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MODERN SCIENCE UNLOCKING THE BIBLE.

MODERN SCIENCE
UNLOCKING THE BIBLE

THE TRUTH SEEN FROM THREE POINTS.

HARRIOT MACKENZIE,
AUTHOR OF
"EVOLUTION
ILLUMIJVATIJVG THE BIBLE."

LONDON : SIMPKIN MARSHALL, HAMILTON KENT & CO.,
LIMITED. 1892.

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OF THE LATE

JOHN STUART MILL,
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED AS AN EXPRESSION OF
THE AUTHOR'S GRATITUDE FOR BENEFITS
DERIVED FROM WRITINGS OF HIS.

CONTENTS.

Preface  I
Introduction  3
PART I.
Chapter I
The Discriminating Power of the Intellect  9
Chapter II.
Faith Expressing Itself in Practice  19
Chapter III.
Jesus as the God of Humanity, or the Seed and Elect of God  23
Chapter IV.
The Effects Produced by Mind  30
Chapter V.
The Object of Justifying Faith  32
Chapter VI.
The Duty of Christians to Live Out their Professions  39
Chapter VII.
Christ as the Vicarious Sacrifice ; and the Believer's Duty to Follow
in His Steps, and accept Truth from All Quarters  46
Chapter VIII.
The Developed Religious Element, contrasted with the Fruits of the
Vicarious Sacrifice  54
Chapter IX.
All Believers are Entitled to Eternal Life and may be Viewed as
Saved  67
Chapter X.
Mind the Base for Christianity to Work on  74
Chapter XI.
Man Presented before God as seen in the Inward Man  76
Chapter XII.
Christ Confessed, and the Value of Labour  87
Chapter XIII.
In Reference to Pleasure Increasing the Vital Action  89
PART II.
Chapter I.
Does Christianity Admit of a Scientific Test?  101

PART III.
Chapter I.
Union with Christ Expressing Itself in Feeling  127
Chapter II.
The Two Types — The Old Man and the New  131
Chapter III.
The Origin of the Objective Christ traced through many stages, and
the Forces Employed in Building the New Man  137
Chapter IV.
The Impossibility of Proving the Existence of a God apart from
Revelation  147
Chapter V.
The New Birth Expressed in Feeling  152
Chapter VI.
The Soul as a Group of Sensations Proclaimed Immortal  154
Chapter VII.
The Theory of the Grouped Sensations brought out  358
Chapter VIII.
Christian Responsibility in the Light of Modern Science unlocking
the Bible  162
Chapter IX.
A Theory applied in Reference to the Resurrection of the Body  169
Chapter X.
Two Sets of Truth contrasted in the Cerebrum Brain  178
Chapter XI.
Clergymen responsible for Modern Scepticism  1 83
Chapter XII.
The consequence of wasted energy in view of the Conservation of
Energy  l86
Chapter XIII.
The Responsibility attaching to a Christian profession  190
Chapter XIV.
The Freedom of the Will defined, and the effect of the organism  196
Chapter XV.
A Theory applied to explain Revelation and its effects  204
Conclusion  , . ,

PREFACE.
'"THE work by the Duke of Somerset on "Christian
Theology and Modern Scepticism," was greatly
blessed to me in stimulating my thoughts. Trusting
a blessing might be given to the effort, I am, therefore,
induced to write the few simple pages of this work.
The opposition of the world in regard to natural and
revealed religion, may be divided into two classes ; those
who, referring to the Bible, believe in miracles and
those who, doubting, rest on the fixed laws of nature.
The one class proves truth by faith in God's promises,
the other by God's established laws of nature, thus
confirming His revealed words in all that is absolute
truth ; so that, in the days that are to come, both truths
shall be united in one, as part of a whole, and in this
way an end be put to the controversy.

INTRODUCTION. *
TT will be apparent at a glance that there is nothing of
the culture of a trained mind in this treatise ; and
how it came to be written can be explained in a few
words. By the perusal of a review of a book by Professor Bain
on " Mind and Body," where the nature of the Intellect
was defined as Discrimination, Similarity, and Retentive-
ness, I saw in this group a basis for Christianity to work
upon, and at once determined, in the strength of God, to
define practical Christianity as seen in the form of
Christian belief. In reply to one question put by
the Duke of Somerset in a book published by him
some years before, "Christian Theology and Modern
Scepticism," page 148, namely, "Is faith' in God the
fa'ith that Jesus taught? or, is Christian faith more com
plex in its manifold requirements ? " I have tried to show
that Christian faith is more complex in its manifold re
quirements. That question I consider answered in the first few
chapters on "Christianity reduced to Proof" ; I continued,
however, to write, as I felt desirous of adding something
more to the treatise.
I intended to publish the work forthwith, but my

4 Introduction.
purpose was defeated ; in consequence of which I cast
the work aside, determining in a sense to make myself
acquainted with modern science, and seek to establish
the truth of revelation from that point.
The essay, "Will Christianity admit of Scientific
Test " ; and the other treatise, " The Christianity of the
Future ; or, the Union of two Systems of Truth,'"
spring from the determination I had made. With this
explanation of the object I had in writing, the book will
go forth to the public, and I leave its readers to judge
of its merits.
I have been obliged to treat the subject of "Christianity
reduced to proof" in a way peculiar to revealed religion,
because, if Christianity proper will not bear the test of
criticism from all quarters, we have no right or authority to
say it is a divine revelation, in which God revealed His will
to man ; but did not leave the subject sufficiently clear to
enable man, when following God's direction, to prove for
himself the absolute truth of revealed religion. (John
vii. 17.)
As capable of producing the power implied in
Christian influence, and of moulding the mind of man,
which avowedly was Christ's object in coming into the
world, He comes, with the authority of God, to deal
with humanity as body and mind, to implant in man a
new element by which man becomes convinced of a
divine power ; moulding his will and bringing it into

Introduction.

5

subjection to the will of God, or, to put it in other words,
convincing mankind of the fact represented in eternal
life, that the mind, individually, is to live eternally as
a separate and distinct creation, and that, through the
element implied in a revealed religion, man becomes
convinced of a power represented in consciousness as a
spiritual presence ; being the fruit of revealed truth,
which, as it increases, becomes the strongest power in
man, by creating new desires, as the effect of that
spiritual experience implied in faith working by love. I
have attempted to deal with mind as the recipient of the
new influence that comes to us through belief, and so
acts on the mind as that this influence becomes apparent
to man in a spiritual experience, the unit of which is
embodied in love to God and man. Thus man progresses
into a perfect state, and the germ contained in the belief,
realised as the perfect unit which is personified in the
ideal Christ, is received into the mind as the medium of
union with God, and thus becomes the ultimate cause of
the change on the mind, as mind presenting our self-
consciousness embodied in nerve-current* finds rest in
the Almighty.
As a reply to "Christian Theology and Modern
* This phase of vibration, we may say, distinguishing the human
soul. For what is the immaterial in the abstract, but a something we call
matter, vibrating at certain periods, of which the colours supply the best
example, he human organism takes on vibration and defines it in sensa
tion as heat, light, sound, or colour.

6 Introduction.
Scepticism," I only pretend to deal with the question
put in page 148 — "Is faith in God, the faith which
Jesus taught ? or is Christian faith more complex in its
manifold requirements ?" and I hope I have been able to
make it plain that Christian faith is more complex in its
manifold acquirements, thus answering the one question
put in page 148, by producing the state of consciousness
necessary to create the other, referred to in page 143, as
a faith which could combine the conviction of the
intellect with the obedience of the heart ; and by showing
that the faith that Paul teaches is the same now as ever,
and that the aspiration to the elevated doctrine of St. Paul
means simply increased spiritual experience, which all
may claim as the heritage of Christian belief.
The germ of the system of Christianity rests in Christ,
and belief enables us to realise Christ as our Saviour.
Christ in the heart germinates or causes love ; love causes
action ; and thus Paul's experience becomes the heritage
of each Christian, and may be realised as such. Christ
as the centre of the system puts man in a position to act.

PART I.

CHRISTIANITY REDUCED TO PROOF.

Chapter I.
THE DISCRIMINATING POWER OF THE INTELLECT.
~\X7"ORSHIP and Morality are possible when man
possesses a religious and moral element, together
with discrimination and similarity, the power by which he
is enabled to recognise and classify differences : this
power teaches him the nature of good and evil, and by it
he knows the difference between a good action and a bad
one ; hence the knowledge as taught in the Bible, just
before the fall of Man — "Ye shall be as goc^s, knowing
good and evil." (Gen. iii. 5.) Reason or intellect in man
may have been so weak when the revelation was first
given, in consequence of his low state of civilisation,* that
he could only receive the truth by figurative language,
but, as intellect developed, God revealed truth as truth ;
though, in order to prove that, the Bible and mental
science must join hand in hand, for truth in the
Bible cannot contradict truth out of the Bible. The one
is God's revelation of truth, the other God's expression
of truth in mind ; teaching man that God has given him
an intellect so vast that, as it develops, it may compre
hend more fully God, the eternal Creator, as God. Truth
* Civilisation will be understood to include a state in which the moral
and religious element is highly developed.

io Christianity Reduced to Proof.
will thus be tested by truth ; for what is intellect, but
the symbol of God's power in man ?
The time has now come that truth in the Bible must
be tested by proof, and Christianity treated as a science ;
for it is of the greatest importance to man that it should
be fully understood, as much for his spiritual as his
temporal benefit.
We Christians, holding the Bible as inspired, and given
to man from God as His rule of life, when enlightened by
God the Spirit through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
may be fully assured that nothing can take from us the
internal evidence of the spirit of truth, as revealed in the
Bible. If we more fully realised what is meant in the
38th and 39th verses of the 8th chapter of Romans, we
should be less concerned as to the way in which the
truth is expressed in the Bible. The absence of this
internal evidence is the reason why man, in his natural
state, can see no beauty in the spiritual teaching of the
Bible — hence the difference that has arisen between
man in his natural state, and man in his spiritual state.
In his spiritual state, he is conscious of the warfare going
on in his mind between faith and reason ; or, to put it
more plainly, " his will and God's will," or the flesh and
the spirit, as described in the 7th chapter of Romans,
from the 1 3th verse to the end. Paul tells us why man
in his natural state cannot receive or comprehend the
things of the Spirit of God, as seen in the nth and 14th
verses of the 2nd chapter of 1st Corinthians : "the natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ; for
they are foolishness unto him : neither can he know them,
because they are spiritually discerned ".

The Discriminating Power of the Intellect. 1 1
Man by his unaided mind can only see God in crea
tion ; he is thus searching out truth as revealed in
nature, by the mighty power of his intellect bestowed
on him by the Creator of the Universe, and called in the
Bible the breath of life, by which man became a living
soul : "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of
the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life ; and man became a living soul ". (Gen. ii. 7.)
By this mighty power developing itself in man, we are
surrounded by many luxuries and comforts of civilised
life, as the product of man's inventive power ; hence the
power of mind over matter, and thus the pride of intel
lect. Scientific research can never take from man the
truth as revealed in the Bible, which teaches man why he
was born, and. why he must die; and all that come to
God, as reconciled by Christ, will find the God of the
Bible a reconciled Father, leading and guiding them
through life, and, their sure hope in death ; therefore
taking the Bible, as it is open to proof, the Christian can
lose nothing that is worth keeping. The Bible will thus
become the guide book of the civilised world, when
truth is recognised as implying God's expression to
man in nature and in grace. The Bible will thus be
useful to science and religion. Little good can come till
this is done, and the sooner the better for civilised
man. My subject leads me to deal with the question how God,
as revealed in the Bible, is made known to man. How
far man, as man, endowed with reason or intellect, may
realise the felt-presence of God, as the God of nature
or creation, my subject does not touch; only we, as

1 2 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
Christians, are compelled to accept as truth whatever
man can prove as absolute truth, because that must be
God's expression to man in nature.
The Lord Jesus makes that very plain in the 37th verse
of the 1 8th chapter of John's Gospel, where he expresses
the cause of his mission to be to " bear witness unto the
truth ". We thus conclude that truth outside the Bible
cannot be contrary to truth as revealed in the Bible : in
so far as Christians refuse to accept absolute truth they
act in opposition to Bible-teaching. Science and revealed
religion unite here.
The truths, as revealed in the Word of God, are the
truths contained in the leading facts of Christianity.
The Commandments, as given in the 20th chapter of
Exodus, only apply to man when he accepts the Bible as
inspired by God, and as a revelation from Him ; and the
reason to be given for this is very fully explained by Paul
in the 24th verse of the 3d chapter of Galatians, in these
words, " Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to
bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith "
(in consequence of Christ having fulfilled the law).
Man by revelation thus becomes conscious, in the
light of such passages as 2d Cor. v. 16-21, that in his
natural state he can never approach God' as a recon
ciled Father; therefore he now approaches the God of
the Bible as a sinner desiring to be reconciled, feeling
that an historical belief in Jesus, which he has held all
through life, has failed altogether to give the peace of
conscience he finds himself entitled to. He now becomes
anxious to ascertain why he has failed to realise or .ex
perience the truth embodied in the Christian doctrine, and

The Discriminating Power of the Intellect. 1 3
now becomes fully aware that Christian truth deals with
the individual, and that he must receive as true, what
God in His word reveals to be true. " But if the Spirit
of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you,
he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also
quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in
you," (Romans viii. n.) Thus he enters into a new
relationship with God as a God of Grace or favour, as
revealed by the Lord Jesus Christ, and the sinner, thus
voluntarily entering into a new relationship, becomes
through it united to the Eternal " I Am ".
God thus becomes to man a centre of attraction, occu
pying the first place in his affections, and this feeling is
strengthened by applying such scripture to himself as we
find in Rom. iv. 5, " But to him that worketh not, but be
lieveth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is
counted for righteousness"; Rom. iii. 22, "Even the right
eousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all
and upon all them that belieye": for there is no difference;
Cor. i. 3, "Grace be'unto you, and peace, from God our
Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ " ; Gal. iii., 1 1 and
12, " But that no man is justified by the law in the sight
of God, it is evident : for, the just shall live by faith. And
the law is not of faith : but, the man that doeth them
shall live in them." The truth, being thus received into
the heart, produces such fruit as is taught by Paul, Gal. v.
22-26, " But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, tem
perance ; against such there is no law. And they that
are Christ's have crucified the flesh, with the affections
and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the

14 Christianity Reduced to Proof
Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain-glory, provoking
one another, envying one another."
This is the effect of the evidence which accompanies a
belief in the truth of the Gospel as applied individually,
and thus Christianity, embodied in the ideal of Christ,
becomes a living power in the mind of man.
The Lord Jesus Christ, having thus revealed God to man
and reconciled him to God, becomes an object of adora
tion and love ; His words are treasured up in the memory,
and act upon the life, and man feels that a new principle
has taken possession of him, and he has thus become a
willing subject of a new King, governed by a new power,
which he finds defined in the Scriptures as "faith working
by love''' Gal. v. 6, " For in Jesus Christ neither circum
cision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision ; but faith
which worketh by love." Man, as an intelligent being,
now realizes a change wrought in him so great that
he feels himself to be indeed a new creature ; "old
things are passed away ; behold, all things are become
new". (2 Cor. v. 17.)
This is the internal or subjective evidence in the form
of the Spirit of God, bearing witness with our spirits
or mind, and testifying to the truth of the change pro
duced. Rom. viii. 16, " The Spirit itself beareth witness
with our spirit, that we are the children of God ".
The more God in Christ thus occupies the thoughts,
and consequently moves the feelings of men, leading to
the "Abba, Father" (" For we have not received the spirit
of bondage again to fear ; but we have received the Spirit
of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." Rom. viii.
15), the more does man become conformed in heart

The Discriminating Power of the Intellect. 1 5
and life to the truth, as revealed in the Scriptures.
As the feelings thus become intensified, the motive
power is strengthened, so that man becomes a will
ing instrument and a co-worker with God the Father,
being created anew in Jesus Christ ; things seen and
temporal lose their power, and the unseen are realised
as eternal. 2 Cor. iv. 18, "While we look not at the
things which are seen, but at the things which are not
seen : for the things which are seen are temporal ; but
the things which are not seen are eternal."
The soul in man thus finds rest in God, the eternal
" I Am," as a reconciled Father ; a new element of God
is thus revealed through the Lord Jesus, and man is con
vinced of his immortality, as taught in the resurrection.
(1 Cor. xv.)
Christianity presented in Christ is thus revealed as the
seed of God in the soul of man realising God as a re
conciled Father, for this new form is personified in Christ.
It is thus the Lord Jesus becomes in man the hope of
glory. Under this growing sentiment man begins to
feel how weak he is, as he tries to follow the Lord fully,
and applies to himself, as a rule of life, such portions of
the Word of God as are contained in the fifth to seventh
chapters of Matthew ; the spirit of which is fully ex
pressed in the forty-fourth verse of the fifth chapter, and
twelfth verse of the seventh chapter, and thirty-seventh
verse of the twenty-second chapter. Man becomes greatly
humbled by a sense of his failures in heart and ' life, and
feels for the second time that his safety and peace of
mind rest on his union with God as a reconciled Father,
revealed through and by the Lord Jesus Christ, as he

1 6 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
clings and rests on Christ. Thus Paul's experience be
comes his, and he is constrained to say, " For we are of the
circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice
in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh ".
(Phil. iii. 3.) Thus the teaching of the Lord Jesus be
comes intelligent to man, for now he is enabled to see
that the Christ of Christianity points man to his reason
as his guide, when enlightened by divine truth, as taught
in John vii. 17, viii. 12, 30-32 ; and this is proof to man
of the truth of Christianity, for he feels and knows Chris
tianity is proved to be absolute truth when it is accom
panied by the fruit flowing from Christian experience, as
made manifest by purity of heart and life. The believer,
thus enlightened, is greatly comforted, as he now under
stands experimentally what is meant by the Saviour's pro
mise to send the Comforter as a Spirit of Truth, revealing
truth, and sent to guide His people into all truth. (John
xvi. 12, 13, 14.) He can now sympathise with the spirit
that prevailed among the disciples, as seen in the four
teenth chapter of John, when this truth was first taught by
the Lord Jesus ; for the sanctified believer must confess
that, like Philip, he has often said in Spirit, " Lord, show
us the Father, and it sufficeth us," but did not till now
realise that God, as the Creator and Father of Jesus Christ,
was revealed in the mind of man. Thus, as he compares
his past experience with his present knowledge, he feels
that reason was given him as his guide, when enlightened
by the Christ of Christianity as seen in the xiv., xv., xvi.,
and xvii. chapters of John. In the twenty-first, twenty-
second, and twenty-third verses of the fourteenth chapter,
the Lord makes it very plain that reason, when intensified

The Discriminating Power of the Intellect. 1 7
by feeling as love to Christ, is the test of our adoption,
that is, when the heart is full of love * to God in Christ.
How simple and yet how sure a test — the highest
intellect need not err, and the meanest is moulded by
this power !
As the power of mind over matter is revealed by the
works of man, so the power of faith over mind is seen in
the mind of man, as enlightened by the spirit, and can
be reduced to proof as an evidence in the soul of man,
as he is being moulded by a higher influence than that
which governs the world of sense and reason, apart from
revelation. The Bible, containing the Word of God, is felt to be
enough to meet man's spiritual wants when accompanied
by the Spirit of God, as revealed in the heart of man,
and tested by its fruit ; the effect of which is always
manifested by humbling man and exalting God, " Who
soever therefore shall humble himself as this little child,
the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven " (Matt.
xviii. 4), and leading to purity of heart and life. For it is
evident from the spirit of the Bible, that we are to accept
nothing short of this teaching as a conclusive proof of
acceptance and spiritual union with God. " Beloved,
believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they
are of God." (1 John iv. 1.)
Though man is thus entitled to judge himself, the
Lord Jesus plainly tells us, his spiritual children, that
the world is to know us by our fruits (Matt. xii. 34, 35) ;
so that the world has no authority to accept our religious
* Love thus qualified is the finite put in possession of the essence of
the Infinite. 2

1 8 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
professions, but only so far as our lives prove them to be
genuine. If our religion does not make us truer and better men
and women, it is worthless so far as our fellow-men are
concerned ; for the Master's command is, " Be ye there
fore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven i.s
perfect " (Matt. v. 48). This striving after perfection is
to be seen in our lives, and felt in our hearts.
Christianity is a new development, moulding 'man's
mind through the power of truth as revealed through
and by the Lord Jesus as absolute truth, and can only be
reduced to proof, when the mind of man is brought into
contact with the spiritual presence of the eternal God.
The truth of Christianity might be better understood
by the intelligent thinking class of society, if expressed
as a new development of the mind, only perceptible
through the evidence of a new sense which connects the
thinking part of man, or soul of man, with God as a
spirit, by bringing it in contact with the spiritual power,
or presence, of the God of creation, as a God of grace or
favour, revealed in and through the Christ of Chris
tianity. The truth of this new development was only
to be made known to the world by the effect it produces
in the individual believer, by showing in his life and
conversation the fruit classified in 1 Cor. xiii. 3-13.
Thus making good faith by works, it would then be felt
that a Bible, containing the word of God, was enough
to immortalise the truth of Christianity ; where reason
intensified by feeling, as faith working by love, unites
all the Christian graces in one great whole, as faith and
practice.

Chapter II.
FAITH EXPRESSING ITSELF IN PRACTICE.*
TF faith and practice were understood to mean reason
intensified by feeling, as faith working by love,
would not the Protestant referred to by the Duke of
Somerset, in page 145 (as he takes up his Bible he wishes
to believe, he tries to believe, he feels ashamed of dis
belief, he even debases his moral truthfulness by pre
tending to believe ; all these efforts avail him nothing,
and he is at last obliged in his own conscience silently
to confess that he has been born some centuries too
late), be greatly comforted if he realised faith and
practice as the fruit of salvation, and feel it a great relief
to know, that all that the Christian religion requires, is
the willing mind, and that, beginning with the confession,
" I believe, help thou mine unbelief," (Mark ix. 24), he will
soon find by experience the truth of Luke xi. 13, where
God promises to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask
Him. Thus, by the power of the witness within, he shall
be able to say, "for I know whom I have believed, and am
persuaded that He is able to keep that which I committed
unto Him against that day" (2 Tim. i. 12) ; "for God hath
not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love,
and of a sound mind " (2 Tim. i. 7). " Being confident
of this very thing, that He who hath' begun a good work
in you will perform it until the day of Christ Jesus"
(Phil. i. 6) ; " for it is God which worketh in you both to
* Practice here means work done, or feeling flowing from love to Christ.

20 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
will and to do of His good pleasure " (Phil. ii. 1 3),
" according to the eternal purpose which He proposed in
Christ Jesus our Lord " (Eph. iii. 11); " for the fruit of
the spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and
truth " (Eph. v. 9) ; " for we can do nothing against the
truth, but for the truth " (2 Cor. xiii. 8). " That we
henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro, and
carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the slight
of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait
to deceive ; but, speaking the truth in love, may grow
up into him in all things which is the head, even Christ "
(Eph. iv. 14, 15). For all this will be found verified in the
experience of every true child of God, " as a believer in
Christ ".
But, if such an experience as this is necessary before
man can comprehend the Bible as containing the Word of
God, it must be apparent to every one that man by his
unaided intellect can never comprehend it ; to man, as
such, it must ever remain a sealed book. Therefore,
man, as body and mind, may know much of God as a
Creator, and be fully persuaded that the Judge of all
the earth will do right, but can know nothing of the
God of Grace or favour, revealed by the God of humanity
as the Christ of Christianity ; consequently this knowledge
must come to man through the medium of a new sense,
compelling the intellect to accept as true what God's
Word declares to be true, as taught in the leading
truths of Christianity, and as seen in the death and
resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Seeing that the leading facts of Christianity may be as
fully authenticated as any historical eventof the same date,

Faith Expressing itself in Practice. 2 1
man, when true to himself, must accept them ; though
the mystery involved must so far remain a mystery.
Inspired religion must thus be treated as a science in
which the mind has to undergo a course of mental
training, though the process is somewhat unusual.
Thus we divide mankind into two great classes. Both
are the subjects of the one King, God the eternal Creator
of the vast universe ; both adore God as the Creator.
But the understanding of the one class has been
enlightened by the power of divine truth, as revealed
in the Bible ; and the Bible, thus enlightening the under
standing, has awakened in this class a sense of the
spiritual presence of God, the God of Grace, as a reconciled
Father, in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, who " came
not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to
give His life a .ransom for many". (Matt. xx. 28.)
" For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost."
(Mat. xviii. 11.) But though this class has entered into
a new relationship with God, as a God of Grace or favour,
yet, as this relationship is of a spiritual nature, and is the
line that divides the two classes, it can only be known
to God (and man individually). Therefore, God alone
can divide the sheep from the goats, (Matt. xxv. 32),
(speaking of the church as a mass). In this connec
tion take also the following passages, " He that shall
endure unto the end shall be saved"; (Mat. xxiv. 13.)
" He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life."
(John iii. 36) ; " God is a spirit, and they that worship
Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." (John
iv. 24.) But an experience of this nature is only valu
able so far as it refers to man's relation to God, and

22 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
though of the greatest importance to individual man, it is
of no value to the world at large, except in so far as the
command is fulfilled as given in Matt. v. 16, "Let your
light so shine before men, that they may see your good
works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven ".
Because all men, professing to believe in the leading
doctrines of Christianity, are only entitled to be accepted
as Christians in so far as their lives bear out their pro
fession ; for the Saviour distinctly teaches this in Matt.
vii. 14-23.
It is the motive that prompts the action that God
will judge by ; therefore the true motive can only be
known to God and the individual, and man may not judge
man. (Mat. vii. 1-6.) Those who have never entered
into a spiritual relationship with God, as a God of grace
and as open to all "to profit withal," (1 Cor. xii. 7.), by
and through the God of Humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ,
must allow that they have no claim to spiritual privileges ;
and ,an inherent sense of truth will teach men that they
only, know God as the Creator, and that He who is the
Judge of all the earth will do right ; for God is to
them as their Creator only.
When Christianity is received as the religion of man
kind, and Christ accepted as the God of Humanity, it
will then be allowed by all, that the motive which prompts
the action, as seen in work done from love to Christ,
divides the classes; for the time will come when there will
be none but professing Christian men and women on this
earth of ours. For the Lord Jesus Christ has not died
in vain.

Chapter III.
JESUS AS THE GOD OF HUMANITY, OR THE SEED AND
ELECT OF GOD.
'T'HE truth that unites us with God is contained in the
Saviour's life, death, and resurrection: once let these
be fully realised and all becomes easy, because those
truths, or facts, involve all that is really essential for our
salvation. His death is a historical event, established on
historical ground, and fully authenticated, and it is this
that gives us the Jesus of history.
The resurrection is communicated to us through a
different channel, and, though as fully authenticated, it
was an event that was only witnessed by the professed
followers of the Jesus of history, and through them com
municated to the world, thus changing the Jesus of his
tory into the Christ of Christianity. This event has been
established by an unbroken line of testimony from that
day to this ; which truth is fully established, independent
of Bible testimony. The different channels though which
the truth has been communicated to us are very remark
able. The Jesus of history is accepted by all ; but the
Christ of Christianity is only accepted by his professed
followers, as the God of humanity. " And, without con
troversy, great is the mystery of godliness : God was
manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels,
preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, re
ceived up into glory", (i Tim. iii. 16.) He is received

24 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
first into the heart by faith. The laws that produce the
resurrection are a matter of faith and above reason,
being afterwards made manifest by the felt power of God
in the soul of man; this is evident from the words of John,
when he saysj " He that believeth on the Son of God
hath the witness in himself", (i John, v. 9-21.) So that
a profession in the belief of Christianity implies in reality
a belief in Christ as the risen Lord, and through the
medium of sense the soul of man enjoys the felt presence
of God; for God, in this sense, is the eternal "I am" of
creation and revelation ; and the evidence of His
spiritual presence increases in man, as his mind becomes
moulded by this new spiritual element, "Which is
the fruit of Christ in man, the hope of glory; even the
mystery which hath been hid from ages and from genera
tions, but now is made manifest to His saints : to whom
God would make known what is the riches of the glory of
this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you,
the hope of glory ". (Col. i. 26,27). The fruit should
be apparent to all in the Christian's outward life, bearing
witness to those who are without of the moral and spiri
tual power of Christianity. Those without will here be
understood to mean, those who honestly disbelieve in the
Christ of Christianity as the Son of God, or, we may say,
the God of Humanity ; for it was to teach men humanity,
and thus prepare them for immortality, that the God of
creation has revealed Himself as the God of Humanity.
The Christian religion will admit of nothing less; and
this class of sceptics will be the first to allow that if Chris
tianity admits of such a union with the eternal " I am,''
they have no claim to it : they may call it a superstitious

Jesus as the God of Humanity. 25
belief, but they will never claim a right to any of the
privileges derived from it. An inherent sense of truth will
show this, for they are often men of great integrity, in
sincerity of heart worshipping the God of Creation, but
because they have rejected the God of grace, they refuse to
enter into that new relation by Which the sinner may ap
proach God as a God of favour, with the "Abba, Father".
God, thus wearing the mantle of humanity, is worshipped
through the medium of sense or intellect in man. The
mystery is great, that the God of creation has appeared
as the God of humanity ; thus in a double form revealing
Himself to man ; but this is no greater mystery than man
finds in body and mind, when he tries to separate them.
We Christians might understand the meaning of the
double union, God as God the Father of all, and God as
the God of grace ; clothed in humanity, and through this
medium known as the Jesus of history, and the Christ of
Christianity, and the God of immortality, establishing, in
the only way men as men could comprehend, the immor
tality of the soul : the mystery thus simplified is cleared
away, and God, as God, remains the absolute " I am " of
creation and grace, while the Christian worships God
" through the evidence of a new sense developed in the
mind," which is expressed as the influence of the God of
humanity (or Jesus the Seed and Elect of God.) Thus go
verned by the law of love, Christians are responsible for
purity of heart as well as purity of life. That is, the God
of humanity, as their Master, comes to teach mankind
through His Word and by His people, who are manifest
ing in their lives this purity ; for to them an evil thought
js accounted by God as sin ; and nothing short of this

26 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
earnestly striving after and longing for purity of heart
can satisfy a soul in communion with God. Then the feel
ings become intensified, love operates in the mind in the
usual way, and the soul in this state maybe understood as
guided more byfeeling than by reason. This is beautifully
brought out by the God of humanity, all through the
Sermon on the Mount ; but especially in the fifth chapter
of Matthew, from the 37th to the 43rd verse. When we
realise this fact that feeling, as love, is to stimulate, how
plain Jesus' meaning becomes when He says, " Many
that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first ".
(Matthew xix. 30) !
Those that act from this motive, " feeling," do indeed
suffer loss in this world, but God is the Judge ; and here
man, as man, is silent, for we are under a new dispensa
tion, and governed by a new law.
Fellow Christian, Christ is our Leader and Master:
His'field is the mind, His power is love, moulding the
stubborn will, by creating in the meekest and the worst
of the human race a desire so strong, that nothing short
of immortality among the purest and the best, will satisfy
their longing souls. With such a destiny in view as
our union with Christ in God, it is easy to comprehend
how reason ceases to be Master, and love rules supreme,
where we cannot follow. We dare not condemn this in
faith and above reason, and all that is left for man to say
is, that the Judge of all the earth will do right. We
see the risen Lord in the God of Humanity, as the seed
and elect of God, and all as elected, when united to God
in Him.
It would be wisest and best for us Christians, if we

Jesus as the God of Humanity. 27
realised more fully than we do, the field our Lord and
Master, the God of Humanity, sent us to labour in. Pie
died to win our love, and procure for Himself the first
place in our affections. He found us estranged from God,
as sinners outside of Christ. When most degraded man
most dreads and fears God, as a God of truth and justice.
Any place would be more desirable for such a man
than a home among the purest and the best, so he must
create for himself a hell, as the only place fit for him.
Therefore a God of truth must, as he reasons, be true to
His nature, and man that has sinned, must suffer again.
Man when guided by reason, discrimination, or an innate
sense of truth, striving to do his best, an honest man in
heart and life, one whom saint and sinner dare to trust,
may have no fear to meet God, as a God of truth and
justice, feeling that God is not less just than man. And
although the future is a vast unknown, yet he feels
that the God of all the earth will do right, and he dare
ask no more justice. It is now and here that the Chris
tian finds it is not a book, though that book is the Holy
Scriptures, he has to do with, but a Living Person, and
in that person he can see God as the Creator, personified
in the Christ of Christianity, dealing with the mind of
man through the medium of a new development ;
moulding man's mind by the mighty power of love ; a
power more enduring than hope (2nd Peter iii. 13), more
lasting than the heaven that now is (Rev. xxi. 1), and
eternal as God (ist John iv. 7). "God is Love."
The God of Humanity is now adored in the Christ
of Christianity. Feeling that a place of worship is
not heaven, and the Bible is not Christ, the soul in

28 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
man melts in love to God who gave Himself for
it, and thus gives itself back to Him, and finds rest in
the arms of the Almighty. It is this, the mind, that
Jesus our Lord came to purify; it is the field he sent us
to cultivate. The tools he has provided for our use, are
God's word of truth ; the power He commands us to
employ, is faith in God ; and the end he sends us to ac
complish, is purity of heart and life. (Mark vii. 21-23.) It
is for the individual to ask — How am I to render an ac
count of my stewardship ? The promise is plain. "What
soever ye shall ask in my name that will I do. If you ask
anything in my name I will do it." (John xiv. 13, 14.)
What progress am I making? for the command is, '' Love
not the world, neither the things that are in the world.
If any man love the world the love of the Father is not
in him." (1 John ii. 15.), What does the heart witness ?
What do my friends see of the other injunction ?
(Mat. v. 44) " Love your enemies,, bless them that curse
you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them
that despitefully use you and persecute you." Do
friends find us " bearing all things, believing all things,
hoping all things, enduring all things ". (l Cor. xiii. 7.)
Am I striving to do as I would be done unto ? If the
heart acquit us, (1 John iii. 21.) we must and shall
be bearing fruit, and the world will add its testimony
for to-day. And how the world shall testify we read
in Matt. v. 16 : " Let your light so shine before men, that
they may see your good works, and glorify your Father
which is in heaven ". Because the sheep are not divided
from the goats, and the tares and wheat are growing
together, the Master was very careful they should not be

Jesus as the God of Humanity. 29
separated. (Mat. xiii. 29, 30.) Except by the evidence of
our lives bearing fruit, the world, as material, must
always judge by the effect produced, though the motive
power in this case is of God, and He is the final judge.
Christianity for eighteen hundred years has possessed
the power of moulding mind. We see what Paul was in
the first century, and we allow mind to be progressive, and
the motive power to be faith over mind, established on a
new principle, " faith working by love " ; governed by a
fixed law, " faith in God," made apparent by the power
of faith* over mind ; an influence all powerful, and lasting
as eternity ; and how is it that our men of science look
in vain for results ? We of Britain have spent millions
sterling on a paid ministry, and millions more on
churches, but where is the moral influence, that Light of
the World which the God of Humanity came, in the like
ness of man, to produce ? The power He employs is to
influence the mind of the individual man, hence every
Christian, as an individual man, is responsible for the effect
he is producing. It is the Pauls and Peters and Johns
of humanity, that Jesus sends as lights to teach in the
world. Such power employed will produce the result
desired, wherever mind will yield itself a willing instru
ment. Thus man will become pure within and pure
without, and Christianity will be accepted as the religion
adapted to mankind, to mould, govern, and subdue the
world of sense and reason.
* Faith in this sense will be understood to mean a belief in an objective
existence not present to the eye of sense, as a. thing that may be dissolved
into parts, as we dissolve an object or a sentiment by reducing the concrete
to the separate parts, or the sentiment to the separate states of conscious
ness which it springs from.

Chapter IV.
THE EFFECTS PRODUCED BY MIND.
THE mind in man that began to make itself felt
in our first parents sewing fig leaves together to
make themselves aprons, soon produced the coats of
skin, and has now procured for the bride of Britain's
Sailor Prince, that magnificent trousseau she carries with
her to her adopted home, the wonder and admiration of
many. When man, as we know him, first appeared on earth,
the command came to him to replenish the earth and
subdue it. (Gen. i. 28.) The intellect or creative power
of man is the instrument God has appointed and
bestowed on him to accomplish that vast work. The
material God created, and sent man to produce out of it
whatsoever he will, by this mighty power of intellect, or
soul, or energy of will, by which all may be subdued
within and without man.
Within, this is effected by God, personified in the person
of Jesus Christ, to whom man being united through faith
enabled man to look up to God as a person to be adored
and loved. Thus has man obtained the ideal God longed
for by men in all ages, but not to be approached, for
man is impure, and he knows it ; an innate sense of truth
teaches this, and this knowledge and longing may remain
with man all through eternity, when he rejects the Christ
of Christianity, because in Him alone God has appeared
again the " second time without sin unto salvation ".

The Effects Produced by Mind. 3 1
s
This is the medium through which God is seen
wearing the mantle of humanity, reuniting sinful life
with sinless life in the band of love ; it is thus no pre
sumption in man to approach God in adoring love
through a crucified Redeemer, for this is the medium
God appointed to subdue the will (or stronger power) in
man, by the exercise of faith over mind, the God-ap
pointed means to subdue it.
The power of mind over matter is seen in all that we
do. By the mighty power of intellect man has subdued
that subtle fluid, electricity, and sent it round the globe
with the rapidity of thought, carrying man's message to
man, and thus reuniting the human race by the first
Adam presented in the experience of the race, mind, who
yet liveth doing his God-appointed work, by calling all
things by whatever name he pleases (Gen. ii. 19, 20).
Moreover he continues to live in the embodied mind
of the race, as an individual, and to teach men the
perfection displayed by God in His works of creation,
when God pronounced it very good (Gen i. 31), by
showing mankind the precision displayed in the arrange
ment of the atoms of matter with which God formed the
globe. Thus the first Adam continues to humble man
and exalt God as the eternal "I am" of creation and
grace. Man is thus silenced in mind, and dare not
approach but with the "Abba, Father," in and through
Jesus Christ.

Chapter V.
THE OBJECT OF JUSTIFYING FAITH.
WE see the magnificent effect produced by the first
Adam, as mind in man, in accomplishing his
work of subduing the material or visible world, arid thus
prove the power of mind over matter. What have we
Christians, as the spiritual offspring of the second Adam,
produced by the -effect of faith on mind in subduing the
will or carnal mind, which is enmity against God, and is
the field our master God, personified in the Christ of
Christianity, sent us to subdue ? Yet the effect produced
is as apparent in God's sight, as the effect produced in
matter is in the sight of man. And we Christians,
that profess to be practically united to the God of
humanity, whom we hold to be the Christ of Christianity,
as God and man, are through that union as responsible
in God's sight for yielding to an evil thought, as those
without, who disbelieve in the truth of Christianity as
contained in justification through faith, are in man's
sight for an evil act. But in all "God will be the
final judge".
By accepting the credibility of the New Testament
records, we are bound to submit to such a test as purity
of thought, in so far as man may judge of thoughts by
our actions, for now and here man is our judge. Our
Lord and Master submitted to that test, and so must we;
and although we are accepted as perfect in Him, and

The Object of Justifying Faith. 33
will be acquitted by Him as such at the final judgment,
yef during the present dispensation we are sent to bear
witness of the truth by purity of heart and life, and thus
prove to man the power of faith over mind. According
to Bible-teaching vicarious faith (John xiv. 13) is a
power as liable of producing effect as the power of
mind, and we are obliged to accept this faith as a
power that governs the immaterial world in the same
sense as the laws of nature govern the material world ;
for the teaching of Jesus will admit of nothing less. It
is when we realise this that we are brought to feel, how
little power man, as man, possesses over his belief. The
Christian will be compelled to allow that in God's sight
he is a great sceptic, and that every step of advance is
to be fought and won by the " Lord, I believe, help thou
mine unbelief".
The Jesus of history, as the Christ of Christianity, is
seen in the God of humanity, who shows great compas
sion to man, in demanding nothing more from him than
he does from his fellow man, which is the evidence of
testimony to establish the truth of an historical event ;
and when the resurrection is established on that ground
it gives us the risen Lord. With the risen Lord as an
accepted fact, we have the proof of Jesus' mission. The
"Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief," when uttered
in sincerity of heart by man, as a sinner, to God, is the
beginning of that mysterious power, faith ; and is all
that Jesus teaches as essential to reunite sinful man to
God. May we Christians be as merciful to man as God is to
us, and not lay on Him the burden of believing the Bible,
3

34 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
which we by the power of faith, have been enabled to
do with Christ, in man the hope of glory ! The power
of faith over mind is established, and will make itself
felt : Christ will be realised and glorified as a felt-power
in the soul of man.
The prayer of faith will be answered, and the Dar-
wins and Huxleys of our age will be united to the Lord
and glorify the Christ of Christianity in a way we, the
rank and file of Christ's followers, have failed to do.
We Christians have driven men to unbelief by our lives
and our teaching, for we have held up to man a dead
Bible as sent from God to teach man purity of life,
instead of a living Christ, making himself felt in the
mind of man as an object of love, and the medium
through which man may approach the mighty Creator
as a reconciled Father. God, thus personified in the
Christ of Christianity, becomes an active power in the
mind. He created and bestowed on man a moral and
religious element, which finds rest in the God of Hu
manity, personified in the Christian's God of Creation
and Grace. When our sceptic men of science yield as
willing instruments their great intellects to this mighty
influence, God will reproduce the Pauls and Peters
ana Johns of the first century. The knowledge they
have acquired of the mighty creations by the laws
of nature, will qualify them well for such a work, for
they can comprehend the value of the soul in a sense
we have failed to do. Though eternity is incomprehensible
to the finite mind, they can in some ways comprehend
it better than we, and thus yielding to the power of God
in and through Jesus Christ are created anew. Through

The Object of Justifying Faith. 35
this influence, realised as the Spirit of God in the soul of
man,' they will accept the Bible as containing the word
of God, and we will rejoice together in one common Lord
of Creation and Grace. Christ, in them the hope of
glory, will produce the same fruit as Christ in us
the hope of glory ; for Christianity is the true and last
ing religion for man.
We Christians of Protestant Britain, with an open
Bible, recognised as the eternal Word of the living
God, what progress have we made, for the world must
judge by the effect produced ? The Spirit or Comforter
Christ bestowed on man at the resurrection (John
xvi. 7)> is as active and powerful now as then, and
the means by which he "is made effectual is plainly
revealed by the prayer of faith, (Matt. xxi. 22.) -'All
things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye
shall receive". Now, that all work that a Christian may
conscientiously be engaged in, is to be pursued in
this spirit, is plainly taught in Ecclesiastes ix. IO
" Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy
might " ; taken along with Philippians iv. 8, "Finally,
brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things
are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things
are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if there
be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these
things". God will have no sluggards in His vineyard,
and this applies to the rich as well as to the poor, for all
are stewards. Man as a free agent is responsible to
God, and his duty is plainly revealed in the Holy Chart
of the World, the very power of the Omnipotent Him
self being pledged as a means to the end. It may be that

36 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
the gulf between the rich and the poor is widening year)
by year. While heathen India is freeing itself from casta'
differences, Christian England is making caste diffcr-f
ences to be felt more and more. The rich and the poor
are inseparably united, and equally essential the one
to the other; the only thing needful being that mutual
sympathy which binds man to man. The poor do
not of necessity envy the rich, but the relation existing
between them can only be properly understood when
both are free to meet on one common platform as
equally independent, yet bound together by the one
common bond of humanity. Thus will the poor man
in his thatched cottage feel as independent in his man
hood as the rich man in his palace : each as a man in his
own right, ready and willing to help his neighbours in
the common battle of life. Feeling that purity of
thought is the only real distinction, man will never envy
man. With an inherent sense of truth in man, a mighty
change is not only possible, but it is even now, and to
day, in our power to produce an effect so marked that it
would surpass any feat of magic. Man would act towards
man the part of brother till all class differences should
melt away, like snow before the rays of the sun. We
only require each and all to apply to himself and herself
the spirit that is taught in one single verse of that book
which we, as a Protestant nation, believe to be inspired
of God. and given as our guide in life and hope in death
— Matthew vii. 12, "Therefore all things whatsoever ye
would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them,
for this is the law and the prophets ''. The operation of
this spirit would effect the whole change in question. If

The Object of Justifying Faith. 37
asked, where is this power manifested? we would reply
by asking, who else are to blame for the existing evils
but we ourselves, the professing Christian men and
women of Great Britain ? For is the evil not of our
making ? Man possessing a moral and religious element
may attain to this end apart from Christianity ; for it
is all which man, as man, has a right to expect from
brother man. It is in this way that many in our day,
who professedly disbelieve in Bible truth, are making
themselves a felt power in the world. But if these
people, who are without a religion having a risen Lord
as its great cardinal fact, teach this high morality,
how are we, the professed subjects of the God of
Humanity, " Christ as God and man," to give an
account of our stewardship ? For the Master plainly
tells us, that He came to purify those very people who
are showing us such an example of moral excellence.
Which are the most likely subjects of the kingdom of
heaven, wherein dwelleth righteousness ? The Master
has said it is by their fruits His people are to reveal His
character in the world, not by their religious profession
of faith. James ii. 14 : " What doth it profit, my
brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not
works ? Can faith save him ? " What are we to say
then ? Is our religion a sham ? Is there no power as
individuals given us from God to do His work, or is the
power offered and refused ? Will the Master at the
great day say, Depart, or, Come? (Matt. xxv. 31-46-)
Seeing then that the men Christ came to purify, are the
very men who in many cases are now setting us Chris
tians such an example — honest, true men, as much

38 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
trusted by the saint as by the sinner — how dare we judge
them, as long as we have the Bible open before us, and
profess to believe that it was given to us by God, and
contains that by which we shall be either acquitted or
condemned at the final judgment ?
On this point we have, in the seventh chapter of
Matthew, the teaching of our Lord Himself, and we ask,-;
Is the Bible bringing forth in us, the Bible-reading Pro
testants of Christian England, the fruit of this kingdom,
purity of thought ? Let each one judge himself and
herself, for the Loid of Matt. vii. 21, 22, 23 will never
save any one. The risen Lord is a felt power in the
heart of His people ; it is not the Bible, but Christ in
the soul of man that opens the gates of heaven, while
it is the fruit which proceeds from love to Christ that
makes up the treasures laid up by the Christian in heaven,
in obedience to Christ's command. (Matthew vi. 20, 21.)*
* Christianity all ends in this : union with God in Christ creates love,
love expresses itself in feeling as action ; action, thus generated, is spent in
Christian work, and work done from this motive appears in God's sight in
heaven in the shape of treasures laid up, in the form of works done from
love to Christ. Thus we see the action and counter-action as the fruit of
revealed religion.

Chapter VI.
THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO LIVE OUT THEIR
PROFESSIONS.
HTHE time has come for ,us, the Bible-reading people
of Britain, to decide whether we or our sceptic men
of science are to lead the moral and religious thought of
our day. They have shown us how far they can go, by
teaching that great lesson — to do to others as we would
have others do to us. That is their limit, and is what Christ
calls the teaching of the law andthe prophets ; for reason
can carry us no farther. Beyond this faith alone can go.
Now if this is all we have to offer, why condemn them ?
They have as good a right to judge as we. If we believe
in a risen Lord, what of that ? They do not ; but they
point to the practical lessons involved in the principle of
the law and the prophets, apart from faith in a risen
Lord. Is man as perfect without a living Christ in the
living soul as with Him ? Where and what is the differ
ence ? If we have nothing higher to offer, we have no
right to teach that they are cast, out from the presence of
the Eternal God, and that we are accepted. What need
was there of Him, who was the child of Mary, but the
Son of God, going through the garden of Gethsemane to
the cross of Calvary, and from the grave of Joseph
ascending to heaven as the God of Humanity, possess
ing the attributes of God, and at length being per
sonified in the Christian's God of Creation and Grace ?
What, we ask, does the Bible teach all this, and teach

40 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
nothing more ? Or, does the Bible only begin to teach
where man without it leaves off ? And what ? v Before
we, the Bible-reading people of England, condemn,
we have this plain and pointed question to answer,
each one for himself and herself, or keep silent ; for
we are not called to teach others if we have not
learned for ourselves what the Bible was given us
for. Did the founder of the Christian religion say
in vain as He ascended from Galilee (Matthew xxviii.
18), "All power is given unto me in heaven and in
earth .... and lo, I am with you alway, even
unto the end of the world " ? Did the early Christians
require the most powerful navy in the world, and a
standing army, such as ours, to protect their homes and
their children ? How few of us have been able to say, in
the strength of an open Bible and a risen Lord, for us our
Saviour exists, in the felt power within! Let might be
right, trusting in the Lord as we do, we feel how secure
our home is in glory, and that death to us is indeed gain.
To many of us this may look like fanaticism ; but Chris
tianity will admit of nothing less. The Vicarious sacri
fice was intended to lead to the Vicarious* faith ; as we
resist not evil, otherwise it gives to the world nothing
better than the world may have without it. Christ died
for us, to teach us to die for others ; and our Moffats,
our Burns, our Williams, and our Gardiners, and many
others, have lived, and, living, have died, to prove to us
that profess so much and do so little, that they did in
deed believe Bible truth, and that Christ is as much a felt
power to-day as when He ascended from Galilee, more
* Seen in the fruit of our lives as we represent Christ in the world.

