth, 
 and enjoy all the bounties of earth and sky, 
 without for one moment concerning himself 
 about either geological or astronomical 
 science, so it is with religion. 
 
 A man may do his practical work, as a 
 man of faith and " doer of the word," with- 
 out ever asking himself what faith is, or how 
 it stands in relation to knowledge ; as also, 
 on the other hand, it is quite possible for 
 a man to argue unexceptionally as to the 
 evidences of religion, and at the same time 
 not to be himself a religious man. When 
 such a one talks about the evidences of 
 religion simply as evidences, and not as 
 religion, and thereupon proceeds to expa- 
 tiate as to what evidences may rightly be 
 expected, it is quite possible he may be 
 talking reason and be deserving of attention, 
 though he does not care about religion. He 
 
SCIENCE NOT ITSELF RELIGION. 2)7 
 
 may be prejudiced against religion, just as 
 we may be prepossessed in its favour ; but 
 his arguments may have weight, neverthe- 
 less. It is not indispensable, in order to 
 discourse sensibly on this subject, that he 
 be a religious man, but only a man of sense. 
 Only there is this difference, that none 
 but a man who first cares somewhat for 
 religion can go on to care for its truth or 
 otherwise. The presumption is that when 
 an individual even quarrels with religion, 
 he is not altogether indifferent to it in itself. 
 He may proclaim aloud that he is not a 
 believer, and all the while he may be a 
 believer unconsciously to himself, if, indeed, 
 the faculty with which we believe, and the 
 faculty by which we know that we believe, 
 are (as Descartes says) not one and the 
 same. He may have interrogated his in- 
 tellect and found no faith there (as, indeed, 
 we never do find faith in the intellect) ; but 
 he has not properly searched his heart, or 
 perhaps he would have found at least so 
 
88 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 much faith there as to account for his 
 troubling himself about religion at all. 
 
 But however these things may be, and 
 whatever effect a science of religion might 
 have on religion itself as a whole, we con- 
 tent ourselves here with remarking that we 
 consider the problem of these Thoughts to 
 be, in its direct intention and effect, an in- 
 tellectual and not a religious one — as science 
 applied to religion, and not as religion itself; 
 though what it might prove to be indirectly 
 as to religion it is impossible to foresee. 
 The probability is that the gain would not 
 be inconsiderable. To enlighten the mind, 
 especially as to religion — what is it but to 
 quicken the whole man, morals and religion 
 included ? Though the intellect is not the 
 heart, they are in closest connection and 
 sympathy. 
 
(89) 
 
 XXX. — EXPERIENCE NO NEW TEST OF TRUTH 
 IN RELIGION. 
 
 In bringing religion to the test of expe- 
 rience, we do not profess t6 be devising some 
 new thing. This appeal to experience is 
 everywhere implicitly and explicitly con- 
 tained in the Bible itself — nay, it is a test 
 which lies in the very nature of all religion. 
 Christianity in particular claims our alle- 
 giance as "worthy of all acceptation" on the 
 ground of its "many great and precious 
 promises," the fulfilment of which is not 
 deferred exclusively to the life beyond the 
 grave, but is in part, and by way of foretaste 
 and earnest, to be realized in this world, and 
 so may be appealed to as evidence of the 
 truth of Christianity now. How far do these 
 Gospel promises come true ? How far are 
 they (as they are said to be) "Yea and 
 Amen to every one that believeth" ? 
 
 Herein lies essentially the appeal to expe- 
 rience, which decides for all practical pur- 
 
90 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 poses how far any religion whatsoever is 
 "worthy of all acceptation," whether it be 
 Islam or Hindooism or Judaism or Chris- 
 tianity itself A religion which makes no 
 promises, is a vain and empty thing, not to 
 say a deception. A religion which does not 
 make its promises good, is a religion which 
 has forfeited its credit. The believer, as a 
 matter of course, looks for the fulfilment of 
 these promises. " I have waited for thy 
 salvation, O Lord !" is his language in prayer 
 and patience. Supposing him to find the 
 promises made good which he regards as of 
 God, in what has he been engaged but in 
 applying instinctively and unconsciously the 
 test of experience to his faith ? So we, in 
 this our method, are not inventing some 
 hitherto unheard-of thing. We are simply 
 following the path which every believer must 
 take in his Christian course, according to the 
 very nature of the case. 
 
 The only point that is new is, that we are 
 bringing reflection to bear upon this old 
 
EXPERIENCE NO NEW TEST. 9I • 
 
 and necessary method, and for purposes of 
 scientific investigation. We always did, as 
 we needs must so far as we were Christians 
 at all, walk in this way of experience ; but 
 now we are doing so with the clearly defined 
 purpose of satisfying ourselves as to what 
 experience has to say for or against the 
 path we are practically pursuing. Just in- 
 deed as if, in things pertaining to man's 
 body, a physiologist should eat, not from 
 the ordinary motives only on account of 
 which men naturally take food, for health 
 and strength or to appease appetite, but 
 with the set purpose of ascertaining experi- 
 mentally the laws of nutrition and digestion ; 
 so also we, in precisely the same way, are 
 inquiring into the laws of the religious life 
 in answer to the query. What good is there 
 in religion ? We live exactly as other Chris- 
 tians live, only we are engaged in taking 
 meanwhile observations by the way, which 
 our fellow-christians are not supposed to 
 take. 
 
92 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 And what a pity that this matter of sci- 
 entific observation is not kept more promi- 
 nently in view in what are called Christian 
 biographies ! These biographies are pro- 
 fessedly a record of Christian experience. 
 How far do they answer their professed 
 design ? The phrase, Christian experience, 
 or similar phraseology, is met with in them 
 in all due frequency — how far are they in 
 deed what they are in word ? The so-called 
 experience is too frequently of an altoge- 
 ther unpractical and purely subjective cha- 
 racter, consisting for the most part qf that 
 phase of Christian experience — if it can be 
 called experience — which is emotional, and 
 therefore fluctuating and uncertain. 
 
 What we look for in Christian biography 
 (and so seldom, if ever, get), is the expe- 
 rience of those who are of the reasonable 
 rather than the emotional type. We say 
 "rather than," because no one is purely 
 emotional or purely rational in his nature, 
 and therefore not in his religion. We are 
 
CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 93 
 
 all mixed characters, more or less, in these 
 respects. What we need — if we may call it 
 so — is objective evidence rather than sub- 
 jective, seeing and knowing rather than 
 feeling — such an experience as is beyond 
 the reach of self-deception. You are at the 
 close of your earthly pilgrimage ; you have 
 lived the Christian life all your days, faith- 
 fully and perseveringly ; you are a man 
 of reason, a man of reflection ; you have 
 brought these qualities to bear upon your 
 religion — what have you found ? You must 
 be in a position to give us at least one word 
 on this head of a solid and trustworthy cha- 
 racter. For what purpose indeed should a 
 Christian biography ever be written, but to 
 that end which the godly Psalmist puts 
 before us (Ixvi. 14), " Come and hear, all ye 
 that fear God, and I will declare what He 
 hath done for my soul" ? 
 
94 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 XXXI. — WHY HAS SO SIMPLE A METHOD NOT 
 BEEN UNIVERSALLY FOLLOWED? 
 
 But how is it that this method, if it be 
 so simple, has not been acknowledged and 
 formally acted upon long ago ; especially 
 when we consider that the matter is so 
 weighty ? Chiefly for this very reason, that 
 the matter is of such weight, and because 
 truth is irksome, and, to say the least, not 
 universally courted and followed. Do not 
 suppose that truth has but to show itself in 
 its own beautiful form, to be embraced and 
 loyally obeyed. Truth is not attractive to 
 the world at large. It is unsightliness to 
 the untruthful ; " wisdom and goodness to 
 the vile seem vile." What says the highest 
 authority of all ? — " Men love darkness 
 rather than light, because their deeds are 
 evil" (John iii. 19). Lord Bacon's words 
 are to the same effect. " What doth bring 
 lies into favour," he says in his Essay on 
 Truth, " is a natural though corrupt love of 
 
SLOW PROGRESS OF TRUTH. 95 
 
 the lie itself." Aristotle is more charitable, 
 if we are unwilling to say less discerning : 
 "The difficulty of discovering truth," he 
 says {Met. ii. i), "lies not only in the things 
 themselves, but in us ; for as the eyes of 
 bats are to the light of day, so is our mind 
 to those things which are by nature clearest 
 of all." In other words, truth, to say the 
 least of it, is too strong for man's weak 
 vision. It needs a veil to cover its counte- 
 nance — like Moses when he came down from 
 the Mount — if we are to look it steadily in 
 the face. It must be diluted or tempered 
 with alloy before it will pass current. 
 
 But whatever the cause or causes may be, 
 truth does, as a matter of fact, move most 
 painfully and sluggishly along the path of 
 scientific progress. The science of geology 
 or astronomy or medicine would, historically 
 considered, afford a curious and melancholy 
 commentary on the words, " Men love dark- 
 ness rather than light." But the kind of 
 truth which makes slowest progress, if, in- 
 
96 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 deed, any at all, is that which is most im- 
 portant of all — moral and religious truth ; 
 and for this very reason, that such truth 
 concerns our interests most. Why bad men 
 should not seek after that truth which, 
 were it found, would be their condemnation, 
 or why they should not welcome it when 
 they cannot avoid acknowledging it, we 
 have no difficulty in understanding. 
 
 But it is not bad men only who do not 
 embrace heartily the truth ; good men — aye, 
 even the best of men (or those who pass for 
 being so) — are more than indifferent where 
 we should rather have expected a warm 
 welcome. How do we account for this 
 hostile or at least cold attitude ? For one 
 thing, as we have said, if not the great thing, 
 it is not every man that has any great love 
 of the truth for its own sake. We follow it, 
 so far as it suits our purposes of self-interest, 
 or credit with our neighbours, or even our 
 curiosity ; and then we part company with 
 it as soon as ever it will no longer go our 
 
NO CONFIDENCE IN TRUTH. 97 
 
 way. If truth is on the side of our religion, 
 we hail it enthusiastically as a valuable ally, 
 and rejoice in the light of its countenance, 
 and make every use of it (it will at all events 
 impose upon others) ; but if the truth is 
 against us, we put it on one side, of course 
 as quietly and considerately as possible, yet 
 without the least compunction. 
 
 But besides having no great love of the 
 truth, it would appear that we have no great 
 confidence in it either. It must be kept in 
 hand, and under some kind of restraint. It 
 cannot safely be allowed to do just what it 
 will. We know not what it might do if left 
 to itself. We are, therefore, highly circum- 
 spect in our dealings with it, lest it might un- 
 expectedly take' a turn which might greatly 
 embarrass us. Truth shall not be our master, 
 but our humble servant only. Few men 
 indeed have reliance enough upon truth 
 (religious men in general have little or none) 
 to cast in their lot with it, come what will, 
 or so much solid confidence in their religious 
 
 H 
 
98 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE, 
 
 beliefs as to bring them to the test of truth 
 if at any time an opportunity should offer. 
 
 Moreover, men in the dark can do what 
 they list, and call their deeds by what name 
 they please (such men literally " love dark- 
 ness") ; whereas when in the light we are 
 under some necessity of speaking and acting 
 as things are, and not altogether as we wish 
 them to be. " Truth," to cite Lord Bacon 
 once more, " imposeth on men's thoughts," 
 and men do not like their thoughts to be 
 imposed upon ; they prefer to impose upon 
 truth, and to think what they like, not what 
 they must, and to put truth itself under con- 
 straint, rather than be in any way in bondage 
 themselves. 
 
 Now in that doubt and uncertainty in 
 which we find ourselves as to relimous truth, 
 antecedently to experience, having merely 
 the dim and flickering light of faith at best 
 as a guide, the believer is in a measure a 
 law to himself; he does what he likes, and 
 calls it religion. His religion is consequently 
 
OUR PRESTIGE AT STAKE. 99 
 
 human, and only so far divine as its divinity 
 may. happen to fall in with this prevailing 
 human element. Let only the light of truth 
 enter our minds, and we are forthwith under 
 a necessity of calling things by their right 
 names. The barriers of our pride and self- 
 will and self-worship, the least amiable fea- 
 tures of our nature, are broken down, and 
 we are henceforth subjects, willingly or un- 
 willingly, where we have hitherto lorded it 
 as supreme. 
 
 Besides, we must remember that in the 
 matter of our religion we are all of us more 
 or less committed beforehand to particular 
 views and opinions. Our prestige is at stake, 
 and in its tenderest point, for a man's reli- 
 gion is the man himself. Truth makes sad 
 havoc of views and opinions where they are 
 not found to rest upon a solid basis. What, 
 indeed, might not happen to our Catholicism 
 or Protestantism, to our High Church or 
 Low Church or Dissent, if some infallible 
 test of the truth of our special phase of 
 
 H 2 
 
100 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 Christianity could only be at once and 
 rigidly applied ? 
 
 But we are in no overweening haste to 
 precipitate any such decision. We prefer, 
 on the whole, to remain as we are. We 
 have shrewd reasons for wishing to do so, 
 even though these reasons be deeply hidden, 
 rather than on the surface. We at least hold 
 a position from which our adversaries so far 
 have found it impossible to dislodge us, 
 though we on our side are equally unsuc- 
 cessful against them. What the impartial 
 intervention of truth might effect it is hard 
 to say ; but we partly suspect what the 
 result might be, and we would rather not 
 force a judgment, which, though it might 
 confound our foes, might also roll us in the 
 dust indiscriminately with them. We know 
 what we are now, but what we might be we 
 know not, were we to submit ourselves and 
 our religion unconditionally to the stern 
 arbitrament of truth. 
 
 The simplicity, therefore, of our method 
 
MARKS OF TRUE METHOD. lOI 
 
 cannot upon reflection be regarded as an 
 argument against its validity. It is not any 
 difficulty in the method that makes against 
 its applicability, but rather its profound dis- 
 tastefulness. Truth is bitter ; and if we have 
 not found it so, it is possible we are under a 
 mistake in supposing that we have found it 
 at all. Perhaps our method might have been 
 more acceptable had it been really difficult, 
 that is, obscure and involved, instead of its 
 being so very plain and imperative. 
 
 XXXII. — BUT IS THERE NO METHOD ACTUALLY 
 AT WORK NOW? 
 
 But is there no method or system of any 
 kind at work now for arriving at truth in 
 religion without resorting to this method ? 
 A system there may have been — nay, must 
 have been ; but has it been the true one ? 
 " By their fruits shall ye know them." A 
 true method is an infallible instrument for 
 the discovery and furtherance of truth, and 
 the marks of this method are certainty, pro- 
 
I02 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 gress and unity. What certainty is there in 
 religion in the present day, philosophically 
 (or even religiously) speaking? To what 
 extent are we able to say, This is or this is 
 not, and not merely I believe this or I believe 
 that ? Where is progress ? Is it not our 
 pride and our endeavour to go back to the 
 elements and beginning of things religious, 
 rather than go on to perfection, as though 
 truth lay behind us in religion, and not 
 before us ? And lastly and chiefly. Where 
 is unity ? But this is a question we will not 
 even ask. One consolation we have at least 
 in putting forward these Thoughts, and that 
 is, that we cannot possibly do any mischief. 
 It is out of our power to be destructive, for 
 there is nothing of a progressive or certain 
 or harmonious character for us to destroy. 
 There is a method already philosophically 
 in religion, but it is an astrology, not an 
 astronomy. 
 
( I03 ) 
 
 XXXIII. — DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEOLOGICAL 
 AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 
 
 What is the difference between the method 
 of arriving at Christian truth set forth in 
 these Thoughts, and the method which has 
 been actually at work, consciously or un- 
 consciously, in the Christian Church from 
 the beginning ? The difference is this, that 
 in Christian theology faith of itself is re- 
 garded as a complete foundation ; and on 
 this foundation of faith alone is built intel- 
 lectually the whole fabric of what is termed 
 theology, or the science of religion— the 
 whole structure, in short, of Christian evi- 
 dences — with what fruits time has shown, 
 and time, if we mistake not, so long as the 
 system continues, cannot fail still more con- 
 clusively to prove. 
 
 The method of these Thoughts, while it 
 leaves faith its rightful place and acknow- 
 ledges its function, and indeed magnifies 
 its office, insists upon faith in all cases being 
 
104 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 put to some test before it can be regarded 
 as truth, or serve as a foundation for any 
 structure of Christian theology properly so 
 called. Faith alone, cries Theology, is all 
 we need in any way as a basis of Christian 
 truth, or as superstructure either ; faith, 
 when properly safeguarded and rightly em- 
 bodied, will bear any weight of truth you 
 can put upon it. Not so, say these Thoughts, 
 not faith alone, but faith and experience 
 hand -in -hand — faith seconded by experi- 
 ence, and so made perfect. You may be- 
 lieve provisionally just what reason and 
 inclination may prompt, only you must not 
 stop short there ; you must put your beliefs 
 to some test and prove them to be true, 
 before you are entitled to speak of them as 
 truths or to proceed upon them as such. 
 
 And it is a consideration worthy of notice 
 from a practical point of view, as regards 
 what is called the science of theology as 
 hitherto understood and professed, that a 
 man may, without religion or even morality. 
 
DESCARTES, IO5 
 
 cultivate this kind of science ; he need not 
 be himself a religious or even a moral man 
 to follow this pursuit On the other hand, 
 one erand recommendation of our method 
 practically is, that a man must first be a 
 religious man, and, as religion presupposes 
 morality, also a moral man, before he can 
 take up the science of religion on our lines to 
 any purpose, or can hope to make any way, 
 even the least, in the prosecution of religious 
 truth. Whatever our method may be intel- 
 lectually, it is at least in the most rigid sense 
 of the term a moral method. A bad man 
 cannot follow the system set forth in these 
 Thoughts. 
 
