CONTENTS (continued 2)

The Great Being, Humanity, is only an abstraction.[12] 'There is no such thing in reality,' Principal Caird reminds us, 'as an animal which is no particular animal, a plant which is no particular plant, a man or humanity which is no individual man. It is only a fiction of the observer's mind.' There is logical force as well as humorous illustration in the contention of Dean Page Roberts, that there is no more a humanity apart from individual men and women than there is a great being apart from all individual dogs, which we may call Caninity, or a transcendent Durham ox, apart from individual oxen, which may be named Bovinity.'[13] Nor does the geniality of Mr. Chesterton render his argument the less telling: 'It is evidently impossible to worship Humanity, just as it is impossible to worship the Savile Club: both are excellent institutions to which we may happen to belong. But we perceive clearly that the Savile Club did not make the stars and does not fill the universe. And it is surely unreasonable to attack the doctrine of the Trinity as a piece of bewildering mysticism, and then to ask men to worship a being who is ninety million persons in one God, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.'[14]

Can it be doubted that the Great Being, the sum of human beings, is less conceivable, less worthy of worship than the Great Being, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?[15] Can it be doubted that the claim of Humanity to worship is less credible if we exclude the Perfect Man, Christ Jesus, from our view? Can it be doubted that the Positivist motto, 'Live for others,' gains a force and a meaning unapproached elsewhere from the Life and Death of Him Who said, 'The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His Life a ransom for many?' Humanity knit together in One, purified from every stain, glorious and adorable, is a lofty and inspiring idea, but nowhere has it been disclosed save in the Man Christ Jesus, the Word made Flesh, the Brightness of the Father's glory and the Express Image of His Person.

V

Dr. Richard Congreve owns that much of the Religion of Humanity exists already in the Christian Faith, but, in one respect, he asserts that the Religion of Humanity can claim to be entirely original. 'We accept, so have all men. We obey, so have all men. We venerate, so have some in past ages, or in other countries. We add but one other term, we love.'[16] That is what distinguishes this new religion and proves its superiority to the old: its votaries have attained this new principle and mode of life: they love one another. The boldness of the claim may stagger us. We turn over the pages of the New Testament. We see that Love is the fulfilling of the Law; is the end of the commandment; is the sum of the Law and the Prophets; is placed at the very summit of Christian graces; is the bond of perfectness; is manifested in a Life and a Death which, after nineteen centuries, remain without a parallel. We recall the touching legend that in his old age the Apostle S. John was daily carried into the assembly of the Ephesian Christians, simply repeating to them, over and over, the words, 'Love one another. This is our Lord's command, fulfil this and nothing else is needed.' We recall that in early centuries the sympathy and helpfulness by which Christians of all ranks and races were united called forth from heathen spectators the amazed and respectful exclamation, 'See how these Christians love one another!' Recalling these things, we cannot but be startled that, in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, a teacher should, with any expectation of being believed, have ventured to affirm that the great discovery which it has been reserved for the present day to make is that of loving one another. Ignorance of Christianity, misrepresentation of Christianity, we may well call it: ignorance inconceivable, misrepresentation inconceivable: and yet, as we consider the state of Christendom, do we not see what palliates the ignorance and the misrepresentation? Have we not reason to confess that, if the commandment be not new, universal obedience to it would be new indeed? May the calm assurance that love is foreign to Christianity not startle us into the conviction that we have forgotten what, according to our Lord's own declaration, the chief feature of Christianity ought to be? 'By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.'

VI

'How can we,' it has been well said, 'be asked to give the name of Religion of Humanity to a religion that ignores the greatest human being that ever lived, and the very source from which the Religion of Humanity sprang?'[17] Man in himself, man so full of imperfections, man having no connection with any world but this, man unallied to any Power higher, nobler than himself, is this to be our God? Which is more reasonable: to set up the race of man, unpurified, unredeemed, worthless and polluted, as the object of adoration, or to maintain that 'Man indeed is the rightful object of our worship, but in the roll of ages, there has been but one Man Whom we can adore without idolatry, the Man Christ Jesus'?[18] The Religion of Humanity, so called, would have us worship Man apart from Christ Whom yet all acknowledge to be the glory of mankind, but we call on men to worship Christ Jesus, for in Him we see Man without a stain, we see our nature redeemed and consecrated, we see ourselves brought nigh to the Infinite God. We adore Humanity, but Humanity in its purity: we adore Humanity, but only as manifesting in the Only Begotten Son the glory of the Eternal Father. Thus we place no garland around the vices of the human race: thus we abase, and thus we exalt: thus are we humbled to the dust, thus are we raised to the highest heavens. Apart from Christ, the magnitude of the creation may well depress and overwhelm: apart from Christ the human race is morally imperfect instead of being a fit object of blind adoration. Seeing Christ, we not only feel our inconceivable nothingness in presence of the Infinite Majesty, but we stand erect and unpresumptuously say, 'We wonder not that Thou art mindful of those for whom that Son of Man lived and died, we are in Him partakers of the Divine Nature. There thou beholdest Thine Own Image.'

Made in the image of God, such is the ideal of Man that comes to us from the beginning of his history; and such is the ideal that once, and once only, has been realised. 'Ecce Homo! Behold the Man!' said Pontius Pilate, in words more full of significance than he knew, pointing to the victim of priestly hatred and popular fickleness. Behold the Man! man as he ought to be, the Image of God. Before that Divine Humanity we reverently bow, to that Divine Humanity we humbly consecrate ourselves, in fellowship with It alone we learn and manifest the true worth and dignity of Man.

One writing frantically to exalt mankind and to depreciate Christianity, tells us how he sat on a cliff overhanging the seashore and gazed upon the stars, murmuring, 'O prodigious universe, and O poor ignorant, that could believe all these were made for him!' but the sight of a steamship caused him to rejoice at the triumph of Art over Nature, and to exclaim, 'If man is small in relation to the universe, he is great in relation to the earth: he abbreviates distance and time, and brings the nations together.' Then he saw that man is ordained to master the laws of which he is now the slave; he believed that if man could understand this mission, a new religion would animate his life, and, in the strength of this revelation, the writer says that he sang in ecstasy to the waters and winds and birds and beasts, he felt a rapture of love for the whole human race, he resolved to preach the New Gospel far and wide, and proclaim the glorious mission of mankind.[19]

On the whole the Old Gospel will be found as ennobling, as inspiring, as practical as the New. All that this new Gospel aims at, we, as Christians, already believe: and we possess a Divine Token, a Sacred Pledge which is foreign to it: we believe that a higher destiny is in store for us than even the construction of wonders of mechanical skill.[20] Stripped of all rhetoric, the conclusion of unbelief in God and Immortality can only be 'Man is what he eats': the conclusion of Christianity, 'There is but one object greater than the soul, and that is its Creator.'

One in a certain place testified, saying, 'What is man, that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels: Thou crownest him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of Thy hands: Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet.' For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see JESUS Who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour. We see Him Who is our Brother and our Forerunner within the veil; and in His Exaltation we behold our own.[21] No vision of the future can surpass that which the Christian Church has cherished from the beginning, that we shall all 'come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a Perfect Man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ ... from Whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.'

V

THEISM WITHOUT CHRIST

'Ye believe in God, believe also in Me.'—S. JOHN xiv. 1.

'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.'—S. JOHN xiv. 6.

'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.'—S. JOHN xiv. 9.

'Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.'—ACTS iv. 12.

'He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.'—2 S. JOHN 9.

V

THEISM WITHOUT CHRIST

By Theism without Christ is not meant a system like Judaism or Mohammedanism, but a modern school which maintains that faith in God becomes weakened and impaired by being associated with faith in Jesus. There are those who cling with tenacity to the first article of the Apostles' Creed, 'I believe in God the Father Almighty,' but who reject with equal fervour the second article of the Creed, 'And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.' They resist with horror the suggestion that the world is under no overruling Providence, or that the humblest human being is not regarded with the tender love of the Infinite God: they rival the most mystical worshipper in the ardour of the language with which in prayer they address the Father in Heaven, but they refuse to bow in the Name of Jesus: they go to the Father, as they think, without Him: they assert that to look to Him is virtually to look away from God. They are as hostile as we can be to the Substitutes for Christianity which we have been considering. They have no sympathy with those who loudly deny that there is a God, or with those who say that it is impossible to find out whether there is a God or not, or with those who think that the Creator and the Creation are one, that the universe is God, or with those who, not believing in any Unseen and Eternal God, insist that the proper object of the worship of mankind is man. In the proclamation of the existence of an All-Wise and All-holy Being, in the proclamation that He has made the world and rules it to its minutest detail, in the proclamation that there is a life beyond the grave, they are the allies of the Christian Church. But then they go on to argue, For those who hold these doctrines, Christ is quite superfluous: to hold them in their purity Christ must be dethroned and His name no longer specially revered. Some may still wish to speak of Him as among the Great Teachers of the world, but some, in order to preserve these precious truths unmixed, decline in a very fanaticism of unbelief to assign Him even that position.

