CALVINISM:
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT ST. ANDREW'S,
MARCH 17, 1871.
BY
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A.
RECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY, AUTHOR OF " HISTORY OF ENGLAND," ETC.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER AND COMPANY.
1871.




RIVERSIDE, OAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
0O 0. HOUGHTON AND OOMPANY.




CALVINISM.
GENTLEMEN, - While I am unwilling to allow the temporary connection between us to come to an end without
once more addressing you, I find it difficult to select a subject on which it may be worth your while to listen to what
I have to say. You know yourselves better than I can tell
you the purposes for which you are assembled in this place.
Many of you will have formed honorable resolutions to acquit yourselves bravely and manfully, both in your term of
preparation here, and in the life which you are about to
enter, - resolutions which would make exhortations of
mine to you to persevere appear unmeaning and almost impertinent. You are conscious in detail of the aims which
you have set before yourselves, -you have, perhaps,
already chosen the professions which you mean to follow,
and are better aware than I can be of the subjects which
you have to master if you mean to pursue them successfully. I should show myself unworthy of the honor which
you conferred on me in my election as your Rector were I
to waste your time with profitless generalities. I have decided, after due consideration, to speak to you of things
which, though not immediately connected with the University of St. Andrew's, or any other University, yet concern
us all more nearly than any other matter in the world; and
though I am not vain enough to suppose that I can throw
new material light upon them, yet where there is so much
division and uncertainty, the sincere convictions of any
man, if openly expressed, may be of value as factors in the




4                  Address to the
problem. At all events, I shall hope that the hour for
which I shall ask you to attend to me will not have passed
away without leaving some definite trace behind it.
I may say at once that I am about to travel over serious
ground. I shall not trespass on theology, though I must
go near the frontiers of it. I shall give you the conclusions
which I have been led to form upon a series of spiritual
phenomena which have appeared successively in different
ages of the world, - which have exercised the most remarkable influence on the character and history of mankind, and have left their traces nowhere more distinctly
than in this Scotland where we now stand.
Every one here present must have become familiar in
late years with the change of tone throughout Europe and
America on the subject of Calvinism. After being accepted for two centuries in all Protestant countries as the
final account of the relations between man and'his Maker,
it has come to be regarded by liberal thinkers as a system
of belief incredible in itself, dishonoring to its object, and as
intolerable as it has been itself intolerant. The Catholics
whom it overthrew take courage from the philosophers, and
assail it on the same ground. To represent man as sent
into the world under a curse, as incurably wicked, - wicked
by the constitution of his flesh, and wicked by eternal decree, - as doomed, unless exempted by special grace which
he cannot merit, or by any effort of his own obtain, to live
in sin while he remains on earth, and to be eternally miserable when he leaves it, - to represent him as born unable
to keep the commandments, yet as justly liable to everlasting punishment for breaking them, is alike repugnant to
reason and to conscience, and turns existence into a hideous
nightmare. To deny the freedom of the will is to make
morality impossible. To tell men that they cannot help
themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair.
To what purpose the effort to be virtuous when it is an
effort which is foredoomed to fail, - when those that are




University of St. Andrew's.            5
saved are saved by no effort of their own, and confess themselves the worst of sinners, even when rescued from the
penalties of sin; and those that are lost are lost by an everlasting sentence decreed against them before they were
born? How are we to call the Ruler Who laid us under
this iron code by the name of Wise, or Just, or Merciful,
when we ascribe principles of action to Him which in a human father we should call preposterous and monstrous?
The discussion of these strange questions has been pursued at all times with inevitable passion, and the crisis
uniformly has been a drawn battle. The Arminian has
entangled the Calvinist, the Calvinist has entangled the Arminian, in a labyrinth of contradictions. The advocate of
free will appeals to conscience and instinct, - to an a priori
sense of what ought in equity to be. The necessitarian
falls back upon the experienced reality of facts. It is true,
and no argument can gainsay it, that men are placed in the
world unequally favored, both in inward disposition and outward circumstances. Some children are born with temperaments which make a life of innocence and purity natural and
easy to them; others are born with violent passions, or even
with distinct tendencies to evil, inherited from their ancestors, and seemingly unconquerable, - some are constitutionally brave, others are constitutionally cowards, - some
are born in religious families, and are carefully educated
and watched over; others draw their first breath in an atmosphere of crime, and cease to inhale it only when they
pass into their graves. Only a fourth part of mankind are
born Christians. The remainder never hear the name of
Christ except as a reproach. The Chinese and the Japanese
- we may almost say every weaker race with whom we have
come in contact - connect it only with the forced intrusion
of strangers whose behavior among them has served ill to
recommend their creed. These are facts which no casuistry
can explain away. And if we believe at all that the world
is governed by a conscious and intelligent Being, we must.




6                   Address to the
believe also, however we can reconcile it with our own
ideas, that these anomalies have not arisen by accident, but
have been ordered of purpose and design.
No less noticeable is it that the materialistic and the metaphysical philosophers deny as completely as Calvinism
what is popularly called Free Will.  Every effect has its
cause. In every action the will is determined by the motive which at the moment is operating most powerfully
upon it. When we do wrong, we are led away by temptation. If we overcome our temptation, we overcome it
either because we foresee inconvenient consequences, and
the certainty of future pains is stronger than the present
pleasure; or else because we prefer right to wrong, and
our desire for good is greater than our desire for indulgence. It is impossible to conceive a man, when two
courses are open to him, choosing that which he least desires. He may say that he can do what he dislikes because
it is his duty. Precisely so. His desire to do his duty is
a stronger motive with him than the attraction of present
pleasure.
Spinoza, from entirely different premises, came to the
same conclusion as Mr. Mill or Mr. Buckle, and can find no
better account of the situation of man than in the illustration of St. Paul, " Hath not the potter power over the clay,
to make one vessel to honor and another to dishonor? "
If Arminianism  most commends itself to our feelings,
Calvinism is nearer to the facts, however harsh and forbidding those facts may seem.
I have no intention, however, of entangling myself or
you in these controversies.  As little shall' I consider
whether men have done wisely in attempting a doctrinal
solution of problems, the conditions of which are so imperfectly known. The moral system of the universe is like a
document written in alternate ciphers, which change from
line to line. We read a sentence, but at the next our key
fails us; we see that there is something written there, but




University of St. Andrew's.             7
if we guess at it we are guessing in the dark. It seems
more faithful, more becoming, in beings such as we are, to
rest in the conviction of our own inadequacy, and confine
ourselves to those moral rules for our lives and actions on
which, so far as they concern ourselves,,we are left in no
uncertainty at all.
At present, at any rate, we are concerned with an aspect
of the matter entirely different. I am going to ask you to
consider how it came to pass that if Calvinism is indeed the
hard and unreasonable creed which modern enlightenment
declares it to be, it has possessed such singular attractions
in past times for some of the greatest men that ever lived;
and how - being, as we are told, fatal to morality, because
it denies free will —the first symptom  of its operation,
wherever it established itself, was to obliterate the distinction between sins and crimes, and to make the moral law
the rule of life for States as well as persons. I shall ask
you, again, why, if it be a creed of intellectual servitude,
it was able to inspire and sustain the bravest efforts ever
made by man to break the yoke of unjust authority. When
all else has failed,- when patriotism has covered its face,
and human courage has broken down, -  when intellect has
yielded, as Gibbon says, " with a smile or a sigh," content
to philosophize in the closet, and abroad worship with the
vulgar, -when emotion, and sentiment, and tender imaginative piety have become the handmaids of superstition,
and have dreamt themselves into forgetfulness that there is
any difference between lies and truth, - the slavish form of
belief called Calvinism, in one or other of its many forms,
has borne ever an inflexible front to illusion and mendacity,
and has preferred rather to be ground to powder like flint
than to bend before violence or melt under enervating temptation.
It is enough to mention the name of William the Silent,
of Luther, -for on the points of which I am speaking
Luther was one with Calvin, -of your own Knox and




8                  Address to the
Andrew Melville and the Regent Murray, of Coligny, of our
English Cromwell, of Milton, of John Bunyan.  These
were men possessed of all the qualities which give nobility
and grandeur to human nature, - men whose life was as
upright as their intellect was commanding and their public
aims untainted with selfishness; unalterably just where
duty required them to be stern, but with the tenderness of a
woman in their hearts; frank, true, cheerful, humorous, as
unlike sour fanatics as it is possible to imagine any one, and
able in some way to sound the key-note to which every brave
and faithful heart in Europe instinctively vibrated.
This is the problem.  Grapes do not grow on bramblebushes. Illustrious natures do not form themselves upon
narrow and cruel theories. Spiritual life is full of apparent
paradoxes. When St. Patrick preached the Gospel on
Tarah Hill to Leoghaire, the Irish king, the Druids and the
wise men of Ireland shook their heads. " Why," asked the
king, "does what the cleric preaches seem so dangerous to
you? "      Because," was the remarkable answer, " because
he preaches repentance, and the law of repentance is such
that a man shall say,' I may commit a thousand crimes, and
if I repent I shall be forgiven, and it will be no worse with
me: therefore I will continue to sin."' The Druids argued logically, but they drew a false inference notwithstanding. The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its
soundness. Where we find a heroic life appearing as the
uniform fruit of a particular mode of opinion, it is childish
to argue in the face of fact that the result ought to have
been different.
The question which I have proposed, however, admits of
a reasonable answer. I must ask you only to accompany
me on a somewhat wide circuit in search of it.
There seems, in the first place, to lie in all men, in proportion to the strength of their understanding, a conviction
that there is in all human things a real order and purpose,
notwithstanding the chaos in which at times they seem to be