 XXXIV. — DESCARTES NOT WITH US IN OUR 
 METHOD. 
 
 We have not Descartes with us, it must 
 be confessed, in this our method — that is, if 
 we understand him aright where he says, 
 " Les choses qui nous ont ete revelees par 
 Dieu sont les plus certaines de toutes nos 
 
I06 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 connaisances, puisque la foi qu'on a en elles 
 .... est un acte non de Tesprit, mais de la 
 volonte." What can this mean ? That 
 what I "believe is a certainty because I be- 
 lieve it — in other words, I am endowed with 
 infallibility? and further, that what I will 
 is a certainty because I will to believe it — 
 in other words, my will is arbiter of right 
 and wrong ? Is this what is meant ? If so, 
 Descartes is undoubtedly not with us. Nor 
 do we much wonder : he could hardly be 
 with us and v/ith the Catholic Church ; 
 and Descartes, though a philosopher and a 
 genuine lover of truth, was unquestionably 
 a prudent man. 
 
 What this philosopher says, however, of 
 the science in general of his day, must be 
 acknowledged to hold good of the theology 
 of our own day or of any day : " Toute la 
 science que nous pouvons desirer, fut-elle 
 renfermee dans les livres, cependant ce qu'ils 
 ont de bien se trouve mele a tant de choses 
 inutiles et disperse dans une masse de si 
 
M. EMILE BURNOUF. loy 
 
 vastes volumes, qu'il nous faudrait, pour les 
 lire, plus de temps que la vie humaine ne 
 nous en fournit, et de plus grands efforts 
 d'esprit pour en extraire les choses utiles 
 qu'il n'est besoin pour les trouver de nous- 
 memes." These remarks, if applied to theo- 
 logy) s^re as much as to say that if you 
 wish for the truth that is in theology, it 
 will take you less time and trouble to make 
 it out for yourself than to ascertain it from 
 the bulky and multitudinous tomes of divi- 
 nity that are in existence. So we think ; 
 and on this principle we have presumed 
 to act. 
 
 XXXV. — ^WHAT A SCIENCE OF RELIGION IS NOT. 
 (m. EMILE BURNOUF.) 
 
 Nor have we wi.th us M. Emile Burnouf 
 {La Science des Religions, 1870) : "Ce n'est 
 a la science," says this writer, " d'examiner 
 la valeur absolue des religions." But is not 
 this precisely what the peculiar province of 
 religious science is, viz. to distinguish sharply 
 
I08 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 and absolutely between the true and the 
 false in religion ? That this is its great duty, 
 the author himself acknowledges (p. 276) : 
 "La theorie d'Agni est-elle vraie absolu- 
 ment?" He, however, nowhere seems to 
 feel himself called upon to give an answer. 
 Again, he remarks that the science of reli- 
 gion " n'a rien d'aggressif." Poor Religion ! 
 if it is not to be aggressive, when everybody 
 else and everything else is so. Is not all 
 science aggressive? Is not the science of 
 astronomy aggressive ? Where is now the 
 Ptolemaic system? Nay, has not science 
 made war upon religion — righteous war per- 
 haps, but still war? What has become of 
 the sun that in bygone days stood still on 
 Gibeon, or of the creation of the world in six 
 statute days? Religious science is bound 
 to be aggressive, if only in self-defence ; for 
 none are so little peaceful themselves as the 
 so-called votaries of science. 
 
 Religion, it must be remembered, is fast 
 losing what may be termed its foreign — 
 
3f. EMILE BURNOUF. log 
 
 perhaps we might even say, its usurped — 
 possessions, and is in danger of losing even 
 its own rightful territory, if it does not at 
 least assume manfully the defensive. So 
 long as science was not yet, religion stood 
 confessedly at the head of all truth, by 
 virtue of the greater excellence of the mate- 
 rial with which it has to do ; but now that 
 truth in so many departments of human 
 inquiry is made science, an unscientific reli- 
 gion contends with science at every disad- 
 vantage ; it is virtually defenceless. 
 
 If the truth must be said, a science of 
 religion which does not regard it as one of 
 its primary duties to maintain its defences 
 where it has right on its side, and to be 
 at least in that sense aggressive, will soon 
 have no religion to defend. Altogether, 
 M. Burnoufs book, notwithstanding what 
 you might expect from its title, is not a 
 science of religion. It is for the most part 
 a collection of facts, more or less connected 
 with religion, and that is all. You might, 
 
no CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 with just as good reason and as good results, 
 bring together all the alchemies that ever 
 were, and call the compound a science of 
 chemistry, as say of M. Burnoufs volume 
 that it is a science of religion. 
 
 This author's science of religion would 
 seem to proceed upon the principle that all 
 things that are called religion — or dre be- 
 lieved to be such, no matter by whom — 
 are equally religion scientifically considered. 
 He takes whatever facts of religion may 
 present themselves, just as they come in his 
 way, and from this indiscriminate budget 
 of data draws his conclusions ; not, however, 
 that there is much of a conclusion. If, 
 indeed, as he appears to think, all the great 
 religions of the world are only so many 
 reforms in religion, or at least so many ad- 
 vances upon a former and less perfect stage 
 of development — Buddhism, Zoroastrism, 
 Mohammedanism, Christianity — would it 
 not seem rather to follow that whatever is 
 in religion is false, or at least imperfect, and 
 
M. EMILE BURNOUF. 1 1 1 
 
 that we are only in some preparatory state 
 still, and no more justified in constructing 
 a science of religion out of the materials at 
 our disposal, taking them just as they are, 
 without having first submitted them to some 
 test, than we should be warranted in fabri- 
 cating a science of geology out of the first 
 chapters of the book of Genesis and similar 
 materials ? 
 
 Does it not, in fact, simply follow from 
 M. Burnouf s position, that while man must 
 have a religion of some kind, however rudi- 
 mentary may be his system, he has not 
 yet hit upon the right method of discrimi- 
 nating between true and false in religion, 
 or between that which is relevant and to 
 the purpose, and that which must be cast 
 aside as a worn-out garment? When he 
 does find truth in religion, one of the first 
 things he will do will be to draw a sharp 
 line between what he knows and what he 
 only believes — a very, difficult task (simple 
 as it may be thought to be), at least for those 
 
112 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 whose minds are rather of the religious than 
 of the scientific order. Most of the facts of 
 religion as hitherto understood he will find 
 to be facts of mere opinion rather than facts 
 of experience. M. Burnoufs book is in many 
 respects an example of what a science of 
 religion ought not to be. 
 
 XXXVI. — ORTHODOXY AND THESE THOUGHTS. 
 
 What have we to do with orthodoxy in 
 connection with these Thoughts ? Properly 
 speaking, nothing whatever. Do we oppose 
 it ? No ; but the truth is, it does not lie in 
 our path according to the principles laid 
 down for ourselves. In the first place, or- 
 thodoxy deals with natures and essences ; 
 we, with facts, with things and persons as 
 they appear to be, with phenomena rather 
 than with noumena. Secondly, orthodoxy 
 determines truth by means of a majority, 
 be it of a particular or general council ; not 
 the best way of arriving at truth even in 
 things not appertaining to religion, and cer- 
 
ORTHODOXY. II3 
 
 tainly not an infallible one in matters of 
 religion ; we are neither majority nor minor- 
 ity, being only a single individual. But 
 chiefly, orthodoxy arrives at truth by the 
 easy method of speculation and disputation ; 
 we are bound to work out our problems 
 practically, and this is not always easy. 
 
 In a word, a science of dogma such as is 
 in vogue, and a science of practical religion 
 such as these Thoughts endeavour to esta- 
 blish, go in different directions and rest upon 
 different foundations — orthodoxy, upon faith 
 alone ; and science, upon faith and experience 
 combined ; that is to say, we do not admit 
 faith as a foundation until it has been first 
 tested and ratified by experience. By what 
 means shall we determine the nature of the 
 Deity ? He is Three and One. How can 
 these things be ? We conceive that any 
 such problem, however imposing in itself, is 
 out of our line. We believe it, and there 
 we stop ; we do not argue. It is a metaphy- 
 sical question, and we are practical. 
 
 I 
 
114 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 Besides, we consider that we can serve 
 God without metaphysically attempting (for 
 we should never succeed) to understand His 
 nature, just as we can take our food and be 
 nourished therewith, and all the while be 
 ignorant of the nature both of the food and 
 of him who feeds thereon. Are we not, 
 therefore, more than justified in confining 
 ourselves entirely to the practical side of 
 religion ? And, by the way, are we sure 
 that this practical mode of procedure is not 
 after all the path by which we scale those 
 hitherto untrodden heights which metaphy- 
 sical speculation has so far attempted in 
 vain ? " The secret of the Lord is with them 
 that fear Him, and He will show them His 
 covenant" (Ps. xxv. 14). That is to say, 
 the way of practical religion is the only way 
 to a knowledge of God's secret things. 
 
 For these reasons and for other kindred 
 considerations, he is the truly religious man 
 who keeps to the strictly practical path in 
 religion, and eschews speculation as a vain 
 
SPECULATION. 115 
 
 and empty thing at best. If any one will 
 not walk in this obvious path, what is his 
 alternative? Can his eye pierce a thick 
 and three-fold veil ? If not, let him not 
 vainly imagine that he can apprehend either 
 the nature of man or the nature of God, or 
 what is "within the veil," unless it shall 
 please God to draw aside the covering for 
 a brief space, or supernaturally to open his 
 eyes. Consequently we are not in these 
 Thoughts speculative or metaphysical ; we 
 are simply practical. 
 
 XXXVII. — SPECULATION NO WAY TO CHRISTIAN 
 TRUTH. FOUR REASONS. 
 
 On what grounds do we affirm that it is 
 not possible to find Christian truth, not even 
 so much as the being of a God or the reality 
 of an unseen world, by any unpractical way 
 — by the way, that is, of metaphysics or 
 speculation ? 
 
 (i) In all probability the things of that 
 world of spirits differ in their nature from 
 
 I 2 
 
Il6 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 the things of this world of sense, this mate- 
 rial world ; so that it is impossible to argue 
 from the latter, the only kind of world we 
 are acquainted with, to the former. 
 
 (2) Even though the two worlds with 
 which we have to do were of the same 
 nature, we are not justified in concluding 
 from what is here to what is there. It 
 would be possible to make a tolerable con- 
 jecture as to what is in the next room, 
 though we may never have been in it ; but 
 it would only be a conjecture, it would not 
 be a certainty. If I really wish to know, 
 I am not satisfied with supposition or argu- 
 ment of any sort, but I enter the room and 
 see, if I may be permitted to do so, or, as 
 the next best thing, procure trustworthy 
 information as to the contents of that other, 
 room. Just so as regards what may be in 
 the next world, which we call the world of 
 spirits (though we have not the slightest 
 conception as to what spirit is, only we 
 presume it is not matter), unless we can 
 
SPECULATION. 11/ 
 
 open some channel of communication, our 
 thinkings and distractions of mind are all 
 " vanity and vexation of spirit." Speculat- 
 ing will do absolutely no good ; believing 
 will do good, but only as a preliminary step 
 and to a certain extent. 
 
 (3) What has speculation ever effected ? 
 Men have speculated and metaphysicized, 
 from Thales to Aristotle, from Aristotle to 
 Descartes, from Descartes to Kant, from 
 Kant to the latest philosopher of all, who- 
 ever he may be — and with what result ? Is 
 there a God ? They cannot one of them 
 say for certain. One affirms and the other 
 denies, and we strike a balance of argument, 
 and in conclusion we are just where we were 
 when we began. The whole argumentation 
 may be represented by the formula, 1-1=0. 
 The scales are exactly even. 
 
 (4) If speculation is a possible way to 
 religious knowledge — that is, if man, by the 
 exercise of his own natural faculties, can 
 find out God and the things of eternity — 
 
Il8 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 what need of revelation, or faith in revela- 
 tion ? We need no Bible in that case, with 
 its word of prophecy, to tell us what to 
 believe — the word of philosophy is suffi- 
 cient ; we put aside faith as unnecessary 
 and superfluous, and at one bound, by 
 means of philosophy, arrive at knowledge. 
 In brief, the net result of speculation in 
 matters of religion is scepticism — that is to 
 say, an evenly-balanced conclusion for and 
 against the essentials of religious truth. To 
 this goal speculation leads you, and there 
 it leaves you ; there is no road forward ; the 
 only road open to you is backward, to begin 
 again where you began before, with the same 
 weary round and the like profitless result. 
 The game of metaphysics — the players 
 being equal — is invariably a drawn game. 
 You are unable to conclude as a matter of 
 reasoning that there is a God ; you are 
 equally powerless to show for a certainty 
 that there is not a God — a plain proof that 
 in metaphysics believer and unbeliever alike 
 
BISHOP BUTLER. II9 
 
 have their labour for their pains. If you 
 would know whether there is really a world 
 of spirits, go and see (as, indeed, you will 
 one day go, if there is truth in religion) ; or 
 apply some test, if you cannot yet go. To 
 sit still and think merely, and then to write 
 down what you think, is simply that " mak- 
 ing many books" of which the preacher 
 declares "there is no end," and in which 
 there is assuredly no profit. 
 
 XXXVIII. BISHOP BUTLER AS TO THE WORTH 
 
 OF SPECULATION IN RELIGION. 
 
 " Religion," says the Bishop in direct 
 terms, " is a practical thing'' — which is as 
 much as to say, unless we are mistaken, that 
 it is not speculative. His exact words are 
 {Charge to the Clergy of Durham^ I75i)- 
 "Besides, as to religion in general, it is a 
 practical thing, and no otherwise a matter 
 of speculation than common prudence in 
 the management of our worldly affairs is so. 
 And if one were endeavouring to bring a 
 
120 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 plain man to be more careful with regard 
 to this last, it would be thought a strange 
 method of doing it to perplex him with 
 stating formally the several objections which 
 men of gaiety or speculation have made 
 against prudence, and the advantages which 
 they pleasantly tell us folly has over it, 
 though one could answer those objections 
 ever so fully." 
 
 This is a noteworthy saying, and all the 
 more so as coming from so noteworthy a 
 man in the domain of metaphysics. It is 
 as much as to say that, when you play with 
 religion, you speculate ; when you come to 
 be in earnest, you cast speculation to the 
 winds, and no more speculate than you do 
 in respect of your food or in the performance 
 of your every-day round of duties. Specu- 
 lation, in short, he says, has neither more 
 nor less to do with religion than it has with 
 the ordinary affairs of life. Speculation, 
 however, we must add, is not absolutely 
 nothing, if we would strike a fair balance of 
 
SPECULATION. 121 
 
 relative good and evil, (i) It is a fasci- 
 nating exercise of the mind. (2) It gives 
 you an opportunity of having to do with 
 religion intellectually, while at the same 
 time holding aloof, it may be, both heart 
 and strength. (3) It enables you to frame 
 objections against religion. (4) It gives 
 you the power at the same time of meeting 
 those and all other objections. (5) It leaves 
 you just where you were when you began 
 to speculate — neither better nor worse. 
 
 These and the like advantages speculation 
 affords. But there are two things it has not 
 in its power to do for you in the least degree : 
 it neither tends to make you religious as to 
 the heart, nor helps you to the conviction 
 that religion is true as to the mind. It 
 gives your heart nothing ; it gives your 
 mind nothing. Speculation is the shadow 
 of religion, not the substance. Take to it 
 by all means if you are so minded, until 
 you find it can do nothing for you ; and 
 when you have worked it out and played it 
 
122 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 out, you will, if you are wise, leave it for 
 ever. You will at least have learnt what is 
 not the road to Christian truth. 
 
 Truth in all practical things — the greatest 
 as well as the smallest, the smallest no less 
 than the greatest — is determined by one 
 and the same method : you conjecture or 
 believe to begin with, and you arrive at 
 certainty to end with, if you persevere as 
 you began. You may eschew this common 
 method as long as you like, but you are sure 
 to be brought down — it may be on your 
 knees — before it at last, supposing you to be 
 in earnest, as we have a right to suppose; 
 You will then have learnt that the only way 
 of truth is not the lofty one of speculation, 
 but the lowly one of a good life. You may 
 think too much. 
 
 XXXIX. — HUMAN KNOWLEDGE RELATIVE, NOT 
 
 ABSOLUTE. 
 
 Man has to do with things, not absolutely, 
 but relatively. Objects do not appear, you 
 
HOL Y SCRIPTURE. 1 2 3 
 
 say, as they are, and I have to find out what 
 they are. But can you do so, and is there 
 any necessity ? You allow that they appear 
 as they are intended to appear. They there- 
 fore appear relatively to us as they are. 
 With what they are absolutely, we have 
 nothing to do, unless we also were ourselves 
 absolute. Hence the distinction between 
 phenomena and noumena would seem prac- 
 tically to vanish. In our thinkings, there- 
 fore, we must draw the line strictly on this 
 side what we call the absolute. It is true 
 in philosophy as in religion that there are 
 "secret things" which "belong unto the 
 Lord." Besides, how do we know that, as 
 regards the finite things with which we 
 have to do, there is any difference between 
 appearance and reality ? 
 
 XL. — THE BIBLE: ITS PROPER PLACE IN THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN SCHEME. 
 
 When religion is lowest in the heart, then 
 it is found that Scripture stands highest in 
 
124 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 our esteem. He who is too poor to afford 
 a new coat, will perhaps be thankful for the 
 gift of a second-hand garment. The Bible 
 is God's Word to us at second-hand. Moses 
 or Samuel or Noah had God's Word at first- 
 hand. So it is possible we might have it, 
 if we would only not dictate to the Almighty 
 through what channels He shall speak, or 
 when He shall cease speaking. But we 
 have presumed to lay down laws for the 
 Almighty, both as to what He shall say 
 and when He shall stop. First of all, our 
 language is, taking the Bible in our hands : 
 This is God's Word in the highest possible 
 degree, if not in the only possible way ; 
 then we shut the Book, and cry. Enough ! 
 God shall say no more. Everything depends 
 upon putting even good things in their right 
 places, otherwise even good things become 
 bad things. What is the legitimate place 
 of the Bible ? Not that of supreme arbiter 
 in matters of religion, from which there 
 shall be no appeal. At least, we are right 
 
EUTHYMIUS ZIQ ABENDS. 12$ 
 
 in affirming that this is not the position 
 which the Bible has invariably without ex- 
 ception held from the beginning. It gra- 
 dually grew to this infallibility. 
 