I

The declaration of our Lord, 'No man cometh unto the Father but by Me,' has been a chief stumbling-block and rock of offence. Are we to believe, it is asked, that only the comparatively few to whom the knowledge of Jesus Christ has come can possibly be accepted of the Father? When the words were spoken the number of His disciples was exceedingly small. Did he mean that the Father could be approached only by that handful of people, that all beyond were banished from the Divine Presence and must inevitably perish? That this is what He meant both the friends and the foes of Christianity have at times been agreed in holding. The friends have imagined that they were thereby exalting the claim of Christ to be the One Mediator. It may be a terrible mystery that the vast majority of the human race should have no opportunity of believing in Him, should be even unacquainted with His Name. We can only bow before the inscrutable decree, and strive with all our might, not only that our own faith may be deepened, but that the knowledge of Christ may be diffused over all the earth, so that some here and there may be rescued. There is little wonder that such a view should have given rise to questionings and opposition, should have been rejected as inconsistent with mercy and with justice. It is an interpretation on which hostile critics have laid stress as incontestably proving the narrowness and bigotry of the Christian Creed.

If we bear in mind Who it is that is presumed to say, 'No man cometh unto the Father but by Me,' the misconception disappears. It is not merely an individual man, separate from all others, giving Himself out as a wise and infallible Teacher. He Who makes the stupendous claim is One Who by the supposition embodies in Himself Human Nature in its perfection, Who is identified with His brethren, Who says, 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' The Life which He manifests is the Life of God. He is set forth as the Way to the Father: in mercy and in blessing the Way is disclosed in Him: it is not in harsh and rigid exclusiveness that He speaks, debarring the mass of mankind: it is in tender comprehensiveness, inviting all without distinction of race or circumstance, opening a new and living way for all into the Holiest. It is the breaking down of all barriers between man and man, between man and God, not the setting up of another barrier high and insurmountable. When Christ declares 'No man cometh unto the Father but by Me,' He is not declaring that the way is difficult and impassable, He is pointing out a way of deliverance which all may tread. So far from laying down a hard and burdensome dogma to be accepted on peril of pains and penalties, He is imparting a hope and a consolation in which all may rejoice.

If we believe Him to be the Word of God made Flesh, if we see in Him the Brightness of the Father's glory, it becomes a truism to say that only through Him can life and healing be imparted to mankind. When He Himself says, 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,' it is natural for Him to add, 'No man cometh unto the Father but by Me.' It will be granted by all who believe in God that, apart from God, no soul of man can have life eternal. The most strenuous advocate of the salvation of the virtuous heathen will grant that their salvation does not descend from the idol of wood and stone before which they grovel. It is from the True God, the Living God, that the blessing proceeds. It is His touch, His Spirit, His Presence which has consecrated the earnest though erring worship of the poor idolater. No one who believes in the Infinite and Eternal God could possibly say that the monstrous image whose aid is invoked by the devout heathen is itself the answerer of his prayer, the cause of his deliverance from sin, the bestower of immortality upon him. The utmost that can be said is that in the costly sacrifices, the painful penances, the passionate prayers which he presents to the object of his adoration, the Almighty Love discerns a longing after something nobler and better, and accepts the service as directed really, though unconsciously, to Him.

But it is the hand of God that they touch. It is from the One Omnipotent God that every blessing comes: it is the One Omnipotent God Who turns to truth and life and reality every sincere and struggling and imperfect attempt to serve Him on the part of those who know not His Nature or His Name.

And what is true of God is equally true of Christ, the manifestation of God. Only grant Him to be the Incarnate Word of God, and it becomes plain that salvation can no more exist apart from Him than apart from the Father. This Word of God is the Light that lighteth every man. Whatever truth, whatever knowledge of the Divine, anywhere exists is the result of that illumination. The sparks which shine even in the darkness of heathendom betoken the presence of that Light, not wholly extinguished by the folly and ignorance of man. That is the One Sun of Righteousness which gives light everywhere, though in many places the clouds are so dense that the beams can scarcely penetrate. Now, if that Word has become Flesh, if that Light has become embodied in Human Form, we are still constrained to say, There is no true Light but His, it is in His Light that all must walk if they would not stray, there is no Guide, no Deliverer, save Him. Christ discloses, brings to view, all the saving health which has ever been, all the power of restoring, cleansing, healing, which has ever worked in the souls of men. The one Power by which any human being, in any age or in any land, has ever been fitted for the presence of the All Holy God, is made manifest in Christ. 'Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.'

We need have no hesitation in asserting that all who in any age or in any land, or in any religion, have come to the Father must have come through the Son of Man, the Eternal Word made Flesh. We do not contend, as has too frequently been contended, that beyond the limits of Christianity, beyond, it may be, the limits of one section of Christianity, there is no truth believed, no acceptable service rendered. We hail with gratitude the lofty thoughts and the noble achievements of some who do not in word acknowledge Christ as Lord. In the vision of the Light that lighteth every man, we see

'Now,' as is well said by the present Bishop of Birmingham, who will hardly be accused of any tendency to minimise the claims of Christianity, 'this is no narrow creed. Christianity, the religion of Jesus, is the Light: it is the one final Revelation, the one final Religion, but it supersedes all other religions, Jewish and Pagan, not by excluding, but by including all the elements of truth which each contained. There was light in Zoroastrianism, light in Buddhism, light among the Greeks: but it is all included in Christianity. A good Christian is a good Buddhist, a good Jew, a good Mohammedan, a good Zoroastrian; that is, he has all the truth and virtue that these can possess, purged and fused in a greater and completer light. Christianity, I say, supersedes all other religions by including these fragments of truth in its own completeness. You cannot show me any element of spiritual light or strength which is in other religions and is not in Christianity. Nor can you show me any other religion which can compare with Christianity in completeness of light: Christianity is the one complete and final religion, and the elements of truth in other religions are rays of the One Light which is concentrated and shines full in Jesus Christ our Lord.'[3]

II

From whatever cause, whether as a reaction against the mode in which this great truth has been at times presented, there have been, and there are, attempts to supersede Christianity because of its narrowness. Religion must not be identified with any one name: God manifests Himself to all, and no Mediator is needed. Theism, therefore, the worship of the One Almighty and Eternal Being, not Christianity, in which a Human Name is associated with the Divine Name, can alone pretend to be the Universal Religion, the Religion of all Mankind. It is not the first time that such an attempt to do without Christianity and to do away with it has been made. In the eighteenth century there was a similar movement. To this day at Ferney, near Geneva, is preserved the chapel which Voltaire erected for the worship of God, of God as distinguished from Christ as Divine or as Mediator between God and man. Voltaire thought that he could overthrow and crush the Faith of Christ, but he none the less erected a temple to God. The Deists upheld what they called the Religion of Nature and repudiated Revelation. Christianity not Mysterious; Christianity as old as the Creation, were among the works issued to show the superiority of Natural Religion, its freedom from difficulties, its agreement with reason, its universality. The most enduring memorial of the controversy is Bishop Butler's Analogy of Religion to the Constitution and Course of Nature, in which it was argued that the Natural Religion of the Deists was beset by as many difficulties as the Revelation of the Christians, that those who were not hindered from believing in God by the problems which Nature presented need not be staggered by the problems which were presented by Christianity. Bishop Butler's argument was directed against a special set of antagonists, an argument, it may be said, of little avail against the scepticism of the present day. The argument seems to have been unanswerable by those to whom it was addressed. The grounds on which they rejected the Revelation of Christ were shown to be inadequate. When they accepted this or that article of Natural Religion, they had accepted what was as difficult of belief as this or that part of the Revelation which they rejected. The mysteries which existed in the religion with which they would have nothing to do were in harmony with the mysteries which existed in the religion which they declared to be necessary for the welfare of society. That retort may be made with even more effect to those who so far occupy that same ground to-day. They rejoice to believe that there is a God, that He is not far off, that He communicates Himself to their souls, that the love which we bear to one another is but a faint image of the love which He bears to us, that the noblest qualities which exist in us exist more purely, more gloriously in Him, that we are in very deed His children and are called to manifest His likeness. It is by prayer, both in public and in private, both in congregations and alone with the Alone, that His Love and His Help can be comprehended and used. He is no absent God: His Ear is not heavy that it cannot hear, nor His arm shortened that it cannot save. With this belief we, as Christians, have no dispute: we gladly go along with Theists in asserting it: we only wonder at their unwillingness to go along with us a little further. For if God be such as they glowingly depict Him, if our relations to Him be such as they esteem it our greatest dignity to know, there is nothing antecedently impossible in the thought that One Man has heard His Voice more clearly, has surrendered to His Will more entirely, than any other in the history of the ages and the races of mankind: nothing antecedently impossible in the thought that to One Man His Truth has been conveyed more brightly, more fully than to any other; that in One Man the lineaments of the Divine Image may be seen more distinctly than in any other. If God be such, and if our relations to God be such, as Theists describe, why should they shrink with distrust or with antipathy from a Son of Man Who has borne witness to those truths in His Life and in His Death with a steadfastness of conviction which none other has ever surpassed; Who, according to the records which we possess of Him, habitually lived to do the Father's Will and died commending His Spirit into the Father's Hands: a Son of Man Who could truly be said to be in heaven while He was on earth? If God be such, and our relations to God be such, as Theists describe, would not that Son of Man be the confirmation of their thoughts? Would not His testimony be of infinite value on their side? Would He Himself not be the radiant illustration, the eagerly longed for proof of the truth for which they contend? They believe in God: why should it, on their own showing, be so hard to believe in Christ?