University of St. Andrew's.               9
involved. Suffering scattered blindly without remedial purpose or retributive propriety, - good and evil distributed
with the most absolute disregard of moral merit or demerit,
enormous crimes perpetrated with impunity, or vengeance
when it comes falling not on the guilty, but the innocent, —
" Desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity, --
these phenomena present, generation after generation, the
same perplexing and even maddening features; and without an illogical, but none the less a positive certainty that
things are not as they seem,- that, in spite of appearance,
there is justice at the heart of them, and that, in the working out of the vast drama, justice will assert somehow and
somewhere its sovereign right and power, the better sort of
persons would find existence altogether unendurable. This
is what the Greeks meant by the'AvadyKy or destiny, which
at the bottom is no other than moral Providence. Prometheus chained on the rock is the counterpart of Job on his
dunghill.  Torn with unrelaxing agony, the vulture with
beak and talons rending at his heart, the Titan still defies
the tyrant at whose command he suffers, and, strong in conscious innocence, appeals to the eternal MoTpa which will do
him right in the end. The Olympian gods were cruel, jealous, capricious, malignant; but beyond and  above the
Olympian gods lay the silent, brooding, everlasting fate of
which victim and tyrant were alike the instruments, and
which at last, far off, after ages of misery it might be, but
still before all was over, would vindicate the sovereignty of
justice. Full as it may be of contradictions and perplexities, this obscure belief lies at the very core of our spiritual
nature, and it is called fate, or it is called predestination, according as it is regarded pantheistically as a necessary condition of the universe or' as the decree of a self-conscious
being.
Intimately connected with this belief, and perhaps the




10                  Address to the
fact of which it is the inadequate expression, is the existence
in nature of omnipresent organic laws, penetrating the material world, penetrating the moral world of human life and
society, which insist on being obeyed in all that we do and
handle, - which we cannot alter, canfot modify, — which
will go with us, and assist and befriend us, if we recognize
and comply with them, — which inexorably make themselves felt in failure and disaster if we neglect or attempt to
thwart them.  Search where we will among created things,
far as the microscope will allow the eye to pierce, we find
organization everywhere. Large forms resolve themselves
into parts, but these parts are but organized out of other
parts, down so far as we can see into infinity. When the
plant meets with the conditions which agree with it, it
-thrives; under unhealthy conditions, it is poisoned and disintegrates. It is the same precisely with each one of ourselves,
whether as individuals or as aggregated into associations,
into families, into nations, into institutions. The remotest
fibre of human action, from the policy of empires to the
most insignificant trifle over which we waste an idle hour or
moment, either moves in harmony with'the true law of our
being, or is else at discord with it. A king or a parliament
enacts a law, and we imagine we are creating some new
regulation, to encounter unprecedented circumstances. The
law itself which applied to these circumstances was enacted
from eternity. It has its existence independent of us, and
will enforce itself either to reward or punish, as the attitude
which we assume towards it is wise or unwise. Our human
laws are but the copies, more or less imperfect, of the
eternal laws so far as we can read them, and either succeed
and promote our welfare, or fail and bring confusion and
disaster, according as the legislator's insight has detected the
true principle, or has been distorted by ignorance or selfishness.
And these laws are absolute, inflexible, irreversible; the
steady friends of the wise and good, the eternal enemies of




University of St. Andrew's.           1
the blockhead and the knave. No Pope can dispense with a
statute enrolled in the Chancery of Heaven, or popular vote
repeal it. The discipline is a stern one, and many a wild
endeavor men have made to obtain less hard conditions, or
imagine them other than they are. They have conceived
the rule of the Almighty to be like the rule of one of themselves. They have fancied that they could bribe or appease
Him,- tempt Him by penance or pious offering to suspend
or turn aside his displeasure. They are asking' that his
own eternal nature shall become other than it is. One thing
only they can do. They for themselves, by changing their
own courses, can make the law which they have broken
thenceforward their friend. Their dispositions and nature
will revive and become healthy again when they are no
longer in opposition to the will of their Maker. This is the
natural action of what we call repentance. But the penalties of the wrongs of the past remain unrepealed. As men
have sown they must still reap. The profligate who has
ruined his health or fortune may learn before he dies that
he has lived as a fool, and may recover something of his
peace of mind as he recovers his understanding; but no
miracle takes away his paralysis, or gives back. to his children the bread of which he has robbed them. He may
himself be pardoned, but the consequences of his acts
remain.
Once more: and it is the most awful feature of our
condition. The laws of nature are general, and are no respecters of persons. There has been and there still is a
clinging impression that the sufferings of men are the results
of their own particular misdeeds, and that no one is or can
be punished for the faults of others. I shall not dispute
about the word " punishment." " The fathers have eaten sour
grapes," said the Jewish proverb, "and the children's teeth
are set on edge." So said Jewish experience, and Ezekiel
answered that these words should no longer be used among
them. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Yes, there is a




12                 Address to the
promise that the soul shall be saved, there is no such promise for the body. Every man is the architect of his own
character; and if to the extent of his opportunities he has
lived purely, nobly, and uprightly, the misfortunes which
may fall on him through the crimes or errors of other men
cannot injure the immortal part of him. But it is no less
true that we are made dependent one upon another to a
degree which can hardly be exaggerated. The winds and
waves are on the side of the best navigator, - the seaman
who best understands them. Place a fool at the helm, and
crew and passengers will perish, be they ever so innocent.
The Tower of Siloam fell, not for any sins of the eighteen
who were crushed by it, but through bad mortar probably,
the rotting of a beam, or the uneven setting of the foundations. The persons who should have suffered, according to
our notion of distributive justice, were the ignorant architects or masons who had done their work amiss. But the
guilty had perhaps long been turned to dust. And the law
of gravity brought the tower down at its own time, indifferent to the persons who might be under it.
Now the feature which distinguishes man from other animals is that he is able to observe and discover these laws
which are of such mighty moment to him, and direct his
conduct in conformity with them. The more subtle may
be revealed only by complicated experience. The plainer
and more obvious - among those especially which are
called moral-have been apprehended among the higher
races easily and readily. I shall not ask how the knowledge of them has been obtained, whether by external revelation, or by natural insight, or by some other influence
working through human faculties. The fact is all that we
are concerned with, that from the earliest times of which we
have historical knowledge there have always been men who
have recognized the distinction between the nobler and baser
parts of their being. They have perceived that if they
would be men, and not beasts, they must control their ani



University of St. Andrew's.          13
mal passions, prefer truth to falsehood, courage to cowardice, justice to violence, and compassion to cruelty. These
are the elementary principles of morality, on the recognition of which the welfare and improvement of mankind depend, and human history has been little more than a record
of the struggle which.began at the beginning and will continue to the end between the few who have had ability to
see into the truth and loyalty to obey it, and the multitude
who by evasion or rebellion have hoped to thrive in spite
of it.
Thus we see that in the better sort of men there are two
elementary convictions; that there is over all things an unsleeping, inflexible, all-ordering, just power, and that. this
power governs the world by laws which can be seen in their
effects, and on the obedience to which, and on nothing else,
human welfare depends.
And now I will suppose some one whose tendencies are
naturally healthy, though as yet no special occasion shall
have roused him to serious thought, growing up in a civilized community where, as usually happens, a compromise
has been struck between vice and virtue, where a certain
difference between right and wrong is recognized decently
on the surface, while below it one half of the people are
rushing steadily after the thing called pleasure, and the
other half laboring in drudgery to provide the means of it
for the idle.
Of practical justice in such a community there will be
exceedingly little, but as society cannot go along at all
without paying morality some outward homage, there will
of course be an established religion, -an Olympus, a Valhalla, or some system of a theogony or theology, with temples, priests, liturgies, public confessions in one form or
another of the dependence of the things we see upon what
is not seen, with certain ideas of duty and penalties imposed
for neglect of it. These there will be, and also, as obedience is disagreeable and requires abstinence from various




14                 Address to the
indulgences, there will be contrivances by which the indulgences can be secured and no harm come of it. By the side
of the moral law there grows up a law of ceremonial observance, to which is attached a notion of superior sanctity and
especial obligation. Morality, though not at first disowned,
is slighted as comparatively trivial. Duty in the high sense
comes to mean religious duty, that is to say, the attentive
observance of certain forms and ceremonies, and these forms
and ceremonies come into collision little or not at all with
ordinary life, and ultimately have a tendency to resolve
themselves into payments of money.
Thus rises what is called idolatry. I do not mean by
idolatry the mere worship of manufactured images. I mean
the separation between practical obligation, and new moons
and sabbaths, outward acts of devotion, or formulas of particular opinions. It is a state of things perpetually recurring; for there is nothing, if it would only act, more agreeable to all parties concerned.  Priests find their office
magnified and their consequence increased. Laymen can be
in favor with God and man, so priests tell them, while their
enjoyments or occupations are in no way interfered with.
The mischief is that the laws of nature remain meanwhile
unsuspended; and all the functions of society become poisoned through neglect of them. Religion, which ought to
have been a restraint, becomes a fresh instrument of evil, -
to the imaginative and the weak a contemptible superstition,
to the educated a mockery, to knaves and hypocrites a cloak
of iniquity, to all alike - to those who suffer and those who
seem to profit by it -a lie so palpable as to be worse than
atheism itself.
There comes a time when all this has to end. The overindulgence of the few is the over-penury of the many. Injustice begets misery, and misery resentment. Something
happens perhaps, -some unusual oppression, or some act
of religious mendacity especially glaring. Such a person as
I am supposing asks himself, " What is the meanihg of these