 One example may suffice to prove this 
 at all events non-invariability, and this one 
 example we take from the Commentary on 
 the Four Gospels by Euthymius Zigabenus, 
 a monk of the twelfth century. " The best 
 thing," he says, " is that we should not need 
 help from Scripture at all. We ought to be 
 so pure in life as not to require the out- 
 wardly and visibly written book. Then 
 shall our hearts be inscribed by the Spirit, 
 just as a book is written with ink. But 
 since we have forfeited this grace of the 
 Spirit, we shall do well to avail ourselves of 
 the next best thing, and of necessity make 
 use of the Bible. God spake to Noah and 
 Abraham and their posterity in the old 
 dispensation, also to Job and Moses, not 
 through the medium of writing ; but as He 
 found their minds to be pure, He spake to 
 
126 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 them personally and directly. But when 
 the whole people of the Hebrews had cor- 
 rupted themselves, then came tablets and 
 letters and writings. So also as regards the 
 writers of the New Testament. God did 
 not gwQ the apostles any Scripture, but 
 instead of Scripture He promised them the 
 grace of the Spirit. That the Spirit is 
 better, hear what the prophet says (Jer. 
 xxxi. 31 — 33): 'Behold the days come, 
 saith the Lord, that I will make a new 
 covenant with the house of Israel and with 
 the house of Jacob. Not according to the 
 covenant which I made with their fathers, 
 but this shall be the covenant : I will put 
 my law in their inward parts, and will write 
 it in their hearts.' Paul also upholds this 
 excellence when he says (2 Cor. iii. 3) : ' Ye 
 are the epistle of Christ ministered by us, 
 written not with ink, but with the Spirit of 
 the living God ; not in tables of stone, but 
 in fleshy tables of the heart.' But when in 
 process of time men went wrong — some in 
 
HOLY SCRIPTURE. \2*J 
 
 doctrine, some in life and manners — the 
 putting in mind which books afford was 
 found to be needful. Consider, therefore, 
 how great an evil it is if we — whose hearts 
 ought to be so pure as not to require even 
 Scripture — not only come down from that 
 high place, but do not even care to avail 
 ourselves of this second - best assistance, 
 neglecting even the Scriptures themselves 
 as of no value." Thus far Euthymius Ziga- 
 benus. If we are not at one with this monk 
 of the twelfth century as to the proper place 
 of Holy Scripture in the Christian scheme, 
 is it that we are sounder in faith in this 
 matter, or less so, than he ? 
 
 XLI. — THE BIBLE RESTS UPON CHRISTIAN 
 EXPERIENCE, NOT VICE VERSA. 
 
 Are Christ's miracles true? Were they 
 ever really wrought ? Do you experience 
 miracles ? If not, what good to you though 
 Christ's miracles be all true ? On the other 
 hand, if you do experience miracles, or at 
 
128 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 least are satisfied with your experience alto- 
 gether, what harm to you though Christ's 
 miracles be, as some pretend, so many 
 myths ? In other words, the truth of the 
 Bible rests upon Christian experience, not 
 Christian experience upon the Bible. So 
 long as thou art merely a believer, thou 
 restest upon Scripture ; when thou " comest, 
 in the unity of the faith and of the know- 
 ledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect 
 man, unto the measure of the stature of the 
 fulness of Christ," thou art emancipated 
 from the letter, and Scripture rests so far 
 forth upon thee. The man in whom no 
 miracle shall ever be wrought is a lost man, 
 and he who expects none is a losing man. 
 What is to raise thee from the dead ? Thou 
 wilt die : what is to restore thee to life 
 again ? The miracles of the Bible will not 
 save thee, however heartily thou accept 
 them. What thou standest in need of is, 
 not the mere record of a miracle, but the 
 miracle itself 
 
( 129 ) 
 
 XLII. — THE RIGHT WAY OF DEALING WITH 
 HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 There are two ways of dealing with Holy 
 Scripture. The one is to regard it, before 
 ever you have opened the book, as pure and 
 unadulterated truth — every chapter of it, 
 every verse, every word. The other is, not 
 to take the truth of the Bible for granted, 
 not a single word of it, whatever your in- 
 most thought or inclination may be, but 
 calmly to set about the inquiry with the 
 Bereans as to how far these things are so. 
 The former of these methods is easy and 
 flattering to self ; it is indeed a tacit assump- 
 tion of self-infallibility ; the latter is hard 
 and humiliating, and involves that, to cer- 
 tain minds, most unpalatable admission, 
 that we cannot possibly say what is in a 
 book until we have read it. Which of these 
 two ways is, from a religious point of view, 
 the more likely to be the right principle of 
 dealing with a book which comes to us as 
 
 K 
 
130 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 from God — the proud and self-sufficient 
 way, or the path of humility? From the 
 religious point of view, we repeat ; for as 
 to the way of criticism or common sense, 
 there never was or could be the shadow of 
 a doubt. Unquestionably the method that 
 exhibits all the tokens of modesty and 
 moderation is the right way : so much so, 
 that, were there any doubt as to the verdict 
 of reason, religion itself — yea, even the Bible 
 as a whole when properly interrogated — 
 would turn the scale effectually against 
 taking even the Bible for granted, to begin 
 with. 
 
 XLIII. RELIGION DOES NOT REST UPON BIBLE 
 
 OR CHURCH AS A FOUNDATION. 
 
 When a good Protestant makes it his 
 solace and his glory that his religion rests 
 upon the Bible, what does he mean ? What 
 he really implies, if he will examine himself, 
 is, that his religion rests, not upon the Bible 
 immediately, but upon his belief in the 
 
HOLY SCRIPTURE. 131 
 
 Bible — in other words, upon himself, for his 
 belief is himself — in other words again, upon 
 his own infallibility ; for has he not pro- 
 nounced the Bible to be infallibly true, 
 and who is entitled to do this but an infal- 
 lible man ? " The less is blessed of the 
 better," and he in this case is the better. 
 This good Protestant first blesses the Bible, 
 and then accepts it in consequence of this 
 blessing. In like manner, when a good 
 Romanist assures us that his religion rests, 
 not upon the Bible, but upon his Church — 
 *' I believe in the Church" — what does he 
 mean? Only substitute Church for Bible, 
 and you have what must be his meaning, 
 whether he thinks it or not. His Church 
 blesses him, but he has first blessed his 
 Church, so as to infuse into it that virtue 
 which now enwraps him and makes him 
 religiously confident. What a marvellous, 
 and we may say self-satisfying, power of 
 self-deception there is in this frail humanity 
 of ours! You first, of your mere act and 
 
 K 2 
 
132 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 deed, invest a book or a church with infal- 
 libility, and this infallibility bestows upon 
 you its blessing. Just as it was in the olden 
 days, the days of idolatry, you first fashion 
 your idol, and then fall down to worship 
 the work of your own hands. Besides, we 
 must never forget that what is lawful in 
 Christianity is allowable philosophically to 
 the same extent in any other religion ; and 
 that, if it is right for us to take the truth, 
 even the infallibility, of our Bible for granted, 
 it is equally right for the Mussulman to 
 take the infallibility of his Bible— that is, 
 the Koran — for granted. 
 
 XLIV. — THE BIBLE ITSELF COUNTENANCES A 
 SIGN IN CONFIRMATION OF ITS WORD. 
 
 Whosoever refuses to take the Bible for 
 granted and without inquiry, may success- 
 fully appeal to the Bible itself in justification 
 of his hesitancy. The case of Gideon is 
 conclusive on this head. Gideon has a reve- 
 lation from heaven. The anprel of the Lord 
 
GIDEON AND GOD'S WORD. 1 33 
 
 appears to him. The injunction is laid upon 
 him to save Israel from the hand of Midian. 
 Gideon requires a sign whereby he may be 
 assured that the vision is true, and that the 
 Lord has really given him this commission. 
 The sign he himself proposes is vouchsafed. 
 The dew is on the fleece only, and all the 
 earth around is dry. He is not yet fully 
 satisfied. The dew on the fleece might pos- 
 sibly be otherwise accounted for than as a 
 sign from God at Gideon's instance. He 
 now asks that the sign may be reversed, that 
 it this time be dry on the fleece only, and 
 that there be dew on all the earth around. 
 The Lord is not angry with Gideon, as 
 Gideon seems almost to have apprehended. 
 The second sign is granted, and Gideon 
 is now satisfied that the Lord has really 
 appeared to him and commissioned him to 
 the war against Midian. 
 
 Are we wrong in following Gideon's ex- 
 ample in the matter of the revelation made 
 to us in the Bible ? Nay, have we not twice 
 
134 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 Gideon's motives ? Gideon was sure up to 
 a certain point. He was confident that an 
 impression had been made on his mind, and 
 that he thought he saw a vision, and that he 
 thought also that he heard words out of the 
 mouth of the angel that appeared to him. 
 He had no doubt that in all this he was not 
 acting the part of a self-deceiver. The only- 
 point on which he could possibly be in doubt 
 was, as to whether he was not himself de- 
 ceived, as to whether that of which he was 
 subjectively certain was also objectively 
 true. But we are not even assured as to 
 this subjective certainty in the minds of 
 those through whom we have the revela- 
 tions of the Bible. 
 
 Were the revelations which are put on 
 record in the Bible ever really m.ade to 
 those whose names they bear? Indeed, for 
 the most part, they are without the voucher 
 even of a name. In this respect, Gideon 
 had an advantage over us. He was sure as 
 to himself and his own honesty. He was 
 
GIDEON AND GOD'S WORD. 1 35 
 
 sure " he thought he saw a vision." He 
 might be deceived, but he was certainly 
 not a self-deceiver. We are more than jus- 
 tified, therefore, in following the example of 
 Gideon, and asking for some sign whereby 
 we may know whether these things are of 
 God or not. And what is the sign we 
 naturally ask ? The sign of God's Word 
 fulfilled in us, in obedience to His command 
 and for our good. When Gideon had over- 
 come the Midianites, he needed no further 
 sign ; he had his sign to the full, a better 
 sign than even the appearance of the angel. 
 So when we, to our own good, experience 
 the truth of what is written in Holy Scrip- 
 ture, having walked in the ways of the Word 
 of God, then in truth are we fully assured 
 that the Bible is indeed God's Word. 
 
 Not to rest satisfied without such a sign 
 is a proof, not of want of faith in God, but 
 of want of faith in man, and in ourselves 
 especially ; in other words, is a proof of 
 humility. Gideon was self-distrustful. So 
 
136 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 ought we to be. So is the true prophet ever. 
 Had prophets always a sign? Spinoza is 
 of opinion that they had {Tract Theo. Pol.) : 
 " Quamvis Scriptura non semper signi men- 
 tionem faciat, credendum tamen est pro- 
 phetas semper signum habuisse." If pro- 
 phets, with their higher spiritual intelligence, 
 always had a sign, much more is it impe- 
 rative that we should have some objective 
 evidence sooner or later of the reality of 
 God's Word to us. 
 
 XLV. — TRUTH OF BIBLE A CONCLUSION, NOT A 
 PREMISS. 
 
 The religion of A.D. 1888 rests not upon 
 the Bible, but, vice versa, the Bible rests 
 upon the religion of A.D. 1888. Paradoxi- 
 cal, but true. The foundations of religion, 
 so far as our knowledge is concerned, lie 
 not in time past, but in time present. To 
 argue from the Bible to ourselves is to con- 
 clude from the unknown to the known, 
 which is unprofitable even where possible. 
 
EOLY SCRIPTURE. 1 37 
 
 The necessary order is to proceed from 
 what we know to what we do not know. 
 If I argue from Holy Scripture to myself, I 
 necessarily begin with taking Holy Scrip- 
 ture for granted, which proceeding is just 
 the opposite of science, however much it 
 may be in accordance with the principles 
 of what goes under the name of that which 
 is the opposite of science. 
 
 Science takes nothing for granted but that 
 which contains its truth in itself. If I reason 
 from time present, I begin with indisputable 
 facts, and so, at any rate, have a sure foun- 
 dation, if only I can build thereon. In short, 
 the truth of the Bible is, practically speak- 
 ing, a conclusion,, and not a premiss. What 
 if I do not find religion to be true, now and 
 to me? Can the Bible make my religion 
 to be of any worth in opposition to my own 
 personal experience ? Would it be even 
 any consolation to me to know under such 
 circumstances that the Bible is true ? But 
 if I find religion to be to me all that I care 
 
138 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 to find it, now, personally, then the truth of 
 the Bible follows, and from no other possi- 
 ble premiss. 
 
 Besides, we must always bear in mind 
 that Christianity might have been true 1800 
 years ago, and may not be true now. Do we 
 not hold, rightly or wrongly, that Judaism, 
 which was once a living faith, is now dead 
 or superseded as a religion? The Bible 
 was true, therefore my religion which rests 
 upon it is true, is an argument which is 
 much more of a conclusion than a premiss. 
 A living religion now, proves all that is of 
 any value concerning the past, even though 
 it leaves the past, it may be, considerably 
 in the dark ; whereas a living religion in 
 time past proves nothing whatever concern- 
 ing time present, or nothing to any prac- 
 tical purpose. 
 
( 139 ) 
 
 XLVI. — MORALITY AND RELIGION, HOW RELATED. 
 RELIGION IS THE HANDMAID, NOT THE MIS- 
 TRESS, OF MORALITY. 
 
 When you ask whether is greater, reli- 
 gion or morality, what religion do you 
 mean — Christianity or Buddhism, or some 
 other? Perhaps, as you are a Christian, 
 you would reply, if you were to speak what 
 you really think, that Christianity is greater 
 than morality, but that morality is greater 
 than any other religion. 
 
 Morality was before Christianity, and will 
 be after Christianity, "when the Son also 
 himself shall be subject unto Him that put 
 all things under Him, that God may be all 
 in all" (I Cor. xv. 28). 
 
 Morality is the beginning of man's good- 
 ness, morality is the end ; and Christ's reli- 
 gion is the means, and the only means, to 
 that end. 
 
140 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 " Alles was ausser dem guten Lebensvvan- 
 del der Mensch noch thun zu konnen ver- 
 meynt um Gott wohlgefallig zu werden, 
 ist blosser Religionswahn und Afterdienst 
 Gottes" (Kant). 
 
 However imperfect morality may be with- 
 out religion, religion, we must bear in mind, 
 is nothing at all without morality. They 
 are essential to each other, and it is hard to 
 say whether of the two has the best of the 
 bargain. 
 
 Christianity is the " leaven which a woman 
 took and hid in three measures of meal until 
 the whole was leavened" (Matt. xiii. 33); 
 and man's moral nature is " the three mea- 
 sures of meal." 
 
 Which of the two is greater, morality or 
 religion ? Morality is greater than religion. 
 We are to be " perfect as our Father which 
 is in heaven is perfect ;" and God is moral, 
 not religious. 
 
MORALITY AND RELIGION. 141 
 
 Religion is a means to an end, and that 
 end is morality in the grandest and widest 
 sense. How far does your religion conduce 
 to this end ? So far only is it true. " If 
 any man among you seem to be religious, 
 and bridleth not his tongue (which is a 
 moral duty), but deceiveth his own heart, 
 that man's religion is vain" (James i. 26). 
 
 " He hath showed thee, O 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 ?" (Micah 
 vi. 8). 
 
 "Think not that I am come to destroy 
 the law or the prophets : I am not come to 
 destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto 
 you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or 
 one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, 
 till all be fulfilled" (Matt. v. 17, 18). 
 
 " But if ye had known what that mcaneth, 
 
142 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 I will have mercy and not sacrifice (morality 
 and not religion), ye would not have con- 
 demned the guiltless" (Matt. xii. 7). 
 
 "Who gave himself for us that he might 
 redeem us from all iniquity, and purify 
 unto himself a peculiar people zealous of 
 good works" (Tit., ii. 14). 
 
 " Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of 
 Sodom ; giYQ ear unto the law of our God, 
 ye people of Gomorrah. To what purpose 
 is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me ? 
 .... Bring no more vain oblations ; incense 
 is an abomination unto me ; the new moons 
 and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I 
 
 cannot away with Your new moons 
 
 and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. 
 .... Yea, when ye make many prayers, I 
 will not hear : your hands are full of blood" 
 (Isaiah i. 10 — 15). 
 
( 143 ) 
 
 XLVII. — MORALITY : ITS END AND ITS AIM. 
 
 The end of morals is happiness ; the aim 
 of morals is virtue. The Epicureans made 
 happiness the aim of life — an impossible 
 aim, seeing that we know not, prior to ex- 
 perience, wherein happiness consists. How, 
 then, can it be our mark ? The Stoics, on 
 the other hand, made virtue the end of life 
 as well as the aim, virtue being to them its 
 own reward-^ a noble sentiment, were it 
 only practicable. Virtue may be misery ; 
 and how can misery be a reward ? A prison 
 or a block may be, and often is, virtue ; but 
 it is only a philosophy of words without 
 feeling that could regard either of them as 
 the reward of virtue. 
 
 The Epicureans were right in making 
 happiness the end of life, provided only we 
 rightly understand what happiness is ; but 
 they were wrong in regarding it as the direct 
 aim of man. The Stoics, on the other hand, 
 were right, so far as they made virtue the 
 
144 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 mark to be kept constantly in view ; but 
 they were wrong in holding it to be its own 
 end. Virtue is a means to an end, but not 
 the end absolutely. The Stoics merged 
 happiness in virtue ; the Epicureans lost 
 sight of virtue in happiness. Who were 
 right, and who were wrong? Both were 
 right, and both were wrong. 
 
