« i A r\ 27 1920 BT 201 . W487 1919 Weston, Frank, 1871-1924. The Christ and his critics THE CHRIST AND HIS CRITICS SECOND IMPRESSION GOD WITH US The Meaning of the Tabernacle BY THE Right Rev. FRANK WESTON, D.D., Bishop of Zanzibar Cloth, 3 s. §d. net. “ The argument of the book is directed against the proposed new rubric limiting the use of the Sacrament as reserved. There is a good practical note on this word ‘ use,’ but the whole treatment of the subject turns on the deepest things. — Church Times. A. R. MOWBRAY & CO. LTD. LONDON AND OXFORD. THE CHRIST AND HIS CRITICS An Open Pastoral Letter to the European Missionaries of his Diocese BY THE Right Rev. FRANKWESTON, D.D. BISHOP OF ZANZIBAR A. R. MOWBRAY & CO. Ltd. London : 28 Margaret Street, Oxford Circus, W. 1 Oxford : 9 High Street Milwaukee, U.S.A. : The Morehouse Publishing Co. First impression, 1919 INTRODUCTION My dear Brethren, This letter is addressed to you. It also seeks a wider public. For it attempts to deal with very serious questions that concern all who hold communion with the See of Canterbury. In 1913 I addressed an open letter to the Bishop of St. Albans. It dealt with modernism, interdenominationalism, and episcopal action against the invocation of saints. It aimed at recalling the Church in England to her true principles, with a view to action against modern¬ ism, or, as it is more aptly termed, liberalism. My letter created much disturbance, and pro¬ duced a war of pamphlets. Other fruit it had none that I can see. The second Kikuyu Con¬ ference has done all that was proposed at the first, except that the Bishops of Mombasa and Uganda only allow, and do not bid, their communicants to take Communion from ministers who have no episcopal ordination. In this they claim the full approval of the Archbishop of Canterbury ; while liberalism flourishes more than ever before. VI Introduction It is true that in 1914 the Upper House of Canterbury Convocation reiterated two resolutions against liberalism ; one of its own, one of the last Lambeth Conference. But it added a rider that removed the sting from them both ; a rider the softening effect of which was greatly increased by the speech of the Metropolitan of the province. These resolutions have, moreover, become dead letters with the consent of the bishops themselves, a consent granted not altogether willingly, but granted none the less, in their reception of the new Bishop of Hereford to a seat on their bench. It is indeed astonishing how little English Churchmen oppose the denials now being made of our Lord’s inerrancy as a teacher, and there¬ fore of His essential Deity. In 1915 the Editor of Foundations , Mr. Streeter, was appointed a Canon of Hereford. I at once did all I could, constitutionally, to force our Metropolitan and his comprovincial bishops to intervene, on one side or the other ; I publicly renounced communion with the then Bishop of Hereford. Of this action no official notice was taken. On February 2nd of last year, as on the day on which the Blessed Virgin Mary pre¬ sented her miraculously-born Son before His Father, Dr. Hensley Henson was consecrated to the See of Hereford. Dr. Henson teaches that our Lord’s virgin-birth and bodily resurrection Introduction Vll are open questions, that the nature -miracles ascribed to Him are not facts, that His utter¬ ances as a teacher need not be received as final, and that He was mistaken in thinking that men were possessed by demons. These doctrines of his were examined by the Archbishop of Canter¬ bury, chiefly on the motion of the then Bishop of Oxford. His Grace decided that they lie within the limits of what the Church of England permits her bishops to believe and teach ; and allowed Dr. Henson’s books to be taken as showing his ex animo acceptance of the Creeds. Dr. Gore withdrew his protest. Ten other bishops refused, like him, to assist at Dr. Henson’s consecration, but no charge of heresy was brought. The consecration took place, and the new Bishop of Hereford now sits in the episcopal Synod of the Metropolitan Church of Canterbury. That Synod , therefore , no longer guarantees to us Christ's teaching. , or the four Gospels , or the Creeds. And since the Bishop of Durham felt called to share in consecrating the new bishops the metropolitical Church of Tor ^ is in life case. It is, therefore, not surprising that our Roman Catholic friends have become more than usually insistent in their invitations to us to seek peace and assurance under S. Peter’s shadow. The consequence of their insistence is, in my case, not what they had hoped. For the more I Introduction • •• vm examine their kindly-meant offer, the more I see the resemblance between modern Romanism and liberalism in their common attitude to definitions they do not like. I have, therefore, come to feel it my duty to lay before you, and before others who may do me the honour of reading this letter, some reasons against availing ourselves of the Roman “ peace ” or of the liberal’s “ freedom.” At first sight the connection may not be evident — I think a little consideration will make it obvious. You will, I pray, pardon me for what is amiss in this letter. It has been written during con¬ valescence after influenza, while I have been waiting for a boat to take me to Lindi. The influenza, as many of you know, leaves behind it a certain disinclination from effort : in which it appears to have affinity with whatever causes English Churchmen to shirk facing liberalism. But 1 can honestly say I have tried hard to write clearly and to the point. If I have failed, the cause lies partly in my natural incompetence, partly in the results of this illness which came on me at the end of a somewhat strenuous and unbroken four years’ labour in the tropics. After twenty years of African service a man cannot hope to be at his best, even apart from war and epidemics. And I admit I would not have chosen Introduction IX such a moment as this for the writing of so important a letter. There are, however, urgent reasons that make it necessary for me to write. 1 commend what I have written to your judge¬ ment, your charity, and your prayers. b I CONTENTS I. Rome’s Offer of Peace - - II. The Freedom of Liberalism - - III. The Revelation in Christ - - IV. Is the Revelation True? - - - V. The Gospel and Tradition - - VI. The Limits of Scientific History Psychology - AND VII. A Contrast between Liberalism and Ortho¬ doxy - VIII. Comparative Religion - - IX. The Christ of Experience - - X. The Inerrancy of Christ - - - XI. Divine and Human Knowledge - - XII. Eternity and Time - - XIII. Insight and Foreknowledge - - XIV. Dr. Henson and the Liberals - - XV. Is Christ Jesus a Creature ? - - XVI. The Answer to Rome and Liberalism - XVII. Our Own Position APPENDICES I. The Bishops and Liberalism - - II. Liberals and the Ministry - - III. The Archbishop of Canterbury Henson AND Dr. IV. Professor Bethune-Baker and Liberalism - V. The Lambeth Conference and Liberalism - PAGE I 10 14 26 32 39 49 57 63 70 78 85 94 104 123 140 H3 151 153 i7i i74 178 XI / THE CHRIST AND HIS CRITICS I ROME’S OFFER OF PEACE BISHOP in communion with the See of -*■ Canterbury may be excused if he .addresses his diocese on highly controversial matters at the present time. His flock is attacked from two sides with great insistency. Rome demands the submission of his people to the pope, offering them a developed supplement to Christ’s explicit teaching ; while liberal critics exhort them to cast away the bonds of their traditional faith, and share with them the splendid work of composing a correction of Christ’s revelation. Rome’s strength lies in her promise of safety from modern doubts. Liberalism offers a sense of being completely up to date, and in touch with the modern mind. Since both are insisting on our duty of open¬ ing our eyes to the light, differing though they do as to what light is, I feel it laid upon my B 2 The Christ and His Critics conscience to bear my witness against both Romanism and liberalism, and to suggest thoughts that may, by God’s blessing, help to establish some people in their present position as catholic Christians. Romanism and liberalism both claim to be developed along lines of sound reason ; and they both show signs of having capitulated to the modern craze for retaining forms, while giving them new and radically different meanings. Rome argues, on what she holds to be strictly logical grounds, from Christ’s founda¬ tion of one society, the Church, to the one, supreme, infallible pope. In 1870 an (Ecu¬ menical Council called by the pope put out definitions and declarations which are said to bind our minds, under pain of sin ; and the pope defined certain truths, the acceptance of which he made a condition of membership in the Church and, therefore, of eternal salvation. All Christians are now bound to believe that the pope is infallible when he teaches the Church ex cathedra about faith or morals, making his definition a condition of communion with him¬ self. They were already bound to accept all the teachings of an (Ecumenical Council approved by the pope, so that the Romanist who follows the pope knows both the true faith and the true will of God : his teacher cannot err. Rome's Offer of Peace 3 The Vatican Council of Pope Pius IX also defined, for our belief, that this infallible papacy has always existed in , and been recognized by , the whole Church ; and that all great Churchmen from the first were fully aware of its active presence in their midst . Now, keeping this well in mind, I ask all who may be moved by its bold claims to consider these points, as in the sight of God the eternal truth : — (i) Pope Liberius rejected Athanasius, and removed him from communion with the See of Rome. To give or refuse communion is the supreme sign of approval or rejection. Therefore the infallible pope taught the Church that the Catholic Faith is wrongs and its upholder , Athanasius , unworthy of communion with S. Peters see. Rome too\ the side of those who opposed Athanasius . (ii) We have it on the authority of several popes and general councils that Pope Honorius was to be anathematized for his heresy. There is exactly the same authority for saying that Rope Honorius misled the Churchy and is to be anathematized , as for saying the pope is infallible. He who denies, rightly or wrongly, that Honorius was a heretic and misled his Church denies the infallibility of the pope and his general councils. The people of Pope Honorius did not, in 4 The Christ and His Critics the judgement of popes and councils, learn the truth from him. (iii) So, too, when the new learning had established itself, the infallible pope fell foul of Galileo. And for some two hundred years all pious Romans were bound to believe, under penalties, that God had made such revelations about nature, here and there in Scripture, as to shut out for ever all modern astronomical theories. God had spoken, the popes said so ; therefore Galileo was wrong to speculate. The pope didn’t say, “ His science is wrong.” He announced, “ God has already spoken on this point, and closed all discussion of it.” For two hundred years , then , faithful Romanists had an “ infallible ” guarantee that they possessed a particular revelation from God ; which, in fact , the pope to-day will admit they ne^er did possess . (iv) Again, in the sphere of morals. No Romanist may rightfully receive absolu¬ tion and communion unless he accepts Pope Leo X’s ruling that the burning of heretics is not against the will of the Holy Ghost. He who does not agree with the pope in this is “ damned.” To us it is a small matter, since the burnings have ceased. But it meant much to those who were burned ! What Roman believes this ruling to-day ? (v) Again, in the matter of politics. Romes Offer of Peace 5 The infallible Pius IX has entirely “ damned” the opinion that the Roman Church would be freer and happier did she altogether lose her “ temporal power”; he has forbidden the question to be raised ; and pious Papists must positively accept their pope’s more positive teaching concerning the necessity of temporal power to Christ’s Church. Thus, from at least 1849 onwards, all who have not sided with the papal claim to a tem¬ poral kingdom ought, strictly speaking, to be refused communion in the Roman Church. And this recalls to our minds that we are, at latest since the days of Boniface VIII, all “ damned ” who deny the pope’s right to depose kings, or to interfere in their kingdoms. Do all Romans believe these rulings to-day ? (vi) The decrees of 1870 about the pope, his supremacy and infallibility, are no longer accepted in their evident meaning. They are God’s message ; but God’s message adapted to man’s views. Romanists have come to see that Pope Pius IX and his council were quite wrong about the papacy in history. To-day these decrees are ignored. Though they bind under pain of sin, though they are approved by an infallible pope, they are treated as of no real importance. Modern Romans, from 6 The Christ and His Critics Newman down to Cardinal Mercier, men like Dr. Adrian Fortescue, Fr. Pope, and Mr. Ber¬ nard Holland, preach the papacy as a develop¬ ment down the ages. In their judgement it was not known and recognized by all from the very first. It was slowly evolved, developed, perfected. Pius IX may be wrong or the moderns ; it is certain they do not agree together. The modern Romans make as free with the Vatican definitions as do liberal critics with the Nicene definition . They interpret it in accordance with the modern mind. If Pius IX was infallible, Cardinal Mercier and Dr. Adrian Fortescue, with most other modern Romans, are “ damned,” or at least are guilty of mortal sin that must damn them, unless they renounce historical facts in favour of the Vatican dream. (vii) Again, Pius IX and his Vatican Council, which are as authoritative for Romans as Leo I and “his” (sic) Chalcedon Council, define papal infallibility as a peculiar gift, given and exercised apart from the Church. It was, therefore, quite lawful for the pope to compel all refractory bishops to accept the defi¬ nitions under pain of the heaviest penalties. Their consent was not necessary. God had spoken by Pius ; the matter was finished. But some modern Romans would have us Romes Offer of Peace 7 believe that papal infallibility is not given or exercised apart from the Church. But to say this is heretical, it is to deny the pope’s own definition, and to incur his anathema . Yet Rome to-day tunes her teaching to the modern mind ! She has dared to supplement Christ’s re¬ velation. She does not dare, however, to put into force the anathemas she has pronounced. She knows that now and again her popes have misled their children in doctrine as in morals ; she knows Pius IX read history wrongly ; she allows her children to hold a view of infallibility quite contrary to her official creed ; but she insists upon her forms of faith. What her view of infallibility will be a hundred years hence who can say ? She entirely altered her mind between 1870 and 1910; who can guess what she will be thinking in the year 1950 or 2000 ? I submit, then, that Rome cannot give us any real certainty in matters of faith and morals beyond what we already possess. We all know what she knows. It is our common heritage. To submit to her is not to gain more certain knowledge. It is, merely, to pledge ourselves to believe a new definition, dated 1870, which, in fact, none of her literate children to-day really accept at all. 8 The Christ and His Critics And in order to call this empty formula our own possession, what does Rome require of us ? (1) We must confess that we have never received sacramentally the Christ of the Sacra¬ ment. We must deny Him, that is. We must say to Him in His Sacrament, “ Now, for the first time, I see Thee.” We must confess that we have never been sacramentally cleansed by Him from the guilt, or saved from the power, of sin. We must say to Him in penance, “ Now, for the first time, I perceive Thee.” In short, with S. Peter, we must deny Him, “ I know not the Man. God I know : but the Man in His Sacrament I have never met.” And we who are in Holy Orders must go further still. We must deny our Orders ; we must deny that we have ever offered the Sacrifice and administered Holy Communion ; we must deny that we have ever absolved a soul. (2) When we have finished denying our dear Lord, we must proceed to perjure ourselves. For we must “ undoubtingly receive and profess all other things delivered, defined, and declared by the sacred canons and general councils, and particularly by the holy Council of Trent, and by the (Ecumenical Vatican Council, particularly those on the primacy and the infallible teaching of the Roman pontiff.” And having professed Romes Offer of Peace 9 this, we shall at once “ liberalize,” “ modernize,” or “ read symbolically ” the things defined and declared by the Vatican Council ! It is perjury. No man can enter the Roman Church and accept the development of the papacy unless he perjure himself in fact if not in intention, at the time of his reception. One of my spiritual children who a went over” informs me that the only thing that matters is the fact of infallibility. The words of the definition are of no importance ; but when God sees fit to give us a correct expression of the fact He will do so ! From all this I draw the conclusion that Rome, which is for ever offering us safety from liberal¬ ism, is herself suffering from the same disease. The Hensons of the Roman Church sit on thrones, too, ruling their dioceses. What the Bishop of Hereford does for the Apostles’ Creed they do for the Vatican definitions. Rome and Lambeth have alike surrendered to the forces of liberalism. May God save them both ! c II THE FREEDOM OF LIBERALISM LIBERALISM claims to be as logical as Rome. J She does not, however, assume the foundation of the one Church by Christ, as does her rival. She is content with the assumption of the general credibility of half S. Mark’s Gospel, and of the absolute incredibility of all that is usually called the miraculous. She proclaims S. Mark’s Gospel, duly ex¬ purgated and edited, as the primary authority for Christ’s life and work and meaning. Where S. Matthew or S. Luke agree with him they are allowed to possess authority, provided always nothing miraculous is admitted. And where these two agree together, apart from, or even against, S. Mark, they are to be accepted, unless good reason to the contrary be shown. Thus the biography of the historic Jesus cc emerges.” After studying carefully the “historic Jesus,” the liberals trust themselves to read the other books of the New Testament. These must be read with caution, because they tell us what other men, of a dark and somewhat superstitious age, IO The Freedom of Liberalism 11 thought about the “ historic Jesus.” This done, and a just estimate of their views formed, the liberals pass on to the next generation of Chris¬ tian writers, “ evaluating ” their judgements of Christ. And so on, to the writers of the present day. Thus they obtain a clear view of how God planted a seed of new thought in Him they call the “ historic Jesus,” and how it has grown and developed. Each generation has had its peculiar limitations and made its own mistakes ; but the God-given seed has been rich in fruit. And to-day we have far truer notions of God, brother¬ hood, and virtue than were ever obtained before. We know clearly what Christ revealed : with the added advantage that we are freed from the darkness and superstition that possessed His “normal Jewish mind.” There, in bald outline, is the extreme liberal’s position. Each critic fills in the outline to please himself. But all alike profess to be guided by “historical science” only. Some see in Christ a Prophet of the Kingdom, whose chief note is a “ catastrophic ” advent. Some think of Him as the great Master of Morality. Others regard Him as a disappointed Idealist Who “ got across ” the materialism of His age. They all agree that God used Him to give the world a new seed of thought, a new ideal. They are not agreed as to 12 The Christ and His Critics what exactly the ideal was. Nor are they of one mind as to its universal validity : for some think it was an imperfect ideal, suitable only to a past age. Again, some see Christ as sinless, others deny Him moral perfection. Some call Him divine, because of the likeness of His will to God’s ; while the less extreme still worship Him as God. There is no disagreement between them about miracle. The historic Jesus did no great works, not because of men’s unbelief, but because He could not do them. Nor is there any question about His normal Jewish mind. Except in those points in which we see God’s new seed of thought, or the new ideal, getting itself unveiled, Jesus thought and spoke exactly like the Jews of His age. Consequently He made mistakes. He was wrong about demons and demoniacal possession. He was wrong about the Old Testament, and about all the other matters on which the Jews of His age were still ignorant. He was mistaken ; He was ignorant : but He was not therefore morally at fault. So does liberalism deal with the Gospels ; and the Creeds are so interpreted as to reconcile them with this new reading of the Gospel story. The rationalism of orthodox Rome is trying to make easy for us the dogma that Christ can be found only in Peter and his successors. The Freedom of Liberalism 13 The rationalism of the liberals, whether Roman or Anglican, tries to make easy for us the dogma that God can be found only in Christ. It is my earnest desire to make it clear how little we need any supplement to Christ’s revela¬ tion or any criticism of the Lord Christ Himself. If this can be done we can cheerfully turn deaf ears to the rationalists of both schools. We shall have no need for either. For, face to face with Christ, Who is God in manhood, there is for us no room for Christ’s further incarnation in Peter,1 or for a merely “ historic Jesus.” 1 See the writer’s The Fulness of Christy p. 324. Ill THE REVELATION IN CHRIST HE revelation of God in Christ is final. It A cannot be altered to suit the passing thought of each generation. Because it was made to us in, and through, the conception, birth, life, work, death, and glory of an historical Person. It is final. It is the revelation of God in Christ , and Christ is no longer visibly on earth. It cannot be altered to suit the passing thought of each age : it is so entirely wrapped up in the facts of the earthly existence of the Lord Jesus Christ. In order to comprehend the main points of His revelation all we need is the knowledge which the Apostles of Christ possessed and co¬ ordinated with their experience of everyday life. This knowledge we inherit ; and, aided by their experience, as far as it is available, the Church does its own work of co-ordinating God’s revela¬ tion in Christ with His unveiling of His mind in the world of each age. No one can add to the facts of revelation. Christ alone was competent to communicate The Revelation in Christ 15 them. No mere man was fit to do it. For mere man is sinful, of darkened mind and blinded soul. Moreover he is a creature of his age and country, one-sided, unbalanced, prejudiced. At his highest, filled perhaps with grace from on high, he cannot refrain from colouring his teach¬ ing with tints of his own. Christ, God in man¬ hood, is perfect man : His mind, alone, is able to reflect the divine light without dimming its reflection. Whatever, then, we may learn, as individuals or as a society, from this Christ mystically united with us, it is evident that the absence of His body from earth makes impossible any supplementary revelation of the facts God unveiled in Him. The Church may make deductions from facts, draw conclusions from premisses, authorize guesses and surmises : she can not rightly add a fact to the revelation, and make acceptance of it a condition of membership. Synods have done so, indeed, but not rightly. Again, while a man may explain the revelation in modern terms, he cannot change its content. The revelation is, strictly, Christ Himself. And Christ is beyond man’s criticism in the exact measure that God is greater than man. We can meditate on Christ’s truly human life ; we can seek the meaning to each age of His activity and doctrine ; we can draw out new 16 The Christ and His Critics shades of teaching as year succeeds to year, and philosophy to philosophy : but we cannot com¬ pare Christ with any other. Nor can we apply to Him the psychological tests, which are valid only for mere man. When all is said, He is God in manhood. The manhood is our own : He, whose manhood it is, is God Himself. All rationalists go wrong at this point. The orthodox rationalist forgets that each point in the revelation requires, for its authenticity and accuracy, a corresponding certified fact in the history of the Christ. And he would lightly add to the revelation, as binding dogmas, defini¬ tions such as are in fact ruled out by the whole Church as involving doctrines unknown to the Apostles. He errs, not in using his reason to make deductions, or in relying on the spirit of Christ within the Church to enlighten him : but in elevating to the rank of a Christ-revealed truth a dogma that is not based upon a certified fact in the Christ’s history. The liberal rationalist likewise errs. He comes to Christ with an expurgated copy of S. Mark’s Gospel as his guide-book, and proceeds to criticize and measure Him as he criticizes and measures Plato or Julius Caesar, Napoleon or Mr. Lloyd George ; whereas he should do what God made the world do : come to Him as to the hitherto hidden God, unexplored Truth, and meekly The Revelation in Christ 17 receive the Babe of Bethlehem from invisible hands. “ The Word was God. The Word was made flesh.” If a man receives from the Church the Old Testament, and follows the paths that lay open to men before Christ came, he will find God in the New Testament and God in manhood : in the Manhood he will see God, and live. He will find a revelation clear enough, considering the diffi¬ culty of translating the divine into the human ; and complete in all essential truths. What he will not find is a society endowed with an unerring faculty for answering all the questions which these truths will suggest ; much less a society with a heavenly power of adding to the truths themselves. Nor will he find himself in a position from which Christ can appear to him as a man of like darkness with himself. The liberal rationalist cannot approach God along this old path. He has so criticized the Old Testament that he finds in it little else than men’s thoughts about God. He therefore con¬ cludes that his own knowledge of God must be evolved from within his own mind and spiritual experience. He expects nothing “from above,” as we say. So when he comes to Christ, it is in order to compare his mind with Christ’s ; and to see how the notion of God he has discovered for himself, D 18 The Christ and His Critics within himself, compares with Christ’s notion of God. He is ready and anxious to learn from the notion which Christ had ; but he will learn from it a human notion of the same kind as his own ; of the same kind, although of finer quality. This being his primary postulate, he must needs free our Lord’s notion of God from all that can mark it off as