University of St. Andrew's.           15
things?"  His eyes are opened. Gradually he discovers
that he is living surrounded with falsehood, drinking lies
like water, his conscience polluted, his intellect degraded by
the abominations which envelop his existence. At first perhaps he will feel most keenly for himself. He will not suppose that he can set to rights a world that is out of joint,
but he will himself relinquish his share in what he detests
and despises. He withdraws into himself. If what others
are doing and saying is obviously wrong, then he has to ask
himself what is right, and what is the true purpose of his
existence. Light breaks more clearly on him. He becomes
conscious of impulses towards something purer and higher
than he has yet experienced or even imagined. Whence
these impulses come he cannot tell. He is too keenly aware
of the selfish and cowardly thoughts which rise up to mar
and thwart his nobler aspirations to believe that they can
possibly be his own. If he conquers his baser nature, he
feels that he is conquering himself. The conqueror and the
conquered cannot be the same; and he therefore concludes,
not in vanity, but in profound humiliation and self-abasement, that the infinite grace of God and nothing else is rescuing him from destruction. He is-converted, as the theologians say. He sets his face upon another road from that
which he has hitherto travelled, and to which he can never
return. It has been no merit of his own. His disposition
will rather be to exaggerate his own worthlessness, that he
may exalt the more what has been done for him, and he
resolves thenceforward to enlist himself as a soldier on the
side of truth and right, and to have no wishes, no desires,
no opinions but what the service of his Master imposes,
Like a soldier he abandons his freedom, desiring only like
a soldier to act and speak no longer as of himself, but as
commissioned from  some supreme authority. In such a
condition a man becomes magnetic. There are epidemics
of nobleness as well as epidemics of disease; and he infects
others witi his own enthusiasm. Even in the most corrupt




16                 Address to the
ages there are always more persons than we suppose who in
their hearts rebel against the prevailing fashions; one takes
courage from another, one supports another; communities
form themselves with higher principles of action and purer
intellectual beliefs. As their numbers multiply they catch
fire with a common idea and a common indignation, and
ultimately burst out into open war with the lies and iniquities that surround them.
I have been describing a natural process which has repeated itself many times in human history, and, unless the
old opinion that we are more than animated clay, and that
our nature has nobler affinities, dies away into a dream,
will repeat itself at recurring intervals, so long as our race
survives upon the planet.
I have told you generally what I conceive to be our real
position, and the administration under which we live; and
I have indicated how naturally the conviction of the truth
would tend to express itself in the moral formulas of Calvinism. I will now run briefly, over the most remarkable
of the great historical movements to which I have alluded;
and you will see, in the striking recurrence of the same peculiar mode of thought and action, an evidence that, if not'completely accurate, it must possess some near and close
affinity with the real fact. I will take first the example with
which we are all most familiar, - that of the chosen people.
I must again remind you that I am not talking of theology.
I say nothing of what is called technically revelation. I am
treating these matters as phenomena of human experience,
the lessons of which would be identically the same if no
revelation existed.
The discovery of the key to the hieroglyphics, the excavations in the tombs, the investigations carried on by a
series of careful inquirers, from Belzoni to Lepsius, into
the antiquities of the Valley of the Nile, interpreting and in
turn interpreted by Manetho and Herodotus, have thrown
a light in many respects singularly clear upon the condition




University of St. Andrew's.                17
of the first country which, so far as history can tell, succeeded in achieving a state of high civilization. From a
period the remoteness of which it is unsafe to conjecture
there had been established in Egypt an elaborate and splendid empire, which, though it had not escaped revolutions,
had suffered none which had caused organic changes there.
It had strength, wealth, power, coherence, a vigorous monarchy, dominant and exclusive castes of nobles and priests,
and a proletariat of slaves. Its cities, temples, and monuments are still, in their ruin, the admiration of engineers
and the despair of architects. Original intellectual conceptions inspired its public buildings. Saved by situation, like
China, from the intrusion of barbarians, it developed at
leisure its own ideas, undisturbed from without; and when
it becomes historically visible to us, it was in the zenith of
its glory. The habits of the higher classes were elaborately
luxurious, and the vanity and the self-indulgence of the few
were made possible-  as it is and always must be where
vanity and self-indulgence exist —by the oppression and
misery of the millions.  You can-see on the sides of the
tombs - for their pride and their pomp followed them even
in their graves - the effeminate patrician of the court of
the Pharaohs reclining in his gilded gondola, the attendant
eunuch waiting upon him with the goblet or plate of fruit,.
the bevies of languishing  damsels fluttering round him
in their transparent draperies. Shakespeare's Cleopatra
might have sat for the portrait of the Potiphar's wife who
tried the virtue of the son of Jacob:
"The barge she sate in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them.
For her own person,
It beggared all descriptiol she did lie
In her pavilion - cloth-of-[ -ld of tissue -
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy out-work nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
2 




18                  Address to the
With divers-colored fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they did, undid."
By the side of all this there was a no less elaborate religion, - an ecclesiastical hierarchy, - powerful as the sacerdotalism of Mediaeval Europe, with a creed in the middle of
it which was a complicated idolatry of the physical forces.
There are at bottom but two possible religions, - that
which rises in the moral nature of man, and which takes
shape in moral commandments, and that which grows out
of the observation of the material energies which operate
in the external universe. The sun at all times has been
the central object of this material reverence. The sun was
the parent of light; the sun was the lord of the sky and the
lord of the seasons; at the sun's bidding the earth brought
forth her harvests and ripened them to maturity. The sun,
too, was beneficent to the good and to the evil, and, like the
laws of political economy, drew no harsh distinctions between one person and another. It demanded only that certain work should be done, and smiled equally on the crops
of the slave-driver and the garden of the innocent peasant.
The moon, when the sun sunk to his night's rest, reigned
as his vicegerent, the queen of the revolving heavens, and
in her waxing and waning and singular movement among
the stars was the perpetual occasion of admiring and adoring curiosity. Nature in all her forms was wonderful;
Nature in her beneficent forms was to be loved and worshipped; and being, as Nature is, indifferent to morality,
bestowing prosperity on principles which make no demands
on chastity or equity, she is, in one form or other, the
divinity on whose shrine in all ages the favored sections of
society have always gladly paid their homage. Where
Nature is sovereign, there is no need of austerity and selfdenial. The object of life is the pursuit of wealth and the
pleasures which wealth can purchase; and the rules for our
practical guidance are the laws, as the economists say, by
which wealth can be acquired.




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It is an excellent creed for those who have the happiness
to profit by it, and will have its followers to the end of time.
In these later ages it connects itself with the natural sciences, progress of the intellect, specious shadows of all kinds
which will not interfere with its supreme management of
political arrangements. In Egypt, where knowledge was
in its rudiments, every natural force, the minutest plant or
animal, which influenced human fortunes for good or evil,
came in for a niche in the shrine of the temples of the sun
and moon. Snakes and crocodiles, dogs, cats, cranes, and
beetles were propitiated by sacrifices, by labored ceremonials of laudation; nothing living was too mean to find a
place in the omnivorous devotionalism of the Egyptian
clergy. We, in these days, proud as we may be of our intellectual advances, need not ridicule popular credulity. Even
here in Scotland, not so long ago, wretched old women
were supposed to run about the country in the shape of
hares. At this very hour the ablest of living natural philosophers is looking gravely to the courtships of moths and
butterflies to solve the problem of the origin of man, and
prove his descent from an African baboon.
There was, however, in ancient Egypt another article of
faith besides nature-worship of transcendent moment,- a
belief which had probably descended from earlier and purer
ages, and had then originated in the minds of sincere and
earnest men, - as a solution of the real problem of humanity. The inscriptions and paintings in the tombs near
Thebes make it perfectly clear that the Egyptians looked
forward to a future state, - to the judgment-bar of Osiris,
where they would each one day stand to give account for
their actions. They believed as clearly as we do, and with
a conviction of a very similar kind, that those who had done
good would go to everlasting life, and those who had done
evil into eternal perdition.
Such a belief, if coupled with an accurate perception of
what good and evil mean, - with a distinct certainty that