The Duty of Christians. 4 1
than 1800 years ago. This is the power that has given
to Protestant England such men as Richard Williams,
surgeon and missionary to Patagonia, who, with Captain
Gardiner and five others, died from starvation in the year
185 1. To show the character of the man, I quote a few
extracts from his diary.
" After describing his sufferings on Saturday, March
22, he observes of his rest the night following : ' It was,
I think, the most refreshing that I ever enjoyed ; not so
much because it was a balmy restorative to my poor
debilitated body, but because if ever the whisperings of
Almighty love spoke tranquillity to the soul of man, and
breathed a continued flow of divine consolation upon his
heart, I felt them that night. I was, so to speak, talking
with the Lord ; and His grace diffused such an influence
around me, that I could very well have thought I was
in Paradise. I might have thought so, but the subject-
matter of my communings with the Lord was the ser
vices, the joyful, heartfelt services, I should render unto
Him in this my lifetime, and period of sojourn here
on earth. My heart seemed to tell the Lord how wil
lingly, how gladly, my poor all should be given unto
Him, to spend and be spent for Him alone. And whilst
such were my thoughts, the Lord seemed to pour upon
me the blessings of His Grace, so that he was unto me
as the dew unto Israel. Communion, heavenly and
blessed ! ' Earnest of joys to come, and foretaste of that
inheritanee undefiled and that fadeth not away, where I
shall see Jesus face to face, yea, behold Him as He is, not
even the transparent veil of a divine faith being betwixt
Him and me ! And how transcendently glorious is the

42 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
further assurance, that when we do see Him as He is, we
shall be like Him, partakers of His divine nature, and
sharers of His glorious image. 0 God, my Lord, for
ever be thy name adored '.
"April 14. — Seeing the sunset once more (for it is long
since I, beheld it), my soul aspired towards the plains of
light, and I could conceive some such portal as yon
bright scene, only brighter, brighter far, and cloudless,
opened into the paradise of our God. Thither my happy
spirit bent its way upon the wings of hope, faith point
ing out the pathway to the golden gate, and love desir
ing and hastening on the soul to win so priceless an
inheritance among the saints in light.
"May 23. — This evening I have been so allured by the
love of Jesus, that I have not been able to refrain from
asking the Lord to permit me to come to Himself.
Nothing on earth could hold back my wishes from tran
sporting me at once into His presence. I felt it could be
no sin to desire thus eagerly for heaven. Its light, its
atmosphere, its peace, its joys, yea, and its holiness, were
around my soul, and earth to my eyes seemed a dreary
place. But am I ready to go ? O yes ; Jesus has made
me ready. I Could not be more ready than He can make
me, were I to live a century longer. His blood, His
precious blood, I bear upon my heart ; His righteous
ness declared of God, I hold for my title-deeds.
"May 27. — My soul rejoices in the Lord, and I would
not exchange my dying hopes, surrounded as I now am
with all earthly discomforts, for the greatest luxuries, and
all the blandishments the world could set before me ;
nay, nor could it stop one minute my onward flight to

The Duty of Christians. 43 ,
God, were the whole realm of nature, and every monarch
with his crown, inviting me to linger for a while, and
taste of honour, power and earthly good. No, oh, no !
All that is vanity and a delusion. There is no other
happiness but in knowing God, and Jesus Christ whom
He has sent ; in knowing Him as our merciful, gracious,
long-suffering God ; forgiving iniquity, transgression, and
sin : and Jesus Christ as  no words can say what
Jesus Christ is, when you know Him. This is the white
stone, inscribed with a new name, which no one knows
but he to whom it is given.
" June 12. — Ah ! I am happy day and night, hour by
hour. Asleep or awake, I am happy beyond the poor
compass of language to tell. My joys are with Him
whose delights have always been with the sons of men ;
and my heart and spirit are in heaven with the blessed.
I have felt how holy is that company ; I have felt how
pure are their affections, and I have washed me in the
blood of the Lamb, and asked my Lord for the white
garment, that I too may mingle with the blaze of day,
and be amongst them one of the sons of light."*
If the child of Mary, but the Son of God, is the
author of such joy, when the world has taken back
almost all it has to give, and before the soul enters
glory, are we, as belonging to such a family, purchased
at such a price, justified in the sight of God or man in'
living as we are doing ?
* Any one that will make himself acquainted With modern science
will see, in such an experience as this, the reflex action of the cerebrum
brain that has been shaped through the influence of revealed religion, by
one that has dedicated all to the Master's service, as the material soul
vibrates in unison with the redeemed in glory.

44 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
With such a power within man, what may not man do?
Is it too hard for us, when smitten on the right cheek, to
turn the other also ; for us, who are followers of the Lamb,
heirs of glory and joint-heirs with Christ ? The. sceptic
men of science have a perfect right to demand from us
such proof; for the sciences are established on proof;
and we have no authority from our Master to hold up a
Bible and call it the Word of God, except we are pre
pared to live out its precepts. ' This will admit of proof.
For the Bible does contain truth that may inspire man
with the strength of a hero, enabling him to run into dan
ger and to death, and in death to die a conqueror. This
power must be felt by the men who are to lead the religious
thought of the nineteenth century, if religion founded on
Christianity is to take its place as one of the sciences
established on truth, which is eternal. But if so, it must
in this respect be reduced to proof, seen in the lives of
the men professing to believe it, in whom purity of
thought leads to purity of life, as seen in all their actions.
Thus only will Christianity be established as the perma
nent religion of man, with the child of Mary, who is also
the Son of God, as a risen Lord, reigning in the heart of
His people, and operating as an active power, subduing
the world as a silent conqueror. Thus shall we teach men
that an open Bible is indeed a living Christ.
The Reformation gave ^s back an open Bible, but
taught man to believe that revelation had ceased. By this
we gained much; but at the same time we lost much. For
the Christian religion was established on the promise
that a Comforter was to come, who was to remain with the
Lord's followers for ever as His felt-presence on earth, to

The Duty of Christians. 45
reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judg
ment As Christ Himself said, " I have yet many things
to say unto you, but ye cannot hear them now " (John
xvi. 12"), and man has no authority from God to explain
away Christ's teaching, which, for all we know, may-
contain a new revelation, as the human soul holds
communion with Christ. For, if Christ is not now and
ever, a felt-power in the spirit of man, our religion is
a delusion, and the Bible no better than any other
book, even though it contains main- a " thus saith the
Lord ". But we Christians feel and know that Chris
tianity, including the ideal Christ, is a heaven-born
thing, and is the seed of God in the spirit of man, reveal
ing truths to him.
Christianity is established on the Jesus of history as
the risen Lord ; on this, and this alone. The Bible
without this is nothing, and with it, it may be called the
chart of heaven, even though God is in the world, as well
as in the Bible, teaching man what is truth. Christ, in
man the hope of Glory, is the " Mystery which hath been
hid from ages and from generations, but now is made
manifest to his saints ". (Col. i. 26.) This is the germ
the Bible contains ; with it, we have the promise of all
things becoming ours, and without it, the Bible would be
no better than any other book ; for without this, it insures
no certain future in the world to come ; but with Jesus
occupying a point in space, as the Redeemer, a certain
future is established in Him ; and where He is, thither
we shall follow in course of time.

Chapter VII.
CHRIST AS THE VICARIOUS SACRIFICE ; AND THE
BELIEVER'S DUTY TO FOLLOW IN HIS STEPS,
AND ACCEPT TRUTH FROM ALL QUAR1ERS.
IN this our day, when Bible truths are attacked on
every hand, it is necessary for us who believe that
the Bible contains the revealed Word of God, and that
it is thus inspired, in a sense in which no other book is,
to know what is the absolute truth which it does con
tain ; for in the Bible there is eternal truth ; the very
truth which separates the human races, and divides it into
two great classes, called the saved and the lost. The Bible
is given to reveal God's character to man as a God of
Grace or Favour in Jesus Christ, the vicarious sacrifice,
the sinless man revealed in the Bible as the Saviour of
the world. This, and this alone, is the absolute truth
which the Bible does contain, and does reveal to sinful
man. When we add to this Christ's resurrection as a great
cardinal fact, which admits of proof, the character of God,
as revealed in the Bible, remains absolute truth, whether
man accept it or reject it. If we accept it, we receive all
the benefit that flows from it, and are accepted as perfect ;
for the God of humanity, the God man died for us as sin
ners; and we are accepted as perfect* in His stead, (i Tim.
* The operation of this realised perfection is manifested in the forces
held together by the complicated generalised ideas which have combined
to produce this effect, as in thought we take possession of all Christ has
procured for us. The effect produced through this means is graphically

Christ as the Vicarious Sacrifice. 47
iii. 16.) "Without controversy great is the mysteiy of
godliness ; God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the
spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed
on in the world, received up into glory." This is truth,
absolute truth. When man accepts this as truth, he is
united to God as a God of grace ; whether he feels it or
not, it is the truth that saves, and gives us the Chris
tian's God, as the Creator and Father of Jesus Christ.
Man, as a free agent, ma)- accept or reject God thus
revealed. Where he accepts, the " Lord, I believe,
help thou mine unbelief," as the prayer of faith, will
be soon followed by the realization of belief on man's
part ; and Paul's experience will be his own, and he
will be enabled to say (2 Timothy i. 12.) " I know
whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is
able to keep that which I have committed unto him,
against that day". Sinful man, with this experience
within him, and the Bible in his hand, can rise above
earth and the things of earth, as a sinner saved by grace ;
and rejoices in the one only true God, as the God of
creation and grace. Man is thus prepared to accept
absolute truth as God's expression to man from all
quarters. The Darwinian theory, if proved, must be accepted as
truth, though we may feel humbled at the thought of
having come from a jelly fish; or of being obliged to
described in the 36th question of the Catechism used in Scotland, in "As
surance of God's love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase
of grace, and perseverance therein to the end." Through this medium, we
shall say, the action and counteraction of the cerebrum brain makes
itself felt in the form of reflex action, as it manifests the effect the forces
communicate to it, in producing the food we employ in feeding the brain.

48 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
accept spontaneous generation. Consequently, the first •
Adam was not created, that is, called forth then
and there, in the form of the Adam of the garden of
Eden, as a perfect man, and yet he may have been
evolved, and may gradually have attained to that, per
fect state of innocence in which we find him, when
Eve was given to him as a helpmate. That is to say,
Adam may have been evolved, and, through the influence
of the moral and religious elements present in humanity,
have attained in his generation such a condition as God
was pleased to call perfect.
In this way, then, it is free to suppose that Adam
attained to that perfect state. And how very easy and
simple all this seems to be, when perceived in the light
of our present knowledge. To many, this will seem the
most natural way to render the Bible intelligent to a
large class of liberal-minded Protestants that accept the
miracles (say the resurrection) as established on the evi
dence of testimony, received from the time of the Lord
till our own day. With us it will be a very easy matter
to suppose, that Eve was formed by supernatural power,
in a miraculous way, as a helpmate to Adam, and thus
bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh ; that is, both
formed in the same mould ; and might we not suppose
that, when temptation came to her, because of the for
mation of her character, as being mostly guided by
feeling, she was not able to resist the temptation so effec
tually ? And might we not also suppose that her influence
on her husband was very hurtful ? How natural then
does the explanation seem which was given as an excuse
to God ; the temptatien was gone, the effect alone re-

Christ as the Vicarious Sacrifice. 49
mained, and now the voice of the Lord was heard in the
garden in the cool of the day. (Genesis iii. 8.) From
first to last, the story is one which all might comprehend
to some extent. But, when it is compared with what we
find in Matt. v. 28, we see that there is a still higher
Christian life, which can only be understood by the class
represented by Paul in Titus i. 15, where he says, that
" Unto the pure all things are pure ". This class alone
can comprehend the full meaning of such a life.
To the class which regards Adam, the first historical
man, as the absolutely first man, the Bible, as it always
has been, is sufficient But there is a large number who
believe that the earth teemed with multitudes, hundreds
of thousand of years before the time of historic man ;
and these may see reason in the explanation which we have
offered. However, where and how we came to be formed
is a question of very little importance in comparison with
that of being fully persuaded as to the place to which we
are going. This, it must be admitted, is a matter of the
deepest moment to men who are to live for ever. For
if the doctrine of evolution is fully established, man
must give up the old mode of rendering the Bible, and
begin with the second Adam, the risen Lord. Further
more, he must confess that, though he cannot tell where
he came from, he knows where he is going to, which is a
matter of greater necessity, and of much greater impor
tance to him, a sinner saved by grace. For all will allow
that evil is in the world ; arid Christians, in accepting
the credibility of the New Testament records, see in
Christ's vicarious sacrifice God reconciling the world
to Himself, as the design He had in view in originating
4

50 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
the laws that have produced humanity as we find it.
2 Cor. v. 1 8, 19, 20: "And all things are of God, who
hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath
given to us the ministry of reconciliation ; to wit, that
God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself,
not imputing their trepasses unto them ; and hath com
mitted unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then
we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did
beseech you by us : we pray you in Christ's stead, be
ye reconciled to God." The reconciliation spoken of
here necessitates and will produce purity of life, that we -
may realise the great Apostle's exhortation, " Be blame
less and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in
the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom
ye shine as lights in the world ; holding forth the word
of life" (Phil. ii. 15, 16); and thus reflect Christ's cha
racter. For it is clearly revealed in the New Testament
records, that this is the God-appointed means whereby
these attributes of the Saviour of mankind are to be made
known to the world ; especially is this made clear to us
in Phil. ii. 12, 13, 14, where the command is given, " Work
out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is
God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of his
good pleasure. Doing all things without murmurings
and disputings". This, when reduced to proof, and
seen in the believer's life, is the God-appointed work
which the followers of Christ are left in the world of
sin and sorrow to accomplish, realising His presence as
a felt power within, leading them on to glory and to
God. So the Comforter, which was to reprove the world
of sin, and reflect Christ's character, as it is revealed

Christ as the Vicarious Sacrifice. 5 1
in the New Testament records, teaches the world
what He means, when He says in John xvi. from the
7th- to the 15th verse, that He had many things to
say unto the people, which His disciples at the first
could not bear. This is just what every Christian
man and woman must learn for himself and herself
from God, and in this sense each and all are inspired
of God, and prepared by Him for the work He hath
appointed them to do. For while sin remains, the
world will demand that the just die for the unjust,
as a sacrifice for sin, and Christ's redeemed ones are
accepted as just in Him, their Head, who died for
them. Each one is His representative, sent to convince
the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment,
by striving after the perfection He has enjoined, where
He says, in Matt. v. 48, " Be ye therefore perfect, even
as your Father in heaven is perfect". The Bible, as
inspired of God, will admit of proof nothing short of
this — it is either thus, or Christianity is a myth ; it
is either Christ as the Saviour of man, reconciling the
world unto Himself by and through His redeemed
ones, or the world is no better of the Christ of
Christianity as a vicarious sacrifice, reconciling the
world unto Himself by not imputing to them their tres
passes. Man is thus left a free agent,* and may accept
Christ as a sinner, saved by grace, striving unto death to
attain perfection, or purity of thought and life, and thus
entering eternal bliss. Or he may reject Christ, and
meet God as a just Judge; feeling that the "Judge of
* A term intended to represent a state of consciousness present in every
one as he feels he has power to choose between two courses of action.

52 Christianity Reduced to Proof
all the earth" will do right. Every man and woman,
with an open Bible, has his and her choice to make, and
must appear as rejected or accepted of God. Man, by
a profession of Christianity, accepts God as a God of
grace or favour ; and the world has a right to demand
from such purity of life and thought, as the evidence
of belief, the fruit of Christ's death. Are we not then
all to be blamed for the evil that threatens us, by
men everywhere saying, show us the Lord (or what is
truth) ? These fail to recognise Him as the felt-power in
the soul, presented in conscience, convincing them of
sin, and so they resist and refuse to yield to the
influence of God manifested in the flesh — flesh here
being understood to admit of the double meaning, as the
feeling and the felt — and revealed in the mighty power
of faith (taken in the scriptural sense) over mind * which
is seen and felt by all men, by prince, and peasant, by
master and servant, by mistress and maid. Moreover, in
the Christian this mighty power manifests itself unto
death ; for Christ died for them that they might die to
save others, not resisting evil, Matt. v. 49, but submitting
rather to be wronged. Thus they make their calling and
election sure, holding forth the Word of life, and reveal
ing "Christ in them the hope of glory". Nothing short
of this will prove to man and woman that the Bible is
true. When all are doubting, this, and this alone, is
absolute truth, or the fruit springing from the absolute
truth of revealed religion. Moreover, it admits of proof,
as the power of God, a God of grace in the soul of
* I deal with the material human soul capable of receiving impressions
from God.

Christ as the Vicarious Sacrifice. 53
sinful man. As sinners, saved by grace, we enter glory,
and as such we shall be known throughout all eternity-
No man can be better ; and no man in Christendom
need be worse, for Christ came to seek and save the lost,
as the fruit of His vicarious sacrifice.

Chapter VIII.
THE DEVELOPED RELIGIOUS ELEMENT, CONTRASTED
WITH THE FRUITS OF THE VICARIOUS SACRIFICE.
THERE is a party that are not Christians, but worship
God as the God of truth and nature. Thus they
worship the Christian's God, but do not recognise Christ
as the Son of God, and have therefore no right to be
called Christian, for they only are Christian who accept
the Christ of Christianity as the risen Lord. All that deny
this are false to themselves and their God, if they accept
for themselves, or demand from us the name of Chris
tian, even while they may be more pure and holy, so far
as man can judge them. There are many who are Chris
tian in heart and profession only, but that gives them
no title to the claim of being Christians ; we are
Christians for what Christ did for us, and not for
what we are striving to do for Christ, from a sense
of gratitude and love, in return for what He has done
by reconciling the world to Himself as a God of grace.
We accept salvation first, and then do His work to
show our gratitude; this and this alone secures for us
the name of Christians ; and when men disallow this,
and take to themselves the name of Christ to distinguish
them for their deeds of charity and love, they are false
to themselves and false to, their God, whether they feel
it or not. For if the Jesus of History did not rise from
the dead, there could have been no Christ of Christian-

The Developed Religious Element. 5 5
ity, and therefore no society formed in His name, and
by this power doing the God-appointed work of charity
and love. It looks as if this new religion which relies
on the Divine presence in the nature of man, "this
religious element, established on scientific ground,"* and
called absolute religion, wished to claim for itself all the
deeds of charity and purity which Christ's death and
resurrection have accomplished in Christendom.
This mistake has arisen in consequence of Christ
having worked by His people, though unperceived and
unfelt on their part ; in consequence also of his followers
not having had clear views of Christ's character and
works, and having therefore seemed to do good for the
sake of goodness. They are, thus far, false to them
selves and false to their God of grace, and many of
them, from this mistake, are all their lives subject to
bondage. They are indeed safe for eternity, though they
do not realise it ; " Christ is in them the hope of glory,"
though by reason of unbelief they fail to see Him with
the eye of faith ; and thus mistaking the Bible for Christ,
they cling to it with the despair of drowning men. But,
for all this, it follows that they place themselves and their
friends of absolute religion in a false position : the one
set clinging to the Bible because it reveals the God of
grace, the God that " so loved the world, that he gave his
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have everlasting life " (John iii.
16) ; the other set clinging to the Bible, because it teaches
more of purity and charity than any other book ; and,
as they say, because the Jesus of history was the greatest
* In the expression of the sentiment universally present in the race.

56 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
religious genius of the race. But they have no risen
Lord to adore and love. The Christ of Christianity, as
the Son of God, is nothing to them ; they have nothing
to lose by losing Him as a divine being, and heaven is as
full to them without Him as with Him. God is to them
only as the God of truth. ^
Their redeemer is within ; they call it conscience and
reason ; charity and purity are life to them. This is
absolute religion ; God is everywhere, but nowhere in
particular. For them Christ has not gone to prepare a
place, but He has gone to prepare one for us Christians,-
(John xiv. 2), and He has left with us the Comforter,
promised in this chapter, as a felt power to prepare us.
Our Redeemer died on the cross, rose from the dead, and
is now in heaven, as God and Man : He is without usj
preparing a place for us, as well as in us, preparing us
for the place. Charity and purity are the fruits of His
work in us, in the cultivation of which He is preparing us
for his kingdom ; and we, in so far as we strive after
this charity and purity, are preparing ourselves for the
place we are to occupy in that kingdom. They of this
party of absolute religion are doing for themselves what
Christ, the Son of God, did for us ; they are redeem
ing their souls, but Christ has redeemed ours, and sent
us to do this work for Him in the world ; that is to
say, by a vicarious sacrifice to redeem the world to Him.
But what a poor bargain He has made in the case of
many of us ! for we are much more our own than Christ's.
We want the world to live in and enjoy, but Christ to
die in, and appear before God as His.
They of absolute religion are better than we in

The Developed Religious Element. 57
.some respects ; for they do good for the sake of good
ness, and thus leave the world better than they found it.
" They build wiser than they know, for God will reward
them according to their works." We take eternal life
and sometimes give , nothing, and thus leave the world
worse than we found it ; for Christians sometimes lead
others into sin : they do evil, and call it good to save
themselves ; and thus we reverse the law established by
Christ as absolute Christianity, as seen in His vicarious
sacrifice. The new life is a life of faith ; for it unites
us to Christ, and therefore this sentiment is eternal as
God. Charity and purity, as the fruit of the religious
element in the other class, is life to them ; it may or, it
may not insure eternal life. They would thus take away
the children's bread, and give them in return a stone.
They can rise no higher than hope, only hope ; still the
world is the better of them in as much as they do good
for goodness' sake. We, as the fruit of Christ's vicarious
sacrifice, may rise, and many of us do rise to certainty ;
but how little do we possess of the new life, that vicarious
sacrifice, that " faith which worketh by love," and "which
overcometh the world " ! This mysterious power Christ
describes when he says (in Matt. xvii. 20), " If ye have
faith as a grain of mustard seed," nothing would be im
possible to you. What of this faith do we show, by works
accomplished in God's strength ?
Scientific research has proved that vicarious sacrifice,
death giving life, is the law that governs the material
world, and Christendom is produced to prove, by the
effect of that great Vicarious Sacrifice, that God has done
for man what man could not do for himself. Man, with-

58 Christianity Reduced to Proof
out Christ, in striving after perfection, is striving to do
for himself what the first Adam lost at the fall ; whatever
that may mean, for God is absolute purity and truth ;
and evil is in the world, as all will allow. Life, as the
fruit of doing good for goodness' sake, is only hope at
the best ; but the life of the Christian, the life that
procures in him the fruit of charity and purity, is the
life he has derived from that great vicarious sacrifice, and
is eternal ; for it is God in him saving man, because he is
a sinner. Man refusing to be saved as a sinner, though he
feels that he is a sinner, and, while allowing that God is
perfect, despising offered grace, and willing to accept no
favour, will have to meet God as a judge, who will render
to all their due, and take what comes of it ; for God
says, he must either be served by Christ or not saved at
all in the scriptural sense of being saved,, that is, a sinner
saved by grace — nothing less and nothing more.
If the two classes would accept their proper position
before God and man, it would be well for the world and
well for themselves ; the one class are sinners saved by
grace, the other class are sinners not saved by grace ;
they leave their present and their future to all eternity
in God's hands. As one of them has said, " I indeed be
lieve with Jesus of Nazareth, that I shall ascend to His
Father and my Father, to His God and my God " ; thus
taking the Jesus of history as an Example, but not as a
Substitute. Herein lies the difference that divides the
human race.
It is a difference of God's making, and man has his
choice to belong to the one class or the other. We Chris
tians, however, have no authority to call the members of

The Developed Religious Element. 59
the other class bad men. Many of them are good, doing
God's work, and we are enjoying the fruit of their
labours in many ways. For many of this class are our
men of science ; and, nex tto Christ's vicarious sacrifice,
science has done most for the world, being the God-
appointed work which the first Adam was set to perform.
(Eccles. i. 13.) That is to say, the men of science make
known to us God's character in the uniformity of the
laws of nature present everywhere, manifesting a uni
versal power. From God they came, so to God they
will go, and take the place prepared for them by their
search after truth. They worship God as a God of truth ;
we worship Him as a God of grace, in and through
Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
When the first Adam and Eve sewed the fig leaves
together to make themselves aprons, and hid them
selves from the eye of God, they realised their state, that
they were impure, and they felt it, for they had disobeyed
a command. We may suppose they procured for them
selves the coats of skin, when they offered the first sacri
fice, as an offering for sin, to reconcile themselves to God.
The God of grace may have been preparing sinful man
to accept the great Vicarious Sacrifice, the God-appointed
means by which sinful man is reconciled to God as a
God of grace. The Bible, as containing the inspired
Word of God, reveals this to man, a sinner, and Christ's
resurrection is the great cardinal fact to prove to him
that God has prepared for him reconciliation, in and
through Jesus Christ, who is that vicarious sacrifice.
We see the effect of faith over mind, in subduing
and conquering the affections and lusts, by binding the

60 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
heart of man to God in adoration and love, as the God
of grace, and in thus preparing man to glorify Him, as
such, through all eternity. When we see the spirit or
soul of sinful man thus clinging to God as a reconciled
Father, or to the Christ of Christianity as the God of
humanity, as God and man, taking on Him our nature,
and dying in our stead, we are made to feel that faith
gives life ; that God hath indeed made coats of skin,
and clothed Adam and Eve, when he procured for man
this Vicarious Sacrifice, called in the Scriptures the righte
ousness of God. The influence of this sacrifice is seen in
faith which, working by love, is the fruit of Christ's
death, which hath procured on earth all the works of
charity Christendom has produced. Christianity says,
God as a God of grace has provided a sacrifice for us,
which we may accept, and thus appear before God
as sinners saved by grace. It is thus that all Christians
stand in the sight of God, whether they feel it or not. As
for the other class, those who believe in an absolute
religion, they will stand or fall by their own merit ; for
the moral and religious element which is in man, procures
for him, without the vicarious sacrifice, the fig-leaf aprons;
for God is justice and truth. Their Redeemer is within ;
they will abide by the consequence, and through all
eternity they will remain what they make themselves.
Hence they must remain a separate and distinct creation.
An innate sense of truth can procure the fig-leaves for
covering, and God will not despise them though he pro
cured for others of the same race coats of skin, by the vica
rious sacrifice of Christ. These have made their choice,
so have we Christians ; therefore, let us now live together

The Developed Religious Element. 61
in this understanding, that they are God's children of
nature, but we are God's children of grace. Believing
this, let us gladly serve each other in our day and
generation. We are safe for eternity. Let us live
above the world, as the Master himself has told us—
" Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the
world". (John viii 1 6.) Natural religion assuredly was
never intended to drive man from Christ, but we Chris
tians, by, living as we are doing, have had that effect, and
we now suffer the consequences, in seeing so many of
our number asking in despair — what is truth ?
I cannot do justice in describing the class we have
had under view. I will, therefore, close this part of my
subject by placing before my readers the 6th and 7th
chapters of a book by Theodore Parker, entitled, " A Dis
course on matters pertaining to religion ". This eminent
writer is one of the class with which this chapter has been
dealing, and though he is no Christian, all must allow that
he displays much beauty of character in the book I have
named. But Christ as a risen Lord is nothing to him,
and, indeed, another of the same party, Charles Voysey,
in the preface to this work, very honestly repudiates
the name of Christian being applied to his party ; for that
name is only applicable to those who are united through
Christ to God.
This party has an Idea wider and deeper than that of the
Catholic or Protestant, namely, that God still inspires men as
much as ever ; that he is immanent in spirit as in space. For
the present purpose, and to avoid circumlocution, this doctrine
may be called Spiritualism. This relies on no Church, Tra
dition, or Scripture, as the last ground and infallible rule ; it
counts these things teachers, if they teach, not masters; helps,

62 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
if they help us, not authorities. It relies on the divine presence
in the Nature of Man; the eternal Word of God, which is
Truth, as it speaks through the faculties he has given. It
believes God is near the soul, as matter to the sense ; thinks
the canon of revelation not yet closed, nor God exhausted. It
sees him in Nature's perfect work ; hears him in all true Scrip
ture, Jewish or Phoenician ; feels him in the aspiration of the
heart ; stoops at the same fountain with Moses and Jesus, and
is filled with living water. It calls God Father and Mother,
not King ; Jesus brother, not Redeemer ; Heaven home ;
Religion nature. It loves and trusts, but does not fear. It
sees in Jesus a man living manlike, highly gifted, though not
without errors, and Irving with earnest and beautiful fidelity to
God, stepping thousands of years before the race of men ; the
profoundest religious genius God has raised up, whose words
and works help us to form and develop the idea of a complete
religious man. But he lived for himself; died for himself;
worked out his own salvation, and we must do the same, for
one man cannot live for another more than he can eat or
sleep for him. It is no personal Christ, but the Spirit of
Wisdom, Holiness, Love, that creates the well-being of men ;
a life at one with God. The divine incarnation is in all man
kind. The aim it proposes is a complete union of Man with God,
till every action, thought, wish, feeling, is in perfect harmony
with the divine will. The " Christianity " it rests in is not the
point Man goes through in his progress, as the Rationalist, not
the point God goes through in his development, as the super
naturalist maintains ; but Absolute Religion, the point where
Man's will and God's will are one and the same. Its Source
is absolute, its Aim absolute, its Method absolute. It lays down
no creed ; asks no symbol; reverences exclusively no time nor
place, and therefore can use all time and every place. It
reckons forms useful to such as they help ; one man may com
mune with God through the bread and the wine, emblems of
the body that was broken, and the blood that was shed, in the
cause of truth ; another may hold communion through the moss
and the voilet, the mountain, the ocean, or the Scripture of
suns, which God has writ in the sky; it does not make the

The Developed Religious Element. 63
means the end ; it prizes the signification more than the sign.
It knows nothing of that puerile distinction between Reason
and Revelation ; never finds the alleged contradiction between
Good Sense and Religion; Its Temple is all space ; its Shrine
the good heart ; its Creed all truth ; its Ritual works of love
and utility: its Profession of faith a manly life, works without,
faith within, love of God aud man. It bids man do duty, and
take what comes of it, grief or gladness. In every desert it
opens fountains of living water ; gives balm for every wound,
a pillow in all tempests, tranquillity in each distress. It does
good for goodness' sake; asks no pardon for its sins, but
gladly serves out the time. It is meek and reverent of truth,
but scorns all falsehood, though upheld by the ancient and
honourable of the earth. It bows to no idols, of wood or flesh,
of gold or parchment, or spoken wind; neither Mammon, neither
the Church, nor the Bible, nor yet Jesus, but God only. It
takes all helps it can get ; counts no good word profane, though
a heathen spoke it ; no lie sacred, though the greatest prophet
had said the word. Its redeemer is within ; its salvation within ;
its heaven and its oracle of God. It falls back on perfect
Religion ; asks no more : is satisfied with no less. The personal
Jesus is its encouragement, for he helps to reveal the possible
of man. Its watchword is, Be perfect as God. With its eye
on the Infinite, it goes through the striving and the sleep of
life ; equal to duty, not above it ; fearing not whether the
ephemeral wind blow east or west. It has the strength of the
Hero ; the tranquil sweetness of the Saint It makes each man
his own priest ; but accepts gladly him that speaks a holy word.
Its prayer in words, in works, in feeling, in thought is this, Thy
will be done ; its Church that of all holy souls, the Church of
the first-bom, called by whatever name.*
Let others judge the merits and defects of this scheme. It
has never organised a Church ; yet in all ages, from the earliest
men have, more or less freely, set forth its doctrines. We find
these men among the despised and forsaken. The world was
not ready to receive them. They have been stoned and spit
* It is unnecessary to enlarge on this scheme, since so much has been said
of it already. See Book L ch. vii § 3, and Book II. ch. viii., and Book
III. ch. v. vii

64 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
upon in all the streets of the world. The " pious " have burned
them as haters of God and man ; the " wicked " called them
bad names and let them go. They have served to flesh the
swords of the Catholic Party, and feed the fires of the Pro
testant. But flame and steel will not consume them. The
seed they have sown is quick in many a heart, their memory
blessed by such as live divine. These were the men at whom
the world opens wide the mouth and draws out the tongue and
utters its impotent laugh ; but they received the fire of God on
their altar, and kept living its sacred flame. They go on the
forlorn hope of the race ; but Truth puts a wall of fire about
them and holds the shield over their head in the day of trouble.
The battle of Truth seems often lost, but is always won. Her
enemies but erect the bloody scaffolding where the workmen
of God go up and down, and with divine hands build wiser
than they know. When the scaffolding falls the temple will
appear. Now then, if it be asked, what relation the Church sustains
to the religious Element, the answer is plain: The Soul is
greater than the Church. Religion, as Reason, is of God ; the
Absolute Religion, and therefore eternal, based on God alone ;
the Christian Churches, Catholic and Protestant, are of men,
and therefore transient. Let them .say their say ; man is God's
child, and free of their tyranny; he must not accept their
limitations, nor bow their authority, but go on his glorious way.
The Churches are a human affair quite as much as the State ;
ecclesiastical, like political institutions, are changeable, human,
subject to the caprices of public opinion. The divine right of
kings to bear sway over the Body, and the divine right oT the
Churches to rule over the Soul, both rest on the same founda
tion — on a lie.
The Christian Church, like Fetichism, Polythesim, like the
State, has been projected out of man in his development and
passage through the ages ; its several phases correspond to
Man's development and civilisation, and are inseparable from
it. They are the index of the condition of Man. They bear
their justification in themselves. They could not have been
but as they were. To censure or approve Catholicism, or
Protestantism, is to censure or approve the state of the race

The Developed Religious Element. 65
which gave rise to these forms ; to condemn Absolute Religion
called by whatever name, is to condemn both Man and God.
Jesus fell back on God, aiming to teach absolute Religion,
absolute Morality; the truth its own authority,' his works his
witness. The early Christians fell hack on ¦ the authority of
Jesus; their successors, on. the Bible, the work of the apostles
and prophets ; the next generation on the Church, the work of
apostles and fathers. The world retreads this ground. Pro
testantism delivers us from the tyranny of the Church, and
carries us hack to the Bible. Biblical criticism frees us from
jhe thraldom of the Scripture, and brings us to the authority
of Jesus. Philosophical Spiritualism liberates us from all per
sonal and finite authority, and restores us to God, the prim
eval fountain, whence. the Church, the Scriptures, and Jesus have
drawn all the water of life, wherewith they fill their urns. Thence
and thence only, shall mankind obtain Absolute Religion and
spiritual well-being. Is this a retreat for mankind 1 No, it is
progress without end. The race of men never before stood
so high as now ; with suffering, tears, and blood, they have
toiled, through barbarism and war, to their present height, and
we see the world of promise opening upon our eye. But what
is not behind is before us.
Institutions arise as they are needed, and fall when their work
is done. Of these things nothing is fixed. Institutions are
provisional, man only is final. Corporeal despotism is getting
ended; will the spiritual tyranny last for ever? A will above
our puny strength, marshals the race of men, using our freedom,
virtue, folly as instruments to one vast end — the harmonious
development of Man. We see the art of God in the web of a
spider, and the cell of a bee, but have not skill to discern it in
the march of Man. We repine at the slowness of the future in
coming, or the swiftness of the past in fleeting away; we sigh
for the fabled " Millennium " to advance, or pray Time to re
store us the Age of Gold. -It avails nothing. We cannot hurry
God, nor retard him. Old schools and new schools seem as
men that stand on the shore of some Atlantic bay, and shout,
to frighten back the tide, or urge it on. What boots their cry ?
Gently the sea swells under the. moon, and, in the hour of God's
appointment, the tranquil tide rolls in, to inlet and river, to
5

66 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
lave the rocks, to bear on its bosom the ship of the merchant,
the weeds of sea. We complain, as our fathers ; let us rather
rejoice, for questions less weighty than these have in other ages
been disposed of only with the point of the sword, and the
thunder of cannon — put off, not settled.
If the opinions advanced in this Discourse be correct, then
Religion is above all institutions, and can never fail ; they shall
perish, but Religion endure : they shall wax old as a garment ;
they shall be changed, and the places that knew them shall
know them no more for ever ; but Religion is ever the same,
and its years shall have no end.

Chapter IX.
ALL BELIEVERS ARE ENTITLED TO ETERNAL LIFE AND
MAY BE VIEWED AS SAVED.
GOD, as a God of mercy and grace, reconciles man to
Himself, through Jesus Christ ; all that are putting
their trust in Him as a God of this nature are Christians,
and are to be received as such. The distinction which
God has Himself made is clearly laid before us in the
two following passages, John iii. 3-6, " He that believeth
on the Son hath eternal life ; " and Heb. iii. 16, and some
"could not enter in because of unbelief". By this we
are bound to regard all, without exception, who profess
belief in Christ, as saved men and women ; this is evi
dently what Christ means in the sermon on the mount,
when he says, Matt. vii. 1 2, " Judge not, that ye be not
judged, for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be
judged, and with what measure ye mete, it shall be
measured to you again ". Christ came to save sinners
as such, and unbelief is the only sin that a professing
Christian can be condemned for. Good and bad, rich
and poor, old and young, are all included in God's pro
mise " Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish,
but have everlasting life" (John iii. 15); and it is in oppo
sition to His command that we judge and condemn any.
If some of us have attained to the assurance by faith,
which all are entitled to, we are no better in God's
sight than the very weakest believer. Whatever our

68 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
state may be, it is Christ's death that hath saved our
soul. Man is either saved or lost, in a scriptural sense,
because Christ died for us. God did not send us here,
and give us strong faith, to judge and condemn" our
weaker brother, but to bear his infirmities by taking him
by the hand as a sinner, saved of grace, as much entitled
to heaven as any of us. For Christ died to save all as sin
ners, and though any one should fall seventy times seven,
if he says he repents, the Master's command is, forgive
him ; and He, the Lord Jesus, is hot less merciful than
He would have us to be. This also is surely what He
means when He says, " He that is greatest among you
let him be your servant ". It is much more difficult to
get men, as sinners, to believe that they are saved, than
that they are to try to save themselves ; they think that
because Christ condemns sin, He hates the sinner. A
sense of the iron grasp of sin often keeps men silent ;
because they feel sin so strong within them, they fear
God, and will not trust Him. But when they once draw
nigh to God, with the " Lord, I believe, help thou my
unbelief," the light begins to come, and the sinner thus
approaching, will soon realise in his inmost heart the
promise fulfilled in his case, that " He that worketh not,
but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his
faith is counted for righteousness " (Rom. iv. 5) ; and with
joy and gladness he will feel the truth of the Gospel,
and hail the glad tidings as the source of the new joy
he possesseth. As a sinner, saved by grace, he will hate
sin now ; because he is saved, and not because he is
lost or may be lost. Oh that we Christians that know
this would teach men and women to realise ' it, and

All Believers are entitled to Eternal Life. 69
treat all as Christians who profess the name of Christ,
and do our duty to them as Christians, thus doing
to others as we would have othefs to do to us ! Then
the spirit of Christ would be seen and felt amongst us ;
envy, and malice, and evil-speaking would disappear.
The same eternal home is to belong to all that believe ;
then why not act as if we felt it here, and now, seeing
this is truth, and we cannot change truth ? We are all
one in Christ ; Christ is our only hope ; we are accepted in
Him ; it is Christ on tbe cross that saved us ; we are all
saved or lost alike. We that enjoy much of the Master's
presence, should have stronger faith than some ; and
though that does not make us any better in His sight, it
makes us happier here, and it. ought to make us more use
ful ; for what we take in of life by faith, we ought to give
out by energy in sympathy : we have got much, and much
therefore shall have to account for. We may well ask
ourselves, is not that text in Matt. xvii. 30, where the
Master says, " Many that are first shall be last, and the
last shall be first," applicable to us ? You, who do not
know that you are saved, though saved as much as we,
little know what we have to strive against, and how often
we feel just like the Pharisee, though we are no better
than the vilest that are trusting to a God of mercy.
Nay, we sometimes feel and act just as if God had given
to us authority to make the distinction, by saying
this one is saved, and that one is lost, which is , just
assuming the part of God, and judging man ; we have
no authority for that. We may reprove each other of
sin, as Christians ; that is all God would have us do :
He alone can condemn or acquit. The world must take

70 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
us as it finds us : that is to say, the world that Christ
came to save, it is to be our judge and must judge us by
our actions ; now and here it is the Master's command
that it be so. The righteous and the wicked live to
gether, and God alone can or may separate them. It is
in this way only that strong faith can be of any use to
the world ; not to condemn, but to acquit. We have
authority from God to call all Christian brethren and
sisters that profess the name of Christ, and to tell
them that it is their belief in Christ that saves
them ; and because they believe they are indeed saved,
John iii. 36, and are as much entitled to heaven as
any saint on earth. Being saved because Christ
died, we have no merit in ourselves, and can have no
merit. Christ came to save sinners ; and when that is
accepted we receive the benefit of His death. It is the
weakest and the worst that the Christian of strong faith
is sent to comfort ; not to condemn, but to acquit on the
ground of their belief, and that alone. When we act
thus we are indeed ministering spirits, doing His work
in His name, not judging, but acquitting. For God sent
not His Son into the world to condemn it, but to save
it. (John iii. 17). We must get men to believe that
first ; and when they realise it, their own consciences,
thus enlightened by the Comforter, will reprove them of
sin. We that have found mercy may direct them to this
power within them, as the evidence of Christ in them,
and as the fruit of their belief causing the spirit to war
against the flesh. Further we may show that, in so far
as they yield to this influence in striving against what
they feel to be wrong, they are working with Christ as

A 11 Believers are entitled to Eternal L ife. 7 1
heirs of glory. Christ must convince of sin first, and in
His strength they and we all are to strive against it, but
we have no authority to dictate to any man what course
he is to take ; we are rather to direct him to the Word
of God (John xvii. 17), and leave his own conscience to
teach him his duty. Some Christians condemn one
thing, some another, and seem to forget that we as
Christians are each, for himself and herself, to ask God
to teach us, and to act according to our own sense of
right or wrong ; having the one broad rule as our duty
to man, namely,. to do to others as we would be done
unto. For God will have willing servants and not bond
men, but free men who feel that to their own Master
they stand or fall ; for, as Christ frees men, they have a
right to tread His earth as men accepted by Him. Not
only so; they are entitled to demand from their fellow-
Christians that they should be recognised as such, for
what they believe and not for what they do. All un
righteousness is sin, the evil thought,* in God's sight, as
much as the evil action ; " be ye perfect," is His com
mand to all. It is not the proud Pharisee as he says,
" stand by, I am holier than thou," b>jt the publican with
his humbler " Lord, be merciful to me a sinner," that the
Lord acquits, and accepts.
By setting up a standard of righteousness, as is done
by many true children of God, they tempt the weak
* An evil thought is meant to imply cherishing an evil sentiment in any
form, always bearing in mind we are not responsible for the expression of
thought as the reflex action of the cerebrum brain ; it only becomes sin
when we cherish the sentiment by permitting the feeling to rest and
generate in the conscious mind.

72 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
brother either to act the hypocrite, by professing more
love to God than he feels, or drive him away from Chris
tian influence, which if less tyrannically exercised might
and would have .helped forward. But he is too honest
to be a hypocrite, and will not profess more than he feels.
I would therefore plead for others what I demand for
myself as a Christian, freedom of thought and freedom of
action ; to serve God according to my sense of right ; and
only expect to be taken for a Christian by the world in
so far as I prove my faith by my works ; to worship God
where and how I please ; this is the freedom I believe
Christ has bought for all His redeemed ones ; and we
that believe have a right to act as Christ's redeemed ones,
free as the air we breathe ; and ready to help our weak
brother by taking him by the hand and lifting him up in
Christ's stead till we convince him that Christ came to
save sinners, and showing him that only as a sinner,
and only because he is a sinner, can he claim to be called
christian ; for Christ has no mercy to offer except we
we come as such. We that have strong faith may help
many thus, but only thus. We do not want to make
mankind hypocrites but honest, taking Christ for what
he is to them as sinners, and believing in a God of mercy,
able and willing to save.
What I say here I believe to be truth, and have faith in
God that He will give me strength to act on it : to my
own master I stand or fall, feeling I am responsible alone
to Him ; taking the Bible as His written Word, and
His promised presence as a felt-power within me, teach
ing me to do His work by taking all professing Chris
tians, however sinful, as erring Christians, but not lost,

All Believers are entitled to Eternal Life. 73
and therefore as much entitled to the benefit of Christ's
death as I or any of His redeemed are. For we all are
accepted on the ground of what He is, and not of what
we may ourselves be. I thus regard the weakest and
the worst in faith as Christians, and lead them back to
God. That God, who " so loved the world as to give
His only begotten Son " to save it, has not cast them
off; and I dare not, believing as I do that the vilest and
the worst are most longed for and pitied by Him, just
because they are least willing to approach, in conse
quence of the deep load of sin that seems to separate
them ; for they have not yet learned by experience
that He loves the sinner though He hates the sin. But
this is just what my strong faith has taught me ; this
is the advantage of knowing God as a God of love,
willing to save all that trust Him through Jesus Christ
In a religion where belief is life, and where the evil
thought is sin, how dare men, professing the same be
lief, judge fellow-men to condemn them ? I take my
stand here, and all that profess His name I accept as
His redeemed ones ; and hope to win many of the worst
. back to peace and happiness, not as bondmen but free
men ; free because Christ died for them ; and man is
responsible alone to God, who saves all that cbme to
Him in Christ's name.
Belief, as a state of the mind, can be known directly
only to the individual, so that, as professing Christians,
all have a right to the benefit of the doubt, and to" be
accepted by fellow-Christians as believers, and therefore
saved.

Chapter X.
MIND THE BASE FOR CHRISTIANITY TO WORK UPON.
CHRISTIANITY comes to man with the authority
of a divinely-inspired religion — dealing with
humanity as body and mind, the soil prepared of God
to receive it. Man thus formed of intellect, feeling, and
will is in a prepared state, and Christianity comes to
him as such to create in man humanity as an instinct,
and the love of liberty as consuming.
In dealing with the intellect as composed of the three
faculties, discrimination, similarity, and retentiveness,
Christianity teaches man by reason the change that is
taking place in mind through the moulding influence of
the Spirit of God in the soul of man. Christianity pre
supposes that man is capable of conceiving God, or per
ceiving that there is an intelligence at the heart of every
thing ; but my subject deals with the Bible as inspired,
and man as believing in the facts of Christianity, and
thus worshipping God as the Father of Jesus Christ,
through a crucified Redeemer, by whom sinful men are to
approach God as reconciled children, with the Abba,
Father. The Bible deals with the mind of man, teach
ing that, though he has no control over what thoughts
may come (Matt. xv. 19), yet, as a free agent, he has
the power of rejecting or accepting at will what thought
he will retain in conscious memory. The Bible and
mental science agree on these two points, that men have

Mind the Base for Christianity to work upon. 75
no control over what thoughts may come, but that we
may accept or reject at will by occupying our mind with
the subjects that we prefer.
The prayer of faith is the means we are to employ
on Bible authority. By accepting the facts of Chris
tianity as the seed of God in the mind of man we
become a new species, with man as the genus, and be
lief as the distinguishing quality. The facts referred to
are intended to imply the life, death, and resurrection of
the Lord Jesus Christ : on these facts Christendom
rests, and they will admit of proof, by the evidence of
testimony ; with this the intellect is satisfied. Now
feeling, in the shape of love to God and man, may and
must take the lead when humanity is to become an in
stinct (1 John iv. 18), and with the resurrection of the
body in view, accepted in faith, it is no more than Christ
has a right to expect of His people. In the resurrection
body we shall understand the meaning of John xii. 24 :
" Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it
abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much
fruit " ; and this is further explained in the doctrine of
the conservation of energy.
Thus is it that science lends its aid in unfolding the
full significance of Bible teaching. The men of science,
on the other hand, need Christianity in order that by
the love of God, revealed in it, they may have the emo
tional side of their nature stimulated and fully de
veloped.

Chapter XI.
MAN PRESENTED BEFORE GOD AS SEEN IN THE
INWARD MAN.
IF absolute religion and absolute Christianity are to
be accepted in the world for what they really are,
then both are of God, though worshipping Him through
different mediums. The one, worshipping God through
nature, does good for the sake of goodness, asks no par
don for its sins, but gladly serves out its time, its re
deemer being within, where also is its heaven and its
oracle of God. The other worships God as the God of
grace or mercy, regarding the Bible as containing His re
vealed will, Jesus Christ as both God and man, the God
of humanity as the ideal God of the human race, the great
Vicarious Sacrifice, the medium through which death
temporal gives life eternal ; and this life eternal is faith
realised. Again, faith is the power employed by God to operate
on the mind of man, to subdue and mould it into willing
submission by striving to overcome the defilement which
dwells therein, and which Christ condemns in Matt. xv.
19, 20, where he says " out of the heart proceed evil
thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false
witness, blasphemies : these are the things that defile a
man ". Faith thus purifies the world through the
energy of life by making its influence felt in deeds of
kindness.

Man presented before God. yy
They of absolute religion appear before God for what
they are or do themselves ; we of absolute Christianity
for what Christ has done for us.
But we appeal to the world to test us individually
by our actions ; a man's belief is a thing between him
self and his God ; the world is to judge us by our
actions, and that alone. Matt. vii. 20 : " By their fruits
ye shall know them". This then is the test which the
Master himself, the Lord Jesus, applied to all the human
race, and in accordance with it any judgment may be
pronounced between man and man.
We Christians, that have the Lord Jesus Christ as a
felt-power within, and an object of worship here and
also in heaven, have a motive power high enough to
carry us above time and sense.
Well, how do our spiritual teachers stand in this re
spect ? Are they true to their profession, and do their
hearts acquit them in the sight of God as teaching the
doctrines they are teaching, not because the Bible says
so, but because they have experienced the truth of it in
their own souls, as teachers sent from God, with a mes
sage to man ; for all truth comes from God ; and it
proves itself as such, when it exalts God, and humbles
man, and leads to purity of thought and life. And no
man has a right in God's sight to possess more than he
feels. If he preaches faithfulness in all things, do we
find him faithful and true when we trust him with no
more religion in the pulpit than out of it. A false
profession cannot be accepted as service rendered to
the God of truth and righteousness ; for man is false or
true according as he appears to God in his inward man.