different in kind from his own. All and anything that suggests the “ miraculous ” or “ supernatural ” he rules out of court. The Christ with whom he will com¬ pare himself, and from whom he would learn, is of like nature, of like personality, and of like experience with himself. It may be Christ came down from heaven ; but, having come, He behaved as if He had never been there. Never was there made a greater error than to say that, because no man comes to God except through Christ, no one can approach towards God before he learns Christ’s notion of Him. Mr. Glover, in his little book The Jesus of History , which the Archbishop of Canterbury so warmly praises, is guilty of this mistake. He not only rules out the Creeds as now meaning¬ less ; he tells us that, in asserting Christ to be God, we must bear in mind that we know nothing of God except what we see in Christ. Thus to The Revelation in Christ 19 say Christ is God means no more than Christ is His own notion of His Father. In other words, we have no standard by which to test Christ and determine His claim to Deity. Tyrrell told us, “ To say Christ is God is like saying Christ is X.” Mr. Glover would add, “ Where x = Christ.” Personally, I still cling to the “ meaning¬ less ” Creed ; I still hold that God spake by the prophets. There is still enough teaching about God in the Old Testament, in nature, and in men’s consciences to provide us with a rough kind of test that shows us a distinction between God and man. The Apostles had a notion of God before they met Jesus, a notion that was deepened and widened by converse with Him ; a notion which suffered no violence when it was made to include Jesus Himself. This notion they received partly from the Old Testament, partly from spiritual experience. And we in these days have certainly some idea of God and His character, apart from Jesus. When I meet a man, with his expurgated S. Mark and a magnifying glass, gazing on his “historic Jesus,” looking for a notion of God, I feel sure he has already formed some idea of what God is. If he denies this, if he pretends that God is unknown, in any real 20 The Christ and His Critics sense, apart from Christ, I recognize him as even less human than I had supposed. For example, how do we dare decide that Christ is morally perfect, sinless ? Do we only mean Christ is perfectly like Christ ? We mean that we see no reason for rejecting His claim to be free from sin. We mean that we have certain ideas of moral character that we have always associated with Him we call God ; and these ideas Christ ex¬ presses. Therefore, as far as these ideas are evidence, Christ is, for us, very God ; His claim is justified. If we had no idea of perfection we could not call Christ perfect or sinless. We come near Christ : we find Him human, like ourselves. We notice, first, little differences ; then a vast moral distinction, between ourselves and Him. We see Him radically different from all the men we know or have read about. We at last understand that He is different from the whole race, in spite of our common manhood. The liberals tell us that it is this difference between us and Him that we are describing when we call ourselves mere men and name Him God. But the liberals are wrong. We call Jesus God, not because He is different from us ; but because, being different from us, He also fulfils the idea we already have of God. We call Him God The Revelation in Christ 21 because He is so exactly like our idea of God that we can find no other explanation than to say “God became man.” Of course, the deep mysteries of God’s being and character we did not know until we knew Christ. But He Who spake by the prophets taught us enough about Himself to make it possible for us to recognize Him when He came, born of a Virgin, unconquerable by death. Without doubt He reveals much that is new in our conception of God : a ministry that counts not even life itself too high a price to pay for the joy of serving others ; a humility that opens to Him a way of service men call slavish ; a gentle endurance that accepts violence and injus¬ tice ; and a self-oblation in crucifixion that has no parallel in man’s experience, let alone in man’s thought of God. While He shows us, in His character, some of the qualities we associate with the God of the prophets — holiness, justice, benevolence, mercy, truthfulness, and the like — it is true that in points which are most foreign to the Jewish conception of God our Lord startles us with a new revelation. The liberals meet this, as I have said, with the assertion that we know neither God nor man apart from Jesus. They call Jesus divine, like God, because He surpasses all other men, and 22 The Christ and His Critics illustrates every quality we can desire to find in God. He is divine because He is super¬ man. He compels us to confess, by His very superiority to ourselves, that we can conceive no one nobler, higher, or better. But this judgement must remain what it always has been, merely a subjective opinion. He is superior to us because we like to think Him so. And if the Kaiser or Nietszche can imagine a still higher and nobler character, then for them Jesus ceases to be the highest revelation. In short, Jesus may be divine ; He is not necessarily the final revelation of God. Catholics, on the other hand, accept the fact that Jesus is God because He said so plainly enough to faith’s ears, and because He conforms with the previously revealed character of God. Like the liberals, they take all the help their own moral sense gives them, as it bears witness to the supremacy of their Master’s goodness. But they dare not base their conviction on their own judgement alone. They rest on revelation, and on their Master’s word. Jesus claimed to be God. The Gospels show this as clearly as in the circumstances of their composition we have any right to expect, while Christ’s own society, the Church, bears a uni¬ versal testimony both to His claim and to its acceptance. The Revelation in Christ 23 Liberals should weigh well the reason they advance for calling Jesus divine. In the result they will see that they depend for their conviction upon their own moral sense alone. Or, if this is putting the case too harshly, let us say they depend on the moral sense of early Christians who, acting on liberal principles, came to the con¬ clusion that Jesus was so Godlike as to merit the epithet divine. If our moral sense be adequate to the task of unveiling God’s character, and of deciding when man has reached the highest possible degree of goodness, holiness, and love, no doubt the liberals are right. They have properly explained God’s revelation and its mode. We who live in Africa, right up against hu¬ manity untouched by sacramental grace, among those who can draw no cheque upon the bank of accumulated Christian ideas, may be excused if we have little confidence in man’s moral sense. To be candid, I do not trust the moral sense even of a Christianity that tolerates slum- life, sweating, and false distinctions between man and man ; that approves the class distinctions which priests and prelates foster in our Lord’s Name; and that gives chief weight in its counsels to men and women of one particular level of culture, education, and social position. 24 The Christ and His Critics I do not trust it to define perfection, much less to determine if Christ be morally identical with God. It is only too clear that such a society has already failed to recognize its Lord in this person and that, in movements religious and social, in ideals individual and corporate. Churchmen, and not least the liberals among them, have over and over again been blind, with the blindness of worldly leadership or intellectual pride, to the presence of Christ in their midst. They seek the honour that comes from men ; they rely upon a full purse ; they dispute for the first place, and like to share the world’s throne. How can they believe ? Is it at all likely that they will be able to measure Christ and decide His claim to likeness with God ? The man who would dare decide for himself Christ’s likeness with God must either be like God or very much in need of humility. I must press this point. It is of supreme importance to us missionaries, for our people have all some dim notion of God to start with ; a notion we develop on the lines of natural religion, and from the Old Testament revelation. Whereas, according to the liberals, we are entirely wrong. We mislead the people. We must show them the “historic Jesus” of their expurgated Gospels, and when they have studied Him we The Revelation in Christ 25 must tell them, “ In Jesus you see man at his highest, and this man at his highest you shall also call God.” This point reached, we may perhaps begin then to inquire what they themselves used to think about God, and show them how much or how little they may retain of their former notions. Certainly we must drop natural religion and Old Testament theology. And the Creeds will be worse than useless : they will be confusing. E IV IS THE REVELATION TRUE ? E must, however, turn back to the revela- ▼ V tion of God in Christ. What evidence have we of its truthfulness ? The proof of its truthfulness lies in the society of those who first received it and, by faith, made it their own. Those who lived with Christ, and were con¬ vinced by Him of His Deity, are the original witnesses. Their witness they have handed on down the ages. What they saw in Christ, to make them sure of His Deity, to support and strengthen their faith, that they preached, they wrote, and they summarized. They preached it : and their traditional story went out into all lands. They wrote it : and their Gospels were recognized by their first readers as in complete agreement with the tradi¬ tional story. They summarized it : and Baptismal Creeds came into being, lest any one should enter the society who had not grasped the essential facts on which the revelation rests. What they could not do was to give men the Is the Revelation True ? 27 faith necessary for the acceptance of their mes¬ sage. Faith comes from God alone, as a gift. But their threefold evidence they could make over to others : and they zealously handed it on intact. The traditional story is with us to-day. It is enshrined in the Church’s worship and formu¬ laries, in Apostolic Epistles and other writings, in the documents of the first century and early part of the second, in the living message of salvation handed on within the Church these past nineteen hundred years, and in the corpo¬ rate life of grace to which it ministers. The Gospels are with us to-day. They are certified as in harmony with the original story by the fact that the Church accepted them, when it rejected so many rivals ; as by the further fact that they were read and accepted by men who must have known their authors. The Creeds, too, are with us to-day. And, developed as they are to meet the Church’s need, they contain no more than is essential to set forth the truths certified by tradition and Gospels. It is, in fact, quite impossible to separate these three strands of the one rope of witness. They are, mutually, co-incident and co-operative. And in giving us this one threefold witness of a living society, Christ fulfilled His promise of putting us in the Way, which is Himself ; the 28 The Christ and His Critics Way that begins and ends in Himself, the Truth and the Life. Criticism has done its best to separate these three strands, and cut them one by one. It has failed. The early documents of the Church are finally authenticated. The New Testament has emerged from its warfare with the critics trium¬ phant, while the Creeds are well established. It is mere prejudice, an unwillingness to accept the supernatural, that still casts doubt on historical value of the fourth Gospel. The weakness lies in the hand that holds the rope of witness, and it is a serious weakness. Against that weakness our Lord Himself warned us all. The Church cannot use her witness to the best advantage because of the separation of Christian from Christian. So long as the Church was visibly one : so long, that is, as no two bodies of importance claimed to be exclusively the one Church, this threefold witness came with over¬ whelming power upon all within the one society, and made itself felt deeply by those outside. But, divided as Christendom is to-day, the force of the threefold witness is sadly wasted. The various sections of Christendom lay stress on different strands in the rope of witness. One emphasizes tradition above all else ; another specializes in Scripture ; another relies on dog¬ matic formularies ; while those who run to the Is the Revelation True ? 29 Scriptures evolve countless varieties of doctrines, since each man claims to be his own guide. These differences are not, consciously, based on self-assertion. Temperament counts. The attacks of adversaries drive men to positions they would not themselves choose. And the law we observe as to reactions in thought never fails to exact its penalties. Where there is disunion there cannot be balanced thought nor co-ordinated doctrines. Above all, where there is disunion the corporate life, hidden with Christ in God, is impoverished and fails to attract. Men fail, necessarily, to see in Christianity a life into which they are caught up. They see it, rather, as a system of doctrines, or as a code of morals, or as a rule of worship. Perhaps the evil would be less were our dis¬ union only in matters of faith and discipline. Alas ! it goes far deeper ; so deep, indeed, that our Christian life is poisoned at its very source. For we are disunited from each other over such things as race and colour and earthly possessions. Christ is made an empty Name of love. His revelation is not seen in bodily form, exhibited in a living, loving brotherhood of men and women. And where there is no love there is no power. Thus it comes about that some young don, who knows life only from his school and college study, who has not tasted the world’s griefs nor 30 The Christ and His Critics carried its sorrows, can by one clever book turn men’s minds away from our Lord God of Calvary’s Cross. The full force of the Church’s witness will never be felt until Christendom is once more united. Reunion will mean a common return by all to the one revelation of God that is summed up in Christ, Virgin-born, now reigning, in complete manhood, in the glory of His own Deity. It will not mean uniformity of discipline and wor¬ ship. But it will mean a common acceptance of what God revealed in Christ. At the same time, it will mean our reunion with each other on the ground of our common membership in the manhood of Jesus Christ. It will mean the ignoring of all race distinctions, colour bars, and class differences ; it will involve our recognition of various habits of worship ; and require in us a new sense of the unimpor¬ tance of our cash balances. Unless reunion, in these two meanings, can be brought about, liberalism will work terrible havoc with the faith of Christians. Our only reserve force that can yet hurl the enemy back, beyond hope of its recovery, is the corporate life of Christ’s mystical Body. Is it too late ? When He cometh, will He find the faith on the earth ? Is the Revelation True ? 31 The present apparent security of Rome proves my point. She is superficially secure, just because her vastness and her official profession of unity produce in her members a sense of united life in Christ that saves them from the liberalism of many individual members, and makes them indif¬ ferent to the assaults of critics. Converts notice this at once. To us her security is apparent only. It could not save Loisy and Tyrrell, and others like them. It is not yet the unity Christ wants ; it is exclusive, unlike Christ’s love. And it is not proof against the separation of Catholic from Catholic on grounds of race, colour, and possessions. But, thank God, it is there in its degree. Let us pray that it may be deepened, widened, and more truly “ christened.” Let us pray also that Rome may one day awake to the fact that she is not slaying her enemy ; she is only keeping him from evident victory. To slay him she must open her arms to all who accept the traditional faith of Christendom. V THE GOSPEL AND TRADITION I WANT now, if I may, to show how, in spite of the disunion of Christendom, the threefold witness of Tradition, Gospels, and Creed is proof against critical attack. Liberals assume that all three elements in the witness can be resolved into one, namely, the historical evidence of their expurgated edition of S. Mark's Gospel, supplemented by extracts, carefully selected, from S. Matthew and S. Luke. By this evidence they are prepared to judge Christ, and, as need arises, to reinterpret Tradi¬ tion and Creed. Mr. Gilbert Chesterton has advised us, wisely, that in tracking down a tradition it is well to begin where you are, and follow it till you reach its source. I propose to adopt this excellent advice ; for, after all, it is just what we always do in hunting. We don’t look for a beast at large in the forest ; we find a spoor, and follow the track till we see the beast that made it. Take, then, the story of the Virgin-birth of Christ. The track from a.d. 1919 to a.d. 107 32 The Gospel and Tradition 33 we can pass over quickly. It is clearly marked, well defined, and easy to follow. We know as we follow it that the ancient tradition exists ; and we are hot on the trail by the time we come to the days of S. Ignatius, Martyr-Bishop of Antioch. Ignatius lived, roughly speaking, from about a.d. 50 to a.d. no, if not from a.d. 45. He was the friend of S. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, who lived from about a.d. 70 to a.d. 156. Poly¬ carp was a disciple of S. John the Apostle. And we cannot be wrong in placing Ignatius within the circle of S. John the Apostle, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the guardian of the Blessed Mother. Ignatius ranks the Virgin-birth, with her child¬ bearing and the atoning death of Christ, among the three mysteries wrought in the silence of God. And we are doing no violence to history if we deduce from this that he had received all these traditions at his conversion to Christ. Thus the circle of S. John must have known the fact of the Virgin-birth. No proof is needed that the Churches of the second century knew it, Churches founded by S. Peter, S. Paul, and their companions, Apostles, and assistants. We passed along their track to reach Ignatius. S. Irenaeus speaks for Gaul and Rome ; S. Justin for Syria and Rome ; Aristides for Greece and Rome ; Tertullian for Africa ; Origen for Alexandria. F 34 The Christ and His Critics We can therefore quite truly say that in the Apostolic circle of S. John, from which S. Peter and S. Paul had recently been removed by death, the story of the Virgin-birth was fully accepted in the year a.d. 70. Can we trace it further back ? S. John himself takes it back behind a.d. 70, since he took the Blessed Mother to his own home. S. Luke, who wrote his Gospel before the Acts, that is, before S. Paul died, takes it back to about a.d. 62. And as he is S. Paul’s disciple, we get back to the meeting of S. Paul and S. Peter years before. Where, then, we find three Apostles of the very first rank involved, we cannot doubt that the story has their authority. Confirming this we have the attack upon the story by Cerinthus the Heretic, a contemporary of S. John, and by the Ebionite Jewish Chris¬ tians, who broke away from the Church. The attacks on the Virgin-birth were part of an assault upon the dogma of Christ’s Deity. They represent efforts to exhibit Christianity as “Judaism with a Messiah.” The fact that it was necessary to deny the Virgin-birth in order to smash Catholic Christianity so early as this is itself excellent evidence of the universality of that tradition. When, therefore, liberals reject this tradition The Gospel and Ttadition 35 because S. Mark did not mention it, the answer is plain : — (a) He had no room for it. His Gospel begins with events of the year a.d. 26. (b) As S. Peter’s companion he must have known it ; for S. Peter’s circle in Rome and Syria accepted it. (c) As S. Paul’s companion he must have known it ; for S. Luke, one of S. Paul’s intimate followers, has placed it in his Gospel. There is, then, excellent reason for maintaining that the Virgin-birth of Jesus Christ was at first a secret of Mary’s inner circle ; that the Apos¬ tolic band knew it, and gradually let it become known ; and that in a very few years of Mary’s falling asleep it was as widely preached and believed as any other fact of the Lord’s life. The story of the resurrection of our Lord’s Body is equally well established in tradition. From 1919 we pass along the plainest tracks right back to S. Clement of Rome, who wrote the Roman Church’s letter to Corinth in a.d. 67 or thereabouts ; or, if we must put it at the latest date, about a.d. 96. There is no possible doubt that he entirely accepted the tradition of the Body’s resurrection (cf. cc. 24-27). Writing in Rome he had behind him S. Peter and S. Paul. S. Paul’s epistles to Corinth and Rome both teach it ; while S. Peter’s epistle, 36 The Christ and His Critics written not many years later, gives the same witness. And S. Peter was an eye-witness of the Risen Lord. Side by side with this we have S. Luke’s Gospel, which also involves S. Paul, and we have S. Peter’s and S. Paul’s speeches in the Acts of the Apostles ; while, finally, S. John takes us back to the very day of the Resurrection. When, therefore, you have these two traditions quite universally accepted in the first half of the second century ; when you can trace them back to S. Ignatius and S. Clement respectively, as also to the Apostolic writers, you cannot escape the conclusion that the Apostolic body received and taught both stories as part of God’s revelation in Christ. God came into flesh by birth from a virgin : God carried manhood into glory by the way of bodily resurrection. We may rest assured, therefore, that either these stories are true or the Apostles themselves connived at the invention of them. Certainly they were repeated by the Apostles as stories of actual facts. Very moderate liberals will tell you that, while themselves accepting the traditions, they cannot claim such certainty for them as permits them to press them upon other men’s minds. There is supposed to be a possibility that the Apostles themselves were not responsible for the traditions. The Gospel and Tradition 37 To us who live in a young diocese there is no such possibility at all. We know from experi¬ ence how traditions grow, and how easily they can be corrected. Our mission was moved to Zanzibar in 1864. We are, therefore, just fifty-five years from its inception, a longer time than that which separates S. Matthew or S. Luke from our Lord’s day. Dr. Tozer came here with Dr. Steere, who suc¬ ceeded him, and we have still with us some of Dr. Tozer’s converts, and some of Dr. Steere’s intimate friends and fellow-workers. Now it would be possible for stories about them on small points to spread abroad despite their in¬ accuracy : I do not know one, however, that I have not heard contradicted by some one or another. But I am sure that no story about Dr. Tozer or Dr. Steere that made them out to be quite unlike other men, whether for good or evil, could find acceptance in Zanzibar to-day, even after these fifty-five years ; for we still live with those who were in their inner circle. I have never heard any important tradition concerning Dr. Tozer or Dr. Steere that is not fully corroborated by those who know. From which fact I am encouraged in believing, what on other grounds I have assumed, that no tradition so extraordinary as these of the Birth and Resurrection of Christ could have obtained 38 The Christ and His Critics circulation in the Apostolic circle, Christ’s own circle, unless they had been strictly true. Had they arisen apart from the Apostles’ disciples, 1 could say they were fictions foisted on the Church. But within a man’s own circle no extra¬ ordinary story about him can find acceptance unless it be true. Is it not this fact which so often saddens us when we turn to the biographies of our great men, and discover for the first time how those of their inner circles correct the popular judgement, and even modify our generous admiration of our heroes ? Popular tradition is indeed fruitful : but “ faithful are the wounds of a friend.” Take three great modern heroes : Disraeli, Newman, and Gladstone. Are we not sure, now, that we have seen them as those of their own circles saw them ? Well, what these friends of theirs have done for their heroes, the Apostles and their disciples did for Jesus Christ — they spoke of Him accord¬ ing to their own knowledge. Whatever, then, the Apostles agreed to hand on is either true or a deliberately concocted fiction for which they are jointly responsible. VI THE LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC HISTORY AND PSYCHOLOGY THE suggestion that the Apostles knew the stories to be false, while making use of them in their teaching, raises another question for liberal critics who follow historical methods : Are they competent to give an opinion, as historians , on the Apostles’ power of judgement ? Here we touch the question of the limits of historical science. Can a historian claim to decide, on purely historical grounds, if a certain writer has told the truth about matters on which no other his¬ torical evidence is available ? It is clear that it is the historian’s business to answer the following questions : — [a] Is the document before us really the writer’s work ? (b) What is its date, and history ? (c) Is its text correct ? If not, how should it be amended ? ( d ) What other documents bear upon it ? 