 Put the two together, and you have a 
 perfect system of morals. Let Epicurus 
 and Zeno join hands. Make virtue in all 
 things thy aim, and believe that thou wilt 
 attain to happiness in the end if thou strictly 
 pursue the path of virtue. Righteousness 
 in morals, as in religion, is by faith. What, 
 indeed, is not by faith to begin with ? 
 
 XLVIII. — MAN HAS MORAL SENSES OR FACULTIES 
 TO BEGIN WITH. 
 
 Man has the power of distinguishing be- 
 tween good and evil. Whence this power ? 
 Is it in man to begin with — a moral sense, 
 
MORAL IDEAS INNATE, 1 4$ 
 
 what we may call an intuitive or inborn 
 faculty — or is it acquired ? If we say that 
 it is acquired, how do we know that it is so, 
 unless we are able to look back to a time 
 in the development of human nature when 
 man was as yet destitute of the power of 
 making these moral distinctions ; or, indeed, 
 not only to look back, but even to point 
 out when and how the human family first 
 became possessed of this faculty ? But no 
 such past time is within our ken, cast our 
 recollection as far back as we may. These 
 ethical distinctions have their roots and 
 expressions in the origins of all languages, 
 which is the same thing as to say that they 
 are at least coeval with the origin of man 
 as a thinking and sentient being. 
 
 They are therefore, so to speak, innate ; 
 they are an integral and inseparable element 
 of our original constitution. They were 
 born with us and in us. Nor, indeed, do we 
 see how experience could have originated 
 them. Experience may and does improve 
 
 L 
 
146 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 man, but it certainly never gives him being, 
 either in general or in particular. 
 
 We are far of course from asserting that 
 experience exercises no influence upon mo- 
 rals. It has a great influence upon morals ; 
 only it did not give birth to morals. We 
 are not in any way indebted to experience 
 for our primary moral perceptions. Expe- 
 rience never gave us what we call a sense of 
 shame, or any sense at all. To say that a 
 man has learnt morals from experience, or 
 in any way independently of a moral faculty 
 to begin with, is as much as to affirm that 
 he has learnt to see without eyes, and that 
 experience gave him his eyes. We learnt 
 morals just as we learnt to walk. We had 
 moral legs to begin with. 
 
 XLIX. — RELIGION AND MORALS DISTINCT, 
 THOUGH CONNECTED. 
 
 Religion and morals, however closely 
 connected, are nevertheless in the abstract 
 distinct As a matter of fact we find them 
 
MORALITY INCOMPLETE. 1 47 
 
 to be so. A man may be moral, and at the 
 same time not at all religious. Religion 
 and morals may be found in every possible 
 combination and dissociation. Jacob was 
 religious, not moral. Esau was moral, not 
 religious. Abraham was both moral and 
 religious. Cain was neither. We shall rea- 
 dily understand how these two sides of 
 one common goodness may be independent 
 (though at the same time interdependent), 
 if we reflect that the distinctive character- 
 istic of morals, that which makes morals, is 
 the moral sense, and the distinctive charac- 
 teristic of religion, that which makes reli- 
 gion, is the religious sense, and that these 
 two senses do not necessarily accompany 
 or imply each other. Experience of course, 
 as a test of truth, is common to both. 
 
 L. — MORALITY INCOMPLETE IN ITSELF AS A 
 PRACTICAL GOODNESS. 
 
 Morality as a practical goodness does not 
 complete itself It falls short in all practi- 
 
 L 2 
 
148 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 cal respects of the glorious end it aims at. 
 The end of morality is man made perfect — 
 perfectly good, and, by consequence, per- 
 fectly happy. But no system of morality, 
 if left to itself, can compass this grandest 
 and best of all consummations. What is 
 morality ? What does it say ? What can it 
 do ? It says much ; it can do little. Morality 
 is. Do this, and thou wilt do right ; Do this, 
 and thou shalt prosper. But we need more 
 than precept, or even more than promise, 
 as a motive to morality. Power is necessary. 
 Duty is hard, and we are weak ; and temp- 
 tations to evil are ever present and ever 
 powerful. Here morality does not even 
 profess to come to our aid. It does not 
 hesitate to proclaim its impotency with no 
 uncertain voice : " The good that I would, I 
 do not ; but the evil which I would not, that 
 I do." "Meliora probo, deteriora sequor." 
 It still utters the old cry of the heart's 
 despair, " O wretched man that I am, who 
 shall deliver me ?" Morality, however well- 
 
MORALITY INCOMPLETE. l^g 
 
 meaning and well-judging, is, as a matter 
 of fact, weak and unable to carry out its 
 intentions. It is wish and desire, but little 
 more ; it is not fulfilment. What would 
 man not be, did his good works but answer 
 to a tithe of his good intentions or even of 
 his well-meant attempts ? 
 
 But morality comes short in another 
 respect also. It fails to influence effectually 
 the will. Man needs motives to well-doing; 
 morality provides none. Why should I lead 
 this hard life which men call virtue ? What 
 is in a name ? Why not live a life of self- 
 gratification, even though it should not go 
 by the name of virtue ? Why should Cato 
 live when virtue itself is dead ? What are 
 thy motives, O Morality ! to righteousness ? 
 Morality is silent : it is not perhaps abso- 
 lutely dumb, but it speaks with a low and 
 faltering voice. 
 
 There is also a further particular in which 
 morality is defective. Morality does not 
 carry us beyond this world, or even look 
 
I50 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 beyond it. Morality does not, either in the 
 Old Testament or in Greek or Roman phi- 
 losophy, recognize a future state of exist- 
 ence. Its sphere is purely earthly and 
 human. " Let us eat and drink to-day, for 
 to-morrow we die," is in this respect good 
 morality. Morality ends where this world 
 ends ; but man does not end there. In fact, 
 morality in point of duration leaves man 
 just where he needs countenance and help 
 most. 
 
 So morality as a system — of which good- 
 ness and happiness are professedly the aim 
 and end — is incomplete, most miserably so. 
 It has a " form of godliness, but denying the 
 power thereof" Still it is a form, and an 
 indispensable form, and an eternal form, 
 and least of all an empty form. It is the 
 foundation and starting-point and eternal 
 model of all our goodness. But it does not 
 in itself contain means to that end. If man 
 is to be good, it is clear that he must, while 
 accepting morals as a law and as a perfect 
 
LELIGION FULFILS MORALS. 151 
 
 type, find elsewhere the means of filling in 
 this form and fulfilling this law. Whither 
 shall he turn ? To what shall he look ? 
 
 LI. — RELIGION THE COMPLEMENT OF MORALS 
 AND THE FULFILLER OF THE LAW. 
 
 Morality is an empty form, beautiful and 
 perfect, but still empty ; religion fills it up. 
 Religion is practically the complement of 
 morals. Morality, as we have seen, is, as 
 a complete goodness, in many essential 
 respects found wanting. It is good as far 
 as it goes, and points out the way still 
 further than it goes ; but it falls short prac- 
 tically of its high destiny. What morality 
 lacks, Christianity supplies. 
 
 One grand defect, if not the greatest, of 
 the moral scheme is, as we have seen, a lack 
 of power ; Christianity supplies this want. 
 Christianity is power. It is a new birth, a 
 new nature. Morality is human ; Christian- 
 ity is divine. It is a power for us. " Be 
 strong in the Lord, and in the power of his 
 
152 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 might." Christ wrought miracles ; so does 
 the Christian. " Ye shall do greater things 
 than these." Christ's religion, whatever else 
 it may be or may not be, is certainly power 
 for every conceivable moral or spiritual 
 purpose — power to overcome evil, to work 
 righteousness, to lay hold on eternal life. 
 It professes at least to be all this ; and this 
 profession must needs be, in any inquiry we 
 make as to what Christ's religion really is, 
 a law to us, rather than the mixed sort of 
 lives which so-called Christians are content 
 to lead, or the views they carelessly hold. 
 Well, if Christianity be indeed power, what 
 a contrast here presents itself between the 
 power of religion and the powerlessness of 
 man's unassisted nature, or between grace 
 and nature, or, which is the same thing, 
 between the Law of Moses and Christ's 
 Gospel ! 
 
 Again, morality lacks incentives to well- 
 doing ; Christianity supplies them. In mo- 
 rals there is little but cold precept, a luke- 
 
RELIGION FULFILS MORALS. 1 53 
 
 warm sense of duty, to influence our will for 
 good. But who can number the Christian 
 motives to this end, or tell their force? 
 What are they? Not merely a sense of 
 duty, which is cold at best and needs re- 
 kindling on every fresh occasion, but love, 
 peace, joy, gratitude, heaven. Motives there 
 are everywhere, look where you will, pre- 
 sent, past or future. God's gift of His Son 
 is a motive in the past; the strength and 
 comfort He affords His people day by day, 
 are so many motives in the present ; " such 
 good things as pass man's understanding," 
 and which are " prepared for them that love 
 Him," are motives in the future. 
 
 Where will you find a motive of an honest 
 and genuine character that is not pressed 
 into the service of Christ's religion ? Chris- 
 tianity is the highest enthusiasm, and en- 
 thusiasm is a motive -power. But Chris- 
 tianity is not enthusiasm only; it is the 
 exact contrary as well ; it is caution and 
 calculation and prudence. You may "sit 
 
154 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 down and count the cost," as you are chal- 
 lenged to do, and you will find reasons why, 
 after the very coolest computations, you 
 should at all events hold fast your confi- 
 dence. Art thou of what is called a san- 
 guine temperament? There are motives 
 for thee. Is thy nature cautious and cir- 
 cumspect ? I do not say there are not even 
 stronger motives for thee. So religion, in 
 respect of motives to well-doing, is a new 
 world, compared with that old world of 
 mere law, of mere morality. 
 
 But not only does Christianity supple- 
 ment morals in those several and important 
 particulars in which we found morality to 
 be wanting, but it enlarges indefinitely the 
 sphere in which morality moves. It adds 
 heaven to earth. Christianity, in its reve- 
 lation of a new and eternal world, and of a 
 God of love, and of the fact that " God so 
 loved the world as to give His only-begot- 
 ten Son," reveals new brotherhoods, new 
 relationships, new affections, a new king- 
 
RELIGION FULFILS MORALS. 1 55 
 
 dom, a new life. Christianity, so far from 
 being content with fulfilling the old moral- 
 ity or even elevating it, enlarges infinitely 
 the boundaries within which it holds sway. 
 By virtue of Christ's religion, morality enters 
 into and takes possession of heaven itself. 
 
 Who can imagine the difference between 
 the sphere of the old natural morality, as 
 set forth either in the Old Testament or in 
 the philosophy of Greece and Rome, and 
 the sphere of the new Christian morality ? 
 The circle of the old morality is man and 
 this world ; the domain of the new morality 
 is not only man, but God, and not only this 
 world, but the world to come. Still it is 
 not essentially a new morality. Aristotle 
 and Plato are not out of date, except so far 
 as to make perfect is to render out of date. 
 The new morality, the Christian morality, 
 is simply the old morality so made perfect 
 and elevated and amplified that no further 
 addition of a substantial character seems 
 necessary or possible. It is the old moral- 
 
156 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 ity, not destroyed, but made new, the " law 
 fulfilled." 
 
 Hence practically Christianity and moral- 
 ity form one complete goodness. Morality 
 without Christianity is imperfect and use- 
 less. Christianity without morality is im- 
 possible and unintelligible. It has neither 
 a beginning nor middle nor end. "The 
 kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven which 
 a woman took and hid in three measures of 
 meal until the whole was leavened." What 
 would the "three measures of meal" be 
 without " leaven" ? They might be eatable, 
 but they would not be palatable ; they would 
 not be bread. And what would leaven be 
 without the "three measures of meal"? It 
 would not even be eatable ; it would be just 
 what religion is without morality, nauseous 
 and naught. 
 
 But is it really the case that religion just 
 supplements morality? If so, can the coinci- 
 dence, we are tempted to ask, be deemed acci- 
 dental ? If Christianity does indeed fill up, 
 
RELIGION FULFILS MORALS. 1 57 
 
 and just fill up, all that is wanting in human 
 morals and in the matter of man's natural 
 goodness, how do we account for this har- 
 monious co-operation ? Can it be accidental ? 
 Yes, if the sun in the firmament of heaven 
 is accidental. Christ came to " fulfil the 
 law" — that was not accidental. "Gratia 
 non tollit sed perficit naturam," says Thomas 
 Aquinas. Where two things, each of them 
 of a complex and mysterious character, so 
 accurately fit together as do man's natural 
 morality and God's revelation, we are irre- 
 sistibly led to the conclusion that the two 
 things were originally intended for each 
 other, and that the God of morals is also 
 the God of the Bible. 
 
 Not that morals may not be regarded in 
 some sort as a revelation as well as religion 
 is, though not to the same extent. The 
 Old Testament is a revelation of morality, 
 of law, of natural law, of the law of man's 
 nature ; the New Testament is a revelation 
 of what is necessary to make law perfect, 
 
158 OHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 to fulfil the law, that is of religion. Thus 
 the relation between the Old Testament 
 and the New Testament is in the main that 
 which subsists between morals and religion. 
 
 LII. — RELIGION A USURPER IN GENERAL, PAR- 
 TICULARLY IN THE SPHERE OF MORALS. 
 
 Religion — meaning thereby particularly^ 
 but in its spirit by no means exclusively, 
 the Church of Rome— has been a usurper 
 in politics, in astronomy, in geology — in 
 short, in every department of human thought 
 and action ; but in no one sphere has it 
 displayed its peculiar spirit of encroachment 
 more than in the region of morals. Religion, 
 in the domain of morals, is, properly speak- 
 ing, a handmaid : she has reigned as queen. 
 These Thoughts have wofully fallen short of 
 their mark, if the necessity has not been 
 impressed upon the reader of a thorough 
 subordination, in thought and life, of reli- 
 gion to law in the widest sense — in other 
 words, to reason and morality. Only in 
 
RELIGION AND MORALS, 1 59 
 
 proportion to this subordination can the 
 infinite confusions of religions and religious 
 people ever be expected to come to an end. 
 
 LIII. — IMPORTANCE OF DETERMINING WHETHER 
 OF THE TWO IS GREATER, RELIGION OR MO- 
 RALITY. 
 
 It is not a mere speculation, but a pro- 
 blem of the highest practical importance, 
 to determine whether religion or morality- 
 is. to predominate ; that is, whether, so far 
 as they are connected — and they are most 
 closely akin, woof and warp as it were — 
 religion has jurisdiction over morals, or 
 morals over religion. The Pope claims to 
 be supreme in faith and morals — as though 
 the domain of faith included, as a matter of 
 course, that of morals. But does it? If 
 faith is supreme, then all good Catholics, 
 acknowledging as they do and must the 
 Pope's jurisdiction in matters of faith, must 
 also confess him to be supreme in the things 
 of morality. But if morality is predominant 
 
r6o CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 and faith subordinate, then it is possible at 
 any rate to conceive that we might, at one 
 and the same time, deny the Pope's supre- 
 macy in morals, and allow it as regards 
 faith. 
 
 It is a stroke of policy, to say the least, 
 on the part of the Romanist Church, to 
 regard morals as a subordinate branch of 
 faith ; for how can you call him to account 
 for a breach of the sixth or eighth com- 
 mandment, who has jurisdiction over the 
 whole Decalogue ? How, for example, are 
 we ever to decide concerning the right or 
 wrong of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
 if religion is supreme over morals? On 
 what religious principle is this deed to be 
 tried ? What are religious principles ? To 
 persecute to the death our neighbour, if he 
 will not see with our eyes and speak with 
 our voice ? What are the religious principles 
 common to Catholicism and Protestantism? 
 Their mutual relation is that of protest. 
 
 But if we hold that morality is greater 
 
RELIGION AND MORALS. l6l 
 
 than religion, and that the latter is bound 
 to give way to the former where the two 
 are not in agreement, then it would be at 
 least possible to come to a conclusion as to 
 the nature of the act and deed of St. Bar- 
 tholomew's-eve. We are all of us at least 
 tolerably well agreed as to what justice is ; 
 and truth and mercy and morality are the 
 same essentially all the world over. We 
 should have no difficulty in concluding, ac- 
 cording to these moral principles, were but 
 considerations of religion out of the way, 
 whether the deed of that eve is to be ap- 
 plauded, or execrated — whether it is to be 
 set down to the debit or credit of the Church 
 of Rome. If we find that it is not accord- 
 ing to morality, then we continue our in- 
 quiries no further : we do not hesitate to 
 conclude thg-t much less is it to the credit 
 of religion ; for religion ought to be, if it is 
 anything at all, a better morality, and not 
 a worse — the fulfiller of the law, not its 
 destroyer. 
 