III

The Theism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is in some respects different from the Deism of the eighteenth. It is not so cold, the God in whom it believes is not so distant from His creatures. But it is not less vehement in its depreciation of Christianity as a needless and even harmful addition to the Religion of Nature. Conspicuous among the advocates of this modern Theism have been Francis William Newman, Miss Frances Power Cobbe, and the Rev. Charles Voysey.

Francis Newman, in his youth, belonged, like his brother the famous Cardinal, to the strictest sect of Evangelicals, but, like the Cardinal also, drifted away from them, though in a totally different direction.[4] As he found the untenableness of certain views which he had cherished, the insufficiency of certain arguments which he had employed, he came with much anguish of mind to the conclusion that the whole fabric of historical Christianity was built upon the sand. He rapidly renounced belief after belief, and caused widespread distress and dismay by a crude attack upon the moral perfection of our Lord. His conviction that Christianity had nothing special to say for itself, and that one religion was as good as another, seems to have been mainly brought about by a discussion which he had with a Mohammedan carpenter at Aleppo. 'Among other matters, I was particularly desirous of disabusing him of the current notion of his people that our Gospels are spurious narratives of late date. I found great difficulty of expression, but the man listened to me with much attention, and I was encouraged to exert myself. He waited patiently till I had done and then spoke to the following effect: "I will tell you, sir, how the case stands. God has given to you English many good gifts. You make fine ships, and sharp penknives, and good cloth and cottons, and you have rich nobles and brave soldiers; and you write and print many learned books (dictionaries and grammars): all this is of God. But there is one thing that God has withheld from you and has revealed to us; and that is the knowledge of the true religion by which one may be saved."'[5]

But although Newman was led to give up Christianity, and practically to hold that one religion was as good as another, he clung tenaciously to what he supposed to be common to all religions, belief in God, a belief deep and ardent. The rationalism of the Deists did not approve itself to him. 'Our Deists of past centuries tried to make religion a matter of the pure intellect, and thereby halted at the very frontier of the inward life: they cut themselves off even from all acquaintance with the experience of spiritual men.'[6] He nourished his soul with psalms and hymns: he sought communion with God. He saw the weakness of Morality without the inspiring power of Religion. 'Morals can seldom gain living energy without the impulsive force derived from Spirituals.... However much Plato and Cicero may talk of the surpassing beauty of virtue, still virtue is an abstraction, a set of wise rules, not a Person, and cannot call out affection as an existence exterior to the soul does. On the contrary, God is a Person; and the love of Him is of all affections by far the most energetic in exciting us to make good our highest ideals of moral excellence and in clearing the moral sight, so that that ideal may keep rising. Other things being equal (a condition not to be forgotten) a spiritual man will hold a higher and purer morality than a mere moralist. Not only does Duty manifest itself to him as an ever-expanding principle, but since a larger and larger part of Duty becomes pleasant and easy when performed under the stimulus of Love, the Will is enabled to concentrate itself more on that which remains difficult and greater power of performance is attained.'[7] Where shall we find a more vivid or more spiritual description of the rise and progress of devotion in the soul than in the words of this man, who placed himself beyond the pale of every Christian communion? 'One who begins to realise God's majestic beauty and eternity and feels in contrast how little and transitory man is, how dependent and feeble, longs to lean upon him for support. But He is outside of the heart, like a beautiful sunset, and seems to have nothing to do with it: there is no getting into contact with Him, to press against Him. Yet where rather should the weak rest than on the strong, the creature of the day than on the Eternal, the imperfect than on the Centre of Perfection? And where else should God dwell than in the human heart? for if God is in the universe, among things inanimate and unmoral, how much more ought He to dwell with our souls! and they, too, seem to be infinite in their cravings: who but He can satisfy them? Thus a restless instinct agitates the soul, guiding it dimly to feel that it was made for some definite but unknown relation towards God. The sense of emptiness increases to positive uneasiness, until there is an inward yearning, if not shaped in words, yet in substance not alien from that ancient strain, "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God; my soul is athirst for God, even for the Living God."'[8]

Mr. Newman, in his later days, we understand, had modified the bitterness of his opposition to historical Christianity and was ready to avow himself as a disciple of Christ.

Miss Frances Power Cobbe was another devout spirit who, with less violence but equal decisiveness, accepted Theism as apart from Christianity. In her case, even more visibly than in Mr. Newman's, it was not Christianity which she rejected, but sundry distortions of it with which it had in her mind become identified. She wrote not a few articles so permeated with the Christian spirit and imbued with the Christian hope that the most ardent believer in Christ could read them with entire approval and own himself their debtor. She took an active part in many philanthropic movements, and she was an earnest and eloquent advocate of faith in the Divine Ordering of the world and in human immortality.

'Theism,' she said, 'is not Christianity minus Christ, nor Judaism minus the miraculous legation of Moses, nor any other creed whatsoever merely stripped of its supernatural element. It is before all things the positive affirmation of the Absolute Goodness of God: and if it be in antagonism to other creeds, it is principally because of, and in proportion to, their failure to assert that Goodness in its infinite and all-embracing completeness.'[9] 'God is over us, and heaven is waiting for us all the same, even though all the men of science in Europe unite to tell us there is only matter in the universe and only corruption in the grave. Atheism may prevail for a night, but faith cometh in the morning. Theism is "bound to win" at last: not necessarily that special type of Theism which our poor thoughts in this generation have striven to define: but that great fundamental faith, the needful substruction of every other possible religious faith, the faith in a Righteous and Loving God, and in a Life of man beyond the tomb.'[10]

'All the monitions of conscience, all the guidance and rebukes and consolations of the Divine Spirit, all the holy words of the living, and all the sacred books of the dead, these are our primary Evidences of Religion. In a word, the first article of our creed is "I BELIEVE IN GOD THE HOLY GHOST." After this fundamental dogma, we accept with joy and comfort the faith in the Creator and Orderer of the physical universe, and believe in GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY, MAKER OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. And lastly we rejoice in the knowledge that (in no mystic Athanasian sense, but in simple fact) "these two are One." The God of Love and Justice Who speaks in conscience, and Whom our inmost hearts adore, is the same God Who rolls the suns and guides the issues of life and death.'[11]

In an able paper, A Faithless World, in which Miss Cobbe combated the assertion of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, that the disappearance of belief in God and Immortality would be unattended with any serious consequences to the material, intellectual, or moral well-being of mankind, she forcibly said, 'I confess at starting on this inquiry, that the problem, "Is religion of use, or can we do as well without it?" seems to me almost as grotesque as the old story of the woman who said that we owe vast obligations to the moon, which affords us light on dark nights, whereas we are under no such debt to the sun, who only shines by day, when there is always light. Religion has been to us so diffused a light that it is quite possible to forget how we came by the general illumination, save when now and then it has blazed out with special brightness.' The comment is eminently just, but does it not apply with equal force to Miss Cobbe herself? The Theism which she professed was the direct outcome of Christianity, could never have existed but for Christianity, was, in all its best features, simply Christianity under a different name.