39 40 The Christ and His Critics ( e ) Is its meaning contradicted by other docu¬ ments of the same age ? (/) Are there any other documents by the same writer ? If so, what is their general character ? (g) In as far as this writer’s documents can be tested in relation to contemporary evidence, what is his character for truthfulness ? (h) What do later writers say of him and his credibility ? (k) What is the generally-established judge¬ ment on the age in which he wrote with regard to its credulity, modes of thought, etc. ? (/) Is there any special reason, proved by facts, for suspecting him of undue bias or deliberate fraud ? (m) If we regard him as untrustworthy, are others implicated with him ? If so, do their charac¬ ters justify us in giving our writer the benefit of the doubt ? Can he share their reputation for trustworthiness ? (#) Are there other writers of his age whose case is parallel with his ? What do we know of their trustworthiness ? Liberal historians may rightly answer all these questions. But they cannot, in as far as they are scientific, go beyond them. A scientific historian will report somewhat as follows: — Here is a society dating from a.d. 29, whose leaders and first disciples undoubtedly Limits of Scientific History and Psychology 41 taught the coming of God into human flesh by way of a virgin’s womb ; the performance by H im of many wonderful works ; and His departure by way of bodily resurrection. The Traditions, Gospels, and Creeds can all be, at least roughly, dated, and their texts verified. They bear comparison with all other documents of acknowledged leaders of this society from a.d. 29 down to the present day, in all essential points. They are not contradicted by contem¬ porary documents ; and, in as far as they were questioned, it was by professed enemies of the society who wished to break it. S. Mark and S. Luke are known to have been friends of eye-witnesses : S. Matthew and S. John were eye-witnesses. Also, S. Luke is admitted to be a really credible historian. The Gospels found universal acceptance in the society, whereas many rivals were rejected. The story was first preached, and the Gospels written, among the Jews of the first century. If these Jews were credulous, at least it is certain many did not believe the Gospels and the traditional story, for they refused to follow Christ, as a nation ; while some Jewish Christians tended to reject the miraculous and deny the Deity of our Lord, preferring to mingle the Gospel with Judaistic thought. We cannot, therefore, on merely historical G 42 The Christ and His Critics grounds, declare the tradition and Gospel un¬ trustworthy. Unfortunately, we cannot proceed by the way of comparison. This story is without parallel. It tells of God becoming man, and living in Palestine at a certain date. We have no other such definite story with which to compare it ; it stands alone. We can, however, verify it in one particular. The story contains the assertion that no one can believe it without first receiving a faculty called faith. And for nineteen hundred years millions of men and women, believing them¬ selves to have acquired faith in answer to prayer, have in fact found themselves able to receive this story as plain truth. And not this only. The story says that he who accepts it by faith, and makes it his own, will find himself alive with Christ in God, alive with new spiritual activities and powers. This, again, during nineteen hundred years, millions and millions have said to be exactly true. So that the historian, in as far as he is a scientist, can answer only thus : I cannot guarantee the truth of the story ; I can only guarantee that the story has been accepted for nineteen hundred years. On the other hand, I cannot allege any historical fact that contradicts it. But I am bound to testify that, in as far as Limits of Scientific History and Psychology 43 it is capable of verification in experience, millions of people have claimed, and still claim, that it has abundantly proved itself to be true to itself and its own claims. It is historically certain that the Apostles did themselves establish the story contained in the Traditions, Gospels, and Creeds of the Church. And the presumption for men of faith, from the spiritual experience of Chris¬ tians, is that it is a true story. History alone can neither prove nor disprove a story that appeals to faith. To put it in a nutshell : the historian cannot call a man untrustworthy without some external evidence ; external, I mean, to the historian’s mind. If the documents give a merely negative result, if no sign of lying or fraud or folly is evident, the historian cannot pretend to read the inner mind of his author and pronounce against him. Now in this case there is no external evidence against the truth of the Apostles’ message. And the sincerity and truthfulness of their inner minds are guaranteed to Christians by their fruit ; fruits of spiritual experience in millions and millions of souls during nearly two thousand years. A Christian, therefore, cannot reject the traditional story of Christ. Let us, then, be quite candid. The liberals who reject the c< miraculous element ” in the 44 The Christ and His Critics Apostles’ story, on grounds of historical science, have deceived themselves. They are not acting as scientific historians should act. For in fact they are judging the Apostles from their own philosophical standpoint. They do not believe in miracles at all. Therefore they are determined to cut miracles out of every history they read. That is to say, they have not the faith which the Apostles presuppose in every one who accepts their story. It is wiser to read to a Central African, who has never seen ice, the story of the North Pole than to read the Gospels to one who refuses to believe in miracles. As well deny to a native of Zanzibar the existence of clove-trees as deny to a faithful Christian the wonderful work of God made flesh. In this abstract question of miracles we are outside the sphere in which historical tests are valid. Suppose there are miracles, there is historical evidence that Jesus Christ performed many. Assume there are no miracles, there is historical evidence that the friends of Jesus said He performed many. And here history leaves us. It remains to face the philosophy of the miraculous ! Into that I have no mind to go with you. I refer you to the works of Dr. Illingworth and Professor A. C. Headlam. I cannot, however, refrain from expressing the Limits of Scientific History and Psychology 45 desire that those liberal prelates and priests who do not believe in miracles, and claim to have reduced the universe to terms commen¬ surate with their own experience, would refrain from posing as unbiassed critics of a narrative that is inseparably bound up with miracles. I must, however, pass on to a further limita¬ tion of historical science. Liberals claim to criticize Christ Himself. They judge Him. They tell you how He slowly grew to a consciousness of His vocation ; how limited He was in His mind through sharing the darkness and superstition of His age ; how little He knew about Himself and His relation with His Father ; how mistaken He was in associat¬ ing personal immortality with bodily resurrection; and how He deceived Himself and us with vain promises of an external appearance in glory at the last day. All this, they assure us, is firmly established on the basis of historical science. I submit that they deceive themselves, but not us. They are not speaking here as historians at all. An honest, scientific historian must report of Christ somewhat as follows : “ I am entirely puzzled. Here is one Who spake as never man spake ; who moved through His life to a painful death with a clear sense of what He was doing, of what it was laid upon Him to do ; Who 46 The Christ and His Critics mingled, in a manner history cannot match, an interior purpose more than human with an exterior bearing and experience that are entirely human ; Who, in speaking of the future, uttered warnings that, at one and the same time, might be applied either to particular incidents of divine judgement or to human life summed up as a whole in the judge’s mind. I do not pretend to explain Him. My science of history is inade¬ quate to the task. For, by the hypothesis underlying the story, He cannot be compared with any one in history. He claims to be more than mere man. I cannot test Him by our usual standards. He claims to be God in man¬ hood. Therefore, while He is so human that I, a man, can understand all that He shows me, I can¬ not pretend to measure the inner life of the Christ. And if, leaving my domain of history, I deny the hypothesis of His Deity, I can only treat Him as the greatest fraud in my historical experience. But that is outside the limits of my science.” So speaks the truly scientific historian, utter¬ ing a purely historic judgement. It is the same with psychology as with history. No really scientific psychologist will undertake to explain by his science a personality of whom it is postulated that He is God in manhood. The psychologist would rightly answer, “ My dear sir, do not mock me ! I can deal with the Limits of Scientific History and Psychology 47 faculties and functionings of any mere man : measure them, compare them, classify them. And no doubt I could throw some little light upon some actions of this Christ of yours, if so be His manhood was indeed complete. But if you assure me that He Himself, Who owned and exercised these human faculties, is really and truly God, well — please excuse me ! I really am not mad enough to believe that man can measure his Maker ! ” No. It is only the liberal critic who can dare to be so unscientific as to claim to criticize his God ; comparing Him with prophets and teachers ; labelling His actions and speeches ; diving into His inner mind, and exposing His hidden motives. No wonder some liberals end up in preaching from the pulpit that Jesus is in fact distinct from God, and that Jesus-worship is a superstition to be renounced ! Where there is no holy fear there is not likely to be worship ; where there is no worship faith soon dies. If only the liberals were pagans we could make out a good case for their methods. A man who admittedly neither has nor desires faith can see nothing in Christ but manhood, and therefore naturally applies to Him tests that he gathers from philosophy and psychology. But these liberals are bishops and priests, ministers of Christ, and many of them assure 48 The Christ and His Critics us that they still worship Him as God. They claim to possess faith, and to walk by it ; nay, more, they claim to lead others in faith’s highway. Indeed, it is astonishing that they use faith so little, and follow so easily along the path of irrational, unscientific criticism. The choice of the psychologist is simple. If he has faith in incarnate God, he regards our God Jesus as a fact for which his psychology must make room. But if he be a “ modern ” first and foremost, he builds up his psychology on facts that do not include Jesus Who is God and, therefore, has no room for Him. In closing this part of my argument let me just allude to the liberals’ assumption that Christ’s mind was dark and superstitious because He believed in demoniac possession. There is no need for me to remind you that demoniac possession is a fact. We in Africa have actual experience of it. Slow as we are to accept such an explanation in any particular case, quick as we are to grasp any other cause that may account for the phenomena before us, we are nevertheless compelled sometimes to confess that we are “ up against ” demons. The fact that exorcism, apart from faith-healing, is powerful in such cases to restore a man to his right mind encourages us to trust our diagnosis. 1 speak from experience, not by the book. VII A CONTRAST BETWEEN LIBERAL¬ ISM AND ORTHODOXY T this stage let me set out a fundamental L*- difference of thought concerning Christ between the liberal and the conservative theo¬ logians. You all know that in the catholic theory the Lord Jesus Christ, in His ascended and therefore glorified manhood, is the first-fruit of the old creation to God ; the foundation-stone of the new spiritual race of redeemed mankind, the fountain of its life and power, and the mirror in which, for it, is reflected the vision of God. You are also well aware that in order to establish Himself and our manhood in this, the central, place of the new creation, the Eternal Word took our flesh and dwelt among us. So dwelling in our midst His manhood was found complete and morally perfect, sinless, God- indwelt, and God-aided. It was, indeed, the limit that bounded His personal activity : He did nothing except through His manhood. But this limit is not to be compared with what our 49 H 50 The Christ and Mis Critics sinful manhood would have imposed on Him. The very perfection of His manhood, and the relation of it with His divine Self, so widen its limits as to render possible the works He per¬ formed. Of these wide limits no a priori judge¬ ment is valid, whether for or against : we can only know what the Gospels tell us about them. Thus we may truly say that, in catholic theo¬ logy, Christ’s manhood is the crown of this present order of creation ; His soul the highest, noblest, and truest image of God ; quite adequate to be God’s instrument of self-revelation to men ; and His mind inerrant, not to be compared with the mind of any sinful man, whether contemporary, earlier, or later. Just because He was all this in the old order, He is able to be the foundation of the new order of creation : foundation, fountain of life, mirror of divine vision, and glorious crown of the universe. Now see how differently the liberal thinks of Christ. To him there is only one order of creation. Man, if he fell, “ tell upwards ” : he is slowly developing a notion of God, in which one day the human race will find all the truth it can assimilate. Under divine guidance, not to be too clearly defined, whether Holy Spirit, or spirit with a small “ s,” or man’s instinct for God, Contrast between Liberalism and Orthodoxy 51 mankind has been slowly working out its thoughts of God : purifying them, enlightening them, co-ordinating them. Of this we have some definite records in history. Leaving on one side such records as the Greeks supply, with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as their ultimate successes, we have two stories that stand alone. There is the story of the Jewish Church and the story of the Christian Church. Practically they sufficiently cover for our purpose the life of man in the world. The Old Testament records how the Jewish prophets, in response to God’s Spirit working in them as religious instinct, developed a pure monotheistic faith, and attained some noble ideas of God. Among them is the idea of national election to be the instrument of a universal knowledge of God and His will, with which some of the greatest prophets associated the coming of a particular prophet, the Messiah, Who should inaugurate a real kingdom of God upon earth. Christianity is the story of the Son of Joseph and Mary, Who came slowly to believe Himself to be this Messiah, and persuaded His disciples to accept Him as such. In Him God was revealed in a special degree, because His response to the indwelling Spirit was so true and so constant that His will contained 52 The Christ and His Critics nothing that is not also within the divine will. The more extreme liberals stop short, however, of ascribing moral perfection to Him : a relative moral perfection, if such a term were not a contradiction, they would like to allow Him. In Christ, then, God was revealed. The mode of the revelation, however, was just that which we find in the prophets. God instructed Christ inwardly, or Christ assimilated the divine truth ; but, as far as men about Him were con¬ cerned, Jesus was merely one man among many. He is the one man above reproach. He has wonderful insight into the nature of God’s Fatherhood, into the springs of man’s conduct, and into the way of man’s progress ; but for all that He is merely man. The liberals assert that, whatever the secret of this man’s innermost self may be, it was hidden from His disciples. Some go so far as to say it was hidden from Himself. All we need to know is that in Christ God added to His orderly creation a new idea of Himself, a seed of new thought. This seed was planted in the human mind of Christ, as all such seeds are planted in human minds, and communicate their fruits from mind to mind. The Christian society is the band of men and women who recognize in Christ this new idea of God, and seek to take it into Contrast between Liberalism and Orthodoxy 53 their own minds, until at last the idea will be universally extended and universally fruitful. The essential idea Christ had of God is not more developed to-day than it was when it first came to H im. It is final. But our minds have become far more enlightened than was His nor¬ mal Jewish mind. For Christ Himself lives in the power of an endless life. His spirit is immortal. He exer¬ cises an influence over us all here on earth which sets us, slowly, free from the world’s darkness and folly. In the measure that men respond to Him within themselves they are able to assimilate His idea of God. As it is assimi¬ lated, it acts upon their minds, to illuminate and purify them. So that, little by little, as generation succeeds to generation, the Christian society is found emerging from its primitive darkness and super¬ stition, ever advancing in closer apprehension of the God of Jesus Christ, at the same time co-ordinating His essential idea with their grow¬ ing knowledge of the universe. The religious instinct is man’s spirit or Christ’s spirit, according to the point of view. And its mode of operation is essentially the same as that of all other human instincts ; it is internal to man ; it developes within him ; emerges, energizes, retires, recuperates, and once more re-emerges. 54 The Christ and His Critics Thus it has been, thus it will be, while man¬ kind continues upon earth. The truth of God is within man, and must be expressed by man. Of this Christ is the highest individual ex¬ ample. But the attainment of Christ’s society, in which His endless life energizes, will exceed, nay, has already exceeded, His own individual attainment while He remained on earth. If we may put it from the point of view in which God’s action towards us is considered, the liberals mean that God introduced into a slowly develop¬ ing world the true seed of spiritual life and knowledge in and through Jesus Christ, Who in all other respects was just what was normal in His own time. The Lord Jesus, now living in the power of His endless life, draws out from the seed God sowed whatever of life and truth each generation needs and can assimilate, com¬ municating it to those who unite their will with His. With the result that He slowly, but surely, lifts men to higher levels, on which the normal human development is higher and nobler than in His own days on earth. If, then, liberals claim more light on normal earthly affairs than He enjoyed, they mean Him no disrespect ; rather, they express gratitude to Him that He so chooses to lead them from truth to truth. It is His doing. Christ is the final revelation of God. Contrast between Liberalism and Orthodoxy 55 But to some of them He is final in the sense of u Christ in mankind,” not “ Christ in Galilee.” The more moderate liberals call this act of God in Christ, whatever its exact nature, the miracle of Christianity . They would desire to see finality in Christ of Galilee. He is God’s momentary interference with the world’s evolu¬ tion, that He might impart to it a final gift of truth without which it could not reach its final goal. They even call Jesus God incarnate. Less moderate liberals prefer to avoid this phrase as meaningless — as all old dogmas and creeds are said now to be. They call Him divine ; of like will with the Father’s will. The more extreme liberals see no certain evidence for such an external act of God. They do not deny it ; but they prefer to emphasize man’s progress to moral likeness with God. In this sense, we may all be Christs, Sons of God, divine. Moderate liberals may think me bitter and unfair but, in fact, I am speaking the truth. There is no moderate liberalism ; liberalism, logically developed, is as I have stated it. A moderate liberal is merely a liberal who is afraid of his own principles ; he wants to be up to date without paying the full price, and he clings to this or that old tradition or dogma because he likes it. On his own principles, he is 56 The Christ and His Critics playing a double game ; and the sad thing is that he is quite unconscious of what he is doing. Dr. Henson frankly asserts Christ’s sinless¬ ness on the grounds of tradition and the Church’s estimate of His character. He rejects his liberal principles in dealing with this point. The Virgin-birth, the Bodily Resurrection, the Master’s inerrant teaching, and His miracles are at least equally well established. But Dr. Hen¬ son refuses to assert them. He is an instance of a liberal who is afraid of his own principles when they deprive him of what he really values. Dr. Latimer Jackson, a priest of the Chelms¬ ford Diocese, is a true liberal. He follows the principles he and Dr. Henson both profess to their logical end. He will not assert Christ’s moral perfection, he counts Him distinct from God, he denies Him resurrection other than the immortality of His soul, and corrects His idea of His own second advent. VIII COMPARATIVE RELIGION THE comparative study of religions is, like psychology, a new obsession of the liberal mind. We are supposed to set out in parallel columns the beliefs and customs of all known religions contemporary with, or antecedent to, Christianity, to note their similarities, and to account for them all by labelling them products of the human mind. The residue of Christi¬ anity that has no parallel is to be ascribed to Christ Himself or to S. Paul. It is a “unique” contribution to our thought ; and has been sadly overweighted by many doctrines and rites evidently stolen, in germ at least, from the parallel columns. By this method of criticism we are at once freed from the miraculous element of Christi¬ anity, and from the idea of sacramental grace. In fact, we can, if we desire it, finish our com¬ parative study by producing a picture of the liberal’s Christ. We ask, however, whence came those ideas that find expression in the “ unique ” doctrine 58 The Christ and His Critics and activity of the Christ, and in the charac¬ teristic teaching of S. Paul ? Justification by faith, conversion, sanctification, and mystical union with God in Christ are S. Paul’s chief contributions to theology. They are found in no parallel columns in the synopsis of religion. Whence have they come ? What is there lying behind them that gives them their reality and vital force ? S. Paul says that Christ is their foundation, their reality, and their vital force. But, according to liberals, Christ is in the same judgement as S. Paul. His record is in the synopsis : parallels exist for all except His character, and His plenary inspiration in certain few matters. Now the Christ’s special contribution to the world is a doctrine of God’s love, illustrated by a life of filial dependence upon the Father ; together with His atoning activity which, at the cost of His own life, has established the union of mankind with God, within His own mystical Body. The salient points in this revelation are ex¬ pressed in Christ’s self-sacrificing service ; His human perfection ; His Passion, Death, and Resurrection to heavenly life ; and His claim to dwell within the hearts of men. With these there is no true parallel. Whence, then, have Comparative Religion 59 they come ? What is there lying behind them that gives them their reality and vital force ? S. Paul claims Christ as the foundation of his special contribution. And the Christ claims, as foundation of His peculiar revelation, nothing less than His own essential oneness with the Father. Here, then, students of “ comparative religion ” must cry a halt. They have reached their boun¬ dary. That which has no parallel in history is incomparable, strictly speaking ; it is not within their science. A specialist in cotton-goods is well within his rights in claiming to account, in terms of cotton- goods, for the various styles of dress affected in Africa. He may tabulate them, and assign each tribe its normal mode of dress. But we should feel a little shocked did he claim, on the ground of his knowledge of cotton-goods, our respectful attention to his judgements on the characters and mentality of his different customers. We should resent his claim. And rightly. For a likeness in dress does not at all imply a like¬ ness in personality. A man may be able to trace the relationship between a kilt and a loin-cloth, and yet be ignorant of both Gaelic and Kiswahili, as also of the personalities those languages reveal. We are, then, no further on when we have 60 The Christ and His Critics eliminated from Christianity those things in which it is comparable with other religions. We have still to explain the central mystery of Christ Himself. Is it, therefore, really scientific to depreciate in Christianity all that it has in common with other systems of religion ? If Christ be truly God, as Christianity asserts, He will doubtless incorporate in His revelation, which deals with our relations with our Father, much that the Father has been using, down the ages, in His efforts to draw men nearer to Himself. Eternal Love is attractive ; He seeks to attract. And what you are able to write down in parallel columns, under the heading of a synopsis of different men’s thoughts about God, may as properly be called a synopsis of God’s ways of attracting different men to Himself. So labelled, the synopsis is of real use. For when we add the column containing Christianity’s record, and find how much it has in common with other religions, we are the more convinced of Love’s unbroken effort to win a response of love from H is children. The main conclusion, therefore, is not that Christianity contains much dross, like all other religions ; rather, it is that much of other reli¬ gions is so near the truth as to merit inclusion in Christianity. Comparative Religion 61 Christianity thus stands out as the final, inclusive revelation. It contains all that is true about our relations with God and with one another. This does not mean there is no dross in our presentment of Christianity, as in other men’s presentation of their religions. Dross there is, and in plenty. But it does mean that the measure of truthfulness is not included in the appliances of the comparative religionist. That measure is still in the hands of the Christian society ; it is a spiritual measure that only spiritual men can apply. To reject Christ’s Virgin-birth, for example, at the bidding of students of comparative reli¬ gion is to be unscientific, illogical, and ultra- sceptical. It is to be unscientific, since the so-called science of comparative religion cannot even guess how God might or might not come ; it is to be illogical, for you cannot argue from some pagan’s idea of incarnation to the falseness of the Apostolic notion of Christ’s coming ; and it is to be ultra-sceptical ; it betrays a lack of faith both in God’s freedom and God’s power. Finally, it is to be all three together ; unscientific, illogical, ultra-sceptical : it excludes the possibility that God may have tried to prepare the race for the manner of His coming. I do not hesitate to maintain that in dealing 62 The Christ and His Critics with Christianity it is too late to alter its credal basis. You cannot apply to Christ the tests of any known science, except in regard of His manhood. Personally, essentially (or however we choose to state a man’s right to say “I”), the Christ is God. And God’s activity no man may claim to measure. The liberals will answer that I have begged the whole question ; that we can only know who Christ is after we have measured Him by all the scientific tests we have. We reply that we have assumed that Christ is God because we desire to explain Christianity, and Christianity offers us our assumption in the form of its primary postu¬ late. If you deny the possibility of Christ being God, you cannot explain Christianity at all ; you cannot explain the Apostles or Christ. As I say, it is too late to alter Christianity. Either accept it or reject it. In any case, the com¬ parative study of religions is of no use to us in this connection. The nearest analogy with it is the comparative study of the human figure, in all its different varieties, in order to decide dogmatically whether Francis Bacon was Bacon, or Shakespeare, or both. IX THE CHRIST OF EXPERIENCE ] KNOW how reactionary all this must sound, for I was “ tutored ” by the chief of the English liberals, and I still read liberal works, trying to understand their meaning. But the effect they have on me is reactionary. I react from them to Christ of Calvary and of the Sacrament. A man’s knowledge of a person requires his whole personality. You can’t know a man really from historical inquiry, a critical examina¬ tion of his letters, and some conversation with him daily about yourself and his relations with you. You must kpow him as he is related to all that makes up his own worlds and as his world touches yours . So does the true wife know her husband ; a true husband his wife. So of two friends does each plumb the depths of his companion’s heart. Perhaps for this reason Christ is called the Bridegroom of our souls. He who really knows Christ well enough to take and announce, in some small degree, His true measure, knows Him with just such a know- ledge as this I have tried, but failed, to describe. 