20                  Address to the
men will be tried by the moral law, before a perfectly just
judge, and that no subterfuges will avail, - cannot but exercise a most profound and most tremendous influence upon
human conduct. And yet our own experience, if nothing
else, proves that this belief, when moulded into traditional
and conventional shapes, may lose its practical power;'nay,
without ceasing to be professed, and even sincerely held,
may become more mischievous than salutary.  And this is
owing to the fatal distinction of which I spoke just now,
which seems to have an irresistible tendency to shape itself,
in civilized societies, between religious and moral duties.
With the help of this distinction it becomes possible for a
man, as long as he avoids gross sins, to neglect every one
of his positive obligations, - to be careless, selfish, unscrupulous, indifferent to everything but his own pleasures, -
and to imagine all the time that his condition is perfectly
satisfactory, and that he can look forward to what is before
him without the slightest uneasiness. All accounts represent the Egyptians as an eminently religious people. No
profanity was tolerated there, no skepticism, no insolent disobedience to the established priesthood. If a doubt ever
crossed the mind of some licentious philosopher as to the
entire sacredness of the stainless Apis, if ever a question
forced itself on him whether the Lord of heaven and earth
could really be incarnated in the stupidest of created beasts,
he kept his counsels to himself, if he was not shocked at his
own impiety. The priests, who professed supernatural powers, -the priests, who were in communication with the
gods themselves, -they possessed the keys of the sacred
mysteries, and what was Philosophy that it should lift its
voice against them? The word of the priest - nine parts
a charlatan, and one part, perhaps, himself imposed on -
was absolute. He knew the counsels of Osiris, he knew
that the question which would be asked at the dread tribunal was not whether a man had been just, and true, and
merciful, but whether he had believed what he was told to




University of St. Andrew's.            21
believe, and had duly paid the fees to the temple. And so
the world went its way, controlled by no dread of retribution; and on the tomb-frescoes you can see legions of slaves
under the lash dragging from the quarries the blocks of
granite which were to form the eternal monuments of the
Pharaohs' tyranny; and you read in the earliest authentic
history that when there was a fear that the slave-races
should multiply so fast as to be dangerous, their babies were
flung to the crocodiles.
One of these slave-races rose at last in revolt. Noticeably it did not rise against oppression as such, or directly in
consequence of oppression. We hear of no massacre of
slave-drivers, no burning of towns or villages, none of the
usual accompaniments of peasant insurrections. If Egypt
was plagued, it was not by mutinous mobs or incendiaries.
Half a million men simply rose up and declared that they
could endure no longer the mendacity, the hypocrisy, the
vile and incredible rubbish which was offered to them in
the sacred name of religion. " Let us go," they said, " into
the wilderness, go out of these soft water-meadows and cornfields, forsake our leeks and our flesh-pots, and take in
exchange a life of hardship and wandering,'that we may
worship the God of our fathers."' Their leader had been
trained in the wisdom of the Egyptians, and among the
rocks of Sinai had learnt that it was wind and vanity.
The half-obscured traditions of his ancestors awoke to life
again, and were rekindled by him in his people. They
would bear with lies no longer. They shook the dust of
Egypt from their feet, and the prate and falsehood of it from
their souls, and they withdrew, with all belonging to them,
into the Arabian desert, that they might no longer serve
cats, and dogs, and bulls, and beetles, but the Eternal Spirit
who had been pleased to make his existence known to
them. They sung no paeans of liberty. They were delivered from the house of bondage, but it was the bondage of
mendacity, and they left it only to assume another service.




22                 Address to the
The Eternal had taken pity on them. In revealing his true
nature to them, He had taken them for his children. They
were not their own, but his, and they laid their lives under
commandments which were as close a copy as, with the
knowledge which they possessed, they could make, to the
moral laws of the Maker of the universe. In essentials the
Book of the Law was a covenant of practical justice. Rewards and punishments were alike immediate, both to each
separate person and to the collective nation. Retribution
in a life to come was dropped out of sight, not denied, but
not insisted on. The belief in it had been corrupted to evil,
and rather enervated than encouraged the efforts after present equity. Every man was to reap as he had sown, —
here, in the immediate world, - to live under his own vine
and fig-tree, and thrive or suffer according to his actual deserts. Religion was not a thing of past or future, an account
of things that had been, or of things which one day would
be again. God was the actual living ruler of real every-day
life; nature-worship was swept away, and in the warmth
and passion of conviction they became, as I said, the soldiers
of a purer creed. In Palestine, where they found idolatry
in a form yet fouler and more cruel than what they had left
behind them, they trampled it out as if in inspired abomination of a system of which the fruits were so detestable.
They were not perfect, - very far from perfect. An army
at best is made of mixed materials, and war, of all ways of
making wrong into right, is the harshest; but they were
directed by a noble purpose, and they have left a mark
never to be effaced in the history of the human race.
The fire died away. " The Israelites," we are told, " mingled among the heathen and learned their works."  They
ceased to be missionaries.  They hardly and fitfully preserved the records of the meaning of their own exodus. Eight
hundred years went by, and the flame rekindled in another
country. Cities more splendid even than the hundred-gated
Thebes itself had risen on the banks of the Euphrates.




University of St. Andrew's.            23
Grand military empires had been founded on war and conquest. Peace had followed when no enemies were left to
conquer; and with peace had come philosophy, science,
agricultural enterprise, magnificent. engineering works for
the draining and irrigation of the Mesopotamian plains.
Temples and palaces towered into the sky. The pomp and
luxury of Asia rivaled, and even surpassed, the glories of
Egypt; and by the side of it a second nature-worship,
which, if less elaborately absurd, was more deeply detestable. The foulest vices were consecrated to the service of
the gods, and the holiest ceremonies were inoculated with
impurity and sensuality.
The seventh century before the Christian era was distinguished over the whole East by extraordinary religious
revolutions. With the most remarkable of these, that which
bears the name of Buddha, I am  not here concerned.
Buddhism has been the creed for more than two thousand
years of half the human race, but it left unaffected our
own western world, and therefore I here pass it by.
Simultaneously with Buddha, there appeared another
teacher, Zerdusht, or, as the Greeks called him, Zoroaster,
among the hardy tribes of the Persian mountains. He
taught a creed which, like that of the Israelites, was essentially moral and extremely simple. Nature-worship, as
I said, knew nothing of morality. When the objects of
natural idolatry became personified, and physical phenomena were metamorphosed into allegorical mythology, the
indifference to morality which was obvious in nature became
ascribed, as a matter of course, to gods which were but
nature in a personal disguise. Zoroaster, like Moses, saw
behind the physical forces into the deeper laws of right and
wrong. He supposed himself to discover two antagonist
powers contending in the heart of man as well as in the outward universe, - a spirit of light and a spirit of darkness,
a spirit of truth and a spirit of falsehood, a spirit life-giving
and beautiful, a spirit poisonous and deadly. To one or other




24                  Address to the
of these powers man was necessarily in servitude. As the
follower of Ormuzd, he became enrolled in the celestial
armies, whose business was to fight against sin and misery,
against wrong-doing and impurity, against injustice and lies
and baseness of all sorts and kinds; and every one with a
soul in him  to prefer good to evil was summoned to the
holy wars, which would end at last after ages in the final
overthrow of Ahriman.
The Persians caught rapidly Zoroaster's spirit. Uncorrupted by luxury, they responded eagerly to a voice which
they recognized as speaking truth to them. They have
been called the Puritans of the Old World.  Never aly
people, it is said, hated idolatry as they hated it, and for
the simple reason that they hated lies. A  Persian lad,
Herodotus tells us, was educated in three especial accomplishments.  He was taught to ride, to shoot, and to speak
the truth, - that is to say, he was brought up to be brave,
active, valiant, and upright. When a man speaks the truth,
you may count pretty surely that he possesses most other
virtues. Half the vices in the world rise out of cowardice,
and one who is afraid of lying is usually afraid of nothing
else.  Speech is an article of trade in which we are all
dealers, and the one beyond all others where we are most
bound to provide honest wares: —
E;ip6of iot KIKECtvof 5Oif'Atdao lrvlaatv
Of 9' trep6v iE KEVI  ev1 M fpepotv i2Ao d6 eiri.
This seems to have been the Persian temperament, and in
virtue of it they were chosen as the instruments - clearly
recognized as such by the Prophet Isaiah for one — which
were to sweep the earth clean of abominations, which had
grown to an intolerable height.  Bel bowed down, and
Nebo had to stoop before them.  Babylon, the lady of
kingdoms, was laid in the dust, and "her star-gazers, and
her astrologers, and her monthly prognosticators" could not
save her with all their skill. They and she were borne




University of St. Andrew's.              25
away together.  Egypt's turn followed.  Retribution had
been long delayed, but her cup ran over at last. The palmgroves were flung into the river, the temples polluted, the
idols mutilated. The precious Apis, for all its godhood, was
led with a halter before the Persian king, and stabbed in
the sight of the world by Persian steel.
" Profane! " exclaimed the priests, as pious persons, on
like occasions, have exclaimed a thousand times: "these
Puritans have no reverence for holy things."  Rather it is
because they do reverence things which deserve reverence
that they loathe and abhor the counterfeit. What does an
ascertained imposture deserve but to be denied, exposed,
insulted, trampled under foot, danced upon, if nothing less
will serve, till the very geese take courage and venture to
hiss derision?   Are we to wreathe aureoles round the
brows of phantasms lest we shock the sensibilities of the
idiots who have believed them  to be divine?  Was the
Prophet Isaiah so tender in his way of treating such matters?
"Who hath formed a god, or molten a graven image that is
profitable for nothing? He heweth him down cedars. He taketh the cypress and the oak from the trees of the forest. He
burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth
flesh. He roasteth roast, and is satisfied: yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire: and the
residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image: he
falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it,
and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god.
" Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the
Lord, for the glory of His majesty when He ariseth to shake terribly the earth. In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver
and gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to
the moles and the bats."
Again events glide on.  Persia runs the usual course.
Virtue and truth produced strength, strength dominion, dominion riches, riches luxury, and luxury weakness and collapse, - fatal sequence repeated so often, yet to so little pur