 M 
 
( 1^2 ) 
 
 LIV. — MORAL SENSE AND EXPERIENCE THE TWO 
 ARBITERS OF MORALS. 
 
 How do we determine truth in morals ? 
 By our moral sense, to begin with. We 
 feel an action to be right or wrong, honour- 
 able or dishonourable, pure or impure ; just 
 as we perceive with our bodily eye this 
 colour to be white, and that to be black, 
 and that other colour to be neither white 
 nor black, but a sort of gray ; only the 
 sense by which we make these moral dis- 
 tinctions is an inner sense — not the eye of 
 the body, nor even of the intellect. But 
 not by our moral sense only or conclusively 
 are we able to distinguish between good 
 and evil morally. Our senses are not infal- 
 lible, and therefore not final. The moral 
 sense may be dull — not to say blinded — or 
 it may need a corrective, or it may not speak 
 with exactly the same voice in all peoples 
 or in all individuals. For example, the 
 moral sense of Europe pronounces decidedly 
 
MORAL SENSE AND EXPERIENCE, 1 63 
 
 in favour of monogamy ; the moral sense 
 of the East is on the side of, or at least not 
 against, a plurality of wives. Or as regards 
 truth in word and justice in deed, who 
 would affirm that man's moral sense speaks 
 everywhere and always with the same voice? 
 In short, man's moral sense is not infal- 
 lible. You may make too little of it, as 
 you do if you deny its existence and autho- 
 rity altogether ; but you may also make too 
 much of it, as you do if you establish it 
 as sole arbiter in the moral world. What, 
 then, is to decide in case the moral sense is 
 doubtful ? The good or evil consequences 
 that follow the action or course of life in 
 question, must determine the character of 
 that particular action or course of life. Ex- 
 perience is the interpreter in doubtful cases 
 of morality, and the final court of appeal in 
 all cases. The well-being of man, his hap- 
 piness, his growth in whatsoever things are 
 " pure and lovely and of good report," and, 
 finally, his perfection, as it was the end of 
 
 M 2 
 
1 64 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 his creation, so it is also the end and test 
 of his morality. By its fruits, in the long- 
 run, our morality stands or falls. 
 
 So just as religion rests philosophically 
 upon faith, or the religious sense, and ex- 
 perience, so also morality rests upon the 
 two-fold basis of moral sense and experi- 
 ence — the moral sense or senses furnishing 
 the materials, and experience working up 
 these materials, and drawing from them 
 conclusions, which in their turn again serve 
 as bases for further results. For science 
 means progress. Where there is no pro- 
 gress — where we are continually gyrating 
 in a circle, or not moving perhaps at all — 
 we have as yet, we may be quite sure, failed 
 (if, indeed, we have tried) to hit upon that 
 essential of all essentials, the right method 
 of procedure. 
 
 And not only do we, by means of this 
 method of experience, make progress in 
 objective moral truth, point after point being 
 added to the gradually increasing stock of 
 
MORAL SENSE AND EXPERIENCE. 1 65 
 
 established truths ; but the moral nature it- 
 self is, /^r^/^jj^/, invigorated and quickened. 
 " The senses by reason of use are exercised 
 to discern both good and evil" (Heb. v. 14). 
 We go on and on, 
 
 " Till old experience doth attain 
 To something like prophetic strain." 
 
 So whatever our moral sense may be to 
 begin with — and it is not alike strong and 
 lively in all — it becomes a sense of higher 
 power and quality to go on with, and most 
 of all to end with. 
 
 Why has ethical science (if, indeed, there 
 be a science worthy the name) made such 
 small progress, if any, since the days of the 
 Stoics and Epicureans ? Why is morality, 
 so far as regards its scientific treatment, 
 still hardly better than a " rudis indigestaque 
 moles," " without form and void," as though 
 chaos in this respect had never yet come to 
 an end ? Because this so-called science has 
 been treated purely as a speculation, and 
 not practically — not as a matter of the 
 
l66 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 moral sense to begin with, and experience 
 (or utility, if any one prefers to call it so) 
 to make perfect with. Treat it practically 
 as a science, and if there is truth in it — and 
 there is — it will no longer stand still. It 
 will begin to move, and it will move rapidly. 
 
 Lv. — JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY — IN WHAT RE- 
 LATION DO THEY STAND TO EACH OTHER? 
 
 Judaism and Christianity stand to each 
 other in substantially the same relationship 
 as morals and religion. Judaism is all law, 
 and (broadly speaking) no gospel ; Chris- 
 tianity is all gospel, and (again speaking 
 generally) no law. Put the two together, 
 first divesting them respectively of all non- 
 essentials, and you have a complete religion, 
 law and gospel ; the law as a foundation, 
 " a form of godliness," and the gospel ren- 
 dering the law possible, and realizing it and 
 making it perfect. But here arises the dif- 
 ficulty. Who or what shall determine in 
 cither case what is essential and what is 
 
JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 1 67 
 
 superfluous? And what as to the grand 
 problem of all, which of the two is in itself, 
 we will not say the more important, but the 
 end of all — law or gospel ? Is the gospel 
 the end of the law, or is the law the end of 
 the gospel ? We have laid down the prin- 
 ciple that the law, or morality, is, philoso- 
 phically speaking, supreme, and that the 
 gospel is the means, and the only means, to 
 that end. Is not this what our Lord him- 
 self affirms in so many words : " I am not 
 come to destroy the law and the prophets, 
 but to fulfil." 
 
 To this formal subordination of gospel to 
 law — gospel being the means, and law being 
 the end — we cannot suppose the Jew would 
 in the abstract have any objection whatever; 
 indeed, we should hardly be wrong in sup- 
 posing that it would be the one inducement 
 which, more than any other, would reconcile 
 him to the union of gospel and law ; but 
 does the Christian see the case in the same 
 satisfactory light ? Does he not, as a matter 
 
1 68 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 of course, put gospel above law ? Be this, 
 however, as it may, this controversy as to 
 the relative pre-eminence of law and gospel 
 is the main point at issue — so much so, that 
 no hope of the conversion of the Jew to 
 Christianity is within the range of proba- 
 bility until this first and great question is 
 out of the way. 
 
 This conversion of the Jew to Christ and 
 his gospel is of course an indispensable con- 
 dition of the amalgamation of Christian and 
 Jew in one religion ; but is there no need 
 on the other side of a conversion of the 
 Christian to that supremacy of law which is 
 the fundamental principle of Judaism, if the 
 two are ever to meet on common ground ? 
 You will never convert the Jew to Chris- 
 tianity, as the Christian religion is, with its 
 absolute claims, especially in the matter of 
 the pre-eminence of gospel over law. Nor, 
 on the other hand, will you ever reconcile 
 Christianity to Judaism, as the Jewish reli- 
 gion is^ with its law everywhere as a burden 
 
JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 1 69 
 
 grievous to be borne, and its gospel nowhere 
 to render possible, not to say acceptable, 
 this intolerable yoke. 
 
 We do not, therefore, expect to harmonize 
 Christianity as it is with Judaism as it is. 
 What we can do is to endeavour to discover 
 the true relation of law and gospel, and how 
 far they have deviated, the one and the 
 other, from the right path, and occupied 
 each other's ground. When we have made 
 clear this fundamental relationship, there is 
 nothing to prevent us, in the first instance, 
 doing homage to this ascertained truth our- 
 selves ; and, that done, it would not be pre- 
 sumption on our part if we approached the 
 Jew and besought him to make the same 
 obeisance, and likewise to submit, not to us 
 or to our religion, but to what is simply 
 religious truth. Will he do so ? It is at 
 least possible, despite the prejudices, and 
 not without reason, on his part of 1800 
 years. This great principle being confessed 
 on both sides, Jew and Christian will then 
 
170 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 be one ; the middle wall of partition will be 
 really and for ever thrown down ; then will 
 there be one Lord, one faith, one religion. 
 
 Christian science may or may not be a 
 possibility, so that religion shall rest, not 
 merely on a basis of faith, but upon expe- 
 rience as well ; nevertheless, all depends 
 upon this possibility. Make religion know- 
 ledge, and not a mere arena of conflicting 
 beliefs, and there ought to be no insuperable 
 difficulty between Jew and Christian. Give 
 the law its rightful place, and it is possible 
 law and gospel may come to terms. Allow 
 that to be " perfect as our Father which is 
 in heaven is perfect" is the end of man and 
 of all religion, and perhaps the Jew may 
 come to see that the only means of com- 
 passing this end is " the gospel of our Lord 
 and Saviour, Jesus Christ." Make sure of 
 the Christian first of all, as we have it in 
 our power to do if we will, and all further 
 difficulties as to the Jew may be expected 
 in due time to vanish. But supposing Chris- 
 
JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. lyi 
 
 tianity to remain as it is, with faith as its 
 sole foundation, and faith upon faith as its 
 superstructure (the last and great effort of 
 faith being a belief in human infallibility), 
 and law and experience nowhere, you may 
 then with equal certainty predict that Juda- 
 ism will remain as it is. 
 
 A science of religion, and not a mere 
 following of our natural religious instincts, 
 is absolutely called for, if Jew and Christian 
 are ever to become one on any solid and 
 permanent basis. Science is truth, and truth 
 is neither barren nor unfruitful ; and one 
 principal fruit of a science of religion would 
 be a substantial unity as regards Jew and 
 Christian. The mistake intellectually of the 
 Jew is, that he undervalues, if not ignores, 
 the gospel ; the corresponding error of the 
 Christian is, that he underrates the law. 
 The consequence is, that religion is to the 
 Jew an intolerable burden, and to the Chris- 
 tian not so exclusively a "glorious liberty" 
 as not to degenerate at will into arbitrari- 
 
172 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 ness and dissoluteness. The Jew is right, 
 so far as he vindicates law and values it as 
 the " pearl of great price," and " loves not 
 his soul unto the death," in comparison of 
 those " oracles of God" that have been com- 
 mitted to his trust. The Christian is in the 
 right, so far as he upholds the gospel and 
 glories in the " liberty wherewith Christ has 
 made him free," and is resolved not to be 
 "entangled again with the yoke of bondage," 
 and maintains earnestly that law without 
 gospel is a dead and impossible thing. 
 
 Only put these two together, law and 
 gospel, in just measure and in their rightful 
 places, and you have a complete religion, 
 no part lacking : you have Old Testament 
 and New Testament inseparably one, neither 
 Judaism nor Christianity exclusively, but 
 the two so wedded together that it is im- 
 possible without deadly violence to put them 
 asunder. Let Jew and Christian each for 
 himself seek and find the truth (and not be 
 content with one exaggerated and diseased 
 
JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 1 73 
 
 side of it, as at present), and the antagonism 
 of 1800 years will cease, never to be renewed. 
 On the foundation of faith only, or law only, 
 Jew or Christian will never realize the bless- 
 ing of unity or any other blessing ; on the 
 basis of faith, made Christian science, if such 
 a thing is possible, they undoubtedly may, 
 and certainly will, become religiously one. 
 Christian science may be impossible, as you, 
 my reader, are perhaps thinking ; but if so, 
 there are hosts of glorious expectations that 
 are vanity too. 
 
 LVI. — JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY IN MATTER 
 ONE, IN FORM DIVERSE. 
 
 Religion may be viewed under two aspects, 
 matter and form. As regards the material, 
 whereof the Jewish and Christian forms of 
 faith consist, this material is altogether 
 Jewish, no less in Christianity than in Juda- 
 ism itself The materials of the Christian 
 religion the Christian is entirely indebted 
 to the Jew for ; he has simply appropriated 
 
174 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 them and dealt with them according to his 
 good will and pleasure, with or without 
 giving of thanks. Could there indeed be a 
 more striking instance of thanklessness than 
 has been shown in Christianity towards the 
 Jew, in return for the benefits the Jew has 
 conferred upon him in the matter of his 
 religion ? What did Moses and the Pro- 
 phets and the Psalms deserve in the way 
 of thanks ? What acknowledgment have 
 they received ? 
 
 So much as to materials. But the ques- 
 tion as to form is not so simple. How have 
 these materials respectively been worked up 
 by the Jew on the one hand, and the Chris- 
 tian on the other ? Have Jew and Christian 
 shaped their course on the same lines, so as 
 to produce on the whole the same form ? 
 Not in the least. They have worked up 
 religion, each of them, into a form peculiar 
 to its respective framers ; and these forms 
 are not only not identical or even sympa- 
 thetic, but they are more or less antago- 
 
JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 1 75 
 
 nistlc. The Jew has found only, or mostly, 
 law in these "materials, and has worked them 
 up mainly into a system of law ; the Chris- 
 tian, on the other hand, has seen nothing 
 but gospel in these same materials, or what 
 might be interpreted as gospel or turned to 
 a gospel purpose, and so has produced what 
 is mainly, if not absolutely, a gospel. So 
 out of these same original materials of Old 
 Testament and New Testament, which are 
 all of them in their nature and origin purely 
 Jewish, have resulted two, not agreeing, but 
 opposing, systems of religion, the one essen- 
 tially law, the other essentially gospel. 
 
 How comes it to pass that, the materials 
 in the two cases being the same, the result- 
 ing forms should be so unlike each other ? 
 Consider the natures of the Jew and Chris- 
 tian respectively, and then perhaps you will 
 understand how, out of these same materials, 
 when worked up by natures so different, 
 forms so unlike, even amounting to anta- 
 gonism, should be evolved ; for it is not the 
 
176 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 material chiefly that constitutes likeness or 
 unlikeness, but the spirit that is breathed 
 into that material, which in the present case 
 is a Jewish spirit on the one hand, and a 
 Gentile spirit on the other. The Jew took 
 this chaos of religious material and con- 
 formed it substantially to his own image 
 and likeness ; the Christian took it and 
 made it in the same way essentially a reflex 
 of his own nature. The Jew made of it a 
 law like himself; the Christian fashioned it 
 into a gospel like unto himself Religion 
 is said to convert us, and so it does ; but 
 do not we also, by way of reaction, convert 
 religion to ourselves? St. Paul was con- 
 verted to Christianity ; but did not the 
 Apostle also in a measure convert Chris- 
 tianity to himself? Is Christ's religion what 
 it would have been outwardly and formally 
 \i Saul the persecutor had never become 
 Paul the Apostle ? Would it not have been 
 in form infinitely more like Judaism than 
 it is ? And suppose the Jews as a people 
 
CRITICISM IN RELIGION. 1 77 
 
 ever to be converted to Christianity (under- 
 standing by Christianity the present Church 
 forms), would this conversion leave the reli- 
 gion to which they were converted as it 
 was before, only with an increase of num- 
 bers ? Would not this accession of what are 
 now heterogeneous elements in some ways 
 modify Christianity ? Action and reaction 
 are in religion, as in mechanics, equal and 
 opposite. In religion it is seen more clearly 
 than elsewhere what manner of men we are. 
 No wonder, then, that the same materials, 
 in such different hands as Jew and Gentile, 
 should work up into forms so dissimilar as 
 Judaism and Christianity. 
 
 LVII. — IS GOD ANGRY WITH US WHEN WE ARE 
 WHAT IS TERMED CRITICAL IN RELIGION? 
 
 Is God. angry with us when we doubt 
 whether the things we believe in really are 
 so — when we act on the principle, not of 
 doubting, be it observed, what God says, 
 but of questioning whether the Word im- 
 
 N ■ 
 
178 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 puted to Him is really His Word, or only 
 the word of men as men ? Or if it is indeed 
 His Word, it may be we doubt whether the 
 meaning usually put upon it is the right 
 meaning. Does such a spirit of criticism 
 evince an unbelieving state of mind, or 
 disinclination to accept God's revelation to 
 man, and a wish to find excuses ? We can- 
 not think so. Not only is such an inquiring 
 state of mind commendable in itself, as be- 
 tokening a love of truth, but it cannot but 
 be regarded as well-pleasing in the sight of 
 God. 
 
 Was God angry with Galileo ? The Pope 
 was, and his Council ; but was He who is 
 the Pope's Pope ? And is not truth in reli- 
 gion the same thing as truth in astronomy, 
 only infinitely more important? Are not 
 the blessings of truth much more precious 
 in religion, and the consequences of error 
 much more disastrous ? So far from God 
 being displeased with us when we inquire 
 concerning the things of religion whether 
 
BELIGION AN INDIVIDUAL THING. 1 79 
 
 they are really what they appear to be, this 
 is precisely the work which, in religion more 
 than in any other thing, God has given our 
 minds to do. Remember it is written, "Thou 
 shalt love the Lord thy God," not only "with 
 all thy heart," but " with all thy mindr 
 
 LVIII. — RELIGION, AS TO THESE THOUGHTS, AN 
 INDIVIDUAL CONCERN ONLY. 
 
 A Christian may be regarded as to his 
 religion from a two-fold point of view. In 
 the first place, he may be considered simply 
 as an individuality — as having, that is, no 
 necessary connection with his fellow-chris- 
 tian — as receiving nothing from him, and 
 owing nothing to him, but subject to him- 
 self alone, to his own conscience, and his own 
 judgment — as being, in a word, thoroughly 
 isolated and independent in thought, feeling 
 and action. But at the same time he is 
 not merely an individual, and as such inde- 
 pendent of his fellows, but he is a member 
 of the Christian community as a whole, and 
 
 N 2 
 
I80 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 therefore in this sense not his own master, 
 but under authority of some kind — subject 
 not to his own judgment and conscience 
 only, but to the universal judgment of all 
 those who, with himself are professed dis- 
 ciples of the same Lord and Master. 
 
 It is solely in the former of these charac- 
 ters that these Thoughts regard the Chris- 
 tian, that is as an individual, not as a 
 member. We are Alexander Selkirk in his 
 island of Juan Fernandez. We have no- 
 thing whatever to do, in respect of these 
 Thoughts, with the Church as a whole : 
 otherwise we should be under a necessity 
 of making the inquiry. What is the Church? 
 Is it the Church of Rome, where member- 
 ship is everything and individuality nothing? 
 Or is it the Church of England, where the 
 Church is something and the individual 
 Churchman something, but it is not easy to 
 say in what relation these two stand to 
 each other, or what they amount to when put 
 together ? Or is it some one or other of the 
 
RELIGION AN INDIVIDUAL THING. l8l 
 
 so-called Nonconformist or Congregational 
 churches, where, speaking broadly, indivi- 
 duality is everything and the church no- 
 thing ? 
 
 We might argue, were it necessary, that 
 the state of things in the present day in the 
 Christian world is such that believers might 
 be thought to be practically absolved from 
 all church obedience or allegiance, and to 
 be free to act independently of whatever 
 goes under the name of Church. Certainly 
 there never was a time when Christians 
 individually — if they are men of thought, 
 and bring their thoughts to bear upon their 
 religion — were thrown so entirely back upon 
 themselves. 
 