63 64 The Christ and His Critics He knows Christ, his God, in His immediate relations with the human race : its sorrows, its pains, its temptations ; its disunion, its discord ; its efforts, its failure ; its hopes, its aspirations ; its goodness, its nobility ; its vocation and its true meaning. And this knowledge can only come with an understanding of what brought Christ our God to Gethsemane and Calvary. Looking into His face as He dies upon the Cross a man sees Christ, his God, as He is related to the whole human race : he knows Him as Saviour, Redeemer, and Sacrifice for sin. He meditates on the divine preparation for the atoning Sacrifice ; he recalls Christ’s purposeful progress from Nazareth to Calvary ; he understands a little the Master’s ever-present consciousness of the inevitable Passion ; he would guess, faintly enough, what it cost Him to endure it ; and he rejoices in his Lord’s certain triumph over sin and death, in His resurrection from the tomb. Knowing Christ so far, he learns to know Him in His relation Godward and manward. God- ward : for he recognizes Eternal Love within the Christ, in all He suffers and performs. Man- ward also : since Christ crucified is just Eternal Love giving Himself to win us for Himself. He sees in Christ human response gathered up into, and made one with, the Word’s personal response to the Father’s love. The Christ of Experience 65 And as he seeks to co-ordinate Calvary’s Gospel with his own daily life, here and now, the disciple of Christ acquires an ever-deepen¬ ing knowledge of Eternal Love. Our life, too, has its inevitable pains and sorrows ; its occa¬ sions for self-oblation and unselfish service ; its claims from Eternal Love upon our responsive love. In fact, it is unintelligible unless we inter¬ pret it as Christ shows us how. As an oblation, it must be related to the atoning Sacrifice once offered and ever presented. As a progress God- wards, it must be caught up into Christ’s own purposeful progress to Calvary ; our guesses at the future being redeemed and enlightened by His accurate knowledge of what lies before Him : a consciousness, true and complete ; whether, here on earth, of all that would over¬ take Him ; or, there in glory, of all that must overtake us. And as a responsive sacrifice of love to Love, it must be made one, step by step, with His life of continuous endurance for Love’s sake. Thus we are enabled to enter into a fuller knowledge of our beloved Saviour. He is with us, thinking thoughts that are ours, yet not ours because completed in His own ; thoughts that are His, yet not His because He has translated them into our own mental modes. Looking into the face of Christ of Calvary we K 66 The Christ and His Critics cannot be deceived. Here is no fanatic Who so abused men’s patience that they were driven to slay Him. Here is no prophet Who, thinking Himself likely to win the world by tactless teaching, awoke suddenly to the imminence of His Crucifixion. On the contrary, we see one Who was born that He might so die ; Who had “ foreseen ” and “ foresuffered ” the Cross, the inevitable price that He must pay for loving God and man, where only hatred reigned ; one whose whole experience of grief and pain is just the conscious self-expression of unquenchable Love incarnate. With our whole personality we men lay hold of Him so revealed to us. We know Him, in our minds, as one Who has proved that He loves us up to the death ; in our wills, as one Who calls us daily to follow in His steps through a suffering world ; in our hearts, as Eternal Love Himself ; and in our life of service, as the Lover of the whole world. So we know Him with a knowledge that defies mere rational standards. In the Sacrament He receives us with His whole personality ; with manhood complete, spiritual, glorious, as with His very Self of God¬ head. So received, embraced, comforted ; so fed, refreshed, empowered ; we are made truly one with Him : and in us He shows love to The Christ of Experience 67 His Father and serves His brethren. Receiv¬ ing Him, we are received by Love Himself. And we have proved Him, times without number. What He was on earth, He has ever been to us. What He is to us, He was once on earth. We know Him whom we have believed. And as He is able to keep us until that day, with all we commit to His care, so was He ever master of His own life. Some liberal will, perhaps, accuse me of pre¬ sumption. “ Who, after all, are you who dare talk as if spiritual experience were your peculiar prerogative ? Is it you only who know Christ so well as to be able to measure Him in parts ? ” “ My dear sir,” I reply, “ I do no liberal any harm ! I grant my experience may be far smaller, shallower, unworthier than that of every liberal on earth. You miss the point. The point is that the Christ of whom they have experience is one, and the Christ of whom I have experience is quite another.” Indeed, it is come to that. Admitting that whoever is right, and whoever wrong, Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, it is none the less the fact that Jesus as the liberals know Him is not Jesus as I know Him. Their Jesus is more different from my Jesus than our God from the Moslem’s Allah. The God of Jesus and the God of Islam at least have the 68 The Christ and His Critics notion of Divine Majesty in common ; Jesus of the liberals and my Jesus have nothing in common but the Name. Their Jesus is a fallible Jew; my Jesus is the God by whom the universe was made. Is it, then, surprising if we simple, ignorant missionaries feel and speak strongly about liberalism ? You will bear me out that Gethsemane and Calvary are most real in Africa ; that Christ is brutally crucified here, crucified in the persons of Africans, by His professing followers, for the usual gain of silver pieces. To the seeing eye Africa is Calvary extended down the ages ; and Africa’s resurrection is not yet. God in manhood, God on the Cross, God of the Empty Tomb — what other hope have we ? And I came to you in the name of the English bishops, consecrated by their Apostolic hands, to help you deliver to these sufferers the one, unchanging Apostolic message of hope. Now, into the glory of our Calvary breaks the voice of prelatic and priestly liberalism. And its message, what is it ? It is that Africans cannot possibly understand the Gospels, Church, or Sacraments until they are learned enough to reinterpret them in the light of modern European thought ! Poor Africans; not yet amongst the “ wise of this The Christ of Experience 69 world ” ! 1 still remember, nay, 1 still feel the strong emotion that stirred within my heart as I read, in a sermon of a prominent young liberal, whose service to the Church has been always academic, that the life of our Lord and Master was cut short before He had finished what He had set Himself to accomplish ! I felt then, as I feel now, that the preacher was, uninten¬ tionally, no doubt, insulting my Saviour, my Lord, and my God. He was talking glibly of One whom he did not really know. There is the Christ, the dear Christ of Cal¬ vary and the Altar ; our Lord and our God. He has said “The hour is come ! ” He is cry¬ ing, “ It is finished ! Father, into Thy hands !” And this dignified don, out of the comfortable life of his study, breaks in upon His silence : “ Yes ; but you have left your work undone ! ” Truly, then, Satan conquered God. And at last, after nineteen hundred years, he has found priests brave enough and clever enough to break the news to Him ! X THE INERRANCY OF CHRIST OU will not object, in view of the length of this letter, if I pass over several other peculiarities of liberalism without notice. I am anxious to place before you some theological considerations that support the notion of revela¬ tion I have laid before you. This I do with extra diffidence, since I am often told that my theological utterances are so obscure as to over¬ pass man’s limit of patience. I will, however, endeavour to write as clearly as possible. First, then, I invite you to consider what kind of person he must be to whom, at one and the same moment, a stone is both white and black, a river frozen and in flood, and a ship full and empty. And I ask you also to guess what kind of knowledge that is which can include, under one harmonious conception, to the exclusion of all contrariness, the notions of black and white, ice and flood, fulness and emptiness. Lewis Carroll, with his portmanteau words, might help us here ! 70 The Inerrancy of Christ 71 Why do I ask this ? Because, in order to be a liberal who still worships Jesus as God, you must imagine the Word Incarnate as holding two contrary conceptions of one thing, in which con¬ trariness He Himself perceives no discord. For example. Here are two contrary con¬ ceptions about demons. “ Demons do not pos¬ sess men.” “ This man is possessed by a demon, and I am about to cast the demon out.” At one and the same moment the Eternal Word of God held both these conceptions as true, if so be He was really incarnate in an “ historic Jesus” Who was deceived about demons. In answer to this view of the Christ’s mind, I submit that the Eternal Word did not exercise wisdom ; He is Wisdom. We do not think of Him as separable from His divine nature, using it as His instrument of thought ; He is Thought. God and God’s nature are not separable even in our thought. Again, all that is is contained within Him, if we may so speak. “ All things were life in Him.” When, therefore, He took manhood, and made a human mind His own, He did so in order to be able to express, through the medium of a human mind and brain, something of what was eternally contained within Himself, divine Wisdom. He was under necessary constraint not to 72 The Christ and His Critics express anything beyond what His own, illumin¬ ated, human mind could express rationally. He became man. He depended on His human mind. Its task was to reveal God humanly. It would therefore express much more than our minds can. But we have no means of judging a priori how His mind must have worked ; we can only study the records, and try to understand. It is, however, clear that He could not express through His human mind anything that is not contained within His own personal wisdom. Whatever He did, in fact, express is true. If He spoke of casting out devils, then demons did really possess men. If He associated bodily resurrection with immortality, His Body is risen, and His tomb was empty. Nor need we boggle at the homely human terms He used. He had to make Himself intelligible to His hearers ; He used their terms, their idioms, their imagery. But He did not deceive them ; He told them the strict truth. Of course, we do not claim that the words written by the Evangelists were dictated by God. Also, we are willing to weigh the opinions of the critics as to what words are really Christ’s and what are the explanations and glosses of the Apostles. But, in the last resort, when once we are convinced that Christ believed or made some The Inerrancy of Christ 73 one definite statement, we too must believe it. For He is the Truth ; He is not deceived, nor can He deceive. There is no real difficulty in thus conceiving the matter, if so be God is incarnate. Our own experience in using two mediums of self-expres¬ sion points in this direction. You are English ; your use of English is practically automatic ; you do not hesitate in expressing what is contained within your mind. But you have come to Zanzibar and have learned Swahili, more or less. Is it conceivable that when you have learned Swahili idioms and modes of expressions you would deliberately teach your people in Swahili a doctrine that you would repudiate as a lie if expressed in English ? Is it not the fact that your inner self cannot reconcile two essentially contrary statements at all ? And will the accident that one is in Eng¬ lish and the other in Swahili make you feel less of a deceiver ? This is a poor analogy, but it shows my meaning. Every mind has its subject, who expresses himself through it. Who, then, is the subject who expressed himself in the dark, superstitious, Jewish mind of the “historic Jesus”? Is He the Eternal Word ? It cannot be He. For L 74 The Christ and His Critics whenever He expresses Himself He expresses something contained in His wisdom, in His truth ; He cannot express what is not true. Is the subject of this dark mind a merely human person ? It must be so ; He is just Jesus the son of Joseph and Mary ! But, if so, in what sense is the Eternal Word incarnate in Jesus Christ ? And in what sense is Jesus the object of our adoring worship ? Logical liberals, like Dr. Latimer Jackson, will reply that Jesus is distinct from God, and that “ Jesus worship” is a superstition. In worshipping Jesus they worship Eternal God, with whom Jesus is so closely united as to be, in a unique degree, like God, and the Way to God. But the Bishop of Hereford worships Jesus Himself, and calls Him God incarnate. I submit to Dr. Henson that he must either believe all the Lord Jesus tells him or give up worshipping Him. In saying this I claim psychology as a witness. It is entirely unknown in human experience that a completely trustworthy and truth-loving person should, consciously, make himself responsible for two quite contradictory assertions about a fact of grave importance, and justify himself on the ground that, in making the second asser¬ tion, he was using a medium of expression commonly associated with fallacious utterances. The Inerrancy of Christ 75 Just because he was trustworthy he would refrain from using a medium that could force him to say what he himself knew to be untrue. If it be urged that we know nothing about the Word’s incarnation, we still know what merely human canons of trustworthiness require. If we follow Dr. Sanday’s hint that in Jesus the “ consciousness ” is the human, while the divine is “subconscious,” and rarely asserts itself, we are no further on. For the Word took man¬ hood to express Himself : and if He be only in the “ subconsciousness ” of the manhood He is not in full possession of the manhood, nor is the manhood the expression of His full divine personality. I would have you think of it still further. It is so important. The Christ speaks to God of demoniac possession, as well as to men ; He casts out demons by prayer. When, then, the “historic Jesus” was speaking with His Father about demons, Who exactly is He Who made the prayer, speaking to the Father of that which the Father knew to be an illusion ? Is it the Eternal Word of the Father, the Truth of the Father ? When the Word uplifts His human soul into the mysterious converse of Triune Love, does the soul so affect Him that the Godhead adopts illusions, deceits, mistakes ? It is clear that He who prays about illusions is 76 The Christ and His Critics not the Eternal Word ; he must be a mere human person, Jesus, son of Joseph. The whole action of the Incarnate Word God- ward must be capable of harmonious co-ordination with the eternal, mutual activity of love in which the Word Himself is God. His human prayers must be such as to express dimly, and to be caught up into, the eternal love in which the Word is dependent on the Father, the love that we in our poverty of language call filial. It is impossible, therefore, that the Word should admit deceit or fallacy or illusion into His prayer, just because all three are barred from His life Who is Triune Love. That which can find no room in eternal love, wisdom, and truth has no room in the Word Incarnate. That which can find no room in the Word Incarnate has no room in the Word’s human mind. If, then, the “historic Jesus” gave room in H is mind to deceit or fallacy or illusion, the “ historic Jesus ” is not, personally and essentially, the Eternal Word. He is mere man. To wor¬ ship Him is idolatry, even if the worshipper be priest or prelate. It is no good trying to hide this clear issue with eloquent words and empty phrases. Theo¬ logy and psychology are allied against the liberal who still worships Jesus the Deceived and the Deceiver. Nor can we justify our worship of The Inerrancy of Christ 77 Him on the ground that He did not intend to deceive ; that we had no right to expect the truth from Him on such a point. Before I worship Jesus I must be in a position to believe that what He said to His Father in His prayers was entirely in harmony with the divine Wisdom, whose Word He essentially is. Otherwise the Godhead is divided, and Truth itself an illusion. XI DIVINE AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE to His own personal wisdom. God sees all things that are as one whole : they all are within that thought of His which is expressed in the universe. They all exist because His thought contains them. They are because He knows them as one whole. Does this mean that God’s thought does not include the various elements which, in our experi¬ ence, make up any one thing, from its first beginning in created form up to its fulfilment ? Clearly not. For each constituent element, each stage of growth, and even of decay as a means to higher forms of life, are real just because God’s thought contains them all. The fact of chief importance is that divine knowledge may, with reverent reservations, best be called synthetic : it embraces all things as they are duly related to each other and to their Creator, in one whole. Therefore it embraces all the parts of any one thing as they too are duly 78 \ Divine and Hitman Knowledge 79 related to each other. And, likewise, it embraces all the mutual relations themselves as seen in their various stages. As God’s knowledge embraces the universe, so it embraces a regiment, a man, a jelly-fish : as being each a whole : as being each part of a whole : and as being each the sum of varying relations between thing and thing. Things exist, that is, as wholes, as parts, as terms of relations, because God’s thought so contains them. To put it in another way. God knows things not as independent existences, but as His own ideas. He knows them, as it were, from within Himself. And since His ideas are just His one thought that is expressed in the universe, they are a unity ; they cannot be apart from Him or from each other. When the Eternal Word took a human soul His purpose was to communicate to men some¬ thing more of what His creative thought contains. He was to reveal more of Himself in His rela¬ tions with His creatures ; more of His creatures in their relations with Him and with one another. These truths, therefore, had to be so expressed and stated as to be intelligible to us men. The truths themselves come from Him Who sees the many as only one ; Who sees all as a whole. 80 The Christ and His Critics They are to be received by us here on earth who see the one as the many, and the whole as merely a collection of separate parts. Our knowledge is primarily analytical. We see things separately : we isolate, in thought, part from part, stage from stage. That is our proper province. In the work of synthesis we are sorely handicapped. We believe a synthesis is possible ; we strive to accomplish it ; but the conditions in which we live and do our thinking are not favourable. We see things in succession, a series of changes. We speak of past, present, and future. We interpret richness of life and fulness of being in terms of duration or area. We can measure everything and compare it with its neighbour. Such is the human mind that God condescended to use as His means of communicating to us His truth. It is necessary to consider if His mode of knowledge and ours are so different as to exclude all measure of likeness. They are radically different. He sees from the inside ; He sees all as one. We see from the outside ; we see the one split up into the many. Yet there is a point of contact between the two modes of knowledge. He whose own know¬ ledge is of the first mode created the second mode to be the means by which we, whose knowledge Divine and Human Knowledge 81 is determined by it, might learn from Him and come to know Him. That is to say, the second mode of knowledge lies within the creative thought of God. Again, while we see the one as many, and God sees the many as one, it is true that we both see one and the same individual thing under one mode or another. And as God created, by “ thinking ” it, the mode under which I see a thing, it is not irrational to say that He too sees a thing as I see it : not “ essentially ” as the thing’s Creator, but as it were ‘‘accidentally,” as Creator of me and my way of seeing it. In this “accidental” relation to me and my way of seeing a thing God has His point of con¬ tact between His knowledge and ours. There is in Eternal Wisdom an idea of the mental isolation of thing from thing : an idea expressed not in His own mode of knowledge, but in His creation of the mode under which we, His creatures, are to gain our knowledge. When, then, the idea of incarnation was given visible form, when the Word became flesh, it was His own idea of mental isolation of thing from thing that made it natural to God to assume our human mind, which sees things only in succession. The Eternal Word can, really and truly, use a human mind and brain as a means of M 82 The Christ and His Critics limited self-expression, in the terms of succession and of change. These terms, as a matter of experience, become modified as a man grows in mystical union with the Word made flesh. The human mind, natur¬ ally aware of the necessity of seeing the many as ane, and all things as a whole, is also capable in no small degree of unifying what it knows. In the Christ of glory it tends more and more to unify all with Him, and in Him with God. This does not mean that we can ever escape from our mental limitations. To do that were to cease to be ourselves. But it does mean that our vision of God will be real ; and that it will include a growing apprehension of the unity of all things in the Christ. Need we, then, be surprised beyond measure at the proposition that the Word’s human mind, in virtue of His Deity and its own moral and intellectual perfection, was capable, in a degree peculiarly its own, of the interior vision of God ; and that in the power of that interior vision, it had a surpassing apprehension of things as a whole, of the many as one ? And this without in the least losing its normal human mode of knowledge ? I go so far as to submit that the acceptance of some such proposition as this is made necessary by the evidence of the Gospels. Divine and Human Knowledge 83 The liberals are unable to accept as authentic any sayings of our Lord that hint at His proper oneness with the Father, His glory that He had with the Father, and such-like secrets of the divine Being. They regard them as part of some Christian author’s attempt to show Christ as the Church of the second generation came to comprehend Him. They say no merely human mind could have expressed such secrets of heaven ; and Christ’s mind was human, and one only. I, too, lay stress on the oneness of the human mind of the Christ. The Word took flesh, that flesh should be His one and only medium of communication with me. I, too, admit that these words, and others like them, are secrets of the Word’s relation with the Father. But, none the less, I submit that the Word’s human mind was competent to apprehend, and to express, as much of the Christ’s personal relation with the Father as the Gospel records describe. The human mind is not so entirely apart from the Word as not to be able to share with Him, in some small degree, a vision of unity in God. To this we all look forward, Christians and, in their degree, pagan philosophers whom the Word had taught. We may not therefore deny to the human mind of the Word such a vision of His own 84 The Christ and His Critics eternal wisdom as made it possible for Him to reveal His own essential relation with the Creator and the creatures. I cannot, myself, see why men deny to Jesus Christ conceptions of His relation to His Father that S. John or some second-century writer is said to have imagined. If this writer’s mind could imagine them, is it not possible that Christ’s mind also could conceive them ? In any case, we who are not liberals accept S. John’s evidence, and rejoice to find that what our conception of knowledge implies as possible, the beloved disciple found to be actually the fact. And we may, I submit, at any rate feel quite convinced that there is no reason at all for accept¬ ing the liberals’ estimate of our Lord’s mind. “ Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life. Speak, Lord, for Thou art the Truth.” XII ETERNITY AND TIME MAY I now take you with me to a still more difficult question ? The liberals appear not to see the vital importance of each detail in our Lord’s life, passion, death, and glorification. They do not regard each element in the Incarna¬ tion as of importance ; but feel themselves able to pick and choose. Their facility in discounting details is no doubt due to their failure to co-ordinate their notions of time and eternity. Bear with me, then, while I try to show how these notions may be co¬ ordinated, and how vital to God’s self-revelation is the whole action of the Incarnation, from His birth of a Virgin to the transformation of His Body in divine glory. In common every-day thinking eternity is too often regarded as the infinite prolongation of time, on a somewhat different level of existence. It used to be, before time began ; it will be, when time ends. It reminds one rather of a switchback : two high levels of eternity, and the intervening valley of time. 86 The Christ and His Critics The one really important fact about time and eternity is that they exist together. More strictly, they are one and the same thing, viewed from two points of view, the inside and the outside. Imagine a philosopher of supreme genius, learned in all sciences and philosophies, speaking only an unknown tongue : and imagine yourself receiving from his hand a small pamphlet, in English, containing an orderly, simple statement of all the really important points in his own special teaching. Just so does eternity co-exist with time ; just so does time translate eternity to our limited minds. Eternity connotes God’s consciousness of the fulness of His life and love and wisdom, of the glorious richness of His own Being. Eternity is the fulness of God’s life and love. When we look forward, consciously, to “eternal life in the world to come” our chief hope is that our life will be found embraced in, and be dominated by, His full life ; and our love united with, enriched by, and made blissful in, His love. And when we claim to have already tasted of eternal life we mean nothing less than that we are conscious of a spiritual life hidden with Christ in God, and of a spiritual love hidden in Christ’s heart and centred upon God. What, then, is time ? 