That Theism, as a separate organisation, gives little evidence of conquering the world is shown by the fact that, after many years, it boasts of only one congregation, that of the Theistic Church, Swallow Street, Piccadilly, of which the Rev. Charles Voysey is minister. Mr. Voysey was at one time vicar of a parish in Yorkshire, where he issued, under the title of The Sling and the Stone, sermons attacking the commonly accepted doctrines of the Church of England, and was in consequence deprived of his living. He is distinctly anti-Christian in his teaching; strongly prejudiced against anything that bears the Christian name: criticising the sayings and doings of our Lord in a fashion which indicates either the most astonishing misconception or the most melancholy perversion. But his sincerity and fervour on behalf of Theism are unmistakable. He describes it as Religion for all mankind, based on facts which are never in Dispute. The book which is called by that title is written for the help and comfort of all his fellowmen, 'chiefly for those who have doubted and discarded the Christian Religion, and in consequence have become Agnostics or Pessimists.' It is prefaced by a dedication, which is also a touching confession of personal faith: 'In all humility I dedicate this book to my God Who made me and all mankind, Who loves us all alike with an everlasting love, Who of His very faithfulness causeth us to be troubled, Who punishes us justly for every sin, not in anger or vengeance, but only to cleanse, to heal, and to bless, in Whose Everlasting Arms we lie now and to all eternity.'[12]

Mr. Voysey has compiled a Prayer Book for the use of his congregation. The ordinary service is practically the morning or evening service of the Book of Common Prayer, with all references to our Lord carefully eliminated. The hymn Jesus, Lover of my Soul is changed to Father, Refuge of my Soul; and the hymn

is rendered:

The service respecting our duty, and the service of supplication have merits of their own, but, except for the wanton omission of the Name which is above every name, there is nothing in them which does not bear a Christian impress. 'Christianity minus Christ' would seem to be no unfair definition of their standpoint: and without Christ they could not have been what they are. The Father Who is set forth as the Object of worship and of trust is the Father Whom Christ declared, the Father Who, but for the manifestation of Christ, would never have been known. Far be it from us to deny that the Father has been found by those who have sought Him beyond the limits of the Church: this only we affirm that those by whom He has been found, have, consciously or unconsciously, drawn near to Him by the way of Christ. Nothing of value in modern Theism is incompatible with Christianity: nothing of value which would not be strengthened by faith in Him Who said, 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.'

IV

The strange objection to faith in Christ is sometimes made that it interferes with faith in the Father. The notion of mediation is regarded as derogatory alike to God and to man. There is no need for any one to come between: no need for God to depute another to bear witness of Him: no need for us to depute Another to secure His favour, as from all eternity He is Love. The assumption, the groundless assumption, underlying this conception is that the Mediator is a barrier between man and God, a hindrance not a help to fellowship with the Divine: that one goes to the Mediator because access to God is debarred. Whatever may occasionally have been the unguarded statements of representatives of Christianity, it is surely plain that no such doctrine is taught, that the very opposite of such doctrine is taught, in the New Testament. 'We do not,' says M. Sabatier, 'address ourselves to Jesus by way of dispensing ourselves from going to the Father. Far from this, we go to Christ and abide in Him, precisely that we may find the Father. We abide in Him that His filial consciousness may become our own; that the Spirit may become our spirit, and that God may dwell immediately in us as He dwells in Him. Nothing in all this carries us outside of the religion of the Spirit: on the contrary, it is its seal and confirmation.'[13]

The whole object of the work of Christ, as proclaimed by Himself, or as interpreted by His Apostles, was to show the Father, to bring men to the Father. 'Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself: but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.' He 'came and preached peace to you which were afar off and to them that were nigh. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.' To argue that to come to Christ is a substitute for coming to God, is an inducement to halt upon the way, is an absolute travesty and perversion. To refuse to see the glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ is not to bring God near: it is to remove Him further from our vision. That God should come to us, that we should go to God, through a mediator, is only in accordance with a universal law. 'Why,' says one, who might be expected from his theological training to speak otherwise, 'Why, all knowledge is "mediated" even of the simplest objects, even of the most obvious facts: there is no such thing in the world as immediate knowledge, and shall we demur when we are told that the knowledge of God the Father also must pass, in order to reach us at its best and purest, through the medium of "that Son of God and Son of Man in Whom was the fulness of the prophetic spirit and the filial life?" ... Of this at least I feel convinced, that where faith in the Father has grown blurred and vague in our days, and finally flickered out, the cause must in many instances be sought—I will not say in the wilful rejection, but—in the careless letting go of the message and Personality of the Son.'[14] So far from the thought of the Father being ignored or set aside by the thought of Christ, we may rather say with S. John, 'Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that confesseth the Son hath the Father also.' 'He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.'

V

The notion that Theism as contrasted with Christianity is a mark of progress and of spirituality is a pure imagination. 'More spiritual it may be than the traditional Christianity which consists in rigid and stereotyped forms of practice, of ceremonial, of observance, of dogma: but not more spiritual than the teaching of Christ Himself, the end and completion of Whose work was to bring men to the Father, to teach them that God is a Spirit, and to send the Spirit of the Father into the hearts of the disciples. It would be a strange perversity if men should reject Christ in the name of spiritual religion when it is to Christ, and to Him alone, that they owe the conception of what spiritual religion is.'[16] To preach the doctrines of Theism without reference to Christ is to deprive them of their most sublime illustration, their most inspiring force, and their most convincing proof.

It is as Christ is known that God is believed in. The attempt to create enthusiasm for God while banishing the Gospel of Christ meets with astonishingly small response. The 'Religion for all Mankind' makes but little progress, is, in spite of the labours of five-and-thirty years, confined, as we have seen, almost to a solitary moderately sized congregation. And whether or not the 'facts' on which the religion is based 'are never in dispute,' the religion itself is often-times disputed very keenly. Modern assaults upon religious faith are, as a rule, directed quite as much against Theism as against Christianity.[17] It is the Love, or even the existence, of the Living God, it is human responsibility, it is life beyond the grave, that are called in question as frequently as the Resurrection of Christ. The assurance that God at sundry times and in divers manners has spoken by prophets renders it not more but less improbable that He should speak by a Son: the assurance that there is life beyond the grave for all renders it not more but less improbable that Jesus rose from the dead. Conversely those who believe in Jesus believe with a double intensity in Him Whom He revealed. 'Ye believe in God,' said Christ, 'believe also in Me.' For many of us now, it is because we believe in Christ that we believe also in God. The Almighty and Eternal is beyond our ken: the grace and truth of Jesus Christ come home to our hearts. The Word that was in the beginning with God and was God, is wrapt in impenetrable mystery: the Word made Flesh can be seen and handled: has

And however it may be in a few exceptional cases, where people nominally renouncing Christ desperately cleave to a fragment of the faith of their childhood, the fact remains that, where He ceases to be acknowledged, faith in the Father Whom He manifested tends, gradually or speedily, to vanish.

VI

The superiority of Theism to Deism simply consists in its being more Christian. With the ideas of God which 'Theists' hold, we can, as Christians, most cordially sympathise. We can sincerely say, 'Hold to them firmly, they are your life: let no man rob you of them by any vain deceit.' But we cannot help also asking, 'Whence have you drawn those lofty ideas? where have you obtained so exalted a conception of the Divine Being in His mingled Majesty and lowliness, in His inconceivable greatness, and His equally inconceivable compassion? We turn from the picture of God which, with so much labour, so much skill, so much moral earnestness, you have exhibited, and we behold the Original in Christ and His Teaching. However unconsciously, it is His Truth, it is His Features, that you have reproduced. You have been brought up in the Church of Christ, or you have been brought into contact with its influences, and you have imbibed its teachings, perhaps more deeply than some who would not dare to question its smallest precepts. Still, Christ's teaching you have not outgrown, from Christ Himself you have not escaped. You cannot go from His presence or flee from His Spirit. Those views which you hold so strongly, which are to you the most ennobling that have ever been given of God and of religion, where is it that alone they are to be found? In places where Christianity has gone before.

No doubt, belief in God is not confined to Christian countries: worship of the Maker of heaven and earth exists where the name of Christ has never been heard, but not such belief, such worship, as that for which those persons contend. The God Whom they adore will not be found anywhere save where Christianity has penetrated. In this country it is the desperate clinging to one portion of the Christian Faith when all else has been abandoned: in other lands, in India, for example, where representatives of this way of thinking are not uncommon, it is the rapturous welcome of one of the sublime truths of Christianity before which the idolatries of their forefathers are passing away. It is safe to call it a transition stage: it will either part with the fragment of Christianity which it retains and become merged in doubt and speculation and unbelief; or it will include yet more of the Christianity of which it has grasped a part: its belief in God will be crowned and confirmed by its belief in Christ.