26                    Address to the
pose.  The hardy warrior of the mountains degenerated
into a vulgar sybarite. His manliness became effeminacy;
his piety a ritual of priests; himself a liar, a coward, and a
slave.  The Greeks conquered the Persians, copied their
manners, and fell in turn before the Romans.  We count
little more than 500 years from the fall of Babylon, and the
entire known world was lying at the feet of a great military
despotism.  Coming originally themselves from  the East,
the classic nations had brought with them also the primreval nature-worship of Asia.  The Greek imagination had
woven the Eastern metaphors into a singular mythology,
in which the gods were represented as beings possessing in a
splendid degree physical beauty, physical strength, with the
kind of awfulness which belonged to their origin; the fitful,
wanton, changeable, yet also terrible powers of the elemental world. Translated into the language of humanity,
the actions and adventures thus ascribed to the gods became in process of time impossible to be believed. Intellect expanded; moral sense grew more vigorous, and with
it the conviction that if the national traditions were true,
man must be more just than his Maker.  In iEschylus and
Sophocles, in Pindar and Plato, you see conscience asserting
its sovereignty over the most sacred beliefs, -instinctive
reverence and piety struggling sometimes to express themselves under the names and forms of the pas-t, sometimes
bursting out uncontrollably into indignant abhorrence: —'Eyot 6' airopa yaarpilapyov
MaK6apov rtv' eiTEZv:'AtafTraiLa..
Kat Tro9 rt Kat fporTSv OpvraS
VrEp TOb aiaOi o6yov
6e6aLtd6aievot it)E6eat rotKTi2otg
E'arraTvTrt V60ot.
Xaptas' a~rep a&avra  TVeXet
-ra jueiLXa -9varol
Emrtpotaa rtuiav
tai arnrarov tli;7aaro 7riraro
lULpevaL T'ro6a2LaKta.




University of St. Andrew's.               27
" To me'twere strange indeed
To charge the blessed gods with greed.
I dare not do it....
Myths too oft,
With quaintly colored lies enwrought,
To stray from truth have mortals brought.
And Art, which round all things below
A charm of loveliness can tnrow,
Has robed the false in honor's hue,
And made the unbelievable seem true."
" All religions," says Gibbon, "are to the vulgar equally
true, to the philosopher equally false, and to the statesman
equally useful: " thus scornfully summing up the theory of
the matter which he found to be held by the politicians of
the age which he was describing, and perhaps of his own.
Religion, as a moral force, died away with the establishment
of the Roman Empire, and with it died probity, patriotism,
and human dignity, and all that men had learnt in nobler
ages to honor and to value as good.  Order reigned unbroken under the control of the legions. Industry flourished, and natural science, and most of the elements of what
we now  call civilization.  Ships covered the seas.  Huge
towns adorned the imperial provinces.  The manners of
men became more artificial, and in a certain sense more
humane.  Religion was a State establishment, -a decent
acknowledgment of a power or powers which, if they existed
at all, amused themselves in the depths of space, careless, so
their deity was not denied, of the woe or weal of humanity:
the living fact, supreme in Church and State, being the
wearer of the purple, who, as the practical realization of authority, assumed the name as well as the substance. The
one god immediately known to man was henceforth the
Divus Caesar, whose throne in the sky was waiting empty
for him till his earthly exile was ended, and it pleased him
to join or rejoin his kindred divinities.
It was the era of atheism, —atheism such as this earth
never witnessed before or since. You who have read Tacitus know the practical fruits of it, as they appeared at the




28                 Address to the
heart of the system in the second Babylon, the proud city
of the seven hills. You will remember how, for the crime
of a single slave, the entire household of a Roman patrician,
four hundred innocent human beings, were led in chains
across the Forum  and murdered by what was called law.
You will remember the exquisite Nero, who, in his love of
art, to throw himself more fully into the genius of Greek
tragedy, committed incest with his mother that he might be
a second (Edipus, and assassinated her that he might realize
the sensations of Orestes. You will recall one scene which
Tacitus describes, not as exceptional or standing alone, but
merely, he says, "quas ut exemplum  referam  ne saepius
eadem prodigentia narranda sit,"- the hymeneal nightbanquet on Agrippa's lake, graced by the presence of the
wives and daughters of the Roman senators, where amidst
blazing fireworks and music and cloth-of-gold pavilions and
naked prostitutes, the majesty of the Caesars celebrated his
nuptials with a boy.
There, I conceive, was the visible product of material
civilization, where there was no fear of God, in the middle
of it, - the final outcome of wealth, and prosperity, and art,
and culture, raised aloft as a sign for all ages to look upon.
But it is not to this, nor to the fire of hell which in due
time burst out to consume it, that I desire now to draw
your attention. I have to point out to you two purifying
movements which were at work in the midst of the pollution, one of which came to nothing and survives only in
books, the second a force which was to mould for ages the
future history of man. Both require our notice, for both
singularly contained the particular feature which is called
the reproach of Calvinism.
The blackest night is never utterly dark. When mankind seem most abandoned there are always a seven thousand somewhere who have not bowed the knee to the fashionable opinions of the hour. Among the great Roman
families a certain number remained republican in feeling




Unwersity of St. Andrew's.            29
and republican in habit. The State religion was as incredible to them as to every one else. They could not persuade
themselves that they could discover the will of Heaven in
the color of a calf's liver or in the appetite of the sacred
chickens; but they had retained the moral instincts of their
citizen ancestors. They knew nothing of God or the gods,
but they had something in themselves which made sensuality nauseating instead of pleasant to them. They had an
austere sense of the meaning of the word " duty."  They
could distinguish and reverence the nobler possibilities of
their nature. They disdained what was base and effeminate, and, though religion failed them, they constructed out
of philosophy a rule which would serve to live by. Stoicism is a not unnatural refuge of thoughtful men in confused and skeptical ages. It adheres rigidly to morality.
It offers no easy Epicurean explanation of the origin of
man, which resolves him into an organization of particles,
and dismisses him  again into nothingness. It recognizes
only that men who are the slaves of their passions are miserable and impotent, and insists that personal inclinations
shall be subordinated to conscience. It prescribes plainness
of life, that the number of our necessities may be as few as
possible, and in placing the business of life in intellectual and
moral action, it destroys the temptation to sensual gratifications. It teaches a contempt of death so complete that
it can be encountered without a flutter of the pulse; and,
while it raises men above the suffering which makes others
miserable, generates a proud submissiveness to  sorrow
which noblest natures feel most keenly, by representing
this huge scene and the shows which it presents as the work
of some unknown but irresistible force, against which it is
vain to struggle and childish to repine.
As with Calvinism, a theoretic belief in an overruling
will or destiny was not only compatible with, but seemed
naturally to issue in the control of the animal appetites.
The Stoic did not argue that, " As fate governs all things, I




30                  Address to the
can do no wrong, and therefore I will take my pleasure;"
but rather, " The moral law within me is the noblest part
of my being, and compels me to submit to it." He did not
withdraw from the world like the Christian anchorite. He
remained at his post in the senate, the Forum, or the army.
A Stoic in Marcus Aurelius gave a passing dignity to the
dishonored purple. In Tacitus, Stoicism has left an eternal evidence how grand a creature man may be, though unassisted by conscious dependence on external spiritual help,
through steady disdain of what is base, steady reverence for
all that deserves to be revered, and inflexible integrity in
word and deed.
But Stoicism could under no circumstances be a regenerating power in the general world. It was a position only
tenable to the educated; it was without hope and without
enthusiasm. From a contempt of the objects which mankind most desired, the step was short and inevitable to
contempt of mankind themselves. Wrapped in mournful
self-dependence, the Stoic could face calmly for himself
whatever lot the fates might send:" Si fractus illabatur orbis,
Impavidum ferient ruinae."
But, natural as such a creed might be in a Roman noble
under the Empire, natural perhaps as it may always be in
corrupted ages and amidst disorganized beliefs, the very
sternness of Stoicism was repellent. It carried no consolation to the hearts of the suffering millions, who were in no
danger of being led away by luxury, because their whole lives
were passed in poverty and wretchedness. It was individual, not missionary. The Stoic declared no active war
against corruption. He stood alone, protesting scornfully
in silent example against evils which he was without power
to cure. Like Caesar, he folded himself in his mantle. The
world might do its worst. He would keep his own soul unstained.
Place beside the Stoics their contemporaries, the Galilean