1 think the easiest Eternity and Time 87 answer is that it is man’s analysis of eternity as it is revealed to him. To the Christian, it is man’s consciousness of the successiveness of the forms under which Eternal Life and Love cause him to realize his dependence upon God and God’s other creatures. The fulness and richness of Eternal Love are not real to man, unless man can perceive himself in some sort of dependence on Him. This dependence is established in countless points. Each point is included in the one long series of successive, interdependent forms ; from conception in the womb, through life, death, and what lies beyond the grave. The sum of these points, the series as a whole, constitutes for each individual man the unveiling to him of eternity ; the self-revelation to him of his utter dependence on Eternal Love, and upon the whole universe of Love’s creation. What is true of the individual man is true of the whole human race. Gather up all the points of man’s dependence upon God and upon his fellows, all the series of successive forms man¬ kind has been allowed to see, and you have, in sum, the total unveiling of eternity, the completed self-revelation to mankind of Eternal Life and Love. We thus find ourselves provided with a true notion of creation. Creation is the spontaneous expression by God 88 The Christ and Mis Critics of the fulness of His life and love, in an orderly progression of partial manifestations, each one of which is related to, and dependent on, all the others, and yet is in itself capable of isolation, in thought, as a separate fruit of His life and an individual object of His love. This mental isolation is a necessity. For since love creates in order to be loved freely, each spiritual creature must be in himself an object of God’s love, and the individual subject of love for God. Hence our human self-consciousness and freedom. Nevertheless the isolation in thought is corrected by the actual relation of dependence in which each creature stands to all the rest, and in virtue of which each human personality finds its true goal in union with other personalities, and, above all, with Christ in God. And it is this progression of successive inter¬ dependent forms, each one of which is a partial manifestation of eternity, that we measure by our standards of time. We realize our depen¬ dence on God, and on all the other creatures, by the simple process of coming before or after one another. The creative thought of God, in virtue of which the universe exists, contains the idea of this progression of partial manifestation, as well as the idea of man’s standard of measuring it. Eternity and Time 89 Time is included in the creative thought ; time is included necessarily in the notion of eternity. But why ? If eternity connotes God’s conscious¬ ness of the fulness of His love, eternity includes time : for time is man’s consciousness of love as it comes from God to him, carries him into the love of God, and binds him to his neighbour. When, therefore, God created the world, He did not come into conflict with conditions of time. There is no conflict ; there is no contradiction. If eternity be love’s immeasurable fulness, time is God’s idea of the measurable response to His love which comes from the creatures of His love. God Himself is not a stranger to time ; it is a necessary idea if so be He is Love. For while eternity is fulness of love — immeasurable love — time implies a measured response, based upon a choice issuing in love or hate. Consciousness of depending on love, and of the necessity of choosing to love again — that is time. For a chosen response to love has its beginning ; it has its experiences of struggle, temptation, advance, defeat ; it has its victories ; it has its failures. And time fades for us into the relative eternal just in the measure that our sense of choosing God fades into our conscious¬ ness of His rich love, and of our harmonious relations with all about us. While time becomes more and more a heavy burden upon our souls N 90 The Christ and His Critics in the measure that our sense of rejecting God passes into rebellion, and we lose loving touch with those who are related to us. Temporal things, then, are just points in which Eternal Love establishes contact with His crea¬ tures, challenges their response of love, offers them increase of life, focuses for them a vision of Himself, and seeks to gather them all up in one interdependent family into Himself. Do all to the glory of God, says S. Paul, even eating and drinking. For time is the sacrament of eternity. I know this must sound a somewhat “high-falutin ” way of describing our daily life ; unless you bear in mind that priggishness and dullness are charac¬ teristics of the “ pious,” and not at all of Eternal Love. Look on the universe with eyes of love, that is, with God’s eyes. At once your doubt about my description of our “temporal” life will vanish ; for you will see God in the laughter that sweetens the world, and in the labour that feeds it ; in the love that is ever renewing our race, as in the mutual service that makes love noble ; in the beauty of the universe and in man’s joyous response to it; in the common converse of daily life ; and in the friendships that defy even death itself. Everywhere we see God if once we love. Eternity and Time So it is, then, that temporal things are sacra¬ ments of eternal life and love. In them God finds His points of contact with His world ; and no one of these points of contact can be declared unnecessary. Consider, then, the case of the “historic Jesus.” The Eternal Word, Who is Himself Life and Love, has the creative thought that includes His Incarnation. In the progres¬ sion of the successive forms of God’s partial self¬ manifestation is one form incomparable with all others — the form of Jesus Christ. The Word’s self-manifestation requires, then, what ? Just the whole human life He lived on earth, from the moment of His conception in the womb of a Virgin-mother; through childhood, youth, and manhood ; through ministry, sufferings, and death ; until, by the way of bodily resurrection and entrance into His Father’s glory, He estab¬ lished His manhood as our fountain of grace and truth. It requires all this, omitting no single detail. Leave out some part of the matter of a sacra¬ ment, you destroy the sacrament ; and whatever grace you receive, it is certainly not sacramental. Rob God of some one point of contact with His world, and time fails to reflect eternity ; human minds lose something of the vision of the divine. Blot out from the story of Christ some one fact 92 The Christ and His Critics of His life or another, and you leave an unbalanced account of God’s self-manifestation ; you pervert the truth of His relations with His creation, and falsify our estimate of our relations with Him. Add to, or substract from, the Apostolic story, and you imperil the whole work the Word came to fulfil ; you threaten the truth that His grace has empowered us to apprehend. If so be the relations between God and man are revealed in Christ, we men cannot afford to miss one single point in the progression of suc¬ cessive, partial manifestations of eternal love. For example. His relations with us may con¬ ceivably be such that He could only come to us by way of a Virgin’s womb, and pass from us only through a victory over death that defied corruption. I say it is conceivable. Can we, then, treat it as a matter of small moment that the threefold witness of the Church asserts, as plain facts, that God was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and that He left the tomb empty to take His Body into His Father’s glory ? I submit that the liberals not only offend against historical science in rejecting the Church’s three¬ fold witness ; they are in error by their faulty co-ordination of the temporal with the eternal. And I venture to suggest that the liberals’ notorious failure to estimate sin rightly is not Eternity and Time 93 altogether unconnected with their failure to see God’s relation to it. This relation they will never clearly see as long as to them the Virgin- birth is a matter of no importance, and the corruption of God’s Body a normal incident. The inherited weakness we call original sin, and the victory of sin we name corruption of the flesh — how shall the liberals find their meaning if they will not read God’s revelation concerning them ? Shall man, by searching, find out God’s secrets ? XIII INSIGHT AND FOREKNOWLEDGE ONCE more. The “ historic Jesus,” as liberals describe Him, is “entirely normal,” and therefore shows no signs of anticipating what was to come upon Him. His passion and death merely happened. He did not foresee them. Consequently, in the sphere of dogma, the reality of the atoning Sacrifice is discounted, the precious Blood is no longer saving, and our need of the Cross is denied. The Eternal Wisdom did not redeem the world by the death of Jesus. Redemption consists in our intellectual enlighten¬ ment which we owe to Eternal Wisdom, Who speaks to us through the “historic Jesus,” and in the spiritual renewal the Spirit of Jesus effects within us. The Death, as the subject of prophecy and preparation down the ages, as a heavy burden on Christ’s mind for years before He went to meet it, and as a necessity for our salvation — this Death we may no longer preach. Here once more we find evil results from a wrong co-ordination of eternity and time. It 94 Insight and Foreknowledge 95 has become possible for serious teachers to elaborate for us a new Gospel under the false impression that the things of time are in no necessary relation to eternity. We are asked to believe that the Eternal Word incarnate became so much a “ slave of time ” as to be unconscious of His own personal being, and to be taken by surprise at the critical moment of His life. This is asking a good deal of us, even had we no evidence to the contrary. But to ask it in face of the contrary evidence of tradition, Gospels, Creeds, and nearly two thousand years of spiritual experience, is the act of a theological Kaiserdom ! Liberals, like other “ moderns,” confound free¬ dom of thought with licence to despise their “ weaker ” brethren. They say the Gospels ascribe to our Lord fore¬ knowledge. They deny that He really possessed it. It is a pity we have no better word for the reality underlying it. It has done much harm to our notions of God’s love. The fact is, it is a misunderstood term. God’s knowledge is neither “before” or “after”: He is not to be measured in terms of the clock. Of course we are all anthropomorphists in our theologies. But to speak of God’s right hand, His face, or His voice does no harm : we convey thereby no wrong ideas. To speak of His wrath, 96 The Christ and His Critics His foreknowledge, His repentance, without conscious mental reservation, is really dangerous, because false ideas that each word may mingle with the true can spoil our vision of God. When we attribute foreknowledge to Christ we do not mean that as man He was granted a “ unique ” kind of knowledge that sees what is coming : we mean that, being the Eternal Word, He still exercised His own proper knowledge of “things as a whole,” under such limitations as manhood implied. So when we say of Isaiah that his message to his own times contains also a mes¬ sage for the ages to come, and predicts Christ’s coming, we do not mean that God communicated to him a certain bit of information, to be realized at a given date in the dim future : we mean that he was, for the moment, so close to the Spirit and Word of God that he had, genius-like, a dim vision of “things as a whole,” and was led so to speak as to profit the men of his age and others of a day yet to come. Now Isaiah spoke under inspiration, while the Christ was exercising His own proper wisdom through His inspired human mind. I want, then, to discuss a little further the relation between our temporal activity and God’s fulness of love. First, let us note that under the conditions we call time God expresses that measure of His Insight and Foreknowledge 97 fulness created minds can appreciate. This expression takes forms which, when they are personal, are mutually intelligible ; and the lower forms are intelligible to those that are personal. His highest form of expression is the manhood of Christ, tc in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” The Creation was neces¬ sary that we might learn the reality of God’s love and exercise it, Godward and manward. God, then, sees expressed under conditions of time things which His creatures are also able to see. He sees, however, with “ a seeing eye,” that is, with full knowledge of the universe, as a whole, in its intimate relation with Himself. Whereas what His creatures see is, to them, by no means a whole ; neither can they assign to what they see its essential meaning. Since God took flesh He sees also what His creatures see, in the way in which they see it, or, rather, in the way they will one day see it when their minds have become really one with Christ’s. The main difference between God’s seeing and theirs is not one of time : it is one of insight. It is not so much that God sees before we see : it is that He sees more than we see. In fact, He sees all. And in His Incarnation the same is true. The really striking difference between Christ’s seeing and S. Peter’s is not that Christ saw before S. Peter saw, or saw what could not ever come o 98 The Christ and His Critics within range of the Apostle’s vision : it is that Christ’s human mind saw more deeply than S. Peter’s. Secondly, let us consider what it is God sees in one of us. In the fulness of God’s love and life and wisdom I have my place as an idea : an idea contained in His creative thought. In His idea of me I am dependent on Him, dependent on others, and am yet self-determined. His idea of me includes, therefore, my appearing at a certain point in a series of interdependent mani¬ festations of His love : I have what in language of time is called a beginning. Yet it is not an absolute beginning, for my place in the series is partly determined by the others on whom I depend, as also by the needs of those who depend on me. I am not an absolutely isolated unit. I owe my being to God, to others, and to God’s care lest the evil choices of others should have denied me my existence. God’s idea of me, then, includes all that may be called His gifts to me : direct, indirect, creative, enabling, protective, restorative ; and also the whole of my response to His love, a response which is the fruit of His idea. It includes my power of self-determination, my free will ; the fruits thereof that are in harmony with His creative thought ; and whatever is Insight and Foreknowledge 99 necessary to correct the effect of my wrong choices upon His universe. It even includes the things I abuse in my sinful misuse of them. It does not include the evil choices of my free will, viewed as acts, apart from their effects on God’s creatures. As an act of will my evil choices lie outside the creative thought. Were it not so God would be creator of evil, and evil would have positive, real being. The fulness of love, then, includes all of me except my acts of sinful choice. In what sense, then, do our acts of sinful choice claim reality ? They are included in eternity in the passive love of God. God’s love is sorrowful : that is, He is aware, within His love, that not all the love He expresses will win response. His love has sorrow : not the sorrow of men, but the sorrow of perfectly unselfish love that will not cease to love, holds all things in its power, and rejoices in serving the beloved who will not love. God’s thought of the universe is, therefore, at once creative and passive : creative as the expression of fulness of love, and passive as aware that the response of love is not complete. In the third place let us consider how all that we have said will sound translated into the language of time. God in the fulness of love gives Him¬ self richly without measure to us all. This is His creative love, His creative power, the expression 100 The Christ and His Critics of His idea for us. His grace is showered on all because He loves all, and where He in His love is, there also is grace. And it is within the region of His love that God is aware of our refusal to love Him. His love finds no response. His loving relation with us is broken from our end. Thus in as far as we do not love Him we tend to reject the influence of His creative love, and there remains to us only His passive love. Our instinct is to say God foresees our failure, that if He gives grace He knows it is useless, and so on. I submit that we do Him a great wrong. Not so does Eternal Love show His love to us. His love has made us for Himself, and made us free, embraces us, and embracing us sees into the very depths of our personalities ; it rejoices over our response of love and sorrows when rejected by us. Just because He is God our relation with Him includes essentially the whole sum of our love, a sum which we here on earth perceive as a series of separate acts. Love never compels : it must always attract, and attraction by personal influence we include within the notion of grace. Love never rejects : it must always endure. Therefore it is wiser to found on the basis of God’s loving insight all that we more commonly call foreknowledge ; and on the basis of man’s free choice all that we Insight and Foreknozvledge 101 are accustomed to regard as man’s rejection by God. Fourthly, we may point out that once we have adopted this view of our relation with God, all notions of time become notions of God’s love brought under our observation, on our own human level. Time is my consciousness of dependence on God, and of my dependence on the rest of His creatures. Time is a reality to me because God’s love is real, and time is my observation of God’s love under the mode called analysis. All the elements that make up the relation of love between God and myself are made visible to me, in created forms, in an orderly succession. And time is real to God. His creative thought includes this mode of analysing His love ; it includes my mind that can learn His love only in this way ; and it includes His own manhood, in which the Word entered upon a similar relation of love to His Father, a manhood dependent on God and on the universe even as is my man¬ hood. It is, then, only reasonable to maintain that the Word incarnate saw further into His rela¬ tions with men and women than any man in history. For He is God’s love incarnate, God’s love that embraces His children and reads their hearts and minds. Is it conceivable that, even in 102 The Christ and His Critics manhood’s limits, Eternal Love should lose so characteristic a quality of love as insight ? There is, then, no a priori reason, that can hold good, for rejecting the Church’s story of a long-prepared work of redemption, fulfilled by a Saviour fully conscious of His vocation and of the death that awaited Him. God’s creative love includes the notion of redemption. And our Lord’s life, passion, and death is the analysis by our minds, and by the Word’s human mind, of the whole content of the redemptive idea. Each element in that idea is duly set out, under a visible form ; each element in due co-ordination with all the rest, the sum total of the series of successive forms being just the divine idea of redemption. So far, then, from cutting out of the Gospels all references to our Lord’s sense of vocation and awareness of coming suffering and death, we should treasure up all such evidence to His comprehension of the whole idea of redemption. We should recognize that it was His work to express redemption in a series of single acts. For so understood, the Word incarnate stands before us as the one and only Person Who can unify God’s vision of the universe with ours. For He alone shares both. I need not apologize for the fact that this section is so hard, and after all our labour makes Insight and Foreknowledge 103 so little clear. For we are face to face, here, with the ultimate difficulty. Nevertheless, we have perhaps seen enough to make us hesitate long before using terms of time as adequate descrip¬ tions of aspects of eternity. That in itself is no small gain. To sum up. Time is included in eternity, and is in fact only a translation of eternity into terms of human thought. Jesus Christ belongs at once to eternity and to time, being Himself the Eternal in human nature. It is, then, not surprising to find the Apostles and evangelists testifying that Christ was conscious, in a degree, of His own relation with the Father ; and pos¬ sessed a superhuman insight into men’s hearts, and knew, as by superhuman intuition, how His redemptive work must be carried out. XIV DR. HENSON AND THE LIBERALS THE real trouble in the liberal’s mind is the present-day difficulty of conceiving God’s Incarnation. We would all see God in Jesus. Some of us believe that Jesus is truly God, and therefore are not surprised to see in Him what we cannot see in other men ; we expect that God in man¬ hood will exhibit a range of activity wider and deeper than a mere man. It does not trouble us that God’s manhood was used by Him in actions no mere man can perform. Rather, we take hope that some day our manhood will be made perfect on the level of His, in union with Christ Jesus, and that the “ new creation ” will be the supreme reality in us, as now in Christ it is real to us. But there are others who can only see God in Jesus as by way of association. Extreme liberals acknowledge Jesus as man and man only ; but a man so completely dominated by God’s Word as to be to us the final revelation of what God is to man, and 104 Dr. Henson and the Liberals 105 what man can be when united with God. This, of course, is no new doctrine. It has been held outside the Church for centuries. To-day it is held by priests and people within the Church. Less extreme liberals have at present halted in a position midway between the two ; a position open to the assault of the extreme section when¬ ever it likes to capture it. They postulate a normal man, probably born of Joseph and Mary, subject to all the limits of a merely human personality. But in this human person¬ ality they also postulate the indwelling of the Eternal Word, Who exercises over the man’s mind a divine influence, under which the man occasionally utters truths beyond human dis¬ covery. This man always acts in moral matters as God’s will demands. In most matters he acts as a normal Jew would act, e.g. he pretends to cast out non-existent devils. When speaking of God he always speaks as God’s wisdom dictates. In speaking of other matters, he speaks as a normal Jew would speak, e.g. he speaks of demoniac possession ; he predicts a bodily re¬ surrection ; he foretells his own return in visible form, in the glory of the angels. 1 say moderate liberals regard the Word as exercising an influence over the man’s mind and will. By this I do not mean He is not thought p 106 The Christ and His Critics to be present within the man’s very inmost personality. On the contrary, they think of Him as so entirely within the man’s personality as to render Jesus worshipful, as God Himself. What I mean is this. The Word does not continuously use the mind of Jesus as His own proper mind ; He only inspires it generally, and occasionally lifts it up out of its normal Jewish groove, in order that it may communicate divine truth. Does this sound like a libel on the moderate liberals ? Let me justify it. Consider, please, these passages from Dr. Henson’s The Creed in the Tulpit , chosen because he is a moderate exponent of liberalism : — 1. “ The birth of that Son of man . . . whose manhood is the very sacrament of deity T (PP- 3V33-) 2. “ Like S. Thomas in his trance, we see the Saviour before us, offering the proofs of His identity ; and we can but respond with the cry of assured and triumphant faith, c My Lord and my God.’ ” (p. 203.) 3. You cannot really believe in the Divine lordship of Jesus unless you are assured that Jesus is verily now living and wielding Divine authority.” (p. 13.) 4. “ Here, at least, in the worship of the Saviour, Who, as on this day, was born into Dr. Henson and the Liberals 107 this world, all Christians are of one mind.” (P- r7-) 5. “ It is, perhaps, only the confusion of faith and dogma which induces so many devout Christians to speak as if the Divinity of Christ turned on the historical value of the birth- narratives.” (p. 22.) 6. “All these theories about Christ agreed in the conclusion that Christ is rightly to be identi¬ fied with God in such wise as to be the object of Christian worship. . . . On this point, as I can see the facts, the dividing line really falls between Christian and non-Christian.” (pp. 49, 50.) 7. He quotes with approval : — “ God, of the Substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds : and Man, of the substance of His Mother, born in the world, etc.” 8. “Jesus; moved by an holy impulse the full significance of which He did not yet know , left His carpenter s shop." (pp. 59, 60.) “ The village carpenter also . . . would be a leader in this Venture of goodness." (p. 63.) 9. “He went with the multitude to John’s baptism, sharing the impulse of a common movement of religion." (p. 66.) 10. “Then follows the exorcism of the ‘man with an unclean spirit.’ . . . This is history , dis¬ closing^ indeed , the crude demonology of the age , but still history." (pp. 72, 73.) 108 The Christ and His Critics 11. “ Nature-miracles . . . from the stand¬ point of historical science, must be held to be incredible .” (p. 89.) 12. “ Like the rest of men in nature , in natural limitations, in earthly fortunes, in the manner of His moral discipline, Jesus stood alone by the fact that He was ‘ without sin.’ Morally unique He was , but otherwise frankly normal .” (p. 93.) 13. “/ will not deny that the attitude which I venture to recommend to you as necessary , if you would rightly understand the testimony of the Gos¬ pels to Christy has an important influence on doc¬ trine . * There can be no doubt, observes Dr. Sanday, ‘ that Jesus Himself shared, broadly speak¬ ing , the views of His contemporaries in regard to cases of demoniacal possession ” (p. 104.) 14. “ Our worship of God in Christ ( that is , our acknowledgement that the version of the ^Divine character provided in the life and teaching of the Son of man is the true Version)." (p. 104.) 