78 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
Again, what of our Christian judges, as they judge in
their Master's name, doing justice between man and
man ? If the universal rule may be applied anywhere
with effect, surely it is here, where the judge for the time
takes the place of his Master, the great I Am of the uni
verse, to see that justice is done, as a centre of gravity ;
for here we ask not for mercy, but only for justice in the
Master's name, in all things doing whatever he would
that men should do to him, knowing that he is entirely
responsible for his own conduct, and that the case, as
dismissed by him from the bar, will be judged again
where all will be real, where man will appear what in
his heart he really is.
Well, what are we to say of the summing up of the
Lord Chief Justice in a recent famous case ? We do not
ask, is the claimant Arthur Orton or is he Roger Tich-
borne ? that is settled for this world. But it is not the
last scene, as the journals of the day call it ; there is
one other scene where all will be real, though it may be
a long way off. Yet nothing is really old in eternity,
where the judge and the claimant will stand side by
side at the final judgment as men, each responsible to
God for the deeds done in the flesh. Sir Alexander
Cockburn, the gifted judge of '72, will be what his heart
proves him to be, and in his case Matt. vii. 12 is surely
applicable. If his Master, while reading his heart, can
say, " Well done, thou good and faithful servant, thou
hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee
ruler over many things, enter thou into the joy of thy
Lord " (Matthew xxv. 21), then it is indeed well with
him. With God within, with God overhead, and with

Man presented before God. 79
God as judge throughout eternity, it must be well. God
shall judge.*
Well, what of our men of wealth and influence, that
hold the Bible to be inspired of God, are they rendering
to all their due by doing the part to the weak and the
* This part was writtenjafter the so-called Arthur Orton was condemned
to two terms of seven years' servitude — that is to say, to fourteen years in
which he is compelled to generate so much energy a day, as work done for
the British nation in the shape of retribution for his previous conduct, so
that when he takes his place at the judgment-seat of Christ along with Sir
Alex. Cockburn, the energy thus generated and presented in his muscles
will be a precise measurement of the judge's penalty for the offence com
mitted. Therefore, if cause and effect can thus be measured with certainty,
little will be left for Christ to do as judge, while the words of Matt. vii. 2,
" For with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged," stand out to all
eternity as God's word delivered by the God-man, and destined to be ful
filled at the final judgment-day when all await their sentence.
To the above I would add a few remarks in reference to the Penge case.
We hear there are two men and two women condemned to death for a
murder, though no murder is proved to have been committed. As we
listen to the summing up of Justice Hawkins, and see the jury return with
a verdict of guilty (when no murder is proved to have taken place), we may
well ask is the jury a cat's paw to the judge : as we hear the judge pro
nounce the sentence in the most heartless manner ever adopted by an
English judge ; as he brands the four, thus condemned to die, with the
crime of the murder of a child not certainly proved to have been murdered ;
as he thus stands as judge, apparently without one ray of human sympathy
in his breast ; as we see the prisoners leave the bar, we ask is this British
justice ? Is this the voice of the nation making itself felt in the final judg
ment that Alice Rhodes should be reprieved while the other three are con
signed to a life without hope. As we see the wife separated from her
husband, the infant torn from the mother's breast ; as they dress her in the
convict garb and lead her in despair to the convict cell, for this we are
tempted to ask, are we to be ruled by a modified British Inquisition, and
will the natibn stand aside in silence while the three condemned ones live
on without hope 1 But the time for Christ to judge as God is coming,
when as a nation we shall be judged as we have judged.

80 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
outcast that God has a right to demand of all, to do as
they would be done to ? Are the daughters of the op
pressed and the poor as safe when in their power as their
own daughters ? God is their judge, for now they are
the strongest power. It will not be always so, and a
time will come when with what measure they mete it
shall be measured to them again, and man will stand
before God as what he is in his heart. Then again,
what of the mercantile class ? . Are capital and" labour
equally reckoned and esteemed, and do men act the part
of men to each other ? The world is the witness that
they are neither better nor worse for what they have,
but for what they are, equally independent and equally
responsible, and in accepting the Bible, bound by one
common rule. (Matt. vii. 12.) In Christian Britain,
where the Bible is almost universally received as the
inspired Word of God, how are we to account for the
universal complaint among all classes that no one is to
be trusted, and that integrity has gone out of the land ?
Now, if the revealed Word of God, bringing forth fruit
in man, is to be a power in the world, its power must
first be felt by the individual realising Christ as the ideal
God of humanity, dwelling in man as man's guide and
example through life.
What have mothers and daughters to say to this
general rule of doing to others as they would be done
unto ? Does the fine lady, as she holds her Bible, sur
rounded by all the luxury that wealth or position can
give, think of this, when she demands more from the
meanest in her household than she can say before God
she would be willing to give, if she changed placets,

Man presented before God. 81
either in service or respect ? Though money will buy
service, integrity alone will demand respect, and both
parties are what they have made themselves ; they are
here before God to serve Him by doing His work, as
¦ mistress and servant, in His strength.
And they of the middle-class, what of them ? Money
will buy service, but are they not expecting more than
they have paid for ? Is it the servants or the daughters
that in God's sight ought to pull down the blinds, light
the gas, add fresh coal to the fire, or hand a glass of
water ? The kitchen is on the low floor, but what of
that ? Is not the bell at hand ? In all this does either
love or justice rule ? Again, what are the ways of
society ? Is it governed by the general principle of
universal love ? Of course in this I refer to the Bible-
reading section of the community, which Christian influ
ence has been moulding for over eighteen hundred years.
This Christ, the ideal or mental God of humanity, has
been striving all that time to make His influence
felt as the ideal of the soul of man, that men might be
filled with all the fulness of God. (Eph. iii. 19.) And
what of the fruit does society present to the world ? Let
the general public speak here. Do we always find those
that make the greatest profession of godliness ready to
take the lowest place, so that they may help some weak
brother ? Or do they pass him by without recogni
tion when it serves their purpose best, though else
where and at another time they professed to be
eager for his friendship, because some bye-end was
to be served, or his acquaintance was a convenience and
might serve some purpose. But because he is not of
6

82 Christianity Reduced to Proof
their class they may cast him off when and how they
please, and when it seems most suitable. He has no
right to feel resentment : he is poor, or he has no
position, and therefore may be pushed aside at plea
sure. The Master as the Carpenter, the Child of
Mary, would be treated in the same fashion, for they
only recognise Him as the exalted Son of God. The
ideal God of humanity is nothing to them, for He came
to teach every man what true manhood is, and to mani
fest Himself as the perfect example of the human race.
It must appear to all how shallow that feeling is in
many in our day — I mean that sentiment of Christian
sympathy, that love of the brethren pointed to by John
in i John iii. 14, as a distinguishing mark of Christian
experience ; for how often do we find that a friendship,
which professes to be based on that, very feeling of union
in Christ, is ignored as soon as it turns out to be a hin
drance or an inconvenience, in the shape of requiring the
recognition of an acquaintance holding an inferior social
position ? How often does it happen that such an one
is thrust aside, or passed unrecognised till another time,
when the so-called Christian friends meet in a humble
place, or when the humble friend is one that it may be a
convenience for the time to know ; or one with whom it
would be profitable to resume the acquaintance. But
for all this, they reason that the injured one has no right
to be indignant ; he has no social position. The
Master would (as I said before) how be treated in
the same way by such people, for they know only the
exalted Son, of God; the Carpenter, the Child of- Mary
is nothing to them.

Man presented before God. 83
Again, what of the general public, among whom the
Bible is held as the holy chart of the world to guide
man from earth to heaven ? Let us ask, what advance
is man making in his knowledge of the eternal " I Am " ?
God as a universal power has sent His commands to
the human race by means of a written book, telling man
where he is going and supplying him with a medium
through which man may know God's will. Surely a
general community holding this belief may be taken
as a guarantee for the genuineness of the book, because,
however pure a Darwin or a Huxley may live, if they
refuse to accept the Bible though they believe in God
and eternal life, they are condemned without mercy.
That a book such as this is of infinite importance to the
human race cannot be doubted, but the value of the be
lief in any given fact is to be measured by the effect it
has on the mind of man. For it is a universal rule that
belief prompts to action. Well, let us examine society
where this belief prevails, and test it in respect of that
charity which is spoken of in the thirteenth chapter of
1 Cor., and which is the principle that is to mould our
lives ; for I am one of the number that holds the Bible to
contain truth that will divide the human race into species.
Well, what fruit do we present to the world? for the
world is willing to believe if we prove our doctrine ; an
innate sense of truth in man impels him to this. Are the
peculiarities of absent friends explained away in the spirit
of love, and covered over by the gentle touch of friend
ship, so that a stranger may be favourably impressed ?
•Is a man's general character that by which his worth
is measured ?

84 Christianity Reduced to Proof
Is a neighbour's good fortune rejoiced over because
the God of the Bible saw fit that he should succeed and
we fail ?
Are all that love the Lord dear to us in a general way?
Do we prefer them just because they love the Lord,
though their sense of truth may lead them to choose
different pursuits, or to frequent a society different from
ours and opposite to our sense of right ? Are our ser
vants treated as fellow-heirs with us of glory ? And do
they render to us what their sense of truth teaches them
we have a right to expect from them ?
Is charity the governing principle which is to set all
things right between us ? As members of one great
family, do our servants find that in families where the
greatest profession of godliness is made love towards all
is the prevailing rule in the house? Are children in
such families taught, by precept and example, that an
unkind word spoken of an absent friend is worse in
God's sight, and may be more injurious to the absent
one, than if they stole his purse ? His purse may easily
be replaced, but the influence of an unkind word may
follow to the judgment-seat of Christ, and determine the
place the one who used it is to occupy in the kingdom
of glory through all eternity.
Though the Vicarious Sacrifice, as seen in the God of
humanity when He died on the Cross, opens the gate of
heaven, yet the labour of love and the single eye are to
be rewarded, though the reward is only promised when
the motive that prompts the action is love — (Matt. xxv.
34-40)— love, that is to say, to the ideal God, the God of
humanity, seen and felt in the Jesus of history and the

Man presented before God. 85
Christ of Christianity as the great human model of the
race. But how can we expect men to believe, except
where they see the fruit of this great Vicarious Sacrifice
produced in us His professed followers ? If we are true
to this" ideal God of mercy and truth, and give up our
wills hearts and souls to be purified by the influence of
His indwelling power, then we shall guard the truth of
the Bible in the only way God expects us to guard it,
and the Bible will hold its place in the world, while
Christ, holds his place in the heart of man as their ideal
or mental God, in the form of a transfigured realism,
teaching the human race their duty to God and man by
worshipping the one and serving the other. It will no
longer be a question of importance how sin came by the
first Adam, if we only are true to the second Adam by
honouring God in all we do ; for we can only feel sure
that we are doing so in living God-like, because in fol
lowing Christ as an example we have the life which
absolute religion demands as the fruit of the Spirit of
God manifesting His presence in man, and thus freeing
body and soul from the power of the second death. We
must bear in mind that it is only those who shall rise at
the first resurrection that the second death has no power
over. (Rev. xx. 6.)
In our present state of knowledge we can understand
the quality of matter in which the disembodied spirit is
presented. Therefore we must look at the meaning of
many texts as applying to the state of existence which
intervenes between death and the Universal Resurrec
tion and Judgment. We can now fully comprehend the
meaning of Our Lord's words in Luke xxiv. 37-41,

86 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
where He said " A spirit hath not flesh and bones as you
see me have ". The words must refer to the inward
man as the body or nerve force which has been evolved
through the natural body, and must be held to imply the
ever-conscious part which survives death.
Now, in this state of existence where the individual is
a believer in intellect and profession, but one whose life
has not been consecrated to Christ in love, such an
experience may induce suffering in the form of repent
ance in the state of existence between death and the
resurrection.* * In applying Matt. vii. 2 — "With what judgment ye judge, ye shall
be judged " to the believer, we must understand the text to refer to the
place or state in heaven he or she have fitted themselves for in their life on
earth, as one of the species of which man is the genesis and belief the
distinguishing quality.

Chapter XII.
CHRIST CONFESSED, AND THE VALUE OF LABOUR.
WE as Christians with all our glaring defects
honour God in one way which is peculiarly our
own — that is, by honouring the Son (John v. 23), and
thus securing the love of the Father. (John xvi. 27.)
By partaking of the holy communion, the weakest and
the worst believer confesses Christ ; and thus makes his
own the promise made in Matt. x. 32 : "Whosoever,
therefore, shall confess me before men, him will I con
fess also before my Father which is in Heaven."
We can have some conception of how broad Christ's
church is, when we realise that His followers range from
all the various grades of belief, so to speak, implied by
Jesus in John xi. 25-26, where He says: "He that
believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live,
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me. shall never
die." To such an one as the last death is only a change
of place, but no change of state ; for Christ is the centre
of attraction here and there.
In. the experience of advanced believers Christ is
realised as a state of consciousness in three ways — that
is, 1st, as the Jesus of the Christian records ; 2nd, as a
symbol of the Jesus present in consciousness as the ideal
object of love ; and 3rd, as the Jesus now existing in
the place He has gone to prepare for His people. Christ
is thus realised in consciousness according to the first

88 Christianity Reduced to Proof
description as the child of Mary ; and the Son of God,
in the second, as the ideal Christ, the elect of God ; and
according to the third, as the real personage with the
marred visage and the pierced hands and feet, so well
known to His followers when on this earth of ours as the
" Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief". It is this
Jesus whom we confess before men by our profession
of faith in baptism and the Lord's Supper.
There is one relationship which we Christians seem to
overlook, and that is the fact that this Jesus came to
sanctify labour. This is proved by the greater part of
His life spent as one of the sons of toil, so that he was
generally known as the Carpenter, the child of Mary.
(Mark vi. 3.) How often do we fail to realise that the
energy required of our sons and daughters of toil, in
providing for their daily wants, is work done for God (1
Tim. v. 8) ; that is, in the case of a mistress and servant,
both believers, the mistress must spend as much energy
in the shape of necessary labour of one kind or another
as her servant spends, before she can take her place on
the same platform in God's sight ; that is, before the
' well done good and faithful servant " can be applied to
her in the same sense as to the other.
This is a fact we all need to comprehend, and it will
be well if we do so here and now, because each and all
are fitting and preparing themselves for the place they
are to occupy in that other world where Jesus has gone
before us.

Chapter XIII.
IN REFERENCE TO PLEASURE INCREASING THE
VITAL ACTION.
IN the foregoing pages I trust I have been enabled to
make it plain what we Christians mean by. faith.
For I have striven to show that, though this faith
is so simple that a child may comprehend it, in as
much as it demands nothing more than the willing mind,
yet so comprehensive is it, that a Tyndall or a Herbert
Spencer will find in it something too high to be
accounted for without the sense of a spiritual presence,
as a state of consciousness, realised as the actual spiritual
presence of God, and made known as a felt power
within, in the feeling of joy that follows belief. Never
theless, the evolution theory, which claims to deal with
only body and mind, explains the meaning of Jesus'
interview with Nicodemus, in the course of which he
referred to the new birth. In the sixth verse of the third
chapter of John Jesus explains the full meaning of his
teaching in these words : " that which is born of the flesh
is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit ". He
thus cuts man off from a spiritual experience as a state
of consciousness, in the sense that many believers enjoy
it apart from union with Him. And science confirms
His teaching in this respect, so that there is no need for
our men of science to reject Christianity merely because
they hold the evolution theory, or because most Chris-

90 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
tians believe in special acts of creation. It is not how
this world came to be formed (Genesis ii. 4-5), but man
as an intelligent being, and Christ in man the hope of
glory, represented in consciousness, that constitutes
Christianity ; and thus Christ becomes all in all (Col. iii.
11), for we will only have one Christ given to the human
race. There is one fact which as yet I have omitted to refer
to that may help to explain much in connection with
our subject. I allude to the force known as vital action.
Science has proved that pleasure increases vitality, and
the Bible teaches us that the action of the Spirit of God
represented in consciousness involves love, joy, peace,
&c, &c. (Gal. v. 22), proving that the vital action has
only one meaning, however differently it may be applied.
It will thus be seen that union with Christ and in
crease of vitality is one and the same thing. Through
Christ we comprehend and love God as a reconciled
Father, and thus enjoy pleasure of the highest kind and
in the highest degree. The vital action is increased to
the highest degree when this union is completely rea
lised ; then life is fullest. But all this might be a delusion
if we had not the resurrection as a great cardinal fact to
rest upon ; at least, as intelligent beings, we might be
quite unable to believe in it and trust our eternal all
to it.
We thus see how eternal life is fused with temporal
life, and, vice versd, temporal life fused with eternal life.
The words of Jesus are thus proved, when He says in
John xi. 26, " Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall
never die. Believest thou this ? " We thus comprehend

Pleasure increasing the Vital Action. 91
how the religious element in man becomes perfected by
his union with Christ. This is the peace represented in
consciousness, and the fulfilment of the promise given in
John xiv. 27, 28. . The last clause of the 28th verse is
very expressive in this respect, that Christ as a part is
less than God as a whole, and the Christ represented in
consciousness as a part is less than the whole.
When we comprehend vitality to imply life eternal as
well as life temporal, and pleasure as increasing vital
action and pain as diminishing it, the Bible becomes in
telligent to all classes, and Christ's teaching may be
understood in the fullest sense. I refer in particular to
His teaching conveyed in the following passages : Matt.
x. 39 and xvi. 25 ; Mark viii. 35 ; Luke ix. 24 and xvii.
21-33; John xii. 25. We thus see that in giving away
energy or life for His own sake, or in His service, we in
crease our capacity for enjoyment in the life that is to
come. (Matt. v. 11, 12.) This is the fruit of His vica
rious sacrifice. That is to say, by temporarily lowering
vital action in His service we increase it eternally. In
the light of this, how different does the Sermon on the
Mount become, so comprehended ! And how easy is it
to understand how we may become the salt of the earth,
and what He means when He says, Matt. v. 39, " I say
unto you that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall
smite thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other
also ". In such teaching Christ shows us in what rela
tion we stand toward the world, as in it but not of it.
(John xv. 19.) We thus comprehend His meaning when
He says, Matt. vi. 20, 21, " Lay up for yourselves trea
sures in, heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth cor-

92 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
rupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal :
for where your treasure is there will your heart be also."
We are thus to learn to labour and to wait, knowing that
pain here is in effect loss of vital action, and leads to
death temporal but life spiritual. Or we may speak of
it as the conservation of nerve energy in the spiritual
body which survives death temporal, and carries the
redeemed soul from earth to heaven (the place where
Jesus waits us), there to witness the redemption of the
body proper, the organism of which will be rendered
capable of sustaining enjoyment of the highest degree ;
in this respect being very unlike our present bodies with
their frail organisation altogethei unfit to bear excessive
joy. We must thus have a pretty clear conception of what
is stated in the Bible in reference to both worlds before
we can adjust the molecules properly in the brain, and
then decide which world we are to labour for: as sin
ners saved by grace we have our choice. And it is
manifest, when we compare the Bible as seen in Matt.
xi'- 36, 37. Rom. xiv. 12, 2 Cor. v. 10, with science, that
by adding moment by moment to that first dawn of
consciousness (that eternal sequence) we are building up
that inner man who will survive death, and hold the
forces together all through eternity as the self-conscious
ego of the individual, representing that spiritual body
referred to by Paul (2 Cor. iv. 16) as the inner man who
was renewed day by day, and will be known in that self-
conscious ego as the beginning of the life " in me " in us
having been derived by the law of inheritance through
our parents (John iii. 6), and in that respect being the first

Pleasure increasing the Vital Action. 93
cause of all our actions. The conservation of energy
presented in the forces included, when applied to the
spiritual body, must be understood to be in like manner
applied to the spirits of children presented in the energy
of life, locked up in the brain, or somehow fused into the
infant as the soul, or spirit, presenting the energy of the
ego, and referred to by Paul in 1 Cor. vii. 14, where he
says, " else were your children unclean ; but now are
they holy ". In our present state of knowledge we are
thus able to trace out how the living germ comes from
the parents, presented in their lives as the medium
through which the vital forces are fused into one, where
the individual life presented in this form must be known
as such all through eternity, in its connection with the
two lives that gave it an existence.
If the energy of life were understood as nerve current,
presenting the subtle fluid in which the ego is embodied,
and the ego in intelligent beings were understood to
represent the activity of life, the vital principle of
which is ever increased by pleasure, pleasure would be
courted in consequence of its life-giving property, mani
festing itself as the strongest power in man, and, in con
sequence of this life-giving property being diminished by
pain, pain on that account would be avoided or shunned.
To the properties of the mental life thus defined Chris
tianity is capable of imparting a new influence in the
shape of a disturber of elements, which, through the
operation of this influence increasing, man is enabled to
counteracl,thus reversing the law of his nature manifested
in the formation of his organisation and compelling his
choosing pleasure to increase life. Whereas this new or

94 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
Christian influence is manifested in inducing him to
choose pain, suffering, and death as the visible proof of
that yet stronger power working through humanity,
representing the expression of the Spirit of God, as God
in Christ, enabling man to overcome the flesh (or burn out
the original structure), which is the term employed in the
Scriptures to distinguish man in his natural state. So
that through this process Christ's kingdom might be
increased on earth by Christ's race being increased on
earth ; in consequence of man convincing fellow-man in
the only way that eternity can possibly be realised by him ;
so that God is through this glorified in having given His
only begotten Son to redeem the race, always bearing in
mind the fact that all that was of the earth, earthly, in
Our Lord came by Mary, and was made under the law.
(Gal. iv. 4.) What I would say is, that His organisation
as perfect man came to maturity through the Virgin
Mary on this earth of ours as the form that is to redeem
humanity. In the light of known truth we are perfectly
justified in holding, that nature, as the fruit tree bearing
fruit after its kind, could not have produced one capable
of having lived the perfect life Christ lived, and God, the
Father of the race, gave the beginning — the germ — in
the shape of a perfectly organised brain, and that such
implies that our Lord's divine nature could act and re
act through it, and thus produce the Jesus of history and
the Christ of Christianity as God and man.
We might represent life temporal and life spiritual in
another way— namely, in the self-conscious ego embodied
in a subtle fluid called light as the most likely emblem,
when we know light to be a disturber of elements and

Pleasure increasing the Vital Action. 95
the possible origin of organic life, whereas I would define
intelligent life embodied in the word. Life is hope,
being the cause and effect of intelligent life, and the
highest point in view of the future the natural man can
rise to in his reasoning on the immortality of the soul ;
for all such reasoning must end in this — namely, man
lives, and he hopes to live — hope, nothing but hope.
Nature can go no further, can rise no higher. We
require the Christ of Christianity to open up the way
beyond, and reveal the source of the new development
(Acts xix. 2) felt in the self-conscious ego as a spiritual
experience whereby we can say God is love, I know I
feel. The Spirit of God is thus acting in the shape of a
disturber of elements apparent to the inner man. Thus
we comprehend hope as life to be realised as eternal life
by means of a felt union with God, bestowing on Jesus'
race peculiar grace and glory too.
Holding as I do that the Bible is inspired of God, and
contains truth that will decide the human race, and having
in comparatively early life experienced the change which
takes place in mind when the truth of the Gospel as
" the glad tidings " is first t realised, and Christ is per
ceived as holding a definite place in consciousness in the
shape of a conception grounded on the truth of Chris- .
tianity, that is, offering Himself as a substitute for sin
ners ; when I was first enabled to individualise myself as
one of the species concerned in the revelation, and as
willing to be saved by Him ; I can now in a pretty
general way single out the succeeding state of conscious
ness that followed this conception, and thus point in
wardly to the transfigured realism as the effect produced

96 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
by belief in or through the facts of Christianity. That
is to say, the Christian experience realised in the term
faith working by love, and presenting a full thought as
the cause and effect produced by the condition implied,
has enabled me to comprehend the truth, taught as
plainly in the Bible as out of it, that before any one can
come to a clear understanding of the truth of any sub
ject the mind must undergo a special course of training,
and that Christianity is a subject in regard to which this
is peculiarly true, for this is one of the greatest strong
holds of its system, if indeed it is not the greatest strong
hold of it.
What I would have clearly understood is, that the
state of consciousness which succeeds a belief in the
leading facts of Christianity applied individually, is of
" such a nature experimentally as to confirm the truth of
the Christian doctrine.
In this connection it is very evident that John's expe
rience in after life in this respect qualified him to com
prehend the Saviour's meaning in away quite impossible
to the other disciples, who lacked the aged disciple's ex
perience. He alone, so far as we know, understood
experimentally the full meaning of John vii. 17, where
the Saviour says, " If any man will do his (God's) will,
he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or
whether I speak of myself". As contrasted with the
assertion made in 1 John v. 10, where John takes the
state of consciousness or experience of each believer
as a guarantee of the truth of the doctrine.
The succeeding veres (1 John v. 9-12-20) are full proof
of this, that John pointed to the witness within. And

Pleasure increasing tlie Vital Action. 97
here I would particularly draw attention to the full
meaning of the word understanding as it is used in the
20th verse. It will be clearly seen that we are to judge
of our right to eternal life by the former knowledge
which we have acquired in the experience of life in
following out the course enjoined ; and it is also evident
that our serial states of consciousness constitute the
knowledge which onr understanding is to be guided by
in establishing our individual right to eternal life. We
shall thus find ourselves guided by the principle of love
that animated John nearly nineteen hundred years ago.
My object in quoting the former verses from the fifth
chapter of 1 John was to show John's mode of reasoning,
as proof of the truth which is taught in our day, namely,
that mind is formed by the serial states of consciousness
of each individual, which are bound together by laws
eternal as God Himself, and must endure as that by
which individual humanity is to judge and be judged.
That which undergoes this experience is the part of
humanity that will survive the body, and thus it will
come to pass that each man may be his own judge.
I would end by adding one word to the class that
treat the Bible with indifference. If Christianity is what
those of my opinion believe it to be, then the other class,
if true lo themselves, must make up their mind to face the
consequences of rejecting Christ as the objective part of
the universal power which we call God, and known to
man as the individual that is to judge humanity ; for
since the experience of Jesus Himself is made up in part
of the serial states of consciousness which He underwent
during his sojourn on earth, and while He had a human
7

g8 Christianity Reduced to Proof
form He is qualified in an especial manner to act the
part of Judge of the human race.
In the simplicity of an untrained mind I have written
the foregoing remarks, feeling that there is a Christian
culture more valuable to the individual than that which
all the learning in the world can give without it. Thus
I leave the subject, asking the Lord's blessing upon my
efforts.

PART II.

Chapter I.
DOES CHRISTIANITY ADMIT OF A SCIENTIFIC TEST?
IT must be apparent to all that this is the question of
questions of our day ; and that, unless Christianity
will admit of a scientific test, belief in it can only linger
for a little while, but cannot last. We that claim for it
a divine origin, and regard it as containing supernatural
power, can assuredly have i>p objection to submit such a
religion to such a test Let us try to realise, therefore,
wherein Christianity proper consists, and how it differs
from all forms of natural religion.
Christianity comes to mankind by the authority of
God, and dealing with humanity as a form of body and
mind seeks to implant a new state of consciousness,
known as a spiritual experience, which gives a new
direction to thought and action, and creates desires un
known and unfelt before.
Mind is regarded by our men of science as one great
organic growth containing a moral and religious element,
man in the form of body and mind being the evolved
unit. Christianity comes by divine authority to deal
with this unit, which we find that Christ defines as one
substance, calling it flesh. In John iii. 6 we read " that
which is born of the flesh is flesh," so that to this extent
at least science and revealed religion are in agreement,
but only science has proved what Christ revealed nearly
two thousand years ago. We have no right, however, to

102 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
quarrel with science for thus proving the truth of Christ's
words, as is done by so many in our day.
It is with men as such that Christianity has to do, and
out of this structure seeks to evolve a new state of con
sciousness, with Christ as leader and centre. Such is the
teaching of Jesus Christ, and such also is the science of
Christianity. Christianity is doubtless a religion of
belief, but of belief of such a nature that it rules and
reigns in us, and at length becomes the strongest power
in man.
I assume nothing as essentia} to substantiate the
claims of Christianity, except the evidence of history
from the Lord's day till ours. The death of Jesus is an
historical fact, and rests on historical ground. His resur
rection was witnessed by His disciples aud followers —
the class that knew Him best, and could recognise Him-
They were startled by the resurrection, for we nowhere
read that they expected it ; that is, they doubted as long
as doubt was possible, and when it was no longer possible
they believed. And thus from the church of the first
born we have received the resurrection on the evidence
of testimony from the Lord's days till our own, of which
testimony the Roman Catholic Church may well claim
to be'a part. The Christian records in some form as a pro
duction of the first century, most professing Christians
admit, and I suppose I may add, that most accept them
as written by the men whose name they bear. The
question now to be answered is, will the doctrine taught
in the Christian records produce the effect implied — that
is to say, a new state of consciousness which will endure,
and at length raise the believer above the things of time

Does Christianity admit of a Scientific Test. 103
and sense, and enable him to realise things spiritual and
eternal. (2 Cor. iv. 18.)
I now assert that a belief in the life, death, and resur
rection of Christ is essential to salvation as viewed from
the Christian point I am dealing with at present. Now
let us try to comprehend what is to be saved as a some
thing that exists in an unsaved state. Here we must
call in the aid of science to enable us to understand
Christ's teaching in John iii. 6, where he tells us that
" that which is born of the flesh is flesh " — that is, all
that lives in us comes from our parents in the shape of
two lives fused into one, and is the origin of an organisa
tion like to that from which we have sprung, with struc
ture and functions prepared for definite work. This life
is realised in the first dawn of consciousness as the
beginning of those serial states of consciousness which
survive death, and hold together our individual ex
perience all through eternity. Now this individual I,
this unit of consciousness, possessing a moral and reli
gious element, is the unit of that great organic growth
which our planet has produced in ages gone by ; and
observe, it is this unit that revealed religion deals with.
It teaches what I think all will allow, that we as indi
viduals have failed in our duty to man and to God, and
that as rational beings endowed with intellect — that is,
with powers of discrimination, similarity, retentiveness,
along with feeling and will — we are responsible beings,
and must be judged according to our merits. I think
that all will admit that human nature is fallible, and that
the best have not in all ways and at all times done the
best they could. It is here and now that revealed religion

104 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
in the shape of Christianity takes effect, by dividing the
human race into two species, with man as the genus and
belief the distinguishing quality, and there is produced a
new development which enables man to worship God in
the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence
in the flesh. (Phil. iii. 3.) To trace out how this state
of consciousness is produced is the object of this paper.
The most extensive view or idea we get of the great
First Cause is obtained in realising that there is an
intelligence at the heart of everything. What this( intel
ligence is we learn in the 16th verse of the 3rd chapter
of John, where Jesus tells us that " God so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoso
ever believeth in him should not perish but have ever
lasting life ". Therefore, just as we realise this Intelligence
to be the father of Jesus Christ, do we get the most com
prehensive view of God possible for us to have. We can
now pray to a something special, a something definite,
and ask for what we want, while We are also in a position
to realise the spiritual -presence of the great I Am. For
we are told that "the natural man receiveth not the things
of the -Spirit of God : for they are foolishness unto him :
neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
decerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet
he himself is judge of no man". (1 Cor. ii. 14, 15.) In
the resurrection we find enough to substantiate all this
— and observe, we do not take it on faith, but on proof
substantiated by the evidence of testimony.
We will now suppose a case very common in a society
of believers such as ours, namely, an individual born of
Christian parents, trained in the Christian religion, but

Does Christianity admit of a Scientific Test. 105
t
failing to realise the state of consciousness which his
religion entitles him to, and such as was Paul's experi
ence as stated in 2 Timothy i. 12 : "I know whom I
have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep
that which I have committed unto him against that day."
Though the structure is complete it fails in the work
assigned td it, that is, Christ is not realised as the seed
of God in the spirit of man, nor recognised as the elect
of God, a state of consciousness which Paul explained in
Col. i. 26, 27, as " the mystery which hath been hid from
ages and generations but now is made manifest to His
saints : to -whom God would make known what is the
riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles;
which is Christ in you, the hope of Glory ". It is this
state of consciousness that we are to suppose it is the
aim of each individual in life to attain.
As to what is to be believed, Jesus Himself teaches us .
in John iii. 16 : " For God so loved the world that He
gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in
Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." It is
further fully explained by Paul in Romans x. 8, 9, 10 :
"But what saith it ? The word is nigh thee, even in thy
mouth, and in thy heart ; that is, the word' of faith
which we preach : that if thou shalt confess with thy
mouth the Lord Jesus and shalt believe in thine heart
that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be
saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteous
ness ; and with the mouth confession is made unto sal
vation." By " the word," as used in the eighth verse, we
are to understand the work of Christ as Mediator be
tween God and man. Man professing to believe is to

106 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
approach God as a sinner saved by grace, desiring to rea
lise that he is indeed saved. Now for the first time the
prayer of faith ascends from a heart that feels its need
in language such as, " Lord, I believe, help Thou my
unbelief". The mind tries to grasp, tries to realise the
state of consciousness desired, a state which every Chris-,
tian man feels, and knows, on the authority of God, he
has a right to possess as a sinner, and because he is a
sinner. On every occasion that he repeats in thought
or word " Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief," while
his mind is striving to grasp, is striving to realise the
state of consciousness desired (that he is indeed saved
because he believes), he is gaining strength, and as he re
peats the prayer of faith he gradually begins to realise
the meaning of such passages as that contained in Rom.
iv. 5 as applicable to himself individually ; that is to say,
" to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that
justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counte.d for righteous
ness ". Once the believer realises the full meaning of
this the conquest is won, the prayer of faith is answered ;
and as a sinner saved by grace he approaches God as a
reconciled Father in and through Jesus Christ. His
intellect is now satisfied, for he feels and knows ; his
emotional nature is in full play ; the real Christ is trans
figured as the Ideal Christ of his soul, adored and loved,
as the Mediator between God and man, while God is
adored and loved as the Father of Jesus Christ. , This is
the Great I Am of Creation and Grace, comprehended as
that intelligence which is at the heart of every thing.
Thus also does the mind of man find rest in the arms of
the Almighty, and realising love as the unit of that in-

Does Christianity admit of a Scientific Test. 107
telligence is made conscious of the spiritual presence of
God as a something known and felt. In this way the
Word of God, in the shape of a revealed religion, which
discloses to us a future state of existence and our rela
tion to God in it, is fulfilling its mission to man by sup
plying food which serves to satisfy that spiritual nature
in him, which is the structure that has been evolved,
and is now being brought to perfection through the
agency of divine influences.
As how to know God as a God of grace was the great
concern of the individual when he first felt his need, and
offered up the prayer, " Lord, I believe, help Thou my
unbelief," so now that has been realised in the state of
consciousness expressed in Rom. v. 1-5, according to
which,' being justified by faith, he now stands in grace,
and rejoices " in the hope of the glory of God," his great
concern will be, how to serve the object of his love
as God in Christ. It is thus that Christianity becomes
the strongest power in man ; the individual is now in
possession of a state of consciousness which is called
faith, and which worketh by love. But as he tries to
fulfil his mission to God and man by regulating his life
in accordance with Christ's teaching, it is then that he
'feels his weakness and a need of a stronger power. For
though his life may have been throughout its whole
course all that man could desire, it is with the thought of
the heart that the Saviour concerns Himself. Thus He
reproves him that is angry with a brother without cause
(Matt. v. 22), and points out that impure desire is sin.
(Matt. v. 28), For the individual is now building up
that structure of consciousness, which is to be his gar-

io8 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
ment in heaven, and in which he is to appear before the
judgment seat of Christ, as seen in Matt. xii. 36, 37 :
" But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall
speak they shall give account thereof in the day of judg
ment : for by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by
thy words thou shalt be condemned". It is when this
is realised, that the world and the things of time lose
their hold, and purity of heart becomes the great aim of
life. The Christian in this alone realises the truth of a
doctrine that is applicable to all, and as he goes forward
in the strength of the Lord, as a sinner saved by grace,
he conquers even when he seems to fail. When old
habits and old desires come upon him and seem likely
to lead him away, guilty and erring, yet as a sinner
saved by grace, as one that Christ is substitute for, and
possessing the spirit of a penitent child, he finds rest and
strength in God, being saved through that which Christ
did for him, and not through what out of gratitude he,
the sinner saved by grace, is striving to do in overcom
ing sin. Here we Christians stand and are strong, here
and here alone. As sinners saved by grace, all who are
followers of Jesus and spiritual children of God, take
their stand on this, and as such, that is, as sinners saved-
by grace, they will be known as a new development all
through eternity, having Christ as the centre.
Christianity, as a religion of belief in which even an
evil thought is sin, excludes man from the right to judge
his fellow man, for belief being a state of the mind can
be known directly only to the individual. In this realm
then God alone may judge, the ground being that which
is stated in John iii. 16. But to this belief all the human

Does Christianity admit of a Scientific Test. 109
race are invited, the invitation being given in these
words : " Whosoever will, let him take the water of life
freely." (Rev. xxii. 17.) Therefore in a society of
Christians, which regards justification by faith as essen
tial to salvation, there is given to every individual mem
ber of it the right to be accepted by the society as
entitled to the benefit that flows from Christ's death,
whatever may be the character of the life of each indi
vidual* The justice of all this will be seen when we
try to realise the different classes that are included in
that general invitation implied in " Whosoever." When
we consider the structural differences that exist between
an individual born of Christian parents, trained in a
fairiily where to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with God (Micah vi. 8), is the constant rule,
and an individual who is born and brought up in the
haunts of vice, where theft is reckoned an honourable
profession, and where lust rules supreme; the direct in
fluences of revealed religion when brought to bear on
two such minds must be taken into consideration. In
seeking to trace the effects of this influence, we must re
member that a life of faith is a life of trial, sometimes ap
parently of failure, whilst the old structure is being burned
out, and in its place there is being gradually developed a
new structure, the possessoi .of which slowly rises in the
moral and religious scale, going onward and forward in
the strength of the Almighty. Thus it may happen that
the poor child of vice may be striving and progressing in
* God provided the substitute, the condition being believing and the
performance of works for the sake of Jesus, which are laid up as treasures
in heaven. (Matt. vi. 20.)

I io Christianity Reduced to Proof.
the sight of God, while we in our ignorance seek to cast
her off as a worthless thing, fprgetting that Jesus Him
self took one of that class which we call the worst, and
assigned to her a place in the first rank of the saints in
glory. (Luke vii. 37-50.) This God alone, Who can
weigh and measure the force of human energy, and
knows who is striving with greatest effect against sin ;
it was He alone Who gave the promise expressed in
Matt. xxi. 22 : " All .things whatsoever ye shall ask in
prayer, believing ye shall receive , " and He knows who
is grasping that promise with the strongest hand, and
going forward in the strength of it. For He who taught
Peter to be merciful, saying that he was to forgive until
seventy times seven, is Himself not less merciful, and
will show Himself infinitely merciful, so that we shall
find many of the first last, and the last first But though
to show this charity in judging is the duty of each be
liever when thinking and speaking of a fellow believer,
nevertheless the world at large, whether believing in the
Bible or not, has no authority to judge individuals in
another way than by their fruits.
That is a test which we all must submit to. " Ye shall
know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of
thorns or figs of thistles ? Wherefore by their fruits ye
shall know them." (Matt. vii. 16, 20.) Here we can be
accepted by none as saved and one with Christ, except
it be by those who are our fellow-believers ; all else
must judge us by our lives, and can only accept our pro
fession of Christianity as genuine, in so far as our lives
prove it to be so. The world is to judge us, and we are
to judge ourselves by the standard Christ has given in

Does Christianity admit of a Scientific Test. 1 1 1
Matthew vii. 12 — " Therefore all things whatsoever ye
would that men should do to you, do ye even so to
them, for this is the law and the prophets ". And it
would be well to notice, that Christ's teaching applies
directly only to his professed followers, the code of laws
as promulgated in the Christian records being addressed
only to believers, for to them only was it given to know
the mysteries of the kingdom. (Matt. xiii. 11.) As
subjects of a new King, the Lord Jesus Christ, professing
to be guided by a new principle, faith working by love,
we are in that respect to be recognised by God as in the
world, but not of the world. Therefore the impure
thought is sin to us, who profess a religion in which
belief insures life eternal, a life which is realised as a
state of consciousness in the spiritual experience of all
Christians. When we try to understand Christ's teach
ing in the light of our present knowledge, this will
become very plain. Science teaches us that the instinct
of self-preservation, though pleasure increases the vital
action, is the strongest power in man. Starting from
this basis, we are able to take in a view of life as a whole
— that is to say, proceeding on the fact that the vital.
action is increased by pleasure and diminished by pain,
we feel that we have all that we need to know, in order
to substantiate our claim to eternal life as a continuation
of the present life. For we find that vitality essentially
consists of that which is the fruit of our spiritual ex
perience as expressed by Paul in Romans v. 1-5, where
in the fifth verse the climax of all is represented to be
" the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost which is given unto- us," love being the highest

1 1 2 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
state of happiness, or pleasure, or enjoyment known to
us at present. Thus then would we prove our claim to
eternal life on scientific ground. And not only so. We
would in the same way also show, that it is impossible
that Christ could have intended- His teaching to apply
directly to the world, at large, as it undoubtedly demands
self-sacrifice in the highest degree; the whole tenorjaf His
teaching being to lower the vital action of the individual
in the present life, while the world at large, lying outside
the Church, might be saved through the instrumentality
of His own people walking in His footsteps. The
sermon on the mount points directly to this, and such a
passage as is to be found in Mark viii. 35 leaves no doubt
of Christ's meaning. There we find him saying, " Who
soever will save his life shall lose it ; but whosoever
shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel's, the same
shall save it ". Of course we are to understand life here
to mean energy, and we naturally ask, how could mankind
give away life or energy in the service of one who has
not been accepted as king. It is thus perfectly clear, in
the light of present knowledge, that Christ never intended
His teaching to apply to unbelievers. Neither will they
be judged by it, for how could those who do not recog
nise His claim as a redeemer be expected to give away
life, in striving to fulfil the code of laws He left for His
followers. We, on the other hand, who realise the
benefit of His death in the shape of a felt power within
us, have at our own disposal, and in our own power, all
that the energy of life includes, and this we may conse
crate as a free will offering to His service ; and indeed in
so far as we are living up to our professions we are doing

Does Christianity admit of a Scientific Test. 113
so. Nevertheless it must be apparent to all that, in the
light of recognised truth, the Christian records only
apply to professing believers, and just in proportion as
they exert an influence on their lives and through them
on the world at large. Thus we see the whole scheme
centres in the principle of causation — that is to say, the
warfare which continually goes on between the flesh and
the spirit, as described by Paul in Rom. vii. 15-25, and
elsewhere, can be fully understood only when we realise
the fact that self-conservation, as the strongest power in
man, wars against the higher law of faith working by love,
first made apparent in revealed religion as a spiritual
experience, and represented by a warfare going on
between the flesh and the spirit.
But this opens another question which we Christians
are constrained to answer. Has Christ made it possible
in a Christian sense for a man to save himself ? To this
I reply without hesitation in the affirmative, understand
ing, however, that salvation coming in this way is not the
rescue from sin by means of grace, but by another way
in which the sinner in virtue of Christ 's vicarious Sacrifice
has salvation made possible. What this other way is,
we find revealed in the seventh chapter of Matthew at
the 1 2th verse, where Christ distinctly announces what is
implied in " the law and the prophets ". His words are
these : " Whatsoever ye would that men should do to
you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the
prophets ". In these words we may hold that there is
laid down a standard of righteousness equivalent to obedi
ence, and that where truth and justice rule within and
without salvation is made possible. Compare with this
8

1 14 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
what is contained in the first verse of the fifth chapter of
Jeremiah : " See now, and know, and seek if ye can find
a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that
seeketh the truth ; and I will pardon it ".* We have
always to bear in mind that Christ came to reveal the
character of God as a God of love, of truth, and of
justice, and that, although Christ opens the gates of
Heaven to the most depraved, and although it is such
that the angels of God rejoice most over, because Christ
" came to save that which was lost," yet the ninety and
nine just persons, who in one sense need no repentance,
are represented as a class in glory. For Christ never
came as a substitute for sinners in such a way as to
exclude them from Heaven, because, like Thomas, they
would not believe except they put their fingers into the
prints of the nails and thrust their hands into His side ;
for doubtless, like Thomas, when they perceive the real
Jesus in glory, the exclamation of " My Lord and my
God " will burst from them only, alas ! to be received
with the cold rejoinder of " because you have seen me
you have believed ; blessed are they that have not seen
and yet have believed ". There can be no doubt that
Thomas represents a class, and that the blessing just
mentioned, with all that it implies, will distinguish the
redeemed of the human race, dividing them into species,
among which many that we have branded with the name
* This passage applies directly to the Jewish race, God's covenant
people, as the seed of Abraham. It may, therefore, not bear the broad
rendering I give it in applying it to the Gentile world. From the law of
inheritance, doubtless, the Jews derive many advantages peculiar to their
race.

Does Christianity admit of a Scientific Test. 115
of sceptic will find a place, and there worship him who is
at once the sinner's friend and the one who made it
possible for them to enter — the Jesus Christ. In this
belief I go forward on my Christian course, trusting
there to meet with one, an Author whom I have learned
to admire and revere, in whom truth and justice ruled.
It is indeed the case that John Stuart Mill has here been
branded as a sceptic, nevertheless I trust to meet him
among the redeemed — not indeed as a sinner saved by
grace, but as a sinner to whom Christ made salvation
possible. The class, however, which I have more par
ticularly in view here are our men of science, who spend
their lives in the search after truth, and so consecrate
their best energies to Him who is the God of all truth.
We may well say that the words in Eccles. 1. 13 are
applicable to them : "I gave my heart to seek and search
out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under
heaven ; this sore travail hath God given to the sons of
man to be exercised therewith ". Therefore those who
despise such men, as many do in our day, must be held
to set at defiance the Word of God. For a truth outside
the Bible is as much His word, or sign, or token, or laws
as that which is revealed within it, and we shall be held
responsible for the use to which we may apply all our
knowledge of the former description. Moreover, as Pro
testants we claim the right of private judgment for our
selves, and an equal right we should be prepared to yield
to others.
In rejecting the sacred Scriptures this class cuts itself
off from the assurance of eternal life, which is a fruit
proceeding from a belief in Christianity, and substan-

1 1 6 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
tiated by a psychological experience that is within the
reach of every believer, and may be taken as a fulfilment
of the promise given by Jesus in John vii. 17, where he
says : " If any man will do his will he shall know of the
doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of my
self ". Thus it is Christians alone who can hope to rise
above the world, and, soaring through the regions of
space, reach unto the presence of the Absolute, where
they shall assert their claims as heirs of eternal life
through Jesus Christ ; for the glorified body of the risen
Lord is the point where they will gravitate to at death,
when they will be for ever with the Lord and know Him
even as they are known by Him. Christians are saved
because they believe on Christ, and works done by them
in His name and for His sake, whether many or few, are
the fruit referred to by Christ in Matt. vi. 20, where He
says : " Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where
neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves
do not break through nor steal ". But on this point
much confusion is apt to be begotten in the mind of the
individual believer by reason of his not sufficiently
regarding the distinction between this injunction of
Christ's and that contained in the immediately preced
ing verse, and trying clearly to understand what is
implied in the terms used-
Those that reject Christianity live, and they hope to
live ; but they can rise no higher, they can go no further,
than merely to hope on. But hope is the life of the race,
and in their case it will be realised in eternity, when
every effort that they may have put forward in the cause

Does Christianity admit of a Scientific Test. 117
of truth will be accepted as work done for Him who is
the God of truth and the Father of Jesus Christ.
Many of the class I represent, sinners saved by grace,
will be doubtless shocked by the material way in which
I treat this subject, not wishing to realise that Christ
came to save man as a form of body and mind, and of
mind and spirit ; that, in fact, the Christian man is saved
as body, mind, and spirit together, and is an individual
possessing a spiritual experience.
We must observe that in Genesis we have as it were
two creations, and that we may understand the first to
mean something like this, that the highest intelligences
on this planet, when they had attained to a sufficiently
high state of development, were enabled to guide their
actions by feeling, intellect, and will — and observe this
class are presented as male and female — as described in
Gen.i. 26-31. But this being regarded as the first creation,
we may go further and say that in the course of time
some individual man of a class, possessing a moral and
religious element, at length attained to that state of per
fection which is described in Gen. ii. 7, as the result of
God breathing into man's nostrils the breath of life, so
that he " became a living soul ". And we must observe
here that, as we nowhere read that the first creation ceased
to exist, therefore those who in our day believe Adam to
have started up all at once at the word of the Lord have
yet a former creation, if they choose to call it so, to point
out as existing along side of Adam ; though I fully
believe Eve to have been produced by miraculous power
as a helpmate to Adam, bone of his bone and flesh of
his flesh, by that infinite Intelligence whom I hold to be

1 1 8 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
at the heart of everything, helping man everywhere, up
ward and onward, heavenward and homeward, and who
gave His only begotten Son to save mankind. More
over, I firmly believe that Adam and Eve, having God
as a felt power within them, lived in that perfect state of
innocence which we read of in the Bible until by the fall
Adam became father of the human race, as has been
made known to us by divine revelation ; for doubtless
the miracles of the Old Testament were as fully authen
ticated to the people then living as the Resurrection is
in our day. However, let that be as it may, it is Christ,
the chosen one of God and the redeemer of the world,
who reigns in the mind of man, dividing the human race
as is indicated in Col. i. 26-27, where he is spoken of as
the mystery which was hid from ages and from genera
tions, but is now made manifest to the saints as Christ in
them the hope of glory. Thus, therefore, it all ends in
causation, God being understood to be the author and,
finisher of all, and man, in the form of body and mind,
being moved by the strongest power which enables him
to build up and pull down.
In conclusion, I would add one word in reference to
the Son of Man as the God of Humanity. In Jesus
doubtless we can trace the history of the race, recognising
in the root and the offspring of David (Rev. xxii. 16)
the germ which was brought to maturity through the
Virgin Mary, and then called to occupy a place in time
and space as the carpenter, the son of Mary and the
brother of James and Joses, and of Juda and Simon
(Mark vi. 3), at first differing from his contempo
raries only in being endowed with a power which enabled

Does Christianity admit of a Scientific Test. 1 19
him to refuse the evil and choose the good (Isiah vii. 15).
For we cannot but believe that the Jesus of history was
prepared for His work by realising in Himself the Messiah
of the Jews, and being therefore the saviour of man. The
voice that greeted him on the threshold of his public
ministry with the words — " Thou art my beloved Son ;
in thee I am well pleased " (Luke iii. 22), must have left
an impression which enabled Him to realise His relation
ship and his mission in such a way as he had never
realised them before. And it is because of all this that
the Christ of Christianity became what he was when he
lived upon earth, and what he now is, the centre of
attraction to all Christians, so that they may finally
attain to a resting-place in the universe of space — that is
to say, find a home in Heaven. The glorified body, as
the material part of Jesus, being the point towards which
the evolved human soul of the believer must gravitate to
at death, we have here mass and distance, the two condi
tions necessary in gravitation.
If some of us Christians have been so moved by the
tumult from without as to have lost for a time the con
scious feeling of the vital process which is the expression
of union between the soul and its redeemer, and have
therefore found it necessary to examine the evidences of
Christianity to secure a foundation for the objective
structure, and have thus, as it were, laid hold for the
second time on Christ as the ultimate unit ; we can
only say we have suffered because we doubted, and that
we now rejoice because we believe.
I therefore trust this essay may be useful to a class
who are even now doubting, and that it may help to

1 20 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
establish them in the faith, so that they may experience
the freedom Christ poifits to in John viii. 32, where he
says, " Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make
you free," for Christianity was never intended to fetter'
the intellect of man.
Note. — The apparent inconsistency appertaining to the statement in this
eway referring to the vital action as being increased by pleasure, which
pleasure is derived from' our union with Christ, and yet at the same time as
biing manifestly lowered by the course of conduct which was prescribed -by
Him as the course to be followed by His people — for instance, in the
Sermon on the Mount — demands a word of explanation.
In the first place, love or joy is the expression of the action and counter
action that takes place in a soul in union with Christ, the embodiment of
love ; therefore, when we speak of the fruit of Christian belief from thif
point of view, we mean that an increase of vitality makes itself felt in the
wave of feeling issuing from a soul in union with Christ, realised as love,
while at the same time it is the case that the soul gives out energy in the
performance of the work prescribed by the Christ of humanity, as the work
His followers are to devote their lives to for His sake while they are in the.
world. But this is & work of self-denial, and therefore tends to lower the
vital action in so far as our temporal life is concerned ; afterward being
realised in the spiritual body, it becomes a cause of quickening to that body
through intense joy, in consequence, we may say, of its having been put to
death in the flesh, but raised to life again in the spirit. Thus the contradic
tion was only one in appearance, and admits of a rational explanation.