University of St. Andrew's.           81
fishermen and the tent-maker of Tarsus. I am not about
to sketch in a few paragraphs the rise of Christianity. I
mean only to point to the principles on which the small
knot of men gathered themselves together who were about
to lay the foundations of a vast spiritual revolution. The
guilt and wretchedness in which the world was steeped St.
Paul felt as keenly as Tacitus. Like Tacitus, too, he believed that the wild and miserable scene which he beheld
was no result of accident. but had been ordained so to be,
and was the direct expression of an all-mastering Power.
But he saw also that this Power was no blind necessity or
iron chain of connected cause and effect, but a perfectly
just, perfectly wise being, who governed all things by the
everlasting immutable laws of his own nature; that when
these laws were resisted or forgotten they wrought ruin,
and confusion, and slavery to death and sin; that when
they were recognized and obeyed, the curse would be taken
away, and freedom  and manliness come back  again.
Whence the disobedience had first risen was a problem
which St. Paul solved in a manner not all unlike the Persians. There was a rebellious spirit in the universe, penetrating into men's hearts, and prompting them to disloyalty
and revolt. It removed the question a step further back
without answering it, but the fact was plain as the\sunlight. Men had neglected the laws of their Maker. In
neglecting them they had brought universal ruin, not on
themselves only, but on all society; and if the world was to
be saved from destruction, they must be persuaded or forced
back into their allegiance. The law itself had been once
more revealed on the mountains of Palestine, and in the
person and example of One who had lived and died to
make it known; and those who had heard and known Him,
being possessed with his spirit, felt themselves commissioned as a missionary legion to publish the truth to
mankind. They were not, like the Israelites or the Persians, to fight with the sword, - not even in their own de



32                 Address to the
fense. The sword can take life, but not give it; and the
command to the Apostles was to sow the invisible seed in
the hot-bed of corruption, and feed and foster it, and water
it, with the blood, not of others, but themselves. Their
own  wills, ambitions, hopes, desires, emotions, were
swallowed up in the gill to which they had surrendered
themselves. They were soldiers. It was St. Paul's metaphor, and no other is so appropriate. They claimed no
merit through their calling; they were too conscious of
their own sins to indulge.in the poisonous reflection that
they were not as other men. They were summoned out on
their allegiance, and armed with the spiritual strength
which belongs to the consciousness of a just cause. If they
indulged any personal hope, it was only that their weaknesses would not be remembered against them, - that, having been chosen for a work in which the victory was assured, they would be made themselves worthy of their
calling, and, though they might slide, would not be allowed
to fall. Many mysteries remained unsolved. Man was as
clay in the potter's hand; one vessel was made to honor
and another to dishonor. Why, who could tell? This only
they knew, that they must themselves do no dishonor to
the spirit that was in them, -gain others, gain all who
would join them for their common purpose, and fight With
all their souls against ignorance and sin.
The fishermen of Gennesaret planted Christianity, and
many a winter and many a summer have since rolled over
it. More than once it has shed its leaves and seemed to
be dying, and when the buds burst again the color of the
foliage was changed. The theory of it which is taught today in the theological schools of St. Andrew's would have
sounded strange from the pulpit of your once proud cathedral. As the same thought expresses itself in many languages, so spiritual truths assume ever-varying forms. The
garment fades, - the moths devour it, - the woven fibres
disintegrate and turn to dust. The idea only is immortal,




University of St. Andrew's.           33
and never fades. The hermit who made his cell below the
cliff where the cathedral stands, the monkish architect who
designed the plan of it, the princes who brought it to perfection, the Protestants who shattered it into ruin, the
preacher of last Sunday at the University church, would
have many a quarrel were they to. meet now before they
would understand each other. But at the bottom of the
minds of all the same thought would be predominant, -
that they were soldiers of the Almighty, commissioned to
fight with lies and selfishness, and that all alike, they and
those against whom  they were contending, were in his
hands, to deal with after his own pleasure.
Again six centuries go by.  Christianity becomes the
religion of the Roman Empire. The Empire divides, and
the Church is divided with it.  Europe is overrun by the
Northern nations.  The power of the Western Caesars
breaks in pieces, but the Western Church stands erect,
makes its way into the hearts of the conquerors, penetrates
the German forests, opens a path into Britain and Ireland.
By the noble Gothic nations it is welcomed with passionate
enthusiasm. The warriors of Odin are transformed into a
Christian chivalry, and the wild Valhalla into a Christian
heaven. Fiery, passionate nations are not tamed in a generation or a century, but a new conception of what was
praiseworthy and excellent had taken hold of their imagination and the understanding. Kings, when their day of
toil was over, laid down crown and sword, and retired into
cloisters, to pass what remained of life to them in prayers
and meditations on eternity. The supreme object of reverence was no longer the hero of the battle-field, but the
barefoot missionary who was carrying the Gospel among
the tribes that were still untaught. So beautiful in their
conception of him was the character of one of these wandering priests that their stories formed a new mythology. So
vast were the real miracles which they were working on
men's souls that wonders of a more ordinary sort were
3




34                  Address to the
assigned to them  as a matter of course. They raised the
dead, they healed the sick, they cast out devils with a
word or with the sign of the cross. Plain facts were too
poor for the enthusiasm  of German piety; and noble human figures were exhibited, as it were, in the resplendent
light of a painted window, in the effort to do them exaggerated honor.
It was pity, for truth only smells sweet forever, and
illusions, however innocent, are deadly as the canker-worm.
Long cycles had to pass before the fruit of these poisonseeds would ripen. The practical result meanwhile was to
substitute in the minds of the sovereign races which were
to take the lead in the coming era the principles of the
moral law for the law of force and the sword.
The Eastern branch of the divided Church experienced
meanwhile a less happy fortune. In the East there was no
virgin soil like the great, noble Teutonic peoples. Asia was
a worn-out stage, on which drama after drama of history
had been played, and played out. Languid luxury only
was there, huge aggregation of wealth in particular localities, and the no less inevitable shadow attached to luxury
by the necessities of things, oppression and misery and
squalor.  Christianity and the world had come to terms
after the established fashion, - the world to be let alone in
its pleasures and its sins; the Church relegated to opinion,
with free liberty to split doctrinal hairs to the end of time.
The work of the Church's degradation had begun, even
before it accepted the tainted hand of Constantine. Already in the third century speculative Christianity had
become the fashionable creed of Alexandria, and had purchased the favor of patrician congregations, if not by open
tolerance of vice, yet by leaving it to grow unresisted. St.
Clement details contemptuously the inventory of the boudoir
of a fine lady of his flock, the list of essences on her toilettable, the shoes, sandals, and slippers with which her dainty
feet were decorated in endless variety. He describes her




University of St. Andrew's.           35
as she ascends the steps of the a0-tLXLK7, to which she was
going for what she called her prayers, with a page lifting
up her train. He paints her as she walks along the street,
her petticoats projecting with some horsehair arrangement
behind, and the street boys jeering at her as she passes.
All that Christianity was meant to do in making life
simple and habits pure was left undone, while, with a few
exceptions, like that of St. Clement himself, the intellectual
energy of its bishops and teachers was exhausted in spinning
endless cobwebs of metaphysical theology. Human life at
the best is enveloped in darkness; we know not what we
are or whither we are bound. Religion is the light by which
we are to see our way along the moral pathways without
straying into the brake or the morass. We are not to look
at religion itself, but at surrounding things with the help
of religion.  If we fasten our attention upon the light
itself, analyzing it into its component rays, speculating
on the union and composition of the substances of which it
is composed, not only will it no longer serve us for a guide,
but our dazzled senses lose their natural powers; we should
grope our way more safely in conscious blindness.
"When the light within you is darkness, how great is that
darkness!"
In the place of the old material idolatry we erect a new
idolatry of words and phrases. Our duty is no longer to
be true, and honest, and brave, and self-denying, and pure,
but to be exact in our formulas, to hold accurately some
nice and curious proposition, to place damnation in straying
a hair's breadth from some symbol which exults in being unintelligible, and salvation in the skill with which the mind
can balance itself on some intellectual tight-rope.
There is no more instructive phenomenon in history than
the ease and rapidity with which the Arabian caliphs lopped
off the fairest provinces of the Eastern Empire. When nations are easily conquered, we may be sure that they have
first lost their moral self-respect. When their religions, as




36                 Address to the
they call them, go down at a breath, those religions have
become already but bubbles of vapor. The laws of Heaven
are long-enduring, but their patience comes to an end at
last. Because justice is not executed speedily, men persuade
themselves that there is no such thing as justice. But the
lame foot, as the Greek proverb said, overtakes the swift
one in the end; and the longer the forbearance, the sharper
the retribution when it comes.
As the Greek theology was one of the most complicated
accounts ever offered of the nature of God and his relation
to man, so the message pf Mahomet, when he first unfolded
the green banner, was one of the most simple: There is no
god but God; God is King, and you must and shall obey
his will. This was Islam, as it was first offered at the
sword's point to people who had lost the power of understanding any other argument: Your images are wood and
stone; your metaphysics are words without understanding;
the world lies in wickedness and wretchedness because you
have forgotten the statutes of your Master, and you shall go
back to those; you shall fulfill the purpose for which you
were set to live upon the earth, or you shall not live at all.
Tremendous inroad upon the liberties of conscience!
What right, it is asked, have those people that you have
been calling soldiers of the Almighty to interfere by force
with the opinions of others? Let them leave us alone; we
meddle not with them. Let them, if they please, obey those
laws they talk of; we have other notions of such things;
we will obey ours, and let the result judge between us.
The result was judging between them. The meek Apostle,
with no weapon but his word and his example, and winning
victories by himself submitting to be killed, is a fairer object
than a fierce Kaled, calling himself the sword of the Almighty. But we cannot order for ourselves in what way
these things shall be. The caitiff Damascenes to whom
Kaled gave the alternative of the Koran or death were men
themselves, who had hands to hold a sword with if they had