15. “ Our blessed Master did frankly fulfil His redemptive mission under normal human conditions. The plenary Divine inspiration which was His did not carry the Son of man outside the limitations of His age and race , save only where His redemptive mission required that He should transcend them . He revealed the Father to the men of the first century as being Himself one of them .” (p. 107.) Dr. Henson and the Liberals 109 1 6. “History sets before us in the Gospels the portrait of One, separated from His contem¬ poraries by a moral perfection which compelled their homage, and which still holds in worship the hearts of good men, and withal possessed with a moral authority which , in degree if not in hindy was unparalleled in human experience .” (p. 108.) 17. “Laying aside the veil which commonly concealed His Divine claim, and speaking in terms of Godhead.” (p. 132.) 18. “Every element of enfranchisement was implicit in the conviction that the Lord was truly divine.” (p. 187.) 19. “The self-identification of the Son of God with the sinful race He came to save is thus symbolized.” (p. 226.) 20. “This Divine Person, Who has been in contact with us, has been doing as much for our brethren.” (p. 230.) 21. Jesus was c without sinj and therefore He was without doubt and without fear." (p. 261.) 22. “That which we are permitted to see points to a still greater apocalypse of Godhead, when the response to the divine vocation shall be rendered . . . freely, fully, and finally by the Son of man." (p. 272.) 23. “Their belief in God has to include their belief in the Divine Christ and the Divine Spirit.” (p. 285.) 110 The Christ and His Critics 24. “The life of Jesus, so gracious, so calm, so majestic, was the adumbration of a relation¬ ship essential to Deity.” (p. 298.) 25. “The worship of God would necessarily merge into the worship of Christ, because only as made known in Christ was God completely worshipful.” (p. 46.) 26. “ Spiritually Jesus is to be identified with God, since apart from the revelation which in Him was made of God, we cannot form a coherent and morally satisfactory conception of the divine character and will.” (p. 49.) 27. “ If in the life of Jesus a normal disciplinary process was really perfecting His human character , then it follows that we may not select utterances out of the recorded tradition of His teachings and attach to them a final and exclusive authority .” (p. 144.) These passages all come from Dr. Henson’s The Creed in the Pulpit , a volume of sermons published in 1912, containing the expression of the “ balance of his mind ” which “ thought and life ” had brought to him. The italics are mine. You will notice, first, that the bishop believes in the Blessed Trinity and in God’s Incarna¬ tion ; and that he speaks of the Divinity of Jesus Christ, and of His Deity. You will, however, also notice that he has a further belief that our Lord Jesus Christ is, Dr. Henson and the Liberals 111 and was, a real, normal Jew. The second belief swallows up the first. Dr. Henson evidently feels uncomfortable with the philosophy of Chalcedon, yet he clings to its theory of “ person,” “ personality,” and “ self.” He is not a modern psychologist who regards these terms as misleading, as in fact expressing something that doesn’t exist. Yet it is clear that he regards Jesus as in some sense personally man, despite the fact that he calls Him a divine Person. Comparing passage with passage, I can only conclude that Dr. Henson’s philosophy allows him to conceive of Jesus as, at one and the same time, a divine Person and a human person ; while, in order to escape duality of person, he includes human person within the manhood. He adopts the notion of modern psychology in some sermons, but not in others ; while care¬ fully avoiding its terminology in all. If you will read once more, carefully, the passages I have put into italics, you will agree with me that Dr. Henson, while anxious to express in more up-to-date terms just what the Creed affirms, has been unable to do so. He cannot believe in demoniac possession. He is sure Christ did believe in it, therefore he has to recognize the influence of his own belief on his doctrine of Christ’s Person. It is necessary 112 The Christ and His Critics for him so to explain Christ’s mind as to allow of its mistaken belief. He therefore asserts that His mind was normally human, except where the plenary inspiration of the Spirit lent Him special light for a special purpose. But a normal human mind implies a normal human thinker. Christ’s utterances are not to be taken as final. Hence the bishop is tempted to explain Christ as identi¬ cal with God only spiritually ; that is, in respect of His character and will. And he finds himself able to speak of Christ’s moral authority over men as unparalleled in degree , if not unparalleled in kind. Thus he ends with a human thinker, Jesus of Nazareth, whose character is unique because the Son of God, the Word, has identified Himself with Jesus. Jesus was mistaken ; but His character contains nothing that is not in the Word of God. He reveals God ; He is of one will, one character, one purpose with God. We worship God, whom we see in Jesus ; and we worship Jesus, Who means to us nothing but God manifest in H is manhood. This is, generally speaking, the position of moderate liberals. Dr. Henson, in 1912, did not count himself a liberal ; but that is neither here nor there. In this matter of the Incarna¬ tion, as in many others, he is a moderate liberal ; while the principles of liberalism are his prin¬ ciples. Dr. Henson and the Liberals 113 The point I set out to illustrate was that some liberals regard the Word of God as not continuously using the mind of Jesus as His own proper mind. The passage marked 17 above is evidence enough ; but I advance also the passages numbered 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 1 6, and 27. I find Dr. Henson regarding Jesus as one of the men of the first century, as a Jew steeped in crude, superstitious notions of demon¬ ology. I find him hinting that words of Jesus needed revision ; while, on the other hand, I find him suggesting that, now and again, in virtue of a plenary inspiration of the Spirit, Jesus speaks “ in terms of Godhead.” This means one of two things. Either Jesus is two persons in one, the human person being part and parcel of the manhood ; or the Word occasionally speaks through Jesus words that Jesus could not have spoken by Himself. Dr. Henson pictures to us a Jesus Who speaks sometimes as God would speak, but more usually as a man speaks who is still coming nearer to the light ; which means that the bishop does not accept the doctrine that God used continuously, directly, and immediately the human mind He took of Mary, and that the only centre of thought in Jesus is God Himself. If he does accept this : if he does believe that the Eternal Word is the only centre of conscious- Q 114 The Christ and His Critics ness, of thought, and of will in Jesus ; the only person, self, or ego ; if he means that in person as well as character Jesus is God ; if he means that every thought of Jesus is a thought of God Himself, with no human thinker between Him and the brain of the manhood ; if he means that every word of Jesus is the direct word of God Himself, with no human agent between Him and the tongue of the manhood ; if he means that every belief in the heart of Jesus is a belief of God Himself, with no human agent between Him and the object of belief ; if, I say, Dr. Hen¬ son means this — well, there are few writers, or preachers, better able than he to have made his meaning clear 1 Will he tell us, plainly, if he really holds that God, for the space of some thirty years, actually believed in demoniac possession, when (as Dr. Henson judges) such possession is not, and never was, a fact ? Will he tell us, plainly, if he really holds that God, for the space of some thirty years, actually believed in the necessary association of bodily resurrection with immortality, when (as Dr. Hen¬ son judges) such association may be an illusion ? It will be plain, perhaps, why some of us were agitated at Dr. Henson’s treatment of the story of the Virgin-birth. If Jesus is personally man, He may well be Dr. Henson and the Liberals 115 Joseph’s son. If, however, He is personally God, His birth of Joseph and Mary is far more incredible than His birth of a Virgin-mother. It is clean contrary to our daily experience, which tells us that birth of two parents always implies a child who is personally man. Liberals, as I have hinted already, very often take exception to the use of the word “personal” in this connection. They are attracted by modern psychologists who, overstepping the boundaries of their science, deny to our manhood that centre of activity commonly called “self” or “ego” or “ person.” We are told a man is merely the sum of his psychic faculties or functionings or disposi¬ tions. And, of course, if you regard a man as selfless, it is at first sight easy to throw over the old Christology. You say, since man is selfless, the self of Christ’s manhood is not the Word of God, nor is it the son of Joseph and Mary. Man is, practically, soul and body, the sum of his functionings together with the instru¬ ment of them. God can, therefore, become incarnate in a man by the simple process of completely dominating all those of his function¬ ings which can in any way manifest the divine character, and so much of his intellectual function¬ ing as will help him to declare the necessary truths about God’s nature. A man so dominated may be regarded for all practical purposes as a 116 The Christ and His Critics vision of God in human terms, as truly Son of God, morally identical with God. Such a form of incarnation fits in well with our experience of God’s dealings with us. The prophets and teachers of our race were, evidently, influenced and inspired in this mode, although in a far less degree. And our own advance in the life of sonship seems to result from a domination of like kind by the Spirit of Christ. All this sounds exceedingly attractive. It meets our desire that God’s self-revelation conform with our notion of natural law ; it secures the normalness of Christ’s manhood and life ; and it opens to all men a path by which they may attain likeness with God. There still remains the crucial question. Sup¬ pose this to be fact, may we rightly worship Jesus as God ? And who was it that made mistakes about such things as demons and the resurrec¬ tion : Jesus the man, or God ? God takes soul and body from Joseph and Mary. Peter takes soul and body from Jonas and his wife. The one child is to be worshipped, while the other is to worship Him. The soul and body God took of Mary were named Jesus. What essential difference is there between Jesus and Peter, according to these psychologists of whom we speak ? We are told the soul and body of Jesus were entirely normal ; that is, the essential Dr. Henson and the Liberals 117 nature of the faculties, functionings, or disposi¬ tions was the same in the case of Jesus as in Peter’s case. The difference arose in the wills of the two. The will of Jesus was dominated by God, so that practically His soul and body mani¬ fested God, and God only. Peter’s will was not so dominated : it was a weak, wavering kind of will. Peter manifested only Peter until Jesus won him over and the Spirit of Jesus dominated him. Jesus, while so entirely dominated by the Word, in that His will was one with God’s will, was nevertheless not so inspired in His intellectual functioning as to avoid superstitions and dark¬ ness. Jesus and Peter were alike intellectually, at any rate at times. There were times when the Word inspired Jesus to rise to heights of intel¬ lectual clarity from which He saw and proclaimed the truth. But normally He and Peter were in one intellectual class. So also were they in the same class as regards their bodies : their bodies were normal bodies, and in the course of nature normally went to corruption. What, then, follows from this ? It follows that the radical difference between Jesus and Peter lies in an external sphere, and not at all within their souls or bodies. It lies in the sphere in which Jesus was given by God plenary inspiration from without. In whatever sense Peter is a man, Jesus is a man. And the reason for declaring 118 The Christ and His Critics Jesus unique, in a class by Himself, is that He received and responded to the plenary inspiration given by God through the Eternal Word. Jesus thus “ became God,” because God domi¬ nated His will. May I ask, Did Peter u become Jesus” when the Lord Jesus dominated his will ? If not, why not ? I doubt very much if Dr. Henson has come anywhere near accepting this psychological position. He uses freely words like “ person ” and “ personality,” words that ought to be taboo to the up-to-date psychologist who studies Christology. But it cannot be disputed that, in assigning to Jesus dark and mistaken beliefs, and in refusing finality to His utterances, the bishop has either accepted, consciously or unconsciously, the psy¬ chology of the extreme liberal, or adopted an older and less fashionable mode which took its name from Nestorius, but has been subject to certain small changes since his day. It would seem, then, that we cannot lawfully worship the Jesus whom Dr. Henson preaches. We may worship the Word Who dominates, inspires, indwells Him ; we may acknowledge the will of Jesus to be identical with the will of God ; we may admit the authority of Jesus as head of our race ; and we may, perhaps, look to Dr. Henson and the Liberals 119 the spirit of Jesus, the immortal soul of Jesus united with God, as the Comforter, Guide, and Light of our own souls. But we cannot worship Jesus as we worship God. For the exact reason that the liberals’ Jesus is not God ! According to Christianity the Spirit of God descended upon the soul of the Eternal Word at His Baptism. In “ modern” language, the Spirit gave plenary inspiration to “ the sum of the psychic functionings ” of the Eternal Word, whom the Church calls Jesus, son of the Virgin Mary. According to Dr. Henson the Spirit of God gave plenary inspiration to the soul of Jesus, a normal man ; in which soul the Eternal Word energized, in a kind not unknown, but in a degree unparalleled in history. Which, being translated, means that the Spirit of God gave plenary inspiration to the sum of the psychic functionings that make up the man Jesus, over whose will-function the Word of the Father exer¬ cised extraordinary domination, of a kind within our experience, but in a degree unparalleled in history. Strictly speaking, then, the Jesus of Dr. Hen¬ son is not Himself Eternal God. Therefore, as Dr. Latimer Jackson put it, “ There is room for an exalted Christology. ... It may demur to 120 The Christ and His Critics the expression c God the Son,’ while it insists on uniqueness of relationships by allusions to the ‘ Son of God.’ Perchance, mindful of the ex¬ ample of its theme, it will point to the Father in respect of the offering of prayer ; eliminating mere c Jesus-worship,’ it will surely respond to the cravings of men who know themselves to be ‘ only an incident in the vaster creative process * by dwelling on a revelation incarnate of the God behind.” So writes the Rector of Little Canfield, in the Diocese of Chelmsford, in 1913, in his Hulsean Lectures , p. 329. 1 have only to add here that I have earnestly desired to state the case fairly. If Dr. Henson will publicly state that, in his belief, Almighty God Himself did, for the space of some thirty years, believe a “ lie,” namely, that men were subject to demoniac possessions, and during that time lent the “ lie ” the supreme support of His divine authority ; if he will publicly state that, in his belief, Almighty God Himself did, for the space of some thirty years, believe the c< lie ” that the bodies He had made for final corruption would none the less live in immortal life with the soul ; if he will publicly state that, in his belief, Almighty God Himself was, for the space of thirty-three years, at the mercy of Jewish and even pagan darkness — then will 1 offer him an Dr. Henson and the Liberals 121 apology as abject as he cares to demand. I will apologize for misinterpreting his Christology. But, in such an event, I venture to prophesy that his Theology will cause so great a stir that even the liberal prelates who consecrated him will begin to wish they had held their hands. You will notice that I have not attempted to answer the psychologists who deny there is such a creature as “ I ” at all. My present concern is with liberalism, not with psychology. All I have to remark on this point is this : suppose that personality is an illusion, and that these psychologists are right, it is yet our busi¬ ness to state clearly the eternal fact of the Incarnation. Whether you state it in terms of personality as the Church has done, or whether you prefer a perverted psychology, you must at all costs be careful to state the actual fact revealed to us. The revealed fact is that God, directly and immediately, thought, spoke, worked, and prayed, using in the thinking, speaking, working, and praying the human faculties that are common to all men, but which He made His very own. And stated negatively, the revealed fact is, first, that Jesus was essentially different from Peter, in spite of their possessing the same human faculties, because Jesus is Peter’s God ; and, R 122 The Christ and Mis Critics secondly, the use Jesus made of His human faculties was in no sense that normal to Peter and other men, for the reason that God is not Peter, nor can Peter act as God acts. The meaning of Jesus is “God” ; the meaning of Peter is “ man.” If you can state this fact positively and nega¬ tively, in the terms of any known philosophy or science, do so, and God be with you. Up to the present no one has had any success who boggled at the existence of his own ego. XV IS CHRIST JESUS A CREATURE? HAT, then, is the real issue between ▼ ▼ liberalism and Catholicism ? It can be put practically in one question, Is Christ Jesus a creature ? Liberals and Catholics alike agree that His soul and body are creatures, born of Mary’s womb. They begin to disagree when they speak of Jesus Himself. Jesus, eating, drinking, sleeping ; Jesus, walk¬ ing, teaching, listening — is He a creature or is He Eternal God ? Catholics have one short answer : Jesus is God, and besides Him there is no God. Liberals of the more extreme type answer as shortly : Jesus is a creature, distinct from God yet like God. The moderate liberals cannot answer so shortly, for they worship Jesus as God, while yet holding Him to have made serious mistakes in the opinions He held, and in the words He uttered. But find an answer they must. For puzzled 123 124 The Christ and His Critics as they may be, unwilling to close the question dogmatically, content to cover over the creature- nature of Jesus with reminders of the presence within Him of God Eternal, they cannot hinder their readers and hearers from uttering the con¬ clusion logic requires. Therefore we missionaries have to face what they will neither affirm nor deny : the common belief that English liberals have established the creaturely nature of Christ Jesus. I have seen it in a Mohammedan magazine, 1 have heard it locally : the liberal Christians do not themselves believe that Jesus is God, and that besides Him there is no God. Is there, then, anything uncreated in Jesus except the domination with which God’s Word and Spirit hold His will bound to the divine will ? Here is the question, it cannot be put more simply, Is Jesus a creature ? The answer that it doesn’t really matter will not do. Granted that the Word of God ruled Him and spoke through Him, we must still ask, Is He merely a creature ? On our answer depends the view we take of His permanent value as a teacher. If He be creature only, we can take nothing that He says as finally true. For we have no Is Christ Jesus a Creature ? 125 certain way of determining where He spoke, and where the Word spoke through Him. Nor, in the second case, can we be sure that He did not alter the emphasis or the substance of the Word’s message. According to the liberals we have left to us only some half of S. Mark’s Gospel. The rest of it is marred by legendary wonder-working or apocalyptic prophecies, all of which are un¬ trustworthy, however honestly meant by their superstitious author. Now if we must edit this remaining half, and determine for ourselves where we have God’s real message, and where the Jewish first-century sentiments of Christ our fellow creature, of what real value is the Gospel to us at all ? How do we know that Jesus, the creature, really spoke God’s words ? He could as easily have conceived them Himself as, we are told, S. John conceived the Word made flesh of his Gospel, or as S. Paul conceived the Christ of his Epistles to Ephesus and the Colossians. If the Creator did not, directly, immediately, humanly, think and speak and act within the created manhood from Mary’s womb, and that apart altogether from any created centre of thought or will or consciousness, which we call “ person” or “self” or “ego,” the Christian revelation is a deception. 126 The Christ and His Critics To put it differently. If when Jesus preached His deepest truths He was at all liable to give thanks for His knowledge of them to One Who was different from Himself, as man differs from His Creator ; if He was not speaking, in human measures, out of the fulness of His own God¬ head — then is the Christian revelation a decep¬ tion. Would I could make it clear to the liberals ! I am teaching an African from S. Mark’s Gospel. First, I must blot out about one-half of the first thirteen chapters, and most of the sixteenth. From the remainder, I read out what S. Mark says our Lord spoke and performed. I warn the African to distinguish : — (a) between S. Mark’s comments and our Lord’s own words ; ( b ) between S. Mark’s version of our Lord’s words and our Lord’s real meaning ; (r) between our Lord’s own meaning and what, when purged from the influences of His Jewish, primitive mentality, the meaning was intended by God to be. When the minds of the African, his bishop, his bishop’s chosen commentators, the teachers of the same bishop and commentators, the whole succession of their teachers back to about a.d. 70, S. Mark and his circle of friends, S. Peter and his intimates, and, finally, the fallible Christ have Is Christ Jesus a Creature ? 127 all been sounded, then, and then only, can we pretend to have a revelation from God ! Surely there must be a mistake somewhere ? It is no use replying that, when all is said and done, things have worked well enough, and men do find the revelation ; that such objections as I now offer are captious, the fruits of ill will. For, in fact, if the liberals are right, things have worked extraordinarily badly. So badly that we have an entirely wrong view of God, of Jesus and His precious Blood, of the Church and the Sacraments. So badly that, if the liberals are right, God is guilty of allowing both Christ and us to be deceived. So badly that, if the liberals are right, our many years of whole-hearted service to Africans are years of deceit and fraud, years of wasted labour and impoverished life. No. If Christ Jesus be a creature, the Catholic Faith of Christendom is a lie. A lie told deliber¬ ately by “ well-meaning ” Apostles, repeated in good faith by their successors, and supposed to be a fountain of spiritual life and power to millions who accepted it in good faith. And yet a lie, which now we are bidden to surrender. If, however, Christ Jesus be God our Creator, then is liberalism a lying spirit on the lips of His priests and prelates, who sacrifice the truth of His Being at the altar of human intellect. If Christ Jesus be God our Creator ! Is it now 128 The Christ and His Critics inconceivable, this that for two thousand years saints of God and leaders of human thought were well able to conceive ? If Christ Jesus be God our Creator ! But — listen to our liberals ! “ One with God, yet distinct from God.” “ Absolute moral perfection, if predicated of Him by others, is not admitted by Himself.” “ It goes against the grain to question the infallibility of Jesus.” So Dr. Latimer Jackson.1 “ The carpenter of Nazareth, unlettered and unlearned, Who dreamed that God would redeem the world through Him, and died to make the dream come true.” “The Christ of God” was “chosen from the ranks of those whose lot it is to labour and to serve.” So Canon Streeter. 2 “ Clearly it is the Logos — the Divine Humanity — that pre-exists. The c finite centre of conscious¬ ness’ (Jesus) had a beginning.” “ You believe in a single world-principle . . . it was made flesh in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth.” “ In Greek philosophy ... it was impossible to represent humanity as capable of developing, 1 Eschatology of Jesus, pp. 327, 324, 348. 2 Foundations , pp. 144, 99. Is Christ Jesus a Creature ? 129 under the right influences, into something divine ; and if we attempt to bridge the gulf between the imperfect human and the perfect divine by any other theory than that of a development of the former into the latter, we shall find that we are degrading our con¬ ception of God.” So Dr. William Temple.1 “ When the preaching of the Baptist was noised abroad . . . and men of good will obeyed the divine call which then became audible to their consciences, the village car¬ penter also * . . would be a leader in this venture of goodness.” So the Bishop of Hereford.2 3 “ c God made Man ’ means more than God come down from heaven to inhabit a human body. It means that Jesus of Nazareth was a real man , with a real human mind and will, with all the natural limitations of a human being." So Professor Burkitt.3 If Jesus Christ be God our Creator ! Well. Make all allowance for the liberals you will ; praise their sympathy with those in doubt, their zeal in study, their accumulations 1 Foundations , pp. 249 n., 227, 224-5. 2 Qreed in the Pulpit , p. 63. 3 Quoted by Dr. Jackson, p. 329. The italics are mine. S 130 The Christ and His Critics of learning ; admire their skill in criticizing the Christ and His Apostles ; be amazed at their courage and bold judgements ; what then remains r It remains to question yourself : Am I to believe Christ or them ? This is not an empty, rhetorical question I put to you. It is from my heart. The day that sees my adherence to these views of modern bishops, deans, canons, and leaders of light and liberty will also mark my withdrawal of faith from Him they call their God. Imagine a head master entrusted with the minds of some seven hundred boys promising their parents to give them the best of training, spiritual, moral, intellectual, and athletic ; and then leaving them in the hands of such incom¬ petent masters that, at the end of their time at school, they were found not only entirely ignorant of all they ought to know, but worn out in mind and body in trying to acquire false information, false methods, and false ideals on every subject in the time-table. Who would trust the master again ? By human standards he would be counted a dishonest knave, and the school governors reckoned guilty of criminal negligence. Imagine a brigadier whose men, on the day they were due to leave for the Front, were Is Christ Jesus a Creature ? 