 But we will not argue here on the ground 
 of the present state of contradictions and 
 confusions in the Church, or upon the inde- 
 finableness of the word Church. We do not 
 need to do so. We may take the Church 
 at its best and purest possible, not in its 
 present wretched condition of schisms and 
 
1 82 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 disruptions, of hatreds and strifes, but in its 
 most glorious unity conceivable — such a 
 unity as it has never yet been its lot to 
 enjoy, but which will one day constitute its 
 glory, if it be, as it professes to be and as 
 we believe it to be, the truth. What is the 
 Church at best, and what could it do for us 
 at most, as regards the particular case of 
 our present inquiry concerning Christian 
 knowledge ? Can it impart to us a know- 
 ledge of the truth of Christianity, such a 
 knowledge as we are in these Thoughts in 
 pursuit of? 
 
 Suppose the Church even to be infallible, 
 which is the utmost that can be conceived 
 concerning it, what could even this infalli- 
 ble Church do for us in the way of Chris- 
 tian evidences ? Can it give us knowledge 
 over and above faith ? Do you say it can, 
 and then we are perfectly safe? Pardon 
 me, my good friend ; what we really rest 
 upon in such a case is, not the infallibility 
 of the Church, but our belief m that infalli- 
 
RELIGION AN INDIVIDUAL THING. 1 83 
 
 bility — a distinction which makes all the 
 difference in the world. Infallibility (if, 
 indeed, human infallibility is not an abso- 
 lute contradiction in terms, just as we might 
 speak of a round square or a four-sided 
 circle) may be a good and sufficient founda- 
 tion to rest upon ; but what sort of a foun- 
 dation is our belief in that infallibility ? 
 What is our belief worth? What are we 
 worth ? Are we infallible — we, with our 
 ignorance and prejudice — we, with our blind- 
 ness and selfishness ? 
 
 Let a man only reflect, and he will soon 
 come to the conclusion that to rely upon 
 an infallible Church, as the single-minded 
 Romanist fondly imagines he does,, or upon 
 an infallible Scripture, as is the kindred 
 belief of Protestantism, is to rest simply 
 upon self — that is to say, upon ojir belief 
 that the Church or the Scripture, as the 
 case may be, is infallible. In plain terms, 
 whatever the Church may be in itself, or 
 the Bible in itself, we occupy simply the 
 
184 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 place of believers ; and what we in reality 
 rest upon is, not that infallible authority, 
 as we might even honestly suppose, but our 
 belief in that infallibility. 
 
 So it is impossible for us, on the founda- 
 tion of Church, however high the Church 
 may stand in our estimation or really be 
 in itself, to get beyond faith. The Church 
 can never put us in a position to say, I know 
 that Christ died for my sins, and rose again 
 for my justification. Not even an infallible 
 Church could do this for us ; so that even 
 to hold the Church to be infallible makes 
 just no difference at all to us as regards the 
 purport of these Thoughts. We had faith 
 before, and it may be a sufficiency of faith ; 
 and we have no more than faith now, and 
 never can have more, on the basis of Church 
 or Bible as foundation. If a man, instead 
 of comforting himself with the persuasion 
 that he relies upon the Church or the Bible, 
 would only reflect that what really gives him 
 comfort is his belief in the Church or the 
 
RELIGION AN INDIVIDUAL THING. 1 85 
 
 Bible, and would then try to estimate accu- 
 rately what he himself is, as a foundation, 
 and not what Church or Bible is, or what 
 he supposes them to be, he would appraise 
 more justly his true position. His high- 
 sounding Church or Bible infallibility would 
 soon come down to the level of his mise- 
 rable and prejudiced self 
 
 Besides, we must not forget that if our 
 belief in the infallibility of the Church or of 
 the Bible makes the Church or the Bible 
 true, the unbelief of that unbeliever, who- 
 ever he may be, equally makes the Church 
 or the Bible to be false. My belief one way 
 is worth just as much as his unbelief the 
 other way, and no more. But neither belief 
 nor unbelief counts as one jot in the way of 
 evidence in one direction or the other. In 
 short, the Church or the Bible, as the case 
 may be, provides us simply with matter of 
 belief : the Bible or the Church speaks, we 
 believe or we do not believe, and there the 
 matter ends, so far as our relation to Bible 
 
1 86 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 or Church is concerned. We believe what 
 the Bible or the Church says, and there we 
 stop : we can get no further under the 
 guidance of either. 
 
 If we would have more, we must find 
 that greater and more precious treasure for 
 ourselves. We must set out for this pur- 
 pose on a solitary journey, and traverse a 
 hitherto unexplored country. This work of 
 Christian evidence is not a matter of books 
 or study, nor can it be done by proxy. If 
 accomplished at all, it must be undertaken 
 and carried out by the individual on his sole 
 and undivided responsibility. The Christian 
 is, and ever must be, in his " heart of heart," 
 a lonely man, unless he is content to be to 
 the end of life's chapter one of the many, 
 with faith it may be, and indeed a super- 
 abundance of it, but without experience, 
 and therefore without, in the full sense of 
 the word, religion. 
 
( '87) 
 
 LIX. — NOTWITHSTANDING ANY KNOWLEDGE WE 
 MAY ACQUIRE, WE WALK BY FAITH, NOT BY 
 SIGHT, TO THE END. 
 
 Well, and suppose this pilgrimage over, 
 and successfully so — what then ? Is faith 
 at an end ? Is faith now superseded ? As 
 touching particular individuals, undoubtedly, 
 in certain respects. What was doubt is now 
 satisfaction. What was anxiety is now peace 
 of mind. When we come to know what 
 hitherto we have only believed, however 
 firmly, we naturally rest upon that confirm- 
 ation in gladness and serenity of spirit. 
 Blind Bartimaeus, when Christ has opened 
 his eyes, no longer believes merely that the 
 Saviour can and will do this great thing 
 for him : it is done, and he knows it. The 
 doubt of the past is merged in the certainty 
 of the present, and faith is lost in knowledge. 
 The light of the risen sun puts out the stars. 
 Faith vanishes in such cases, or rather it 
 hardens and crystallizes into firm convic- 
 
1 88 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 tion. When we know a thing, we no longer 
 concern ourselves about reasons for believ- 
 ing it Knowledge, so far as we have it, 
 must supersede faith to the same extent. 
 How far that knowledge may reach alto- 
 gether is a matter which experience alone 
 can determine. Never, however, can faith 
 become knowledge in so great a measure 
 .as to make religion knowledge to us rather 
 than faith ; for " we walk by faith, not by 
 sight," not only to begin our Christian 
 course with, but to end life with altogether. 
 
 LX. — OUR KNOWLEDGE INCOMMUNICABLE AS 
 KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Never does our religious knowledge, what- 
 ever it may amount to, go beyond ourselves 
 as knowledge. It began with us, and it 
 ends with us. In the form of knowledge it 
 is incommunicable. We impart what we 
 have found — and what is the worth of this 
 communication to our listener? It is a 
 confirmation of his faith — nothing more. 
 
CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 1 89 
 
 And yet it is of some value even so, as 
 faith, though not as knowledge. Just as it 
 is natural that a believer should go on from 
 faith to knowledge, and indeed necessary, 
 where his faith is a living faith, — so it is 
 equally to be expected that he should not 
 keep silence as to what he has found in the 
 course of his journey from this world to the 
 next. 
 
 All this is so much a matter of course, 
 and so entirely what we should look for, 
 that we should feel no slight disappointment 
 were we never to meet with such recorded 
 experiences. A doubt, moreover, might 
 even trouble our minds as to the reality of 
 religion altogether, were we never to find 
 those corroborations of our beliefs which 
 we felt we had a right to calculate upon 
 in the experience of others. We are now 
 satisfied : we find just the sort of evidence 
 we were looking for, on the supposition of 
 the reality of faith. And not only as dis- 
 pellers of doubts may such experiences be 
 
I90 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 regarded when made public, but as aids to 
 faith. They do not, it is true, turn our faith 
 into knowledge — that is not to be antici- 
 pated ; but they do support and strengthen 
 our faith. 
 
 Whatever of edification or utility there 
 be in works on theology in the ordinary 
 sense — such as there is no lack of in the 
 present day — there is at least a shorter, if 
 not more satisfactory, way of imparting re- 
 ligious truth to others, and that is simply 
 to set down what you yourself have found, 
 if anything, of truth in your journeying 
 heavenward by faith. A i^w grains of such 
 experience, simple, pure and genuine, are 
 worth many a bushel of what is called divi- 
 nity. What we stand in need of in the mat- 
 ter of religious evidence is not divinity, but 
 humanity ; not the clouds, but terra-firma. 
 Otherwise what are we doing but building 
 our eternal home, not even on the sand, but 
 in the air ? The song of good old Simeon, 
 that " sweetest of all canticles," to use Lord 
 
INDIVID UALIT Y AND MEMBERSHIP, 1 9 1 
 
 Bacon's words, is what we require in the 
 way of divinity or theology : " Lord, now 
 lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for 
 mine eyes have seen thy salvation." This 
 'is not faith in God merely, such as had been 
 Simeon's all the days of his life — it is faith 
 in its ripeness and perfection — it is know- 
 ledge of God, the " end of our faith, even 
 the salvation of our souls." 
 
 LXI. IS IT POSSIBLE TO DRAW THE LINE BE- 
 TWEEN THE CHRISTIAN IN HIS INDIVIDUALITY 
 AND IN HIS RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY AS 
 A WHOLE? 
 
 Though religion as to these Thoughts is 
 an individual concern only, we cannot, never- 
 theless, altogether lose sight of the fact that 
 each individual is a member also of the 
 whole Christian community, as well as an 
 individual Christian. On both this indivi- 
 duality on the one hand, and this member- 
 ship on the other, great, if not equal, stress 
 is laid in the New Testament. The be- 
 
192 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 liever is free and independent. " If the Son 
 shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed," 
 says the Saviour (John viii. 36) ; and St. 
 Paul speaks of " the glorious liberty of the 
 children of God" (Rom. viii. 21). But we 
 need be at no pains to multiply passages. 
 Such is the general tenor of the New-Testa- 
 ment teaching as to the Christian in his 
 individuality. He is " free indeed." He is 
 not, unless he voluntarily descends from that 
 high station which is his birthright, the 
 "servant of men." Even a St. Paul does 
 not claim " dominion over his faith." 
 
 But he is not merely regarded as an indi- 
 vidual, and therefore independent ; he is 
 at the same time a member of the Christian 
 community as a whole, and therefore in this 
 sense not his own master. On this side of 
 the Christian character also Scripture lays 
 great stress. We are " members one of 
 another." " Ye are the body of Christ, and 
 members in particular." "No man liveth 
 to himself, and no man dieth to himself" 
 
INDIVID UALIT Y AND MEMBERSHIP. 1 93 
 
 Such are the sayings of St. Paul ; and the 
 words of our Saviour to the same effect had 
 already gone before. " I am the vine; ye are 
 the branches." " If two of you shall agree 
 on earth as touching anything that they shall 
 ask, it shall be done for them of my Father 
 which is in heaven. For where two or three 
 are gathered together in my name, there am 
 I in the midst of them" (Matt, xviii. 19, 20). 
 " I pray that they may be one, even as we 
 are one" (John xvii. 22). 
 
 So Scripture, while it represents the Chris- 
 tian as individually and gloriously free, puts 
 him also before us as at one with, and living 
 on terms of the closest fellowship with, his 
 fellow-christians, and so in the enjoyment 
 of fuller and richer blessings than would 
 otherwise be his portion. But where is the 
 line to be drawn ? In what respect is the 
 Christian free, and how far is he bound ? 
 How far is he to assert that freedom which 
 is his purchased possession ; and how far 
 is he to be ready to surrender it for the 
 
 O 
 
194 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 good of the Church at .large, and indirectly 
 for his own greater benefit ? This is a prac- 
 tical problem not easy to solve. Perhaps 
 there is no such hard-and-fast line, as would 
 unquestionably be highly convenient if we 
 could only find it Assuredly there is not 
 such a line drawn as regards the kingdoms 
 and other communities in general of this 
 world, where the same problem is continu- 
 ally awaiting solution. 
 
 How much liberty is it good and right 
 politically for a man to reserve for himself ; 
 and how much is it fair and reasonable he 
 should surrender to the government of his 
 country, be that form of government what 
 it may ? The line is drawn differently in 
 different nations and peoples, and is con- 
 tinually shifting, and certainly does not seem 
 to be approaching fixity. How variable in 
 quantity and quality is individual liberty in 
 Russia, in Germany, in England, in the 
 United States of America ; and therefore 
 how varying also, only inversely, the power 
 
INDIVID UALIT Y AND MEMBERSHIP. 1 9 5 
 
 of the central authority ! Well, can the 
 problem present itself otherwise in the 
 sphere of religion ? Perhaps not ; we have 
 extremes here and variations here, and no 
 universally agreed-upon line of demarcation 
 between what is the right of the individual 
 Christian, and what is due to the Church of 
 which he professes to be a member. 
 
 There is the Church of Rome, as one 
 extreme, claiming and receiving the full sur- 
 render of the individuality of its members^ 
 their individual conscience, their individual 
 judgment. On condition of this absolute 
 self-sacrifice, Rome undertakes to make us 
 safe for eternity ; as though man could 
 receive back aught worthy the name of sal- 
 vation, when his liberty, his conscience, his 
 common sense, his manhood, are all gone. 
 What, we may well ask, is left to such a 
 man worth saving ? At the other extreme 
 we have in this country what is called Dis- 
 sent or Nonconformity. Here individuality 
 may be said to reign supreme, the surrender 
 
 O 2 
 
196 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 that is made to Church being merely nomi- 
 nal ; so much so, that it would almost seem 
 to be more outspoken in these communities 
 to abandon the idea of Church altogether, 
 the word Church meaning in their case not 
 so much the subordination of self to Church 
 as of Church to self 
 
 Neither of these extremes can reasonably 
 please us. It cannot be required of a Chris- 
 tian man that he should be a slave in his 
 religion, neither can it be lawful for him so 
 to eschew unity in his religion as to sacri- 
 fice entirely unity to his own individuality. 
 Where lies the mean between these two 
 extremes ? Is it the Church of England ? 
 We will not argue the point. Whatever 
 the line may be, its indispensable conditions 
 would seem to be both a real freedom on the 
 one hand, and a real subjection and submis- 
 siveness on the other. These conditions 
 being satisfied, perhaps it is allowable that 
 we draw the line where we judge best, if we 
 can only find one. It may be that the same 
 
INQUIRY CONCERNING RIGHTS. ig7 
 
 line would not serve equally well in all 
 cases and under all circumstances. 
 
 This much, however, does appear practi- 
 cally to follow from the fact of our bearing 
 this two-fold character of individuality and 
 membership, that whatever we undertake, 
 which we may regard as of importance, of a 
 religious nature, in our individual capacity, 
 we should first ask ourselves seriously, before 
 we take the matter in hand, whether we are 
 at liberty to act as an independent indivi- 
 duality in this particular, or, as members of 
 Christianity as a whole, are bound to take 
 some other course, or, it may be, to refrain 
 from acting altogether. 
 
 LXII. — BY WHAT RIGHT HAVE WE TAKEN IN 
 HAND THESE THOUGHTS? 
 
 By what right have we presumed to take 
 in hand and to resolve the great problem 
 which has been engaging our attention in 
 these Thoughts? How may I know that 
 Christianity is true? I do believe, but I 
 
198 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 am not content with believing ; how may I 
 know ? This inquiry concerning our rights 
 might, we confess, seem to have been more 
 in place when we began, than now when 
 our task is as good as accomplished. It is 
 nevertheless one with which we should not 
 then have been able to deal so effectually 
 as we may be supposed to have the means 
 of doing now. Whatever the right may be, 
 we have at least shown that we have not 
 lacked the power to take in hand this pro- 
 blem and bring it to what we may consider 
 to be a satisfactory conclusion. This is the 
 chief thing ; for what is the use of a right 
 where there is not the power to enforce the 
 right? We have at all events done what 
 we proposed to do, and to our no small 
 contentment. 
 
 Nor have we met with any such obstacle 
 on our way as was of a nature to arouse the 
 suspicion that we were engaged on some 
 unlawful enterprize. Difficulties we have 
 experienced, and no light ones ; but we have 
 
INQUIRY CONCERNING RIGHTS. 1 99 
 
 encountered no such hindrances as would 
 seem to suggest that we were on forbidden 
 ground, or employed in some vain or un- 
 warrantable undertaking. On the contrary, 
 what we have found by the way, apart from 
 what we expected to discover as the final 
 result of our explorations, has fully repaid 
 us for the toils and anxieties of the enter- 
 prize itself. What, indeed, have we been 
 doing but simply that which it was our 
 bounden duty to do? What is a man's 
 duty, if it be not to inquire after truth, and 
 to "search for her as for hid treasures"? 
 What is this but religion in its very essence, 
 no less than the highest morality ? So we 
 have no misgiving as to our right in this 
 matter. Whatever is a man's duty is at all 
 events his right — is a pursuit in which he is 
 justified in setting at nought all interference, 
 whether from his own easy-going self or 
 from them that are without. 
 
 So far therefore as our individuality is 
 concerned, we can have no qualms whatever 
 
200 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 respecting the perfect propriety of our pro- 
 ceedings as touching the matter of these 
 Thoughts. But we are not individuals 
 merely — individuals and nothing more ; we 
 stand in a certain relation to universal 
 Christendom ; we are members of the 
 Church Catholic, that is of the " company 
 of all faithful people." Hence a considera- 
 tion arises as to what becomes of our indi- 
 vidual rights when put face to face with the 
 obligations of our Christian membership — 
 when we regard ourselves, not as absolute 
 units, but as units in relation to the myriads 
 of equally significant Christian units around 
 us, to whom our problem, if it is anything, 
 is just as significant as it is to us, and who 
 may all of them be supposed to have just 
 the same voice as we have in the matter in 
 hand. 
 