University of St. Andrew's.           37
heart to use it, or a creed for which they cared to risk their
lives. In such a quarrel superior strength and courage are
the signs of the presence of a nobler conviction.
To the question, " What right have you to interfere with
us?" there is but one answer: "We must. These things
which we tell you are true; and in your hearts you know
it; your own cowardice convicts you. The moral laws of
your Maker are written in your consciences as well as in
ours. If you disobey them, you bring disaster not only on
your own wretched selves, but on all around you. It is our
common concern, and if you will not submit, in the name
of our Master we will compel you."
Any fanatic, it will be said, might use the same language.
Is not history full of instances of dreamers or impostors,
"boasting themselves to be somebody," who for some wild
illusion, or for their own ambition, have thrown the world
into convulsions? Is not Mahomet himself a signal - the
most signal - illustration of it? I should say rather that
when men have risen in arms for a false cause the event has
proved it by the cause coming to nothing. The world is
not so constituted that courage, and strength, and endurance,
and organization, and success long sustained are to be obtained in the service of falsehood. If I could think that,
I should lose the most convincing reason for believing that
we are governed by a moral power. The moral laws of our
being execute themselves through the instrumentality of
men; and in those great movements which determine the
moral condition of many nations through many centuries,
the stronger side, it seems to me, has uniformly been the
better side, and stronger because it has been better.
I am not upholding Mahomet as if he had been a perfect
man, or the Koran as a second Bible. The crescent was
no sun, nor even a complete moon reigning full-orbed in
the night heaven. The light there was in it was but reflected from the sacred books of the Jews and the Arab
traditions. The morality of it was defective. The detailed




38                 Address to the
conception of man's duties inferiors far inferior, to what St.
Martin and St. Patrick, St. Columba and St. Augustine were
teaching or had taught in Western Europe. Mahometanism rapidly degenerated. The first caliphs stood far above
Saladin. The descent from Saladin to a modern Moslem
despot is like a fall over a precipice. All established things,
nations, constitutions, all established things which have life
in them, have also the seeds of death. They grow, they
have their day of usefulness, they decay and pass away,
"lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
But the light which there was in the Moslem creed was
real. It taught the omnipotence and omnipresence of one
eternal Spirit, the Maker and Ruler of all things, by whose
everlasting purpose all things were, and whose will all
things must obey; and this central truth, to which later
experience and broader knowledge can add nothing, it has
taught so clearly and so simply that in Islam there has been
no room for heresy, and scarcely for schism.
The Koran has been accused of countenancing sensual
vice. Rather it bridled and brought within limits a sensuality which before was unbounded. It forbade and has
absolutely extinguished, wherever Islam is professed, the
bestial drunkenness which is the disgrace of our Christian
English and Scottish towns. Even now, after centuries of
decay, the Mussulman probably governs his life by the
Koran more accurately than most Christians obey the Sermon on the Mount or the Ten Commandments. In our
own India, where the Moslem  creed retains its relative
superiority to the superstitions of the native races, the Mussulman is a higher order of being. Were the English to
withdraw, he would retake the sovereignty of the peninsula
by natural right, -not because he has larger bones and
sinews, but by superiority of intellect and heart; in other
words, because he has a truer faith.
I said that while Christianity degenerated in the East
with extreme rapidity, in the West it retained its firmer




University of St. Andrew's.             39
characters. It became the vitalizing spirit of a new organization of society. All that we call modern civilization in
a sense which deserves the name is the visible expression
of the transforming power of the Gospel.
I said also that by the side of the healthy influences of
regeneration there were sown along with it the germs
of evil to come. All living ideas, from the necessity of
things, take up into their constitutions whatever forces are
already working round them. The most ardent aspirations
after truth will not anticipate knowledge, and the errors
of the imagination become consecrated as surely as the
purest impulses of conscience. So'long as the laws of the
physical world remain a mystery, the action of all uncomprehended phenomena, the movements of the heavenly
bodies, the winds and storms, famines, murrains, and hu —
man epidemics, are ascribed to the voluntary interference
of supernatural beings. The belief in witches and fairies,.
in spells and talismans, could not be dispelled by science,
for science did not exist. The Church therefore entered.
into competition with her evil rivals on their own ground.
The saint came into the field against the enchanters. The.
powers of charm and amulets were eclipsed by martyrs'
relics, sacraments, and holy water. The magician, with the
devil at his back, got to yield to the divine powers imparted to priests by spiritual descent in the imposition of
hands.
Thus a gigantic system of supernaturalism overspread
the entire Western world. There was no deliberate imposition. The clergy were as ignorant as the people of
true relations between natural cause and effect. Their
business, so far as they were conscious of their purpose,
was to contend against the works of the devil. They saw
practically that they were able to convert men from violence and impurity to pity and self-restraint. Their very
humility forbade them to attribute such wonderful results
to their own teaching.  When it was universally believed




40                 Address to the
that human beings could make covenants with Satan by
signing their names in blood, what more natural than that
they should assume, for instance, that the sprinkling of
water, the inaugurating ceremony of the purer and better
life, should exert a mysterious mechanical influence upon
the character?
If regeneration by baptism, however, with its kindred
imaginations, was not true, innocence of intention could not
prevent the natural consequences of falsehood. Time went
on; knowledge increased; doubt stole in, and with doubt
the passionate determination to preserve beliefs at all hazards which had grown too dear to superstition to be parted
with. In the twelfth century the mystery called transubstantiation had come to be regarded with widespread misgiving. To encounter skepticism, there then arose for the
first time what have been called pious frauds. It was not
perceived that men who lend themselves consciously to lies,
with however excellent an intention, will become eventually
deliberate rogues. The clergy doubtless believed that in
the consecration of the elements an invisible change was
really and truly effected. But to produce an effect on the
secular mind the invisible had to be made visible. A general practice sprung up to pretend that in the breaking of
the wafer real blood had gushed out; real pieces of flesh
were found between the fingers. The precious things thus
produced were awfully preserved, and with the Pope's
blessing were deposited in shrines, for the strengthening of
faith and the confutation of the presumptuous unbeliever.
When a start has once been made on the road of deception, the after-progress is a rapid one. The desired effect
was not produced. Incredulity increased. Imposture ran
a race with unbelief in the vain hope of silencing inquiry,
and with imposture all genuine love for spiritual or moral
truth disappeared.
You all know to what condition the Catholic Church had
sunk at the beginning of the sixteenth century. An inso



University of St. Andrew's.           41
lent hierarchy, with an army of priests behind them, dominated every country in Europe. The Church was like a
hard nutshell round a shriveled kernel. The priests, in
parting with their sincerity, had lost the control over their
own appetites, which only sincerity can give. Profligate in
their own lives, they extended to the laity the same easy
latitude which they asserted for their own conduct. Religious duty no longer consisted in leading a virtuous life, but
in purchasing immunity for self-indulgence by one of the
thousand remedies which Church officials were ever ready
to dispense at an adequate price.
The pleasant arrangement came to an end, - a sudden
and terrible one. Christianity had not been upon the
earth for nothing. The spiritual organization  of the
Church was corrupt to the core; but in the general awakening of Europe it was impossible to conceal the contrast between the doctrines taught in the Catholic pulpits and the
creed of which they were the counterfeit. Again and
again the gathering indignation sputtered out to be savagely repressed. At last it pleased Pope Leo, who wanted
money to finish St. Peter's, to send about spiritual hawkers
with wares which were called indulgences,- notes to be
presented at the gates of purgatory as passports to the
easiest places there,- and then Luther spoke, and the
whirlwind burst.
I can but glance at the Reformation in Germany. Luther himself was one of the grandest men that ever lived on
earth. Never was any one more loyal to the light that
was in him, braver, truer, or wider-minded in the noblest
sense of the word. The share of the work which fell to
him Luther accomplished most perfectly. But he was exceptionally fortunate in one way, that in Saxony he had his
sovereign on his side, and the enemy, however furious,
could not reach him with fleshly weapons, and could but
grind his teeth and curse. Other nations who had caught
Luther's spirit had to win their liberty on harder terms,




42                  Address to the
and the Catholic churchmen were able to add to their other
crimes the cruelty of fiends. Princes and politicians, who
had State reasons for disliking popular outbursts, sided with
the established spiritual authorities. Heresy was assailed
with fire and sword, and a spirit harsher than Luther's was
needed to steel the convert's hearts for the trials which
came upon them. Lutheranism, when Luther himself was
gone, and the thig which we in England know as Anglicanism, were inclined to temporizing and half-measures.
The Lutheran congregations were but half emancipated
from superstition, and shrank from pressing the struggle to
extremities; and half-measures meant half-heartedness, convictions which were but half convictions, and truth with an
alloy of falsehood. Half-measures, however, would not
quench the bonfires of Philip of Spain, or raise men in
France or Scotland who would meet crest to crest the
Princes of the House of Lorraine. The Reformers required a position more sharply defined, and a sterner leader,
and that leader they found in John Calvin.
There is no occasion to say much of Calvin's personal
history. His name is now associated only with gloom and
austerity. Suppose it is true that he rarely laughed. He
had none of Luther's genial and sunny humor. Could they
have exchanged conditions, Luther's temper might have
been somewhat grimmer, but he would never have been
entirely like Calvin. Nevertheless, for hard times hard men
are needed, and intellects which can pierce to the roots where
truth and lies part company. It fares ill with the soldiers
of religion when "the accursed thing" is in their camp.
And this is to be said of Calvin, that so far as the state of
knowledge permitted, no eye could have detected more
keenly the unsound spots in the received creed of the Church,
nor was there reformer in Europe so resolute to excise,
tear out, and destroy what was distinctly seen to be false,so resolute to establish what was true in its place, and make
truth to the last fibre of it the rule of practical life.