For, speaking to those who cherish faith in the All-Righteous and All-Loving God as the only hope for the regeneration of mankind, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that where faith in Christ fades, faith in God has a tendency to become vague and dim. He ceases to be thought of as a Friend and Help at hand: He is resolved into a Creator infinitely distant or into a Law, immovable, inexorable, a blind, unconscious Fate. It is Christ Who gives life to the thought of God. It is the Word made Flesh that makes the Eternal Word more real. The attempt of the Deists to purify religion by the preaching of a God who had not revealed Himself, and could not reveal Himself, in a Son, came to nothing. Voltaire's chapel at Ferney still stands, but nobody worships in it. Religion seemed to slumber: belief in God seemed to be decaying, when the preaching of the name and the work of Christ again aroused it into life. And so it is now. Whatever the ability, whatever the sincerity of the advocates of belief in God without reference to Christ, it lacks motive-power, it lacks the missionary spirit. If we may judge by the past, Theism without Christ is a faith which will not spread, which will not lay hold on the labouring and the heavy laden: which may be maintained as a theory, but which will not be as a fire in the souls of men diffusing itself by kindling other souls. It is from Christ alone, from Christ the manifestation of what God is in Heart and Mind, from Christ the manifestation of what man ought to be, from Christ Who said, 'In My Father's house are many mansions: he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,' that there comes with an authority to which, in face of the difficulties besetting the present and the future, the human soul will bow, with a soothing power to which the human spirit will gladly yield—it is from Christ alone that there comes the Divine injunction, 'Let not your heart be troubled, ye believe in God, believe also in Me.' It is as He is clearly seen and truly known that the clouds of error and superstition vanish from the Face of God, and men are drawn to worship and to trust.

VI

THE TRIBUTE OF CRITICISM TO CHRIST

'For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.'—DEUTERONOMY xxxii. 31.

'He asked His disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? And they said, Some say that Thou art John the Baptist; some Elias; and others Jeremias or one of the prophets.'—S. MATTHEW xvi. 13, 14.

'What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?—S. MATTHEW, xxii. 42.

'And there was much murmuring among the people concerning Him: for some said, He is a good man: others said, Nay, but He deceiveth the people.'—S. JOHN vii. 12.

'Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.'—S. JOHN vi. 67, 68.

VI

THE TRIBUTE OF CRITICISM TO CHRIST[1]

Of the investigations of modern criticism the most serious are those which have concerned the person of our Lord. It has been felt both by assailants and by defenders of the Faith that, so long as His supremacy remains acknowledged, Christianity has not been overthrown. Other doctrines once considered all-important may fall into comparative abeyance: whether they are upheld or rejected or modified, matters little to Christianity as Christianity. But more and more it has grown clear that Christ Himself is the Article of a standing or a falling Church. If this doctrine is not of God, if He is not the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Christianity, whatever benefits may have been associated with its career, must be ranked among religions which have passed away. But so long as He is admitted to be the Authority and standard in the moral and spiritual realm, so long as His name is above every name, the work of destruction is not accomplished.

Hence, renewed attempts have of late been made to tear the crown from His brow, to reduce Him to the level of common men, to relegate Him to the domain of myth, even to deny that He ever existed. Although, in certain quarters at present, this last and extreme position is loudly asserted, it is hardly necessary to occupy much time in examining it, the trend of all criticism, even of the most rationalistic, being so decidedly opposed to it. To deny that He existed is commonly felt to be the outcome of the most arbitrary prejudice, the conclusions of Whately's Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte remaining grave and weighty in comparison. That Jesus of Nazareth lived and taught and was crucified, that, immediately after His Death, His disciples were proclaiming that He had risen, and was their living inspiration, these are facts which can be denied only by the very extravagance of scepticism. And the admission of these simple facts implies a great deal more than is commonly supposed.

I

It is the fashion for hostile critics to say, 'Christianity is not dependent upon Christ: it is the creation of the semi-historical Paul, not of the unhistorical Jesus. There is at best no more connection between Christendom and Christ than between America and Amerigo Vespucci.[2] See how much Christians have been obliged to give up: see how belief after belief has had to be surrendered; see how they are now left with the merest fragment of their ancient Creed, how evidently they will soon be compelled to part with the little to which they still desperately cling.' The conclusion is somewhat hasty and premature. The fragment which remains is after all the main portion of the Creed of the early disciples. Where that fragment is declared and held and lived in, there is the presence and the power of the Christian Faith. We need not trouble ourselves about sundry points which, at one epoch or another, have come to be denied or ignored: we need not say anything either for them or against them. We have to take our stand on what is accepted, not on what is rejected. And for the moment we may venture to take our stand only on what is accepted by the critics least biassed in favour of the traditional views of Christendom. Those who have come to imagine it to be a mark of advanced culture to break with all religion, to confine their attention to the fleeting present, to reject all that claims to have Divine sanction, may listen with respect to the words of some who appear in fancied hostility to Christianity.

We are not assuming that because men are great in Science or History or Philosophy they must be great in spiritual things. Their achievements in their own sphere, let us gratefully recognise; their uprightness, their single-heartedness, let us imitate; and if by chance they are sincere Christians as well as able men, let us rejoice; if they are not professing Christians at all and yet bear witness to the beneficial influence of Christianity and the unique power of the words and character of Christ, let us hail with pleasure their tribute of admiration as a testimony impartial and unanswerable to the pre-eminence of our Lord, but let not our faith in God, our knowledge of our Saviour, be dependent on their verdict. The Faith of the Gospel does not stand or fall with their approval or disapproval. In matters of criticism we do well to defer to scholars, in matters of science we do well to defer to men of science. But in matters pertaining to the inner life, to the development of character, to the knowledge of things pure and lovely and of good report, such men have no exclusive claim to be listened to. And it would be absurd to say that we cannot make up our minds as to whether Christ is worthy to be revered and loved and followed until we have ascertained what is said about Him by authorities in physics, or geology, or astronomy, by statesmen or novelists or writers of magazine articles, by inventors of ingenious machines or authors of sensational stories. If they speak scoffingly, if they do not recognise any sacredness in His Spirit and Life, it will be impossible for us to take Him as our Moral and Spiritual Guide.

We might almost as well say that we will not trust the truthfulness or goodness of our father or mother or brother or friend of many years, unless, from persons eminent in literature or science or politics, we have testimonials assuring us that our affection for those with whom we are so closely associated is not a delusion. That is a matter, we should all feel, with which the great and distinguished, however justly great and distinguished, have really nothing to do. It is a matter for ourselves, a matter in which our own experience is worth more than the verdict of people, however learned in their own line, who do not, and cannot, know the friend or relative as we know him ourselves. Still, we regard it as an additional compliment to his worth, and an additional confirmation of our own faith, if those who have been jealously scrutinising his conduct declare that they can find no fault in him.[3]

If it is made plain that the positive teaching of men unconnected with any Church, untrammelled by any creed, is a virtual assertion of much that is most dear to Christianity, if it is made plain that even where there is strong denial there is also much reference to Christ, it may have more weight than the most cogent arguments or the most glowing appeals of orthodox divines or devout believers. The Evangelists delight to record instances of unexpected, unfriendly, unimpeachable testimony to the power of Christ. It is not only that the simple-minded people were astonished at His doctrine, but that the soldiers who were sent to silence Him returned, smitten with amazement, saying, 'Never man spake like this Man.' It is not only that a grateful penitent washed His Feet with tears, but that the unprincipled governor who sentenced Him to death declared 'I find in Him no fault at all.' It is not only that an Apostle confesses, 'Thou art the Christ the Son of the Living God,' but that the centurion who watched over His Crucifixion exclaimed, 'Certainly this was a Righteous Man: this was a Son of God.' It is similar unprejudiced witness that we may hear around us still, the witness of those who profess to have another rule of life than ours, and to be in no degree influenced by our traditions. We must not expect too much from this kind of evidence: we must not expect clear logical proof of every article rightly or wrongly identified with the popularly termed 'orthodox' Creed. It would destroy the value of the evidence simply to quote orthodox doctrines in orthodox language. What we rather offer is the testimony of those who have resigned their grasp on much that we may deem essential. It is because in a sense we may call them 'enemies' that we ask them to be 'judges' in the great controversy. It is exactly because they are incredulous, or sceptical, or irreligious that we cite them at all. We confine ourselves to the utterances of men who are commonly cited as hostile to the commonly accepted Faith of Christ, or who do not rank among the number of His nominal disciples, or who at least have discussed His claims by critical and historical methods, endeavouring fairly to take into account all the facts which the circumstances warrant. We say to those who disown the authority of Christ: It is not to the words of Evangelists or preachers that your attention is sought: it is to the words of those whom you profess to respect, of those because of whose supposed antagonism to Christianity you are rejecting Him. We ask you to listen to them and to consider whether He of Whom such men speak in such terms is to be so lightly set aside as you have fancied.