Does Christianity admit of a Scientific Test. 1 2 1

Note. — The foregoing essay was written in May, 1875, and was intended
to make its appearance in one of the magazines, but this idea was not
realised. Before publishing it now, I feel an explanation is necessary in reference
to a point or two not so fully wrought out as I could wish.
First, it will be necessary to explain the meaning attaching to the phrase
"being saved" or "redeemed," as used by Protestant Christians. The
phrase "being saved" is applied to the soul as being the inward life of the
individual which has been, or is being, evolved through the body, and
retains an individual existence when separated from the body at death. Now,
a soul in this condition is saved when it has been relieved from the conse
quences attaching to sin or conscious guilt ; and it is thus that Christ's
redemption-purchase affects the soul of the Christian by redeeming or
saving it from the consequence of sin, and procuring for it the assurance of
a happy eternity. Thus the highest form of Christian life is developed
through the individual believer becoming converted or born again ; and
¦ from the time this change takes place, the believer having realised his
pardon and title to eternal life through Christ, he is animated by a desire,
generated by love, to serve Him ; so that every act of service, arising from
love to Christ in God, is accepted by Christ as service done for him, and
includes the treasures laid up in heaven referred to in Matt. vi. 20, and
explained more fully in the cup of cold water mentioned by our Lord.
(Matt. x. 42.)
By my mode of reasoning it will be apparent that it is the motive prompt
ing the action that will determine whether the work is accepted or rejected
of God in Christ.
In the second place, I would allude to the remark previously made by
me, that Christ's atoning sacrifice, viewed in a universal sense (1 Johnii. 2),
does enable that man to save himself in whom truth and justice rules. As
to such individuals, when the soul is separated from the body they will
realise their title to a happy eternal existence, which they have been enabled
to earn for themselves in consequence of the fruit of Christ's atoning sacri
fice. But this class can have no treasures laid up for themselves in heaven,
for they will only learn to love Christ as they come to realise the eminent
obligation he has conferred on them in thus securing them salvation or
deliverance.

1 22 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
But the shallowest intellect must see the enormous difference existing
between the two classes in respect of the relationship which they bear to
the individual through whose agency both classes have attained to an
eternal well-being. The important distinction that separates the two
classes will be of infinite moment, and may really determine almost every
thing in their progress onward through eternity. Yet I rejoice to feel that
we all are one with Christ in God, and that the best of the race will
mingle and rejoice together in Christ, the Head, throughout eternity.

PART III.

THE CHRISTIANITY OF THE FUTURE
OR
THE UNION OF TWO SYSTEMS OF TRUTH.
AS THE SCIENCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN RE
VELATION AND MODERN SCIENCE.

Chapter I.
UNION WITH CHRIST EXPRESSING ITSELF IN FEELING.
IF the laws of nature are God's thoughts, and revela
tion is given to reveal the future destiny of the race
to humanity, we must read both systems of truth in the
light of the one explaining the other, and both of God.
Consequently, the truth in the form I present it can only
be realised by the Christian Church viewed as the repre
sentative of revealed truth, in the form of the body of
Christ. For the Church springs from Christ's person.
and works as the product of His life and death ; while
the individual, as the unit of which the Church is formed.
is made responsible to Jesus for the light his character
presents, the Saviour being the Master he professes tc
serve. Further, every unit of this Church possesses the
power of enjoying felt communion with Christ, expressing
itself in a new state of consciousness as the fulfilment of
Our Lord's words in John xiv. 21, "I will love him and
will manifest myself unto him ".
Viewing feeling as man's ultimate criterion, as we are
bound to do in the form science presents him, and as
that sensitive thing to which our Lord addressed these
words, I insist upon this personal experience as an
absolute necessity before man is in full possession of
revealed truth, and therefore may with safety use the
language of Paul (2 Tim. i. 1 2), " I know whom I have.-
believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep thar

128 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
which I have committed unto him against that day ".
And it is in this personal experience that Paul has
revealed truth demonstrated as God in Christ addressing
him, having been enabled to realise revealed truth for
himself in the union that unites the soul of man with
Christ. With his feet fully established on the rock, and
the risen Lord occupying the point of space where the
wave of motion originated which expressed itself on his
conscious soul, there was manifested the union, as a
Christian experience, of which the objective Christ was
the origin, and toward which the individual believer will
gravitate at death. Possessing revealed truth in this
form the individual believer may meet the sceptic man
of science half-way as he declares the immortality of the
soul, and asks to be instructed in the laws of nature, as
recognising that in them his God speaks, so that thus he
may more freely understand his Master's words as
revealed in the sacred Scriptures. In reference to
that passage in them (Joshua x. 13) where we are told
that the sun and moon stood still at Joshua's bidding,
I confess I know not how that may be ; but one thing I
know, that the God I serve had the power to affect
nature so, for He rules supreme, and as His servant I
would prove all things, holding fast that which is good.
(Thess. v. 21.) For this reason then I would be taught
of you, and glorify God through the truth as you men of
science present it. It will be observed from this that the
believer alone has power to combine the two sets of
truths expressed in nature and in grace.
Starting from this ground, all knowledge must take
the form of the feeling ; and the felt as presenting the

Union with Christ expressing itself in Feeling. 1 29
subject and the object, and therefore all our knowledge
must appear in the form of contrasted ideas, just as we
see the truth of nature presented in the truth revealed,
wherein the contrasted ideas stand for two objective
existences. For example, we have man presented in John iii. 6 in
the form of body and mind ; that which is born of the
¦flesh as flesh (which . the material school of thought has
taught us to comprehend) being placed in contrast with
its opposite — namely, that which is born of the spirit as
spirit. Thus is presented the new element which is got
in our union with Christ, and the full thought is realised
in the Christian as a form of body and mind and spirit.
Thus do we pull the idea to pieces and build it up again,
to find in it the full thought as presented by our Lord.
When we speak of the soul we mean the thing formed
and the process employed in forming it, and the future
work of the Church, as Christ's body on earth, will be to
present the future of the race as seen in the light of
revealed truth illuminated by science, with our Lord as
its developing intelligence.
It will be seen from what I have said that I boldly
assert that matter presents man in the ultimate form of
body and mind ; and that the unit of humanity who
contracts a union with Christ, made apparent by a new
state of consciousness, has felt the effect of a wave of
feeling issuing from the very person of Christ, defined as
the spirit of truth. Through this medium the believer
becomes possessed of the essence which includes the
spirit of God, so that with this meaning attached to this
experience I would have it distinctly understood that the
9

1 30 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
Christian is to be regarded as composed of body, mind,
and spirit. Further, I hold that in this wave of feeling
that issues from the Saviour we ought to include a some
thing which represents the Godhead, received through
our union with Christ in God ; in this sense Christ is to
be taken as the objective existence presented to the eye
of sense.

Chapter II.
THE TWO TYPES— THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW.
FROM my starting point it makes no difference
whether the race was evolved or created, taking
the latter term with the meaning usually attached to it.
For anyhow it was created, in the sense that the word of
God produced the race, either as the effect of the laws of
nature — namely, the thoughts of God — or otherwise.
Therefore this unit which presents itself before us in the
form of body and mind is the unit which revealed reli
gion has to deal with, as well as the unit in which the
vital action expresses itself in the form of conscious life
as the function of the structure. Therefore we must
view the individual being as a unit possessing a con
tinuous existence, whose vital action will ever be increased
by pleasure and diminished by pain, and consequently
we must hold that pleasure and pain are to us life and
death. Life is increased by the vital actions put forth to
secure a pleasure and avoid a pain. Man is thus
stimulated to self-preservation, which indeed becomes
the strongest power in him, and may be said to govern
his actions almost, if not quite, entirely, rendering him an
automatic machine as he grasps a pleasure and avoids a
pain. With this we have to include the individual as
possessing a moral and religious element, and as capable
of reflecting on the consequences of his actions at the
same time that he has the conscious feeling that to act

132 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
or not to act is within his power (how far this feeling
may be actually realised is a very different matter). It re
mains, however, that to man, a rational responsible being,
self-preservation is the spring of all his actions. Now,
this self-regard ing instinct, where there is a due respect
had to the rights of others, is a legitimate and right feel
ing in the individual unbeliever, because his ultimate is
understood to consist in making the best of life as we
now know it, and his eternal destiny will depend on what
use he makes of his present opportunity. Man, there
fore, as the highest intelligence presented in the form of
body and mind is, we maintain, quite justified in acting
according to his nature, provided he manifests a due
regard for the rights of others. But all this becomes
changed immediately we admit the power of Christian
influence, for Christianity strikes at the very root of this
self-regarding interest as regards this life, calling it the
work of the flesh and the cause of enmity to God. More
over, it was that very self-regarding interest which led to
Adam's fall, and constituted the germ from which all
evil springs. It was this ingredient present in humanity
which necessitated a saviour being provided (in one
sense) to redeem the race by converting a rebel into a
friend and co-worker with God, where every unit of
humanity, as the consequence of being saved, will cease
from this self-regarding interest, and henceforth only
desire a separate existence in union with Christ. Other
wise there would be presented two opposing forces,
which would tend towards man's destruction, and ulti
mately effect it. For herein lies the whole germ of man's
controversy with God. And here we see , God's fore-

The Two Types— the Old Man and the New. 133
knowledge manifested in providing the Saviour as the .
medium through which humanity may be subdued by the
power of love. Thus men are raised above what is known
as the doctrineof necessity, and arestimulated individually
to actions arising from love to Christ, each one devoting
his energy and conscious life to the service of Christ in
God, this being his God appointed work upon earth.
For, taken in his Christian relationship, a man is not of
the world, but one that Christ has chosen out of the
world as in a special sense destined for eternal glory,
therefore not of the world though in the world. From
this reasoning, the motive that prompts action in the
two classes of individuals which I have described arise
from quite different and opposite sources, and will pro
duce fruit altogether unlike. The Christian so animated
is storing up treasures in heaven, as the fruit of his
redemption, in service done for Christ ; in other words,
as an individual he ceases to live, and is only desirous to.
have a continuous existence in union with Christ ; to be
one with Christ is the only life which he would now
know. The other, on the contrary, is desirous to main
tain his separate and individual existence, and is per
fectly justified in using all lawful means to attain a-
lawful end. Action thus springing from this idea, the
two-fold motive of securing a pleasure and avoiding a
pain, is the germ from which self-preservation takes its
rise. In the other class, however, this self-regarding
instinct has been overcome in consequence of a new
principle, in the shape of a dominant idea taking posses
sion of the mind, inspiring love to Christ, together with
a desire to serve Him in grateful return for service ren-

1 34 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
dered by Him. In this way the individual's mind is
raised above the self-regarding instinct, and is stimulated
to action as the fruit of a passion or emotion — namely,
love for Christ. In the light of present knowledge we are
thus enabled to divide the human race into two classes,
whose actions proceed from entirely different motives, and
therefore produce fruit eternally different. We find the
noblest types of the one class, as fully developed in their
natural state, to be noble, generous, high-minded speci
mens of humanity, just and righteous in all their ways,
acting according to reason and conscience, perfect men.
Yet only men, born of the earth, earthly. They are
perfect models of what the world can produce, nature's
very noblest work, and as such we would present their
disembodied spirits as they escape from the tenements in
which they have been evolved, and now leave dead on
the ground, and would present them before Christ the
judge as the noblest portion of matter the earth and its
surroundings can produce. In contrast with this we
would present the other. Probably we find him poor
and obscure, for his calling may be a humble one, per
haps that of a ticket-collector at some central terminus.
He is always to be found at his post, and little does one
think of the self-denying life he leads as he provides for
a large family, and devotes every moment of his spare
time to the service of Christ, his master. His heart is
full of love to Him, for he has been born again, and with
a feeling of deep gratitute would he now consecrate all
to Him, while he labours to bring others to the know
ledge of Christ (happily in Scotland the Sabbath is
mostly his own, and therefore that day is wholly consc-

The Two Types —the Old Man and the New. 1 3 5
crated to his Master's work). You watch him as he devotes
every moment of his time to the service of his Lord, and
you find that the self-regarding instinct has been overcome
in him by a nobler feeling, as he follows in the footsteps
of the Master. In all this you see the effect of faith work
ing by love, as he feels his eternity secure. Does he look
for a reward ? Mark the expression on his face, if you
broach the possibility of any profit arising from this
service he is rendering. How puzzled he looks ! He
cannot understand you ! His labour is the fruit of grati
tude and love ; he already has his reward, for has not
Christ saved his soul, and is not his life the effect of
Christ's sacrifice, for which he would thus show his grati
tude ? Press the point of reward a little further, and all
the brightness that before animated his face has dis
appeared, either in pity for your ignorance regarding the
way of salvation, or from the feeling of uncertainty that
would attach itself to his future did he think that his
eternal happiness depended in the least on his efforts to
secure it through the medium of good works. These are
indeed performed, but only as the fruit of a something
he already is in possession of — namely, the consciousness
of being a sinner saved by grace, who seeks to express
his soul's emotion in this form. But as for the notion of
any reward being attached to works so rendered, that is
wholly absent from his mind.*
* The labour of love proceeding from the inner circle in its highest form
is simply the effect of the new principle that is animating the individual in
the form of the wave of feeling which proceeds from Christ and includes
the spirit of God. A new wave is thus in turn generated which, returning
to Christ, presents the individual experience in heaven as the soul or angel

i ^6 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
From the two examples just offered of the noblest of
the race, it will readily be seen that there is not one
point in common between them. The source of action
in both individuals is entirely different : the self-regard
ing interest, which is the just and legal feeling, animating
the one, while the other, having ceased altogether to
think of self, has his conduct controlled by love to
Christ, and that feeling of gratitude which the prospect
of eternal happiness in and through Jesus, his Lord and
Master, has inspired.
of the redeemed. In this way a constant action and reaction in the form of
the feeling and the felt is taking place between Christ and His body or
Church on earth.

Chapter III.
THE ORIGIN OF THE OBJECTIVE CHRIST TRACED
THROUGH MANY STAGES, AND THE FORCES EMPLOYED
IN BUILDING THE NEW MAN.
LEAVING my two possible types of the last
chapter, I would try to present the Christianity
of the future in the light of known truth, by building a
new structure out of the material which may be said to
be the effect of that self-regarding feeling or instinct of
self-preservation which has been seen to be the strongest
power in man. The soul of the infantl would regard
as though the forces in the little brain of the child had
been in equilibrium. Furthermore, as the product of the
joint conscious beings from whom it has sprung it may be
looked upon as embodying in a manner the experience
of the race, and as having stored in its brain the ideas •
which have been evolved in the process of time, and of
this experience the soul of any such dying in infancy
may be taken to be in a measure the expression. The
souls of the imbecile or idiot may be viewed in a similar
way, only I cannot help thinking that their souls have a
special claim on the Almighty, and in this idea I would
cling to the old Scotch saying, that they are the children
of the Almighty, irriplying that He keeps a special watch
over them. And indeed I am sure that He does so,
knowing them to be irresponsible creatures, whom His
own laws have produced. All the insane, therefore, seem

1 38 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
in my opinion to be specially cared for by God, and to
have before them a future very splendid indeed, as
possessing much of the experience of the race without
any responsibility attached. We may say that their's
are souls fresh from the hands of the Creator, as being
the product of His laws, and this would be a good
reason to offer for such an opinion or belief, through the
latter may also partly have arisen from the sympathy
I feel for all such in the treatment they often receive.
Anyhow, in the spirit of the old Scotch saying I would
address one and all, and say, Behold the offspring of
God — the offspring of the Almighty — which He has
committed to the care of mankind, and in regard to
which we will have all ot us to render to Him an account
of our stewardship.
To return to my subject as relating to the power that
Christian influence exerts on the individual life, I would
first deal with the germ which I perceive to present itself
as the original Christ, understood to represent the God
Man. And I would begin by stating that I hold the
religious and moral element in humanity to be a fact
which is apparent to all. Therefore, understanding this
to be an element existing in the race, I would take hold
of Abraham as that one in the race who in his genera
tion displayed the religious element in the highest form,
and in consequence of the developed state of this ele
ment was chosen by God to fulfil His design, and to
become the medium through which the future Saviour was
to be produced. I'n this way came the effect that the reve7
lation given by God was intended to produce, which was
destined to be accomplished by God revealing Himself

Origin of the Objective Christ Traced. 1 39
from time to time to Abraham and his seed. It must
be observed here that the revelation thus made by God
is understood to include an entirely new element, namely,
that of God specially presenting Himself to man. No
matter how high and exalted and utterly beyond our
reach it may be, modern science presents a first cause,
while as believers in a revealed religion we are dealing
with facts, and must conclude that Abraham and his
seed were specially called of God, and in this form pre
sented a new development, which was destined to pro
duce eminent and glorious effects, through the influence
of this new element of God revealing His will to man.
It was this that taught Abraham's race to fear and"
adore Him, as the Self-existing, Eternal, Omnipotent
One, who chose thus to make Himself known to them
by this wave of feeling issuing from the Eternal, and
making itself felt in truth communicated through
this medium.. Man was brought to the knowledge
of God, and the forces thus united eventually assumed
the form of definite ideas, in which God's character
was revealed, and through which God ordered that
man should perceive his need of a Saviour. The
result of the laws thus originated through the forces
employed has been the production of a germ, in
the shape of an idea, which includes God's will to
save and man's desire to be saved. This is the germ
frorh which the future Saviour was destined to be pro
duced, and to Which as made apparent in the light of our
present knowledge our Lord traces His origin when he
alludes to the root and offspring of David, implying by
His language that David's united contrasted ideas in re-

140 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
vealed truth, which, when united, formed a full thought,
and became the word of God. Thus was presented to
us the germ which afterward appears in the form of the
Lord of Hosts, who is to be called the God of the whole
earth (Isiah liv. 5), and which, being in due time brought
to maturity though the Virgin Mary, is known to our age
as the Jesus of history, and the Christ of Christianity
— the child of Mary indeed, but also the Son of God, and
the God of humanity, by whom as God-Man our race is
redeemed. Thus we have the medium of the organism
and its environment presented in the subjective and
objective, the feeling and the felt, and expressing itself
in the wave of ether, which in this sense includes the
embodiment of the spirit of God uniting sinful humanity,
as conscious life, with the eternal, in the expression of the
"Abba Father" which is the Christian's birthright. Thus
we have found the Jesus of history in the first revelation
made by God to man, and have followed the cause pre
sented till we see Him seated on the judgment seat, and
recognised as the God of the whole earth, and the only
one able to weigh and measure human energy, that is to
say, what is seen in the possible to man in his efforts to
mount up higher and yet higher, bearing the image of
God. In all this I would have it observed that I have
not stripped Christ of His divine nature. For every
unit of the forces thus employed existed in the form of
the Godhead before they were presented in the way we
have seen. To show this we need only quote the words
of Jesus Himself, " And now, O Father, glorify thou me
with thine own self with the glory which I had with
thee before the world, was." (S. John xvii. 5.) Such

Origin of the Objective Christ Traced. 141
language can only refer to that previous state of exist
ence which included Christ's divinity, and which you and
I as Christians believe in. By doing so we become
sharers in that wave of feeling that units us with Christ,
and which John speaks of as the spirit of truth. There
fore let us glorify God with our bodies and spirit, which
are God's.
From my reasoning Christ must have existed first of
all in the form of the original Godhead, and then as a
separate existence in the germ presented to us in Revela
tion xxii. 16, where He speaks of Himself as the root
and offspring of David, which germ was afterwards
brought to maturity through the Virgin Mary, being the
fruit of miraculous conception. And again having pre
sented itself as the Jesus of earth, it afterwards appeared
as a disembodied spirit, which preached to the spirits in
prison. (1 Peter iii. 19.) Lastly, having taken posses
sion of His body, it appeared as the risen Lord. And
now we point to the form as it occupies a point in
space, where the soul of each believer desires to gravi
tate. And I feel perfectly confident in saying that Jesus
will yet again appear on the earth as the Messiah of the
Jews, when Jerusalem will be rebuilt, and the ordinance
of circumcision be once more demanded as a sign of the
chosen seed. Then shall the prophesy of Zechariah
be fulfilled, and " Ten men shall take hold of tlie skirts
of him that is a Jew, saying, we will go with you ; for we
have heard that God is with you." (Zechariah viii. 23.)
My theory then is, that Jesus during the millenium
will take up His abode now at one time on the earth,
and now at another on one of the nearest planets of less

142 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
dimensions than the earth, for we are told in Revelation
xx. 9, that " They went up oh the breadth of the earth,
and compassed the camp of the saints about ". Here
the reference is made in regard to the last rebellion
and final battle as the gathering of Gog and Magog.
The consequence of this battle is, that the end and
consummation of our earth will be determined and
brought about through its effect, as the combined will oj
the race is manifested by the inhabitants of the earth
whom the self-regarding instinct will prompt to an act
of rebellion in surrounding the camp of the saints as
their last struggle, when the devil who deceived them
is to be cast into the lake of fire, events which will imme
diately precede and determine the final resurrection and
judgment. From the ioth verse to the end we see the
last judgment described, but during the intermediate
period — including the millenium and the time of falling
away which will succeed the millenium — I hold His
people, who are raised as the fruit of the first resurrec
tion, will be present on either one or other of the neigh
bouring planets, while the souls or disembodied spirits of
His people, not yet ready for this change, shall enjoy His
conscious presence while they are being prepared for the
second and final resurrection. Anyhow, whatever may
be the future of the race in this respect, there can be no
doubt that the Jews will find every promise of the Lord's
fulfilled to themselves, and so we may leave the future,
feeling assured th'at the Lord of all the earth will do
right. Having followed Jesus in this way through many dif
ferent stages, I would have you see the influence which

1 !

Origin of the Objective Christ Traced. 143
the ideal Christ is destined to produce on the race, for it
is this influence which rebuilds the structure of this,
mostly automatic, machine which we have seen to be
produced as the result of self-preservation. The Saviour
cuts at the root of this self-regarding interest in His re
building, and the Scriptures call the individual believer
who acts under its influences as " at emnity with God,
and hot subject to the laws of God". But it must always
be borne in mind that the meaning which I attach to
this language is, that the vital action is increased by
securing a pleasure and avoiding a pain. This I hold
to be an illegal course of action for the believer to secure
vitality by, as he goes forward through life bearing his
cross in the service of his Redeemer. And I would also
have it understood that I do not regard the pleasure aris
ing from felt communion with Christ as included in this
form of speech ; that pleasure is the believer's ultimate,
and is derived from a legal and proper source — the
source that bestows eternal life. Consequently it is
worldly pleasure that I refer to, of which the enjoyment
has no longer become a necessity to the believer,
as one of the class to whom Jesus speaks in John
xvi. 33, " In the world ye shall have tribulation : but
be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." ' Thus
the believer is bound to seek his enjoyment elsewhere, as
not of the world, but of them whom Jesus has called out
of the world. (John xv. 19.)
The significance to be attached to our Lord's teaching
in this respect is very apparent in the light of present
knowledge, according to which we see the whole indi
vidual structure to be evolved through the influence of

144 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
an opposite law, that finds expression in every feeling of
the human heart or soul. And it is when we view these
two contrasted interests that we recognise Paul's teaching,
as expounded in his contrasted ideas presented as flesh
and spirit warring against each other. We thus get at
the root of his meaning, when he made objective his,
conscious self in the graphic description to be found in
his epistle to the Romans vii. 14-25. In the view there
maintained to be going on we see the fire that is burning
out the old structure, while the new form is made to take
its place. The effect of this opposing current is very
plainly and fully defined in Galatians v. 15-26. Here1 the
meaning is as manifest as is the effect of an organism
built up through the principle of self-preservation and
ready to grasp at a pleasure, and from the possession of
which a man feels how strong he is in the full flow of
life, while the vital action is rising even higher and
higher. It is to the individual so constructed that Jesus
addresses the Sermon on the Mount, and expounds the
process through which His followers are to be moulded.
We thus realise how often Paul's expression, Romans
vii. 19, "For the good that I would I do not ; but the evil
that I would not that I do," will represent the state of
consciousness experienced by the believer, as he rebuilds
the structure after the form of the teaching of Jesus.
As the organism he will joyously welcome his Lord in
whom he shall have confidence, and not be ashamed
before Him at His coming. (1 John ii. 28.)
We have in our day the teaching of Jesus fully de
monstrated before our eyes, as we see the formed struc
ture, and perceive the process employed in forming it

™fp?f*p

Origin of the' Objective Christ Traced. 145
plainly, confronting the teaching of Jesus Christ as
brought out in Paul's philosophy, the counter current
answering to the definition of Paul's description so
graphically given by him in Galatians v. 17. "For the
flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the
flesh : and these are contrary the one to the other : so that
ye cannot do the things that ye would." We now fully
comprehend the words of Jesus to Nicodemus. (S. John
iii. 7-8.) " That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that
which is born of the spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I
said unto thee, ye must be born again." In this new
birth we see the action of the new set of forces applied
to the conscious mind, and producing a movement totally
different from the previous movement, in which the
external actions are felt to vibrate in unison with the
Lord, as He proclaims His power over the structure
which His influence controls, for it is the unit which His
sacrifice has redeemed, and in which He now takes up
His abode as the ideal Christ presented by Paul,
(Colossians i. 26-27) as " the mystery hid from ages,
which is Christ in you the hope of glojy". Thus we
trace the internal movement to its source, finding
it in the power which this ideal Christ produces, in
directing and enabling the individual to rise above the
things of time and sense, as the fruit of God's spirit in this
new state of consciousness making itself felt according
to Galatians v. 22-23, in l°ve> j°y> peace, long-suffering,
&c. Thus the human soul finds rest and peace in Christ.
The natural experience of such a soul is manifested in
the joy derived from the consciousness of being recon
ciled to God, and being in felt communion with Him, as
10

146 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
the individual's future is realised in union with Christ,
and this though the battle of the counter forces some
times rages. Yet, while the eye is directed to Jesus as
the sinner's friend, the renewed soul is sure to conquer.
Thus modern science enables us to see our strength
and our weakness, as we follow the Master, and get at
the Lord's meaning in His saying, " Ye must be born
again". Then we see an entirely new element making
itself felt in the process which this implies, being the
movement of the Spirit of God, and as I have said the
leading features of this movement is the feeling of security
attaching itself to the consciousness of being reconciled
to God, and for this reason enabled to approach Him
with the Abba Father of the Christian God.

Chapter IV.
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF A
GOD APART FROM REVELATION.
THE very ground work of Christianity arises from th
accepted fact of the existence of a Self-existing Eter
nal Being defined as God, and revealing Himself in and
through Jesus Christ as the objective part of Himself, and
arising out of the forces that were from time to time em
ployed in revealing the presence of the Almighty Power
in whom the Jews trusted, and from whom they received
the law. In the rebellion of the latter from time to time
we see the action of the self-regarding instinct manifested
in opposition to the commands of God. The action and
counter action are clearly manifested in the history of
this people, viewed in the light of present knowledge.
For amongst them the belief in the existence of a God
was a universally accepted fact. But to return to our
subject ; in the revelation of Christ we see that the
existence of the personal God,, which constitutes the
framework of the whole system, is the very idea that
Christianity springs from. Therefore it is an utter waste
of time which is often devoted to the fruitless attempt to
prove the existence of a God or the immortality of the
soul, for that is utterly impossible apart from the revela
tion that has been given us. For there is nothing repre
senting the object concerned in nature to prove the

148 Christianity Reduced to Proof
existence of either the one or the other. Moreover, the
notion of design used for that end is altogether worthless
and useless, in as much as it can only point to a God of
force, and presents man in the form of body and mind
as the grandest display manifested in the action of the
forces at work, with an inspiration and craving after im
mortality. But what have you when the lifeless body of
the dearest friend is presented to your view ? Where is
your evidence now to prove the existence of a God tak
ing care of the self-consciousness of your friend, and
binding the forces together by a law that can be traced
and demonstrated before you. Higher than the intelli
gence of man we have nothing, and this intelligence only
procures for us an individual existence, while body and
mind remains united in the bodily organism. Hence it
must appear to every intelligent, conscientious, or honest
mind as an utter waste of time to bestow effort on an
argument of which there is no objective existence corres
ponding to the thing. Therefore the question still rests
in an utter impossibility to prove the existence of a God
apart from revelation. But let it be fully understood
that to say we cannot prove the existence of a God apart
from revelation, is very different from saying that God
does not influence the mind of man apart from revelation
(understood as Bible truth). For most certainly God
does express Himself, and the man that worships Him
through nature is sure to find Him.
Theodore Parker presents the highest form of such I
can think of, and the God he found in nature was per
ceived by him as his father and his mother too. What a
devotion gave birth to that thought ! What a fount of

God apart from Revelation. 149
love these words include, and what utter loneliness they
imply regarding human sympathy, as he finds in God his
ultimate. That God he has consecrated his all to, and
we call him a sceptic and an outcast. A sceptic we
certainly are justified in calling him, for he was an un
believer, and therefore he did nothing from love to Christ.
But see the other marks Jesus would have us judge by,
how brightly they stand out (Matthew vii. 20-21) in pro
ducing this fruit ! Yet he is no Christian, for his fruit
springs from self-preservation as the desire of immortality
increases. But the Christian's consecrated life is the
fruit of his love to Christ as his Saviour and Redeemer,
and though in his case much of the same fruit is pro
duced, yet it rises from an entirely different motive-
The Christian is saved and one with Christ in God,
whom he will or must serve, as being animated by a law
which, as faith working by love, must express itself in
action. This service to God is the effect of the belief
implied in his power to overcome his former bad habits
aided by the strength of Christ. The other, on the
contrary, is earning eternal life as the fruit of his good
works according to the saying, " do this and live." But
the believer lays up treasures in heaven in the name of
Jesus, and as the reward of service done for his Lord
while he strove to attain the perfect state enjoined in
Matthew v. 48.
But though man cannot prove the existence of a God,
yet those who search will surely find him, as the feeling
of the felt expresses the manifestation of the God of
nature, which will be seen in the person of Jesus Christ
as the objective portion of the Godhead, and as the one

1 50 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
who is to be called the God of the whole earth. (Isaiah
liv. 5.) But this worshipping of a God of nature and
finding Him at the end objectised in the Christ of
Christianity is wholly different from worshipping Jesus
in the Christian form, and earning for ourselves the re
ward of having witnessed for Him before a sinful world.
Hear the words of our Saviour as recorded in Matthew
x. 32. " Whosoever therefore shall confess me before
men, him will I confess before my Father which is in
heaven." The honour here implied "is the highest con
ferred on our race, or even possible to man. The idea
that seems attaching itself to those who profess to believe
in Christianity, and yet avowedly teach the impossibility of
perceiving God in consciousness, is at utter variance with
the teaching of the originator of Christianity, and cuts
at the very root of His doctrine. For there is no point
that our Lord more fully maintains than this, namely,
His felt presence as a state of consciousness intended to
maintain the evidence of His power and presence in the
church through the individual believer, as the fruit of the
new birth, and the manifestation of the spirit that was
ever to witness for Him. (John xv. 26, xvi. 7-13, also
John iv. 23, 24. To the individual the felt power is of
vital importance, as the counterpart ' of the truth he re
ceives in his Christian faith, and as the influence that
stimulates to action in pulling down the old structure,
and rebuilding the conscious mind in the likeness of
Christ. Thus it created the new man whom Paul points
to, and nothing short of this would enable him to rise
above the doctrine of necessity, nothing short of the joy
that attaches itself to the reconciled child would satisfy

God apart from Revelation. 1 5 1
him as a believer approaching the Father in the name of
 Christ, and feeling the warm glow of heavenly love
H throbbing in every nerve as he points to his eternal
t home and says, " it is mine ; for Jesus died for me,
and God is love, I know and feel". Thus does he feel the
promise made by Jesus in John vii. 17 to be fulfilled in
his own personal experience of the truth of the thing re
vealed. The Bible proclaims the/words of Jesus, and the
Spirit applies them to any one listening and willing to be
taught. For Jesus will only have willing service, in
which man does not see his own glory, but the glory of
. .. God as seen in Jesus Christ. It is thus when we look to
- ¦¦ the forces that were combined in an intelligent life
as the revelation made to the Jews foreordained to
form their promised Messiah, and regard them as
the germ brought to maturity through the Virgin
Mary, as the root of David presented in the Jesus of
history that rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven ;
it is thus we can say: Behold the man that has demon-
, strated the immortality of the soul by revealing the
personal God !

Chapter V.
THE NEW BIRTH EXPRESSED IN FEELING.
IN our day it seems peculiarly apparent that it is
mostly the poor and so-called ignorant that have the
gospel thus addressed to them, as they sit at their
humble fire-sides and discuss the mystery of the know
ledge of God. With the evidence of His promise in the
witness of the spirit manifested as a felt power in every
heart they feel Christ dwelling in their midst, and dedicate
their children to God in Him. They have the experi
mental proof of their religion throbbing in every nerve
in Jesus as a felt power within (Ephesians iii. 17-19), and
you maysayit is all sensation, merefeeling. But what does
ourknowledge arise from but the feeling and the felt? And
have not the class I refer to the historical Jesus, though
they may have never heard of Him, and they are only
bewildered if you speak to them of the historical Jesus.
They have never doubted, and therefore they have no
notion of the historical Christ, but by this they certainly
have not lost. For the " blessed are they, who have not
seen, and , yet have believed " ; this simple " faith is
wholly theirs ". We, that have made our religious belief
a matter of proof in finding the historical Christ cannot
say He is ours in this child-like form, as we fight the
battle of life, and having found Him outside the Bible
—therefore believe. For He lives outside the Bible as

The New Birth Expressed in Feeling. 153
well as inside it, and it only requires one animated by the
Spirit of God to get acquainted with the laws that govern
the mind,, to be able to point out the idea implied in
Paul's work of the flesh (Galatians v. 17) as the fruit of the
self-regarding interest, and the wave of feeling which issues
(see John xvi. 7 as to the origin of the wave) from Jesus,
making His presence felt as the idea standing for the
Spirit of God in the movement which is first expressed
jn the new birth, and afterwards in the Christian expe
rience of the believer. Thus, with these two truths separate
and combined, the most ignorant of the race, in the
possession of the Christian experience, could have pre
sented the truth taught or revealed, as seen in the
counter-current ; that is, if the laws of the mind had been
known to them together with the perception of the feel
ing and the felt as man's ultimate. The power of com
bining was certainly within their reach, however stupid
they might be. Only, ' without the experimental know
ledge of the new birth all is midnight darkness and
nothing in the future certain.

Chapter VI.
THE SOUL AS A GROUP OF SENSATIONS PROCLAIMED
IMMORTAL.
I CAN fancy I hear many of my contemporaries saying :
well, if the soul is to be reduced thus to a group of
sensations, what proof have we that the grouped mass will
hold together when the bodily organism falls to pieces ?
I would answer, the very same authority that we have for
the existence of a God objected in the revelation he has
presented to us. The counterpart of this we find in the
root and offspring of David as the grouped intelligence
and the seed of the miraculous conception which
appeared in the Jesus of history, being the child of
Mary, but the Son of God arid the ideal God of
humanity. The subjective and objective existence is
that which the church has spiung from, just as the sensa
tions arising from the wave of feeling thence originated,
have united the individual soul of the Christian believer
with its correlative objective whole. The unit which finds
its objective existence in the God Man is the only ex
pression we can point to as demonstrative proof that God
is, and the immortality of the soul rests on grounds
exactly similar. Both rest on the fact that a revelation
has been given to demonstrate the truth of both —
namely, the existence of a God and the immortality of
the soul.
We have seen how the objective Christ was formed,

The Soul as a Group of Sensations. 155
and came into being as the counterpart of the forces
employed in the revelation given by God from time to
time to the Jewish race, and having assumed the form of
humanity in the person of our Lord, became the God of
the whole earth, and the being through whom humanity
has procured an eternal existence* For thus has an
individual immortality been secured to every germ which
is the product of conception, and the fruit of two lives is
seen in the parent germ, the soul being presented and
immortalised through the life and death of the Redeemer
whom God provided for that end. In the seed of every
such germ we have the generalized experience of the
race, which is implied in the term humanity. And at no
stage of its existence can we prove its immortality apart
from revelation. You may deny the formation as the
result of' sensations grouped together, but you gain
nothing by your denial. If you say that God creates
each soul, which He implants in an organism, then
what reason have you to offer for God providing a germ
which in its instinct of self-preservation will, if left to
itself, ultimately aspire to possessing the throne of the
Almighty ? If you present the product of creation in this
* This eternal existence undoubtedly is presented by John ii. 2, where
Christ is said to have atoned for the sins of the whole world. From this
we reason that in the countless ages of eternity the worst will ultimately be
rescued from the power of evil in the conscious ego being endowed with
power to stamp out the evil as he rebuilds the structure, animated by love,
which I hold to be included in many words of John's. It will be apparent,
from all that has been said, that evil and good in the abstract must exist
eternally apart ; that is if the devil, animated by his self-regarding interest
— Isiah xiv. 12-14 — is to have a continuous existence, and be animated by
the same feeling.

156 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
form, you present at the same time God in a false light.
For as we have before seen the self-regarding interest has
been fully demonstrated to be universally the strongest
power in man. But now, allow this spirit to be the pro
duct of sensational grouping, and the effect produced in
humanity as the result of a natural law, with the indi
vidual experience of the race presented in the individual
soul, and you have a reasonable soul at once, with
the character of the individual or personal God present
in the religious element evolved. With the grouped
sensations presented as the human soul in the light of re
vealed truth we are justified in proclaiming it immortal.
For here we have the eternal mind objected in the unit
of intelligent life, built up through the medium of human
experience, in which the individual feels he has power
(in a certain sense) over his thoughts and actions as the
form with which revelation chiefly concerns itself, and as
that aspiring thing which would usurp the throne of the
Almighty.* While we proclaim the carnal mind as seen in this
* There is a passage in Romans viii. 7-8 which throws light on this point,
for there we are told that "The carnal mind is enmity against God : for it
is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that
are in the flesh cannot please God." For at this stage, where a' revelation
is given, aspiring man crosses the path of a mightier than he, who will be
obeyed, who sooner or later says to the individual germ, or soul of the race
presented thus, "As you judge you shall be judged ". Possessing the little
superiority which your additional brain power gave you, what justice have
men rendered to that weaker portion of humanity, woman, whom the
Lord committed to your care as the product of his laws, and marked by a
sensitive nature as keen as your own. As you judge, so you shall be judged.
(Will not then that iniquitous Contagious Diseases Act speak here, when
man presents himself before the Supreme Being ?)

The Soul as a Group of Sensations. 1 57
sensational grouping to be immortal in Jesus' name,
so we view Him in one sense as the propitiation for
the sins of the whole world (1 John ii. 2.) In other
words, Jesus has secured the individual immortality
of the race, when, in the life to come, He, as judge,
will mete to each individual according to his own
measure (Matthew vii. 2), and shall have power to en
force His judgment. At the same time He has secured
immortality to each individual, as a responsible, in
telligent unit, capable of reasoning on the past, the
present, and the future ; fully conscious, moreover, of its
immortality as it sees humanity presented in Christ, who
is the God Man thus qualified to judge and condemn a
race, which is seen to be the product of God's laws while
it is insured of an eternal existence. As we present the
grouped sensations which embodies the human soul and
proclaim its immortality in Jesus' name, we point to
Jesus as God and Man, whom as the God of humanity
we worship and adore, for He took on Himself a human
form, and proved Himself capable of realising the joys
and sorrows which animate us, having rejoiced at the
marriage and wept at the grave, and in all respects
assumed our nature and suffered in our stead.

Chapter VII.
THE THEORY OF THE GROUPED SENSATIONS BROUGHT
OUT.
AS aspiring to connect two systems of truth, I present
the human soul as a group of sensations which are
the product of the organism and its environment, and as
yielding a conscious life which dwells in the framework
of the body. And thus I say the individual soul
bears the form of the body. Here I would say
one word to those who may possess natural deformi
ties, which are a cause of a cross to them in this
life. If they have glorified God in bearing their
burden in the spirit of the " Thy will be done ",
then the bodily defects will present the form of treasures
laid up in heaven, and be for the individual a triumph
through eternity. Not now will they seem as deformities,
but as distinguished marks of grace, of course in a limited
and Christian sense. A similar impress did our Saviour
bear in the marks of the nails on His hands and feet.
For the afflicted individual has suffered because of the
laws of nature, which is God operating on the earth and
producing a form like this. And any one so afflicted may
feel when the finger of scorn is pointed toward him,

Theory of the Grouped Sensations Drought out. 159
that the finger thus pointed is mocking God, represented
in the form produced by His laws.
We are now dealing with the soul as bearing the im
press of the body, and as a group of sensations which we
claim the right, in God's name, to proclaim eternal, in
accordance with the language of revealed truth. There
fore we would lay the foundation of the personal soul
first on the sanction presented in conscious life, and next
on the serial states of consciousness which form the
grouped sensations of the individual soul. It is an
accepted fact that our knowledge comes to us in the
shape of ideas ; for example, the child, when taught, per
ceives the dog, the cat, and the table, &c, &c, and the
man knows what anger and fear means by the feeling
implied, as the perception of the cause that gave the idea
birth ; so also he receives the impression into the brain,
already prepared as a kind of framework in which the
ideas presented in this framework were developed in
the parent germ. I thus accept as a fact the notion
that the cerebrum of the brain contains the stored up
ideas of the individual, presenting themselves as sensa
tions on the sensorium portion of the brain. The shock,
herein implied and occasioned by the union of the gases
and rendered a sensation, divides its forces according to
an established law ; as the wave spreads, one portion of
it carries the idea forward to the cerebrum portion
of the brain, the other part goes to form the indivi
dual soul (or angel, as it is called in the Revelation
of John). It will be here observed, that I take no
notice of any sensation except such as presents itself
in the consciousness of an intelligent being, because

160 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
this is the only portion that personal responsibility
is attached to. Though the actions and thoughts
of a drunk man with other similar cases, such as fever
and madness, will doubtless be presented in a continuous
flow of thought as the life experience of the individual —
^or I cannot comprehend a break in the continuity — yet
of such feelings I take no account and confine myself to
the flow of conscious life as presented in the responsible
man. From this reasoning our individual life will present the
divided wave in the shape of a sensation causing a shock
on the nerves of the sensorium, and this will be the por
tion presented before the judge as the disembodied spirit,
soul, or angel. It will be thus seen that the spirit thus
formed presents the appearance of a portion of matter
disintegrated from the body as the growing part of con
scious life, though doubtless it will also contain in its
framework the impression of the grouped forces of
the parents which made it possible to act thus, and
which were the seed which produced the individual
as a whole. I can see no better arrangement than
this, as in it we leave the inner brain (or cerebrum)
to arrange the stored up ideas according to its own
law, by which they will, or may, again present them
selves in a new form to consciousness, namely, as
thought. Here again the wave divides, the one half
being carried back, while the other part goes towards
forming the individual soul, and helps to create the big
thing which some of our men of science will proudly
find to belong to them, as the product of a well spent
active life in the search of truth, stored up for them-

Theory of the Grouped Sensations brought out. 161
selves in the form of an individual existence. In
the union of the gases thus presented we have an
objective existence which corresponds exactly with the
idea Christ gives of the soul, namely, as an existence
where every individual will have to render an account
of his stewardship, and as the conscious part of the
body made to rise again.