University of St. Andrew's.               43
Calvinism as it existed at Geneva, and as it endeavored
to be wherever it took root for a century and a half after
him, was not a system of opinion, but an attempt to make
the will of God as revealed in the Bible an authoritative
guide for social as well as personal direction. Men wonder
why the Calvinists, being so doctrinal, yet seemed to dwell
so much and so emphatically on the Old Testament. It was
because in the Old Testament they found, or thought they
found, a divine example of national government, a distinct
indication of the laws which men were ordered to follow,
with visible and immediate punishments attached to disobedience. At Geneva, as for a time in Scotland, moral sins
were treated after the example of the Mosaic law, as crimes
to be punished by the magistrate. " Elsewhere," said Knox,
speaking of Geneva, " the Word of God is taught as purely,
but never anywhere have I seen  God obeyed as faithfully." 
If it was a dream, it was at least a noble one. The
Calvinists have been called intolerant. Intolerance of an
enemy who is trying to kill you seems to me a pardonable
state of mind. It is no easy matter to tolerate lies clearly
convicted of being lies under any circumstances; specially it
is not easy to tolerate lies which strut about in the name of
religion; but there is no reason to suppose that the Calvinists at the beginning would have thought of meddling with
the Church if they had been themselves let alone. They
would have formed communities apart. Like the Israelites
whom they wished to resemble, they would have withdrawn
into the wilderness, - the Pilgrim Fathers actually did so
withdraw into the wilderness of New England, - to worship
1 In burning witches the Calvinists followed their model too exactly;
but it is to be remembered that they really believed these poor creatures
to have made a compact with Satan. And, as regards morality, it may
be doubted whether inviting spirit-rappers to dinner, and allowing them to
pretend to consult our dead relations, is very much more innocent. The
first method is but excess of indignation with evil; the second is complacent toying with it.




44                 Address to the
the God of their fathers, and would have left argument and
example to work their natural effect. Norman Leslie did
not kill Cardinal Beaton down in the castle yonder because
he was a Catholic, but because he was a murderer.'The
Catholics chose to add to their already incredible creed a
fresh article, that they were entitled to hang and burn those
who differed from them; and in this quarrel the Calvinists,
Bible in hand, appealed to the God of battles. They grew
harsher, fiercer, -if you please, more fanatical. It was
extremely natural that they should. They dwelt, as pious
men are apt to dwell in suffering and sorrow, on the alldisposing power of Providence. Their burden grew lighter
as they considered that God had so determined that they
must bear it. But they attracted to their ranks almost
every man in Western Europe that " hated a lie." They
were crushed down, but they rose again.  They were
splintered and torn, but no power could bend or melt them.
They had many faults; let him that is without sin cast a
stone at them. They abhorred as no body of men ever
more abhorred all conscious mendacity, all impurity, all
moral wrong of every kind so far as they could recognize it.
Whatever exists at this moment in England and Scotland of
conscientious fear of doing evil is the remnant of the convictions which were branded by the Calvinists into the people's hearts. Though they failed to destroy Romanism,
though it survives and may survive long as an opinion, they
drew its fangs; they forced it to abandon that detestable
principle, that it was entitled to murder those who dissented
from  it. Nay, it may be said that by having shamed
Romanism out of its practical corruption the Calvinists enabled it to revive.
Why, it is asked, were they so dogmatic? Why could
they not be contented to teach men reasonably and quietly
that to be wicked was to be miserable, that in the indulgence of immoderate passions they would find less happiness than in adhering to the rules of justice, or yielding to




University af St. Andrew's.             45
the impulses of more generous emotions?  And, for the
rest, why could they not let fools be fools, and leave opinion
free about matters of which neither they nor others could
know anything certain at all?
I reply that it is not true that goodness is synonymous
with happiness. The most perfect being who ever trod the
soil of this planet was called the Man of Sorrows. If happiness means absence of care and inexperience of painful
emotion, the best securities for it are a hard heart and a
good digestion. If morality has no better foundation than
a tendency to promote happiness, its sanction is but a feeble
uncertainty. If it be recognized as part of the constitution
of the world, it carries with it its right to command; and
those who see clearly what it is, will insist on submission
to it, and derive authority from the distinctness of their
recognition, to enforce submission where their power extends.  Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and
in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve. Compare the
remonstrance of the casual passer-by if a mob of ruffians are
misbehaving themselves in the street with the downright
energy of the policeman who strikes in fearlessly, one
against a dozen, as a minister of the law. There is the
same difference through life between the man who has a
sure conviction and him whose thoughts never rise beyond
a " perhaps."
Any fanatic may say as much, it is again answered, for
the wildest madness.  But the elementary principles of
morality are not forms of madness. No one pretends that
it is uncertain whether truth is better than falsehood, or justice than injustice. Speculation can eat away the sanction,
superstition can erect rival duties, but neither one nor the
other pretends to touch the fact that these principles exist,
and the very essence and life of all great religious movements is the recognition of them as of authority and as part
of the eternal framework of things.
There is, however, it must be allowed, something in what




46                  Address to the
these objectors say. The power of Calvinism has waned.
The discipline which it once aspired to maintain has fallen
slack. Desire for ease and self-indulgence drag forever in
quiet times at the heel of noble aspirations, while the shadow
struggles to remain and preserve its outline when the substance is passing away. The argumentative and logical
side of Calvin's mind has created once more a fatal opportunity for a separation between opinion and morality. We
have learnt, as we say, to make the best of both worlds, to
take political economy for the rule of our conduct, and to
relegate religion into the profession of orthodox doctrines.
Systems have been invented to explain the inexplicable.
Metaphors have been translated into formulas, and paradoxes intelligible to emotion have been thrust upon the
acceptance of the reason; while duty, the loftiest of all sensations which we are permitted to experience, has been
resolved into the acceptance of a scheme of salvation for the
individual human soul. Was it not written long ago, " He
that will save his soul shall lose it "? If we think of religion only as a means of escaping what we call the wrath to
come, we shall not escape it; we are already under it; we
are under the burden of death, for we care only for ourselves.
This was not the religion of your fathers; this was not
the Calvinism which overthrew spiritual wickedness, and
hurled kings from their thrones, and purged England and
Scotland, for a time at least, of lies and charlatanry. Calvinism was the spirit which rises in revolt against untruth;
the spirit which, as I have shown you, has appeared, and
reappeared, and in due time will appear again, unless God
be a delusion, and man be as the beasts that perish. For it
is but the inflashing upon the conscience of the nature and
origin of the laws by which mankind are governed, - laws
which exist, whether we acknowledge them or whether we
deny them, and will have their way, to our weal or woe,
according to the attitude in which we please to place our



University of St. Andrew's.                47
selves towards them, - inherent, like the laws of gravity, in
the nature of things, not made by us, not to be altered by
us, but to be discerned and obeyed by us at our everlasting
peril.
Nay, rather the law of gravity is' but a property of material things, and matter and all that belongs to it may one
day fade away like a cloud and vanish.  The moral law is
inherent in eternity. " Heaven and earth shall pass away,
but my word shall not pass away." The law is the expression of the will of the Spirit of the Universe. The spirit in
man which corresponds to and perceives the Eternal Spirit
is part of its essence, and immortal as it is immortal. The
Calvinists called the eye within us the Inspiration of the
Almighty.  Aristotle could see that it was not of earth, or
any creature of space and time:o yap voiv (he says) oi(ria TL ocra EouKev
eyytyvEeaoa1. KaL oP pbOetperOat..
What the thing is which we call ourselves we know not.
It may be true-  I for one care not if it be —that the
descent of our mortal bodies may be traced through an
ascending series to some glutinous jelly formed on the rocks
of the primeval ocean. It is nothing to me how the Maker
of me has been pleased to construct the organized substance
which I call my body. It is mine, but it is not me. The
vogs, the intellectual spirit, being an ovcrla, -  an essence, 
we believe to be an imperishable something which has been
engendered in us from  another source.  As Wordsworth
says: 
" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises in us, our life's star,
Hath elsewhere had its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
Not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come,
From heaven, which is our home."