II

It will be strange if, accepting even that scanty creed, we do not find ourselves speedily accepting much more. When it is heartily acknowledged that Jesus of Nazareth lived and died, and that His first followers found strength and irresistible power in the conviction that He had conquered death and the grave, it is of necessity that we go further. The extreme sceptics who maintain that He never existed are, for the purpose of controversy, wise in their generation, for, once His existence is admitted, His mysterious power begins to tell. We are confronted with an Influence by which, consciously or unconsciously, we must be affected, a knowledge which we must acquire, an Authority to which we must bow. Let us not think merely of those who have, in utter devotion, yielded their hearts and souls to Him through all the centuries, of the institutions and customs which owe their existence directly to Him; let us think of the manifestations which are so often visible in those who do not suspect whence the manifestations come, let us think of the tributes of affection, of homage, of devotion which are paid by those to whom the ancient faith in His Divinity appears to be an illusion or an impossible exaggeration.

Scarcely any critic of recent years has been regarded as more destructive than Professor Schmiedel. Indignant attack after indignant attack has been made upon him for arguing that only nine sayings attributed to our Lord can be accepted as genuine, that all else is involved in suspicion. What Schmiedel really does maintain is that these nine sayings must of necessity be accepted as genuine, cannot be rejected by any sane canon of criticism, and that the acceptance of these nine sayings, these 'foundation-pillars,' compels the acceptance of a great deal besides. 'What then have I gained in these nine foundation pillars? You will perhaps say "Very little": I reply, "I have gained just enough." Having them, I know that Jesus must really have come forward in the way He is said to have done.... In a word, I know, on the one hand, that His Person cannot be referred to the region of myth; on the other hand, that He was man in the full sense of the term, and that, without of course denying that the Divine character was in Him, this could be found only in the shape in which it can be found in any human being. I think, therefore, that if we knew no more we should know by no means little about Him. But as a matter of fact the foundation-pillars are but the starting-point for our study of the life of Jesus.'[4] And this study, he concludes, gives us nothing less than 'pretty well the whole bulk of Jesus' teaching, in so far as its object is to explain in a purely religious and ethical way what God requires of man and wherein man requires comfort and consolation from God.' The standpoint of Professor Schmiedel is not the standpoint of the Church as a whole: he fearlessly and aggressively endeavours to remove any misconception on that subject: all the more remarkable that, renouncing so much, he incontrovertibly establishes so much, incontrovertibly establishes, we may not unreasonably contend, a great deal more than he admits: he cannot, we may think, stop logically where he does. All this may, or may not, be legitimately argued: there can be no doubt that one whose dislike of traditional dogmas is excessive, and whose scrutiny of the Gospel records is minute and unsparing, forces us to say of Jesus, What manner of Man is this?

It is the same with the general tendency of modern criticism. From the day that Strauss accomplished his destructive work, the Figure of Jesus as a Historical Reality has been more and more endowed with power.[5] No age has so occupied itself with Him, none has so endeavoured to recall the features of His character, to apply His teachings to the solution of social questions, as this age of ruthless inquiry. The inquirers may have abjured tradition, but almost without exception they have profoundly reverenced, if they have not actually worshipped, Jesus of Nazareth, and they have found in His Gospel moral and spiritual light and life.

Some thirty years ago, M. André Lefèvre, a fervid disciple of Materialism, an uncompromising and bitter opponent of every symptom of religious manifestation, could not help discerning 'with the clairvoyance of hatred,' the influence of Christianity in modern thought. 'Descartes, Leibnitz, Locke, Condillac, Newton, Bonnet, Kant, Hegel, Spinoza himself, Toland and Priestley, Rousseau, all are Christians somewhere.... Voltaire himself has not completely eliminated the virus: his Deism is not exempt from it.'[6] The same thing is still occurring. In the most unexpected quarters we find the fascination of Christ remaining. Men not acknowledging themselves to be His followers, defiantly proclaiming that they are not His followers, that they can hardly be even interested in Him, are yet perpetually returning, in what they themselves will confess as their higher moments, to the thought of Him, trying to make plain why it is that for them there is in Him no beauty that they should desire Him. For example, this is how Mr. H. G. Wells, the popular author of so many imaginative works, attempts frankly to explain his attitude:

'I hope I shall offend no susceptibilities when I assert that this great and very definite Personality in the hearts and imaginations of mankind does not, and never has, attracted me. It is a fact I record about myself without aggression or regret. I do not find myself able to associate him in any way with the emotion of salvation.' But Mr. Wells goes on to say: 'I admit the splendid imaginative appeal in the idea of a divine human friend and mediator. If it were possible to have access by prayer, by meditation, by urgent outcries of the soul, to such a being whose feet were in the darknesses, who stooped down from the light, who was at once great and little, limitless in power and virtue, and one's very brother; if it were possible by sheer will in believing to make and make one's way to such a helper, who would refuse such help? But I do not find such a being in Christ. I do not find, I cannot imagine such a being. I wish I could. To me the Christian Christ seems not so much a humanised God as an incomprehensibly sinless being, neither God nor man. His sinlessness wears his incarnation like a fancy dress, all his white self unchanged. He had no petty weaknesses. Now the essential trouble of my life is its petty weaknesses. If I am to have that love, that sense of understanding fellowship which is, I conceive, the peculiar magic and merit of this idea of a Personal Saviour, then I need some one quite other than this image of virtue, this terrible and incomprehensible Galilean with his crown of thorns, his bloodstained hands and feet. I cannot love him any more than I can love a man upon the rack.' 'The Christian's Christ is too fine for me, not incarnate enough, not flesh enough, not earth enough. He was never foolish and hot-eared and inarticulate, never vain, he never forgot things, nor tangled his miracles.'[7]

There is no disputing about tastes; and it is impossible to refute one who tells us that he cannot see and cannot understand, though we may lament and be astonished at his disabilities. Why a man upon the rack should not be loved, or why the prime qualification for the Saviour of mankind should be the plentiful possession of petty weaknesses, or why it should be necessary for Him to be sometimes foolish and to have a bad memory, or what necessary connection there is between hot-ears and the salvation of the world, need not detain us long. For in spite of this apparently curious longing for a Deliverer who shall be weak and vain and forgetful and hot-eared, and foolish, and of the earth earthy, Mr. Wells shows us that the urgent outcry of his soul is for a Being limitless in power and virtue and one's very brother; and though he says that he does not find such a Being in Christ, it is exactly what Christians have in all ages been finding. 'We have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the Throne of Grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in times of need.'

III

The instance which we have cited is exceptional among modern doubters, among those who have deliberately set themselves without violent prejudice to study the claims of Christianity. Be it in poetry or prose, in scientific criticism or in imaginative biography, with remarkable unanimity, while stubbornly refusing to accept the Creed of the Church, they so depict Him that the natural conclusion of their representation is, 'Oh, come let us adore Him.' There is scarcely any of them who would not sympathise with the admission and aspiration of B. Wimmer in his confession, My Struggle for Light: 'I cannot but love this unique Child of God with all the fervour of my soul, I cannot but lift up eyes full of reverence and rapture to this Personality in whom the highest and most sacred virtues which can move the heart of man shine forth in spotless purity throughout the ages. Even if many a trait in His portrait, as the Gospels sketch it for us, be more legendary than historical, yet I feel that here a man stands before me, a man who really lived and has a place in history like that of no other man: indeed I feel that even the legends concerning Him possess a truth in that they spring from the Spirit which passed from Him into His Church. I know what I have to thank Him for. I would in my inmost self be so closely united with Him that He may live in my spirit and bear absolute sway in my soul. I will not be ashamed of His Cross and I will gladly endure the insults which men have directed, and still often enough direct, against Him and His truth.'