II

Chapter VIII.
CHRISTIAN RESPONSIBILITY IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN
SCIENCE UNLOCKING THE BIBLE.
IF modern science enables us to present the Saviour's
words in a form like this, it is time we had recog
nised the science of Christianity as true to ourselves and
others. Feeling that in Christianity we hold the key to
the immortality of the soul, as science shows us how the
form is built, then we ought to proclaim it in Jesus'
name eternal. How selfish we are not to do so, though in
looking at Christianity from this point we increase our
responsibility ten fold ! It would be almost as credible
to shun the subject altogether and live in peace, as
we allow the experimental knowledge of Christianity to
die out, or be so unjust as try to shelter ourselves in saying
that the men of science have closed the Bible them
selves, and therefore we are in no wise responsible. But
Christ will make us wholly responsible in this matter ;
for they have no opportunity of proving the immortality
of the soul, except in the light of a revelation. As
Christianity was given for that very purpose to animate
man with supernatural power, manifested in his union
with the Saviour, for the very end that he may witness
for God. As he rises above the necessity doctrine in
rising above the things of time and sense ; as he proves
his belief by a life corresponding to his profession ; as

Christian Responsibility Unlocking the Bible. 163
one whom Christ has chosen out of the world to proclaim
His truth ; as one reconciled to God, and responsible as
such to God for the impressions his actions produced on
the race in revealing God to it ; in all these we see the
forces which God has applied for that end in view. By
their influence the individual may be built up in a form in
which he shall not be ashamed to meet the Lord, and be
judged according to the deeds done in the body, as one
who is responsible for the impression he may have given
of the character of God. Of that God the world can
know nothing for certain, except through the members
of Christ's body, that is to say, individual believers. This
then is our position, whether we honestly accept it or
not: God in the form of Jesus Christ will certainly expect
positive fruit. But to return to the grouping of the inter
nal sensations as the grouping of the human soul. By my
way of reasoning we leave the cerebrum free to act ; only
we are responsible, in so far as we have power to control
the circumstances in which we store up our ideas. This
we cannot but feel if we keep in view the consequences
involved in the words which Jesus Himself made use of.
(Matthew xii. 36.) " But I say unto you, that every idle
word which men shall speak, they shall give account
thereof in the day of judgment." For the form of
reasonable soul is the product of the laws of nature, now
inspired through the conscious union with God, as the
fruit of the new birth, and therefore capable of perceiving
truth in the form of revelation, as the wave issuing from
a personal Christ. It may be through this medium, act
ing on the soul in the form of fixed laws,' and rebuilding
the structure according to the form which the individual

1 64 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
soul possesses, that there is presented a result as certain
as that of the laws of nature. Thus also it may be that
the impression which we receive in consciousness is the
result of the former actions, classified according to the
decrees manifested in the work of redemption. An
action like this, taking place here on what we shall call
the outer redeemed mind, as purchased by the Saviour's
redemption, and governed by the law of His kingdom,
would correspond exactly with the internal arrange
ment which, we have good reason for saying, is that
which is manifested in the action of the cerebrum brain.
Thus it sometimes happens with the subject which we
were engaged on- yesterday, or it may be months ago,
and which we left in utter confusion with a sigh of
regret at the helpless entanglement of it. When we take
itup again, we find that the subject is presented to con
sciousness with perfect clearness (implied in the words, I
see through it now). The ideas are divided and sub
divided so that we can take up any point and see where
it differs from, and where it agrees with, any other point.
In this way we proclaim an eternal truth as the fruit of a
reasonable soul, responsible because possessing this con
scious knowledge as the result of ideas received as sensa
tions, which were however quite different from the form
they now assume, although quite capable of being referred
to the forms presented in the separating sensations. For
these sensations have by one sense or another proceeded
from objective things, or at least things which profess to
have an objective existence. Surely then no one will be
so unreasonable as to claim the merit of these groupings.
With regard to them all that is left for the individual to

Christian Responsibility Unlocking the Bible. 165
do is to register the facts, as the means to a yet nobler
and higher end. For it is a universal law, that an estab
lished fact becomes the ground-work which we use as a
means to enable us to grasp something higher ; so to
speak, we degrade every thing as a means to attaining a
yet higher end in our aspirations. It is so with
Christianity. Christ has reconciled us to God as a
means to a yet higher end, by causing our service to be
rendered in the spirit of love, and our approach to the
Christian God with the cry of " Abba Father". Being
thus made desirous to glorify God in all -things we are
enabled to enjoy His conscious presence for ever.
In the view thus taken we have first the sensorium brain,
the seat of conscious life ; then we have a divided wave,
carrying the ideas inward to the cerebrum brain, and
outward to form the conscious soul (in the case of a
Christian embodying a unit of Christ's redemption pur
chase) ; but over this outer portion we have no control
during natural life. The seat of conscious memory is
certainly to be regarded as composed of the stored up
ideas of the cerebrum. It is to the cortical layer that
the molecular wave is directed when we rouse the vaso
motor nerves in, search of a missing thought. We raise
up one train of reasoning after another till we get hold
of the notion wanted, which we feel is stored away some
where ; and often after a fruitless search with a heavy
heart we turn away, as we feel we cannot advance one
step without this idea wherewith to close the argument,
only to find that after all the thought comes wholly un
expected, at the very time perhaps when we are listlessly
thinking of nothing. We feel our cheek flush, and our

1 66 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
heart beat, as we catch up the idea so much wanted ; for
with it the train of reasoning is complete (we have found
the piece of money which was lost). " The sensation that
presents itself as the " I am " of the individual life, must
therefore be sought for in the sensorium, which receives
every idea presented in consciousness, in the shape of a
sensation, of which the wave divides itself into two
halves, the one carrying the impression inward, the other
outward ; the whole being regulated by a natural law
which binds the ideas together in the single shock in ques
tion ; though the latter indeed may be viewed as made
into two halves, each doubtless governed by different
laws, as the effect of the different conditions under which
it originates. For let it be observed, the one half of the
before mentioned wave is fixed in the cortical layer of the
cerebrum brain, where it usually finds a prepared place,
or can unite with something bearing some resemblance ;
the other, united as a whole, swings in pure space, so to
speak, and is the expression of an imaginary existence,
bearing the impress of the individual soul, and is in fact
the sensitive thing our Lord addressed in Mark viii. 35-
38. There it is spoken of as a responsible thing which
may be lost, while yet it is able consciously to perceive
the effect of mediatorial rebuke in the particular case of
having been ashamed of Christ before a sinful world or
generation, and of having thus merited the treatment
naturally entailed by such conduct. For the Saviour, in
His human nature, feels and acts as a man possessing a
perfect sense of justice, and, having procured salvation
for all, He had a perfect right to demand to be recognised
and honoured accordingly. Believers that refuse this

Christian Responsibility Unlocking the Bible. i6j
recognition and honour, will nevertheless feel the fruit of
it in themselves, in their increased sense of justice as they
judge themselves. For though Christ saves His people
from the punishment due to their sins, by securing them
from the consequenee of the state implied in " You shall
not come out hence till you have paid the uttermost
farthing", yet the increasad sense of justice, as the fruit
of our being saved, will become so fully developed, that
each will recognise and realise his own short-coming. Not
that the Lord will upbraid any, but all will judge them
selves according to their works, viewed in connection
with their privileges, and the soul will be seen to be the
result of our earthly life, conscious memory in it being
understood as the chain that binds all our individual
experience together, and enables us to judge our past
actions in view of present circumstances. ,
In this objectised soul we present every conscious
thought and action. Viewing the thing thus, we may
suppose the union of the gases thus formed to assume
the impression of the thing implied in the thought ; for
example, in the form of dissolving views, as scene after
scene takes the place of the former one in the order of
the impressions received in the course of perception.
Suppose the case of two redeemed disembodied spirits'
capable of perceiving impressions in this way, one of
which had rendered many kind services to the other,
every one of which appeared in the form presented, as
the impression received in the union of the gases, the
shape of ideas being the result of the first conscious meet
ing, and all feeling in the form of ideas having expressed
itself as such, so that the exchange of conscious thought

1 68 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
might thus become a very rapid process. This pfesents
itself to my mind as a very natural mode of communi
cating between two conscious minds ; for in this case
mind presents itself as such, that is, as a grouped mass
of ideas in connection with a conscious mind, capable of
expressing themselves or itself so, yet longing for the re
surrection of the body, when the powers of the mind will
be greatly increased in the consequent reunion.

Chapter IX.
A THEORY APPLIED IN REFERENCE TO THE
RESURRECTION OF THE BODY.
WHEN we see the selecting power manifested in
the animal and vegetable worlds we may well
generalise in reference to the resurrection body. In the
vegetable world we see the fruit-bearing trees producing
fruit, each after its kind ; first the flower, and then the
fruit So in the animal world we behold species after
species brought forth from the parent germ, the organism
of each being included in the molecular substance of that
tiny speck from which in time we find the full grown
animal presented. A germ containing the selective
power, through the operation of which all this is pro
duced, and the different qualities of matter necessary for
the ends aimed at in maturity are evolved, we can speak
With eertainty about. And further, if the rays issuing
from the sun by uniting with waves of the same period
can build themselves up in the form of a special crystal
with perfect symmetry, as we may justly infer : and if
the aqueous vapour, seen at another stage in the ice
block, can with certainty be said to have been acted upon
according to law ; if we can in all this trace the selective
power in nature, manifested according to law, surely we
may justly infer that the human soul also will be en
dowed with a selective power, which will be clearly dis
played in the possession of the capacity to select and

170 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
unite with its parent germ in process of time, and this
notwithstanding that the germ may have passed through
many and great changes during the interval of separa
tion. This resurrection is a promised fruit of Christ's
redemption purchase, and less than this will not present
the promise fulfilled, and would rob our Lord of His
purchased possession.
In the light of present knowledge we may clothe the
spirits or angels of the redeemed with the resurrection
body, with as great certainty as we can talk of any
theoretic conception accepted as a truth in science, even
though this conception can only be regarded as a step
towards a yet higher conception as our knowledge and
intelligence increase. In this way we follow in the foot
steps of theoretical science, when in theory we create the
resurrection body of the saint ; for it is the redemption
purchase presented in the individual life we are dealing
with. As we use our reason, illuminated by scientific
thought learned at the feet of Tyndall, Bain, Spencer,
Lewes, and Carpenter, we are enabled to comprehend
our Saviour's words. Here and there we gather an im
pression, and gradually find a growth of bundles of
grouped sensations, presented in the form of ideas re
ceived, as the result of the union of the gases during the
period embracing our earthly life, i.e., in that portion of
time in which the human soul or mind was formed, as the
result of the bodily organism influenced through the
medium of its environment, and expressed in the feeling
and the felt, the object and the subject. In dealing with
this union, resulting in the renewed mind, we have a
something that presents an individual, in which every

The Resurrection of the Body. 1 7 1
impression was marked as the result of a change of feel
ing in the individual, and as the cause of a movement
somewhere else, either in the cerebrum brain, or through
the senses, as the case might be. Anyhow, we have a
something produced in connection with bodily organism.
Or, to put it somewhat differently, we have one portion
of matter receiving lasting impressions, as the result of
being thus related with another portion of matter, from
which, however, it has disengaged itself by being absent
from the body, but present with the Lord ; for the bodily
organism ' through which the soul was evolved falls to
pieces for the time being. Now this germ, which we
first find formed as the result of natural laws, was at
another stage of its development the conscious subject of
a change presented in the Christian records as a state of
being born again ; which state was realised as the result
of felt communion with Christ. This germ formed from
the union of the gases, and including the conscious
knowledge of the processes implied in the united series,
understood as conscious life, is a unit similar to the in
telligence we have presented to our view in the Revela
tion, as the Angel sent by Jesus, to make known the
future of the Church and the world to the beloved
disciple in the Isle of Patmos. Christ presents this
figure in the form of an Angel in Rev. i. 1, and again,
in the sixteenth verse of the last chapter, we find the
intelligence thus employed, making His antecedent cir
cumstances clearly apparent in Rev. xix. 10, as well as
in Rev.- xxii. 9, where occur the words, " I am thy
fellow-servantj arid of thy brethren the prophets, and of
them which keep the sayings of this book ; the result of

172 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
which is to leave no doubt as to the form of the intelli
gence implied in the term angel used by our Saviour.
In addition to this, our men of science have enabled us
to apprehend the full meaning of this phrase, by taking
it in conjunction with the words "behold the man". For,
because of their hard reasoning and clear thought, we
may earn the blessing promised in Rev. i. 3, " Blessed is
he that readeth, and they that hear the words of- this
prophecy, and keep those things which .are written
therein : for the time is at hand". From these words
in the light of present knowledge we may certainly infer
that Jesus will make us responsible as to the way in
which we apply the teachings of science, in our effort to
understand His words in the light of the immortality of
the soul as an accepted fact implied in revelation, and
lying at the very foundation of its existence. As the
fruit of that revelation the Saviour is presented as the
Redeemer of the race, reconciling man to God, and in
fluencing his soul in proportion as he recognises a
personal God to whom in love he would dedicate all
things. This God the man of science may adore, glorify,
and worship as the originator of the laws by which finite
intelligence came into being, and through the power of
which man as an intelligent being can rebuild the uni
verse in theory, laying down the result of his labours at
the feet of the Infinite Self-existing Eternal Being, and
see in Him the Father of Jesus Christ, the risen Lord,
the God of humanity, and the Ruler of the whole earth.
Through the labours of modern science enquirers we
can take hold of the disembodied individual life, in the
form of an angel," as representing the group of separate

The Resurrection of the Body. 173
experience of an individual intelligent life. It is to this
that our Saviour's words apply, when in Matthew xxiv.
31, He speaks of His angels as those who " Shall gather
together His elect from the four winds, from one end of
heaven to the other". Nor is it to be regarded as other
than the expression of a natural law, of which the result
will be that the portion, of the body which we have laid
in the grave as the dust of a departed friend, will again
unite with its parent germ in the shape of its former in
telligent companion, having every portion of matter
before presented in this union, which is essential to pro
cure the end required, and implied in the resurrection
body of the saints. In this form our present knowledge
enables us to comprehend the matter, by offering to us
the body and mind as one substance. On this head the
words of Jesus Himself are very instructive, as revealing
to us the way in which this process of reuniting is to be
effected. " Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the
eagles be gathered together." (Matthew xxiv. 28.) We
understand that by the eagles are signified the indi
vidual souls, and in the carcase we recognise the particles
or stuff of the body seen to close with the spirit, or soul,
or angel, just as Professor Tyndall's experiment present
to our view the play of the atoms in the process of the
formation of crystals. As we follow our Lord's words in
the light of modern science we see where one law can be
applied as well as another, only we cannot call our
departed friends out of heaven to show the working of
the process as Tyndall can in his experiment. Never
theless, we do not feel in any degree less secure on that
.account, as we repeat the words of our Saviour,

174 Christianity Reduced to Proof
" Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall
not pass away". (Matthew xxiv. 35.) And indeed it
would be very inconvenient for our friends, safely lodged
in the arms of Jesus, to come back at our bidding to
enable us to prove our theories, and thus to help in the
work in which we may sneeringly have refused to be
helped by them when here, because we thought our
knowledge far superior to theirs.
What portion of the dust that we lay in the grave will
be needful for this end we cannot tell, only it would
appear by Paul's reasoning that it depends on the
quality of the soul. (1 Cor. xv. 38-41.) In the passage
referred to God is safd to give the soul " a body as it
hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body", and
therefore we must view man in the sense here presented,
as the product of God's laws, and confine man's responsi
bility to the possible in man in the light of his organism
and environment. From this point of view Christiaffufy-
implies a terrible responsibility, as in the light of that
revelation we view the possible in man ; recognising, as
we have to recognise, in the objective Christ the elect of
God, with all as elected of God, where the ideal Christ,
in the form of our Saviour, appears in the subjective
Christ as part of the individual mind. From this point
of view we have no notion of what the possible in man
may include. All we know is, that through this union
humanity is presented in the form of body and mind and
spirit ; the last being regarded as of the form of a wave
of motion, issuing from the Infinite and passing through
the medium of the Saviour to animate the human
soul, and to express its presence to the individual mind

The Resurrection of the Body. \ 75
as a new state of consciousness. Through this spirit
God is addressed as a reconciled Father in the " Abba
Father," in the wave of feeling as motion sent back.
As Christ is the elect of God, being the fruit of revela
tion seen in the forces employed in the process working
according to law, so, in the very same sense, are we the
elect of Christ, according to the language used in Matt.
xxiv. 31, where we are told that his angels, in the form
of the redeemed disembodied spirits, gather his elect, in
the shape of the redeemed body belonging to each spirit,
from the four winds ; for Christ's redemption purchase
includes body and mind, and therefore he must collect
his elect in the form of their bodily organisms, which
helped in forming his image. Nothing seems more
intelligent than the truth presented here, as we follow
Paul in his reasoning in the light of present knowledge ;
and the difference in, the ftuit thus raised may include a
difference to be expressed in celestial and terrestrial
bodies,, possessing different degrees of glory, in accord
ance with the view of the possible in man. , When we
follow this line of argument, and view the Christian
man as endowed with the potential energy implied in
Paul's words, " I can do all things through Christ, which
strengtheneth me," (Phil. iv. 13)* who can say what
is the possible in man, as we consider the impressions
received through the sensorium brain (or portion of
brain), and know that through this origin the will pre-
* I' would have it understood that I make a great distinction between
those who have, been born again and others simply holding the truth in the
form of an intelligent conception, though both classes are entitled to the
name of Christian,

176 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
sents itself in such a way as to make it possible for man
to have the power over the two sets of muscles taking
their rise, here, and enabling him to act, or not to act, as
he views the consequence of each action in the light of
revealed truth ; as well as giving him power to think, or
not to think, on any subject which may be presented to
his conscious mind ; for he has the power to select, by
dismissing the one and retaining the other idea, except
when the mind may chance to be taken possession of in
consequence of a great sorrow or a great joy, which for
the time may prevent action. But in this latter case both
extremes are guarded against through the influence of
Christianity, for in the most trying circumstances we may
see the will of God, and say that all things work together
for good to them that love God. And in the highest
state of earthly joy we may see, that what the worldling
lives on is the expression of a state of mind which in
cludes our promised inheritance in the home to which
we hasten, and therefore may treat it as a common
thing. But, in the light of all this, it must appear to
every thoughtful mind, how careful every Christian ought
to be regarding the food he provides his mind with, both '
in regard to the books which he reads, that is to say, the
ideas which he imbibes, or in regard to the outward
life, in so far as he has control over the circumstances
connected with it. For the Christian has the certain
knowledge of the future consequences before his eyes,
as they have been revealed in the Christian records, and
it is in the light of these, and the effect produced by
Christ's life and death, for all springs from that point,
that the Christian's profession will be judged. But with

The Resurrection of the Body. 177
those who are converted individuals, the case is some
what different, if we understand by these those who are
living out their professions, and thus have the, power of
selecting their own bodily substance, which will include
the degree they are qualified to occupy in the state of
glory, as sinners saved by grace, and rejoicing in the
treasures it laid up in works done from love to Christ.
With them in the next world the element of justice
is so fully developed, that they are enabled to com
prehend with perfect accuracy the part they have
acted toward others, while they condemn the actions
of life that are worthy of being condemned, humbly
desiring to make amends if such be possible. For
surely heaven, or the state of being saved by the
Vicarious Sacrifice, cannot include less than this. Paul
tells us in 1 Cor. xi. 31, "If we would' judge our
selves we should not be judged ". But if it is so on
earth, surely we may infer that this high sense of justice,
with a desire to make amends, is included in the fruit of
the redemption purchase, as the individual sits in judg
ment on himself or herself. From this point, it is very
essential that we realise our responsibility in reference
to the potential energy stored up in the mind in the
shape of gradually accumulated ideas.
It is here that we find the intelligence of the race trea
sured Up, and accdrdingly it is the cerebrum brain which
must rise again in the shape of conscious life, first in
the portion of the human race raised at the first resurrec
tion, but ultimately, at the final resurrection when all will
rise to answer for the deeds done in the body.

12

Chapter X.
TWO SETS OF TRUTH CONTRASTED IN THE CEREBRUM
BRAIN.
THE treasure box of stored up ideas in the cerebrum
brain, alluded to in the last chapter, is the birth
right of the race, and is capable of being divided into
two groups, being the product of two distinct sources,
through both of which knowledge in the shape of
sensations come to us, and divides itself as it forms the
ideas which include conscious life. One portion of the
cerebrum brain, according to my reasoning, is stored up
with knowledge that comes to us in the shape of what is
earthly, that is, which has regard to our movements on
the earth. The other portion of the cerebrum is stored
with revealed truth, dealing with a state of existence
succeeding this life. This, we may say, is the revelation
contained in the Scriptures, because in them we have
grouped together both the ideas of revelation given from
time to time in the past, which have now been fulfilled,
as well as information regarding the future of the race.
Thus, in accepting the truth here revealed as containing
absolute truth, we receive the conscious knowledge of
revelation in impressions received into the brain.
Through this medium the ideas present conditions,
which either have an objective existence in this life in
some sense corresponding to the impression implied, or
must have an objective existence in the world to come

Two Sets of Truth Contrasted. 1 79
or, yet again, they present scenes which have still to be
acted out in this planet. In this sense then, we find the
element of history blended with the element of prophecy,
the- knowledge thus presented in the Bible being taken
as coming from God, and addressed to man. This is the
medium through which man may gain the knowledge
which will enable him to unite his soul in conscious
union with God, who represents the objective portion of
the Infinite, which has risen out of the revelation given,
and now occupies a point in space in the form of the
risen Lord — the God-Man who is the developing intelli
gence of the universe.
It will be seen that the set of ideas coming to us from
this source, is wholly connected with a revelation that
deals with a state of existence we have no means of
knowing anything about except through revelation, so
that the ideas stored up in connection with this subject
are purely of this nature, and therefore may be termed
collected truth, or knowledge of a peculiar nature.
Hence the form of energy which has been employed in
building up the brain in this respect, is not in one sense
concerned with the products of earth in this formation.
For in the way in which I have put this subject, the
Bible, or the truth contained in the Bible, is principally
the environment employed to build up the organism,
in the form at least in which Protestants are v most
concerned to have it built up. And in this connection I
would add one word of infinite importance to the indivi
dual Protestant. Our religious belief deals with the
individual as such, holding each man as responsible for
the formation of his individual existence, whereas the

180 . Christianity Reduced to Proof.
Roman Catholic Church upholds a system which takes
little or no notice of the individual, but leaves the Pur
gatorial fire to act upon the individual. And though I
rejoice in my Protestant independence, I cannot help
recognising much truth in this system, if wrought out in
its purity ; but alas ! alas ! viewing it in the light of a
book recently published in America, " The Priest, the
Woman, and the Confessional," by Father Chimoeny, it
seems the bleakest spot upon earth.
Having stored up one portion of the brain with ideas
got from the truth contained in the Bible, I would
point to the environment which encircles the organism on
the earth as that which furnishes the' ideas stored in the
other part of the cerebrum brain. In this division I
would be understood to deal purely with natural pheno
mena, not meaning to take account of such things as the
loaves and the fishes, &c, &c, as an environment, seeing
that these only appeared as such by the word of Jesus
This portion of the brain is stored with ideas which may
be tested in the form of objective existences, or as
theoretic conceptions which may be tested in this form.
The universal ether cannot be tested as such, but, if we
agree to accept the fact, we may procure a basis through
which demonstrative proof may be presented in another
form, as when we see the white light refracted or broken
up into the coloured light, and presented as coloured
light, and again, when we see one colour absorb another,
as is shown by experiment. In this way, viewing this
portion of the brain as stored by ideas, which are the
result of the organism and environment, we may say

Two Sets of Truth Contrasted. 1 8 1
that the sun's energy produced the impression and also
the appliance.
If we view light as a quality of matter, and also as the
medium through which we apprehend matter, we have
the transparent gas* presented to us as the result of the
union through which all our knowledge has received an
objective^and subjective existence. The expression of
feeling may be pointed to as containing all the elements
of matter issuing from the sun, and known to us in the
form of intelligent life. For is not this the process
implied in the formation of conscious life, as each form
of existence presents itself in the form of many com
pounds. Sometimes we pick' the idea to pieces, and
build it in a new form, calling it by a new name, or we
leave out one of the elements and present the idea as a
new thing. During all these changes does not the gas
unite in order to bring about the new form, as if it were
a little sun burning in the human brain? Anyhow,
whether the sun has produced all the stuff we call matter
as well as the energy we call force, is really of little
moment, for it has produced in one form or another all
the elements from which the brain has been built up.
For indeed nothing is more certain than this in our day,
as we view revelation in the light of science, and know
that science itself rests on demonstrable proof. Let us
call revealed truth God's truth, as we find it presented in
one portion of the brain, while the facts of nature resting
* Although transparent to light, observe this gas is far from transparent
to heat, and I believe on this point the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purga
tory will chiefly rest.

1 82 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
on demonstrable proof are man's truth, as seen in
another portion of the brain. Thus is truth, as presented
in the flesh, found to be contrasted in the cerebrum
brain in the form of matter as human intelligence.

Chapter XI.
CLERGYMEN RESPONSIBLE FOR MODERN SCEPTICISM.
VIEWING the portions of the brain built up of a
purely earthly form as the things of earth and
time, let us as Christians try to realise how we stand
indebted to our men of science, as of late years in their
search after truth they have stored our minds with new
ideas. Now the effect produced through the two
systems of truth — truth in revelation, and truth in nature
— will and must stand out in bold relief in the indivi
dual as the effect of different laws acting through
different mediums, yet both of God. Under this heading
we shall advance still farther in the question of contrast,
as we present our men of science in their devoted search
after truth in contrast with our Protestant clergymen
professing to proclaim the truth of the immortality of
the soul, with all the consequence attached to a respon.
sible life. Well, what sort of contrast do these two
sets of individuals present in the amount of energy,
generated by personal labour, given to the work each
class has voluntarily chosen to devote their earthly life
to. For there can be no doubt in the light of present
knowledge, that every grain of the sun's energy includes
a measured portion which will and must reappear in the
new form it has assumed, just as each soul will present
the measured portion which the individual carries into
eternity with him, as well as the forms in which the

1 84 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
forces thus objectised were generated while here. The
truth of this reasoning must be apparent to every honest
mind. From this point of view, I would ask what
appearance will some of our Clergymen make as they-
stand contrasted with our men of science, each class
assuming the form of intelligence which they may have
developed while each individual of the two classes is in pos
session of a separate system of truths standing contrasted ?
Thus I view the contrast in such a way that every grain
of force used up will proclaim its own work. I feel God
will demand a reason from our Clergymen for the cause
of the scepticism of the age, because the immortality of
the soul is the truth they have specially taken in hand to
deal with and , proclaim, while that is a form of truth
that our men of science are no wise responsible for.
For the truth with which they concern themselves
presents an objective existence, and the expression of the
spirit, as such, only lives in the bodily organism, and they
have no means to trace it there. Revealed truth alone
deals with the immortality of the soul and the nature of
the evidence attaching to that subject. Moreover, this is
concerned with that personal experience which arises
when the individual has been brought into direct
communion with the Saviour, and has undergone the.
change implied in "born again," which proclaims its/
power in producing the state of mind referred to by our
Saviour in John vii. 17. In what is there stated all may
recognise that personal fruit, arising from Christian be
lief, which enables the individual to present himself as
the inspired and taught of God, and therefore as pos
sessing the personal experience which proclaims the

Clergymen Responsible for Modern Scepticism. 185
individual so endowed as being in personal communion
with the Infinite, in consequence of being in union with
Christ. Further, having thus learned truth for himself
he is enabled to teach it to others. Hence he meets the
unbelieving man of science with the consciousness that,
as a Christian and as an individual, he possesses a state
of thought and feeling wholly absent from him (the un
believer), and different from any experience he has had,
so that he is often found beseeching the unbeliever to be
reconciled to God in Christ (or united to God in Christ).
But if Christianity does present something so distinct as
this, why not proclaim it ? For God in Christ will most
certainly expect this at the Clergyman's hands, as he
professes to be taught of God, and takes on himself the
responsibility of teaching others in proclaiming the im
mortality of the soul — an immortality that can only be
known to have demonstrative proof when it comes in the
shape of the. feeling and the felt, and can point to the
risen Lord as the Jesus of history. Therefore with all
this as within the scope of a Christian experience the
Clergyman is surely greatly responsible for the scepticism
of the age.

Chapter XII.
THE CONSEQUENCE OF WASTED ENERGY IN VIEW OF
THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY.
THE doctrine of the conservation of energy is now
recognised as an absolute or demonstrated truth.
We have seen our men of science weigh and measure
the energy or force stored up in a ton of coal ; they tell
us that it is the converged rays of the sun's bounty,
absorbed in woody fibres ages ago. By the aid of
modern Science this energy is liberated and measured ;
and though it appears in a different form, and is called
by a new name, we find that the absolute quantity
remains the same. Throughout the different changes it
has undergone, the original force has neither gained nor
lost in quantity ; and doubtless every grain of energy
used up in conscious life will bear demonstrative proof
of as rigid a nature. Thus the services rendered by the
poor in ministering to the luxury and comfort of the
rich will all be presented in due course, as each indi
vidual must, if humanity is to be judged according to
the deeds done in the body. In view of all this we would
ask, what obligations do those incur in our day who

The Consequence of Wasted Energy. 187
are great consumers of such energy, though producing no
useful work in return ? How different will the relation
ship that now divides the rich and the poor then appear,
as they change places, and the words of our Lord are
fully understood : " Woe unto you that are rich ! for ye
have received your consolation ". (Luke vi. 24.) , A like
remark applies to the terrible responsibility attaching
itself to wasteful extravagance of every description.
Consider the price paid in human energy in producing
coal as a necessity of life, in the hardships the collier has
to endure in his daily work, as he provides for the mem
bers of his household depending on him, while he enables
the race to advance because such as he will and must
work. How little do we think of all this in the wasteful
extravagance we display in regard to our coal, which was
first the product of the sun's rays in bygone ages, and
now is procured by much labour as human energy, the
brain and muscles of humanity, ioth examples of mus
cular force, liberating the sun's energy, and making it
possible for ihe race to advance ; for what would all our
mechanical appliances be without the use of coal ?
As finite intelligences we rise higher and yet higher, but
we may say that we are able to do so .only by the
aid of the collier's hardships, as he earns an honest
living. The hand of such, many would feel degraded if
expected to grasp in recognition of the best service
rendered, as if the money earned by such can in any
way repay the obligation received in procuring such
results as our coal enables us to make. Notwithstanding
all this we still continue to waste, heedless of the con
sequences which our waste entails, and of the load of

1 88 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
obligation we are brought under to a class whom we may
have treated with contempt, just as if we thought that
honest labour degraded humanity. How changed all
this will become when we meet before the throne of God,
with the Saviour, the carpenter of Galilee, seated on it
as judge, bearing the marks of the labouring man, while
his hand and his arm are stored with potential energy,
as the fruit of the thirty years' toil, -and his brow bears
the marks of the sweat of such labour !
And just fancy the human energy that, from first
to last, has been used up in producing that ball
dress, which is intended to be worn for one night
only, while the wearer of it dances away more
energy in those few hours than possibly she ever
devoted all her life to work — work, that is to say,
rendered as the fruit of love, and in the service of the
Saviourwhom she professes toserve, as she devoutlykneels
at the communion table. She is careless of truth like this,
but nevertheless she must render an account of the
energy she has used up, as well as given out, in that other
way ; for every grain of energy will proclaim itself in
the formation it appears in as the process implied in pro
curing and presenting that form. The blacksmith's right
arm will proclaim his calling in the muscular fibre pre
sented to the eye of sense, and the sensitive muscles of
the tongue and larynx of the throat yield a proof, equally
direct, of the nature of the energy there stored up in the
form of these members of the body, which made it pos*
sible for man to proclaim his thoughts in vocal sound, as
the symbol of his thought.

The Consequence of Wasted, Energy. 1 89
There is nothing we may be more certain of
than that concealment of any kind will be utterly
impossible in the state of existence which succeeds
this life, where the thing formed will proclaim the
process employed in forming it, as the evolved soul of
i.idividual man is objectised, in that grouped mass of
matter which stands disembodied, we call the soul.

Chapter XIII.
THE RESPONSIBILITY ATTACHING TO A CHRISTIAN
PROFESSION.
IN viewing the poor and the rich in relation to the
human energy of the one class being used up by the
other, I would remark in passing, that I do not think the
rich as a whole are so tyrannical as the poor. That is, in
the possible event of their changing places, I believe the
poor would tyrannise fully as much as the rich do,
Hence, in the light of Luke vi. 24, we must believe that
it is their circumstances and not their nature that gives
them the advantage, sheltering them from the woe that
falls on the rich. One thing is very apparent, that the
old landed gentry often do display great forbearance and
kindness to the poor on their properties, even when the
poor are very ungrateful, as sometimes happens.
Christianity then presents the distinction I have stated,
both in regard to its source, and in regard to the process
implied in the personal experience which it manifests
when it proclaims its divine origin. In the same way we
view our ultimate knowledge as coming to us in the
double shape of the feeling and the felt. If we regard
our Saviour's teaching, as for instance, in the Sermon on
the Mount, and especially in that part of it contained in
Matt. v. 39, where He says to His elect, " That ye resist,
not evil ; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right

Responsibility attaching to a Christian Profession. 191
cheek, turn to him the other also ". Regarding this we
cannot say that Christ's teaching presents a state of
endurance beyond what He is quite justified in expecting
from the individual in possession of eternal life, and
having the prospect of a glorious future provided for
him. For the latter has to bear witness in a world where
the believer's actions, in the prospect of the immortality
of the soul, are the only testifying declarations which
God has provided the race with on that point. For the
revelation contained in the Bible is evidently intended by
God to be objectised through this means ; the ideas
there revealed regarding the other world being first
received into the brain, and then embodied in the action
of the believer's life, being presented to humanity as his
testimony to the truth contained in revelation. To point
to the Bible and proclaim it as the Word of God, means
nothing in our day, except we can show the fruit arising
from it in some way. As a, theoretic conception it only
presents the appearance of a mere assertion, and simply
goes for nothing. If we are not prepared to endure all
that is implied in Matt. v. 39, we are quite justified in
not submitting to such usage, and may prefer to
divide our inheritance between time and eternity, by
having less treasures laid up in the shape of works done
for His sake. In this matter we have a perfect right to
choose ; for our Lord will only accept willing service.
Only, let us be honest enough to confess that we keep
this back, as we would demand from others what is
due to us, confessing that we are so influenced, and
prepared to take whatever consequences may follow. All
this is right and just; we wrong no one in this except our-

192 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
selves in our eternal glory. But in the face of the words
of our Saviour, contained in Matt v. 39, let us be honest
about it, and say plainly, the words are indeed these,
but we are not prepared for the sacrifice they involve,
and thus act an honest part to the world, to ourselves
and to our Saviour, and not seek to act such a hateful
part as would lead us to explain away the message in
our desire to excuse ourselves. For whether we believe
it or not, we, as professed believers, shall alone be made
responsible for the acting out of the doctrines taught in
the Christian records. Than this nothing is clearer to
us, as we view Christ's teaching in the light of present
knowledge. In the light of the necessity doctrine, with
no possibility of proving the immortality of the soul
apart from revelation, the teaching of the Lord is perfectly
intelligible. For example, take this statement of our
Lord's, " For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and
whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it ".
(Matt. xvi. 25). How meaningless and absurd it is to
expect or suppose that these words are addressed to any
but believers, when we know that humanity at large have
no certain authority for believing that there is another
life. Doubtless, in both worlds the believer alone will
be judged as condemned or acquitted, in the light of
Bible truth ; as professed believers they must suffer the
consequence of being lost as suchj if they negleet their
soul's salvation. Doubtless also, viewing all unbelievers
as Gentiles, we cannot but think that an additional re
sponsibility attaches to those of the latter who have
chanced to live where the Bible was presented as the
Word of God. With this, however, their responsibility *

Responsibility attaching to a Christian Profession. 193
ends, for they will be judged according to conscience.
Even so, however, they shall, alas ! find that they
have refused the inheritance of the adopted children of
God, as they are judged according to conscience, and
must abide by the consequence all through eternity.
They had_ a revelation within their reach, which, with
their superior intelligence, would have enabled them to
compare revelation with modern science, and so they
might have taken a high place in proclaiming God's will
on the earth. Thus they might have had many treasures
laid up as the fruit of love to Christ, having accepted Him
as a Redeemer, and so been brought in contact with
God. as God. Such then is the light in which I would
treat Christianity. That is to say, I would first divide
all men into two classes, the believers * and unbelievers,
each class possessing an entirely different experimental
knowledge. Then again, I would divide the cerebrum
brain of the believer, by marking off the portion of it
occupied by the truths coming through revelation. In
this resides the ideal Christ, rendering the possessor
capable of holding communion with Him, a developing
intelligence, as a power within the brain. The knowledge
here stored becomes conscious knowledge, only when
it proclaims its message on the sensorium ganglia
though stored with His words in the shape of ideas, dis
tinctly presented as revealed truth. In connection with
this point I would refer to the teaching of our Lord
(Matt. x. 19, 20), " When they deliver you up, take no
thought how or what ye shall speak; for it shall be given
* Generalising so broadly as this, we must attach the state of being born
again to the term believers here. 13

194 Ckt istianity Reduced to Proof.
you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is
not ye that speak, but the spirit of your Father which
speaketh in you ". This presents a case where the course
of action is vastly different from an individual having
command of the two sets of muscles in the sensorium
brain, and deals with the spontaneous character of the
individual in the action of the cerebrum brain, when
the vaso-motor nerves are roused, and when the self-
acting, leyden jar (as we may call this part of the brain),
gives off the effect of a previous experience, we shall say
in the form of electricity, manifesting the effect of our
Lord's words in the 20th verse just referred to. The
other portion of the brain may be fully stocked with the
ideas coming from modern science, and there demon
strated truth is accepted as God speaking in nature —
as the thoughts of God manifested in nature. From this
point of view the theoretic conceptions of modern science
are regarded as involving consequences which may throw
light on revealed truth, and are to be viewed in connection
with it, though of course not accepted as .absolute truth.
The believer, however, as an individual, is perfectly justi
fied in accepting the conclusions of theoretic science, as
feeling them to be the best explanation yet given of the
things and operations by which'we are surrounded, thus
vindicating his claim to private judgment, while he seeks
to give his reasons for so accepting them, even though they
are not confirmed by demonstrative proof. Viewing his
scientific conceptions in this way, in the light of revealed
truth, the believer may help to confirm theoretic science,
and secure for it a permanent place or basis; yet always let
him follow as a believer in the footsteps of modern

Responsibility attaching to a Christian Profession. 195
science, being only desirous to get more fully acquainted
with the teaching of Jesus as it stands revealed in the
light of God's dealings in nature. We would, therefore,
recognise the importance of individual liberty, while
proclaiming the truth of revelation in word and deed.
At the same time we are conscious of the difference that
divides the believer and the unbeliever ; only we would
leave others free to choose their lot in eternity. Inasmuch
as the believer makes the distinction that divides and thus
clearly defines the two classes, he feels that with this his
responsibility ends. For if he has received an advantage
from the other's labours, he has offered a definitely
marked experience in exchange, with a life corres
ponding to his belief. And yet one step further he
can go ; he can insure to his unbelieving brother the
immortality of the soul as absolute truth, which his posi
tion enables him to proclaim. How helpful would Chris
tianity in this way become, if each believer realized the
responsibility attaching to the individual life in the
light of an endless immortality. It is only when the two
truths are accepted in this way, and mingle freely in the
individual brain, that the full advantage arising from.
Christianity will appear with power on the earth, and
Christ will be honoured in being recognised as our Lord.

Chapter XIV.
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL DEFINED, AND THE
EFFECT OF THE ORGANISM.
IN the light of modern science we are wholly justified
in proclaiming the freedom ¦ of the will and the
sovereignty of God as manifested in what is possible to
man. In dealing with this subject in the meantime, we
will take no notice of the responsibility the Christian
belief confers thereby increasing the responsibility of the
individual a hundredfold. In view of the necessity doc
trine the responsibility in man is greatly less in conse
quence of so many elements coming into play, in shape
•of the antecedents of the individual, the early training,
and the circumstances in which he is placed, and over
which he has no control. From this point of view man's
responsibility is a question that the wisdom implied in
the Infinite alone can determine. For each grain of
energy, moving in connection with conscious life, can be
taken account of by Him, the Infinite One. The energy
in every form will proclaim the condition through
which it assumes its present form and place in the indi
vidual life, and whatever responsibility is attached there
with, it being always borne in mind that it is a law of
the organism, that a pleasure is snatched and a pain
avoided without any regard to consequences, and that
to act in accordance with this rule is always the natural

Freedom of the Will Defined. 197
law of the mind's action. The so called freedom of the.
will is determined by many antecedent circumstances,
and principally rests with -the power the individual has
acquired over the two sets of muscles taking their rise in
the sensorium brain, which will enable him to direct his
energy according to deliberate clioice. But that there
may' be a proper use of this high attainment in having a
complete control over the power of these muscles implied
in the execution of the will, their exercise must be accom
panied with a high sense of justice, in the light of indi
vidual responsibility, before this power will morally
affect man's actions. In the light of all this, how little
responsibility can we justly say attaches itself to many
actions which our laws punish with the greatest severity.
For example, take the case of a drunkard's brawl, in
which, let us suppose, one man kills another, Well, I
hold that the former is wholly irresponsible in this case ;
the so-called murderer had no control over his actions,
he had no power to withhold his hand ; his was an
action as much determined by previous circumstances as
the result of any of our laws of nature. The whole guilt
attaching to this act rests in the power the man had
over his 'inclination in regard to getting intoxicated.
And as I follow that man through the few succeeding
scenes of his earthly life, from the prison to the court of
the so-called justice, and hear the judge sum up the evi
dence, leaving the jury simply to say in one word what
he implied in many wo.rds, that the prisoner is guilty of
rnurder ; as I see the judge assume the black cap, and
in mock justice condemn the man as a murderer to
death, while he expresses a hope that God will have

198 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
mercy on his soul, which doubtless will be fully fulfilled
in view of all the circumstances of the case ; as I fol
low him to the scaffold, where through the carelessness
attaching to some one the hanging process may have
to be twice performed, the rope having broken, and
the man requiring to be hoisted and hanged a second
time. During all these different stages the poor man
is thought of as the guiltiest wretch on earth, while the
family of which he was a member is branded, because
it has chanced to be in connection with such a wretch.
The fact of the matter however is, that the man is a
martyr to circumstances over whieh he may have no
control, or over which his power may have been very
limited indeed. Certainly in regard to the last act for
which he and his family and friends suffer all this misery,
he is wholly irresponsible, and dies a martyr to the so-
called law of justice made in the name of a Christian
state, and in the light of the certain knowledge that the
automatic structure of the individual renders the action
of that individual, when under the influence of passion
or, drink, wholly automatic. Individuals who suffer thus
will doubtless find the measure of justice meted out by
a God of mercy wholly different from man's. And yet
man asks God's blessing on such a state of things, and
calls it justice in the light of Christ's teaching, with the
words ever before our eyes, " With what judgment ye
judge ye shall be judged ". (Matt. vii. 2.) No one will
deny that society must be protected, but dare we, in the
name of Christian justice, protect it at such a cost. Inr
deed, viewing our criminal class as a whole, we feel that
our sense of justice in the light of their responsibility is

Freedom of the Will Defined. 199
wholly at fault ; we must give them a new organism be
fore we have a right to punish them as we are doing,
and this new organism Christianity provides. The
scenes that sometimes takes place in our convict prisons
are of a nature that would paralyze the half of humanity,
if there were any one to care for the poor convicts, and
draw public attention to what they sometimes suffer.
But a convict seems to have no claim on humanity; for
no one heeds his grief. Yet true is it that in many cases
he suffers as a creature of circumstances ; while the
circumstances surrounding him in prison often, if not
always, tend to harden him yet more.
I was informed of one punishment administered in the
convict prison either at Portland or Portsmouth, in 1875
or 1876. It was of this nature. One of the convicts
had six dozen lashes given him in consequence of having
spit over the balcony on one of the officers (a medical
officer I think). This dreadful punishment so shocked
me when I heard it that I was quite unnerved for days.
I have since then prayed hundreds of times for the man
that suffered so, and look forward to meeting him in
glory, (for as a Christian of course I believe in the
efficacy of prayer as a means to an end). Now if the
officer so used, who must have been greatly provoked,
had simply forgiven the man this personal insult, which
I fancy he as a head official had the power to do, but
which perhaps he could not have done if it had happened
to an official in a lower position, how the cord of
sympathy would have vibrated in a heart treated in this
way ! The man would have stood self-condemned,
whereas the punishment suffered for such an offence

200 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
must have paralyzed every human feeling that might
linger in his heart. And how the prompters of such a
punishment are to stand before God, to have the same
measure in some sense measured to them again, is a
matter which concerns themselves only. The future cer
tainly does hold in store some such position as that for
them whoever they may be, and I for one do not feel
that I have any sympathy to offer them, seeing that,
when they had the power to act mercifully, they showed
so little mercy to the erring but weak.
What mockery the form of prayers offered up in behalf
of the convicts, in convict prisons, must appear before
God, in the light of such cases as this ! How useless -to
pray, where no sympathy is given! Prayer is as (much
to be valued as a means to an end in going forward 'to
our work, as the end itself which is ultimately to be
attained. When we ask the Giver of all Good to touch
the heart of any one, we ought also to ask to be able to help
that one, by having our own heart beating in sympathy.
I am informed that Ladies, while engaged in their works
of mercy and labour of love, have been excluded from
convict prisons, because they were too sympathetic and
were giving the authorities _ trouble in regard to the
punishments. In this I may have been misinformed,
but at any rate there is little power brought to bear so
, as to soften the convict's heart: However, as I think of
the future in connection with our convicts, I can find
comfort in the assurance that, where man has measured
out their punishment, God's justice is testified, and they
must stand acquitted before a merciful God, so far as the
offence they have suffered for is concerned. They have

Freedom of the Will Defined. 201
sinned against man, and man has punished them, there
fore the God of love is sure to acquit, for we find this
law established in relation to his capacity as a judge,
" an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth ". It is only
to the Christian that the words of our Saviour, " Resist
not evil" can apply (Matt. v. 39). As I follow our convicts
to the judgment seat, I can see every grain of energy stand
out in bold relief, in the shape of suffering exacted by man,
but taken account of by the God of humanity as he
appoints to them their place.
As the judge pronounces the sentence which he thinks
equivalent to the offence commuted, in the view of re
vealed truth, we would remind all such, that the words of
Jesus stand as eternal truth, " With what judgment ye
judge, ye shall be judged." When the criminal and the
judge change places, and the former, though he has sin
ned, has at length wrought out his punishment, will not
the other, in the name of national justice, await his sen
tence ? *
* In connection with this subject, I would draw the reader's attention to
a book just published, "Five Years' Penal Servitude,'' by one who has
endured it. The misery that arises from the working of the system is too
terrible to imagine, as we follow the author through the experience he
gained, where everything seemed to be so managed in the form of a
punishment as most effectively to crush every feeling of humanity out of the
convict, as he satisfies the demand of English justice, and by this deter
mines the position or system that nation will occupy in eternity; for
they must be judged according as they judge. I can look forward to the
time when a man who had strayed into temptation, and sinned and
suffered, and in consequence of suffering, like the author, found forgiveness
and repentance — when such will be as much respected and admired as they
are now despised and condemned. This state of things must succeed the
time when humanity is enabled to conceive God everywhere manifested in

202 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
In the conduct of our convict classes we see, how very
limited is the power which they have acquired over the
two sets of muscles taking their rise in the formation of
the will ; for they suffer again and again for the same
offence ; in many cases they almost seem to have no con
trol over themselves to enable them to resist a temptation.
In consequence, therefore, we must view the freedom of the
will as it is seen in the formation of two sets of muscles,
His laws. But now I would raise my voice with the author in behalf of
the weak, the erring, and the downtrodden, as we try to follow a case or
two. Page 210 — A young man gets five years for embezzlement, and leaves
a wife and child. The wife supports herself, and the child dies. She
quarrels with her mother, with whom she lives, writes her husband to ask
his consent to leave the protection of her mother and go into a lodging
house, but he is not at liberty to write for four months. The chaplain will
do nothing to enable him to write at once. The next he hears of her is
that she has left her mother, and the end is a gentleman has seduced her,
and she is living with him in style. She was a young pretty creature, of
nineteen, to whom her husband was devotedly attached. Fancy his
despair — an inmate of a convict prison, his child dead, his wife seduced !
Surrounded as we find him, is it possible for him to reform ? Observe the
chaplain, who had pledged himself before God and man to devote his time
to convert the convicts. He might have helped him, but he refused.
Page 349^-Two men are told to lift a stone, and told if they do not the
officer will report them for laziness. One of the two men's turn for writing
home came next week ; by a report against him he would lose the privilege
of writing, as well as getting a letter in reply. He puts forth his whole
strength, injures himself internally, falls to the ground, and, before he could
be taken to the infirmary, is dead. See the doctor and apotheeary on their
rounds (page 197), and the ointment left on the side of the author's plate
in the middle of his dinner, and fancy beiug obliged to swallow castor oil
while at dinner. Page 383 — A man gets seven years for stealing 12 eggs. In
this case the judge is one of the great unpaid. A postman, five years, for
stealing a few dozen of stamps. Page 142 — A decent old man, from Lan
cashire, who bore a previous good character, five years, for receiving 10s. of
postage stamps, which turned out to be stolen goods.

Freedom of the Will Defined. 203
over which the highly cultivated and developed man
sits in judgment, as he deliberates in view of the
past, the present, and the future, in his choice of
the course of action he is about to pursue. View
ing the soul as purely material, presented in a
group of molecular motion (destined as a conscious
thing to live for ever), where each part is the product of
previous action, the possibility of the capacity to act or
not to act having been evolved through the product of
two such sets of muscles, we see that man, when fully
developed, is in the possession of a power correspond-.
ing to the idea included in the freedom of the will,
while at the same time the laws of nature, as pre
senting the will of God, are definite and indepen
dent Yet man may be seen in the form of a finite
God, possessing complete power over those muscles,
as he deliberately chooses his future destiny in time and in
eternity ; a very God knowing good and evil, and pre
senting the form of demonstrated proof, which was
implied in the words of the serpent in Gen. iii. 5, " Your
eyes shall be opened, ye shall be as God's, knowing
good and evil ". For man, when he possesses full power
over the Will, as seen in the form of the two sets of
muscles (in view of the future of the race revealed), may,
as I said before, choose for eternity as he deliberates on
the past, the present, and the future.