 Is there not at least a call for hesitancy 
 here ? Not at all. We reply plainly that 
 our natural rights, as regards our special 
 problem, remain just where they were when 
 
INQUIRY CONCERNINO RIGHTS. 20I 
 
 we have taken fully into account Church 
 rights. What can the whole of Christen- 
 dom, however well inclined, do for us in 
 this matter of Christian experience ? Can 
 the Church, by means of its catholicity, 
 endue us with any knowledge of Christian- 
 ity apart from and higher than faith ? The 
 Church is an embodiment of the Christian 
 faith, and beyond that it does not attempt 
 to go. It imparts to us the Christian doc- 
 trines simply to be believed and practised, 
 and that is all. Nay, whatever knowledge 
 the Church might put us in possession of, 
 supposing it to have it, this knowledge could 
 not reach us as knowledge, but only as 
 faith. 
 
 If we would have the Christian religion 
 in its highest possible degree, that is to say 
 as knowledge, this highest attainable stage 
 can only be ours as the result of our own 
 individual efforts and experience. But not 
 only is it the case that the Church cannot, 
 as regards its power, rise so high as to 
 
202 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 impart to us what is in the proper sense of 
 the word Christian knowledge, but it cannot 
 in another sense, and that is with a due 
 recognition of its professed and, we may- 
 say, unalterable principles as to science. 
 Christian theology — what is it? It is not 
 human science ; rather it is in principle the 
 exact antipodes of human science. Its pur- 
 suit is not knowledge. Faith is its sphere, 
 and within this sphere it scrupulously, and 
 we may say religiously, keeps. In its length 
 and breadth, and from foundation to top- 
 stone, it has to do with faith, and faith 
 alone, and with the conclusions to be de- 
 duced therefrom. 
 
 . Theology could not, without first aban- 
 doning its principles, be our guide in the 
 ways of knowledge, as a thing higher than 
 faith. Nay, where you naturally expect 
 faith to stop and to give place to knowledge, 
 it foils our expectations ; it puts itself or is 
 put in the place of knowledge, and as faith 
 asserts a pre-eminence over knowledge. 
 
INQUIRY CONCERNING RIGHTS. 203 
 
 Faith as regards Church doctrine is supreme 
 over knowledge and overpowers it. What 
 is transubstantiation ? Here faith says one 
 thing and our eyes say another, and faith 
 overwhelms and leads captive knowledge. 
 The true Catholic believes that a transub- 
 stantiation has taken place, though all the 
 while he knows that the substances remain 
 just what they were, and so he subordinates 
 his knowledge to his faith. So also as to 
 that kindred doctrine, the doctrine of Papal 
 infallibility. We all know that the Pope is 
 not infallible — that he is liable to mistakes, 
 great or small, continually ; but as good 
 Catholics we believe him to be what we 
 know him not to be, and here again faith 
 triumphs over knowledge. 
 
 If we, as Catholics, repudiate this infalli- 
 bility as a monstrous thing, we are assuredly 
 inconsistent Catholics, for we have already 
 allowed the principle again and again, and 
 to abandon it now as a principle would be 
 to stultify our past lives and to sap the 
 
204 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 foundations of the Church itself It is the 
 principle intellectually on which the Church 
 — we might say any Church — is built, how- 
 ever much or Httle it may be kept within 
 bounds. 
 
 These two doctrines, in fact, represent the 
 complete subjection of human freedom and 
 human reason to Church authority ; and the 
 heads of the Church, in insisting upon them 
 without one jot in the way of abatement or 
 • qualification, know perfectly well the role 
 they are enacting ; while those who oppose 
 them on the ground that such beliefs are 
 absurd, may be in the right as a matter of 
 reason, but they are nevertheless inconsis- 
 tent Catholics. It is, in fact, because these 
 doctrines do violence to reason and common 
 sense outwardly and unmistakably that they 
 are so insisted upon ; were they in them- 
 selves reasonable, they might be, and in all 
 probability would be, left to take care of 
 themselves. The relation in which faith 
 stands to knowledge in these two doctrines, 
 
INQUIRY CONCERNING RIGHTS. 20$ 
 
 It holds in respect of theology in general, 
 though of course not to such an extent as 
 to shock the common sense of mankind. 
 
 These doctrines, however, are no excep- 
 tions to the general rule, but only the most 
 striking examples of it. Who could have 
 imagined that faith, divine faith, heavenly 
 faith, could ever have become what we see 
 it to be in transubstantiation and Papal in- 
 fallibility? How careful ought we to be 
 not to suffer even the best and holiest of 
 things to go one jot or tittle beyond their 
 legitimate bounds ! "Virtue itself turns vice, 
 being misapplied," we must ever remember. 
 All human things, however good in them- 
 selves, are only good in a particular way 
 and to a certain extent. But men forget 
 this; only let them get hold of a good thing, 
 and they never can make too much of it, 
 as though it were absolutely and eternally 
 good ; consequently their good sooner or 
 later turns to evil. It is against the evil 
 that is in good things that we shall do well 
 to be more especially on our guard. Things 
 
206 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 bad in themselves are at least in this respect 
 good, that they cannot deceive us. 
 
 But are we not digressing ? If it be the 
 principle of theology that faith, when it 
 speaks in the name of religion, is to be 
 accounted greater than the most absolute 
 knowledge when it speaks in any other 
 name, it must necessarily follow that theo- 
 logy should regard science as in some sort 
 an unnecessary — nay, as an unholy thing — 
 as, in fact, an enemy rather than a friend. 
 The Church must decry science, seeing that 
 science is antagonistic to the system on 
 which theology is built ; and it does decry 
 it. Its instincts are against it, its policy is 
 against it, so are its acts and deeds. When- 
 ever the question is asked — and it is a 
 standing question in these days — whether 
 there be in reality any opposition between 
 Christianity and Science, we must take care 
 that we understand what is meant by the 
 question before we commit ourselves to a 
 reply. 
 
INQUIRY CONCERNING RIGHTS. 20/ 
 
 If by Christianity is to be understood 
 the birth, crucifixion and death of Christ, 
 and his ascent into heaven, and all the 
 facts appertaining thereto, as set forth in 
 the Four Gospels and in the Acts of the 
 Apostles — if by Christianity is meant these 
 and the like facts, when they were as yet 
 unsystematized, we need not hesitate to 
 reply that there is no opposition at all 
 between them — that religion and science 
 will, if only the perversity of man will allow 
 them to do so, live harmoniously and con- 
 tentedly together ; in other words, we admit, 
 indeed we think we have shown, that Chris- 
 tianity is capable of scientific treatment and 
 amenable to scientific laws. 
 
 But if we are to understand by Christian- 
 ity Christian facts and Christian doctrine, 
 as already embodied in Christian theology 
 and worked up into the already prevailing 
 Christian system, then we are equally bound 
 to say that Christianity in this sense is not 
 capable of scientific treatment, and for the 
 
208 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 simple reason that it has already been 
 enshrined in a system which is just the 
 opposite of science and irreconcilable there- 
 with. Concord there will be between science 
 and Christianity, provided the so-called 
 Christian facts are taken for what they are 
 worth to begin with — that is, as beliefs 
 and nothing more — and then reduced to a 
 science, as they are capable of being ; but 
 there is every antagonism between a method 
 of inquiring after truth (the scientific method) 
 which insists upon knowledge and cannot 
 be satisfied with less, and a method (the 
 dogmatic method) which is abundantly con- 
 tent with faith, and which, so far from 
 "following on to know" the things it pro- 
 fesses to believe, resolutely stops short at 
 faith, and rather scorns knowledge than 
 assigns it its proper place in relation to 
 truth. 
 
 The Church system always has been, and 
 is, and must be, at war with science, covert 
 or open ; and men of science must be as 
 
INQUIRY CONCERNING RIGHTS. 209 
 
 such Opposed, we do not say to religion, but 
 to what are called the evidences of religion, 
 where beliefs are quietly assumed to be 
 facts, and where the immeasurable differ- 
 ence is not recognized between knowing a 
 thing to be true and only believing it to be 
 SO- It is this Church system, already exist- 
 ing and firmly grounded, which is the great 
 difficulty in the way of a science of religion. 
 The ground is not clear for a science of 
 religion, in the true sense of the word. So 
 long as this opposing power is in force, there 
 is and must be war between the science of 
 religion as already embodied in theology, 
 and which is regarded as a divine science, 
 and that other which we profess to be 
 merely human science, and which does not 
 rest upon faith alone, but on faith as con- 
 firmed by experience. This war between 
 science and religion will one day come to 
 an end. "Mercy" (as religion) "and truth" 
 (as science) " will meet together," and, once 
 meeting, will never part asunder more. 
 
 P 
 
2IO CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 They will go hand -in -hand, and "shine 
 brighter and brighter unto the perfect day." 
 
 Meanwhile our duty is clear. If theology, 
 or divinity, or whatever its most appropri- 
 ate title may be, cannot, will not, must not, 
 assist in or even countenance our individual 
 researches after Christian truth, in the only 
 worthy sense of the word truth, theology 
 must at least not be suffered to bar the way. 
 If it does make the attempt, we quietly, as 
 we are at liberty to do, pass by on one side. 
 We must not permit ourselves to be troubled 
 in mind or turned from our purpose by 
 this far-reaching and over-reaching power ; 
 though in presence of it we are, humanly 
 speaking, but as dust in the balance. In- 
 deed, we have not permitted ourselves to 
 be in any sense detrimentally influenced by 
 this opposite principle. 
 
 The Church has no rights whatever as 
 against the individual in thQ inquiry we 
 have been instituting in these Thoughts. 
 It is the Church and not we that are to 
 
INQUIRY CONCERNING EIGHTS. 211 
 
 blame if we break down any barriers that 
 may be set up to stop our way. Christian 
 knowledge, as the ripeness and perfection 
 of faith, is a field of labour for our own 
 individuality, and for that alone. Whatever 
 rights the Church may have (and it has 
 rights, rightly considered), it is not entitled 
 to interpose between the conscience of the 
 individual and any researches in the realm 
 of Christian truth he may be minded to 
 prosecute. To allow such a right on the 
 part of the Church would be to leave no 
 right to the individual worth retaining. 
 When our conscience is silenced, and our 
 freedom of thought and action in matters 
 of religion gone, what have we left which 
 as men we can care to keep? When we 
 are once brought down to say that bread is 
 not bread, or that humanity is infallibility, 
 at the bidding of our spiritual superiors, 
 what is there remaining of us in any sense 
 that writes us down men ? 
 
 We go gladly with the Church, so far as 
 
 P 2 
 
212 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 it is our duty to do so, whether in its con- 
 fessions of faith, or in its ordinances, or 
 what not of that character, even to the fur- 
 thest bound of its legitimate tether ; but 
 when the Church puts its veto upon our 
 thoughts — when it forbids us to help our- 
 selves, though it cannot itself assist us — 
 when it sets bounds to our inquiries after 
 truth — "Thus far shalt thou go, and no 
 further," lest thou imperil what we hold 
 dear— then, in place of obedience, we part 
 company in these matters with the Church, 
 and quietly go our own way. 
 
 Whatever love a man may have for his 
 Church, he does not even love his Church as 
 he ought if his love of truth is not greater ; 
 and when we lay down the principle that the 
 Christian as an individual has his individual 
 rights, and those. of the most precious de- 
 scription, which he must not suffer even 
 universal Christendom to supersede or im- 
 pair — what are we but at least lovers of 
 truth, and certainly not enemies of what is. 
 
A FORECAST. 213 
 
 in the true sense of the word, Church ? Fol- 
 low truth in thy religion, and thou wilt find 
 both truth and religion ; follow religion in 
 thy so-called prosecution of truth, and thou 
 wilt find neither one nor the other. All 
 depends upon what we put first to take the 
 lead. 
 
 LXIII. — A FORECAST, OR CHRISTIAN SCIENCE IN 
 THE B^UTURE. 
 
 Will Christianity as a science ever hold a 
 place in the religious world ? Will it ever 
 be, what it is not in any degree now, an 
 acknowledged science, with more or less of 
 a professed following? What is the pros- 
 pect when we scan the future, and penetrate 
 as far as our dim and blurred vision will 
 permit? It may not be useless to make 
 this inquiry, though it is beyond the scope 
 literally of these Thoughts, which are con- 
 cerned solely with Christians as individuals, 
 and not as any recognized or organized 
 whole. Do you answer with the trite pro- 
 
214 CURISTIAXITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 verb, "Magna est Veritas et prevalebit"? 
 So be it ; but will truth prevail if left to 
 itself and to its own inherent goodness? 
 Like most aphorisms, this proverb is but a 
 half-truth, or a truth in sound rather than 
 in substance. You mistake it if you fold 
 your hands and sit still under the comfort- 
 able conviction that truth will do the work 
 for you, and you have simply to reap the 
 harvest. 
 
 Truth has no power whatever if left to 
 itself. We may, if we please, take for granted 
 the truth of the principles we are advocat- 
 ing ; it does not, however, follow that we 
 are justified in taking for granted their ulti- 
 mate triumph also, if discountenanced and 
 unaided. Truth is indeed a weapon, and 
 no light one ; but where is the hand to 
 wield it, and to strike blow upon blow ? 
 How many truths are there which have not 
 even seen the light, which lie hid in the 
 treasure-houses of earth and heaven, or are 
 buried in the womb of time ? Why have 
 
A FORECAST. 21 5 
 
 they not yet come forth, if truth unassisted 
 is all-sufficient ? How is it that truths live 
 and flourish at one time and place, and 
 wither or die at another, if truth is, so to 
 say, unconditioned ? How is it that truths 
 ever fail or perish, if truth contains in itself 
 all the indispensable elements of an inherent 
 vitality ? 
 
 So truth is not self-sufficient. Its success 
 is conditional, not absolute. And what are 
 the conditions ? For one thing, truth is a 
 seed, and seed implies a sower ; as it is 
 written, "A sower went out to sow his seed." 
 Now what kind of sower must he be who 
 would disseminate living truth, moral and 
 religious truth, such as has for its own end 
 the well-being and perfection of man ; or, to 
 drop metaphor, what qualifications are in- 
 dispensable to him who would undertake 
 and effectually carry out the task of im- 
 planting and propagating moral and reli- 
 gious truth ? He has to begin with, of 
 course, the truth in him which he professes 
 
2l6 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 to engraft and inoculate. Or rather, perhaps, 
 we ought to say the truth has him. 
 
 There is a wide difference between our 
 having the truth and the truth having us. 
 What we have hold of, we may let go ; what 
 has hold of us, if it be truth, will not let us 
 go. A man may be in many respects a man 
 of truth, and yet may go no further in the 
 way of truth than may seem good to him. 
 For some reason or other he may stop short 
 at the critical point, that point being where 
 his interests and the interests of truth are 
 no longer one. To such a one, truth is not 
 a lord (the only relation in which truth, real 
 truth, will ever consent to stand to us), but 
 a menial. He does not live to it ; he has 
 no thought of sacrificing himself on its high 
 altar. Not so the true disciple of truth : 
 with him, truth is the first thing and the 
 only thing ; he does not regard truth as the 
 mere abettor of his purposes ; indeed, it is 
 altogether out of his power to do so, for the 
 truth has him, mind and heart, and he must 
 
A FORECAST. 21/ 
 
 follow it whithersoever it goeth. Is his 
 labour in vain ? No ; every man has his 
 reward in due season of one kind or another, 
 and so has he. He who is thus emptied of 
 self becomes a depository of truth, and that 
 not of a useless or incommunicable sort as 
 regards his fellow -men. So the truth is 
 sown broadcast and spreads. 
 
 Not that we are to suppose that the power 
 to impart truth follows as a matter of course 
 from the possession of it. To picture a 
 landscape in our minds and to put it on 
 canvas are widely distinct things, and the 
 former is very far from implying the latter. 
 Just so of spiritual truth. Whatever truths 
 of this character may be generated in our 
 minds, it does not follow that we shall 
 possess the power of realizing an adequate 
 presentment of them in speech or writing. 
 So to express ourselves as to make the 
 hearer hear the truth and the beholder to 
 see it, is a faculty very different from the 
 power of discovering the truth or ourselves 
 
2l8 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 seeing it. An apostle of the truth, to do 
 the work of an apostle, must be specially- 
 endued, not only with the truth, but with 
 the word or expression of truth. St. Paul 
 was right well aware of this principle when 
 he says concerning his own teaching (i Cor. 
 ii. 13), "Which things we speak not in the 
 words which man's own wisdom teacheth, 
 but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." 
 
 So much as to the men, if truth is to take 
 root and spread. It now remains only to 
 inquire where is the ground, and ground of 
 the right character; for a certain soil or 
 preparation of the soil is necessary if the 
 seed sown is not to be cast into the ground 
 in vain. What is this indispensable condi- 
 tion or preparation of the soil ? To speak 
 plainly, and apart from figure of speech, can 
 it be any other than what is commonly 
 called a sense of sin, which sense of sin has 
 for its precursor a sense of misery, an in- 
 tolerable sense of misery? Misery is the 
 seed-bed of truth. Were there no misery 
 
A FORECAST. 219 
 
 in the world, no progress would be possible 
 in moral and religious truth. In moments 
 of gloom, it may be, we are tempted to ask 
 why this world was ever created at all, with 
 misery permeating its inmost nature and 
 stamped upon every feature, if not misery 
 absolutely overpowering happiness. One 
 thing, however, we need not be at any loss 
 to comprehend, and that is, why it should 
 be a world of misery if ever it was to be a 
 world of truth in things spiritual. There 
 may, indeed, be misery and no truth, for 
 misery does not in itself generate truth ; 
 but never can the latter be where the former 
 is not. 
 