That is the characteristic and dominant note of the more recent criticism. The almost universal conclusion is that the Perfect Ideal has been depicted in the Christ of the Gospels, and has been depicted because the Reality had been seen in Jesus of Nazareth.[8] Is it not allowable to declare that the writers, let them say what they will about their rejection of the doctrine of the Church concerning the Incarnation and the Atonement of Christ, are practically His disciples, that the ardour of their faith in Him not infrequently puts to shame the coldness of us who call Him Lord?[9] There is scarcely extravagance in the assertion that, as we recognise the part which Strauss and Renan played, and the unconscious help which they rendered, 'we may well say now "noster" Strauss and "noster" Renan. They were, in their measure, and, according to their respective abilities, defenders of the Faith.'[10] While it is possible to lament that among Christian apologists there are timid surrenders and faithless forebodings, it is yet more possible to reply that 'Whereas our critics were at one time infidels and our bitter enemies, they are now proud of the name of Christian and ready to be the friends, as far as that is permitted, of every form of orthodoxy in Christianity.'[11]

The language in which, at any rate, they express their conception of Him is sometimes more devout, more exalted, than the language which used to be employed by professed apologists. The Hindu Theist, Protab Chandra Mozoomdar, who stood outside the fold of Christianity, joyfully proclaimed, 'Christ reigns. As the law of the spirit of heavenly life, He reigns in the bosom of every believer.... Christ reigns as the recogniser of Divine humanity in the fallen, the low, and the despicable, as the healer of the unhappy, the unclean, and the sore distressed. Reigns He not in the sweet humanity that goes forth to seek and to save its kin in every land and clime, to teach and preach, and raise and reclaim, to weep and watch and give repose? He reigns as sweet patience and sober reason amid the laws and orders of the world; as the spirit of submission and loyalty He reigns in peace in the kingdoms of the world.... Christ reigns in the individual who feebly watches His footprints in the tangled mazes of life. He reigns in the community that is bound together in His name. As Divine Humanity, and the Son of God, He reigns gloriously around us in the New Dispensation.'[12]

Or listen to the rhapsody with which Mrs. Besant, once an Atheist, now a Theosophist, depicts His influence from age to age: 'His the steady inpouring of truth into every brain ready to receive it, so that hand stretched out to hand across the centuries and passed on the torch of knowledge, which thus was never extinguished. His the Form which stood beside the rack and in the flames of the burning pile, cheering His confessors and His martyrs, soothing the anguish of their pains and filling their hearts with His peace. His the impulse which spoke in the thunder of Savonarola, which guided the calm wisdom of Erasmus, which inspired the deep ethics of the God-intoxicated Spinoza.... His the beauty that allured Fra Angelico and Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, that inspired the genius of Michael Angelo, that shone before the eyes of Murillo, and that gave the power that raised the marvels of the world, the Duomo of Milan, the San Marco of Venice, the Cathedral of Florence. His the melody that breathed in the Masses of Mozart, the sonatas of Beethoven, the oratorios of Handel, the fugues of Bach, the austere splendour of Brahms. Through the long centuries He has striven and laboured, and, with all the mighty burden of the Churches to carry, He has never left uncared for and unsolaced one human heart that cried to Him for help.'[13] When we read sentences like these by themselves we say, Here is unqualified acceptance of the Christian Faith. And even when we are told that we must not take the sentences in their literal and natural meaning, that they apply not to Him Whose earthly career is sketched in the Gospels, but to an Ideal Being evolved out of the writer's imagination, we are surely entitled to answer, It is of Jesus that the words are spoken, whether their meaning is to be taken literally or figuratively; if they have any meaning at all, they indicate a Being without a parallel. That there should be so extraordinary a conflict of opinion regarding Him, that the greatest intellects as well as the simplest souls should hail Him as Divine, that the most critical should still find their explanations insufficient to account for the impression which He made upon His contemporaries and continues to wield to this day, at least renders Him absolutely unique. Men may disbelieve a great deal; they cannot disbelieve that this Amazing Personality has a place in the heart of the world which no other has ever occupied. The alleged imaginary Ideal has had on earth only one approximate Embodiment. Nay, we are forced to confess, without the actual Character disclosed from Nazareth to Calvary, the Ideal would never have been conceived.

IV

Robert Browning has described in his Christmas Eve a certain German professor lecturing upon the myth of Christ and the sources whence it is derivable. But as the listeners wait for the inference that faith in Him should henceforth be discarded, 'he bids us,' says the supposed narrator of the story, 'when we least expect it take back our faith':

This is a correct though humorous summary of much prevalent scepticism. While critics destroy with the one hand, they build up with the other; while they seem intent on rooting out every remnant of trust in Christ, they frequently conclude by passionately beseeching us to make Him our Model and our King, our Pattern and our Guide. If there is anything which is calculated at once to arouse us who profess and call ourselves Christians and to make us ashamed, it is that the diligence with which His Example is followed, the earnestness with which His words are studied, by some whom we hold to have abandoned the Catholic Faith, throw into the shade the obedience, the love, the earnestness which prevail among ourselves. They who follow not with us are casting out devils in His name. It is with us, they are careful to say, and not with Him that they are waging war. They may dispute the incidents of His recorded Life: they may insist on reducing Him to the level of humanity, but they also insist that in so doing they act according to His Own Mind, that they refuse, for the very love which they bear Him, to surround Him with a glory which He would have rejected. Devoid of the errors which have led astray His successors, exalted far above the wisest and the best of those who have spoken in His Name, it is the function of criticism to show Him in His fashion as He lived, to sweep away the falsehoods which have gathered round Him in the course of ages.[14]

We do not seek to read into the emotional language of such writers a significance which they would repudiate, but we are surely entitled to point out that in spite of themselves they are bringing their tribute of homage to the King of the Jews, the King of all mankind. They grant so much that, it seems to us, they must grant yet more. We, at any rate, cannot stop where they deem themselves obliged to stop. We must go further, we hear other voices swell the chorus of adoration, we have the witness not only of those who, in awe and wonderment have exclaimed, 'Truly this was a Son of God,' but we have the witness of those who from heartfelt conviction are able to say, 'The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.' And to them we humbly hope to be able to respond, 'Now we believe not because of the language of others, whether honest doubters or devout disciples, for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.'

'Restate our doctrines as we may,' to sum up all in the words of one who began his career as a teacher in the confidence that Jesus of Nazareth was merely a man, but whom closer study and deepening experience have brought to a fuller faith, 'reconstruct our theologies as we will, this age, like every age, beholds in Him the Way to God, the Truth of God, the Life of God lived out among men: this age, like every age, has heard and responds to His call, "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest": this age, like every age, finds access to the Father through the Son. These things no criticism can shake, these certainties no philosophy disprove, these facts no science dissolve away. He is the Religion which He taught: and while the race of man endures, men will turn to the crucified Son of Man, not with a grudging, "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!" but with the joyful, grateful cry, "My Lord and my God."'[15]

V

He who was lifted up on the Cross is drawing all men to Himself, wise and unwise, friend and foe, devout and doubting, is ruling even where His authority is disavowed, is causing hearts to adore where intellects rebel. The patriotic English baron, Simon de Montfort, as he saw the Royal forces under Prince Edward come against him, was filled with admiration of their discipline and bearing. 'By the arm of S. James,' he cried, recalling with soldierly pride that to himself they owed in great measure their skill, 'they come on well: they learned that not of themselves, but of me.' The Church of Christ, when confronted with the benevolence, the integrity, the zeal of some who are arrayed against her, may naturally say, 'They live well indeed: they learned that not of themselves, but of me.' 'You are probably,' was the homely expostulation of Benjamin Franklin with Thomas Paine, 'you are probably indebted to Religion for the habits of virtue on which you so justly value yourself. You might easily display your excellent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and thereby obtain a rank amongst our most distinguished authors. For among us,' continued Franklin satirically, 'it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a youth, to be raised into the company of men, should prove his manhood by beating his mother.' The blows inflicted on Christianity come from unfilial hands and hearts, from hands and hearts which have been strengthened and nurtured on Christianity itself, from hands and hearts which, but for the lingering Christianity that still impels them, would soon be paralysed and dead. The ideals which systems intended to supersede Christianity set before them are, to all intents and purposes, only Christianity under another name. Where the ideals go beyond ordinary Christian practice, they are only a nearer approximation to the Supreme Ideal which has never been fulfilled save in Jesus Christ Himself. Wherever there is truth in them which is not generally accepted, or which comes as a surprise, investigation will show that it is an aspect of Christianity which Christians have been neglecting, that it is a manifestation of the mind of Christ, a development of His principles. Look where we will, the men that are making real moral and spiritual progress are those who are in touch with Him. Their beliefs about Him may not be accurate, their conception of His nature and work may be defective, but it is His Name, His Spirit, His Power, it is Himself that is the secret of their life. One part of His teaching has sunk into their hearts, one element of His character has mysteriously impressed them. They have touched the hem of His garment, the shadow of His Apostle passing by has glided over them, and they have been roused from weakness and death. 'He that was healed wist not Who it was, for Jesus had conveyed Himself away.' So it happened in the days of His flesh: so is it happening still: they that are set free may not yet know to Whom their freedom is to be ascribed. Now, as on the way to Emmaus, when men are communing together and reasoning, Jesus Himself may be walking with them, though their eyes are holden that they do not know Him. John Stuart Mill, whose acute intellect, whose spotless rectitude, whose public spirit, whose non-religious training naturally made him the idol of those to whom Christianity was a bygone superstition, came in his later days, not indeed to accept the orthodox creed, but yet to stretch out his longing hand to Christ, believing that He might have 'unique commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue.' George Eliot, whose genius was ever labouring to fill up the void which the rejection of her early faith had made, consoled her dying hours, as she had inspired her most ennobling pages, with the Imitation of Christ. Matthew Arnold, most cultured of critics, joins hands with the most fervid of evangelists in maintaining that 'there is no way to righteousness but the way of Jesus.' The name of Christ—none other name under heaven given among men will ever prove a substitute for that.