Chapter XV.
a theory applied to explain revelation and
its effects.
IF we are justified, as I hold we are, in maintaining
that a special agency, made known in revelation,
was to reconcile man to God, and procure for him per
sonal good, which man was destined to receive in being
made a friend of God's in and through Jesus Christ, the
mediator provided for that end, so that man might serve
God in love in consequence of having been redeemed by
the blood of the Son of God, then the ideal Christ and
the actual Christ unite in the brain of the believer, and
express their union in the new birth. This is the action
and counter action determined of God, viewing Christ in
the form of his elect and all as elected who are united
in this way to Him, or in other words who believe on
Him, as when the gases have united in the brain in form
ing the impression implied in the ideal Christ, and the im
pression received manifests itself as demonstrative proof
in the felt communion implied in the realization of belief,
as stated in i John ii. 27. The wave of motion, personified
in the spirit, carries the impression generated at the centre
outward through space, first as it issues from the eternal
in the form of revealed truth, and now as it issues from
the objective Christ, as the expression of that revelation.
In the light of present knowledge, we may view revela
tion as presented in a very intelligent form, if we accept

A Theory applied to Explain Revelation. 205
mind as a quality and form of matter, and call it the
highest quality of the stuff fitting space, which we call
matter, while our senses are the means through which
we get acquainted with this stuff, filling infinite space as
matter and force. This latter we shall, for convenience,
term the material part of God's existence and the medium
which he makes use of in his communications with man.
We, view man therefore as a product of God's laws,
and as originated for the very purpose, we shall say, of
procuring His ends, so that through this means God
might procure a comparison for Himself. This was the
personal end God had to serve, so to speak, in producing
the form of man according to law, from the very lowest
form of existence ; and in order to produce this form a
revelation concerning future events was necessary.
Through this revelation the whole human race have
received infinite advantage and eternal benefits, which
procure for the race individual and eternal existence.
Well, in view of our universal medium, matter in
form, or matter and force, which has been called stuff, is
thus a very easy process, implied in revelation, which at
some future time is to occupy a certain place and form,
and which at present exists in some place and form. Now
suppose that, in the form of revealed truth, the same
portion of stuff that now exists somewhere should assume
the form which it will at some future time appear in
(according to law), then we shall have demonstrated the
revealed will of God, as it is presented in the form of re
vealed truth. For example,' in the Revelation of Saint
John in regard to the future of the race we have only to
suppose that the stuff, which was at a future stage of de-

206 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
velopment to appear as such, assumed that form for the
time being, as it presented the actual existence which
was to appear in due course according to law. All that
is necessary here is, that the stuff, as matter and force,
or matter in form, has an actual existence.
We are thus enabled, by the help of modern science,
to present a theoretic conception, implied in the decrees
of God, and understood as the laws through which forms
are produced ; our view being that the freedom of man's
will is included in the power he has attained, or may
possess, over two sets of muscles taking their rise in the
sensorium portion of the brain, over which man in his
highest development may preside in view of the past,
the present, and the future, as he chooses the course of
action he will pursue. And I hold that this attainment
includes the very highest development possible to the
race — the very highest form which the circumstances
could produce, and certainly the very highest which my
reason can comprehend. I would have it here distinctly
understood that Christianity does not come to us pro
fessing to deal with such a form as this, though it con
tains enough to satisfy such a form.
Christianity, as personified in Christ, may justly be
viewed as the product of the Jewish nation, to which a
revelation was given, and1 over which I expect the
Saviour will yet come, for a limited time, to reign
in Jerusalem, when He appears as the Messiah of
the Jews. From this point Christ is seen in his media
torial capacity, wherein he was decreed to reconcile man
to God by suffering in his stead, so freeing mankind
from the consequences of guilt on certain conditions.

A Theory applied to Explain Revelation. 207
Our Lord so presented is understood to come to any
nation in which the existence of a God as an Infinite
existence is an accepted fact, and in which men realise
their responsibility to this God, and their liability to
punishment in consequence of their actions.
To humanity in a state of development corresponding
to this, Christianity proclaims its glad tidings in the
form of a ' free gospel, where Christ is presented as a
substitute to all who will accept Him ; where all who as
sinners accept Him thus are reconciled to, and through
Him, approach God in the spirit of the " Abba Father "
of the Christian God. It will be thus seen that it is by
increasing the emotional element, or producing action in
consequence of emotion, that Christian action is pro
duced. As the heart of the individual is filled with
gratitude and love, then to give out energy in the shape
of service is a natural consequence, and in its essence is
purely automatic. I hold that the very adoration im
plied in the " Abba Father " of the reconciled child, is of
the highest form of service ; and surely all will allow
that that expression, as the outburst of emotion, is purely
automatic, is simply a quality of matter, beating in sym
pathy with God, and breathing the language of heaven,
personified in the felt presence of the Spirit of God, and
wholly of God. We might say that it is the brain
vibrating at the rate of motion implied by Paul in
1 Timothy vi. 16, as a quality of this stuff known to us
as matter, which surrounds the immediate presence of
God in the place we call heaven, wherein God manifests
His presence. It will thus be seen that Christianity
simply provides a motive and stimulus to action in a cer-

208 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
tain direction, so to speak, through the process implied
in faith working by love. The Christian work produced
in consequence of this love, according to the Saviour's
teaching, assumes the form of treasures laid up in heaven,
in the form of works done from love to Him, and it is
these that determine the position of the eternal inheri
tance which the believer has a claim to as the fruit of his
earthly life ; so that from this point it is the motive
which produces the action that God as Christ takes cog
nizance of, or a'ccepts as sacrifice. We thus see how the
individual becomes possessed of a new organism in con
nection with Christianity, as we view Christ in His
double form, presented in the ideal Christ and the actual
Christ, in the form of organism and environment. For
the ideal Christ moves the feelings, and the feelings
build the inner man, in the form of the new man referred
to by Paul, 2 Cor. v. 17. As our rnen of science theoreti
cally rebuild the universe so we rebuild the Church
theoretically ; for they have taught us to apply laws as
they do, and to see that laws will apply to one case as
well as to another. We see this automatic . action of
Christianity in the life of the devoted believer, as the
heart vibrates in love, and animates the organism, as the
brain rnay be said to act in obedience to the heart, supposing
the heart to mean feeling, and to be the motive power,
while the brain is the machine.
But if Christianity proper takes no account of works,
except such as flow from love to Christ, and if the sinner
is saved by grace from the consequence of punishment
for sin, that is, as a sinner for whom Christ died and who
is accepted in Christ. We must take into account the

A Theory applied to Explain Revelation. 209
element of justice in such as are fully developed, so that
each individual thus saved, in reviewing his earthly life
in glory, will be fully conscious of the consequences of
their actions, and of the effect their actions have pro
duced on their neighbours and the race. In consequence
of this element of justice being fully developed, a desire
to make amends to those we have injured, where such is
possible, must have a powerful effect on the individual
in procuring a spirit of humility, as well as influencing
us in many other forms of action. Hence though to a
certain extent an unrighteous act in this life may be for
given, yet the effect in another sense must follow us to
heaven, where we shall be conscious of the effect our
actions have caused, and shall see the effect that an un
kind word has produced in the loss of energy caused by
the pain it gave. We might follow the effect of all our
actions thus, and see the terrible consequence a selfish
life will have caused, as the stronger power triumphs
over the weaker.
I would end by adding one word in reference to
our duty toward the heathen. With a Christian re
ligion, which contains all I have stated, is it not
high time that the gospel should be proclaimed in
every land ? We are using up so much of the heathen's
life or energy in consequence of the luxurious state
of our living, seen in the foreign products made use
of, and this must present itself in the form of human
energy given out by the heathen in producing it, and
capable of being weighed and measured by our Lord as
the God of humanity or the God of the whole earth. In
view of the energy here referred to, what appearance will

210 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
be made by our Christian efforts put forth to secure their
salvation. This is a serious question, in view of the fact
that every particle of human energy will proclaim itself
in the work it has done, for at the final end it must do
so when humanity appears at the judgment-seat of
Christ.

CONCLUSION.
THE treatise I thus present to the public requires no
apology or qualification. If the union of two
truths already existing in contrasted ideas produce
new thoughts, including a spiritual experience which
in its essence includes God, making his presence felt
in consciousness, then we are presented with a state of
things in which every individual unit may enjoy the
proof of the truth implied. Therefore our religion can
no longer be called a religion of faith, if faith is looked
at as a negative quality apart from any experience of
the thing implied. Thus I present the truth of revela
tion as capable of expressing itself in consciousness, in a
feeling corresponding to the promise made by our Lord to
His followers in John xiv. 21, " He that loveth me shall be
loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will mani
fest myself unto him" This test removes the knowledge
held by the individual believer from a state of theory to
a state of certainty, which may be defined as a positivism
resulting from Christian belief. The truths of religion,
therefore, are presented as truths open to proof from
this point, and, as the result of the union of the mind
with Christ, are expressive of the objective and subjective
in the form of the wave of feeling, that unites the
redeemed soul with the Redeemer. Viewing feeling as
man's ultimate, the statements put forward in this
treatise are indeed capable of proof from one point at

212 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
anyrate, and consequently requires no qualification.
Therefore, I would say to all believers — prove the truth
of the statements made to you, for the Christian theory
does indeed admit of proof. (John vii. 17.)
Our Protestant faith was founded on or rose out of
justification by faith, and so we rely on absolute truth,
trusting to a crucified Redeemer as the seed of God in the
soul of -man proclaiming itself eternal. This doctrine of
justification by faith is peculiarly a Protestant doctrine,
if not the Protestant doctrine. According to its essence
the individual may inherit all things, and in laying up
treasures in heaven he possesses the power of reaping the
fruit of his love to Christ, as he rises higher and yet
higher in his knowledge of God as seen in his laws,
through science illuminating revelation. But as the
Protestants stand here accepted in Christ by God, we
need to pause while we try to answer many questions
requiring to be clearly defined. To many of these the
Roman Catholic Chuich* has given an answer, while we
attempt no explanation, but simply dismiss the subject.
For example, what explanations are we to give to the
words of Jesus in John xiv. 13, 14. "Whatsoever ye
shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father
may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything
*In reference to the Roman Catholic Church in the work she prescribes
to her clergymen, if honestly executed, it includes much merit, which doubt
less God will not despise ; for in honour to Him they are thus working
out their own salvation, in the form of duty prescribed by their Church,
calling itself by our Lord's name ; so that viewing God as the universal
power manifested in the uniformity of the laws of nature, we are only just
in our reasoning in supposing that the " Well done, good and faithful ser
vant," will at the final end be spoken to many of them.

Conclusion. 2 1 3
in my name I will do it '' ; and so with many texts
pointing to the same meaning elsewhere ? Well, are we
to assume that the power and efficacy of this promise
ceases when we fear that some one dear to us has died
without being born again, and we know that such a
change is not possible under the circumstances? Never
theless, may we not hope that the prayer of faith may yet
prove in some sense effectual, as we thus follow our
departed friend, and read our Lord's words in John xiv.
2, 3 : " In my Father's house are many mansions ;
. . . I go to prepare a place for you". Here we
realise that the place Jesus has prepared for such of
us who have been born again and are living for Christ,
will bear a more extended meaning than a single man
sion, for we may have many mansions in a place. Thus
may we not hope that a mansion may await our friend ?
Viewing mind as a quality of matter, we have the certain
knowledge that mind is progressive, so that we may hope
and pray even after our friends have ceased to occupy a
place in time. May it not be just possible that the
Roman Catholic notion of a purgatory represents some
corresponding state . of existence, though a state not
essential to Christians, when as believers they make their
calling and election sure by walking with God in Christ ;
whereas believers living an indifferent life may make such
a state essential to the securing of their future well-being
before they are qualified to use their resurrection body to
the glory of God. When we view the Church of Christ
as presenting a first and second resurrection (Rev. xx. 6)
this state seems very possible.
There are many such questions which must be answered

214 Christianity Reduced to Proof.
in the future by the Protestant Church in view of a pro
gressive immortality ; and one which will agitate the
Church of the future will be to define the meaning to be
attached to Jesus' words in Matt. xix. II, 12 in compari
son with Rev. xiv. 3, 4, 5. As we listen to the words
from the lips of our Saviour in Matt. xix. 12, " He that
is able to receive it, let him receive it," we feel that the
question of celibacy is to be discussed in the light in
which mind as a quality of matter will be viewed in the
future. For from this point of view we are very certain
that a life of celibacy presents that quality of stuff, which
we call mind, in a state peculiar to itself, and therefore
demanding an explanation from the Protestant minister
that takes the position of tmfolding the Word of God as
he finds it revealed in the Scriptures.
In the light of all this we shall have to view Paul's
teaching in 1 Cor. vi. 18 in connection with an impure
life, where man is said to sin against his own body. All
these questions, with many more, will be raised in the
future, and the sooner we try to understand revelation in
the light of scientific truth, the better will it be for indi
vidual man, so that each may make the best possible use
of his life on earth in view of a progressive immortality.
In the light of our present knowledge what a fount of
truth is proved to be included in such a verse as this
(Prov. xxii. 6), " Train up a child in the way he should
go, and when he is old he will not depart from it ''.
When we find that impressions received in youth in a
peculiar sense grow with the brain, and such impressions
remain there, we ought to remember that the future
destiny of the individual life will be influenced by such

Conclusion. 2 1 5
impressions, as it proclaims itself immortal, just as when
we cut our name on the bark of a young tree we find it
grows with the tree.
And again, let us refer to a passage in the Revelation
(that book so much questioned in our day, and cast aside
by many Christians as utterly unintelligible) in regard to
the new Jerusalem — Rev. xxi. 1 1 — where the city is pic
tured as " pure gold, like unto clear glass ! " Now, gold
is the only metal known to modern science that is trans
parent to light, and here we have the material substance
of the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, presented as
transparent gold, and therefore capable of transmitting
light and heat, as the city in the light of which the
nations of them that are saved are to walk (Rev. xxi. 23-
24). Science surely unfolds the Scriptures here in pre
senting a metallic base of this order, where we may
interpret the term city as possibly implying an intelli
gence of the highest order, in full communion with God
and with Christ, and thus giving out light and heat, a
source from which the nations referred to may be capable
of generating an increase of energy. This and much
more in that wonderful book of Revelation is worthy of
notice, and will be a subject of inquiry in the future,
when science teaches us to read it, for doubtless
it was given to explain the working of the laws of
nature in the light of revealed truth. Therefore
to make the individual to understand it, his mind must
be stored with experimental Christianity in the shape of
a personal experience, as well as with an intimate
acquaintance with modern science, which includes
mental powers of a high order. This is a quality of mind

216 Christianity Reduced to Proof
which we have a right to expect in the Protestant clergy
man, as he proclaims to a doubting world or race the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul, grounded on a
Christian faith, based on an objective Christ, occupying
a point in space known as heaven ; for faith in the
Scriptures is a term which implies a something which
has an objective existence, manifesting itself under cer
tain conditions. For example, the Christian will find
the objective Christ as the disembodied spirit gravitates
toward Him, its centre, while the soul quivers in love, as
it nears the personal Christ.
In conclusion, I would draw attention to Rev. xix. io:
"And I fell at His feet to worship Him, and He said
unto me, See thou do it not ; I am thy fellow-servant,
and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus :..
worship God : for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of
prophecy." In the truth included in these words (the
testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy) we
see the Lord as a developing intelligence revealing
truth, the meaning of which we realise as we
reason on revealed truth in the light of modern
science ; therefore a Christian striving to unfold God's
word of truth may be understood as striving to
unfold (or predicate) future events, much of which
will appear to the natural man as mere assumption, as
they thrust the ideas presented aside, (just as many of
this class are doing with the truth contained in the Bible
— truth, which is eternal as God, and it is this very truth
which divides the human race) ; consequently if we pro
claim an apparent new truth, we may expect to be
abused, while the new way of putting an old truth is being

Conclusion. 217
sifted and weighed, and at the end accepted as absolute
truth. So we Christians labour and wait, as we rest in
Christ our Lord.
Until I read the book referred to I knew nothing
about modern science, and cared as little, being happy
and contented in knowing Christ as my Lord, and only
determined to acquire some knowledge of science when
I perceived it would better help me to understand my
Bible. This knowledge I have acquired exclusively
through books, and in this form absorbed other's
thoughts. Knowledge thus accumulated through the
medium of so many differently constituted minds may
fairly claim some slight consideration from others having
greater advantages who may criticise the work. But
however erroneous the conclusions I have formed may
appear to some, I would remind them that I have drawn
my conclusions from two legitimate sources, and therefore
I am justified in demanding a better explanation of the
facts T deal with before they condemn my reasoning.

APPENDIX.

The Appendix includes an account of what to me is a special
or prophetic Revelation, and the theory that has proceeded
from it.

This Appendix has been made necessary from various
causes. First, in consequence of the book having been in a
way suppressed when it was issued in February, 1878,
though this was concealed from me at the time. As this
was a private matter, there is no occasion to refer further
to it here. Secondly, because I feel it my duty to detail
what to me implied a prophetic revelation (in the form of
a truth which will affect men in all ages), and the theory
which has risen from the revelation.
The distinctive character of the book may be fairly
estimated by its dedication to the memory of the late J. S.
Mill, and likewise from the complimentary way in whieh I
have felt it my duty to write of the startling work of the
Duke of Somerset, on " Christian Theology and Modern
Scepticism," even although it cuts at the very root of our
Christian faith. While I answer the question put in
page 148, "Is faith in God the faith which Jesus taught?"

n

or, " Is Christian faith more complex in its manifold require
ments ?" by showing that Christian faith is more complex in
its manifold requirements; thus I lead the intellectual
believer step by step onward until I produce in my willing
pupil the much to be desired mental condition which com
bines the conviction of the intellect with the obedience of
the heart, made apparent in faith working by love, or, in
other words, action flowing from feeling, which, in its
essence, includes union and communion with God in Christ,
being the final issue involved in Christianity.
The work, as a whole, is intended to point out that
Christianity anticipated the discoveries of modern students
of nature. I address myself to the intellectual believer
in a religious system which springs from the conviction
that a revelation has been given, in which God has revealed
His will by manifesting His presence from time to time in
a special manner — where the term or idea involved in
"prophet" is understood to affirm or predicate that revela
tion addressed to an individual enables such an one to
grasp a truth applicable to men in all ages. In our Protes
tant Church, the Bible is understood to include the truths
principally resting on what is termed the miraculous, all
of which the believer is unhesitatingly to accept, though his
judgment (or common sense) is expected to be his guide in
all other departments of knowledge, with the exception of
being warned against the views put forward by modern
science. Instance, Professor Tyndall's Belfast Address,

m

1874. Yet, in whatever form the Bible reveals the mira
culous, the Protestant believer is expected to accept it,
though revealing facts so startling as that man for the first
time appears or was called into existence only about seven
thousand years ago. Two thousand years later the earth is
ingulfed by a flood, but, fortunately for the work of crea
tion, the whole animal world, including eight souls, are saved
by means of an ark which took one hundred years in
building. Later on, fire from heaven consumes the Cities
of the Plain. In course, the ten plagues of Egypt follow,
with the Israelites escaping by the sea dividing, in which
their enemies 'are ingulfed ; with all' the miracles of the
wilderness, during forty years' wandering, in which we are
told neither their clothes nor their shoes waxed old upon
them. Perhaps, to us, the most startling of all is the sun
and moon standing still. Yet, an interference with what
we, in our infancy, call the laws of nature, may have no
place here, for the Protestants all allow that anything is
possible to the God they serve, as the Intelligence at the
heart of everything, by whom we may infer all is regulated
according to law, being the truth involved in the decrees
of God. Nevertheless, in the face of all this, the destruc
tive nature of my book must be very apparent, as it only
claims for the one miracle of the resurrection of our Lord,
the place of unhesitating acceptance freely granted by our
Protestant Church to all the others, while I offer substan
tial proof for the truth involved only in this one.

IV
If such an author comes forward with the startling
intelligence that, in consequence of truth, first perceived
in the form of a prophetic revelation, including truth
capable of being demonstrated, comprising in the perception
the physical basis of mind, therefore, truth which must
affect men in all ages — a revelation capable of bearing out
all this — would surely be hailed by the Protestant Church as
of vital importance. For, if the author can prove all this,
it will secure for the individual the intellectual freedom
involved in the Protestant term "right of private judgment,"
being the perception our Protestant Church rests on, yet
preserves in the Church all that is essential for individual
development, being the idea included in faith working by
love, which manifests the individual's sanctification — thus
making him fit for the Master's service. The simple story,
including this startling prophetic revelation, is told fur
ther on. The truth which it involves is wrought out in
this Appendix, finally taking the form of a theory, in
cluding ultimately the possible salvation of the race, being
capable of demonstrating the physical basis of mind in
its relation to a bodily organism ; and this does much to
prove the theory advanced by Dr. Carpenter in his " Prin
ciples of Mental Physiology," dealing, as that book does
with a special department of knowledge, presenting a system
of truth, which includes mind in the abstract, although it
was not issued when the prophetic revelation was given.
If such a startling announcement can be verified by facts

it must involve great gain to the liberal-minded Protestant. I
only read Dr. Carpenter's "Principles of Mental Physiology"
at the close of 1876, and I confidently affirm a careful
perusal of that book was absolutely necessary before I
could fully comprehend the nature of the prophetic revela
tion, so as to enable me to present the truth included in
the form of demonstrated truth, so that I might define, in
the fullest sense, the limit which the natural man is entitled
to (as seen in his form of body and mind), as he reasons on
the possibility of a future life, when the bodily organism is
broken up at death. For, doubtless, it is only when we
can refer to a revelation — instance Christianity (as it in
cludes Christ in his divine and human form and nature,
thus presenting the God-Man as the refuge for sinners)
that we have a right to apply the term absolute truth.
This, therefore, is all I contend for in using that term, which
in some quarters has been used as a powerful weapon
against me, so that my ignorance might be made apparent
in my professed admiration of J. S. Mill, the strenuous up
holder of the elasticity of knowledge. This I hold rather to
reflect credit, in consequence of this author, in his last
work, "Nature — the Utility of Religion and Theism,"
limiting the bounds of his class ; as they reason on the truth
included in a Christian revelation being entitled to no
higher aspiration arising from that glorious dispensation,
than the dim hope that a revelation has been given to
lighten the midnight darkness which separates the dead

VI
from the living ; positively excluding his class from having
a right or title to any higher aspiration — in this manifesting
his usual clear perception, in thus limiting the . subject
dealt with, by marking the limit that divides the two sets of
intdligent life, defined as unbelievers and believers. This
coming from him, leaves the Christian Church in no doubt
how it stands related to the world of Nature — with man in
the form of body and mind as the crowning intelligence at
the head of the system. For a sceptic has, in what I would
term his crowning work, clearly defined the relation in which
the Church stands towards the world, in proclaiming Christ's
divinity, thus alone giving it the power and honour to pro
claim the absolute truth included in our Christian revelation,
therefore entitled to exclude Doubt, which is the very element
included in my favourite author's definition of Hope. I,
therefore, ask any candid mind if there could be a more
full inclusion or exclusion than J. S. Mill has enabled the
true Church to make, as it proclaims Christianity capable
of securing a condition of mind that excludes doubt; yet,
leaving each intelligent man and woman free in their own
silent consciousness to answer God in the language which
will manifest the class they belong to, defined as a believer
or an unbeliever. In this little book, I can have left no
doubt in the reader's mind to which class I belong, as I-
claim for the Christian Church alone the power of pro
claiming truth in a special form, justly entitled to be de
fined as Absolute Truth.

Vll
The Protestant Church is based on the full conviction
that God's Spirit is a felt power in the renewed mind —
sanctifying and revealing truth of a spiritual nature, where
the feeling involved in this experience can always be defined
to a sympathising mind. This state of mind is implied in
Peter's "Be ready always to give an answer to every man
that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with
meekness and fear," 1 Peter, iii. 15, and refers to the dis
criminating power of the intellect, enabling the individual
to define a spiritual experience to a sympathising nature in
language clearly intelligible. This experience, in the fullest
sense, proves the power and presence of the Spirit of
God. It is this spiritual experience, therefore, as a felt
power within, which makes it safe for the individual to
derive knowledge from all quarters* and turn all to a
practical account, in view of the eternal existence which
springs from our present life — a life to which great respon
sibility is attached.
As we have gained much knowledge from the ideas
advanced by Modern Science, therefore, I hold our men of
science had a perfect right to expect the Protestant' Church to
point out the physical base of mind in the quality of the stuff
which includes conscious life, as the ego of the individual
being the formation procured by the oxygen of the blood
* For unless the individual realised his union with Christ in felt
communion, there might be a danger in acquiring knowledge from sceptic
books of his becoming an unbeliever.

vm

and the carbon of the system uniting in forming and fixing
the ideas or mental images, and is the formation which will
ultimately include the human soul, as it passes from the
body. But the definite perception included in this pro
cess, can only be perceived when revelation is illuminated
by taking possession of the thought put forward by Modern
Science enabling us to perceive the idea or mental image
involved in the term "soul." If we stand so related to
. Modern Science, we are only just in saying that our Protes
tant Church has, by her conservative notions, robbed the
men of science of their birth-right, including the assurance of
eternal life, and all that such involves. Am I not, then,
justified in saying the Protestant Church owed them a debt
of gratitude which was clearly within the limits of the
Church to repay ? And does not the slavish fear manifested
in the nervous excitement breathed out by the whole Protes
tant Church imply much unbelief, if the Bible is touched
ever so mildly by the friendly hand of criticism, as if our
Protestant Church did not secure for us the full assurance
that God's Spirit, as the absolute source of inspiration, was
a felt power in every renewed heart, inspiring men now as
ever with love to God in Christ, clearly defined in the
beautiful words I so often quote from the thirty-sixth answer
of our Presbyterian Catechism — "an assurance of God's
love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase
of grace, and perseverance therein to the end," which sup
plies the individual with a far surer test than though

rx

every word of the Bible could be proved to be literally in
spired ; for in this internal evidence we possess in the
Spirit of God the source from which all revelation comes,
which is all that is needed to ensure the fact that eternal
life, is a continuation of this life. Therefore we may hear
the Angel, of Revelation x. 6, proclaim that time shall be
no longer, which is- the answer to what I have stated,
sounding in our ears " time is no longer." This we are en
abled to do when we call in the aid of Science, by turning
to practical account the ideas advanced by such authors as
Dr. Carpenter.
I will now proceed to describe the prophetic revelation
referred to. Tt occurred in 1873, though I was obliged to con
ceal it until I made myself acquainted with the sub
ject, which enabled me to turn the truth involved to prac
tical account, by perceiving where Christianity and Science
may be said to form the counterpart of each other, in Chris
tianity predicting the discoveries of modern students of
nature. By this means I hoped to shield myself from cen
sure ; otherwise, had I not taken this precaution, as a
member of the Protestant Church, I would have incurred
the merited rebuke of casting pearfe before swine, while the
community would have turned to rend me, as that Church
wholly ignores the probability of God manifesting His
presence in a special or prophetic form, and so implying
that the book of revelation is closed. Had I belonged
to the Church of Rome, I would have been in a wholly

different position, as that Church holds the conviction that
God does manifest His presence from time to time, in what
is popularly called the miracles.
But to the point of the prophetic revelation. Soon after
" Christian Theology and Modern Scepticism" was issued,
I read the work, to find out immediately afterwards that
I, too, began to question the truth of Christianity. I, there
fore, determined to make myself acquainted with historical
Christianity, and seek to establish the truth from that
point. This course satisfied my intellect so completely that
not one trace of unbelief remained. From this point, Chris
tianity acquired a new and powerful influence over me, for,
in the truth it taught, I saw truth of infinite importance —
in fact, the one thing needful for time and eternity.
About this time, I formed a slight intimacy with a
family where the gentleman was an avowed sceptic; as such,
I felt exceedingly concerned about his salvation, and, after
once or twice referring to Christianity, we arranged to meet
and discuss the question. This meeting lasted about three
hours. By this interview I felt I had made very little im
pression on him, but he had left a lasting impression on me,
for I found him one of Miture's truest sons, highly endowed
with the religious element, as in reverence he acknowledged,
worshipped, and adored the God of Nature, while the
moral element was so fully developed as to be strong
enough to hold all low, grovelling, selfish ends in check.
The feeling left on my mind after this interview was that,

XI

from the point of personal merit, my sceptic friend was, in
God's sight, entitled to a higher place than I, for his
religious nature was more highly developed. Nevertheless,
from Bible testimony, he was an unbeliever and, therefore,
wholly unsaved. For some time after the interview, the
question, Can such as he be eternally lost ? was ever pre
sent in my mind. This question I felt utterly unable to
answer, for the Bible, to me, seemed to say he must, as an
unbeliever, be eternally lost. From this time, my burdened
mind sought to find relief in a term that would fully define
the distinction that separated his class from mine (defined
as believers and unbelievers) and mark the difference, by
words clear and definite. This state of mind lasted until
one Thursday evening, as I sat silently thinking, when all
at once the thought flashed into my mind that such as' he
could never rise above hope, either in this life or the next.
They live, and they hope to live. Hope is to them their
ultimatum, therefore, I concluded, Life is Hope. With this
generalization, the burden was lifted from my troubled mind.
My intellect was satisfied and relieved. I had found a real
distinction — in life is hope, as that idea stood contrasted in
my brain with its opposite, realized in the state of being
assured of eternal life, this being my own realized condition,
in the sight of God, as a believer, therefore, a sinner saved
by grace and entitled to eternal life. Had I not, then, found
a real distinction in the contrasted ideas so related ? Now my
whole being quivered with intense joy, for in this general-

XU

ization the hell of my infancy disappeared, as I perceived a
state of hope excluded despair, and the worst, as I reasoned,
may have hope. But this was not the source of all my joy,
for now I realized that all believers were, in a sense, saved,
and that it was Christ in them, the hope of glory, that ensured
eternal life to them. How bright and happy heaven and
earth seemed then, as in gratitude and love I sought to
adore God. My spirit breathed only holy joy as His Spirit
thus revealed truth.
This state of joy, as the fruit of a clear intellectual per
ception, lasted with more or less intensity up to Sunday,
until late in the evening, when I began to question the
enclosure, and reasoned thus : — Can God intend all believers
to be saved ? adding, Can those who live a wicked and im
pure life be saved and fit for heaven, though they do
believe ? With this question unanswered, I thought, arid
thought, and felt constrained to admit, that it certainly
could not be so revealed in the Christian doctrine that
all believers were saved and one with God in Christ. In
the early morning of the day following, when giving
expression to this thought, all at once the words, Life is
Hope, were stamped on my sensorium brain in letters of
light, just directly at the back of the left eye. This was the
form the impression was made to take in conveying the
truth involved in the generalization I had previously
made ;* the truth which I was about to efface by my
* Which was to the effect that a state of hope is th& highest point

xm

reasoning, namely, that God could not intend all believers
to be saved and one with Christ. But God prevented me,
and thus stamped the truth which is of infinite importance
to the race on my sensorium brain, so as to confirm it to me as
absolute truth* In the formation effected thus, the "L" and
the "H" were capital letters about an inch and half long, the
others small type. The impression lasted a second or two —
just long enough to make a vivid impression on consciousness,
in conscious mind — then faded away so as to give place to
another thought. I got up immediately, and observed it '
was a quarter to four o'clock on the 17th November, 1873,
as I took a note of the thoughts that succeeded the im
pression, which I copy, and was as follows : — " 17th Nov
ember, 1873 — He, the Spirit of Truth, has sent me to tell
you, 0, men of science, it is all mind over matter till you
take Jesus as God reconciling the world to Himself, and
the seat (part) of the brain you will find it (mind) in is
just beyond (behind) the eye — it may be only the left
eye, it may be both eyes, but you test and try, and you

man can rise to as he reasons on the possibility of a continuous exist
ence, and that this mental state of hope is equivalent to life ; so that
hope, in this sense, may be made to include eternal life.
* Observe, hope is the mental state which separates the believer
from the unbeliever — all believers being entitled to eternal life as the
fruit of belief ; consequently this revelation, when fully understood,
concerns unbelievers only. But it enables us to place in contrast the
mental condition the two classes are entitled to — the believers being
assured of eternal life, whereas the unbeliever lives on in hope as the
equivalent of life.

XIV
will find it visibly written there ; for mind, my Master,
King Jesus, has told me. Search and try and you will
find it true. I have it by faith, but you will have it by
sight. That is all he has sent me to tell you — the seat of the
brain you will find mind in,* just the seat of the brain yoa
* It will be necessary to add a note of explanation here. In the
cerebrum brain we find a quality of stuff which has come into existence
as the product of thought or mental life, as the quality of stuff which
includes the mental images, or ideas, of the race — consequently, a
material holding intelligent life in the concrete, as1 the stuff built up of,
and held together by, the mental images, which includes intelligent life
in its ideal form. This quality of stuff, by my reasoning, both forms
the tree and the fruit, in having the power to present, as ideas in the '
form of thought, on the sensorium brain, all the fruit the tree contains
where the ideas will express in the notion or conception of the sentiment,
or thing, all the knowledge of the subject dealt with which the indi
vidual possesses. For example, if religion is thought of, the conception
in the concrete deals with all we know of God, and our relation to him,
as the knowledge which has been gathered by the race, and treasured
up in the form of an element or conception in the cerebrum — a concep
tion which may be broken up into parts implied in these words :— " This
phase of religion is peculiar to this race, and that phase of religion to
that other race." By this process, the individual breaks up the religious
sentiment and analyzes it in perceiving what was peculiar to one race,
and what to another. I hold that the quality of stuff capable of producing
all this is held together in the cerebrum brain, built up in this form,
containing the soul or mental life as the experience of the race— the
action of which will be manifested, doubtless, by the laws peculiar to
the stuff and its conditions. Such action is sometimes manifested in the
preconscious action of the individual soul, where the subject we dis
missed in utter confusion, when taken up again is presented with clear
ness. But, observe, every sentiment or idea as matter and force governed
thus has been evolved through a brain, and is the product of intelligent
life, bound by laws as eternal as God. How this stuff, as the element
of thought, stands related to the individual is the matter in hand. Its
relation is, that it forms impressions, as thought in ideas on the sen
sorium brain, and is the inner world from which that organ receives im
pressions.

XV
will find mind' in. I have seen it written on the brain with
letters of light, and like a little fluid it faded away as soon
as the impression was given to make way -for another
thought. Prove for yourselves."
In communicating these facts I feel my responsibility
ends ; as, if any credit should be reflected on me for the
knowledge I may have gathered, the source of it will be
seen to have come from this impression, which, in one
sense, only concerns myself, though {he ideas involved in
their contrasted relationships are of infinite importance to
humanity — the question at issue being, Does belief ensure
eternal life, and, therefore, exclude doubt, as this experience
stands contrasted with its opposite, including a state of
doubt as seen in " Life is Hope" ? — the hope referred to here
having arisen from man's previous experience, in view of the
past, 'the present, and the future, which state of mind cer
tainly does include or involve doubt. How these two con
trasted ideas* stand related to humanity is the question that
concerns the Christian Church and demands an answer.
On the sensorium brain, a joint alliance is formed between the
internal source of knowledge I have described above, and the external
source, as the impression made on our senses by object existences. It is
by means of these two sources, as the springs of intellectual life, making
their influence felt on the sensorium brain, that the individual soul is
formed, and is the explanation I give of the term used, " seat of the
brain you will find mind in." Observe the office which the sensorium
brain performs is taking on impressions from two sources, and transform
ing them into thought, as soul or mental life.
* Which present the two mental states — the one including a state
of doubt, the other resting in full assurance.

xvi
It now remains with the men of science, on the one
hand, to say if mental life can be defined as thought, by
the impressions presented forming an idea or mental image
in the form of a sensation on the sensorium brain, as the oxy
gen of the blood and the carbon of the system unite ; the
union thus formed would contain each impression in the
form of thought, and, that thus grouped, unit, would ulti
mately be presented in what we are justified, as Christians,
in calling the individual soul. The forces so generated would
include conscious mind as the individual unit produced,
where 'we are to suppose the gases unite in photographing
every thought as the unit forming conscious mind. Where
as, the question to be answered by the other class as be
lievers, specially including the Protestant Church, will be,
does Christianity raise the believer above hope, by insuring
him of an eternal existence in union with Christ our Lord
in his relation as the Son of God ?
The question which concerns humanity is — how does
the truth involved in this prophetic revelation stand related
to known truth ? for it is only when contrasted with known
truth that it concerns the world of intelligent life. Observe
the different stages I passed through. First, Christianity is
unhesitatingly accepted and realised as absolute truth (for
I was converted in early life.) Then a period of doubt
follows, when scepticism makes the truth of Christianity to
be questioned. Here the historical evidence of Christi
anity steps in and establishes its truth. The effect of

xvn

which is manifested in the conviction stimulating the emo
tions, and feeling is profusely poured out in the form of a
strong desire for my sceptic friend's salvation.
Now, an entirely new element is perceived in the high,
moral, and religious character my sceptic friend presents,
in consequence of which, my intellectual conception is con
fused, as the question rises, Can this man be eternally lost ?
which must have remained a week or two unanswered,
until at last the discriminating power of the intellect per
ceived the distinction between the two classes (as believer and
unbeliever). This is clearly denned in Hope presenting the
highest point in view of eternal life to which the unbe
liever can ever attain, as he reasons on the past, the present,
and the future, in the light of eternity. Therefore, I con
cluded "Life is Hope" as onward through eternity the soul that
has been produced here will continue to live under different
and altered circumstances, and still hope to live, as age suc
ceeds age. While the believer, through all these stages,
enjoys the full assurance of eternal life, as he realizes life
in union and communion with the Son of God, seen in his
Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.
I arrived at these conclusions by the force of reason
alone. Up to this point there was no revelation properly
so called. ' Doubtless the joy that ensued was an expres
sion of what the Protestants define as the Spirit of God
revealing truth. The Spirit was thus fuMlling his mission
by verifying the words of the Saviour, " He shall guide you
B

xvm
into all truth, for He shall not speak of Himself, for whatso
ever He shall hear that shall He speak, and He shall show
you things to come," John xvi. 13. The work of the Spirit
will thus be understood to present the truth of revelation,
as it stands contrasted with truth in nature. The intelli
gence of the Christian would, by my reasoning, enable such1
an one to perceive truth from two points, and unite the
truth from both points under one head, in a generalized
idea.* The physical cause of the joy I experienced, how
ever, is the very same condition which our men of science
would define as joy derived from an intellectual percep
tion or insight ; the strain on the intellectual power being
removed in consequence of having secured the generaliza
tion desired, the object wished for was attained, and the
energy is poured out over the system, manifesting an
emotion of pleasure in all the members of the body rejoicing
together as one great whole. Up to this point, I had evi
dently anticipated what Christianity reveals, and the con
clusion the Protestant Church should have arrived at ere
now. There was no need for a prophetic revelation being
given if my brain had been big enough to hold the truth in
the form of an intellectual perception, grounded on tlie full
meaning of the term "belief" in its concrete form, as a term used
* Life indicates movement, and hope progressive movement ; but,
in the assurance of faith, both conceptions or ideas are combined under
one head, in eternal life being realized by the believer, where life and
progressive movement are doubtless included.

xix
to include the state of mind involved in acting with as much
energy for an intermediate end as for an immediate end,
which is the scientific way of putting faith working by love.
It will be thus seen the forces akeady present in our
Protestant faith were enough to produce this effect by pre
senting revealed truth in a clear form, demonstrated as the
intellect and the emotions performing their separate functions,
animated by love, for the work is clear and different from a
Protestant point of view. While I rested here, all is well,
for the joy and glory of Protestant Christianity are realized.
God is adored in having given His only begotten Son to
rpdeem the sinner.
Here I would have it clearly observed that it was in
reality the most subtle form of Egotism that necessitated
the prophetic revelation. Take notice of the question I am
trying to solve — when the impression was made on my
sensorium brain — namely, Can all that believe be saved — the
worst and the vilest ? Possibly, though I am not aware of
it, I was mentally comparing my own life with that of others
living in known sin, and, therefore, I must exalt myself
and those of my class by maintaining the old position, that
faith must be substantiated or accompanied by good works,
implied in — all that believe can not be saved. Although this
error was at the root, and is the most subtle' form of Egotism,
yet, doubtless, it springs from not having clear views of what
faith or belief really includes in its essence, which I would
again state is a mental condition that ensures working for

XX
an intermediate end with as much energy as for an im
mediate end, which is simply other words ; for firm, strong
faith will always produce a blameless life, or at anyrate, a
desire to live a blameless life. I had not clear enough
insight to perceive all this, therefore our Lord must present
the truth that separates the believer from the unbeliever
in his own language, as Life is Hope, by the impression
made in letters of light on, my sensorium brain. The
fact being that, though I held the truth in an intellectual
perception, I had not brain enough to hold all the parts
separately as a logical whole, The physical cause was the
oxygen and carbon in the system united, forming an im
pression as an idea, including truth that applies to the race,
in thus proving what science has revealed, enabling us to
take hold of their ideas, and state the case thus — our
mental life, in ideas as mental images is the formation
which has been effected in the union of the gases which
hold the forces together in the laws which include the indi
vidual soul.
The question now is, Has modern science' taught
us to comprehend the full meaning of revealed truth ?
as we make the acquaintance of such authors as H.
Spencer, H. Lewis, A. Bain, and Dr. Carpenter. To my
judgment, the last-named distinctly implies, in his " Prin
ciples of Mental Physiology," that the mental life of the
individual is " played off," or produced, in the impression
made on the sensorium brain ; and we have only to add,

XXI

when the oxygen of the blood unites with the carbon of
the system under this condition it includes in the shock
the ideal impression then present in conscious mind;
so that, in the light of revealed truth, we are justified
in holding up the continuous mental impressions thus
formed as the soul of the individual. All must admit that
this is a fair and logical course to adopt, as we reason on
revealed truth in the light of the ideas put forward by such
authors as I have here quoted, who teach us to comprehend
how the individual soul is formed. The process being, the
gases forming the impressions unite in holding the mental
images together as they are presented in their ideal form
(or as ideas), destined to contain the mental life or mind of
the evolved soul, being the unit of a system that includes
the intelligence of the human race. Observe, instead of
having the brain-organism, or function, we have the com
pound in the united gases bound together in the mental
images they include, presenting the conscious "ego" of the in
dividual, or we may perceive the brain containing our indi
vidual mental life as the impressions received that form
the series in the united gases. Could anything be more
simple and definite to realise than the union of the oxygen
and the carbon, thus formed, held together by means of the
mental image that includes knowledge as mind or mental
life ? While the union of the same gases taking place in
any other part of the organism or body, in consequence of
the mental image not being present, therefore, the union

XXII
effected in all other portions of the body would include an
entirely different form of matter. This last formation may
ultimately present the bodily organism in the form of crys
tallized carbon, over which the will of the individual would
be understood to exercise complete control, as the ultimate
form which the resurrection body will take, including a
unit of intelligent life which was produced on this planet.
With this explanation, I am hopeful the obscure parts
of my book will be rendered more intelligible. For example,
page 159, all I contend for is that the shock which accom
panies the union of the gases includes the mental image at
that moment present in consciousness, and that conscious
ness is always accompanied by this shock and union, which
form the physical counterpart of consciousness or mind,
forming the "ego" of the individual which has been evolved,
and is the product arising from a bodily organism in its
relation with its environment or surrounding. The bodily
organism thus possesses the power of taking on vibration
and transforming the vibration thus received into an intelli
gent perception of the thing or object causing the movement
or vibration* For example, we communicate our thoughts
by intelligent speech, the physical cause being atmospheric
* By means of the movement which is caused by the objective
existance, the object is transformed into the subjective state, so that, by
this process, the "ego " is formed. This is the meaning I attach to the
terms objective and subjective, which I use in my volume — terms which,
I contend, include man's ultimate knowledge, and, therefore, his intelli
gence.

xxm
air taking on certain, vibrations, interpreted as sound, which
convey and include the ideas or mental images the speaker
represents in the terms he uses. By this means, impres
sions are transmitted to other minds, by the organism taking
on the vibrations, including all this. Therefore, is not the
"ego" the product arising from the organism and its environ
ment in the bodily organism being so effected by its sur
rounding as to produce this "ego," as the intelligence of the
individual, included in the shock that accompanies or causes
consciousness, as the carbon and the oxygen unite on the
sensorium brain holding the impression formed together.
With this form of matter, understood as the "ego "or conscious
life of the individual, we have a physical base presented in
the brain organism which I hope to turn to good account,
as I strive to elucidate the obscure part of the subject, and
give the meaning I attach to the different terms dealt with.
The " ego," presented in this form, will be understood to in
clude the units of conscious life, grouped together so that
each unit is, in a sense, related with each other unit, form
ing one great whole. However, in this whole, we find some
of the units more closely related than others ; for example,
the groups defined as the moral and religious groups or
elements, the social group — the love of country and kindred,
and so on.
The religious element I would define as a group, which
specially includes, and springs from, the belief in a God, or
that there is an Intelligence at the heart of every thing.

xxiv
Therefore, all adoration, worship, reverence, including
submission to and acquiescence in the will of such a being
governing, according to his own good pleasure, are included
in this genu or group, as it vibrates in worship, so ren
dered by, or through, the individual possibly presenting
the special emotion in the colour seen by the phase of
vibration. I likewise assert the possibility of each in
dividual holding communion with God, as the human
soul in adoration seeks to approach the Infinite ; and I
hold this feeling, proceeding from the religious element,
to include man's ultimate knowledge of God, except where
a special revelation is given in some form. Under such
circumstances, man's knowledge of God must ever remain
exceedingly limited and vague, or obscure, except where
a special revelation is given, and such could only apply
as a general rale to man individually. Nevertheless,
man has a craving after the Infinite, as in aspiring adora
tion, a feeling which I hold may fill the inner man with
joy, and presents man in his natural state — instance
Theodore Parker. Such an element as this being present
with more or less intensity in the race, I hold to be demon
strated, or manifested, in the experience of the race as a
whole, having arisen, or sprung from, a desire in the lowest
intelligence to be led by a higher intelligence, increasing
until, in a way, God's felt presence is realized, and through
this, presents the highest form of worship possible to the
natural man. Observe, it does not ensure eternal life, and

xxv

the highest point that can ever be obtained by such is a
hope that life may be continued through eternity. We
may thus perceive how feeling after feeling has crystal
lized round the centre unit, and produced such men as we
sometimes find in the heathen world. To meet the require
ments of a race possessing such an element as this, Chris
tianity presents all that can be desired, when it is viewed in
connection with the moral element present in the race also,
having been evolved, possibly being first seen in connection
with the tribe or family, hence the social relationship con
necting itself with the interest of the individual, inducing
man to do justice to fellow-man, in exacting only his due,
while he would recognise service rendered, and strive to
give an equivalent. Until a social state is reached, where
each realizes his individual interest as included in the weal
of the general whole as a race ; doubtless this feeling will
ultimately include the weal of the intelligent universe as a
whole, viewed in the light which Christianity forecasts. This
social and moral element, merging one into the other, is a
sentiment, in some form or other, universally present in the
race. Where it exists in the highest form, the individuals
so possessed feel they have a common interest in the well-
being of the race as a whole, as each renders to each other
their due ; and while the moral element has been forming,
the germs have been crystallizing round the centre unit,
and by this means the part ultimately presents the " moral
element," manifested in humanity, even although the forces

xxvi
thus combined are often powerless when combating against
the self-regarding interest of the individual. Neverthe
less, in every case where the self-regarding interest is held
in check, this power is fully manifested in the moral
element, as the force proceeding from this group of brain
matter ; the function of that group being to perform moral
actions. Again, it is with a race thus possessed, in which
such feeling is present, that Revelation in the shape of
Christianity, making known to man in what relationship
he stands towards God, in consequence of being in posses
sion of a moral element, and, therefore, an Intelligence to
whom God will ultimately show himself all powerful, ad
dressing one and all of the race in the words used by our
Lord, Matthew vii. 2, " With what judgment ye judge, ye
shall be judged ; and with what measure ye mete, it shall
be measured to you again," having power to enforce the
condition implied ; for this includes all, in one way, that
Revelation demands of the natural man, and is fully in
cluded in the Jewish law of " an eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth," which includes the fulfilling of the Law.
It is with the moral and religious element, as the crys
tallized unit, which I have here defined, that Christianity
specially takes to do. And observe how my reasoning is
illuminated by the prophetic revelation referred to (as the
words were impressed on my sensorium brain in letters of
light — Life is Hope), showing how every thought of the
mind, as conscious life, has been photographed in the form

xxvn

of an impression by means of the gases uniting, in forming
and fitting the impression which includes the physical
basis of mind, as a portion of matter, where the mental life
of every individual is held fast in the forces that have
combined to form and fix the impressions included in
thought. Observe, that the crystallized mass of conscious matter,
thus defined, is held together in such a way that each
separate group expresses itself in the form of an element
having a special function. For example, the emotions of
adoration, worship, and reverence, proceed from the group
defined as the religious element ; and, observe, the emotion
proceeding from it may be either presented in the emotion
of pleasure or pain, as when man realizeth the awful respon
sibility attached to intelligent life, he may so dread the
consequences as to be filled with fear, approaching to des
pair, in realizing the position in which he stands to the
Almighty as a responsible intelligent being, who must ren
der an account. And, again, he may be filled with joy, as
his heart swells in adoration and love to the Supreme,
Eternal, Self-existing One ; therefore, either a pleasurable
or painful emotion may, for the time being, be presented
in consciousness as proceeding, from the same source or
element as the consequence of the intellectual perception
that part may assume, for the time being, felt as either
pleasure or pain; always bearing in mind that it is a
law of the organism that pleasure and pain cannot be

xxvm

represented in consciousness at once. For example, if
the animated mental mass is vibrating as the response of
the pleasurable emotion, for the time being, pain must
be absent or neutralized, because, in its essence, it con
tains a sentiment producing results entirely different, and,
doubtless, manifested by a phase of vibration entirely dif
ferent, possibly made apparent in the colour forming the
vibration then present. Therefore, in their essence, the
emotion of pleasure and pain present conditions totally
different, and are the very conditions, humanly speaking,
which either procure for the individual a continuous exist
ence, or deprive him of a continuous existence, in the sense
that pleasure increases the vital action, and pain diminishes
it. Nevertheless, the two contrasted emotions can only in
clude for the human race an equivalent for life and death,
in consequence of eternal life being ensured to all by re
vealed truth in Christ's sacrifice ; therefore, death, in the
abstract, must only mean, or stand for, a lowering of the
vital action, though certainly not a taking away of conscious
existence. Thus we reason on the physical causes of things,
and talk of the grouped intelligence as mental life, and see
that its life-giving property is included in the emotion of
pleasure, and its death-threatening property is included in
the emotion of pain.
I hold I am now justified in assuming that I have estab
lished the physical bases of mind or conscious life in this
grouped mass of intelligent life, held together by the forces

xxix
that have combined in forming and stamping the impres
sions received as mental life. The qualities of matter which
present the united substance are carbon and oxygen, trans
formed by the process into carbonic acid. In this material
the mental life of every individual is presented in a series
of ideas bound by laws lasting as eternity — personified in
the decrees of God as the combination His laws have pro
duced. In thought, I thus transform mental life, formed in
the brain organism, and present it in the form defined above,
this being the form which presents the human soul, for
which Christ has secured an eternal existence. 1 John ii. 2.
When we view the human soul in its concrete formation,
we may separate the special parts as groups, and define
the groups as the structures of the different functions ; the
function thus defined having the power of raising in the
conscious " ego " either the emotion of pleasure or pain. And,
observe, pleasure and pain are the contrasted emotions which
determine the moving power of the " ego," and are the germs
from which all movement springs; these movements in
clude the law of the organism, where the vital action is
ever increased by pleasure and diminished by pain. There
fore, pleasure and pain are to us the equivalents of life and
death, and are the roots which have quickened into intelli
gent life, enabling us to perceive the means that will secure
trie end desired — the vital power derived from pleasure
being ever sought after as an end, until Christianity steps
in with its pruning hook and strips the germ of its power

xxx

during this life, for Jesus' sake, by inducing the converted
and sanctified individual to choose suffering, so that the
Redeemer may be glorified and His race increased on earth.
, All our knowledge being derived from contrasted ideas,
and our judgments formed by the discriminating power of
the intellect, which enables us to classify our knowledge
in generalized ideas, by perceiving where one object or
emotion differs from all other objects or emotions, in conse
quence of the discriminating power we derive from this
mental condition, we may divide and build up in a new
form. For example, just fancy all that the two words,
matter and force, include to our men of science, as they
perceive in mental life the ultimate of matter, because the
knowledge of this stuff comes to us by the effect it manifests
on our bodily organism, and the mental conception growing
from the contact includes all we know of matter. Therefore,
in the brain organism, have we not mental life in the ideal
form, as the abstraction of all we know of matter — the dis
criminating power of the intellect having done its work of
putting down and building up, where the ideas, thus formed,
are stored away in the brain organism, to be reproduced
when wanted. In this form, the whole concrete mass is
included in the terms, subject and object, as the joint alliance
which has been formed on the sensorium brain, including
the mental conception, forming intelligent life, this language
being only intelligible to our men of science, as in rnind or
mental life they perceive all we know of matter and force.