131 inspected and found not only ignorant of every thing they needed to know for the winning of the war and their own safety, but absolutely stale and worn out owing to laborious efforts to acquire the worst possible methods of attack and defence. Such an one we should count a knave, possibly a traitor. Imagine we, now, the God whom the liberals name Love. He has so ordered the world and our lives that we have been led to believe, with our whole souls, that Jesus is God our Creator ; and that He required us to forsake father, mother, wife, children, land, and other worldly prospects, to go and preach to Africa the Godhead of Jesus, His inerrancy as a teacher, with all that it implies. He has led us to believe that our Lord God Jesus is His own final revelation ; that we must accept no theory of philosophy or psychology or theology that does not leave room for the Uncreated, Eternal Centre of Human Conscious¬ ness (or Person, or Ego) in the Son of the Virgin Mary ; and that we must face all our problems of human sin, caste, colour, race, and the like in the light of this Eternal Centre of Human Consciousness. In response to His call we have given all we have : love, labour, friendships, health, strength, 132 The Christ and His Critics vitality ; we have sacrificed human interests, human affection, and the truest human joys. All this we have “ counted as dung,” in sheer joy at God’s own amazing love for us men. We never missed what we left, so great, so over¬ whelming was the richness of the eternal love in which we believed Jesus had embraced us. Now, when we are prematurely aged, our vitality sapped, our lives practically “lived out,” a new voice of God falls on our ears ! From the recesses of rich studies in palaces and deaneries, from the cosy arm-chairs of college studies, God cries aloud to the sons of men, “ Fools ! Fools that ye were to see Me naked and dying on Calvary’s Tree ! He Who died on Calvary’s Tree had His beginning in time. I used Him to reveal My character, as I have used you to preach Me. I allowed Him to be deceived, as 1 have allowed you to be deceived. He spake in good faith, even as you have spoken in good faith. He was wrong in part, even as you have been wrong in part. Yet all is not lost, for at last ye know the truth. Jesus — your Jesus — though divine in character, is not God. He is not I, nor am I He ; but Fie is so like Me that, seeing Him, you see Me. More of Me than He can show, you will never see ; this have ye come to learn. And as reward for your blind service of My chosen Christ, Is Christ Jesus a Creature ? 133 I grant unto you to become one with Him as He is one with Me ; one in will and heart and purpose.” To such a God what answer can we make ? One and one only. “ God, if there be such a God as Thou, Thou art no God to me. The good faith of Jesus I know ; but Thy good faith I cannot see. if Thou art God, why didst Thou deceive Jesus, or let Him be deceived ? If Thou art God, why hast Thou deceived me, or let me be deceived ? “ Thou art no God to me. I had a God — the God Whom Jesus preached, Who Jesus claimed to be, Eternal Truth. Now I have no God. “If Jesus be not God, there is no truth. If Jesus be not God, there is no God for me.” If Jesus be not God our Creator, Jesus is a delusion ; and if Jesus be a delusion of our minds, the God of the liberals is their illusion ! So, if the liberals be right, the matter stands. We cannot get back our lives ; they are wasted and gone. We must just set our teeth, and wait for freedom from this world of illusion — if so be the liberals are right. But wait. Are the liberals right ? Ah ! that is a question only Faith can answer. And Faith thunders out her “ No ! ” 134 The Christ and His Critics Faith knows Him whom she has believed t knows Him as the Truth that cannot err ; the Good Shepherd Who goes before His sheep lest they lose their way ; Jesus, Son of the Virgin Mary ; Jesus God, by whom all things were made. Faith perceives His Incarnation as one among the many activities of the Eternal Word, or Reason, or Son of the Father, as one that is performed side by side with all the others. She acknowledges in His Incarnation the same Word whom she perceives upholding all things, direct¬ ing them, and guiding them to their appointed end. To her the Incarnate is the Word Himself, and not another ; while the Incarnation means to her His measureless love, Who condescends to use our very manhood as instrument and means of His redemptive activity. She sees the Eternal Word born of a Virgin, becoming con¬ scious as a babe, growing, thinking, speaking, acting, under normal conditions of childhood, youth, and manhood. In face of this mystery Faith keeps an open, humble mind. She clings to the facts that He Who grows, thinks, speaks, and acts is the Eternal Word, and no other ; and that His manhood is as real as any man’s. But as to the differences between His human Is Christ Jesus a Creature ? 135 accomplishments and another man’s she makes no guess : she takes what the story of Christ’s life records. Reading His history she finds that there were differences in respect of sin, moral perfection, personal relations with Nature, con¬ sciousness of God, and knowledge of the universe generally. She therefore accepts as facts Christ’s sinlessness, His holiness, His miracles, His self- consciousness as God -in -manhood, and His unerring knowledge. She attributes them, if she dares to guess, to some peculiar quality in His manhood, due to His Deity Who took the manhood as also to the manhood’s sinless origin. In Faith’s belief God became man. God became human Thinker, human Actor, human Will-power. God’s self-knowledge is such that a human soul can come to mediate it in part and in degree, as the Gospels testify ; in virtue of which act of mediating His mind is to us the mirror of the Vision Beautiful, and our power of comprehending it. Faith, then, refuses to be dismayed at the evident difficulties. She knows God incarnate : she believes He is Love and Life and Power, without limit or period ; His nature is unchange¬ able and unchanged. She is certain that He Who is Pure Act is not distinct from His own 136 The Christ and His Critics nature, whatever the Triune Love implies of internal distinction. Therefore, when she per¬ ceives God incarnate she perceives the Word, in virtue of His own proper Nature and Personality, acting as man, existing as man , in virtue of His own eternal idea of redemptive self-restraint. This existence of God in manhood is a real existence, coinciding with His proper existence, His essential Being. It is measurable by human measures ; but He Who so exists surpasses all such measures. Thoughts, words, works, all that express this human existence of His, Faith measures humanly ; and where she finds what is obviously beyond normal measurement she ascribes it to Him Who so exists, to Him Who is personally beyond such measures, since He is God and not a man. And all the while she con¬ fesses her gratitude that the human attainment of this Immeasurable One are, some day, to become revealed in all who are united with Him. Faith, therefore, lays hold upon some truths of vital importance to her in her reading of the universe. She knows that the human mind of God incar¬ nate is really human, created at a certain point in mankind’s development ; she recognizes that it deals only with such things as naturally come within its scope. But she perceives that it deals with all those things as they truly appear to the Is Christ Jesus a Creature ? 137 Word Himself. And she is aware that the Word’s human mind, however small its area of knowledge, must necessarily be in harmony with the Word Himself. Faith cannot conceive the Word thinking humanly in direct contradiction to the truth of things, which proceed from Himself. Therefore Faith, when once she has laid hold on an undoubted word of Jesus, would die rather than confess it a mistake. Hence it is that Faith can make no terms with liberals who trust chiefly to the worldly wisdom of historical science, falsely so called, and who come to the study of the Gospels already biassed against miracles and the supernatural. She can make no terms with them. This, however, is not due to a false estimate of the services liberals have rendered to sound know¬ ledge, or to any failure to recognize the moral and spiritual worth of individual liberals. It is due simply and solely to Faith’s conviction that she must choose either to believe the liberals and dishonour her Lord the Truth, or stand by the Truth, refusing terms with the liberals. Faith will not call her Master an “ errant teacher.” To her every word He speaks is final. Faith is not astonished that men do not confess Him as God. But her surprise is great when she watches the bishops of the Church, men in whose hearts she still retains a throne. These men T 138 The Christ and His Critics know Jesus as she knows Him. Yet they remain silent, in face of those who deny Him ! It is published far and wide that the bishops no longer proclaim with united voice the Deity of Jesus, His inerrancy as teacher, His miracles, His Virgin-birth, or His Bodily Resurrection. Yet they remain silent ! It is published far and wide that the bishops no longer guarantee the teaching of Christ, the Gospels, and the Creed. Yet they remain silent ! It is published far and wide that in theological and missionary colleges ordinands are taught by “ superior ” dons to criticize the Christ as boldly as the best of His critics. Yet they remain silent ! Is their silence justified by the falseness of these publications ? I submit that it is not. The Bishop of Hereford’s presence on the episcopal bench proves the truth of the first and second, if proof be needed, not to mention the writings and sermons of some other bishops, as of examining- chaplains, deans, canons, parish priests, and col¬ lege tutors. The third is illustrated by the very mention of such a college as Ripon Hall, Oxford, and of such a book as Foundations , not to add to the list much more that might be mentioned. Even in our own diocese we have had experience of the college-gained “ superiority ” that comes Is Christ Jesus a Creature ? 139 out to Africa ready to rewrite the Old Testament, and does not shrink from editing the Apostolic message. No ; the bishops remain silent. They are not yet quite sure whether it is better to explain Christ in the terms of modern philosophy and psychology, or to demand of philosophy and psychology that they make room within them¬ selves for the human life of Christ Who is God over all, blessed for evermore. XVI THE ANSWER TO ROME AND LIBERALISM WHAT, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter ? I admit our present position is most unhappy. But I must protest that I see no other less unhappy. If we become liberals we adopt the theory that man is slowly developing his own beliefs about God, starting from the “historic Jesus,” helped by the Spirit Who was and is in a peculiar sense the Spirit of Jesus. In adopting this we throw overboard our belief in Christ’s true Deity and our sacramental life. If we become Romans we adopt the very similar theory that man has down the ages developed the papacy, starting from the teaching of the same Jesus, helped by the same Spirit, so that Peter now reveals Christ, while Christ reveals God. Moreover, in adopting it we must deny the Lord Jesus of our altars and tabernacles. And in both cases we are, even if we mean it not, guilty of perjury. For as liberals we shall 140 The Answer to Rome and Liberalism 141 not, in fact, believe what we profess before God we do believe, the dogmatic statements of the Catholic Creed. And as Romans we shall also, in fact, not believe what we must profess before God we do believe, the dogmatic definitions and declarations of the Vatican Council. It remains, then, to abide in the vocation wherewith we are called. We are Catholics, we know Christ’s revelation, we live by His sacra¬ ments through faith, and we have our member¬ ship in the one mystical Body of our God. Further, I beg you to bear in mind, men will win no victories for our Lord’s honour against the liberals by submitting themselves to Rome. Liberalism will flourish as before in the English communion. In fact, to be strictly fair, such men only reinforce liberalism by themselves accepting the Vatican Decrees in the sense that liberalism alone makes possible. Above all things, beware of the snare of senti¬ ment. Some men, and more women, tell us that they “ feel ” the Roman Church is the one true Church. They are, therefore, ready to throw on the pope full responsibility for all he tells them to believe and to deny. They give blind obedi¬ ence in the letter : of its meaning they refuse to think. If, as some of my Roman friends do, men like to call this feeling “ faith in Peter,” it is still mere “ sloppy sentiment.” 142 The Christ and His Critics Let us assume that in answer to prayer God gives a man such <£ faith in Peter” as makes him feel all this, and impels him to a blind repetition of formularies. It occurs to me to ask him : Who is your God ? Of what sort is He ? Can you, really, believe Eternal Love has not made it possible for you to be in His true Church unless first you have, in fact, denied your Saviour, and then, with or without real intention, perjured yourself? I repeat, Who is your God who prompts you to this, giving you a special grace of “ faith in Peter,” lest perchance your moral sense be too strong for your sentiment ? Certainly such a God is not He Who died on Calvary that Truth might be crowned on earth. XVII OUR OWN POSITION THE Christian body in any one diocese, clergy and laity, is bound to Christ’s Church through its bishop. If the bishop be declared heretical, the provincial synod that so adjudges him an heretic becomes, for the time being, the official link between the diocese and the rest of the Church. A bishop is, I admit, in a different position. For he is morally responsible for his official association with other bishops. He shares with all bishops the rule of God’s flock, and the task of testimony. It is, so far as I can see at the moment, my evident duty to dissociate myself in this matter from the Metropolitan and Synod of Canter¬ bury. Otherwise I shall remain morally respon¬ sible for their approval of liberalism, approval shown in the consecration of Dr. Henson, and his subsequent reception into the synod without protest, as also in the indulgence extended to teachers of the type of Dr. Latimer Jackson, Canon Streeter, and some of our professors. H3 144 The Christ and His Critics Protests are futile. I did my best in my “ Open Letter to the Bishop of St. Albans ” in 1913. Dr. Jackson’s Eschatology of Jesus was mentioned to the Provincial Synod by the Bishop of London in full session. With what result ? The bishops merely reiterated a resolution under which liberalism in priests and prelates had been before fruitlessly condemned. As a set-off to this, Mr. Streeter, of Foundations fame, was made a Canon of Hereford, and Dr. Henson con¬ secrated a bishop. I protested against Mr. Streeter’s promotion. I did all that is ecclesi¬ astically possible to force the metropolitan of Hereford and Zanzibar dioceses to face the situation. But to no purpose. When the Kikuyu decision came out in 1915 1 gave notice to the archbishop that in the Lambeth Conference I should appeal against it and, if no senior bishop acted, should also move a resolution in this matter of liberalism. When Dr. Henson was consecrated I at once took action that to me seemed to require the interference of the bishops in the Lambeth Con¬ ference. The only result was a warning that unless I retraced my action it might be im¬ possible, for technical reasons, to invite me to the conference.1 And I received no support at home. 1 As matters are in August, 1919, I am invited to the Conference, although my position is not defined. Our Own Position 145 Evidently, the highest authorities of the English communion do not mean to take any action as regards liberalism. Were our diocese financially independent of the Canterbury Province it would be a simple matter to renounce official allegiance to its metropolitan, without breaking communion, and to “ carry on.” But this is not so. And in taking such a step 1 might be sacrificing the whole mission, in its three dioceses, to my own conscience. Needless to say, I hope it may be possible for me, whatever happens, to remain at the head of my diocese. I cannot, at the moment, see at all clearly what it may be necessary for me to do. There are two or three possibilities : I cannot say more yet. But to the European staff of our diocese I say clearly : your duty is to your flocks, and you have no responsibility for what the bishops in England may say or do. Christ has spared you that burden. Let me, as a last word, make clear what it is I am aiming at. I desire to rouse Churchmen to face a single question. The question is the most serious, the most overwhelming, that man can ever have to ask. It is this, “ Has God deceived Christ and us ? Is Jesus Christ really and truly, in His essential person, God, or is He a real man in whose u 146 The Christ and His Critics human personality and manhood God so dwells that we may say He is incarnate therein ? ” Has God deceived Christ and us ? If He has, well — to-morrow we die. If God has deceived me by the lips of Jesus, Man of all men, I cannot trust Him again ; I cannot trust Him to tell me the truth by the lips of liberal bishop, dean, or canon. I stake my whole life on Jesus, Who gave His life for the truth, and for my salvation. I will not stake a silver rupee upon any fallible scholar who, " against the grain ” though it be with him, adjudges Jesus mistaken, and in his own last volume gives me the latest news of how mankind regards the Invisible and Unknowable God. I would rather appear wrong with Jesus of the Four Gospels than right with the whole body of scholars steeped in German theology. In this spirit I have written. I make my protest, I bear my witness, I submit my plea. I speak to wise men. And “ the judgement is set.” Either our faith in the Deity and inerr¬ ancy of Jesus is being slowly surrendered by the English bishops and clergy, or it is not. If it is not, I retract : and thank God I am mistaken. If it is, either the liberals are praise¬ worthy or blameworthy. If — but you can finish it yourselves. My one desire is that Churchmen awake to these questions, and get them answered before Our Own Position 147 it is too late. Let them ask why liberals now become bishops, deans, and canons ; why they hold cures of souls ; why so many theological colleges and missionary colleges are in their hands ; and why the bishops either love to have it so or are unwilling to stop it. For able to stop it they certainly are. They exist in order to stop it. Is it because we now know for certain that God, Whom we name the Word, is not one and the same Person with Jesus, in the literal sense that Dr. Henson is one and the same person with the Bishop of Hereford ? Of course, if this be certain, I have no more to say, except that the whole of Christianity from a.d. 29 to a. d. 1919 is a cruel lie. If, however, this is not so ; if there is no proof that God is not Jesus, in the sense that Dr. Hen¬ son is the Bishop of Hereford, then let English¬ men ask themselves why the official Church appoints to the cure of souls and the work of teaching candidates for the ministry men who deny Jesus His essential Deity, and challenge His inerrancy, mocking Him with the com¬ pliment that He is “ so like ” God. Let them be careful, too, not to be deceived by rhetoric, or frightened by the liberal’s snobbish scorn of their “ uneducated ” minds. Let them be sure they get a plain answer. 148 The Christ and His Critics It is no light thing for a nation to make its choice between Jesus of the Four Gospels, Jesus of the Atoning Blood, Jesus of the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus the Power of Holiness within us, and - the Jesus of the liberals, the deceived, uneducated Jew of the first century, Who in the providence of God so responded to vocation that the Spirit of the Lord could inspire Him fully, and so dominate His will that, spiritually, in respect of His moral character, we may give Him the courtesy title of God. Let them also ask why it is this “ God by courtesy ” is held up by liberals as a far more inspiring example than the inerrant Jesus of the Four Gospels. Our Lord God, Jesus, is true Man, doing nothing without His manhood. His example is with us ; and dwelling in us He assists us to do and be, little by little, with many a failure, what He was able in His own manhood to be and do. What advantage does England gain from the Jesus of liberalism ? Merely man, like us, His character is, we are told, unique : which is, I think, “ journalese” for beyond other mens attainment. And since He is only by courtesy called God, He cannot really and truly dwell in us and infuse into us His own holiness. Our Own Position 149 Let Englishmen awake, then, and ask why this liberal Christ is now given preference over the old Saviour of Mankind. In short, let them ask why, in the hour of their sorest need, they are being robbed of the Jesus Who made the saints of England and Europe, the Jesus Who made old England great and happy. And why in His place are we given the J esus of German theology, the Jesus Who is merely superman, the Jesus Whose preachers blessed the murder of Belgium. Why ? I urge my fellow countrymen to see to it that they think a million times before they set apart “one of themselves” to worship as their God! “ Unique men ” should always be suspected, like the Kaiser. And if we are to worship any one under the Name of God, is it not wiser to choose Him Who, in very truth, is God Himself ? Meanwhile, till England wakes up to ask such questions, let us fall to prayer, while quietly continuing our preaching of Christ’s Godhead. Pray for the Church’s faithfulness and her peace. Pray, I beg you, for me your bishop. And pray for these men who trouble us and our flocks. Finally, let us be true to our Lord in these dark hours, when the Sun of Truth is hidden by the clouds of intellectual arrogance. 150 The Christ and His Critics The clouds will pass. Only, bear in mind that the price of their presence is to be paid in suffering and loss. Let us set ourselves to learn, as multitudes of better men and women have learned before us, and as we ourselves have indeed begun to learn, that the victories of our Lord Jesus Christ are won only in Gethsemane and on Calvary. May He bless us all, and have us in His safe keeping, Who is God over all, Jesus, our Master. FRANK ZANZIBAR: Bishop’s House, Zanzibar. Jan. I, 1919. APPENDIX I THE BISHOPS AND LIBERALISM THE Bishop of Hereford clearly teaches : — i. That the Virgin-birth is an open question. 2. That our Lord’s Bodily Resurrection is an open question. 3. That our Lord’s so-called “ nature” miracles are not facts. 4. That the Fourth Gospel must not be read as history. 5. That our Lord made mistakes in His teach¬ ings, believed some things that are not true, and prayed to His Father about demons who do not possess men as He supposed. Following upon 5 he must either believe that in His Incarnation the Word associated with Himself a fallible human thinker named Jesus, or believe that God Himself can be deceived and can deceive. The Archbishop of Canterbury, on Feb. 2,1918, authorized these teachings as legitimate within the Church. Associated with the Primate in this authorization were the Bishops of Durham, 1 51 152 The Christ and His Critics Lincoln, Southwark, Birmingham, and Peter¬ borough ; 1 while all the bishops of the Southern Province acquiesced in the presence of Dr. Henson on their bench. Thus the whole Episcopal Synod of Canter¬ bury is committed directly to the authorization of these opinions. And the Synod of York is indirectly committed, because it has in no way repudiated the action of the Bishop of Durham. It is odd that Dr. Moule, successor of Light- foot and Westcott, and episcopal leader of the Evangelical party, should have set his seal upon Dr. Henson’s liberalism. It is the more odd when we remember his action, with eight other bishops, in protesting against changes in the service of Holy Communion. For it can hardly matter what prayers the English Church says when she meets, if so be she allows us to call the Lord Jesus a fallible Jew of the first century. 1 should add that the Bishop of Peterborough wrote a letter to the Primate urging the consecra¬ tion of Dr. Henson. It is to be noted that his lordship is presiding over the “ Church Congress” of 1919: he will direct our debates on “The Church and the New Age.” Indeed, it is a New Age for the English Church : the Age of the Correction of Christ by His bishops ! 1 I allude to those holding these Sees on Feb. 2, 1918. APPENDIX II LIBERALS AND THE MINISTRY [I place this Section in an Appendix because I hate having to write it. It does not touch the question of the Validity of liberalism. But it does , unfortunately , concern us in our defence of the Blessed Lord God , Jesus Christ .] THE liberals are very careful to explain to us how honourable are their intentions in trying to reinterpret our formularies, and how entirely honest they are in remaining in their ministerial positions while yet unable to accept the Creeds in their plain meaning. It is, therefore, unfortunately impossible to omit this question from our consideration. The only argument of any importance I have seen advanced on their side is this. The formu¬ laries of the Church bid the clergy study the Scriptures ; and also bid us accept the Creeds because they can be proved out of the Scriptures. If, therefore, the clergy studies and finds in the Scriptures reasons for altering the Creed, it is acting as the Church desires it to act. It is putting Scripture first, and Creeds second. i53 x 154 The Christ and His Critics To this argument there are two answers. First, it is a strict historical fact, and there¬ fore bound to find a welcome from liberals, that no member of the English Church who has fallen under suspicion of heresy since a.d. 1549 (when the new Ordinal was made) has been excused by the Church on the plea of his loyal study of Scripture. And the Ordinal never contemplated justifying such a plea. Secondly, Article VIII definitely asserts that the Creeds must be received. In adding that they can be proved by the “ most certain warrants” of Scripture, the Church sets her seal on a particular interpretation of Scripture ; not on the young minister’s right to interpret it at will. It is a schoolboy’s jest to suggest that the compilers of the Ordinal, or its revisers, intended to increase confusion, making each man his own interpreter of Scripture. To decide the moral question now under discussion by such a jest is utterly impossible — except perhaps to liberals ! Are, then, liberals really honest who, remain¬ ing in the Church’s ministry, try to restate the Church’s Gospel in terms of the “ modern mind ” ? But, first, this so-called “ modern mind ” — what is it ? Your mind is modern and so is mine, and so is the mind of every one alive to-day : modern because still alive. But our Appendix II 155 minds vary very much. We are Socialists, Tories, Radicals, Liberals, Sinn Feiners, Home Rulers, Republicans ; we are musical geniuses, fond of music, unmusical ; we are Good Templars, moderate drinkers, heavy drinkers ; meat-eaters or vegetarians ; fighters or conscientious objec¬ tors ; pro-feminist or anti-feminist ; we are philosophers, chemists, psychologists, artists, engineers, architects, or what not ; we are spiritualists, materialists ; idealists, realists ; we are all different. Our minds and hearts have no one common self-expression. And therefore there is no one c< modern mind ” to which to explain Christianity. Even if there were one “ modern mind,” even if we were all alike, it would not be possible to explain to it Christianity, unless our teachers could convey to our minds exactly what Christ conveyed to His disciples. For that, and nothing but that, is real, true Christianity. And it is that, and nothing but that, which the Gospels and Creed contain. But these liberal critics, in trying to explain Christianity to the one “ modern mind” (that does not exist), refuse to give us the old Gospels and Creed. They do not give us the original Christianity at all. They give us only those bits of Christianity they themselves still believe. If you ask me to show you a very old vase, of great value, and I first smash it into twenty 156 The Christ and His Critics pieces, and then hand you only ten pieces, saying “This is the vase,” will you be satisfied ? No, of course not. And if I assure you that these ten separate pieces are, to the “modern mind,” the whole vase, the other ten pieces being dis¬ tasteful to such a mind, and the whole, unbroken vase intolerable, will you be pleased with me ? I guess not. And if so be you have been paying me a salary, or even a small “ retaining fee,” for many years, to keep the vase whole and clean, that you may look at it when you like, will you call me a faithful guardian of the vase ? Again I guess not. Well, this is a parable of the “liberal ” clergy and the old Christianity. If you say “ Come, ye guardians of the Gospels and Creed, show us the traditional religion of Jesus Christ entrusted to your charge,” they will answer you, “ My dear sir, pray remember you have a ‘modern mind.’ And to your ‘modern mind,’ we are sure, the old religion has no real value. See, we have pieced together, in a new order, such bits of it as we think are wise and good, the rest we have blotted out. Be content with what we have kept for you. For we ‘moderns’ know best what will really suit you.” And you ? Well, if you don’t mind being deprived of your own property, you will smile Appendix II 157 approval at the critics, and promote them to be the chief guardians of Christianity, making them deans and bishops. But if you happen to mind very much, you will tell these men they have not acted the part of guardians. You will point out that since they have already lost half of the old religion, and are ready to lose more as their minds become more “ modern,” there will not be any of the old religion left for your grandchildren ! And, if you are wise, you will tell them to give up the work of pretending to guard what they have really thrown away. To mean well is a sorry substitute for doing well ! Liberals will not be able to answer you without they deny being appointed as guardians. For they themselves say there is really nothing to guard. They tell us we have not inherited any¬ thing external to ourselves that is worth having. The really valuable things are hidden away within our hearts. By which they mean that what matters is not our vase, but each man’s notion of the vase ! That is to say, we do not find “ external truths ” of value in the Gospels and Creed ; what really counts is the “mind” of religious people to-day, which the old, worn-out Gospel and Creed have helped to its present illumination. German Kultur was said to contain all that is 158 The Christ and His Critics valuable in past moral systems, and in the old teaching of Jesus Christ. Also, German Kultur had shed all in Christianity that was weak and humble and offensive to the modern German. So “liberalism” is said to contain all that is really valuable in the religions of the past, and all that is really valuable in the old Christianity. It has shed all those things in the Gospels and Creed that savour of the supernatural, and are incredible to the “modern mind.” We must not, however, suppose for one moment that liberals do not themselves believe in liberal¬ ism. They sincerely believe it. They think we are wilfully old-fashioned, loving the darkness rather than the light. But then the Germans believed sincerely in their Kultur. They thought other nations wilfully blind to its beauty. And they were quite sincere in their hatred of England for throwing in her lot with France, Russia, and Japan against Teutonic Kultur. In short, liberalism is in religion what Kultur is in morals. It is the theory that the true religion comes out of the mind of man, and not from God. In the same way Kultur is the fruit of human effort alone ; it knows no external voice of God. The fact that liberal theologians are sincere and earnest makes it very hard to write about them. They must, however, make allowance for Appendix II 159 us. For having taught us to criticize Christ, and God, they must not be surprised if we venture to criticize them. They will admit that Annas, Caiaphas, and their friends were sincere in judg¬ ing Christ. Yet they will allow that those worthy priests committed a crime. And what was the crime ? Having been appointed guardians of the promise of Christ’s coming, they did not guard it. Instead, they changed it to suit the “ modern Jewish mind.” And because Christ, when He came, did not suit the “ modern mind,” they denied that He was Christ. They were kept in office ready against the Christ’s coming ; in all sincerity they altered their notion of what Christ would be according to their idea of the then ‘modern mind’; and when Christ arrived they crucified Him ! “ Which things were written for our learning.” Let me now try to prove what I have just said. I will take only two points. If I can prove my case in regard to them, I have proved it all round. If I fail with them, I do not wish to press the case in other respects. i. The Virgin-birth of Christ . The Church, in order to compel her “ guardians of the revela¬ tion ” to be faithful in preserving the record of this fact, and in making it known, requires the 160 The Christ and His Critics whole clergy and laity to confess the truth of it on the following occasions : — ( a ) Twice daily in Morning and Evening Prayer, in the Apostles’ Creed : a Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.” (b) Once in each celebration of the Holy Com¬ munion, in the Nicene Creed : “ He was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary.” (c) On Christmas Day and seven days after¬ wards, in the collect : “ Born of a pure Virgin ” ; and, if there be a celebration of Communion, in the Preface : “ Made very man of the substance of the Virgin Mary His mother.” (d) On each day that the Te Deum occurs in Morning Prayer : “ Thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb.” if) Whenever S. Matthew i. 18 ff. and S. Luke i. 26 ff. occur in the lections appointed to be read. (/) At ordinations, when the Nicene Creed is said as in {f) above, the ordinand having professed his acceptance thereof before his bishop in assent¬ ing to the Thirty-nine Articles. 2. The Bodily Resurrection of Christ from the dead . This the clergy and laity profess to believe on these occasions : — ( a ) Twice daily in Morning and Evening Prayer, in the Apostles’ Creed : “ The third day Appendix II 161 He rose again from the dead ” ; and also, 1 believe in “the Resurrection of the body.” ( b ) Once in each celebration of the Holy Com¬ munion, in the Nicene Creed : “ And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures.” (c) Thirteen times a year when the Athanasian Creed is said : “ Rose again the third day from the dead ” ; and also, “At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies.” ( d) Whenever S. Matthew xxviii, S. Mark xvi, S. Luke xxiv, S. John xx and xxi, Acts i, ii. 22 fl\, iii, iv, x. 24 ff., etc., Romans i. 1-4, vi, viii, xv, etc., and other like passages are ordered to be read in church. ( ery wrong view of her belief. See John vi. 62, 63 ; 1 Cor. x>. 49-55 ; 2 Cor. v. 1-5 ; and compare 1 Cor. xv. 35-46.) (/) All this we have just stated in ( e ) is pub¬ licly read at every funeral : “ In certain hope of Y 162 The Christ and His Critics the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ ; Who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto His glorious body/’ On these two points, 1 submit, no candid man can deny that the English Church requires her clergy and laity to accept, and teach, as historical facts the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ from a virgin named Mary, without human father, and the resurrection of His Body from the grave. The liberals reply that the Creeds must not be taken literally in these two points ; and all the language of the Prayer Book must be corrected accordingly. Why must not these two clauses of the Creed be taken literally ? First, because the liberals do not themselves believe in such miracles as are here asserted. They have no experience of them. Therefore they reject them as impossible. Secondly, they say that as the chief clauses of the Creed are admittedly framed in symbolic phrases, these two clauses must also be taken as symbols of spiritual truth, and not at all as expressions of historical facts. This second point needs full discussion. Before we come to it let me make one thing clear. Whether the liberals are right or wrong, they Appendix II 163 arc teaching the exact opposite to what they are employed to teach. They are not loyal to the society that trusts them to hold “cures of souls” or other higher positions. According to ordinary views of equity and justice a man is bound to fulfil his contract with his employer. If he find his obligations irksome he must ask leave to resign. A liberal professes his belief in all the Church’s teaching, which we have set out above, before he is ordained. He repeats his profession when he begins his ministry, when he receives his first “ living,” and when he is raised to higher office. He cannot draw his salary until he has made his profession of faith. Yet all the while he teaches the exact contrary to what he professes ! The dishonesty of their conduct will become clear if we take an imaginary case from what is called “secular” life. The Royal Society for Promoting Vegetarian Diet had a young lecturer, at a salary of £300, whose ability was far above the average. He had signed a contract with the society that he would both teach and practise the strictest vegetarianism. After some years his skill, eloquence, and zeal procured for him the secretaryship, at £800 a year. Again he signed a contract as strict as the first. The committee then began to hear rumours 164 The Christ and His Critics that their secretary was not quite loyal to the society’s tenets. True, he had a great zeal for the people’s bodily health, he was a firm believer in vegetables as most profitable in securing health, his fame as a lecturer was great, and his converts many. Only it seemed true, beyond a doubt, that he taught his disciples not to waste their time chewing the many vegetables for them¬ selves. He recommended them to keep cattle, sheep, or goats, feed these on the best grasses and vegetables, and then themselves eat the animals’ flesh. He said the flesh was not really flesh : it was merely a symbol of vegetable life. When questioned the secretary admitted the fact. He defended himself on these grounds. First, life is short, and our time for meals limited. Secondly, he was as keen as ever on vegetable life as our salvation. Thirdly, he only used and recommended meat as the symbol of vegetable life. Fourthly, he found his doctrine more suited to the “ modern mind ” than were the tenets of the society. And, lastly, he could still sign the contract, ex animo. His supporters pleaded that, whatever he taught, he was a man of excellent character, unusual eloquence and fervour, and of tireless zeal. The committee replied that, notwithstanding Appendix II 165 his many good qualities, he was not an honest servant. The secretary refused to resign. He said the committee -members were lovers of darkness, whereas he was leading the society to new truths. He would guide it to a point in which mere details like meat and cabbages would be swallowed up in a generous devotion to life in the abstract. Above all things, he was, like Brutus, an honour¬ able man. The committee prosecuted him for breach of contract. The articles of the society, and his promise to teach and live in strict accordance with them, were read in court. The court found him guilty of breach of contract, and gave leave to set the contract aside. And every one said, “ Quite so ! ” It seems so obvious — except to the liberals and their friends amongst the bishops. If the liberals are right they are in their wrong places. They ought to be outside the ministry of the Church, fighting to make her alter her teaching. They have no right to occupy posts within her borders, draw salaries from her endowments, daily profess her doctrines, and at the same time teach men the exact opposite of what she bids them proclaim. Of such a course of action as they approve and defend it is enough to say it “ is not done ” — outside the Church. 166 The Christ and His Critics Now let us face the further question. Are the liberals justified in claiming from the Church freedom to interpret the historical clauses of the Creed as mere symbols of a spiritual truth on the ground that the chief clauses are admitted to be symbols ? It is agreed by every one that in speaking of God we have no words to express exactly what we mean. We must use “ symbols ” to show what we are trying to express. We call God our “ Father ” ; we speak of His “ Son ” and “ Holy Ghost”; we talk of “ the right hand of the Father,” and so on. All these terms are symbols. They contain the ideas we have ; they also con¬ tain thoughts we do not associate with God Who is Spirit and has no body. So also we are not able to put into a few simple words our notions of heaven and of the place of departed spirits. We talk of “ ascending into heaven ” or “ descending into hell,” or “Hades.” These terms, again, are symbols. They partly express what we mean ; partly they carry ideas we do not at all mean. They are the best we can do. But when we have to speak of the Body of our Lord we speak of something that is entirely human, and therefore capable of expression in human terms. We can easily say, without any qualification, that Christ has no human father, Appendix II 167 and that His Mother is pre-eminently the Virgin. So also we can quite well express, if we wish to, the fact that on the third day from His death our Lord’s Body was removed by Him from the grave, and was found to be alive with a life so rich as at once to include heavenly life and earthly relations with His disciples. It is true we do not at all know how the one fact or the other was accomplished. But we can put the two facts into plain words. The liberals, therefore, have no right to say that the clauses containing these two facts must not be read literally ; but, rather, must be taken as symbols, just because the other clauses of the Creed are symbolical. When dealing with the Inexpressible we use symbols ; when dealing with the human body we use plain statements. How wrong the liberals are becomes clearer still when they tell us what these clauses symbolize. To them the clause “ Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,” is a symbol meaning c< conceived by Joseph, born of Joseph’s wife Mary, but all so purely and reverently that the Child may be called Son of God.” Some liberals can still call Him God. While the clause “ The third day He rose again ” is a symbol meaning “ He did not rise 168 The Christ and His Critics the third day : His Body saw corruption : but He passed at death into the immortal life of the soul.” This, then, is the case for asserting that, whether they be right or wrong in their teaching, certainly the liberals are wrong in retaining their offices, and drawing their salaries, within the English Church. The only excuse for them is that the bishops have not told them to go, and even this was not quite true until February 2, 1918. In 1908 all the bishops in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, from all parts of our Empire, from America, and from missionary dioceses outside, met at Lambeth, and declared that these historical clauses of the Creeds are an essential part of the Catholic Faith. In 1914, when some of us asked the bishops of the Canterbury Province for a ruling on the same subject, complaining that these two clauses were wrongly explained by liberals, they declared once more exactly what the bishops at Lambeth had declared. So that while it is true the bishops have made no efforts to turn liberals out of office, we are bound to admit they did, in 1914, in very gentle words, put the whole clergy and laity on their honour not to pretend to hold the whole Christian religion if they could not accept and teach, as Appendix II 169 literal facts, the Virgin-birth and the Bodily Resurrection. But since the consecration of Dr. Henson the English bishops must be counted as supporters of the moderate liberals’ claim. They are content not to guarantee the final truth of the Christ’s teaching ; they are content that some of their number do not accept the Four Gospels, or believe the ancient Creed. One word more on this point of freedom in interpreting dogma. We, living among simple people who deserve as much “ accommodation in teaching ” as any men on earth, learn by practical experience the extent to which it is safe to go with “ symbols.” If I found a teacher in our diocese who so “ accommodated ” his doctrine to his audience as to use phrases that implied to the learned the exact contrary of what they meant to the simple, he would either amend his methods or cease to teach. Nor should I be moved to excuse him did he plead that he had only done what God Himself did with the Jews, and with the Christians, till the liberals arose to put Him right ! Such a plea would merely reveal more clearly his lack of reverence and holy fear. When common forms of words no longer express what we ourselves believe, in God’s Name let us throw away the forms, even if, with the forms, we have to throw away our own z 170 The Christ and His Critics positions of dignity and present opportunities of usefulness. Let us go out into the wilderness with Lonely Truth, and trust Him to make new opportunities for us. Only so will the world be purged of falsehood and canting phrase. If a liberal will not face so high a vocation, if he will still be using the old common forms, he is not honest even as the market-place counts honesty. Certainly his new teaching will lack the support that evident sincerity lends to any doctrine, how¬ ever wild. APPENDIX III THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTER¬ BURY AND DR. HENSON KIND friend, who read the proofs of this -Li* Letter for me before I reached England, tells me I am wrong in blaming the archbishop in the matter of Dr. Henson’s consecration. He argues that the Primate deplored much of what Dr. Henson had published, that he received the bishop-elect’s assurance of his ex animo acceptance of the Creed, and that in any case Dr. Henson had never been adjudged an heretic. My case against the archbishop is as follows : — ( a ) Since he ruled out Dr. Gore’s objections to Dr. Henson’s consecration, he was, ipso facto , deciding that no just cause could be established against the consecration of the bishop-elect. By Catholic custom a metropolitan can decide that an accusation is not weighty enough to justify such an objection. Had he any doubt, His Grace could either have referred the matter to his Provincial Synod, as joint judges with himself, according to Catholic custom ; or he might have l7l 172 The Christ and His Critics called the parties to plead before him and his assessors, according to the modern Lambeth method. On the contrary, His Grace decided that Dr. Henson was a fit person to be con¬ secrated. The responsibility for the consecration is his, and his alone. ( b ) An assurance of an ex animo acceptance of a Creed has very little value. It means that a man conscientiously believes he is right in the view of the Creed he at present takes. This is certainly Dr. Henson’s meaning. But, unfortunately for the Primate, Dr. Henson made a public appeal to his published works to show what his acceptance of the Creed implied. Dr. Gore, I submit, misread Dr. Henson’s letter containing his assurance and his appeal. He read into it what the bishop-elect did not intend, and what he has, since then, repudiated in Convocation. (c) The archbishop must, therefore, have known perfectly well what Dr. Henson’s ex animo teach¬ ing has been and still is. In fact, so well did His Grace know it that he had no word of hope or comfort for those petitioners who, on the eve of the consecration, made appeal to his sympathy. He said nothing, because he had nothing to say. (d) The plea that the Primate was deceived by Dr. Henson’s claim to an ex animo acceptance of the Creed is, I think, only possible to those who Appendix 111 173 undervalue His Grace’s powers of grasping a situation. Moreover, the bishop-elect’s teaching has been well known for years. And the Primate himself admits having “ sat under him ” now and again. In fact, His Grace, if I remember rightly, singled out for praise Dr. Henson’s doctrine of the Incarnation as he had heard him preach it. I do not, therefore, see my way to alter my considered opinion upon the complicity of the archbishop with the Bishop of Hereford’s doc¬ trines. His Grace may deplore much that Dr. Henson has said. He has, however, ruled that the main meaning of his teaching is com¬ patible with membership in his Provincial House of Bishops. And this teaching emphasizes its author’s ability to correct the Lord Jesus Christ where He spoke in ignorance. APPENDIX IV PROFESSOR BETHUNE-BAKER AND LIBERALISM AN additional example of academic liberalism is provided for us by the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in Cambridge University. It is sufficient to quote a passage written by him in his Journal of Theological Studies , January, 1919, in a review of Dr. Relton’s book on Christology. It contains the pith of the doc¬ trine he sets out in his book. The professor writes : — “ There is no kind of * evidence . . . that He ever thought of Himself as God in any sense. Such statements put their authors out of court for students of history. We cannot get on with our urgent work of reconstruction of our doctrine on these lines. ... I believe that it {enhypo stasia) is a term that may guide us to a restatement of the doctrine of Incarnation, when we jettison the categories of ‘substance’ and ‘ nature ’ and start on our way from the fact that our Lord was born ‘ a ’ man into the world, and i74 Appendix IV 175 as c a ’ man — a real man — was the subject of the experience through which He passed. As c a ’ man He grew and developed, as all men must, and what is ex hypothesi potential in all men — that is, the complete union of the human with the divine — was actualized in Him. His c person¬ ality ’ was the expression of the divine personality in a man.” What this paragraph will be found to mean when it is rewritten, after the author has jettisoned the categories of “ substance ” and “ nature,” I cannot guess. What I do perceive is that he believes our Lord meant always by the pronouns “ I ” and “Me” nothing more than “I, a man like yourselves,” and “ Me, a man like your¬ selves.” “Come unto Me, a man like yourselves, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I, a man like yourselves, will give you rest.” “No man knoweth the Father save a man like your¬ selves.” The professor has, I suspect, jettisoned more than his two categories ! S. John’s Gospel must, I fear, be “ out of court ” for students of history ; as well as all the narratives of “ nature ” miracles, not to mention the Transfiguration. But what exactly does it mean ? It means that Jesus Christ, the subject of the experience recorded in such parts of the Gospel as are accepted by these so-called “ students of history,” 176 The Christ and His Critics is a real man> that is, He is a creature like ourselves. It also means that God is in some way self- expressed in and through this Jesus, Who is a creature like ourselves. And it means that the union which Jesus, the creature, has actually with God is the same union that is potentially open to all other human creatures. Professor Bethune-Baker has long had a great tenderness for Nestorians. We begin to see why. There is nothing at the moment that I would add. The professor is merely another example of the clever man who begins by rejecting, on a priori grounds, a great part of the historical revelation the Church has preserved for his guidance, and ends by naming our Lord Jesus a real man like himself. I would, if I dared, express the hope that the professor doesn’t really mean this — that he has deceived himself into the delusion that by jettison¬ ing some ancient categories he will really abolish the obstinate human “ ego,” which refuses to allow a man, however holy, to become God. But I dare not : 1 might give offence. In any case, facts abide, even if terms of speech alter. Jesus Christ must finally say “I am God,” or “ I am a man ” ; He cannot be both. The professor will Appendix IV 177 have Him say “ I am a man ” : that is the Chris¬ tianity he “ likes/’ Alter metaphysical terms as you please, reject what categories you choose, you will always be face to face with the awkward fact that “I” cannot become “you,” nor can “you” become “1.” It would be at once fairer and kinder to the general public if liberals would admit the fact, and have done with it. If Christ be a real man , He is not, He cannot be, God Himself. APPENDIX V THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE AND LIBERALISM THE Conference will include those who have dared to correct the Lord Christ in the matter of demons. What can it say if other bishops correct Him about His views of wealth and riches ? or others about His law against marriage after divorce ? If His Jewish ignorance put Him wrong about demons, may not His normal life as a working man have misled Him about the rich ? May not His Eastern asceticism be blamed for His over-strict teaching on mar¬ riage ? In short, what final authority does the Confer¬ ence propose to acknowledge ? Will it take Christ at His word ? Or will a select board of liberal prelates and professors sit, as “ assessors ” to the presiding archbishop, ready to tell him what our Lord God, Jesus, ought to have said ? In conclusion, may I ask if the bishops who are to meet at Lambeth propose to call upon our Lord to be present in their midst ? If so, which 178 Appendix V 179 Lord will they summon ? The “ normal Jew ” whom they encourage Dr. Henson in correcting ? Or the Eternal Lord God, Jesus, Virgin-born, whom some of them have, in encouraging Dr. Henson, denied before the civilized world ? Let them choose whom they will serve. Printed by A. R. Mowbray & Co. Ltd., London and Oxford Other Works by the RIGHT REV. FRANK WESTON , D.D., Bishop of Zanzibar. THE ONE CHRIST A Study in the Manner of the Incarnation Second Edition. 65. net. 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