Renouncing faith in Christ, is there life, is there salvation for man to be found in the doctrines, the names, the influences which are so vehemently extolled? Is there one of them which so satisfies the cravings of the heart, which enkindles such glorious hopes, which inspires to such holy living, which inculcates so universal a brotherhood, as Christianity? Is there one of them which, at the best, is more than a keeping of despair at bay, than a resolute acceptance of utter overthrow, than a blindness to the tremendous issues which are involved?[16] Will the culture which is devoted, and cannot but be devoted, exclusively to the outward, which imparts a knowledge of Science or Art or Literature, be found sufficient to rescue men from the slavery of sin or from the torment of doubt? Will the progress which is altogether occupied with the material and the physical, with providing better houses and better food and better wages, produce happiness without alloy and remove the sting and dread of death?[17] Will the reiteration of the dogma that we are but fleeting shadows, that there is nothing to hope for in the future, that we are all the victims of delusion, tend to elevate and benefit our downcast race? Will the attempt to worship what has never been made known, what is simply darkness and mystery, be more successful in raising men above themselves than the worship of the Righteousness and the Love which have been made manifest in Christ? Will the attempt to supplant the worship of Jesus Christ, in Whom was no sin, by the worship of Humanity at large, of Humanity stained with guilt and crime as well as illumined here and there with deeds of heroism, of Humanity sunk to the level of the brutes as well as exalted to the level of whatever we may suppose to be the highest, seeing that there is really no higher existence with which to compare it—will this worship of itself, with all its baseness and imperfection, this turning of mankind into a Mutual Adoration Society, make Humanity divine? Will even the assurance that far-distant ages will have new inventions, fairer laws, more abundant wealth be any deliverance to us from our burdens, any salvation from our individual sorrow and guilt and shame? Can we to whom the likeness of Christ has been shown, can we imagine that any of these efforts to answer the yearning of mankind for deliverance from the body of this death will prove an efficient substitute for Him? And if we forsake Him, it must be in one or other of these directions that we go.

VI

But the signs of the times are full of hope. In social work at home, in the progress of missions abroad, in revivals of one kind and another, in growing reverence for holy things, in a renewed interest in religion as the most vital of all topics, even in strange spiritual manifestations not within the Church, we have, amid all that is discouraging and depressing, indication of the coming kingdom. The cry, 'Back to Christ,' with all the truth that is in it, is only half a truth if it does not also mean 'Forward to Christ.' He is before us as well as behind us, and the Hope of the World is the gathering together of all things in Him. Should there be, as there has been over and over again in days gone by, a widespread unbelief, a rejection of His Divine Revelation, of this we may be sure—it will be only for a time. When the sceptical physician, in Tennyson's poem, murmured:

the believing nurse made the comment:

A thought most sad, though most inspiring. 'Only dawned.' Why is Christianity after all these centuries only beginning to be manifested? It is at least partly because of the apathy, the divisions, the evil lives of us who profess and call ourselves Christians, because we have wrangled about the secondary and the comparatively unimportant, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, because we have so left to those beyond the Church the duty of proclaiming and enforcing principles which our Lord and His Apostles put in the forefront of their teaching. We have narrowed the Kingdom of Christ, we have claimed too little for Him, we have forgotten that He has to do with the secular as well as with the spiritual, that He must be King of the Nation as well as of the Church. But now in the growing prominence of Social Questions, which so many fear as an evidence of the waning of religion, have we not an incentive to show that the social must be pervaded by the religious, that our duties to one another are no small part of the Kingdom of Christ? For all sorts and conditions of men, for masters and servants, for rulers and ruled, for employers and employed, there is ever accumulating proof that only as they bear themselves towards each other in the spirit of the New Testament can there be true harmony and mutual respect; that only, in short, as the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ will men in reality bear one another's burdens; that only as the Everlasting Gospel of the Everlasting Love prevails will all strife and contention, whether personal or political or ecclesiastical or national, come to an end; that only as men enter into the fellowship of that Son of Man Who came not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give His Life a ransom for many will the glorious vision of old be fulfilled: I saw in the night vision, and behold One like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven and came to the Ancient of Days and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all people, nations and languages shall serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I

'I hope no reader imagines me so weak to stand up in defence of real Christianity such as used in primitive times (if we may believe the authors of those ages) to have an influence upon men's beliefs and actions. To offer at the restoring of that would indeed be a wild project: it would be to dig up foundations: to destroy at one blow all the wit and half the learning of the kingdom, to break the entire frame and constitution of things, to ruin trade, extinguish arts and sciences, with the professors of them; in short, to turn our courts, exchanges, and shops into deserts; and would be full as absurd as the proposal of Horace, where he advises the Romans all in a body, to leave their city, and seek a new seat in some remote part of the world, by way of cure for the corruption of their manners.'—DEAN SWIFT, An Argument to Prove that the Abolishing of Christianity in England may, as things now stand, be attended with some Inconveniences.

APPENDIX II

While the state of our race is such as to need all our mutual devotedness, all our aspiration, all our resources of courage, hope, faith, and good cheer, the disciples of the Christian Creed and Morality are called upon, day by day, to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling and so forth. Such exhortations are too low for even the wavering mood and quacked morality of a time of theological suspense and uncertainty. In the extinction of that suspense and the discrediting of that selfish quacking I see the prospect for future generations of a purer and loftier virtue, and a truer and sweeter heroism than divines who preach such self-seeking can conceive of.'—HARRIET MARTINEAU, Autobiography, vol. ii. p. 461.

'Noble morality is classic morality, the morality of Greece, of Rome, of Renaissance Italy, of ancient India. But Christian morality is slave morality in excelsis. For the essence of Christian morality is the desire of the individual to be saved: his consciousness of power is so small that he lives in hourly peril of damnation and death and yearns thus for the arms of some saving grace.'—F. Nietzsche, by A. R. Orage, p. 53.

'They [Christians] have never learnt to love, to think, to trust. They have been nursed and bred and swaddled and fed on fear. They are afraid of death: they are afraid of truth: they are afraid of human nature: they are afraid of God.... They deal in a poor kind of old wives' fables, of lackadaisical dreams, of discredited sorcery, and white magic, and call it religion and the holy of holies. They wander about in a sickly soil of intellectual moonshine, where they mistake the dense and sombre shadows for substances. They want to stop the clocks of time that it may never be day, and to hoodwink the eyes of the nations that they may lead the people as so many blind.'—ROBERT BLATCHFORD, Clarion, March 3, 1905.

APPENDIX III

'In Georgia, indeed, as the Jesuits had found it in South America, the vicinity of a white settlement would have proved the more formidable obstacle to the conversion of the Indian. When Tounchichi was urged to listen to the doctrines of Christianity, he keenly replied, "Why, there are Christians at Savannah! there are Christians at Frederica!" Nor was it without good apparent reason that the poor savage exclaimed, "Christian much drunk! Christian beat men! Christian tell lies! Devil Christian! Me no Christian!"'—SOUTHEY, Life of John Wesley, vol. i. p. 57.

'I was then carried in spirit to the mines where poor oppressed people were digging rich treasures for those called Christians, and heard them blaspheme the name of Christ, at which I was grieved, for to me His name was precious. I was then informed that these heathens were told that those who oppressed them were the followers of Christ, and they said among themselves, "If Christ directed them to use us in this sort, this Christ is a cruel tyrant."'—Journal of John Woolman, p. 264.