xxxi

Whereas, to people not acquainted with the subject, the
words hardly present a definite intellectual perception at
all, in consequence of the discriminating power being less
fully educated on that point. In this, we see how differently
the crystallized mass of intelligent life has been made to
combine in one class compared with the other, whereas, our
men of science presenting intelligent life in this form,
enable us to understand in its fulness, the idea our Lord
wished to convey in the term " Flesh" where he includes this
very condition, in the words, " that which is born of the
flesh, is flesh," John iii. 6. Does not our Lord in this pre
dicate or reveal what students of nature now prove, while
He would have us point to this crystallized unit of conscious
life as the natural growth which has been brought to
maturity, through the influence of self-preservation, acting
as the force which has produced the whole ? But a force
which is now hurtful to the further development of the
individual, and necessitates the change involved in conver
sion, or in being born again, a change which cuts at the root
of the self-regarding interest, by inducing man to desire
God's glory in preference to his own glory, and thus making
man willing to suffer, so that God in Christ may be glori
fied, while the change which has produced 'this, includes a
new state of conciousness, defined as a spiritual experience,
realized in union and communion with God in Christ.
It is now necessary to refer to the law that governs the
conscious "ego," being the desire to secure a pleasure because

xxxn

of its life-giving property, which is the principal force
that stimulates the individual to pursue a self-regarding
course, where selfishness is at the root of every movement,
and is the power which so influences man's actions as to
make it impossible for trim to resist a temptation beyond a
certain point. The case may be otherwise stated thus —
in consequence of the law of his organism, compelling him
to pursue a selfish or self-regarding course, there is a
certain point beyond which he has no control, because
at this point his course is fixed or regulated by the law
of his organism, which compels him to choose a selfish
course, whoever will suffer or whatever may ensue. Con
sequently, men in reality have only a limited capacity to
resist a wrong course, and they cannot therefore be held
wholly responsible in the eye of the Almighty, far less in the
eye of his fellow-man, being conscious of how often he himself
falls. This, then, being the law of the organism, there is
only a limited power man can possibly acquire over his
destiny, even although the moral element is most assidu
ously cultivated, for even in this form there is always a
point beyond which man is liable or compdled to act from
the instinct of self-preservation ; whereas, when the moral
element is, as often happens, left almost wholly uncared
for or uncultivated, the power to resist a temptation is
very limited indeed. The question is, how far have ante
cedent circumstances limited the individual's power of
resistance. Anyhow, to the natural man, there is a point

xxxm
beyond which he is utterly powerless, and it is at this
point that Christianity proclaims its divine origin, in raising
the individual above the influence. dealt with, i.e. selfishness
and raising him above the influence of earth and the things
of earth. This is effected when he realizeth his union with
Christ in God. This union insuring him of a happy eter
nal existence, raises him above the surrounding circum
stances which before formed his temptations and compelled
him to choose a selfish course.
It is to produce this state of feeling I aim at in the first
part of the book, where I strive to create the mental states
which combine in making a Christian a willing servant of
God's, and in training the believer to stimulate the percep
tion included in Christianity, by so pouring the emotion of
love into the conception already present in the term belief,
as to fill the conscious Hfe, or " ego " of the individual with
love to Christ, being the source from which the highest form
of Christianity springs. I thus sought to stimulate the emo-r
tion of love so as to absorb every other feeling by com
pelling all earthly interests to possess only a limited power
instead of holding the principal place. Observe, the book
is not addressed to unbelievers, but principally deals with
the professing Christian in dealing with the fruit that pro
ceeds from Christian faith, or felt communion with Christ.
As I strive to give expression to the mental process that
accompanies and produces this fruit, in showing the intel
lectual believer that the highest form of Christianity is only

xxxiv
attained when the soul is stimulated by the emotion of love,
as the individual clings to, and rejoices in a personal Saviour
manifesting His presence in the soul thus possessed, and
filled with the new set of forces springing from belief in the
Christian faith. Thus, then, I hope to inspire the individual
believer with the Christian love and zeal that animated John
and Paul over eighteen hundred years ago, this being the
means by which the dead image of the ideal Christ held in
the form of an intellectual conception, would be animated by
a force containing in its essence the spirit of God and capable
of rousing the dead image into a living form, strong and
powerful enough to animate the believer with the fire and
zeal present in the souls redeemed in glory, as they raise the
song of triumph to the Lord who bought them. And I am
fully persuaded that the course enjoined at the beginning of
the book, if pursued in the spirit of real desire, will animate
the Christian believer with true joy, as his heart responds to
the full conviction included in " Christ is mine, for God is love,
I know and feel." And where such aspirations as these are
the daily and hourly experience of the mental life, are we
not justified in saying that the world has lost its power, and,
with it, the power of temptation is gone, for the joys that this
life or the world has to offer have lost their power. There
fore, man is redeemed and consecrated to God in Christ.
This, then, was the object I had in view in writing the
book, when I found, in the ideas put forward by the authors
I have referred to, the fits I required to enable me to per-

xxxv

ceive what the physical basis -of mind included, as the por
tion of conscious life our Lord defines as " flesh." As I thus
point to the physical basis of soul, in the united forces
which combine in procuring and fixing the mental images
of every thought that has passed, or will pass, through the
mind during our earthly life; I would ask, are not our souls
worth more care in cultivating for eternity than we bestow
on them ? In view of God having provided for us a Saviour
to rescue usfrom the penalty and power of the self-regarding
instinct, by animating us by new sets of forces which proclaim
their divine origin, by filling the soul with an assurance of
God's love, peace of conscience, joyin the Holy Ghost, increase
of grace, and perseverance therein to the end. Justification
by faith secures for the individual, at conversion, the power
to procure the form of mental life enjoined — to whom
Christ is to become all and all. But where the course which
will insure success is not followed, we may infer that such a
state will induce or entail suffering in the next life. The
full blessing being only promised to such as overcome, by
striving to regulate their lives in accordance with Christ's
teaching, as the fruit which will flow from love to Him
when the individual is wholly consecrated to the Lord.
Viewing the physical basis of mind in the light I put it, all
must allow that it is the truth put forward by Modern
Science which has enabled us to form a conception of the
physical basis of mind or soul, enabling us to understand
how matter, as conscious life, becomes possessed of a new

XXXVI

mental experience, manifested through our Christian belief,
made apparent in the words I will again state — " an assur
ance of God's love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy
Ghost, increase of grace, and perseverance therein to the
end." This glorious experience unites us with heaven in
uniting us with Christ. All this springs from our Protes
tant docjirine of justification by faith, being the germ from
which the emotion of love can alone in its purity proceed,
and procure works fully acceptable to God ; because such
works, as a natural consequence, flow from love to Christ in
spontaneous energy, where the individual looks for no re
ward. Much confusion has arisen from the Protestant
Church failing to perceive, with clearness, the idea involved
in Paul's conception of it being possible for man to attain
the state of glory included in his term of " glory of God,"
showing that, though the possibility of attaining to this high
state is included in the fruit that may flow from conversion,
nevertheless, from various causes, few Christians care to at
tain this high state, which is only secured where the life is
wholly consecrated to God in Christ ; but in this state of
consecration the idea included is the natural fruit which
flows from love to Christ, for in this state the individual is
filled with the fulness of God, therefore, full of the glory of
God. This fruit, in its highest form, does flow from, and
secure, a fully consecrated life, because fruit, so rendered,
includes both cause and effect, or the final cause, thus making
it possible for man to attain to the condition conveyed in

xxxvii

Paul's conception, which includes that to be filled with the
glory of God is made possible to man, and is the condition
which is attained when the life is fully consecrated to God in
Clirist. Much confusion has arisen from our Church not per
ceiving, with clearness, that, though conversion makes it
possible for man to attain to this high state, nevertheless,
that change does not often produce the high form of Chris
tianity included in Paul's conception, which, however, is
only made possible through conversion.
I hold that, though the individual has been converted,
where the life is not fully consecrated, the law of the orga
nism, in such a condition, will necessitate suffering in the
next life ; but that this suffering will spring from the
voluntary labour which the individual will choose to per
form, as fruit flowing from love to Christ, and that the
pain he suffers is in consequence of his organism not having
been perfected by means of a consecrated life while on earth.
But though the willing service such an one will now render
will be accompanied by pain as an offering of love — yet,
observe, this is pain voluntarily chosen. Nevertheless, that
such a condition does and will include suffering, is all I
contend for in the notion I hold of the conception included in
Purgatory, or an intermediate state of suffering, which is a
doctrine held by the Church of Rome.

I will proceed by stating my. theory as briefly as possible.
I can have left no doubt in my reader's mind of the

xxxvm

meaning I attach to the physical basis of mind, held fast in
a portion of matter we call fixed air, being the product of
intelligent life in the human system, by which the ideas
are formed as mental images comprising the conscious "ego,"
or we may state the matter thus — As it possess through the
brain organism, under certain conditions, the physical basis
of mind is formed in, fixed air* This quality of matter
is held together by the ideas forming mental life which
it contains, and, in consequence of these impressions, as
mental life, it must endure, and will possess the power of
reproducing, at will, the whole series or any portion of
the series of the individual's conscious life on earth.
The mental life here referred to has sprung from, and
formed itself into ideas, rising from conditions which have
an objective existence. This objective existence, which
forms the counterpart of the subjective state, is the object
which gave the subject birth, and which is now formed in
to an idea, as the mental image which has sprung from this
objective source, and which has thus been made to form the
mental conception of the object, including all the knowledge
we possess of the object. I hold that an object so related to
a subject will, under certain conditions, have the power of
rousing the ideal expression of the subjective state which
springs from this objective source. For example, suppose
the object which had roused the feeling of anger again pre
sent the " ego," which I always associate with a bodily form,
* Because the mental images thus formed are to be found in the fixed air.

XXXIX

might assume the expression of anger in the compressed
mouth, the frowning brow, the erect figure, with the feet
firmly planted on the ground, or might assume any of the
various expressions indicating that passion, and that the
objective existence which gave this feeling birth, might
always have the power of raising this state, though, doubt
less, under many conditions the sensation of anger wouid
be absent, though the expression was present. What I have
stated might be presented in the phase of vibration indi
cating anger. Matter or stuff possessing this power,
surely we are justified in defining as the physical basis of
mind, as it holds together in this form the concrete mental
life of the individual, where each individual life so defined
is in possession of a moral and religious element. Elements,
in this sense, will be understood to present the matured
ideas included in the terms as the products of evolution,
therefore, capable of progressing.
I would have it fully understood that the very highest
meaning I attach to the term Civilization is manifested in
the highest degree where the character of the individual
displays the " moral and religious " elements most fully deve
loped ; because my subject deals with a state of existence
in which the well-being of the individual will depend on
the care he has bestowed in cultivating his moral and reli
gious nature.
In close relation with these two elements, we find
Conscience, which includes the knowledge of right or

xl
wrong, a sense which enables the individual to form a
judgment between right and wrong, not ultimately, but
from his own point of view. For example, supposing
some one pursued a course of action which caused another
to bear the consequence of an unmerited rebuke. I hold
that the individual who caused another to suffer this, as
a general rule, would feel the injustice of the course he
had adopted, and, except where the temptation was very
strong, he would avoid such a course in the future, being
convinced it was a wrong course ; so that, by this means,
a notion of right and wrong would be formed. Conscience
so defined will, as a matter of course, depend very largely
on the character of the individual ; and I hold that Guilt
will only be attached to such an one where the conscious
feeling of having acted wrong exists. Thus, then, it will
remain entirely with the individual to pursue the course he
may approve of, always bearing in mind that such an one is
understood to have conceived the truth and accepted the
fact involved in there being an Intelligence at the heart of
everything, to whom he is responsible for his actions, being
liable to punishment if he fails in his duty, where the
degree of punishment will be based on the principle in
volved in our Lord's word, " Do to others as you would
have others do to you ; for with what measure ye mete it
shall be measured to you again." Though, doubtless, the sur
rounding circumstances of the life will greatly add to or
take from the responsibility, nevertheless the responsibility

xii
of all such (for I am dealing with the natural man) will be
limited, in consequence of the law of his organism compel
ling him to choose pleasure at a certain point, because of
its life-giving property defined as self-preservation — the
effect of such a condition being that, up to a certain point,
this selfish course may be kept in check by various causes ;
but when a certain point is reached it will disregard all
consequences in the effort to attain a continuous existence
— words equivalent to saying, if the temptation is strong
enough all are liable to fall, or, indeed, must fall. So that
with such a force at the root of intelligent life there can
only be a measure of justice possible or of responsibility at
tached, as the individual ever craves for a higher state, and
where the desire to attain it will, at a certain point, render
him careless of who may suffer if he can secure the end
desired* The selfishness which leads man astray seems to
be anticipated in, or closely allied to, a course sometimes re
commended in the phrase " regulating your conduct accord
ing to expediency." This course, to my judgment, implies
that man is only to think of his own convenience by using
every means to attain that end whoever may suffer. Where
this is the meaning attached to the phrase, and where the
course is recommended and pursued, we may expect the
very worst issue as the end of such a course. For the
* This reasoning leads to the conclusion that, if to do right is the
guiding principle that animates the individual, God may say of him "he
has done what he could."

xiii
motive implied in expediency so rendered rises wholly from
selfishness; and as the motive stands for everything in
rendering the action good or bad in God's sight, the motive
in this course being purely selfish, therefore wholly bad.
The truly bad effect which must proceed from this course
is very apparent to a race where the best is sure to fall if
the temptation is very strong. Nevertheless it is so with
the natural man, as the intelligence God purposed to re
deem, by securing for him, under certain conditions, a
happy eternal existence, in virtue of another's merits,
through whom the individual is rescued from the power of
selfishness, which includes conscious guilt, both having risen
from a desire to maintain a continued happy existence,
being the notion included in, and rising from, the emotion
of pleasure, which increases the vital action, by inducing
the desire to attain a yet greater flow of vitality whoever
will suffer, which course is sure to entail a selfish course.
However, the selfish course is checked when the individual
realizeth that his eternal life is secured, • and perceives the
obligation this includes. This being a state of mind which
will induce gratitude, and a desire to show it by being
willing to suffer so that the Saviour may be glorified, who
has redeemed him from the consequences of a selfish course,
which eventually, if not checked, must have led him to ruin.
When the individual realizeth all this, the gratitude which
proceeds and includes love becomes the strongest power, and
induces a self-sacrificing course, which eventually takes the

xliii
place of a selfish course, and, by this means, man is re
deemed. I further assert that, in one sense, Christ's atoning
sacrifice has secured or redeemed the race by securing for
the individual an eternal existence, which will, under certain
conditions, animate man with the emotion of love to God,
so that each will only desire an eternal existence in union
and communion with him. My theory is, that even where
Christianity has been rejected, but where the life has
been regulated by justice and truth, in so far as that
is possible to the natural or unbelieving man, the blame
less life of such will, in virtue of Christ's atoning sa
crifice, secure deliverance from the penalty included in
" You shall not come out thence till you have paid the
uttermost farthing." — Matt. v. 26. And that, in virtue of
the deliverance thus secured, the individual will be animated
with love to Christ which will produce a desire for a future
existence, only in union with the Redeemer. Self-preserva
tion will thus, in the form we find it, be neutralized. For
if we view intelligent life as acting according to law, this
self-regarding instinct must be overcome by a force which
will conquer it, and such a force we find included inGhrist's
atoning sacrifice, which operates by so increasing the emo
tional state as to compel the individual to act according to
a certain course, prompted by love to God, where, in its
fully developed state, all the actions proceeding from this
source will be in harmony with the will of God, being fruit
flowing from love to God.

xliv
In saying a good life, in virtue of Christ's sacrifice, will
save the soul from the consequence of sin, as seen in Matt.
v. 26, nevertheless, it is very apparent the relation Christ
stands in to the class saved thus is totally different from the
relation He stands in to believers. To the believer He is
Brother and Redeemer, a Saviour and Deliverer, sent of God,
to whom all believers are joined, and with whom all believers
work, in showing forth His glory on the earth, where He is re
viled and despised, and called an impostor, or at best, a self-
deceived man in regard to His mission. It is while such
abuse is heaped upon Him that the believer is honouring
Him in proclaiming His Divinity, and in being willing
to suffer for His sake — their mission being to proclaim an
absolute truth, involved in Christ having a permanent
objective existence, as the counterpart of the ideal Christ,
which is presented in every brain. Further, believers help
to build up a system of truth, where Christ, as the God-
Man, is the developing intelligence of the universe, and to
Him the believer is brother. Observe, unbelievers, though
rescued, have never honoured the God-Man on earth, and
because they have not honoured Him when He was despised
is, I believe, the difference which will distinguish the so-
called saved and lost through all eternity — these being
the two classes the race will ultimately be divided into ;'
for take- notice, the ideal Christ, in the God-Man, as the
fruit of revealed truth, has not been formed in the soul of
the one class. Though they are saved they are not fully

xiv
equipped, therefore, have not the power of believers, for
what the believer held in faith was an absolute truth, and
will be manifested in the God-Man, as the developing intel
ligence of the universe. Thus it is apparent that being deli
vered from the consequence of sin is totally different from
being members of the true Church, presenting the Church
of the first-born, where the ideal Christ, in the form of the
God-Man, brightens every brain, shining forth in the form
of a little sun, diffusing light and heat, and wherever the
influence is felt, developing intelligent life. I hold that to be
rescued from a self-regarding course is absolutely necessary
before a soul is fit for glory, because, among the pure and the
holy, one selfish act would pollute the place. But who can
tell what terrible retribution will be necessary before a
wicked life can be rescued according to law, as doubtless
all are under law; however, if we find man has only a
limited power of resisting a temptation, surely we cannot
infer that he is to be eternally lost, though doubtless there
will be an eternal distinction between the saved and the
lost, viewing the unbeliever as lost and the believer as
saved. I can have left no doubt in the reader's mind that no
works- coming from the believer are acceptable to God but
where they are the fruit of love, as action producing work
flowing from love. The source of action indicated here
alone will make the work acceptable to God. I, therefore,
infer, when we view the future of the race from a Chris-

xlvi
tian point, that the works proceeding from love, as the
work rendered by the Church of the first-born, will ulti
mately ensure the salvation of the race, in the form of
fruit flowing from love, in gratitude for personal deliverance,
acting according to law, as each member of the ransomed
Church united by love to Christ hastens on His errand of
mercy to the erring and weak, to proclaim the glad tidings
of " he that overcometh shall inherit all things " — Rev. xxi.
7. All this I h'old to have been included in the eternal
purpose of the redemption purchase, ultimately destined to
animate the worst with new life, as the birthright Christ
has procured for the race, including the glad tidings
delivered for the second time, as the Church of the first
born proclaims the tidings in every ear, which are destined
to animate every heart with love to Christ, as the indi
vidual strains every nerve to overcome, in the strength of
him that is all powerful ; while I ask will not we of the
Church of the first-born be the. willing messengers of such
tidings which will animate the face with hope now clouded
with despair, and ultimately enable each one to triumph
in love, as they strain every nerve to make themselves
worthy of Him who includes even the worst in the kingdom
that will be delivered up by our Lord to the Father at the
final end. This, then, is the result I anticipate from the
redemption purchase, which you and I, believer, may now,
and ever, hasten.
In adopting this course of reasoning, if I have erred, I

xlvii
have erred in mercy and not in judgment, as some of my
contemporaries have done, by proclaiming eternal punish
ment. To my judgment, in our present state of knowledge,
we may hear the voice of our Saviour proclaiming in every
ear the words delivered to St. John — " He that overcometh
shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall
be my son"— Rev. xxi. 7. I would draw particular attention
to this verse, for here it is Christ as God we have presented,
where they that overcome are to be His sons, whereas to the
Church of the firstborn, He stands in the relationship of a
brother. In this distinction, we may have the separation
that forms the eternal distinction — separating the two classes
dealt with. I thus form my judgment in forming new
ideas, and by this process I mentally divide and build
up in a new form, careless of others' judgments, only re
sponsible for myself, and willing to abide by the conse
quences. In what I have stated, / see all the promises 'of
God fulfilled in Christ, as in Him they are yea, and in Him
amen, unto the glory of God by us — 2 Cor. i. 2.
But let us look at this subject from another point. Sup
pose I make the salvation of the human race a matter of
prayer, resting my claim on the words of the second Psalm
— " Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine in
heritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy pos
session." (This, in our present state of knowledge, includes
all intelligent life, past, present, and to come, in view of
the material soul being purely of the earth earthy.) While

xlviii
I plead the promise given by our Lord — "All things whatso
ever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive" —
Matt. xxi. 22 — the fulfilment of this promise wholly rests on
belief as the condition that secures the end. Now, suppos
ing I have strong enough faith to believe I shall receive
all I pray for, how do I stand related to Christ in the pro
mise ? Observe, I have got the faith ; will that secure the
condition ? Let the doubters say yes or no to this ques
tion, for, as a Christian, I have asked the salvation or de
liverance of the race, past, present, and to come, and have
strong enough faith to believe I will succeed ; or, in other
words, that I am only filling God's decree in asking all this.
Anyhovj, I rest in full expectation that the promised condition
will thus be secured, in the ultimate deliverance of the race,
and all that such includes. Observe how the salvation of
the race is effected. MaD, as we find him constituted in
the power we term Will, has power to choose a certain
course of action up to a certain point, beyond which he is
utterly powerless, being compelled to adopt, at any cost,
the course that will ensure self-preservation. It is thus seen
to be a desire to ensure self-preservation that leads the in
dividual astray, so that when his self-preservation is secured
by the merits of another, and when the individual realizeth
that it is so, he will adopt a course of action in har
mony with the will of God, which will include the
ultimate well-being of the individual. This condition is
secured when the individual realizethh that his lifeis in

xlix1
union and communion with God. In this condition the
emotion of love is ever present to stimulate action in one
direction, the course being ever guided by a desire to glorify
God. This course is stimulated by gratitude, because of
the deliverance secured over a self-regarding instinct, which
must ultimately have ended in the individual's ruin, or, at
least, have limited his attainments in consequence of the
desire being present to secure individual well-being, inde
pendent of any regard to the will of God as the intelligence
at the heart of everything. Now, I hold that, stating the
cause of the existing evil, which is selfishness, and se
curing a remedy, or perceiving a possible remedy, is all we
are justified in attempting as finite creatures.
In the forces which have combined in forming the in
telligent mental life bound together and presented in fixed
air, we have the action of the individual soul, or the spirit
of man, in the " I am," " I can," " I will," which we call the
unit of the system forming intelligent life, as the germ that
has sprung from the earth and its surroundings ; and we
may fairly infer the character of the unit will be perceived
in the phase of vibration it presents. Supposing the indivi
dual stimulated by self-preservation, which will cause a
selfish course, red might be the colour distinguishing the
individual so influenced, where violet might distinguish the
character of one striving to glorify God in the face of many
difficulties; finally, the pure white would manifest the
character which had secured the victory and rested in Christ,
D

being capable of performing any service, because the phase
of vibration which could produce pain has ceased to have
any power or effect on a character where all changes have
been effected according to law in obedience to the will of
God ; being the form and character which Christian influence
was intended to produce through the course prescribed, acting
according to law ; this course would be personified in the
decrees of God as His laws.
In the way I put the subject, the phase of vibration
which produces the colour, under certain conditions, would
likewise include the character of the soul. In the red we
have a slow phase of vibration, capable of giving out this
one colour ; in the violet or mauve we have a very rapid
phase of vibration, therefore we may infer that the intelli
gence capable of vibrating so rapidly as this would possess
the power, up to this point, of increasing or retarding the
power of vibration at will. Whereas in the pure white light
we have the condition which includes all phases of vibration,
therefore the soul whose natural condition is to produce
white Hght, which includes the most rapid phase of vibration,
could at will assume any phase of vibration, so that under
such conditions pain would be impossible, as pain will be
understood to be caused by the individual striving to attain
a more rapid phase of vibration than the one natural to him
in a state where the phase of vibration indicates the de
gree of intelligence the individual has attained. The most
rapid phase of vibration would thus indicate the individual

possessing the greatest intellectual capacity, by enabling
him to combine ideas most rapidly, therefore possessing great
intellectual power.
To put all I have said in a more concise form ; this fixed
air, which includes intelligent life, and which has the power
of vibrating more or less rapidly, where the phase of vibra
tion distinguishes the degree of intelligence arrived at. The
most rapid vibration presenting the highest intelligence,
because the more rapid the phase of vibration, the more
quickly can the ideas be broken up and combined into new
forms and relationships, being the process that includes intelli
gent life. Here I only deal with the powers possessed by
the conscious " ego " over the matter defined as fixed air,
which include intelligent life. But, to look at the subject
from another point of view, as the quality of stuff which
forms the human cerebrum brain, the substance, in one sense
or another, is formed of, and held together by, the intelligence
of the race, taking the form of generalized ideas. For,
observe, this substance, hi forming the mental images, has
passed through a brain organism and contains the intelli
gence of the race, and, because of this, is defined as the
physical basis of mind ; for, in one sense, it both forms and
contains intelligent life, which is equivalent to saying that
the cerebrum brain contains, in generalized ideas, the intel
ligence of the race. , But, although all this is contained in
the cerebrum of the brain, the' power included is only per
ceived when the idea makes an impression as thought on

Iii
the sensorium brain. This being the portion of brain where
the conscious mental life of the individual is played off or
produced by the subject and the object forming a joint alli
ance here, and, by means of this alliance, conscious life is
produced as the intelligence of the individual in an ideal
form. Whereas, in view of the material way in which I put the
subject, the impressions coming from the cerebrum, in the
form of ideas as thought, may be as fairly classed by the
name of objects presenting an ideal form, as the impressions
coming through the senses are the effect of outward things
or objects The consequence of all this is that the sensorium
brain presents the medium which connects the two sources
from which our knowledge comes, and by means of the union
effected on the sensorium brain, the conscious " ego " is pro
duced, as the unit of intelligent life presenting the spirit of
man, the action of which, as I have before said, is manifested
in the " I am," " I can," " I will," which action, in a limited
sense, includes the individual's power to choose, in view of
the past, the present, and the future. Observe, by my reason
ing, the cerebrum is stored with the ideas as the frame-work
from which the intelligence of the race springs, because the
grouped unit of the thing implied is held in the form of an
idea, including all the knowledge we have of the thing, or
thought presented in the grouping, where all such group
ings are supposed to have an objective existence from which
they have sprung, and to which they apply, and must thus

liii
include, in the ideal form, the subject and object which
form ,the frame-work of intelligent life. The parts
called elements, because of their uniformity of action, are
formed by the units which resemble each other group
ing themselves together (in what we may term cerebrum
action as the pre-conscious action of the soul), and present
ing what we term the religious and moral elements, includ
ing the social element, and so on. In few words, all this is
presented by the law of inheritance, in the fruit-tree bear
ing fruit after its kind, to which we must all bow.
From all I have stated, you will observe the action of
man's soul or spirit in the "I am," "I can," "I will," is mani
fested by the impressions made on the sensorium brain, and
through that medium alone makes its influence felt in any
form. By means of the connection thus formed, manifest
ing the action of the individual in the " I am," " I can," " I
will," making its influence felt on the sensorium brain,
a communication is established with the outward world
by which the action of the will of the individual is
manifested, when, up to a certain point, it is possible for
the individual to choose between two courses of action.
Where to gratify self is the motive inducing one course,
and what he feels to be his duty to another being the
motive inducing the other course, where up to a certain
point man has the power of choosing what to his judge
ment is the just and proper course for him to adopt, there
fore, because of possessing this power, man has freedom of

liv
action, manifesting freedom of will, how-ever limited in
many cases the power may be, nevertheless the germ is
there, which includes the term Free Will. It is a terrible
responsibility (in having power to choose) that the term
Free Will confers on tlie human race ; for, in the power to
choose, the individual's destiny for time and eternity is in
volved. This is made very apparent in the plastic matter
forming the sensorium brain, because it is in that part of
the brain organism that the tracts or muscles are formed
which enable the individual to act from deliberate choice,
being the action included in Free Will. It is thus very
apparent that by choosing the right course the tract in
ducing that course will be strengthened, so that action
that first cost an effort will by-and-bye become an estab
lished habit, and will enable man to rise higher and yet
higher in the moral scale. By this means the very weakest
moral nature may ultimately attain the strength of a giant,
in adding moment by moment to the tract which bears
moral fruit. But where it is possible to build up our moral
nature thus, it is also possible to choose the opposite course
of action, where selfishness, regardless of how others suffer,
will lead to the very worst course, and where this course is
followed, the result will be most apparent in -eternity,
where the judgment implied in "as you judge you shall
be judged," will in one way or another be exacted from us
all, in the name of eternal justice. It is from, the point
involved in personal responsibility, that Dr. Caipenter's

lv
work referred to speaks with terrible power, by enforcing
the necessity of choosing the right course of action.
In dealing with Christianity, I am dealing with a qua
lity of matter as mind, where the ideal Christ is stamped
with all the force of a fixed idea, because the idea thus
formed comes from a permanent objective existence, thus con
taining the quality which ensures " absolute truth" whereas
conversion, in the abstract, may be said to include a force
which animates this dead or dormant image, by infusing
into the group of forces forming it, movement or life, by
animating this intellectual conception, with the emotion of
love generated by gratitude, in the individual having
realized, in its fulness, the relation which exists between
him and the objective Christ (as the counterpart of the
ideal unit), in having rescued him from the penalty,
according to Scripture rendering, attached to sin, likewise
insuring him of a happy eternal existence. Conversion, in
the abstract, will appear in the emotion of love stimulating
an intellectual conception already present in mind, in the
form of the ideal Christ as the Son of God sent to redeem
the sinner — John iii. 6. This being the conception Chris
tianity includes in conversion, where the intellect acts in
obedience to the heart, and is the conception that is included
in the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith. And
certain it is that, when fully understood, no conception could
bear out the principle of action more fully and forcibly,
because, in starting from this point, the individual at once

lvi
realizes his right and title to all the benefits arising from
the redemption-purchase ; and, when this is realized, grati
tude and love fill the soul, so that, by this influence, the
believer may attain complete control over his bodily or
ganism in the unhesitating surrender of his will to the will
of God. This being the condition included in the redemp
tion-purpose, which represents the elect or counterpart of
God on earth, as a people in which the Divine will is sub
stituted for the human, the emotions being ever stimulated
by love to God, which is other words for stating the intel
lectual conception included in being filled with all the
fulness of God — Eph. iii. 19. For, observe, Christian action,
viewed from the highest point or in its highest form, is not
the choosing between two or more modes of action, which
is the conception included in duty, but a stimulus, in the
form of an emotion, compelling the individual to take a
certain course of action, arising from love to God in Christ.
That is to say, the highest motive which prompts to ac
tion in a converted individual is love to God in Christ ; the
intellect and will is only used or brought into action to
enable the individual to use the best means to attain an
end, where the end to be attained, prompted by love,
ought always to be God's glory. This, you will perceive,
leaves great scope for the individual effort of the intelligent
responsible agent, guided by the Spirit of God. Any one
must see how difficult the course here is, as self is to be
lost sight of in the effort to glorify God ; hence the ex-

Ivii
perience of Paul — Rom. vii. — becomes more or less the
experience of each converted, individual, though the victory
is secured in the " I can do all things through Christ
which strengtheneth me." — Philipp. iv. 13. Even where
the organism has come to its maturity, by following the
natural course of self-preservation, which, up to the point
of conversion, is a just and proper course when the rights
of others are properly regarded; even when this is the
case at conversion, if the bodily organism is wholly stimu
lated by love to God, this new influence will insure the
individual's sanctification, and so make him fit for the
Master's service and work.
All this is included in conversion; for, from that moment,
the forces are present in the organism which are capable to
effect this change ; therefore, in the broadest sense, conversion
fits the individual for heaven, or, tO put it in other words,.
puts him in possession of the forces which govern and ani
mate the redeemed in glory, and is the end decreed by God,
to he attained by means of the redemption-purpose, includ
ing the believer's sanctification or full consecration to God.
But, alas ! how little of this consecration is seen in the lives
and conversation of the Protestant believer of to-day. There
fore, I ask, is it not very probable, as the consequence of our
living as we are doing, that we are guilty of acting a part
which will unfit and deprive us of being among those who are
to enjoy the happy condition of being raised at the first
resurrection, over whom the second death will' have no

lviii
power — a class defined as blessed and holy ? — Rev. xx. 6.
Blessed, doubtless, all believers are. But, alas ! how little
have many of us of the holiness that proceeds from a conse
crated life, the absence of which will, in my judgment, en
tail suffering in the next life, on the consideration that, at
•conversion we were put in possession of the power capable of
producing the effect required to fit us for the first resurrection,
which condition, to my judgment, includes our bodily or
ganism bearing the impress of a consecrated life in obedience to
His revealed will; where love to God has animated the struc
ture, as the Old Man presented in self-preservation was being
burned out, so that the new form might be made to take his
place, and thus make it safe for us to be entrusted with a
bodily organism, because it is built up in the form God
would have it built up in. For, in our present state of know
ledge, we have to deal with the physical basis of mind as
well as body, and, therefore, in justice to the Christian
martyrs, we are obliged to look for a distinction represent
ing the two classes of believers.
How few of us can say we are wholly consecrated to
God, though the condition is present in conversion which
could have effected that end, for the forces involved in
the conception perceived as conversion include, and will
produce, the course of action defined in faith working by
love. The faith here stands for the full conviction that
the individual is entitled to forgiveness and eternal life,
in virtue of the benefits secured by Christ's atoning sacri-

lix
fice being freely offered and accepted ; when this is
realized, the natural fruit flowing from this conception
is gratitude or love. But, observe, the stream of action
flowing in love, from a clear conception of the deliverance
secured, is marred and quenched if doubt arises as to the
individual having a claim and title to the benefits derived
from this source. Where this doubt is allowed to make
way, the fruit, which is the action of love flowing in its purity,
will cease, and where this mental state of doubt is allowed
to go on increasing, the individual will only hold the con
ception dealt with as true in the abstract, but will cease to
apply it individually. In this state of mind he may be said
to retain the shadow in the dead conception, but he has lost
the substance in the fruit flowing from love as the natural
and vital action flowing from, or implied in, conversion ; but
where the vital action is retarded, we are only just in sup
posing that, because of spiritual deadness, the element of
regret may mingle in our song of adoration as the rejoicing
spirit, not yet clothed with the resurrection body, joins in
the millennium glory.
Thus, in the light of known truth, is my theory illumi
nated by the impression, " Life is hope," as this full thought
presents the mental state of an uncertain future, which
stands contrasted with the assurance of eternal life as the
realized experience and heritage of every sanctified believer.
It will thus be perceived that the two states dealt with pre
sent two totally different mental conditions — distinguishing

Ix
the saved and the lost, where despair is, or ought to be, wholly
excluded ; for the worst may have hope. A title to hope being
surely included in the future of a race which, in this life,
has been fettered by a conditioned existence, in perfection
being impossible to an unconverted man.
We may infer that the truly consecrated will respond to
the voice of love in the " Come up hither." — Rev. xi. 12. Or,
to put this truth in another form, let us suppose, while I write,
the shout is heard, " The bridegroom cometh ; go ye out to
meet him." How few of the redeemed Church might be
supposed to respond, while all that hesitated would be unpre
pared for the blessing included in the state implied " Blessed
are they which -are called unto the marriage supper of the
Lamb." — Rev. xix. 9. For we are dealing with a condition
where the response of the willing heart is the only accept
able offering. You perceive, that this point would be decided
by what we might call the will of the individual as he clings
to the earth and its surroundings. Whereas, in the highest
form of Christianity, this influence is intended to be power
less, which is the mental condition or idea included in
John's words — "Love not the world, neither the things
which are in the world. If any man love the world, the
love of the Father is not in him." — 1 John ii. 15. The
responsibility of attaining this state must, I feel, be attached
to all believing in Christ as the son of God, when viewed
in the light of the Christian revelation, which insures
eternal life, realized here and now.

lxi
From the view I have taken in expounding the highest
form of Christian life, it will be seen I deal exclusively with
the intellect and the emotions, whereas the will which stands
for everything in a system of duty with the Christian, is
simply merged into the will of God, leaving the emotion to
stimulate action capable of producing the highest Christian
form as the fruit of the emotion of love. Where service as a
duty is, in a way, excluded, the will of the individual may
be said to possess a very limited power, indeed — the indi
vidual being supposed to be guided by the emotions of love
to God, where a desire to glorify him is the only concern.
That such is seldom the case is no answer. The question
being, will the means secure the end, ?
In justice, we may say, the will is the power God will
specially deal with in judging the non-Christian world as a
race, where, up to a certain point, they have the power of
choice, a power which enables man to direct his energy by
deliberate choice. To attain great power over the will so
as to direct its action in the service of justice and truth,
should be assiduously cultivated by the natural man, when
we know the physical basis of the mind is embodied in a
material substance which he may wield at will according
to deliberate choice, being the freedom of action expressed
in, " I ought to do so and so," or, " I ought not to do so and
so," which must include man's liabihty to punishment, when
the wrong course is deliberately chosen. For certainly it is
the motive that prompts the action, which will ultimately be

lxii
proclaimed good or bad. For example, if the desire to do
right is present, but nevertheless, because of the trouble
such a course might entail, the right course is not adopted,
has not the individual, in that case, erred from deliberate
choice, and, therefore, become liable to the consequences
included in such a course of action ?
My theory may be stated in a few simple words, and
starts from the accepted truth that a revelation has been
given, including that, except a revelation had been given,
we could know nothing of the future life, not being
certain even of so much as that there is a future life. In
my judgment, revelation includes all knowledge of eternal
Hfe. This revelation I hold to be included in the Christian
faith, and, therefore, presents Christ in His capacity as Be-
deemer, and also proclaims the necessity of conversion as
the means by which the emotion of love is kindled in the
believer, so that the fire of love to Christ may be kept con
stantly burning in gratitude for deliverance secured, and,
when this is so, the life will be wholly consecrated to God,
as the soul realizes its title to eternal life in union and
communion with Christ its Redeemer. In this case, body
and mind are consecrated to the Master, whereas, when this
fire is allowed to dwindle away so that only occasionally
love to Christ is realized, earth and the things of earth
take the place Christ desires to occupy, and the converted
believer, in consequence of this half-hearted service, will so
mar his heavenly glory as to necessitate suffering in the

lxiii
shape of repentance, which may include work done as
willing service in the shape of retribution rendered to those
he may have wronged. It would thus be the emotion of
love to Christ stimulating the redeemed soul to action
that would raise a desire to serve his Lord, while he ever
realizes how sure his eternal wellbeing is in virtue of Christ's
sacrifice. And, take notice, this state may include actual
suffering in the form of willing service, even after the re
surrection of the body. This, to my judgment, is implied
in Rev. xx. 6, where we are told it is only them which are
raised at the first resurrection over whom the second death
has no power, which surely implies that being raised at
the second resurrection includes the possibility of suffering,
and, as suffering to the redeemed can only be the result of
a self-chosen course, we may infer it will spring from a
desire to benefit others of the race, and especially those our
influence or actions may have injured during this life ; but
this service can never take the form of duty, and must
come from love to the Lord as the fruit of repentance. I
further hold that the blameless life made apparent injustice
and truth is the form our Lord points to as the course of
action that is to manifest the children of God. — Matt. vii. 20.
Wherever this fruit is apparent, we may point to such and
say the fruit is good, therefore we have the authority of our
Lord te call the tree (the individual) good. For, in virtue
of the atoning sacrifice, I hold all such will be rescued in
the next world from the consequences involved in " thou

lxiv
shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the
uttermost farthing." — Matt. v. 26 — and that, when the indi
vidual realizes that the benefit arising from this is secured
by Christ, his heart will swell with gratitude and love, so that
he will henceforth only desire an individual existence in
union and communion with Christ his Lord, and that he
will show this spirit in the service he will now render as
an offering of love. But observe, though the individual
has saved his soul, as the fruit of a blameless life (so far as
such a life may be possible to the individual), in virtue of
the atoning sacrifice, nevertheless, at bottom he is wholly
saved in virtue of Christ's merits as Redeemer, and that the
one rescued thus has not one offering as a love-token to
bring in treasure laid up as work done from love to Christ.
Whereas, it is treasure in this form, as the fruit of conversion,
which is the very condition the Elect of God, as the Church
of the First Born, rest on, being elected because they are made
capable of producing such fruit, in obedience to the law
that governs love,- in honour of Christ as the Son of God.
My theory also includes that, ultimately, the whole
human race shall be redeemed by Christ from the conse
quences of evil, which are the fruits of selfishness, and that
this end will be effected by raising humanity above the
self -regarding instinct in securing the eternal well-being of
the race in virtue of His sacrifice, so that, through this
process, by stimulating even the worst with love to God in
Christ, the race will be rescued; for are not the worst always

Ixv
more to be pitied than blamed, being more the creatures of
circumstance than we are often willingjto allow. Therefore,
at the end, I believe, when the kingdom will be delivered
up to the Father, the whole human race will, in one form or
another, be included in it as the fruit of the redemption pur
poses, though, doubtless, there will be^an eternal distinction
between the believer and the unbeliever. Likewise, there
will be a marked distinction between those who have lived
a consecrated life, and so earned the fruit of having overcome,
and those who have lived more for the world than for Christ,
to which former condition the Saviour attaches so many pro
mises in addressing the Seven Churches in the Revelations.
Observe, it is from this class of lukewarm Christians, who
have lived more for the world than for Christ, though
converted individuals, that much mischief springs, where
their lives imply no higher motive — directing their choice
or influencing their actions — than the earth, and the things
of earth, while they use up much of the energy produced
by others, and give out no useful energy as work done from
love to Christ in return. By this, they incur a debt of gra
titude to those of the world, and we are justified in sup
posing their own sense of justice will be so much increased
in the next world as to induce them to own the obligation,
and stimulate them with a desire to make amends, if such
be possible ; when they realize that it was in consequence of
Christianity, presented Linj this cold, heartless form, that
Christ's race was not increased on earth, which would be
E

lxvi
the result oi a natural law if all lived consecrated lives,
in being filled with zeal and love for Christ. Therefore,
we are surely justified in saying that such as they mar
Christ's glory humanly speaking, and must take the conse
quences, which, for all we know, may be the means of much
good ultimately, in the form of voluntary labour bestowed
in the next world on the so-called unsaved. That it will
be so I feel perfectly convinced, as we view revelation in
our present state of knowledge. This firm conviction has
arisen from what, to me, presents a prophetic revelation
(and, if really so, includes absolute truth applying to the
race), in the impression formed in my sensorium brain — "Life
is Hope."* When the truth presented in these words stands
contrasted with the assurance of eternal life, the birth
right of belief is realized in conversion, being the heritage in
cluded in the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith.
T would again state that the two mental conditions dealt
* This prophetic revelation bears a rational explanation. The idea
which was previously formed as the fruit of a very wide generalization
was lodged in the cerebrum brain, in the forces which had combined in
forming the perception, and, therefore, included all this. These forces
were afterwards used in forming the written character "Life is Hope,"
thus presenting in a new form, the generalization I had effected by the
force of reason alone. It was thus clear that the same forces which had
previously combined in the generalization now completed in forming the
letters on my sensorium brain, and by this means (to me) confirming the
generalization as absolute truth. You may observe the forces which
had been previously prepared for special work, by passing as intelligent
life, through a brain organism, are now made to assume different forms
under different conditions, as the forces which include conscious life.

ixvii
with present- states' totally different The one, in* assurance;
conferring a boon of immense importance, the other fettered
by the uncertainty of hope, though longing for assurance. My
theory is that, ultimately, assurance will be' made to take
the place of hope, and, by means of this deliverance, love
will be generated and neutralize the effect of sin,, which I
hold to arise from selfishness, and that, through this means,
¦ it will be made possible for the unsaved to atone for their
sins. In the same sense, I hold that a good, just life will, in
virtue of Christ's sacrifice, rescue the unbeliever from the
penalty of his sins. In holding that assurance will be made
to take the place of hope, while this is being effected, it is
thus quite fair to suppose that the believer would be very-
useful to the so-called unsaved, in stimulating the other to
overcome; for observe at the final end — "He that over-
cometh is to inherit all things." — Rev. xxi. 7. Take notice,
it is he that overcometh, addressing the individual at the
present moment. Surely this implies much in the light of
present knowledge.
These words being addressed by the Saviour to the
race after . the final resurrection and last judgment is
past, where each individual of the race shall appear in
the garments he has woven for himself ou earth, as
the form his actions have moulded his bodily organism
into during his life on earth. In this new system
of things (the new heavens and the new earth), we
have all that remains of our present system. And in

lxviii
this new condition Christ is presented as God in develop
ing intelligent life, calling the class he is addressing his
sons, and stimulating them to overcome, including a pro
mise in the words — " He that overcometh shall inherit
all things." In this form our Lord proclaims the gospel
of glad tidings for the second time. This time he stands
in the relation of a Father to all of the human race,
where personal effort accompanied by pain has to be en
dured by the individual in securing his well-being, as he
overcomes the estabhshed bad habits which are the effects of
the selfish course he adopted on earth. And who can tell
the terrible suffering that will be absolutely necessary be
fore the effect of an evil life can be atoned for and the in
dividual rescued according to law, which must be effected
before the Saviour can deliver up the kingdom to the
Father ? This, therefore, I beheve to be the final end de
creed of God to be secured by the redemption purchase ;
while the true Church, personified in the Saviour's ransomed
bride, will be the willing messengers to proclaim the infi
nite power conveyed in Paul's words — " I can do all things
through Christ which strengtheneth me" (Phil. iv. 13).
Because this was the power that enabled them to overcome
on earth, and is the power by which the race shall ulti
mately be redeemed by Christ ; for the idea cenveyed in
these words is now and ever true to the human race, and
will invigorate every nerve— where the weakest and the
worst will take hold of the idea conveyed by these words

Ixix
in their effort to overcome, so that they may inherit all
things. In all this I proclaim no new Gospel, but simply
etetend to another system of things the power included in the
old Gospel, which is held in potential energy and applies to
the condition referred to by Paul in 1 Cor. xv. 24-28, where
our Lord must reign till He has put all enemies under His
feet — the last enemy being pain — which is the idea con
veyed in death to a race insured of eternal Hfe. Pain will,
by this means, be neutralized.
Christianity, in its concrete form, simply procures a
motion which stimulates the individual to purify or sanctify
himself, and, by the force of example, to purify wherever
his influence is felt, so that, where this influence has been
limited in the individual appearing, in the form of a self-seek
ing spirit, in the light of our Lord's teaching, to all follow
ing such a course, there must be a penalty attached in some
form ; and, in my judgment, it wiU be manifested by a de
sire to render voluntary service toward those who may have
suffered from their influence or example, or otherwise.
Forces so directed by voluntary choice would be only
making an effort to undo what their action or example
had done during the previous history of their career, and
the forces present in Conversion may involve aU this.
At anyrate, the forces in Conversion include power to pro
duce a blameless life, showing itself with powers as the
fruit of love to Christ ; but when the forces have been re
stricted or limited, the condition I have stated as the after