 When men are happy, they are more or 
 less contented, and loth to jeopardize their 
 present lot by any agitation for a change ; 
 and even though we do succeed for a time 
 in arousing them to the thought of better 
 things, no sooner is the pressure relaxed 
 than they revert forthwith to their original 
 easy-minded condition. Why is the gospel 
 
220 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 said to be preached to the poor, as though 
 there were no others in the world to preach 
 it to ? Because the poor are as a class the 
 miserable ; because, consequently, the minds 
 of the poor are a congenial soil and in a 
 state of receptivity. Put your higher moral 
 and religious teachings, as worthy of all 
 acceptation, before the rich, the happy, the 
 prosperous, and the most eloquent words 
 are to no purpose ; they are " deaf to the 
 voice of the charmer." First make these 
 flourishing sons of earth as ill-to-do as they 
 were before well-to-do, then the spell is 
 broken, the scene changes, and they are 
 now all devotion where they had not before 
 "an ear to hear." Well may it be said, 
 "Blessed are the poor" ! 
 
 Thus there are two things which seem to 
 be needful to the propagation of moral and 
 religious truth, of what we may call living 
 truth, truth in relation to man, as distin- 
 guished from truth relatively to the things 
 of this material world ; and these two things 
 
A FORECAST. 221 
 
 are, the right man and the right time. Truth, 
 if left to itself, is nothing. It may or may 
 not be beautiful to the spectator (all depends 
 upon the eye), but it is of no account prac- 
 tically. It is helpless in the midst of foes. 
 It is the sixth Henry at the head of Yorkist 
 or Lancastrian forces, as the one or the 
 other is for the time the stronger. It is not 
 itself a king. The moment it presumes to 
 lift up its puling voice, it is at once silenced, 
 or, it may be, crushed at least temporarily 
 out of account. It is at most in its solitary 
 self " the voice of one crying in the wilder- 
 ness," with no ear in the wilderness to hear. 
 You may be a thousand times in the right ; 
 but where are you if you have only ten 
 thousand men to meet him that cometh 
 against you with twenty thousand ? When 
 the devil disarms, then truth may. Be not 
 content with the thought, " I have truth on 
 my side," but muster your forces and beat 
 up for fresh recruits. Be strong and of good 
 courage, if you are to make any way. 
 
222 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 Under what circumstances was Christian- 
 ity itself first established ? Under precisely 
 those which upon inquiry we have found to 
 be necessary to the life and final success of 
 truth in these days. In the first place, there 
 was a ripeness of time ; and, secondly, not 
 only the right time, but the right men. The 
 time was, without doubt, propitious for a 
 gospel of mercy and truth and justice, at 
 that crisis of the world's history. Mankind 
 was all wretchedness ; sin and suffering were 
 at their height. Cruelty and lust ruled the 
 world. It was a world ready to perish, 
 and it was conscious of its desperate state, 
 and consequently prepared to receive a de- 
 liverer with open arms. No wonder there 
 was throughout the Roman empire a wide 
 expectation, perhaps born of necessity, that 
 a Saviour was at hand. 
 
 Here, then, was the soil prepared to re- 
 ceive the good seed of joy and hope and 
 love — the good seed of " the life that now 
 is, and of that which is to come ;" and with 
 
A FORECAST. 223 
 
 the time, behold the men, men of power 
 and of the Holy Ghost, men who spake 
 with tongues. What if Christ had not come 
 when the time was ripe for his advent? 
 What if he had not commissioned the 
 Twelve ? What if there had been no day 
 of Pentecost ? The world was in a perish- 
 ing state ; and if no Saviour had appeared 
 in due time, " to put away sin by the sacri- 
 fice of himself," and to infuse a new life into 
 the world, man would have been actually 
 lost. Or if a Saviour, even this very 
 Redeemer, had come, and the human race 
 had been in a contented condition, the 
 gospel would have fallen dead, no evangel- 
 ization of the nations would have been 
 attempted ; or if the attempt had been 
 made, and the gospel had been preached 
 with divine power, "the Lord even con- 
 firming the word with signs following," it 
 would have found but a listless reception 
 from these happy and self-satisfied sons of 
 earth. 
 
224 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 How far may these two conditions, the 
 time and the man, be thought to be now 
 existent as the necessary conditions of a 
 Christian science? They were present at 
 the foundation of the gospel — how far can 
 they be now thought to be forthcoming at 
 what may be regarded as the topstone of 
 the gospel ? There is a sense, and an im- 
 portant one, in which the gospel was not 
 given in the beginning. It was not revealed 
 in any systematic or scientific sense. We 
 shall not be surprised. The God of truth 
 never presents truth completely, never be- 
 stows it under its scientific aspect. He 
 furnishes man with what we may call the 
 raw material, and leaves him to work up 
 these materials scientifically as he will. Has 
 God given man astronomy ? He has given 
 him the materials— sun, moon and stars, 
 and all the host of heaven ; but the science 
 of astronomy is the work of man's own will 
 and mind. He has never been told by the 
 Creator that the sun stands still and the 
 
A FORECAST. 22$ 
 
 earth moves ; nay, if he has been told any- 
 thing, it is the contrary. He has after much 
 labour found these things out for himself. 
 
 So in religion. The facts of religion are 
 so many revelations from God, and God 
 has given all that is indispensable in this 
 respect — all needful heavenly facts, whether 
 in heaven or brought down to earth from 
 heaven. This hath God done ; but it is 
 man's part if he will — and if he will not, the 
 work for ever remains undone — so to infuse 
 an intellectual life into these materials as 
 to bring them under the rule and sway of 
 science. Christian science, therefore, when 
 established, may be regarded as the com- 
 plement of that gospel which was given 
 eighteen centuries ago. 
 
 What shall we say then ? Is it likely to 
 be established now or soon ? Can it in any 
 sense be said to be in view when we scruti- 
 nize the future as far as mortal vision can 
 reach ? We will not venture to say that it 
 is. The conditions of success are, we must 
 
 Q 
 
226 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 confess, all but non-existent, so far as our 
 earnest expectation can foresee. Where are 
 the men ? What kind of men are needed ? 
 What qualifications are indispensable in 
 them ? They must, of course, in the first 
 place and above all, be men of religion, and 
 that not merely of a nominal or superficial 
 sort, but heart and soul and strength. In 
 order that any one may determine scien- 
 tifically whether Christianity is true, it is 
 essential that he himself live the Christian 
 life in its sincerity and in its all-sidedness. 
 He must live the life of faith if he would 
 put his faith to any test, so as to try it 
 whether it is true or false. 
 
 So the scientific inquirer is to be a man 
 of religion — that is abundantly clear — a 
 man of religion in the best sense of the 
 word. But not only a religious man is he 
 to be, but a man of mind, and of a scientific 
 cast of mind. This also follows as a matter 
 of course. How can any other than a scien- 
 tifically inclined man cultivate a religious 
 
A FORECAST. 227 
 
 science ? If he is merely religious, he will 
 be satisfied with believing ; he will not care 
 to "follow on to know the Lord" in the 
 scientific sense of the words. 
 
 We see, therefore, that two distinct and, 
 we may say, opposite qualifications are 
 called for in him who would prosecute our 
 method — a true faith and a sound reason 
 harmoniously working together, and each 
 in its own sphere ; in other words, a strong 
 common sense, and this sense brought to 
 bear upon the things of religion. Such are 
 the qualifications of the man who can really 
 be said to be a follower of the science of 
 religion. Can we then wonder that a science 
 of religion has not only not as yet triumphed, 
 but has hardly seemed to prefer a claim for 
 recognition ? How few are there who are 
 possessed of the necessary two-fold endow- 
 ment of heart and mind — the heart burning 
 with zeal, and at the same time under the 
 control of reason ! Of scientific men pure 
 and simple there is no lack ; but they look 
 
 Q2 
 
228 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 slightingly for the most part on religion and 
 religious people, religion being foreign from 
 their thoughts ; religious people also there 
 are in the world, of almost every possible 
 form and hue ; but the very name of science, 
 as applied to religion, is in the highest de- 
 gree an astonishment to them. 
 
 How few, then, must there be who are at 
 once scientific and religious — their science 
 rationalizing their religion, and their religion 
 sanctifying their science ! Not many, cer- 
 tainly ; especially if we take into account 
 that it is not enough that the necessary 
 qualities be present in a certain inert and 
 somnolent fashion, but as the life and soul 
 of the whole man. And what as to the 
 time ? Is the time ripe for a science of 
 religion? Who wants it? Where is the 
 cry of the discontented ? Does it go up to 
 heaven, or is it so much as heard upon 
 earth ? What is it at loudest but whispered 
 in the ear in closets, or murmured in the 
 secret places of the mind ? The Christian 
 
A FORECAST. 229 
 
 world is content to be as It Is In this respect. 
 It believes that Christianity Is true — what 
 further assurance can it possibly stand In 
 need of? Why should its self-satisfaction 
 be disturbed ? Why should It demand that 
 a rigid canon of truth be applied to that of 
 which there Is already no doubt? To do 
 that would be as much as to Insinuate that 
 there are searchings of heart as to the truth 
 of religion ; and In any case no good could 
 possibly result. 
 
 So the Christian world for the most part 
 is indifferent to a science of religion. How 
 long Is this indifference to continue ? Not 
 for ever. It is impossible It should so remain. 
 The world does not stand still. See we 
 nought in the future when we look well 
 a-head ? Yes ; we foresee science constantly 
 marching onwards, and annexing kingdom 
 after kingdom of this world's knowledge 
 under its benign but no less inexorable 
 sway. Where will it stop ? Not, we may 
 be sure, until it has brought under its domi- 
 
230 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 nion every branch of human inquiry except 
 religion. Will it arrest its course then ? 
 We cannot think so. A pressure will, in 
 consequence of these continual successes on 
 the part of science, have been indirectly 
 brought to bear upon religion, which it will 
 be found impossible to resist any longer — 
 which, indeed, in the minds of those who 
 have Christianity really at heart, there will 
 be now at length no disposition to resist. 
 • How will then stand the case between 
 science and religion ? Human science is 
 the highest form of truth. Earthly know- 
 ledge, in all its departments, will have re- 
 ceived the imprimatur of this highest form. 
 But not so religion. It will not yet be held 
 to be truth, in the sense in which earthly 
 knowledge of all kinds proves itself to be 
 so. Is religion to remain for ever in that 
 state of comparative inferiority and conse- 
 quent degradation ? Is the taunt never 
 to cease, but rather to grow continually 
 stronger, that whereas human science knows, 
 
A FORECAST. 23 1 
 
 this divine science of religion only believes ? 
 Great and increasingly so will be the pres- 
 sure of science upon religion as time goes 
 on ; until at length this indirect force will 
 become irresistible, and then "the fulness 
 of time" is come, the ground is ready for 
 the seed ; and the time, as it has never yet 
 failed to do, will produce the men. 
 
 And now the gospel is complete. The be- 
 liever is now able to render perfect obedience 
 to that first and great commandment, "Thou 
 shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart and soul and mind.'' Hitherto he has 
 loved God, it may be, with his heart and 
 soul, but assuredly not with his mind. How- 
 ever little the principles of science may be 
 to the liking of the religious world, the time 
 will come when they will force their way 
 in spite of all likes and dislikes. Necessity, 
 which has no laws, has no tastes either. 
 
( 232 ) 
 
 LXIV. — CONCLUSION, WHEREIN THE WRITER BIDS 
 ADIEU TO THE READER AND LEAVES HIM HIS 
 WORK TO DO. 
 
 These Thoughts being ended, what re- 
 mains but that the writer of them should 
 bid adieu to the reader ? As to the prac- 
 tical conclusion, it is with the reader himself. 
 Are these Thoughts true ? Do they bear the 
 stamp and impress of truth? Have they 
 at least the countenance of the dictum of 
 Descartes, " Les choses que nous conce- 
 vons fort clairement et fort distinctement 
 sont toutes vraies" ? Are they of any prac- 
 tical value ? If so, fail not to turn them to 
 practical purpose. We have put before the 
 reader a certain method^ which he is to 
 follow if he would know, and not merely 
 believe, as men generally are content to do, 
 that Christianity is true. The method is such 
 as of itself to commend itself — and apart 
 from its scientific bearings — to the religious 
 man. Even supposing that from the scien- 
 
CONCLUSION. 233 
 
 tific point of view the pursuit comes to 
 nothing, he is only where he was ; he has 
 not wasted his time or lost his labour in a 
 religious sense, inasmuch as the scientific 
 and religious cultivation of Christianity are 
 in the same direction, only with this differ- 
 ence, that it is the province of science to 
 observe and judge, and of religion to believe 
 and do. The materials are the same, only 
 the treatment is different. It is possible to 
 be religious without being scientific ; it is 
 not possible to be scientific in religion with- 
 out being religious. So the conclusion of 
 these Thoughts rests with the reader, if they 
 are to be of any practical value to him. We 
 are the way ; he is the traveller. 
 
 But perhaps the reader, seeing that we 
 have said so many words to him, may also 
 have a word to say to us before he can 
 regard the book as closed. What have you, 
 on your part, found? he may not unnaturally 
 be inclined to ask. You commend to us a 
 
234 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 certain course ; you have, we may be sure, 
 for you seem to be an honest man, trodden 
 this same path on your own behalf — what 
 have you found? What does it lead to? 
 A natural inquiry, no doubt, but savouring 
 perhaps more of curiosity and want of re- 
 flection than of good judgment. It is, to 
 say the least, premature. Not yet, at all 
 events, am I, the writer of these Thoughts, 
 in a position to satisfy my interrogator. He 
 must at any rate wait awhile. Life with me 
 is not yet ended, though the sands are fast 
 running low. No man can tell what he finds 
 until the end is come. It is the end alone 
 that justifies the beginning. Can you stand 
 with me on the brink of the grave ? Can 
 you accompany me to the world of spirits ? 
 Can you then hear my confessions and 
 experiences? But what am I committing 
 myself to ? Even though I could impart to 
 you my experiences of the realities of Chris- 
 tian truth, and assure you that they are 
 
CONCLUSION. 235 
 
 verily and indeed truth, of what benefit 
 would this communication be to you ? Un- 
 less you are already a believer, and on far 
 stronger grounds than those which my indi- 
 vidual assurance could afford, my evidence 
 would not suffice to make you the believer 
 which you now are not. You might, and 
 probably would, take me to be a deceiver, 
 " If they hear not Moses and the prophets, 
 neither will they be persuaded though one 
 rose from the dead ;" and most certainly 
 if you have not heard already the Bible, 
 with its prophets, apostles and teachers, 
 you would never hear me. On the other 
 hand, if you are already a believer, my 
 evidence would add nothing of weight to 
 the faith you already have. Do not there- 
 fore appeal to my experience as to what 
 verdict our method pronounces when put 
 to the test. The inquiry is undoubtedly 
 a natural one — for what is more natural 
 than curiosity, especially in the things of 
 religion ? — but it is one that either could 
 
236 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 not be responded to, or the answer would 
 be of no service when forthcoming. 
 
 But has not this demand as to what the 
 writer himself has found, been already in 
 substance met, though indirectly, and with- 
 out any attempt on his part to satisfy it? 
 What is it these Thoughts undertake to do ? 
 They profess to discover the way to truth 
 in the matter of religion. The pursuit has 
 been an impartial one ; at least we have 
 done our endeavour to make it so. Has the 
 result been favourable to the truth of Chris- 
 tianity, in the opinion of the writer ? The 
 very fact that these Thoughts are permitted 
 to see the light, is a proof at least that he 
 who publishes them abroad can conclude 
 nothing to the contrary. Why should they 
 have been made publicly known else? 
 Would it not have been absurd to lay down 
 carefully and painfully a road that leads to 
 nothing? Who would not, the moment 
 he finds his attempt vain, at once cut his 
 labours short in such a case, and thank God 
 
CONCLUSION. 237 
 
 that he has not at least gone further in what 
 must ultimately have ended in nothing, 
 however long he had persevered ? 
 
 Suppose the result of these investigations 
 had, if possible, been unfavourable to the 
 religion we believe in ; suppose we had 
 found, to our thinking, that this method, 
 while it was the true method, bore no fruits 
 on the side of Christian truth, but rather 
 the contrary, — should we have made public 
 these negative or positively hostile conclu- 
 sions ? We could not have done so. We 
 should simply have refrained from giving 
 to the world any thoughts at all on the 
 subject of the evidences of the Christian 
 religion. These Thoughts, or any such 
 thoughts, would never have seen the light 
 of day. But if you had found the truth, it 
 may be urged, even though it was against 
 you, why should that truth be concealed 
 and hushed up ; why should it not be 
 made known just as completely and just 
 as honestly as though it were on your side ? 
 
238 CHRISTIANITY MADE SCIENCE. 
 
 Yes, if the truth had really been found ; but 
 we ask, with Pilate, "What is truth?" 
 
 Truth is not simply that which is, it is 
 also that which is worth having. Would 
 this discovery of ours as to the nothingness 
 of religion from a scientific point of view be 
 worth having? Whom would it benefit? 
 The non-existence of God and of that world 
 which we significantly call a better world, 
 to whom would these grand negative dis- 
 coveries of ours, these discoveries of dark- 
 ness where we hoped there might possibly 
 have been light, whom would they have 
 been of any advantage to ? Why, then, 
 should they be allowed to go beyond the 
 region of the discoverer's own thoughts ? 
 So far at least as he is concerned, whatever 
 principles others may hold in the matter, 
 had these Thoughts produced nothing worth 
 having, or only what is of a questionable 
 character, he would have proceeded no fur- 
 ther from the moment he had been so 
 unfortunate as to make that discovery. 
 
CONCLUSION. 239 
 
 We have, however, gone further, and not 
 only have thought, but have said what we 
 thought. The reader may safely be left to 
 draw his own conclusions. And so, kind 
 friend (and may we not add fellow-traveller), 
 farewell ! 
 
 C. Green & Son, Printers, 178, Strand. 
 
xM^ 
 
 
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