-lxx"
consequence, would "only be voluntary service rendered in
the form of, retribution, as the effect which a just view of
previous conduct would .entail, where the • sense of justice
was fully developed. , And ' we , may surely infer that, the
sense- of justice will' have "attained 'to that fuU development
among the, sections of humanity defined .as "the Redeemed,"
or. 'fthe Elect,"; or, "the Church of ;the- First-Born;". or by
.whatever name, you may choose to 'call, the ransomed Church
of Christ. This, therefore, is what I hold to be the germ of
Christianity- in ¦ its essence, securing,, voluntary service ren-
'¦dered, so that God, the Eternal I Am, seen in the' intelligence
-at the heart of everything, may be glorified by this means,
.being the, design He had in view when' He 'originated the
¦forces which were destined 'to combine in producing this form
•of action. ¦ , ,
Here we have to think of another form of intelHgent
-Hfe which revelation reveals--the Devil and his angels,
•as a section of intehigent life over which the head or king
¦seems to have.implicit power. Any candid mind may see
, 'that the self-regarding instinct we have present in hu
manity, and defined as selfishness, would ultimately work
itself out by producing an inteUigence of that form in which
.the head would attain nnHmited power over the whole tribe,
-the service of . which he would thus retain, because those
•inferior intelligences enabled him to secure his end, while
¦they may he supposed to have an individual existence only
in connection- withhim. , Now, in the Hght of our present '

•ixxi
¦knowledge, are we hot justified in supposing God's ultimate
decree may eventually be to rescue- even this inteffigent
section, which, in reality, must be the products of His laws,
from the power of this self-regarding influence, and Hmit
their bounds ? Even this, as an ultimate end, is not beyond
•what I would desire to see accompHshed, in view of :the
past, the present, and the future — in the light of eternity.
Ultimately, I look forward to the race being saved or re
deemed, and the Devil and his angels rescued. Anyhow',
¦if I have any power given me in the future to Help to at
tain such an end, I would ' ask that God, in Christ, would
give me power to aid in securing this, even at the expense
of personal suffering, where God, in the fullest sense, was
present with me.
Again, may we not say, during the period of our earthly
life, when aU these thoughts are passing through, and fornix
ing our minds, that the physical condition of mind in
those who are rescued from selfishness may be made to
take the form of carbonic oxide, which is Hghter than fixed
air, and, if it is so, we are safe to say, that the disembodied
spirits, thus equipped, apart from any power used from
within in the form .of choice' or ihteHigent wiU, would rise
-above atmospheric air, in obedience to a law of nature,
because the physical condition was such. Let us suppose,
just by-way of contrast', two souls, the physical condition
of the one being carbonic acid, and the other carbonic
oxide, where, as a matter of course, each substance included

lxxii
the conscious Hfe of the individual, in the same sense that
our intelligent Hfe is treasured lip during natural Hfe in
our brain organism. Supposing also, under such condition,
a special phase of vibration to indicate special emotions,
with the wiU either powerless from choice or inability; under
such conditions, in virtue of a natural law, the carbonic
oxided soul would free itself from the earth and the trammel
of earth, as it bounded along, containing, in this form, the
intelHgence of a redeemed human soul, as it nears the per
sonal Saviour in adoring love ; whereas the other soul, whose
physical condition was heavier than air, would, therefore,
be bound to the earth and the things of earth, so to speak.
The theory I advance leads to the assumption that the
human soul is the product of evolution, therefore destined
to an endless Hfe of progress, where system after system,
out of which it has been formed, pass away, while the soul
takes on the impressions of every system holding the form
fast, though the substance pass away. Nevertheless, the
substance in the ideal form shall ever remain, forming the
link between the past and the present. The soul wiU thus
grow in knowledge and likeness to the God-man in his
capacity of developing intelHgence, where He (the Lord)
will originate system after system in which He will per
ceive the end from the beginning, where each system wiU
include worlds capable of still farther development. Thus
age will succeed age, bringing with it its yet farther deve
lopment. The first system of this glorious future, which

Ixxiii
is to take the place of our present system, we find revealed
in the Revelations — "As the new heaven and the new earth,
wherein dweUeth .righteousness, and where sea was no
more." In our present state of knowledge, no words could
more clearly indicate this new condition than the words
"there was no more sea." — Rev. xxi. 1. Under conditions
Hke this, does not the fixed air, which contains our mental
life in an ideal form, stand us in good stead, while we
grasp the new system revealed in these words " there was
no more sea," and quietly walk over dry shod, as in thought
we take possession of the system of which we are to form
part- ? In doing so, we can identify our past condition with
our present, as we reaHze how the new includes the old in
the formation effected here, seen in the fruit we gathered
and carry with us, which joins the past with the present,
as we take our place in the new system.
In aU this the men of science have been teaching us to
understand the Lord's words, while we have been robbing
them of their birthright, and doubtless have caused many
of this class to shed tears of blood, as they viewed the
misery that surrounded them ; for, in proclaiming eternal
punishment, we clouded the present and the future, and thus
robbed them of the bright hopes they were justly entitled to,
whereas we ought to have grasped their ideas, and thus have
unfolded the glorious future the race shall inherit in eternal
life, in union and communion with Christ the Lord. What
terrible suffering we might have saved the race if we Chris-

lxxiv
tians had followed the Lord fully, as we grasped truth
from aU points and proclaimed eternal Hfe in eternal hope;
which is a truth clearly revealed; for, in ¦' this bright hope,
we have the intelHgence of man held fast.— ^Eccles. ix'. -4.
This inteUigence is perceived by me and my class as
ihe products of the sun's energy — energy which, in con
sequence of having been under certain conditions in con
nection with a bodily organism, is made the vehicle in
¦which the human soul is grouped and held together in the
form of fixed air, where every 'thought that ever passed
through a human brain has been treasured up in its ideal
form, and is the quality of stuff which is capable of repro
ducing this energy at any moment in the form of an ideal
conception, thus presenting the action of the individual
soul. The sun's energy qualified thus is the product of
evolution as the "ego" over which the individual will, in the
future, have complete control, and wiU be capable of mani
festing that power of action by reproducing a former state
cf consciousness at any moment. This "ego" is the part of
¦owe system which has been treasured up in the forms of
¦ideal conceptions as the product of the earth, over which
the individual manifesting the intelhgent power of the
system will, in the future, have complete control ; and this
power will manifest itself in the " I am," " I can," " I will,"
as the action of the soul.
The origin of matter and force as the quality of stuff in
which we find the inteUigent Hfe of the individual embodied,

ixxv
-is the portion of the' sun's energy ¦which we may reason
ably be desirous to trace through the different stages it has
passed, of which it forms part, and from which it has
sprung. In doing so. we are compeUed to look for the ex
planation which gave birth to the inteUigence of man, in
.the laws that govern the universe, as the birthplace from
-which it or he has sprung, first manifested in spontaneous
generation as the force which gave birth to the first ceU,
being the, product -of the' sun's energy— energy governed
.•by. the laws of nature — which as a disturber of elements
,was capable of manifesting that power on the inorganic
world by producing a new form of force ; and as this! new
form of force developed itself, it has produced all the forms
,of the vegetable and animal world by which we are sur-
,-rdunded, and of ¦ which we form part. Over the organic
forces dealt with, the intelHgence of man has attained cbri-
isiderable control. This control is possibly seen in its
highest form in the selective power man has employed in
jdeveloping the domestic animals most suitable to the end
,'he has in view. In this way. man moulds the organic
-forces to his will, in moulding the' form his inteUigence has
selected as best suited ,to the end he desires. Thus he
compels the organic forces to carry out his wiU, by produc
ing a higher and yet higher form. By his superior inteUeCt
Tman thus takes the place of the Creator in forming and
-fashioning the organic forces, as he builds up and pulls
.down. This power is not limited- to the bodUy organism ;

lxxvi
and in the case of the dog, at anyrate, by man's superior
inteUigence, the dog's mind is made to produce work of a
considerably complicated inteUectual kind, being moulded
partly by fear and partly by affection.
But it is when the savage races cross the path of the
so-called civilized Christian races that we have most occasion
to dread the consequences arising from the power the intel
ligence of man gives him over the organic forces, in the
responsibiHty this power includes in view of the future
life. For the superior inteUigence of the one class in the
desire to grasp and hold, crushes the other class out. But,
alas ! in aU this the Christian is careless of the terrible
responsibility his profession includes, in the truth conveyed
by God to the highly civilized race at the beginning (Gen.
i. 26-28) highly civiHzed because, when viewed in the
Hght of their responsibiHty, the moral and rehgious ele
ments were highly developed; therefore, God addresses
them as male and female, created or formed in His image.
Thus, blessed of God, they are commanded to replenish the
earth, and subdue it. The truth conveyed here, viewed
from the highest point, appHes to Christians, in union with
Christ as co-workers with God, because they are thus
capable 'of creating or forming the lower races, in moulding
the organic force of mind anew in Christ tlie Lord, by
example and precept — by precept in proclaiming a free
pardon in the glorious gospel, as the glad tidings ; by
example, in manifesting the effect of that gospel in a

Ixxvii
blameless life. For, in the Hght of present knowledge, the
higher races are endowed with power from on high, by
which they could mould the lower races in obedience to
the wiU of God, by the higher inteUigences infusing into
the minds of the lower, God's words of truth, as the idea
impHed in Christ being formed in them, their hope of glory.
By this means the Saviour's race would be increased on earth,
for His Hkeness would be multiplied in the ideal form. The
higher races would thus subdue the lower, by infusing into
them Christ's spirit, which teaches them to glorify God in love.
In the truth thus rendered, would not the higher races re
plenish the earth and subdue it, by creating the lower races
anew in Christ Jesus, and through this means present them
as sons of God, who would be qualified for the very highest
place in glory ; if the potential energy, included in Chris
tian faith, enables men to live for the glory of God, and to
¦create this spirit in his less highly gifted brother, surely we
may infer there is no necessity that the higher intelHgence
should crush out the lower. However, such being the fact,
the cause must proceed from a law governed by what man
lias power to effect as the fruit of a grasping, selfish spirit,
and, therefore, he is whoUy to blame, for he has power to
mould the races he is crushing, and wiU surely be held
responsible to God* Whereas you' often hear the truth
* In connection with this subject, I would draw the reader's attention
to the papers on " Convicts and Quakers," in Good Words, especiaUy the
last paper, August, 1878. The scenes depicted in these papers will justify
the remark I make on the terrible responsibility we incur in our treatment

Ixxviii'
involved in this explained away in words . like these —
'• WeU, it is a law of nature that. the lower races must dis
appear before the higher." In this, man casts the responsi
biHty arising from his selfish course on God ; for this is im
phed in the laws of nature effecting an end, whereas the
forces included in the Christian faith enable man to mould
of the lower races. Some of the scenes described are too terrible to al
low the mind to rest on, in our present state of knowledge, in view of
our responsibility as » Protestant Christian nation, being a system where
each member is made responsible/or himself. From the point of personal
responsibility, the labour of the two devoted Quakers referred to in the
papers dealt with, shows what two devoted men can accomplish. And,
unless for their labours, we might have known little or nothing of the
scenes which took place, not fifty years ago, on British soil, and on ships
sailing under the British flag. In view of all the labours the Society o£
Friends have rendered toward the cause of justice and true humanity,
the Society have well earned the name of the " Friends of Humanity"—'
as the Society of humanity ; for ever since the day George Fox formed
the Society, the members of it have ever been foremost in the cause of jus
tice and truth, always willing to bear the consequences arising from the.
course they believed to be a right course. The Society of Friends, I would
say, is the only religious body that have any authority to hold up the
Bible and call it the Word of God (though we may all say it contains
the word of God), for they alone, of all our religious bodies, profess to
live to prove that perfection may be attained here below. And we may
be very sure a state of perfection is possible to us, as a state which the
Judge at the final end will call perfect, when the very Founder of our re
ligion leaves us an example of a perfect life and power to follow in his
name, with the comment — " Be ye, therefore, perfect, even as your
Father which is in heaven is perfect" — Matt. v. 48. If we Protestants
of Britain are not prepared to live out this doctrine of perfection, we can
have no excuse for professing to the world that we believe the Bible is
wholly inspired. The Bible most assuredly contains the word of God,
but all that is essential to salvation is a risen Lord revealed in the heart
of man ; and this power, if not resisted by a selfish course, will enable
man to attain the state Christ will call perfect.

lxxix
the organic force of mind in obedience to the wiU of God,:
by fusing into the lower races the spirit and likeness of
Christ, which is the potential energy of the ideal Christ.
Thus, therefore,, man, being formed in the Hkeness of God,
and having power over the organic forces to build up and pull
down, would use that power to secure his own selfish end, and
then be unjust enough to refer the effect of this course to
the wiU of God, this being, as I said before, understood in-
the laws of nature. Nevertheless, God gives man power to;
create anew, and, as a Christian man, he must be held re
sponsible for the effect he may produce.
Or we might refer the truth included in this to the law
that governs heat. In the higher intelligences we have the
generalized ideas stored up in the brain, as a quality of
potential energy displaying its power in the rapidity with
which ideas may be made to take a new form in generaliza
tion and abstraction, and in showing how one feehng or object
differs from, or agrees with, all other feelings or objects.
This power is distinguished by the rapidity with which the
brain can be made to give off inteUigent life, in energy as heat.
And it is by this means that the higher races have infinite
control or power over the lower races, either by crushing
them out or by fitting them for a higher and yet higher
place in glory ; because, in the generalized ideas involved in
Christianity, the certain knowledge of the two worlds, which
surely includes potential energy as heat of the highest form,
are contained. This is just other words for stating the law

lxxx
which governs heat in the abstract, by showing that the more
rapid the vibration, is the more heat is generated, and that
matter of a higher temperature affects matter of a lower
temperature ; and this truth appHes most of aU to the sun's
energy in the form of inteUigent Hfe. For, in this form, aU
we know of matter is treasured up in the conception we
have formed of its different qualities, which, in the ideal
form, may be referred to the phase of vibration that part
assumes in the colour it presents under certain conditions.
For it is quite possible to imagine that hydrogen may con
tain in the concrete every form and quality of the stuff we
caU matter and force, or matter in form. That is, that hydro
gen may have been made to assume, in expanding and
appearing under different conditions, all the forms and
quaHties of matter. AU this may be included in the phase
of vibration it is made to assume for the time being;
whereas, its highest and natural phase of vibration would
appear in the phase of vibration which indicates electricity.
If it is so, we might say the process going on in the galvanic
battery was a process where hydrogen was made to assume
its natural element, in being made to take on the form of
vibration indicating electricity. And observe, from or
through electricity, in one way or another, we can get the
solar spectrum, which, by my reasoning, includes all the
qualities of matter.
Observe, we may take one of the metals in its solid
state, and reduce it to a liquid and to a vapour, in which

lxxxi
Ave find its co-relative in the solar spectrum as colour. In
the spectrum it is the phase of vibration as colour which
the matter has assumed that we are dealing with, and
referring it to, as the counterpart of the metal we hold
in our hand; for we have followed it through many
forms, and find its birthplace to be the white light that
issues from the sun — light which thus makes its dif
ferent compounds apparent in its phases of vibration, so
that, by means of spectrum analysis, we can refer to the
metal, and say, with apparent clearness, that matter and
force is a something vibrating' at certain periods, of which
inteUigent life in the male and female form is no exception.
Where we may yet further generalize, and say man is, or
ought to be, principaUy guided by intellect and wUl, but
woman by feehng, as sympathy. From this we might infer
that the perfect state is only possible where the three,
" Feeling, Intellect, and WiU," can be merged into one,
which seems to be the idea included by Paul in the con
ception he forms of the married state (Eph. v. 21-24) im
plied in " For the husband is head of the wife, as Christ is
head of the Church." His notion evidently being that the
husband is to be aU wisdom, goodness and justice, where the
wife is to be moulded by her affection or love hi yielding to
a higher inteUigence. The example Paul adduces is Christ
and the Church. Now, the Church is governed by love.
The harmony and wisdom of this arrangement is very ap
parent, woman having less inteUectual power, and less
F

Ixxxii
brain matter than man. Therefore, she is more liable to-
be guided by impulsive feeling, and less qualified to rule,
though it appears to me that the quickness of apprehension
characteristic of woman is the effect of an exceedingly quick
phase of brain- vibration enabling her to break up and
combine ideas with wonderful rapidity ; though showing no
grasp of inteUectual vigour in foUowing out the generahza-
tion, because her smallness of brain prevents her forming
the logical connectionsnecessary to work out the theory in
cluded in the generalization she has effected, so that, as a
general rule, man reaps the benefit of her efforts in adopting
her ideas and making them his own by working them out,
which is a just and proper course to adopt, when her ideas
are taken possession of by fair means, in referring the gene
ralization effected to her. Which generalization is now
wrought out by another. How seldom this course is adopted
may be inferred from the general aversion manifested to
ward the class of women known as "blue stockings," being the
class which effects most of the work referred to, and have,
therefore, to bear the penalty of being thurst aside and
trampled on, whhe others enjoy the labour that cost them
so much. In this we see the weakest go to the wall ; for,
doubtless, women, on the whole, are less highly endowed intel
lectually than men.
In saying that the experience from which our inteUi
gence is gathered comes from the earth and its surrounding,
I state the fact quite correctly, because, in revealed truth,

lxxxni
God made use of the surrounding condition and circum
stances in making Himself known through them. God thus
used earthly things to interpret heavenly things. For ex
ample, we have every reason to infer that the Urim and the
Thummim were symbols of Egyptian origin, and were
adopted by Moses as the medium God was to make use of
in communicating with His people, possibly by Uluminating
the jewels when the revelation was of a joyous nature, and by
dimming the original lustre of the jewels when of a sorrow
ful one, to manifest His displeasure. Whereas this might
have been effected by the truth the high priest had pre
viously imbibed from Pievelation, as the, effect that truth
had made on his cerebrum brain, and by this means affected
his heart's action where a joyous expression was apparent,
by the phase of vibration the truth was made to effect in pro
ducing, a rapid vibration manifested in a burst of Hght which
would iUuminate the Urim and Thummim on the high
priest's breast, whereas despair or grief might retard the
heart's action, and thus be made to dim the natural bril
liancy of the gems. Man would thus be made the medium
between God and the race in revealing God's wUl by means
of the natural law that governs the action of the cerebrum
brain, manifesting itself under certain conditions. The effect
proceeding from this action is made very apparent by Dr.
Carpenter, toward the end of the book referred to, in the
incidents he relates in connection with experiments, where
the action of the cerebrum brain was conveyed by muscular

lxxxiv
action, as when the hands of the operator are laid on the
instrument, and by this means the instrument proclaimed
the action of the cerebrum brain, 'manifesting that action
by the effect produced by the hands of the operator on the
instrument, in communicating knowledge previously ac
quired by the operator, though not then present in conscious
mind " or memory."
Tlvis action clearly manifests the pre-conscious action of
the soul ; and very probably was the means adopted by God,
through which the lustre of the jewels was affected on the
high priest's breast. And thus God would manifest His
wiU to man by first revealing truth to the high priest, which
afterwards affected the action of the cerebrum brain, so as
to manifest that action by its effect on the Urim and the
Thummim. In this way, God would be making use of the
earth and the things of the earth, in the bunt-up human
brain being used as the medium between God and the race.
The different nations mentioned in the Bible are evidently
intended to represent or personifiy the different phases of
the human character in the phase of intelHgence the nature
manifests as a whole. By this means the prophecies would
be rendered inteUigible and applicable to aU, by applying
to each individual whatever manifested the form of intelli
gence that his nation was famed for. For example, the high
culture of Egypt would stand for the inteUigence presented
by our men of science, who make it their business to look
for the first cause that governs everything in the laws of

lxxxv
nature, taking no account of God in the matter at aU.
Whereas, Babylon might represent a nation where a belief in
' a God to whom man was responsible was an accepted fact
or truth. Nevertheless, where the people were regardless
of the responsibiHty involved, they sought only their own
glory in the system their nation presented. If we hold this
system to include aU the divine knowledge essential for man's
salvation, we might say Babylon would represent the human
character, where the individual took aU the advantage his
position gave him, and was careless of how much such a
course rendered him indebted to others, provided he could
turn all -the advantage thus gained as a means to attain a
yet higher end, feeling that this higher end, when attained,
would render him so much above the class he had benefited
by as to render them quite powerless to injure Mm. He
world thus secure his personal well-being, regardless of the
well-being of others* Now, this is exactly what the Church
of Borne, viewed from the highest point as a system, aims
at, in proclaiming itself the True Church, where the first
point taught is that each individual is to work for the good
of the system as a whole. In this, the work of the indi-

* It is something very like this we Protestants are doing in the way
we act toward our men of science, by taking advantage of all their
labours, yet making no effort to perceive where science and religipn are,
in a way, the counterpart of each other, and thereby show them where
they have thought the thoughts of God, in the truth their labours reveal,
and that they have thus strengthened the kingdom of our Lord among
the Gentiles.

Ixxxvi
vidual soul is to be work rendered to the system. In this
the Church, to the individual, is made to take the place of
the Saviour, and certainly it does contain the truth which
wiU save the soul eventuaUy. As a system, it is thus
perfect, for each of its members, in the faith which unites
the individual to the Church or system, teaches the indi
vidual to worship God in Christ as God. Observe, Christ,
in this sense, is both God and Bedeemer- — the elect of God
sent to save the Church, where all are elected that are in
the Church. Observe, this includes and confers on a system
aU the advantages which our Protestant doctrine of justifi
cation by faith includes and confers on the individual, as
the fruit that springs from the high position attained at
conversion, being the means by which the individual is
made a willing servant of God's, in using every effort that
Christ may be glorified and His race increased on earth, as
an offering of love, where the converted one looks for no
reward. Do you not see that the true or Eoman Catholic Church,
as a system, has and holds all the benefits included in our
doctrine of justification by faith ? where the individual is
reduced to the level of the mass, as he works for the good of
the system (a system vjhere Christ as God is head) — where,
as to benefits arising from personal effort, he looks for no
reward, as the system grasps and holds all. Where, how
ever, the image of the God-man in the ideal Christ brightens
every brain, by sending out its generated lustre to the

lxxxvH
objective Christ as the counterpart of the faith the system
includes, where there is not one unbehever included, be
cause every soul finds a counterpart in Christ as God.
It is in the advantage which conversion may be made to
include that the member of the Protestant Church reaps
the Ml benefit of the reward conveyed by conversion on
the individual when he consecrates his life to Christ in
love, when every effort of this consecrated Hfe wiU reappear
in the fruit Christ refers to in Matt. vi. 20 and 21, as the
fruit of love. It wiU thus be seen that the system, as the
True Church* or Church of Piome, insures the member of
* I would have it clearly understood that in calling the Church of
Rome the " True Church," I most certainly do not include in the term
"True," all the fallacies that Church has woven into her constitution,
very much of which is wholly worthless, besides being greatly injurious,
and is nevertheless imposed on the member as duties essential to salva
tion. The adoration and worship it bestows on the Virgin, to me, seems
greatly injurious, especially in putting an obstacle between men and the
free intercourse established by the Saviour and the soul He redeemed ; for,
supposing the mother to have free intercourse with the Son, is it at all
likely she would use that intercourse first in behalf of the members of
a Church where each individual was freely invited to approach, being
assured of the Saviour's willingness to hear and answer every prayer.
And again, if a Church so related to the Redeemer as the Church of
Rome is, choose to take the responsible place she is doing in teaching
her members to incur all the risk involved in addressing the Saviour
through the medium of saints and martyrs; she, as a system, is responsible
for all the misery that may arise from such teaching. One of the injuri
ous consequences that does arise from this teaching is, that man, by this,
chooses to take a lower place than God in Christ Jias made necessary. This
is distinctly implied in Paul's warning— Col. ii. 18-24. And just fancy
the misapprehension that has arisen from the doctrine held in the sale of
indulgences, where the Church, in the name of Christ, takes the re
sponsibility of making a system of men responsible for the sins some

lxxxviii
eternal life, but insures him of nothing else, whUe aU his
work goes to build up the system which secures for each
member the assurance of eternal life. It is from this point
that the Church of Borne is represented in Scripture as
Babylon, in the spirit it manifests in grasping and holding
aU, whereas she ought to have taught her members that the
consecrated Hfe proceeding from conversion secures for
the individual at death the right and title to pass immedi
ately into glory, being, by the consecrated Hfe, a member of
the Church of the first-born, to whom the Saviour is bro
ther, and that the new lieart so often referred to in the Scrip
tures is a term to represent the centre vjhere works spring from
love to Christ, which is tlie fruit of conversion presented in
spontaneous energy.
My plea is, that a revelation has been given embodied
in Christianity, and, of course, is of God — Christ being the
form that has sprung from the revelation — revelation first
given to the race as a whole, but ultimately confined ex-
highly favoured individual chooses to commit ; this being what I under
stand to be included in " Indulgences." However, if the individual choose
to remain involved in the responsibility this system includes, simply
because it insures him of eternal life, we, as Protestants, are in no
wise responsible after laying the condition clearly before him — we have
delivered ourselves from all responsibility in the matter. However, my
own impression is that the women alone will ultimately suffer irreparable
loss in being in connection with a Church that binds its members to a
system wiich, except being fettered thus, woman might aspire to the
highest place possible for a created intelligence to occupy in the uni
verse of space.

Ixxxix
clusively to the seed of Abraham. That in connection
with the Jewish race as the fruit of Eevelation, Jesus was
formed in the Virgin Mary ; thus our Lord took the form
and organism of the race as a man, where nothing of Him
but the form and the experience He gathered during His
earthly life, was of the earth, earthly, excepting so far as
the Eevelation from which He sprung was wholly in con
nection with the race, being the design ordered of God
through which their ultimate deliverance was to be effected.
The reasonable soul having sprung from the Eevelation
thus related to the race, which was whoUy of God, though,
doubtless, David combined the contrasted ideas which had
previously formed this revelation, and by this means united
the units which afterwards formed the reasonable soul. The
words of our Lord evidently refer to this in " I am the root
and the offspring of David, the bright and the morning star."
— Rev. xxii. 16.
Christ is thus the centre which, Avhen formed in the
human soul, includes the condition referred to by our Lord,
in " that which is born of the Spirit is sphit" — John ih. 6
— meaning the Spirit and nature of God as the source of a
new centre and movement, which is the condition longed
for by the author of the 51st Psalm, breathed hi the words
— " Create in me a clean heart, 0 Lord, and renew a right
spirit within me," words which are literally fulfiUed when
Christ is formed in the soul, for He is whoUy of heaven,
with the exception of the form and experience gathered on
earth, and wiU produce heavenly fruit— therefore new fruit.

xc
Further, my plea is that the Bible contains God's re
vealed wiU, addressing itself to believers only ; that Chris
tianity includes forces "which wiU work themselves out,
manifesting the glory of God in voluntary service rendered
in love to Him ; but where such service has not been freely
and fully rendered, the believer, though saved, will be
liable to suffering in the next world, as voluntary service
rendered toward the unsaved, in the form of retribution,
from love to Christ, yet service of such a nature that wUl
entail suffering. Whereas suffering wiU be impossible after
death, where the earthly Hfe, after conversion, has been
whoUy consecrated, and where Hfe has been so far prolonged
as to enable the individual to mould his organism in obe
dience to the will of God. In this case, the sensation of
pain wiU be quite impossible in an organism moulded thus.
Further, that the worst of the race will ultimately be de
livered from the power and penalty of sin, in being delivered
from a sphit of selfishness or self-preservation, which is
the root of all sin, and is the germ from which all evUs spring,
but that, in virtue of Christ's atoning sacrifice, He wUl ul
timately rescue humanity from the self-preserving instinct,
and, therefore, from the power of sin, by the human race
being made capable and willing to glorify God in love.
AU I have hitherto said centres in the few following
words. The laws that govern the universe in their connec
tion with the race are forces which have combined in form
ing the unit, which includes the intelligence of the system

XC1

in the male and female form of humanity* The organic
centre where the forces producing these forms spring from
is self-preservation ; and this centre has produced the forms
dealt with. This centre of self-preservation we find in the
human brain, manifesting its power in individual preserva
tion, as the strongest power in man, and is the centre from.
which aU action springs, being the centre, in the full sense
of the word, which produced the natural man. But as the
power proceeding from the centre has been abused by the
individual, and has taken the form of selfishness, Eevelation
in the form of Christianity steps in and forms a new centre
of action in the human brain, which cuts at the root of sel
fishness, because the forces springing from this new centre
secure the eternal well-being of the individual, in obedience
to the will of God as the final cause. This is effected by
the new form, which springs from the new centre being
made to take the place of the old form, which came, to
maturity through the influence of self-preservation. Thus,
therefore, the old man, from the old centre, is being burned
•out, while the new man, from the new centre, takes his
place in the nature and likeness of Christ, as the form of
* It will be a work of the Christian Church in the future to ob
serve the different works our Lord requires of men and women. It was
apparently by the labour of active service that man was required to show
his love, whereas, woman was to be most of all concerned in cultivating
her emotional nature in love to Christ as the one thing needful, and the
part which could not be taken from her.— Luke x. 42. In the light of
present knowledge, this speaks with much power.

xen
the son of God, which is to endure through aU eternity..
For, observe, the new form in the concrete proceeds from
the Eevelation which was given to the race, and manifests
God's wUl in the final cause that was made to produce th&
form ; therefore, this form is whoUy of God, and represents-
the nature of God.

It has occurred to me that some weak one may be encouraged in choosing '
the course that leads to peace and glory, if I related the simple story of
my conversion, which took place in comparatively early life.
My early training was of a, strictly moral nature. My religion was
¦of such a nature that if I had gone to bed without going through a form
¦of prayer and reading part of the Scriptures I would have felt quite self-
condemned in the sight of God. This, I am safe to say, included all my
religion, with the exception of asking God to enable me to perform any
work I was to engage in if it seemed to me difficult or arduous ; for I
always concluded this asking God to strengthen me would secure success
— my whole happiness being derived from earth and the things of earth.
The fear of eternal punishment sometimes made me uncomfortable ; but
how I was to secure deliverance was a perfect mystery to me, only I
thought deliverance could be secured if I devoted myself to the perform
ance of religious and moral duties. This, however, I did not at all feel
inclined to do, because I saw such a life would cut at the root of my enjoy
ment, and I did not wish to secure eternal wellbeing at such a price ; and
as to what the meaning of a free pardon secured in Christ by believing was,
I was completely ignorant of. That Christ, as the Son of God, was in
tended to secure man's salvation, I had a vague conception of ; but how
this was to be effected I was, totally ignorant, though a, member of the
Presbyterian Church, until late one evening, when reading a volume of
the Kelso Tracts by H. Bonar, and, as I turned over the leaves, I found
the tract " Believe- and Live " pencil marked, which raised a feeling of
resentment against the friend who had bought the volume for me, and
who, I at once felt, had marked the part for my benefit. I inferred
this, because at the time he brought home the volume, I saw him look
ing it over in another room before he gave it to me. I now felt quite
indignant when I saw by his pencil mark that he considered I required
instruction in religious matters from him. This feeling took expression
in the thought, "Well, I am sure I am quite as good as you," which
implied I did not need to be instructed by him. However, fortunately,
I continued to read, and as I read I gathered at onee from the tract
marked that Christ had secured a, full and free pardon to all sinners

XCIV
that believed. When this idea was formed, I laid down the book on
my knee — I was sitting all alone on a low stool before a bright fire,
and reasoned thus : — " Well, I am a sinner, and I am willing to be
saved by Jesus." With these words my heart's desire rose from a
new centre, with, I may say, the first prayer I had ever offered, in
the words, "Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief," which is
equivalent to saying, " I am trying, as a sinner, to trust my eternal
wellbeing on the strength of your offered pardon, enable me to do so,
and to feel how secure this will make me. " The connection was thus
formed between me and the Saviour. This prayer ascended time after
time, morning, noon, and night, during the months and years that suc
ceeded my conversion. Whenever the thought of the next world crossed
my mind,' my heart rose to God in Christ with " Lord, I believe ; help
Thou my unbelief." By this means I became assured of my salvation,
as I felt and realized how secure I was in being hid with God in Christ ;
therefore my eternal wellbeing was secured in and by the Saviour.
For I saw in such passages as " He that worketh not, but believeth
on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness"
— Eom. iv. 5 — a truth which wholly applied to me and my class, ' ' as sin
ners saved by grace.'' I thus learned to rejoice in the liberty with which
Christ had made me free, for I was free indeed.
One thing I recollect during the early stage of my converted life
was, that I found no comfort from the Psalms, for they seemed to
require a personal righteousness or goodness to qualify for heaven,
and I felt I had nothing good in me ; just a sinner saved by grace, I
had not one shadow of righteousness in me to. recommend me ; there
fore, the Psalms gave me no comfort. For, observe, when I accepted
the free salvation offered in the tract referred to, I was neither op
pressed with a sense of sin, nor saw any necessity for righteousness.
All I realized was that Christ had procured a free pardon to sinners,
where the condition was to beheve ; and in complying with the con
dition, I had accepted the pardon, and was, therefore, free as tlie air
J breathed, with a happy eternity secured, because I was a sinner willing
to be saved in Christ's way — a beggar, without one merit to recommend
me, for He had provided the very thing I wanted in the free gift, which
I thankfully received, for by it I secured a happy eternal existence in
union with Him as the Son of God. Some time after, I began to cling
to the promise from which new life and peace were to flow. In the old
heartless way, I was going through a form of prayer, really desiring no
thing, but simply uttering words in -prayer ; when all at once my mind

xcv
was filled with an entirely new influence, and, in amazement, I expressed
my feeling in the words— Cod is Jiere. I was thus filled with an entirely
new joyous emotion which I had never in any way experienced before.
I cannot tell how long the joy lasted, but when it passed away, it left
no impression but the memory of it. Then, I had not learned to love
Jesus ; I, as a sinner, was only clinging to the promise which was sure
to lead to that. My object for stating this experience is to show it was
not joy proceeding from the growth of an affection, to which the reli
gious sentiment is sometimes compared by sceptics, but simply God
manifesting His presence in the soul of one striving to get near Him
through Christ.
At last I began to feel that I loved the Saviour, and that, unless
He was to be with me in heaven, heaven had no attraction for me, for it
was the personal Saviour I cared for, to be ever by Him, and with Him,
" just- to feel He was near," for His presence then, and now, constitutes
heaven to me. That form alone is all I care for, either in heaven or in
earth, for I may say God the Eternal is lost sight of in the Redeemer.
During this stage of my converted experience, Mr. Spurgeon's first
volume of Sermons crossed my path, and the way he put the truth in
these Sermons affected me so that every nerve in my body quivered in
love to the Saviour, as I realized how dear He was to me, and that
nothing could separate us either in time or in eternity. I often paused
while I read, so that a burst of love and adoration might ascend, as, in
spirit, I alone, of all the human race, seemed to sit at His feet, who
was, and is, everything to me.
During the early stage of my converted life there seemed little out
ward change, my life before being, in the fullest sense of the word,
strictly moral. The first outward effect was a desire to devote the Sun
day to sacred reading, and to give up making calls on that day, for I
now loved Jesus so well that I was desirous to know his commandments,
and to keep them, though this course was not followed, by any means,
from a sense of duty, but was the effect of love to Him. I loved Him,
and I wished to please Him, where fear in any form was, and ever has
been, absent. I loved, therefore found pleasure in serving.
This simplicity of action was only endangered where influences were
used from without, when, as a converted individual, I took that position
in concert with others, likewise converted. They considered it right to
induce me to adopt certain courses of action which seemed, to my ad
visers, as the right course for a converted one to follow. As, for example,
in doing, or abstaining from doing, certain things because of appearances,

XCV1
or rather, because of the injurious influence my example might have.
This course, in a general way, I have always resisted, by only acting in
any form, or refraining from acting, when I, myself, felt it would be
right for me to do either the one or the other. I always had the notion
that, to refrain from doing anything, or do anything, from any motive
less than love to Christ, included deception, by professing more love to Him
than I felt, being always desirous that love to Christ would form the
pure centre whence all religious work, in any form, would spring.
Fortunately, in a general way, I had enough independence of char
acter to resist pressure from without, where my heart did not move me
to adopt the course enjoined. This course of action was strengthened
by observing that if I did adopt a course prescribed by others, simply
because it seemed to them the right course for one converted to adopt,
I was sure to give it up at another time, and thus do the cause I professed
to serve more injury than if I had never taken up the position prescribed
by others whose religious sentiment was possibly more fully developed
than mine. Anyhow, I concluded, however right and proper the course
prescribed might be for others, for me it was wrong, because my convic
tions were not strong enough to induce me to carry out the course im
plied — the truth, I suppose, being, I had not enough religious sentiment
to carry out the course enjoined, and I was clear-sighted enough to see
that I injured the cause when I failed, so that, eventually, I rarely at
tempted to adopt the show of more religious sentiment than I felt, as I
found this to be the only safe and proper course for me to adopt. But I
always strove to abide by the consequences which my convictions might
involve, up to the point of proclaiming, as I have done in this book, the
material human soul and all that such includes in time and eternity.

(fclwkte Jikmmafhtg i|e ^ible.

By HEERIOT MACKENZIE.

Opinions of the Press.
" It is not easy to give an idea in a few words of a work
like Mr. Herriot Mackenzie's 'Evolution Illuminating the
Bible,' full as it is of close scientific or quasi-scientific dis
cussion and reasoning. . . . But perhaps we should not
be far wrong if we say that its aim is to reconcile the
extremest materialism with religion, and to show that there
is nothing in the doctrine of evolution which even the
staunchest Bible Christian need fear. ' It is evident,' says the
author in his preface, ' that the materialistic views advanced
by our leading men of science are causing a class of Christians
much anxiety. One object I had in writing this volume was
to draw the attention of this class to the fact that our Lord
clearly advanced such views when He defined man in his
natural state as a unit of Body and Mind — classed by Him as
born of the Flesh is Flesh — put in contrast with the new senti
ment conversion imparts, defined as one 'born of the Spirit,
Spirit.' John iii. 16. Cabannis taught that thought is a
secretion of the brain, and Mr. Mackenzie, who writes that
' there is no longer any doubt of the mental structure being
- r -_¦¦-¦-: jo way short of this

celebrated dictum. The loss of brain substance can so far be
measured as a secretion from the brain during mental work ;
further, the heat developed is perceptible and measurable
by thermo-electrio apparatus.' Nevertheless, he recognises
a spiritual principle under the name of the Ego, a conscious
personality, not, however, antecedent to the body, but created
by the vitality operating in the blood, yet not perishing with
the body but surviving it. To follow the author minutely
in his curious speculations is of course impossible here. It
must be admitted, however, that he seems to have a good
acquaintance with recent scientific literature dealing with the
relation of mind and body, and must have thought deeply on
the subject of which he writes. . . . It is dedicated 
without permission— to Professor Huxley, 'as a token of
(admiration and a tribute to his genius.' " — Scotsman.
" The writer of these pages hastens to reassure her readers
or rather her fellow ' converted Christians ' that Materialism
has the sanction of Scripture. She finds the germ of it in the
words of our Lord to Nicodemus, and its fuller exposition in
the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. Evolution
and the Bible mutually illuminate each other." — Bookseller.
From Messrs. Simpson, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co.
" Evolution Illuminating the Bible," by Herriot Mackenzie. —
" ' It is evident,' says Miss Mackenzie, ' that the material views
advanced by our leading men of science are causing a class of
Christians much anxiety ; but the author is not among these.
She dedicates her book boldly to Professor Huxley, 'as an
admiration and a tribute to his genius,' and though an earnest
Christian herself, has written a book to show the class referred
to that their fears are groundless; that we have the highest
of all authority for accepting the material views advanced
by such authors as Spencer, Bain, Huxley, &c.

"Those who are familiar with works on these lines will
anticipate the nature of Miss Mackenzie's reasoning."— Pub
lisher's Circular.
" Evolution Illuminating the Bible," by Herriot Mackenzie,
is an attempt to show that the material views advanced by
our leading men of science were clearly advanced by our Lord
in His words to Nicodemus about the new birth. The book
is not easy reading, and is based on the hypothesis that spon
taneous generation is possible. . . . Our authoress regards
' Light as a disturber of elements ' the most probable force
to originate the vaguest possible form of sensation — which
is life." — Literary World.
" One of the most singular among the recent books which
have been published is Mr. Herriot Mackenzie's 'Evolution
Illuminating the Bible.' Mr. Mackenzie is so great an admirer
of Huxley, the high priest of Agnosticism that he dedicates
this volume to him ; and yet his faith in Evangelical Christi
anity is as devout and unquestioning as that of a Highland
Free Church Elder. He is an out and out materialist, and
professes to find materialism as one of the corner stones of
Christ's teaching. How he reconciles this doctrine with a
future state, readers must find out for themselves. It is
impossible to indicate in the short space at our disposal the
drift of Mr. Mackenzie's general argument. It is able. . . .
Messrs. John Menzies & Co. are the Edinburgh publishers." —
Northern Ensign.
" Miss Mackenzie dedicates her book to Professor Huxley,
as ' a token of admiration and a tribute to his genius.' That
eminent scientist says somewhere, ' that the crassest material
ism is consistent with the airest idealism ; ' and he confesses
old materialistic view

that the brain secrets thought somehow in the same way as
the liver secrets bile. It has often been deplored that no
writer ever appeared to set about the difficult task of recon
ciling the theories of the physical philosophers and of the
airy idealists, and of harmonising the discordant opinions of
Professor Huxley and Mr. Herbert Spencer on the one hand,
and of Messrs. Moody and Sankey on the other. By most
people it is generally believed that these couples are metaphori
cally at daggers drawn on such subjects as God, the Universe,
and the origin and destiny of man, but in Miss Herriot
Mackenzie's opinion such is not the case. .... Miss
Mackenzie comes boldly forward and publishes what will be
either an epoch making book or the reverse. She concedes
at the outset everything to her opponents, postulating only a
soulless, godless universe filled with all pervading ether ; and
at the close she forces the Agnostic into a corner, compelling
him to accept without reservation, qualification, or modification,
all the doctrines of popular Evangelical Theology. Some
critics who look more to processes than to results may be apt
to raise objections here and there to Miss Mackenzie's logical
methods ; but these are small and insignificant matters com
pared with the great object aimed at, viz., showing that the
principle of Materialism leads ultimately to Methodism, and
those of Evolutionary Agnosticism to Scotch Presbyterianism.
" Miss Mackenzie, in the beginning of a book of about 400
pages, shows how the transition from lifeless matter to organism
is accomplished by means of the heat and light of the sun. The
origin of consciousness is next traced to the simple fact that
plants notice the presence and absence of the sun. After this
the development of intelligence is easy. All notions of right
and wrong follow as natural consequences of sensitiveness to
pleasure and pain; while, last of all, the growth of the
immortal soul is demonstrated to be connected in some way

with the universal ether filling all space  When
so much is accomplished, the origin of life, of consciousness,
and of the soul made perfectly plain to the most rudimentary
understanding, there is no need to explain in detail the steps
by which Miss Mackenzie at last reaches the conclusion that
each and all of the doctrines of Evangelical Theology harmonise
with, and indeed are but logical sequences of the principles
professed by Professor Huxley and Mr. Herbert Spencer. As
our authoress says, after one has followed her argument, ' the
process of Christ's resurrection is simplicity itself.' . . . Miss
Mackenzie has evidently read extensively in the subjects of
biology and of organic evolution generally. Her scientific
knowledge is up to date  Altogether, this is one of
the strangest books we have read for a long time. Audacious
in its conception and its scientific conclusions. . . . Miss
Mackenzie's ironical treatise on the Bible and Evolution
is certainly the most unique book of its kind." — Banffshire
Journal, Aberdeenshire Mail, Moray, Nairn, and Inverness
Review. "In admiration of the Disruption it cannot be excelled.
It also accepts the rankest materialism, and reconciles it to a
very simple evangelicalism by denying to all men any spiritual
nature whatever prior to regeneration." — Dundee Advertiser.
"'Evolution Illuminating the Bible.' . . . The author
appears to admit the extremest theories of materialism, as far
as Body and Mind are concerned, in order to introduce a third
element, as he puts it, 'Born of the Spirit, Spirit.' Several
chapters are devoted to a review of Modern Physiology and
Physiological Psychology. . . . (Example of) the author's
style: 'Christianity takes to do with the immortal soul
have seen that primary

6
conscious states are divided from the objective world, and
carry with them the emotions that accompany them at their
origin. I hold it permissible to believe, an Ego or soul, so
defined, to be built up of luminiferous ether, which, when
disembodied as such in functioning, gives expression to the
conscious states developed during natural life, and the correla
tive of consciousness the phenomena of which conscious states
are forms.' " — Westminister Review.
" 'Evolution Illuminating the Bible' is a study written with
a set purpose. The author attempts to prove that there is
really nothing in the theory of Evolution which is at variance
with the teaching of the Scriptures. ' It is evident,' says Mr.
Mackenzie, ' that the material views advanced by our leading
men of science are causing a class of Christians much anxiety.'
Why this class does not approve of the scientific opinion, he
does not understand, for ' our Lord clearly advanced such views
when He defined man in his natural state as a Unit of Body
and Mind.' . . . ' That which is born of the Flesh is
Flesh,' put in contrast with the sentiment 'one born of the
Spirit is Spirit.' It is the immense difference between Body
and Mind that the author dilates upon, and his reasoning,
while ingenious, is very unusual. This remarkable book is
dedicated to Professor Huxley ' as a token of admiration and a
tribute to his genius.'"— John 0' Groat Journal.
" The author's object, according to his own statement, is ' to
draw attention to the fact that our Lord clearly advanced such
views (that is, the material views of leading men of science),
when he defined man in his natural state as a unit of Body
and Mind.' . . . Classed by Him as ' that which is born
of the Flesh, Flesh,' put in contrast with the new sentiment
conversion imparts, defined as one ' born of the Spirit, Spirit.'
Mr. Mackenzie believes in spontaneous generation— ' lioht

originated lite, sensation is created by the shock produced in
parting atoms of a very stable compound molecule.' ' The vital
force inherent in the human form at birth awakens into con
sciousness, and creates the soul of the first sensation.' The
Christianity of the future will be moulded by the operation of
the materialistic views, which will explain all mental terms
in form of matter." — North British Daily Mail.
" We shall not profess to review this work, which is best
left to make its own way. The views of the writer are so
peculiar that it would require far more time than we are able
to afford to enter into their merits or demerits. . . . We
would not care to stand in the way of a new light, if new
light it is, and therefore would earnestly recommend the
reading public to procure the book and judge for them
selves." — Brechin Advertiser.
"The author wishes to show that the immortal part in
man is gradually evolved from material conditions, but being
evolved in this life it is then indestructible."— Independent.
" This volume gives, undoubtedly, evidence of considerable
thinking power and knowledge of biology." — Glasgow Hearld.
" ' Evolution Illuminating the Bible,' by Herriot Mackenzie,
is a praiseworthy and thoughtful attempt to treat the subject,
so far as relates to religious matters, in a legitimate way.''
— Church Times.

EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW: JOHN MENZIES & CO.
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO.

" This is a singular and remarkable book. On professedly
scientific grounds the author has adopted the materialistic
views of Professor Huxley (to whom the book is dedicated),
Herbert Spencer, Professor Bain, and other scientists — views
generally regarded as opposed to the teachings of the Bible,
and yet in this book he powerfully applies these same con
ceptions to the elucidation and enforcement of Evangelical
Christianity. The theory of Evolution, which not a few con
sider to be anti-Biblical, he holds to be illuminated by the
Bible, and the Bible illuminated by it. The most startling
part of the argument is that in which he applies the Evolution
theory to the exposition of our Lord's teaching on the all-im
portant subject of the new birth and its necessity. He finds
proof of his thesis in his words to Nicodemus : " That which
is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit" and also in the general teaching of St. Paul.
On this subject of regeneration by the Holy Spirit he utters
no uncertain sound. He describes it as " a change so momen
tous and of such vast importance, as far to surpass anything
that could happen to a human being hereafter, even during
that immortal individual's onward existence through eternity;"
and he affirms that " much that is said in the eighth chapter of
Romans is so plain to the converted — therefore adopted child
of God — that he who runs may read. Assuredly," he adds,
" to him the mysteries of Christianity are explained in the
simplest form of language." Unfortunately, in dealing with
these mysteries, the author's style is not simple ; and this,
combined with the exceedingly abstruse character of the argu
ment will, we fear, limit his readers to " the few and the fit."
Those, however, who will take the pains to carefully study and
weigh his arguments and lines of thought will find a rich re
ward in many a fresh view of old truth and in the confirma
tion of faith in revelation and in the religion of the Bible. On

10
the great cardinal doctrines of the divinity and atoning work
of Christ he is equally outspoken and orthodox. " All that
revealed truth ever imparted to our race," he declares " was
embodied in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, who eame to
atone for sin by means of vicarious sacrifice ;" and on page
268 he ably shows that vicarious sacrifice " is an eminent law
of the constitution and development of the social organism."
We regret we have not space to show how, starting from
materialistic conceptions of humanity, he arrives at the Chris
tian doctrine of immortality and eternal life, or his treatment
of prayer and law, or the application of his principles to the-
ethics of the Gospel. In all these subjects he shows himself to
be not only an earnest believer in Divine revelation, but a
Christian of no ordinary spiritual knowledge. And the freedom
with which he handles biological and other sciences in the prose
cution of his great and noble object is instructive. The conclud
ing chapter, entitled " The Mysteries of Christianity explained
in Scientific Language" is a fitting elose to this singular
book. From what we have said our readers must not suppose
that we agree with the materialistic views of the author. We
do not ; but his object is so good, and his maintenance of the
great facts and doctrines of the Gospel is so earnest, that we
have been able to speak much more favourably of the work than
otherwise we might have done, if noticing it purely as a
" scientific production." — Christian Age.